EVE General Discussion

Reserved. (seriously. will post later.)

I've made a huge post and ran out of time. All I can say so far is that you are making it yourself too easy, without actually analysing and understanding the issues. Besides that do you throw around 'player driven PvE' without explaining in detail what that actually means. Having a word for something doesn't mean anybody understands what it is o how or why it works. (paraphrasing Richard P. Feynman, or actually his dad)

In the last two weeks I had to literally suffer sadness about how new players are treated and I have to conclude that CCP either has no clue how human minds work or that CCP is deliberately trying to ruin their game. What the game is about and what it's advertised as and what new players are getting presented is in complete dissonance.

Will continue later, no time left.

What is the reward for this player-generated NPC content, and where does it come from?

High Sec Income vs Null Sec Income - the reality
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=287044&find=unread

Clearly it's having a constellation to yourself and winning the npc drop lottery repeatedly while using 10 alts

Wait, what? EVE is really that simple? I've been doing it wrong all this time!

The problem with EVE is it's a long-term sandbox game and people are notoriously bad at setting their own goals and deriving long-term satisfaction from it. That's why community is so important to EVE, because while the system itself provides very little recognition for any sort of achievement, there is social validation for how you play in the sandbox.

Take the Provibloc- they congratulate themselves on playing the game on 'hard mode' and attach themselves to terrible quality nullsec because of the stubborn community they have there.

Take Rooks and Kings- they didn't set out just to win, but to do so in a conservative fashion- skill & intelligence vs. the blob, and making entertaining videos in the process. Half of the reason they're still around is that their videos are so popular and their shenanigans are validated by that popularity. Same goes for any solo PVPer or regular manufacturer of EVE videos (maybe even more so for someone like Mad Ani, who doesn't generate their own content).

Take any big nullbloc, where there's social validation for doing your job in the big blobs, being entertaining in allaince chat, not dying stupidly and paying for your own stuff with careful carebearing (and dropping it when defence fleets are called), and, of course, flying logi.

Take incursion communities, who have their own 'rules' for sites and who runs which ones and when (not that they always agree and the wonderful drama that results when they don't).

Take any griefer, who doesn't just satisfy themselves with ganking hapless scrubs in highsec, but sharing the reaction with those that will laugh along with them at the tears.

Take killboards- an arbitrary mesaure of success that most EVE players will recognise or dismiss, depending on their mood.

None of these communities are compulsory, nor is any playstyle. You can set your own goals and if they satisfy you and you achieve them all by your own, all the more power to you. You don't have to fly with other people, but many people derive the most enjoyment from it.

Where EVE falls down on marketing is they try to sell the game and community is only sold once you're in the game (and only in a limited fashion- recruitment by said communities is far more effective at getting players into communities than the occasional spotlight). Some of the most successful and largest EVE organisations are ones in which the community is not based in EVE, but is transplanted from another (Reddit, SomethingAwful, etc.)- hardly proof, but a strong indicator that there's something to the community thing.

What CCP could do better is connect the dots between 'What is this 'EVE' game I've heard about? Do I want to play it?' to 'I want to be a part of corp/alliance/coalition X'. Maybe the myriad of communities in EVE needs to be a bigger part of external marketing, maybe there's a way CCP can support that.

I'm absolutely with Ripard that EVE should stand on it's own two feet as it has done for over a decade. NPE is an important part in not alienating uncertain and unbound players, but to a degree it's needed only as long as it takes a player to find a supportive community that will continue/replace the NPE.

First off, most of 0.0 is a ghost town. We have to wait 5 more years for new space.
No new real content has been added, how many times is that damsel going to get kidnapped?
Most of the game is boring as **** with no real challenge outside of PvP, and PvP has become epeen fleets and blob warfare.

When you've done everything this game has to offer, after several years, you thirst for more!

CCP is...yet again...taking their focus off their flagship product and focusing on dying products (Dust 514) and unproven products (Valkyrie)

Would you like more details?

i'm new so still lot to learn an experience but i feel for the vets even at this early stage of my career so to speak, i think rubicon an the words there speaking sound exciting though.

After 10 years maybe the universe needs a huge shakedown an maybe just maybe the life of this expac is the one thats going to do it

Gee, you might want to have a look at the business model of ALL computer game companies.

Let me try to lay it out for you, since you seem to have some difficulty with real life facts:

See, every game, no matter how good, experiences attrition of subs.
To grow, a company has to attract and retain more subs that they lose.

You with me so far?

So yes, CCP must make the game attractive enough to retain that portion of newbies to keep their cash flow solid.
That kind of thing means curtailing the sociopaths in the game, who delight in driving new players out of the game.
It also means in devoting more resources to teaching new players the game mechanics, plus the meta-game mechanics.

Frankly, I think every new player should automatically be enrolled in Eve University for the first 3 months of the char's life, to give the best start on learning the game.

And here I agree with him. EVE's skill model (and more importantly, ease of running multiple clients) promotes "an alt for every purpose" scheme. Instead of "division of labour" scheme with actual people doing each job, which I find healthier.

I should point out that EVE is still growing.

Again I have written a huge post only to understand that there is no point, as words don't help at all and there is nobody reading this who actually has any influence or honest interest in it. This is just the typical pointless thread filled with words, nonsensical opinions and arguments that are based on lack of information or plain stupidity. That was harsh.

To not seem rude and completely off-topic though, I'll provide you with my observation about your idea.

I have no idea what this is about. I have no idea about how card games work and as it is you who wants to spread your idea, you should be the one finding a way to communicate your idea in a way that makes it actually understandable. This isn't about me not understanding it, but about developers wanting things explained easily, because they already have it complex enough. Developers have to integrate things into an already complex system. Unless you can write down your idea in a manner that makes it easily comprehensible, it is doomed right from the beginning. One of the big reasons why so many people fail to communicate with each other. Something easily observable in GD.


Try step by step explanations and a flowchart. So far, it only seems to be overly complex and completely disconnected from the actual assignment. Just like the NPE is. I fail to see how this helps new players at all. This might also be, because It is based on the wrong idea that PvE is a great entry into the game, which it observably isn't.


People love graphs and flowcharts. They make things easily understandable and THAT'S always helpful to get a point across. It also always helps to point out important parts by using italic, bold or both.Not too much, though.


Good luck! o7