EVE General Discussion

I played the first EQ when it went out, not so long ago I played EQ2, the second seemed clearly less punishing than the first.
But beyond that I don't understand what you mean by "accomplisment", what are we really doing here ?
Playing the content of an entertainment product sold/rent by a company from the private sector.

I must admit I don't get what you mean by "sense of accomplishment" in the case of EVE, I feel like CCP employess are the ones doing something truly worthwile by creating then maintaining the game.

Sure, I'll take a crack at it.

At their very core, the carebear is made of 2 things, that may or may not be in equal proportion.

Those things are Fear and Greed. Greed for assets, always more, always increasing. Fear of real players, who might not have strictly better combat skills, but more importantly have the will and ability to use them.

These two things combine together to create a mindset that quite simply cannot handle loss of the imaginary assets we all play with. But most especially, they cannot countenance that loss coming from another player. This both frightens and enrages them simultaneously, hence the bile and vitriol that comes out of them when they are confronted with loss.

This is called "tears", and due to a segment of the playerbase finding this misplaced rage to be hilarious, the extraction of said tears has become a primary industry in EVE Online. That segment that enjoys the verbal flailing of the carebears even does such things as put their various collections online, sharing stories and trading these tears among one another for amusement.

The carebears are not unaware of this, which only heightens their sense of being persecuted.

But for some reason, their behavior doesn't change. They don't see negative consequences arising as a result of their actions, but instead shift all the blame onto the existence of other players. They are unable to consider that they have done anything "wrong".

Which is why so very many of them are bound and determined to act as though this is a single player game.

Correct. While highsec may not be exclusively carebears, carebears do almost exclusively live in highsec. Kinda of a square-is-a-rectangle sort of thing.

Hold on a minute guys, I'm getting a lot of replies about how the hisec PvE population will quit.

To me, this doesn't make much sense. There are many other games with a much more focused, sophisticated PVE experience.

Why would many PvE gamers play a game that didn't have much PvE content?

It's fairly obvious this is a troll thread.

But the same question repeated ad nauseam may deserve different replies in different years.

In fact, we are talking about a special product: a sandbox MMO where players perspectives and game features change over time.

I think a subtle line may be drawn: in the past casual players, "PVEers", "F2P", "competing MMOs" were all mostly uncommon or downright not existing things.

Ask this thread question in 2004... nobody would have really cared about most of the factors above.

EvE was an engrossing, new universe to explore, paying an AAA grade sub (multiple subs strongly encouraged by game design!) were obvious things. A blank slate sandbox universe for everyone so bold to go take it? GOOD!

Then the years passed. The blank slate became less blank. CCP's "greed is good" did not reduce a bit, so the AAA grade sub stayed - they actually tried adding more burdens. But hey, it was still "sub MMOs" and the competition games were something pathetic at best.

More years pass. The blank slate now is definitely well full and somewhat tired. New content trickles in, game is in a sort of "active maintenance mode" where great expansions a la Apochrypha are actually and publicly shunned by the very game designers (don't ask me to go find the precise posts, this is all common knowledge or EvE-Searchable anyway). At least partially F2P games become not just a reality but actually almost the norm. Luckily for EvE, the only competition is called Star Trek Online and similar other poor excuses for MMOs.

More years pass. Game's definitely stale. Some off-springs have grandiously failed or shown tight limits (WiS, PI, Dust itself). News about content are sparse and Fanfest is more of a "good intentions talk room" than something followed by facts.
Sub is still AAA grade though. Notice the (not so) subtle change in demographics: in old times, the concurrent player numbers would slowly rise before an expansion and then would stay strong for a couple of months till the "novelty factor" wore off. Nowadays, players come in relatively late, peak at expansion date and then in few weeks they are back to normal.
This is a sign of overall interest declining. Old players return to see if this time CCP finally implemented something worth playing. But whatever they put in, is exhausted and then those players return doing something else.

In the meanwhile, old competitors like Entropia Online (the "evil brother sandbox" implementing several words including an harsher version of a spaceships sandbox) keep churning out new content. Other games like Star Citizen appear on the horizon. And the worrysome truth is that EvE lived so good so far, not because of it's over-time increasing, unbeatable quality and merits but because the others downright sucked hard.

So, EvE in my opinion is slowly losing grip, slowly losing momentum. It's staying playerbase are less and less fidelized, many look around. It's like a big, fat giant standing on feet of clay.
If CCP will keep doing... nothing new, come something big or powerful enough and EvE is ripe to crash.

The first to go will be the many who developed less ties to the game, those who did not develop massive human networks over the years, those who did not invest years learning the "secrets" of the game in its whole.

Who are those less attached to EvE and thus easier to quit?
Worrysome to say, it's a large amount of players, exactly the profile the OP wants to nerf.

Those who only did casual play, who did not invest their being into the deepest game features, who did not develop years strong friendships. Those who form the "players turnover".

All those bring a sizable income to CCP, but it's not reliable. Keep beating on them and they SHALL move to greener pastures.

After all if some dude for inexplicable reasons finds fun to waste his life shooting red crosses and pays for something I'd not do even if paid for, then let him in peace!

EvE is not progressing at the moment, it's mostly stationary. But anything could tip its direction towards a slow but steady decline.
I am very displeased to see a great game being abandoned like that, but it's not in my capability to add new content or features. All I can do is try preserving it as long as possible and flinging nerfs left and right is definitely not the way to preserve anything.

Hold on a minute guys, I'm getting a lot of replies about how the hisec PvE population will quit.

To me, this doesn't make much sense. There are many other games with a much more focused, sophisticated PVE experience.

Why would many PvE gamers play a game that didn't have much PvE content?

CCP