Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The idea of high-sec capital ships is pretty absurd, but we do need a way to keep these guys playing. We need to give them a goal to strive for, even if it's just the ability to get 2-5-10% more out of their character in terms of tank and DPS. I mean where do the players go after the Raven or CNR if they're mission runners?

Maybe we should introduce a line of deadspace grade ships for all T1 classes, something with slight increases over the normal ship. Hell, we could create officer ship designs and give them a set bonus for using officer mods or something. Anything like that would give these mission runners an objective, even if it's just to get a shinier and shinier ship.

Of course, there will be much crying at Jita 4-4 if this happens as an officer battleship fitted with officer mods would be a suicide gankers wet dream.

My calculations are based on the top SP per hour rate that EveMon shows me when proper attributes and +5 implants are used to train that particular skill: 2700 SP/hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year results in 23.6 million SP if I do things right.



The game costs enough already. In real life money terms. Remember new players don't have proper ISK revenues in-game yet. Their interest has to last long enough to allow them to get to the interesting part, PvP or something else. Or they need to regularly feel that they achieve progression instead of doing the same things over and over.

And making people feel they are progressing can be done. There is this popular MMORPG that has existed for a long time and had millions of active subscribers. It used subtle tricks to make people feel they are progressing while the progress was in essence miniscule. Still social people (I guess I am social too) felt good about themselves. So new player retention can theoretically be improved.

But maybe I am just poor and don't understand you because you guys are rich whales that can spend a bit of extra money (USD100+) on their favorite game every month.

CCP can gain more money if they get more subscribers and CCP gets less money if people just quit. And I guess some people quit because they just cannot wait for years to get what they want. I am new but I've already heard a funny statement about a proper way to play this game: If you log into Eve, you are doing it wrong. And logging just to put another skill in the queue is not fun at all if the time when you think that character is ready is months or years away.

Let me make some assumptions. Maybe even false ones.

Eleven years ago when Eve went online, people had different expectations about MMOs. A number of MMO games had long grinding built in and it made sense to make this grinding (gaining skill points) part and parcel of Eve Online's core experience because everyone (or at least many) game development studios did that.

Now the situation has changed a lot. There are many more options regarding spending money on video games. Yes, Eve Online can always stay a niche game for dedicated players and equally dedicated developers. But it has the potential to catch up with the times (I don't say get better because it will rub every long-time players the wrong way) without ruining your own enjoyment of the game.

There are various options when it comes to tweaking the payment system. PLEX is a very innovative idea. I don't think anything like that still exists in other games. All CCP has to do is tweak payments options. Not pay to win but pay to enjoy the game.

And as part of the transition to the tweaked payment model after accelerating the overall SP accumulation pace (or maybe reducing SP needed for all skills by several times) I would offer long-time players an optional ability to reset their skills like once a year and redo them any way they want.

Back to the band-aid for the 40%. I like the idea of piloting a Rorqual in high-security space. But how much time will I have to spend to be able to pilot it and fit it properly? Not afford officer or faction modules but being able to fit Tier 2 modules without thinking "Damn, I don't have Advanced Spaceship Command V and my attributes are wrong for learning it now. I wanted to get the skill initially but I couldn't just wait. Do I learn it slowly now or do I wait for months to get my next attribute reset? Tough choice". And the choice of attributes punishes players. They wish they could have changed their past choices. Something surely can be done to alleviate the problem.

I may be ranting here and not saying a lot of useful things but I probably say some useful things. At least I thank you all for making thoughtful posts.

No it didn't. Or lets say not the way you [want to] percieve it. Back then mmorpg was somewhat obscure genre of a few internet geeks and somewhat more significant number of those who was intrested in what going on beyond forum boards and popular chatrooms. Those archetypes didn't disappeare in thin air, their numbers even have increased today, as internet now became ubiquitous all over the world. Such people constitute potential core playerbase of somewhat hardcore mmo's like Eve. They won't trade it for WoW, no matter what.

But there is one change - it is invasion of players of another kind, those who never had a chance to beat Contra or Battle Toads without cheats, those who are accustomed to games which play themselves and never last too long to expose their poor design and lack of gameplay too clearly. Those so called "AAA titles", for example. It's those people you see choosing all these player friendly, annoyingly comfortable projects which will give you all their content in 3 to 6 month and let you free to move to another generic flashy, short-lived world. There are so many of them - and, consequently, so many products designed to suit their tastes - that sometimes they are able to shadow such neglectable niche projects like Eve, or Darkfall, or Wurm. But yet those niche projects have their audience even today, as does Minecraft, Cavestory, Dwarf Fortress and other games which replaced for new generation of gamers those infamous Battle Toads of hardcore games' lovers of the past.

No, just no. As a long term player I don't want it myself and I don't want it in this game. You either plan your path good in advance, or face the consequnces, I don't need a game mechanics which nursering me to this extent.

I agree that something could be done to somehow allow people feel they advance each day step by step. But I don't think we need to change game SO much to do it and that it even worth it.

How on old good Earth new people are supposed to be willing to dedicate a year or two to the game right off the bat? Their initial interest in the game must be weak at first because they haven't joined the game already.

Besides, nobody suggests beating the game. Hell no! Only getting to perceivably better parts faster. Not past them.

I decided to give the game a spin and plan to stay here for some time only because Steam had a sale
Weekend Deal - EVE Online, 75% Off
Before that I heard only not so good things about the game: spreadsheets in space, PvP all over the place, your character can die forever there, people are sadistic pricks who love hunting down newbies, scams are allowed all the way, there are pirates, gangs, ransom demands for your ship and stuff like that. Now I can see that the game is not that bad.


All I can hear is the fear of change. "Back in my days we tanked uphill in the snow". Nobody has said yet that the change will go that far once the ball starts rolling.

From my point of view as a cost-conscious customer, who primarily plays as a single player: the cost of reaching a certain amount of skill points and a certain ability to generate ISK in the game are prohibitive for new players like me in terms of real money and real time. The pace of getting better at this game I for one can measure in ISK per hour and the amount of skill points accumulated. And I want it faster. Otherwise, logging in only to add a skill to queue looks like a viable option. For some time. And then attention is shifted to some other game if only because the time I spend in Eve Online is too short.

While Gevlon suggests giving some goal for socials to strive for and keep playing and paying, I believe that is a weak solution at best. Many of the suggestions voiced here are addressed towards those players, who managed to hang on with the game for several months or a year already. I suggest something for even newer players. There is a massive gap that freshly minted characters need to bridge to get engaged with the game.

As a solution I suggest accelerating the acquisition of skill points for 6-12 months for new characters via unlimited attribute remaps for a period of time, buyable attribute remap packs, buyable pretrained characters with a certain amount of skill points that players can distribute at will, better Cerebral Accelerators that last longer than 7 days, 14 days, 35 days and stuff like that.

I believe that skill points represent one of the stumbling blocks for new players on their way to the greatness of your caliber!

Tutorials are another stumbling block. Starting missions are good but not one of them told me that clicking twice on empty space will get my ship moving in that direction. I used to navigate by aligning to celestials. And was that fun? For masochists only.

Then there is the transition from PvE to PvP. People naturally don't have a tendency to kill other people. Armies take years to train rookies to kill total strangers withiout qualms. Shortly after I started playing, I joined Eve University but unfortunately they were and still are in the state of war. I lost some ships and I didn't like it in the end. I can offer no solutions for this feeling. It is the job of psychologists to come up with a solution for that.

If we want people not to get stuck in the solo raven in NPC corp end game issue. What about automatic message from CCPevery week after 2 month of sub with link to the corp search tool, the forum : EVE Corporations, Alliances and Organizations Center.

What about real bonus for beeing in player driven corp ? like :
+1% LP
+1% bounty
-1% manufacturing time
+1% skill training rate

!these would not harm the game play at all but with great mind effects !!


Giving high sec supers for mining and PVE , not orth the thread..

A better way to do it would be some kind of achievement system visible in the medals section, like "serpentis slayer" etc. Something to brag about, based solely on pve. But for crying out loud, not hisec titans!

There are easy (and not so effective) and pretty hard (but somewhat more effective) ways to achieve it.

Former is tightly link achivement system's status indicators to local chat and portraits in it - well, it's the only place you will see some other player when you both share one space 80% of the time, so it's pretty straightforward. Like, create some fancy border, paint his nick in chat window in some distinguishing way, place some small icons of medals at the bottom of his userpic, add some popup with his achivements showing when someone hovering his mouse over this userpic.

Later is another, completely new plane of players' interaction, like what WiS strived to achieve. But this time it should be well thought, convinient, full of fun, meaningfull, integrated into the game world content, so people willingly started to use it often enough. Then you will have the place where you can brag about your unique uniforms, accessories and medals as much as you want.

Somehow I don't think giving new players a Super will solve player retention issues.

More and better PVE content. High sec safer. (faster concord response). Expand the Universe. This one is crowded.

doesn't really do anything for the 50%, 40%, 10% split in player demographic, it just encourages people to play in 1 man alt corps. we don't need more 1 man alt corps, we need more players interacting with the existing playerbase.

It is really simple. Give custom ship skins for achievements, for an amount of achievement points, make achievers stand out from the crowd by implementing custom designs. For instance, the ships available from Sisters of Eve look very good thanks to their white skins. All the other ships in the game are kind of too dark for me. Consider adding custom POS skins and maybe unique POS designs.
But really before CCP gets to do it, I hope they will improve new player experience and explore new money-making options.