EVE General Discussion

So I was wrong about that. I tried searching for it but I couldn't find it anywhere.
It should be pretty clear from this why he left though. It's pretty apparent that he left because it provided better opportunities than a gaming company could provide, not because CCP was struggling.


I'm pretty sure that if someone leaves a position at a company, someone is hired or moved to fill that position. I seriously doubt CCP went "oh, I guess new players probably don't matter."

I'm glad that you understood me the right way and your response was great

Anyway, to address forcing certain styles of game play that you have mentioned in the post linked in the quote. I agree completely that it exists. Your example of PI is perfect for this. PI in highsec was a side game that even I enjoyed casually without any delusions that it could make me rich. It was just a fun thing to do sometimes after the more active playing session (either PvP or PvE), just as a wrap up of my play time. A 100 or 200 mil a month from it was not the cause for me playing it, but it was a decent enough initiative to keep me interesting in the actual gameplay and optimizations of my colonies. But again, I was playing it semi-casually while there was a possibility to engage in some serious spreadsheets, multiple alts and production lines to make a decent game content of it. And even without that PI provided content for me as a player.

When POCOs hit the game, no matter how low certain corps charge for the export, I was under the impression that all my gameplay and colony optimization effort can at any time go down the drain if a player corporation that owns the CO lifts the taxes, or the COs switches hands to a corp that does the same. The idea was to engage the players in more interaction, but the basis of it was fundamentally flawed. Players that were engaged in PI in higsec are at best not interested to defend or fight for something that doesn't return much profit. With the introduction of POCOs, the fight was not for resources but for your niche play style in a game that was always great just because it offers so many niche play styles.

I have given up highsec PI and I know many others that did as well. ISK wise it's just not worth it, your playing effort and colony optimizations does not mean a thing any more and the gameplay that they provide now (wars to own them) I simply get in a myriad of other ways. PI in higsec was a great and relaxing side game for AFTER i have finished PvP sessions. It was a content that turned into something that I always already had and the decision to introduce POCOs literally killed of a side game that I liked because it was different from the other stuff I did - yes, including primarily PvP. My game is now more poor because of it.

And this is coming form a player that loves PvP, player interaction and in-game politics. Now imagine what impact does it have on players that do not like that. Forcing player interaction in this way is highly counter-productive. And by the way, player interaction in an open world sandbox with player driven market is everything and anything you do, no matter whether it's direct "shoot you in the face" PvP or not. That is something some of the devs have forgotten or simply refuse to believe. Expanding interaction should be done in a natural way and not by the "forced down the throat" game mechanics that have the capacity to kill a whole dimension of the game.

Oh, and one more thing... while we are at engaging players in more interaction. I can almost guarantee that I have managed to lure more players into the W-Space, in direct and pure engagement in player interaction, with CCP Dropbear's lore stories published back in Apocrypha than POCOs forced players to engage in interaction. And I'm not talking about role players or fiction geeks, I talking about a definition of believed ideal player profile - PvPer that provides PvP content and interaction as his primary play style. Putting a content in is always better than removing it by forcing it to be replaced by another content that already existed.

Regarding wardecs example you have mentioned: I don't completely agree with it, since it's still relatively easy to avoid war decs, but at the cost of breaking one player community in order to nurture the other. There has to be a balance between having a good opportunity to declare a war dec and to avoid one and I believe that the current system is good enough at doing that (certainly much better that the old one).

How old are you? Some people who left over POCOs, where PvPrs who were on the verge of burning out and used hisec PI as an outlet. The person who helped me most in my early times, he burned out after Lvl5s disappeared from hisec. He was a nullsec warrior and lowsec industrialist, and hisec Lvl5s were his outlet. Then they were fixed so they would never spawn in hisec, and he was done. He traded EVE for studying languages, literally.

The abbility to escape PvP is key even for PvPrs. And CCP is killing that as they chase the 80% who "just level up their Raven" so they feel compelled to move out of hisec, or engage in PvP. The CCP buzzword for this pressure is "move away from the comfort zone"...

It works very well, as some people is totally willing to move away from EVE rather than be pushed around like a puppet, even if they can pay less taxes. I am certain that Crius is going to have a funny effect once hisec industry becomes effectively more complex and potentially less profitable, both for non-PvPrs and for everyone using that as a hobby.



It is easy... if you know how. But griefers avoid targetting corps who pose a risk to know what they're doing.

I'm 8 years into EVE (this is not my first character, but it stuck as my main).



This is the key! You've nailed it.

EVE has a history as an open PvP universe throughout 11 years of its existence and makes headlines because of the huge battles. Trillions of ISK make the headlines in player run scams and battle losses. If someone who never played EVE before came into the game with that reputation, what's the first thing they are going to do? Well, it's pretty obvious - try to accumulate enough wealth and skills in order to even think about competing in the game. And with a game that has characters from 2003 and 2004. active, even those who are interested to stay are basically thinking that a year in the game is absolute minimum for becoming competitive. I'm not saying that,... in fact I have been guiding newbies to see exactly the opposite of that, but the fact is that this mentality of new players is predominant and the best part is - it's natural given the global industry standards.

So we really need to look at "leveling up the Raven" not as a comfort zone, but completely the opposite - it's a heavy discomfort zone. It's the zone where a new player is absolutely convinced that he needs more time, skills and ISK in order to compete with other players. Stomping on those players while they are in that state certainly doesn't help. And forcing them to move away from that state by game mechanics or other player actions can and does only yield leaving the game altogether.

Hell, after 8 years and all that I have experienced in the game, I still have less than 10 bil in the wallet and sometimes feel that I'd need more financial security in order to PvP actively (although my experience always kicks in and tells me that I don't). Imagine having that thought as a new player without 130 mil SPs on their character and without prior experience of PvP as the primary focus of the game. And then force the interaction on them with a clear message "you are already competing even though you don't like it and don't think you are ready".

Add to that a dozen of cheap Catalysts ganking his ISK making machine (or his stuff in industrial ships) that was beasically a tool that kept him in the game and you just sent exactly what message to that player? That "no matter how much effort he puts in, there will be always older and more experienced players that will stomp on you whenever they feel like it for no apparent reason". Please note that these are not my words or words of bad forum posters.

Don't get me wrong, suicide ganking is an element of this game like any other and the game is richer because it exists. On the other hand it is damaging for the community if it gets out of control and it's pretty clear that it will be getting out of control very soon if the trends continue. And this time I'm not doing CCP's job of detecting the scope of the problem like I did a couple of years ago for bots. Players underestimated the scope of the problem back then and would usually send an obligatory HTFU if you even tried to touch a subject of bots, especially of those in nullsec. It's the same now with suicide ganking, but I now simply don't have time or will to gather all the information about the scope of suicide ganking in order to present it to CCP. That's a job for a game designer... or even better CSM.

And the simple solution is already there - tax the ganks dynamically depending on frequency of ganks in certain areas like they are going to do with industry. Connect he tax with the percentage of the value of the target even if it means that your wallet will go into negative. That would still make juicy targets attractive, it would still keep suicide ganking as a viable profession but it would also involve at least some form of planning and dedication if you want to focus your core gameplay around it and would finally introduce risk of failure if you don't do it right and without planning.

Finally, suicide gank alts do not bring money to this game as they can be trained in about 2 weeks (Tornado with large guns... for catalysts it's much shorter) on the existing accounts and don't require further maintenance whatsoever. I actually have one ready on this account, but haven't had time to use it due to RL. On the other hand, ganked players do quit after just 2 or 3 loses and they do take their money with them. CCP should keep that in mind along with everything else I've said in this post if they really want to keep subscribers in the game long enough for those players to progress into player interaction naturally or with positive focused help of other players.

Me? I don't care about suicide ganking as an element of my game. When I have enough time to play actively, I will re-join one great group of players in W-Space that I had a privilege to meet. Or get back to nullsec if the doors to W-Space get closed to me. I'll continue to move my valuable stuff with collateralized freight services and farm ISK in W-Space, nullsec or Factional warfare. As an old player with a long and diverse experience I have these options - those 80% mentioned simply don't.

So much fail i dont even want to think about what if all that money was invested in eve what this game would become.....

I wander how much this "feed the scraps" to fanboys via re balancing this and that and occasional tit for tat will last.

Refocusing yeah right,i think it is time for another "this could be eve but it will not" trailer.

Well it depends on what the objective was. If the objective was to make a amazing MMO then sure, SWTOR failed since it is just another WoW Clone but with a Star Wars theme skin, if the objective was to make an obscene amount of money then SWTOR is a success, a pretty damn big one.

It has been rumoured that SWTOR made $139 million in 2013 alone.

So sure, you say SWTOR is not a good game, I would actually agree with you yet we would be in the minority as a hell of lot more people play SWTOR then will ever play Eve.

SWTOR also generates a hell of lot more revenue then Eve could ever do in its present state. I guess like I said before, it all depends on what you define as success.

And the counter-point is that they have never removed or replaced content unless it was utterly broken and unused (eg. FW), nor have they ever forced any kind of replacement by different, pre-existing content.

You don't need to PvP at all, at least not any more than you already had to by virtue of picking a competitive activity. In most cases, you can just keep doing what you're doing without a care in the word — often with higher margins than before since players will want to make money and not have people move to a completely different planet. If they're trying to put the squeeze on you, you can trivially get your stuff out without paying the tax and relocate.

If the owner of the CO puts an insane tax on the planet, you can bypass it; your optimisation efforts are equally valid on other planets; and nothing gets destroyed other than the owner's return on investment.

No content is being replaced. Highsec PI is still highsec PI, and it was already PvP. Its interaction level increased, but that is not a replacement of content — if anything, it's the content nearing the state it was originally slated to be in.

Solar Freakin' Roadways!

Hey, once I had a brilliant job with totally competent managers who were awesome!

...for a year.