EVE General Discussion

Is that your response to everything now?

Null as it is now is a result of choices made by basic human nature (protect what you have and share it only with the ones you love).

You can go ahead and be Karl Marx and invent some idea of better angels that humanity is not, but give any random assortment of humans the same resources that Goonswarm has and you will get a big, blue donut.

Botting, or pretending to be a bot, doesn't count as playing the game.

Meh. Killed a bunch of those guys recently on another toon of mine. If they're bots, they're tremendously ****** bots to not run away when local spikes by two. I think they're more likely a consequence of the lamewad drone mechanics that let your drones defend your ship for you.

Mittani suggests a fenced off newbie area to improve NPE.
Cites WOW success as example.
Illustration of how money eats everything. Business needs to be balanced or you end up with the bland theme park.
Leader of big coalition does not qualify you as game designer or business manager. It's like listening to a great dancer talk about his ideas about how to vamp up the disco scene.

BESIDES, newbro area would be griefed by exactly those baby eaters that are wasting miners around jita. So that flushes that idea entirely.

Across the world people are spending slightly less on fun things. Best NPE in the world does badly when customers aren't spending.

Eve by its very nature will always make a large proportion of new players quit and nothing you do to the NPE will change that.

CCP advertises Eve as a place where stealing, cheating, back stabbing and basically acting like a total douche bag is a must, so this in turns attracts a certain type of person.

One of the most commonly pieces of advice given to new players by the Eve community is never trust anybody ever.

Most Corps / Alliances are in a state of constant paranoia. Any new character must be a spy and if not a spy then a noob so an opportunity to be scammed.

When you put all this together is it no wonder that most new players leave never to return?

Nope, no wonder and from my perspective it's perfectly fine.

Seems to me there are 2 ways to increase the number of new paying players:

1. Increase the rate at which players convert (ie. fix NPE to give greater appreciation/safety of the game); or
2. Get more people to try the game so that more of life's 'scumbags'** try the game

I'm more for 2 than 1 tbh (but that's also a gamers perspective than a business perspective).

There is room in the game for both city builder type players and for pvpers, but people in both groups need the maturity to realise that this is a niche game that challenges and rewards people who generate their own fun rather than waiting for the game to feed it to them.

We don't need to create a WoW-like area to attract more WoW-like players, but that may not be the best language to use to express that.













** By scumbags, I mean mature people able to separate life from a game and recognise that internet space toys are there to be destroyed and stolen

HTFU?
Can I haz your stuff?
Go back to WoW?
Don't let the door smack you in the ass?
Adapt or die?

I agree with someone on this forum. Mr. Epeen.

I trust you guys about as far as I can throw you.

I'm agreeing with that article 100%.

The player base says it's about "throwing people in the deep end" and making them learn the game themselves and being better for it. But this seems to be a very bad approach, especially with games like WoW offering a more relaxed and easy approach to getting started, it becomes a case of "Hmm should I play the easy to follow and learn game that helps you get to know the game and ease into it" or the "HOLY **** WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?, UNDOCK BUTTON. THE **** IS THAT, IM DEAD, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" game that gives you next to no instruction on how a lot of the simple mechanics work.

I'm pretty sure the casual gamer would chose the first option. A game can't keep driving away customers and expect to survive. They need these new players to stay and if it means changing something drastically that has been an almost "tradition" if you will, then so be it. More players = more content! Ease people into the cruel universe that is Eve Online and after that let them decide if they want to continue with this brutal, brutal game further.

I almost quit this game myself as it was incredibly difficult to learn how to play, the starter tutorial was awful and I had to ask for so much help from the rookie channel it was ridiculous.

But I persisted and here I am. 1 year later (to the day I think, wowser) with 6 accounts and apart of a great alliance.

Basic human nature? What kind of human being are you, exactly, that that is your basic nature? . . . Oh, wait! Duh. You're an EVE player. That might help to illuminate why EVE has the new player experience that it has.