EVE General Discussion

Yah. We have a lot of folks who don't really read. They run their eyes across the lines, but the words aren't registering pictures. And, we have a lot of people who think their opinion is fact and no other view but theirs has merit, so they just "reply," type their tirade, and disregard thereafter any question or challenge to their position...all the while claiming they're in a debate.

The butter topping are folks who have no reading skills whatever. Couldn't understand any posts either way (if they tried) who avoid their self-inflicted frustration by (with misspellings Daniel Webster would load a musket over) just tell us all off for having too many words, and too many thoughts. Just go blow something up. "If you were busy shootin' sh*t you wouldn't be here typing all these big words just to make us look stupid."

I'd cry for the future of humanity, but I have four kids competing with these people IRL and I anticipate a nice, well-funded old age, judging by the strength of the competition. I tell you what. Let's have these flashes of human brilliance dictate the design of something very complicated, intricate and aesthetically superior. Good idea? R i i i i i ght!

I wouldn't count my sheep just yet. My experience in the corporate world says that your kids will be getting coffee for the illiterate people you are complaining about.

For the purpose of those stats, what defines a 'newbie'? Are we talking 30-day trial accounts or 1-3 month active subscribers? I have to agree with the point Nexus Day made that without any frame of reference these numbers really don't mean anything.

Sorry, I missed that. In any event, my point still stands: Are these 15-day trial accounts or xx-day trial + 15-day active accounts?

On this line of de-rail
I am catagorically highly intelligent.
Telling people that proves I am not clever.

It is how you socialise and make networks that get you forward in the world. High academic achievements only help if you aim to be a professor.
(.... and you want to stay away from academics if you are in the UK.
The Vogons have taken over and are under pressure to keep producing so when you do come up with something a bunch of people co-sign or take over your work completely.)

I see people having problem with the 15 days time frame.

It is the logical choice.

Because there are a lot of trial accounts, that do not subscribe.

If ganking would drive them away, it's only that 15 days time frame when that gank could have happen.

Ok, so I did not read CCP Rise's full explanation of this, (A quick google search didn't turn it up.)

But I surmise the gist is that a lot of 15 day trial accounts quit without subscribing. And of the 15 day accounts in general, 86% don't die, and 14% do. The distinction between "legal" death and "ganking" is irrelevant, in that it's easily possible to be "ganked" legally. You thought the game was a "PvP" game and got "kill rights" on yourself, or you foolishly joined a player corp and got war decced.

The more important question is what could you possibly do, from a cold start, in 15 days that would convince you to pay for the game? People starting a new game have an expectation of a cadenced presentation, one that provides content that is level specific for them.

Eve has none of that. There is no "noob PvP area" where you get free ships that only noobs can enter, for example. About the only actual thing you can do in those 14 days is mining in your free Venture, or level 1 missions... which probably haven't changed in 10 years. You're left to wander aimlessly in a "sandbox" while being told that big bad gankers are looking for you 24/7... (Which in reality, isn't all that true.) You can, and should... do the "Career missions" but then what?

This may have flown a decade ago, but nowadays players have a LOT of choices. A new player in that formative first 15 days has two constant things shoved in their face every 10 minutes: "You don't have the skill needed for that!" or "You have no idea where that is." while at the same time not really giving you anything to do with the skills you DO have.

You could argue that Eve isn't a game like WoW, where there is a clear path of what to do, and that's fine... but the blowback of that is that Eve simply won't appeal to the majority of players. So they quit after 15 days.

When was the last time you ran the full NPE?

Nice post.

I agree with you that it's not a game for everyone, especially on the content end. It doesn't feed it to you beyond the NPE and initial epic arc.

Content is what you create for yourself, or leverage off the gameplay of others (eg. from activities of each member of a Corp, etc.).

Leveraging off others is a much easier way to find content continuously that engages you in the game, with others also leveraging off what you do. I think that also comes back to CCPs views about social play and trying to encourage it as early as possible for a player. It's all tied in together.

The stats that CCP Rise released are incomplete, but CCP has all the data. I am sure they also looked at 30 days or 90 days, trial and already subscribed, and did a similar analysis as there is no reason why they couldn't. I guess one could suggest Rise is cherry picking the numbers and that the picture is totally different if you look at a 90-day window say, but why would he do that?

But the other number he gave in that talk is that also less than 1% of quitting players give "ship loss or harassment" as the reason for quitting. He wasn't explicitly clear, but that is presumably over all accounts of all ages.

The myth that players leave the game because of ganking or so-called "griefing" is completely and utterly busted. Or at least if they do quit for that reason, they aren't telling CCP that when they unsubscribe.

EDIT: In case you haven't seen the presentation, it is available on Twitch now. The presentation under discussion starts at time 3:15 of all places.