Out of Pod Experience

Funny how these threads always start with one whiney *****, who then gets replaced by another whiney ***** (or two).

Coïncidence? I think not.

In case I never shiptoast again: Happy Easter.

Pulled in quite a few with that one sentence troll, congrats.

And that niche is how big...? Is there any chance to expand that niche? How many players have borrowed CCP from other niches which were deserted?

I said two or three years ago, and still think it, that EVE is a great 150,000 players game. In that sense, EVE may never die. But there's plenty of room for downsizing, if the estimates meaning that EVE curently haves 340,000 to 380,000 subscriptions are right.


PS: according to the data from Fanfest 2015, there's only 38% of "core" EVE players, what they called "Profesional" and "Agressors". The other are not in the game for the pew pew and could fit into any other game that was as complex, "adult" and sandboxy as EVE, minus the pew pew.

Elite: Dangerous could fill that gap, if it just went for the subscription model. Not being a subscription game is the biggest handicap it haves, as buy to play games have a naturally shorter lifecycle.

EVE is not just what you get by being smart and hitting the right spot. It's a kind of game which only 500 million dollars can buy...

You know that I don't totally disagree with you, but …

1) we need to be clear on what eve's niche is exactly.

2) CCP has moved a tiny step closer to what was on the original drawing board (you will not know what I'm talking about if you haven't been around the time of the old website)

1) eve's niche is imvho defined by these two conditions:

• all the active players are in the same universe (same server, no instancing)
• losses are real (and more or less painful)

Anything more than that is a feature, which makes a game more desirable, but they do not define the niche EvE has carved for itself (they didn't invent it btw. EvE is inspired by Ultima Online … when MMO wasn't even a genre yet.)

So Star Trek Online "features" walking and shooting avatars on top of the spaceship game. But is losing a spaceship in STO hurtful ? Is the loss real ?

Star Citizen has also a long list of great features. It's said that some ships can be controlled by multiple players (one at the helm, one at the guns …). But as far as "single universe" goes, RSI had to fake it. As far as I understood, you can keep your buddies close but the overall number of players in the same spot being very limited, all other encounters will be randomised. That is so not EvE like.

I believe that Elite: Dangerous has a similar approach for the same technical reasons. Basically, the more your game is about players actually targeting other players in realtime, the fewer players you can have in the same rendered space.

On a side note: there is also branding, which is neither a gameplay feature nor a gameplay mechanic. It's a marketing tool to draw anyones attention for a short time. But if you fail to deliver good gameplay, you'll still fail to retain players.

2) When CCP promises, they deliver bits and pieces or not at all and then they deliver something else … and yet that's not always bad.

Back on the old website there was a section named "the drawing board" which allowed players to see which features or outline of features CCP had in store for future expansions. Moreover CCP explained their vision of EvE as a simulation of a complete science fiction universe. CCP always wanted to develop EvE further than just spaceships doing spaceship things.

Way before Incarna, players were slightly upset about "atmospheric flight" being shelved despite the demo at Fanfest. Then avatar gameplay became the new fad. I wasn't convinced until the first demo videos came out. With Incarnagate, walking in stations was shelved too.

In paralell to this Dust514 came … and disappointed many existing EvE players, because it was not a PC game. It expanded the EvE universe but excluded most of the existing playerbase.

And now I'll come to my point: With Valkyrie and Legion in development we're likely to get this expanded Science Fiction universe outlined in the drawing board. It's not exactly the way we may have thought of it and it certainly wasn't a smooth ride to get there, but we're getting there.

To put it in an example rather then trying to explain it: No matter how hard people try to copy Minecraft, their games are not Minecraft. They may have nicer graphics, push their game more in already existing genres (RPG, FPS, …) … but they are not Minecraft. This may of course change now that Minecraft is no longer the Indie title it used to be.

So, let's hope that CCP doesn't sell out

I'm unsubbing as well. Reasons:
-Can't be arsed to log on lately. It's not you EVE, it's me. I'm a loner and a rebel, I'm no good for you baby.
-Long lack of any scandals, yelling and screaming, or good humor in GD. Player created content is lagging-- and it's not even summer yet.
-I'm getting kind of good at WoT.
-Sub ends tonight.

Fly safe, see you when I'm back. Yeah, probably tomorrow.

Ha, I knew I saw an unsub thread of the OP ...

Obligatory can I....you know the rest


I'd like me some AhriBítches call each other whatever they want. Part of EVE Online is what you make of it.