EVE General Discussion

Dear CCP,

Here are my 2 cents about your game and this post is made to react to graphs that have been shared on some websites (in Destructoid (EN), Clubic (FR) and some others).

I started in May 2012, after some friends invited me to play this game (and gave me back half the ISK they won with the buddy system - cool friends isn't it?). Nothing really started before I joined them a few months later and we started pvping (awfully). I lost a lot of ships, but it was fun and I learned a lot. At that time, the tutorial was crap, but the universe was pretty stable, with releases coming every 6 months. I kept pvping all around (a lot, actually), but then progressively the game started to evolve. The main change for me was the rate at which releases were coming out.

We came from a system where we had to wait for major changes in the game, kind of like a gift for the summer holidays and for Christmas,with new things to try out, new ships, new things, to a system where, if you go on holidays, you'll have a new patch out by the time you come back. That also means you will have to update your fits after almost every patch. Believe me, when you have lots of them. that's freaking annoying!

The second thing, that I think strongly impacted the drop in player connections, is the fact that skill queue are infinite. This was something that, even if it seemed really odd to players from other MMOs, kept some of the player base active. Maybe 80% of the almost-inactive players were just coming on to add skills, but that was still 20% that would do more, like undock their ship or go trading, creating somehow content to the game (happened to everyone). I don't feel the need to do so that often, and when I do I realize my fits are outdated again...

Another thing I noticed: you might have releases coming out often, that doesn't solve any of the issues you guys pretended to fix in the first place, and the Ishtar is a good example. I mean it took 6 months to fix a broken ship where players were telling you right and left about it...another example? In all of your o7 shows, you take ships out to fight, and in every single one of them you got jammed by a single griffin trolling you, weither you were in a frigate or a battleship. How long will it take before you realize some changes need to be done on that? (I salute the player, whoever he is, jamming you every time. Keep doing it space friend, CCP might get your message one day)

All that come to that question: if it doesn't fix important things, what's the point then of having those releases so often? Changing the Damage Control icon however, that didn't took long... and we all know how useful it was to the community (I'll give you that - CCP, you are pretty good at trolling )

Add to that the renaming of lots of items that everybody was using for years (if you wanted to name them with a convention, without much originality, you should have done it from the start, not after 10 years), that was not needed and not nearly close to its end (also making translations very funky), the introduction of SKINs, that make the ship very kikoolol but don't actually bring anything to the game and many other things... when was the last time something was made which had a WOW effect on people? Wormholes were cool, Factional Warfare was new (now it is just another way to farm the game outside of highsec). Any plan to really make something exciting for people that like to do something else than missionning or trading? When I reconnect, nothing has changed. Same players, in the same systems, doing the same **** every single day. Some would say that's what Eve is, but Eve used to be a lot more than that. Like seeing RTSavalanche undocking a Mimir, a Vangel and an Utu for New Year in Egghelende (I know you still have some space friend, and I hope you are taking good care of them), just because you know, New Year

So yeah. I think by willing to accelerate the pace of this game you actually fell into the trap of making too many releases with not enough significant content. 6 months was maybe a bit too long (although bugs were corrected in between), but 6 weeks is way too fast. Once every quarter is probably the best shot, giving people time to get used to the new things, make some more significant changes and not just small things that personnally make me feel like it is done just to feel the void, and correct what is broken. And I am not even talking about multibox, or we could be here for the night :)

At the same time, you advertised your new TV studio a lot, holding a show, and when it comes to streaming the Alliance Tournament, you decide to not broadcast half of the matches and play the other half on two different systems at the same time...even though people are telling you they want to be there to see them. I tried to look at this from all angles, I still don't see why you can't do it, at least for the player base.

Don't get me wrong, not everything is bad in the game, or I wouldn't be here writing this. It is just that I have been playing less lately, despite having more time off and an ever-growing interest to space related things, so there was definitely something more than "you're a veteran in the game, you are just grumpy and did it all". I didn't, and the current game doesn't make me want to play more than that.

As a side note, I don't pretend to be the voice on anybody playing this game but myself with this post, so if you don't agree, I don't have any issue with it

Pretty much. Didn't talk about it, but the lifting of the ships that made them look like shiny plastic toys initially made me wonder what went wrong in the graphic department for this to happen. It's now a bit better but again, content before graphics (especially since they were far from hideous)

im thinking the "content" and "graphics" department do different things, however you have a lot of content been added to the game, maybe you are only asking for content that is relevant to you?

Does that mean we have to burn Jita all over again?

Stop waiting for CCP to add content and add your own. You do realize what a sandbox is, don't you?

I didn't read all of the OP so i don't know if this is a derail post or not (lol).

But I never cease to be amazed at how people choose to play a sandbox game (and sandbox games require willpower, a self starting attitude, and creativity) while not displaying any sandbox qualities (willpower...creativity...self starting attitude). I log in to EVe Online every night and find that there is too damn much stuff to do, to many possibilities, too many things I haven't tried (or tried in the past and failed but haven't tried again using new ships and mods that weren't available back then).
I'm serious, i've got 4 expeditions waiting for when i can get home and logged in and I know I['m going to miss at least a couple because 2 groups I fly with have plans for tonight and my null alliance has a thing, but then there is my buddy who is going out of town in a few days and he wanted to day trip into some shattered wormholes in Hictors to see whats what..... Between that and real life, I'm swamped, and it's a very good thing.

Then I come to the forums lol, and it's gripe after gripe about EVE not having any new content or not being fun or being inaccessible to new players when this game is literally a dozen times more accessible not than when i started blah blah. I'd be willing to be real life money on the idea that people doing such complaining are the self limiting types that don't try things because they don't think they will like them, or who do try things but have low attention spans

It all leads me to believe that even with CCP sometimes making mistakes, the real people is the individual at the keyboard who would rather be spoon fed 'content' playing the wrong type of game for their needs.

You seem to not have much imagination.

Yet again, get out there and create some content.

Look at what people in CODE and Wingspan are doing. That is creating content. How many projects like those have you done so far?

100% truth. Methinks OP isn't understanding what "sandbox" really means. You say you create content by PVP, and then wonder why people quit?

Do you even understand your own question?

What makes people leave EvE Online? Their lack of imagination.

I actually agree with almost everything the OP said. I don't feel that the new patches (which are popping up way too often nowadays) are adding very many significant and fixing changes, but instead a lot of shiny visual stuff which indeed is not comparable to actual game content. In the previous years I used to be excited about the new changes. Nowadays instead, for the last three or four patches I haven't really given a **** about the changes because I know I don't have enough in-game time to familiarize myself with every modification until the next patch gets launched already.

I also feel that an actually big patch day like two times a year would be better for pulling in new players with the correct ways of campaigning the game at the same time. The current system doesn't allow that.

Even though it's more of a side-note in the original post I can't go without mentioning: I concur, ECM is still ******* broken.

ehhh graphics =/= aesthetics.


Also, ship balancing is cool and all, but every ship I have ever flown has been nerfed or made less useful/productive by another nerf. And some ships remain IMBA.



They're obviously not fixing what the players want, because they're dropping off like flies.