EVE General Discussion

Tune ups won't help. The very core structure system is a dumbed down version of the previous one, with no sense of control over the tedium, you can't fit a ship to wave a wand faster for attack or repair. It makes fleets and gangs more shallow.

Basically, Fozzie SOV is shallow and very annoying.

Remove high-sec, surely the number of people will grow then, r-right?

Uh-huh…

Here is an idea. Lets make eve... Fun? Pvp combat once out of small gang is prettyvlacking in diversity. PvE is on rails. Been saying it lots in discussion about remove high, etc. The common topics. Is fine to cater to existing playerbases, but all people eventually go inactive. That is why a good business model starts at the new customer experience.

Doesnt mean change way eve works, but most new players get a more dynamic experience from Farming simulator in early gameplay. Partly players fault because we believe killboard efficiencies are more important than winning the fight. Get the newbs to be your grunts in pvp.

"Go out young ones and perform suicide attacks against our enemies. You shall be rewarded with 7 virgin ships in the afterlife."

I can totally subscribe to that.

Oh man. Wasn't this predicted? Nostradamus' 84th quatrain or something?

"The numbers do fall when tallied
The mighty core once so stable
When rivers run blue"

Something like that. No? Oh, this is just EvE is dying thread #42389?

Lame.

Regardless of what has led to lower activity rates, what makes this all so complicated is the dynamic interconnection of the entire EVE community in all their individual pursuits.

Any change, anywhere, leads to a cascade effect throughout the rest of the game, often with unpredictable results.

FW farming (lack of pvp incentive), HS incursion payouts, sov mechanics, inflation due to various isk fountains, industry efficiency, HS ruleset, and dozens of others on the list of ingame grievances and room for improvement is endless.

I hope CCP is ontop of this and correctly analyzing the data they have to the right conclusions.

But the server figures, and the price of PLEX, are two real sets of figures we can work with, and which speak to the gross aggregate of how all the above is affecting player retention.

PLEX price in particular concerns me, in conjunction with lower activity.
The 1bil mark is a big psychological threshold.
PLEX price ingame is a watermark between subbing and PLEXing accounts/players (on however many accounts or skill programs).
I see 3 explanations:
1) Players who buy PLEX from CCP, have left the game, or no longer do so (perhaps instead subbing) leading to loss of PLEX supply. (Matches with lower activity)
2) Players who PLEX their accounts, have increased, leading to greater PLEX demand. (Doesnt match reduced activity) Or multitraining has taken a huge upswing (which would match reduced activity)
3) Players have finally managed to find a window in the market to manipulate PLEX by buying up available PLEX over the last 3-6months. This is unthinkable, but not impossible. Owing to the nature of EVE, Ive often wondered when someone would finally pull this off and effectively AWOX CCP feom within their own game. Would also be difficult to detect as cross referencing PLEX exchange over that period against server figures is inconclusive (especially if it was done over numerous front accounts)

In anycase, it is reasonable to expect, that the higher PLEX rises in isk, the less account activity we will have in EVE.

This is true even on the part of people who pay sub, as they no longer PLEX their other (unsubbed) accounts or train toons on the same account, as it is on the part of completely PLEXing players who now retire accounts, or stop multitraining. Multiboxers come up against the hard efficiency figures, and though demand for their supplies will rise as other multiboxers fold accounts, its not likely to match or exceed it. Against this, there is the assumption that more players will buy PLEX from CCP so as to sell them for isk for ingame activities, but I dont think this population is numerous enough to offset the amount of activity drop due to other players being simply unable to afford PLEXing accounts with ingame activities, are unwilling or unable to sub, and drop out.

The price will plateau when these even out, but the player activity drop may persist for quite sometime, if not indefinately, until CCP gets a truly shining review for future updates and beckons players back. Its easier to retain, than to entice a return. Increasing isk income ingame wont help, as that will just increase inflation, and hence PLEX price in a market that already has more demand than supply. The foreseeable new Drifter/Sleeper/Jovian PvE and whatnot will most likely not lead to marked asset destruction (as a PvP incentive would), and hence people buying PLEX from CCP to support that activity. Lets hope they do include PvP.

Going from around 750-800mil last year at this time last year, to 1bil this year, is 20-25% increase.
Something has definately happened here, and the further PLEX prices rise, the less active accounts there will be.

This is not "EVE is dead", but it is certainly contributing to less activity.

Inversly, I hope it atleast leads to higher concrete sub/PLEX revenue to CCP and thereafter more profitability, and better investment in game development.

You can only meet a logged account in EVE, no matter if he's an alt or not. Less logged character is still less people in the game at that moment.

This struck me as particularly interesting.

Imo, from personal experience and preference, EVE is in many ways best played with atleast 2 accounts simultaneously.
This has less to do with the pragmatic matching of two pilots and their ships and all the ways they can support united action together for greater results (which are almost unlimited throughout many activities in EVE) but also to do with EVE being inherently quite a bit of a grind/waiting game, as well as such a huge universe. Also, that you can completely trust your alt, whereas you can never fully trust another capsuleer.

Its not for everyone, but really 2 accounts offer such a huge opportunity for what you can do in EVE with your own recognisance.
It doubles your potential and complicates it immesurably with opportunities for synergy. The jump from 2 to 3 accounts however, starts to become cumbersome and is inherently less advantage than 1 to 2. 1-2 is x2. 2-3 is only 1.5x.

Having said that, things got out of hand with multibox fleets exploiting various game systems.
HS multibox mining (ice especially) in particular, became a laughing matter where the equation above actually started paying out far higher dividends the more accounts you ran, as mining is inherently so passive (compared to other activities) and HS safety. Attention or action was no threshold or limitation. Point and click, check back every so few minutes.

But I think there needs to be a threshold in EVE, between what you can do alone with all your accounts, and the incentive to join together with others for greater success/profit/opportunity.

Perhaps EVE population is now rationalizing back into that.
Higher PLEX cost- less multi-accounts= more incentive to interplay with others.
In that sense, it makes sense that activity figures are at 2007 figures, and perhaps is a good thing for community and commitment.
Also establishes a precedent for a period when active account figures were indeed as low as now, but led to growth (albeit, without a 1bil PLEX price over their head, but inflation and various isk fountains didnt exist back then either as they do today).

Rising PLEX prices can also be considered a positive element, leading to, yes, less active population, but also perhaps more interaction between them. More "real" players with a real commitment to their accounts.

The above just isn't true. In fine and Glorious fashion, one of the people defending incursions once posted a link to a chart CCP published showing isk faucets.

The one for 'bounties' (missions, anoms, belt rats, things like that) was close to 30 trillion isk on that graph Incursion rewards (with the overwhelming bulk coming from high sec) was like 10 trillion.

"NOW WAIT, Doesn't that prove what I just said?!!" you are probably asking yourself. Well, you'd think so...

...Till you realize that that 30 trillion isk is generated by Tens of Thousands of characters killing thousands upon thousands of NPCs all over Known Space, where as that 10 trillion isk bundle made mostly from high sec incursions is falling into the hands of a few hundred players. It means incursion runners per capita isk generation is a good couple light years past every other form of liquid isk generation.

And the above does NOT take into account CONCORD LP...


Last time I looked there were something like 80,000 characters in alliances that hold null sov, and nullsec accounts for 75% of all isk bountes, so something like 22.5 trillion isk per month.

80,000 characters (not all ratting, but that's the population) in the various null regions only generate slightly more than twice (22.5 T isk) as much as a few hundred incursions runners (10 T isk) . And most of that incursion isk comes from high sec (space protected by CONCORD).

You can't tell me that's not broken as all hell. I know of what I speak, I was a refugee in high sec for a long time running incursions because null just wasn't worth it. Ran with TVP, ISN, WTM and others.