These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE General Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Decline in numbers... starting to turn into RAPID!!!

First post
Author
Tykonderoga
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#401 - 2015-08-29 14:44:54 UTC
Aegis and Phoebe did this. I liked my mobility and having my big toys useful.
Caleb Seremshur
Commando Guri
Guristas Pirates
#402 - 2015-08-29 14:52:22 UTC
Market McSelling Alt wrote:
Just throwing it out there...

What if CCP let devs, or hired staff to play the game and be FCs to newbs?
-stuff-
I still know no one but that is because the hundred or so people I called "friends" have all quit. But imagine the retention if you became "friends" with a real live CCP employee who showed you a good time in your first few months?


I think that 6-18 months ago CCP were using devs to run new player experience events, but as we can see that has mostly died off. It could never have worked since new players join every day and at all different times and have their own individual set of motivations. I think that if new players understood that "if I want to fly a raven I need to go to lowsec because highsec can't sustain the use of one" then many many more would go to lowsec.

This is not to be confused with capital ships which literally cannot be used in highsec at all and so training for one as a casual is a complete waste of time, above and beyond any other consideration a complete waste of time for someone who will never physically even get to sit inside it and spin it in their station.

This is talking about real and accessible ships that anybody can fly within a couple months, that have their definitive uses and drawbacks made clearer.

However this is what I said above, the whole thing about making fundamental changes to the game. Such as gate guns targeting yellows and reds automatically of their own volition without the need for actual witnessed aggression. Things such as reds being physically barred from highsec full stop so that being a pirate and trying to enter HIGH security space isn't actually possible and reinforces to -10's that their actions have consequences too. Tangible ones, including not being able to sit on gates and farm newbies for their killboards.

Things such as faction police having varying levels of activity in the 'new' lowsec and pirates being seen in lowsec too with actual pirate stations and "pirate police" on most 0.1 and 0.2 gates. Pirate missions inside of lowsec so that people don't HAVE to run the gauntlet of 0.0 bubble camps in order to experience that portion of the game.

These are ideas that would break a lot of hearts and a lot of spines for those whose lifestyle currently hinges on tired old mechanics that as Ishtanchuk Fazmarai said were appropriate back when the playing field between newbies and old players was more level, now it is not level and new players frequently feel like they've joined the game too late and that the easy answer is to buy an older character (which is frankly asking way too much of a new player, coughing up minimum $15 and up to $200+) just to be on a level where they can directly compete with the established player base and not be used as a foot stool. Saying SP doesn't matter is also an oxymoron since SP directly impacts on what you can fly, what modules you can equip and what activities you can perform. SP does matter, otherwise people wouldn't worry about it.

Quote:

I know from back in the day when we were figting BOB I would have a highsec alt that no one knew about just because I would get burned out on the RR BS fleets pos grinding, so it wasn't that I couldn't make more or that I didn't want to be in Null, it was that if I was in Null I was expected to participate in fleet, not make isk.


This is also not a universal rule. And not terribly relevant to todays sov system where you won't be alarm clocking fleets at all because the defending party is dictating which portion of your alliance is doing the legwork in taking sov. Actual POS sov should never, ever return because it gives guys like Mittani with their massive 14k+ man alliances too much leverage in convincing people to blue up and then just stack all your capital assets on the edges of your territory. Making money can be done by anyone who won't be there during a vulnerability window and furthermore if you're being marched lock-step in to every fleet available by your leadership without any consideration for the financial viability of it then they have a problem. Real life militaries supply their soldiers the equipment they need to fight, generally speaking, noone should be going pre-Marian reforms and having to supply their own gear all the time because a system based on endless growth is unsustainable. You cannot press the entire games population in to service on the battlefield because all other systems suffer entropy and eventually it all collapses under its own weight.

Black Pedro
Mine.
#403 - 2015-08-29 15:18:46 UTC
Market McSelling Alt wrote:
That is because you are either too afraid to try the taco places, or too lazy.

In real life if you really wanted a taco, you would get a taco.

Furthermore, if 80% of that Burger places customers asked for Tacos... the business owner would close shop if he ignored them for 12 years because eventually no one would come back as ask for Tacos or anything.

I understand the point you are trying to make... but a better example would be trying to open a Starbucks in a completely Mormon town in rural Utah...

You have to know your base, and you have to play to their desires, or settle for selling to the fringe.

No, that is because you are too entitled to respect the proprietor's choice to sell burgers. Burgers are their passion and what they have set out to make, not just another taco.

Istanchuk Fazmarai should just go get a taco from one of the many other gaming companies that will sell him what he is looking for instead of demanding CCP change their product to suit him. CCP has put out a successful product for over 12 years despite refusing to cater completely to the 80% of taco lovers, much to the appreciation of the burger lovers of the world.

Have some self-respect. If you dislike burgers, stop buying them. Don't keep buying them while you go on how they are not taco-y enough for your tastes, especially when there are plenty of tacos on offer in the gaming world.
Malt Zedong
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#404 - 2015-08-29 16:32:07 UTC
Commenting on some stuff I read:

- Supply and demand is far from being a unidimentional factor. You have, in a realistic measure, to take into consideration a lot of factors that end up being a meta sequence which is called supply and demand. The lack of that knowledge is the reason almost no one is good at trading IRL and in EVE. Flooding the market with something is not the only factor to decrease its price, and as you all know in the US, by the diamond example, starving the market alone wont get the price to rise.

- The forum still and always will be by its lack of representative sampling space, the worse measure of customer satisfaction. Once and twice the forum input happens to be the same as the other inputs, which doesnt make forum responses to be the factor driving the change. The same way devs dont do what a forum poster demands because other sources show them wrong, when they do what forum posts demand, they are answering most likely to a number of other sources including the forum among of them in a lower key.

- For everything I saw from EVE Online since I started playing, it remains the same core game whatsoever. IT has always displeased a lot of folks from time to time, everyone comes to forum to tell sov, null, low, hi, combat, pvp, pve, industry, and what not, is broken, that EVE is dead, doomed, decaying, forgotten, forsaken, whatever. I always saw by observing market and my ingame business partners that the oscilations in subs and noticeable changes in playerbase occurs for a big margin by people expanding or shrinking their pool of alts. I myself have something like 25 accounts summing the actives and inactives. I have had a max of 12 concurrently active at a given time, and a min of 2. I know people, due to the particulars of my work ingame, bearing 30 accounts, 40 accounts. I can asure you that if 50 people that I know of simply get to have 1 account, then the active number of subs will decrease by almost a thousand. That really doesnt mean much in a game that is notorious by its large number of multiboxers. In a time, I dont know if still exists, there were a group called "EVE Jihadin" or some such non-sense name, where the 60 or 70 people in there had something like 20 accounts each, and they just popped around killing random people with massive ganks of dozens of any people flying in their way. Others I know sustain dozens of accounts to get bots around to survey data for webistes. Number of subs means too little around here.

- People most often, and many even say that literally, that the game changed because of expectations they had. Expectations not met arent devs to blame. You expect something by your own, and there isnt much you see in the EVE online adverts that is not true. You see many things you will never get because for that you need money, friends, power and etc, but that is life, and that is the same as democracy and all the western good stuff you see on TV. The ones staying in the game are usually the ones who didnt created that expectations in the first place, or those who woke up and faced the game as it was and still is. Everyone around complaining about the game being broken for this or that, usually talk about things that NEVER really worked the way they say it did.

WorldTradersGuild.Com [WTG] - We are here for the long haul.

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#405 - 2015-08-29 18:11:25 UTC
Black Pedro wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
In my humble opinion, if 80% of CCP's customers choose a path that leads them out of the game, and provided that there is no reason for that, CCP as a company is failing to ensure its long term survival by paying sufficent attention to what customers are buying. Since 80% of them buy a ticket out, why not try and retain them by letting them do what they like/want/enjoy?
I've been coming to this burger shop every day for 12 years for lunch. Every day, I go to the counter and order a taco, but the cashier tells me they only serve burgers. I say, "fine give me a burger" and while they make it, I complain loudly how people really love tacos. The man finishes making my burger, gives it to me, and says "But we sell burgers here mate, like we have for the last 12 years and there are 4 taco restaurants on this block for you to go eat at." I pay the man my money, tell him he doesn't know how to run a restaurant and that he should serve tacos like everyone else or he will go out of business any day now, and sit down to eat my burger like I do every day.


EVE is not a burguer. It's a all-you-can-eat restaurant.

They make excellent burguers, but their tacos are mediocre at best. For years, people have been coming because the restaurant is unique, not because they make the best burguers.

It turns that the restaurant sells 4 tacos for each burguer since that's what customers prefer, but as tacos are so poor, taco eaters leave the restaurant after a few tries and seldom become long term customers.

Burguer lovers and the owner think that people should ignore tacos and take burguers, as that's what the restaurant does better.
Taco eaters think that the owner is making a terrible job to ignore the tacos since they are the favorite dish an the one that earns him more money; if he wants to sell just burguers, he should open a burguer, not a all-you-can-eat restaurant.
The owner keeps improving burguers and advertises burguers to taco eaters in hopes to get more long term customers out of selling burguers.

Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you

Barrogh Habalu
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#406 - 2015-08-29 18:24:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Barrogh Habalu
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Funny think is that everyone has his own opinion on reasons restaurant is empty. Some claim that it's because of lack of tacos, other claim that burgers became worse off. Another opinion is that you can eat so much fast food because it becomes harmful to your life, no matter what exactly it is. Some had to move to another city.
But who is right and what do people have to back up their claims?
Malt Zedong
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#407 - 2015-08-29 18:27:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Malt Zedong
Just to think about:

Some of the most profitable business around the World have very few regulars and a few casuals. What they do is charge a lot for unique kind of service that costs much less than they are paid for it, but people still pay because it worth for them, despite the fact that most people dont really like it, or value it enough to pay the price.

WorldTradersGuild.Com [WTG] - We are here for the long haul.

Whitehound
#408 - 2015-08-29 18:44:30 UTC
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Are you saying Taco Bell has the better burgers while McDonalds is selling poor pizzas?

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#409 - 2015-08-29 19:15:03 UTC
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Are you saying Taco Bell has the better burgers while McDonalds is selling poor pizzas?


i'm saying that EVE is not a single-themed game like LoL or WoT.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you

Whitehound
#410 - 2015-08-29 19:24:52 UTC
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Are you saying Taco Bell has the better burgers while McDonalds is selling poor pizzas?


i'm saying that EVE is not a single-themed game like LoL or WoT.

Are you saying it is more than Internet spaceships?

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.

Zozoll Neblyn
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#411 - 2015-08-29 19:49:19 UTC
QuantumBen wrote:
Game has become too focused on changes and endless updates. The changes and endless updates detract from what has made the game great in the early years: conflicts between groups of people.

Now instead of slow changes and conflicts between groups of people, we have fast changes and people waiting to see what the next patch brings.

rather poor strategy ccp.



Yeah. Marketing often fails to take the base into account. And by "base" I mean the steady customers who you don't need to sell to because they've already decided they like your product and they plan to keep buying it.

So it's always easy for market researchers to see how changing the product could attract new customers, but much harder to see what effect those changes might have on the old customers.

Because the old customers don't appear anywhere in the data. There's a questionaire you can answer when you unsubscribe, but you don't usually get asked any questions at all when you resub again and again.



Anway, change is good in moderation. Unless your product is already nearly perfect, in which case you shouldn't change it at all.
Hal Morsh
Doomheim
#412 - 2015-08-29 20:17:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Hal Morsh
'Steroid Alternative" Putting Gyms Out of Business
Mom Shocks Doctors With $6 "Skinny Pill"
Wrinkle Solution Horrifies Surgeons


Sorry I had to.


Your evidence is beaten by the active numbers when I happen to log in. Also, one snapshot of active numbers from one point of the day varies so damn much and doesn't show how many have logged in that day. There is 31k online as I post this, doesn't mean squat on it's own.

Oh, I perfectly understand, Hal Morsh — a mission like this requires courage, skill, and heroism… qualities you are clearly lacking. Have you forgotten you're one of the bloody immortals!?

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#413 - 2015-08-29 20:32:56 UTC
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Are you saying Taco Bell has the better burgers while McDonalds is selling poor pizzas?


i'm saying that EVE is not a single-themed game like LoL or WoT.

Are you saying it is more than Internet spaceships?


What are you talking about? Spaceships are the mean of playing, but the game haves many themes, as it is purposed to be a sandbox, not a PvP or a PvE game.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you

Whitehound
#414 - 2015-08-29 20:53:20 UTC
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Whitehound wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:
Meanwhile, the restaurant is emptier and emptier since everyone interested with it turned in, tasted the tacos, and left because they are so poor, and apparently the owner is so proud about the burguers that he would rather close the doors than care for tacos.

Are you saying Taco Bell has the better burgers while McDonalds is selling poor pizzas?


i'm saying that EVE is not a single-themed game like LoL or WoT.

Are you saying it is more than Internet spaceships?


What are you talking about? Spaceships are the mean of playing, but the game haves many themes, as it is purposed to be a sandbox, not a PvP or a PvE game.

So it is multi-themed sandbox game and because it does not offer tacos does it lose players?

Loss is meaningful. Therefore is the loss of meaning likewise meaningful. It is the source of all trolling.

Rain6637
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#415 - 2015-08-29 20:57:29 UTC
Salvos Rhoska wrote:
Rain6637 wrote:
No. To provide hipsters a game they can claim to play that is not mainstream.


Ironically, WiS would have achieved that perfectly

Hipsters engaged in furious fashion PvP at space station coffeeshops, sipping Quafe, while skilling up "social", browsing tumblr, and occassionally streaming some LoL/Minecraft for gamer legitimacy.

I respectfully disagree. The more clunky and unenjoyable the game, the more niche it will remain. The desired response is "how do you play that game? It's so confusing."

Nevermind it all though. Hipsters can just lie about having an account.
Malt Zedong
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#416 - 2015-08-29 20:58:27 UTC
EVE is restaurant with no menu. You have the food out there, you just make your own meal.

People who like to be served, are better served elsewhere. Period.

WorldTradersGuild.Com [WTG] - We are here for the long haul.

James Razor
RazorEnterprise
#417 - 2015-08-29 21:22:23 UTC
Malt Zedong wrote:
EVE is restaurant with no menu. You have the food out there, you just make your own meal.

People who like to be served, are better served elsewhere. Period.


Eve is a restaurant where the menu gets taken away under your nose once u finished putting it together.

Tell me what to do with 2 Capital Chars without the need for capitals.
When i was done training and getting the money together they nerfed my Aeon (Drone Removal). Now they turned Caps into useless amounts of unrefined resources. And nullified YEARS of Training and payment for that training time.

At least allow them into HighSec so i can run L4 in the Archon.

Old Bitter Veteran.

Rain6637
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#418 - 2015-08-29 21:22:58 UTC
Malt Zedong
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#419 - 2015-08-29 21:25:53 UTC
James Razor wrote:
Malt Zedong wrote:
EVE is restaurant with no menu. You have the food out there, you just make your own meal.

People who like to be served, are better served elsewhere. Period.


Eve is a restaurant where the menu gets taken away under your nose once u finished putting it together.

Tell me what to do with 2 Capital Chars without the need for capitals.
When i was done training and getting the money together they nerfed my Aeon (Drone Removal). Now they turned Caps into useless amounts of unrefined resources. And nullified YEARS of Training and payment for that training time.

At least allow them into HighSec so i can run L4 in the Archon.


The "need for capitals" thing again. It is not because you cant use your ship the way you want, that it has no use at all.

The rest is just building up on a false premise.

WorldTradersGuild.Com [WTG] - We are here for the long haul.

Zozoll Neblyn
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#420 - 2015-08-29 21:34:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Zozoll Neblyn
Malt Zedong wrote:


The "need for capitals" thing again. It is not because you cant use your ship the way you want, that it has no use at all.





It's about not being able to use a ship you spent a year of subscription time to get into.

We're not talking about "failure to offer tacos".

We're talking about offering tacos, taking an order for tacos from a customer, accepting their payment, and then deciding not to offer tacos anymore.


That upset a lot of longstanding players. A niche game with a difficult learning curve is not the kind of game that can afford to lose longstanding players.

So, yes, if they want those people to keep playing they really will need to find a way to make the SP investment turn out to be worth it. Maybe not removing jump fatigue. Perhaps by adding some content that is perfectly suited to capitals. But something.