EVE General Discussion

qft

now op prolly block me
er or already has. Prolly wind up blocking everyone that actually does have dev exp, just because they won't agree with him and with his 1 week of exp in EVE.

CCP design decisions haven't had the goal of putting new fun into the game but breaking up groups that play for free and dont pay them anything.

Very bad tactic since the people who are playing for free are supporting the community by providing attractive game play to a large percentage of the active population.

This tactic could be viable but needs to be based on a product that has a higher percentage of players staying to play to replace the old vets.

CCP knows this its why CCP has spent 12 years redoing the new player experience over and over and over again so they can keep reusing the same content as new players join the community and older players leave. This hast worked the Vets love Eve so much have so much time invested they never want it end, some pay RL rent off CCP isk.

The development world has continued to raise the bar by offering easier to learn games with more instant gratification. CCP needs plan to take note of these trends in some cases match them Eve, not by destroying the product but shape it so new players will find something they like enough to give the game some effort over other products.

Listen to the dev interviews and watch the Fanfest VOD's again, they thought that by forcing Null Sec to pay rent would cause the break up that was 3-4 years ago, everyone knew it wouldn't work then.

You cant force people to fight each other, the players will always work together against the dev when the chips are down and backs are against the wall. RAWR!

They admit failure to this idea working because they didn't account for how much money people have in Null sec.

Some players have enough isk to play the game for free for 77 years and buy an officer fit titan every one of those 77 years. You think a guy like this is effected by a Sov change?

ok am i done for now getting tired its 3 am in Cali.

In a thread that's based solely on conjecture and uninformed nonsense, this is probably the most fantastical yet.

Not only have they no real intent to break up groups — they don't have to since that happens on its own (what was that about designing with human nature in mind again?) — pretty much every expansion has had the goal of putting new fun into the game. Suggesting otherwise exhibits a shock detachment from any known reality.

…except that they've also updated the content to the point where it doesn't particularly qualify as “the same” any more. The reason they've been improving the NPE is because it needs to be improved; because EVE is a complex game that takes a bit of time to understand, nothing more.

…and also more complex, in-depth game with some pretty crushing difficulty. After years of coddling, the gamer market is getting fed up with dumbed-down content and is once again yearning for a challenge.

Source?

Of course he is. Without it, he wouldn't still be playing. It is the very essence of what he's built his EVE life on.

What has 0.0 renters to do with F2P accounts and why would you want to make EVE like a mobile game for a 12 y.o with mums credit card? Are you also suggesting to use new players in F2P accounts as targets for vets? (thought that is considered griefing even by EVE standards)

Have you actually played EVE?

The complexity is what makes it different and interesting, although they act like 4 y.o most of the time the eve player base is actually very intelligent - just look how long it takes them to find exploits or "features" and abuse the sh*t out of them.

The learning curve is steep because its complex - that whats puts new players off. No amount of new player experience will keep players that want instant gratification - eve is a long term hobby by design (I assume).

But then again I seem to be the only one here that doesn't have a job in the gaming industry so what do I really know.




*edited - typo

already showed you the financial report for ccp and 100mil was nowhere near the amount spent writing off wod and dust so maybe you should do a bit of research before conjuring up silly numbers because people who play eve are not really that stupid

i dont know anyone who has unsubbed a super alt because of this change, so yeah out of all these accounts you mention that have been banned and unsubbed, eve still pulls in 39k+ players on a good weekend, supers are still dying on zkillboard, people have a chance to fight more without the worry of just being roflstomped by capitals, input broadcasting needed to go. changes ccp have made recently are a good decision

Can't speak in Verstal's name (I'm not his alt ofc) but I totally don't have a problem with that, and I didn't suggest any gameplay changes that would give instant gratification, only a revision of the subscription model that would make new players more likely to at least give the game a try for few weeks - yes I know most of them will go but nobody will stay only if you don't try to bring anyone in.
My problem is with the vets who are unsubbing (doesn't matter if you don't personally know any of them, since the numbers in the chart I linked prove otherwise), and if you can't bring them back (which would probably be preferrable) at least find a way to attract some new blood.
Therefore the real question is how you're going to increase player numbers (if that's what anyone other than Verstal and me in this thread even want) without flattening the learning curve EVE is (in)famous for.

This is actually the core fallacy at the heart of your bad thinking on this.

The "development world" is cranking out dime-a-dozen F2P mobile phone games to cater to a totally different market segment than EVE aims for.

EVE is not designed for that demographic.

Get it?

The unique thing about the EVE community compared to most mmo's... well speaking of old-school mmo's as EVE is, is that EVE doesn't suffer from serious turnover issues among 2+ year vets. Well, old-school mmo's have less of a problem with that as well now, but in comparison to the way pre-f2p era player retention and turnover worked across the genre (not counting WoW).

There are those that quit, but many or most return. I think it's sort of like tossing a bird out of a boat to find land, but there is none so they return. Some even delete their character, transfer them, give everything away, but then they wind up coming right back and do it all over again. Not just account age, but poor sods that put a couple active years in, there is no hope.

A lot of the turnover you see are newer subs, six months or a year of activity. And traditionally, three to six months were the avg for player retention in old mmo's back in the day. Most do leave, that was true of UO, DAoC, EQ etc, at about six month if they had a subscription. Though back then there was less to leave to while today the market is absolutely saturated, but still here the vets retain.

Yeah, for all the many vets you see, many-many players that started with them didn't stick around to the 2yr mark, that is the history of mmo's in general. The vets you see here today, if things don't change too much with bad ideas, will likely still be here in ten years, just like some old MUD's that still run subscription servers. UO, DAoC, EQ and such games, yes they have less players, but mostly because at some point in development they changed direction, changed their vision of the game, worried too much about newbies and not their bread and butter vets. So they suffered tremendous loss with no great recovery.

SWG probably one of the best examples of this (yes I know I play the SWG card much ). Be it fast or slow, though it was fast in that case, they blew the vets out of the water and they quit in droves, ~80% sudden subscription drop then slow slide to near nothing. It was all about getting newbies, admittedly by the devs there. Ok so it was done, that was that, now they should expect new play retention to bee off the chart, right? Didn't happen. In fact, game shut down, imo one of the best mmo's ever made, well became trash. Worse case example, but too games like EQ1 did the slow change to the hot new idea, having been at one point the flagship of SOE! SOE is gone... out of business.

History, history, history, it's all over the place beyond just these small examples of what happens when direction changes and how it always ends up. There is always a direction, a theme, a dream, a vision, and players are smart enough to catch onto it when they start a game and spend some time in the environment. The game becomes endearing, a home away from home, and a stable community of friends, enemies and silly npc's we still laugh at and shoot if we can.

f2p is focused on the players that do not stick around for two years. Not even a year. If they can retain a player for a few months, in that time they can possibility get a little money out of them, before they move to the next f2p. And in the ideal cases, the players of those sorts they hope such players will be "whales" that spend thousands, tens of thousands, and some do. The dream, the direction, the vision, what ever the theme. And when that game has run it's course, the devs move to a new game project to do it all over again.

Because there will always be more players that will play a few months compared to the long term players that become vets. Investors and publishers figured that out. How can they ever grab WoW players from their game? Well they don't really need to, there will always be some players bored and looking for something to do while they wait for the next WoW expansion (plight of themepark progression mmo's). That's where the $$$ is for them, and why we have seen soooooo many WoW clone games, all f2p, a quick cash grab until they burn out and die.

CCP is admittedly in it for the long haul. Jobs in Iceland mean something to them, even if the money comes in slower, but for a long time to come. It's not easy to crank out complicated mmo's one after another to keep money constantly coming in. CCP has a vision, and risking that on something that has a good chance of failing, as others have done, well where then do they find jobs elsewhere after the failure? The country doesn't have a lot of hiring signs on big development studios. As much as you don't want to move there, they don't want to move away.

So no they won't do it, too much of a gamble, and EVE is really a terrible platform for an f2p convert and they already know that. Closet thing to it is PLEX, and far from anything f2p as it works. If they make another game they could, designed from the ground up as an f2p, but for EVE, it's simply not feasible. And there you have it. ibtl

tl;dr: Just no.

New player already can try out the game for a few weeks. The trail account is 30 days. Thats is enough time to decide if you want to throw 10 bucks at the game to try it out another month. F2P will not change that. (Which is by the way still the topic of this thread right?)
The way the game itself teaches new player has been improved a lot over the years and as far as I know CCP has not stopped improving it even further. I dont see a problem here.

If anything, CCP could put a little more advertising out there to raise attention and get more people to try out the game in the first place.

Verstal pulled some wild numbers of 0,1% new player get over 6 months out of his 3 letters and has faild to provide any scource for that claim. The truth is : We have absolutely now idea how many trail accounts make it into played accounts and how many of those payed accounts make it make it over 6 months. And how many of those are actually new players and how many are alt accounts of players that already own a EvE account.