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How would EVE break if we removed skills altogether?

First post
Author
Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#321 - 2015-10-07 03:50:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Zan Shiro
Dror wrote:

So instead of replying on established science, it seems more interesting giving anecdote?


I was really bored in file transfers at work....read one article from your stuff and left not swayed.

Quote:
Eighteen- to 22-year-old U.S.-American undergraduate students were participants in a series of focus groups. This population is particularly appropriate because it is the first generational co- hort to grow up with video games both at home and in arcades. Members of this generation were born in the early 1980s, when the early home console games Atari and Mattel Intellivision were popular. As they progressed through grade school, Nintendo NES (1986), Nintendo Game Boy (1989), and Sega Genesis (1989) were introduced and rose to prominence. Their high school years saw the introduction of the Sony PlayStation system (1995) and Nintendo 64 (1996).



the age group is narrow. Eve's player base has shown it has a decent number above 22. I'd be in the 40+ crew myself. Started in my 30's. Many things have changed since I was in my 20's. Insert the "old man" adage youth is wasted on the youth.

If proving young bloods may not like eve...well I will grant you that to some degree (more on this later). Now find us research for 22-30, 30-40, 40+. Also factor in situations. I know full well I am not the gamer I was in my 20's. What happened? Wife, kid, likes and dislikes change as you add on the years. These are CCP's markets as well the take away. they aren't making all the people happy.


Researchers are already focused on on a specific type of gaming or are less than objective in taking in all of gaming. . Consoles seems to be what they consider gaming.. No mention of the rise of PC gaming or its implications. Console gaming to me is a different mindset from my PC and mac game use. I have different goals on console than I do PC. PC also give me modding options. this has extended game time to 100's of hours in even less than popular games.


Also I have to wonder about the data in this article. I don't see a graph. I like graphs. they tend to show outliers better than wall of numbers. All we get are nice summaries then given in text. I don't like summaries tbh. Its where the old adage there are liars, damn liars and statistics comes from. I have seen bad research give very valid looking summaries. Its when you get the raw data, see their methods that you see actually see the bad research.

Why would seeing outliers be useful here? These potentially could be people who don't follow "the trend". Why is that important? Eve is a niche game and quite possible would appeal more to the people represented by outlier data points than this in the center cluster of data points they summarized.

We can only speculate this here as the researchers gave us no indication of how they cleaned the data and statistical methods used. They don't even cite the statistical package used for analysis. Reproducible research, something considered a basic tenet of good research, is lacking in this article basically.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#322 - 2015-10-07 04:08:04 UTC
Zan Shiro wrote:

Also I have to wonder about the data in this article. I don't see a graph. I like graphs. they tend to show outliers better than wall of numbers. All we get are nice summaries then given in text. I don't like summaries tbh. Its where the old adage there are liars, damn liars and statistics comes from. I have seen bad research give very valid looking summaries. Its when you get the raw data, see their methods that you see actually see the bad research.


Yep. Completely agree here. I always graph the historical data and the forecast. Always.

Quote:
Why would seeing outliers be useful here? These potentially could be people who don't follow "the trend". Why is that important? Eve is a niche game and quite possible would appeal more to the people represented by outlier data points than this in the center cluster of data points they summarized.


Agree, and depending on where the outlier falls it could influence the magnitude of the trend as well. Again...graph your data.

Quote:
We can only speculate this here as the researchers gave us no indication of how they cleaned the data and statistical methods used. They don't even cite the statistical package used for analysis. Reproducible research, something considered a basic tenet of good research, is lacking in this article basically.


Ooops. If they can't give you the data nor describe their methods for such basic things, into the rubbish bin.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#323 - 2015-10-07 09:07:20 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Intrinsic motivation is an initiative issue. It's not a game design problem beyond the fact that a chain of extrinsic rewards in the NPE builds a false initial expectation of what progress looks like and provides a poor representation of the range of freedom the game allows with Eve specifically.

Eve is and continues to be reliant on intrinsic motivations and SP does not detract from this. It's not about autonomy so that's a non issue. If you want autonomy you are in the wrong game as advanced functions are often enhanced if not fully enabled by cooperation. And there is every reason to use creativity to get around skill limitations.

That you see none is practically a confession of a lack of initiative; you have no desire to be creative, to work through challenges and to find ways to exercise your freedoms in the game. You simply want full efficiency and per your own characterizations need it before you can be creative, motivated, social or in any way capable.

Having a titan/carrier/T3/whatever would not solve any of those issues. You need an actual motivation or curiosity, not just more tools in place of one. Tool based motivations end the moment you get them and them being given destroys their capacity as such.

Edit: Also if you're referring to something like gamification for using extrinsic motivators to manipulate intrinsic motivations (IE: completionism) that doesn't work in a sandbox as there is no objective measure of overall success as that is personally driven.

Every authority on the matter would disagree with you, and what grounds do you have for saying that how interesting a game is has nothing to do with its design?

Basically every point you make is a false dilemma. There can be an objective measure of success in a sandbox game. The objective sense of progression is experiencing the whole game, from ships through professions.

If EVE prevents learning a class, because it's locked, does that not limit initiative and mastery?

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#324 - 2015-10-07 09:33:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Rivr Luzade
Dror wrote:
Limiting learning and exploration are detrimental to interest. For relatedness, the limitations are effecting [social] status. For autonomy, it's about creativity, choice, freedom, and responsibility.

This kind of players can stay away from EVE. I cannot not confirm from my own experience that training JDC V and $faction$ BS V in order to participate in awesome Blops ganks was detrimental to my interest in the matter or activity.
I also cannot confirm that my skill limitation in form of JDC IV instead of V made me less creative or engaged, instead it forced me to come up with creative and thoughtful ways to compensate the range deficiency compared to other JDC V Blops pilots in the fleet with mid point cynos or gate jumps in order to get in range of targets. I was also responsible for making sure that I could contribute and participate to the fleet despite my shortcomings, and my initiative and autonomy by asking for a mid point, getting my own cyno in place, scouting other people with the same issue or looking up possible midpoints on dotlan and share the knowledge about them was most often well received.

If people get discouraged by this kind of responsibilities, limitations and additional requirements and fail to come up with solutions like I did rather than complaining, they are not fit for the game and are not needed as players.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#325 - 2015-10-07 10:06:19 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Dror wrote:
Limiting learning and exploration are detrimental to interest. For relatedness, the limitations are effecting [social] status. For autonomy, it's about creativity, choice, freedom, and responsibility.

This kind of players can stay away from EVE.

Those criteria are from research. They're the rule.. not the exception.

Rivr Luzade wrote:
I cannot not confirm from my own experience that training JDC V and $faction$ BS V in order to participate in awesome Blops ganks was detrimental to my interest in the matter or activity.
I also cannot confirm that my skill limitation in form of JDC IV instead of V made me less creative or engaged, instead it forced me to come up with creative and thoughtful ways to compensate the range deficiency compared to other JDC V Blops pilots in the fleet with mid point cynos or gate jumps in order to get in range of targets. I was also responsible for making sure that I could contribute and participate to the fleet despite my shortcomings, and my initiative and autonomy by asking for a mid point, getting my own cyno in place, scouting other people with the same issue or looking up possible midpoints on dotlan and share the knowledge about them was most often well received.

If people get discouraged by this kind of responsibilities, limitations and additional requirements and fail to come up with solutions like I did rather than complaining, they are not fit for the game and are not needed as players.

Hamfisting, the post. It's implying that IV vs V skills are what's necessarily causing problems. Granted, a lot of options are locked behind lvl Vs, but it's asking a sub that has come for B-Rs, for example, to be fine with frigates and a tiny percentage of effectiveness. That's not what the game advertises, and that's not why they come.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#326 - 2015-10-07 10:42:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Rivr Luzade
That's exactly what the game advertises.

What you call ham-fisted is what I call my experience of the game and my expectations on the game and the players. People can come in because of B-R and expect B-R every day, but they will not get it. Neither with no skilling nor with skilling, because it requires preparation. The amount of carriers is not earned in a couple of hours so that you can have a weekly B-R. Everyone, who expects this and leaves disgruntled because it is not happening, is no valuable or needed asset to the game.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#327 - 2015-10-07 11:14:15 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
That's exactly what the game advertises.

What you call ham-fisted is what I call my experience of the game and my expectations on the game and the players. People can come in because of B-R and expect B-R every day, but they will not get it. Neither with no skilling nor with skilling, because it requires preparation. The amount of carriers is not earned in a couple of hours so that you can have a weekly B-R. Everyone, who expects this and leaves disgruntled because it is not happening, is no valuable or needed asset to the game.

That's a video with less than a million views. What's even being implied by posting that? Even CCP says that expectations aren't met.

I've described a method of providing everything the game is advertised as, and the forum replies can't respond on basic research data. There's really no discussion to be had, if the best reply you can muster is that you imagine "B-R"s being implausible if players can play however they feel like. There's a very simple A to B: getting ships and flying them. If SP disallows that, feel free to support it without any decent reason, but you're not providing data; and these responses are baseless. ..Nor do they bring and sustain subs. ..Nor does implying that they're not welcome, so please stop posting that. It's no prerogative of yours. That, you can be sure of.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#328 - 2015-10-07 11:38:40 UTC
Dror wrote:
Rivr Luzade wrote:
That's exactly what the game advertises.

What you call ham-fisted is what I call my experience of the game and my expectations on the game and the players. People can come in because of B-R and expect B-R every day, but they will not get it. Neither with no skilling nor with skilling, because it requires preparation. The amount of carriers is not earned in a couple of hours so that you can have a weekly B-R. Everyone, who expects this and leaves disgruntled because it is not happening, is no valuable or needed asset to the game.

That's a video with less than a million views. What's even being implied by posting that? Even CCP says that expectations aren't met.

I've described a method of providing everything the game is advertised as, and the forum replies can't respond on basic research data. There's really no discussion to be had, if the best reply you can muster is that you imagine "B-R"s being implausible if players can play however they feel like. There's a very simple A to B: getting ships and flying them. If SP disallows that, feel free to support it without any decent reason, but you're not providing data; and these responses are baseless. ..Nor do they bring and sustain subs. ..Nor does implying that they're not welcome, so please stop posting that. It's no prerogative of yours. That, you can be sure of.


There is a much simpler reason why B-R's won't happen very often even if you remove skills and allow any old pilot to fly any ship. Let's take an example ship...the Nyx. Very popular carrier I believe. It costs ~28 bil isk, so a new player enters the game, thinks 'I want to be in this weeks B-R' and goes to buy a nyx by using plex packs to get the isk to buy the nyx. That's about 24 PLEX, which is about £400 to me here.

Do you really think new players would do this? And when they get primaried and lose that ship in 10% TiDi just so they can watch that investment crumble in slo-motion? Somehow I don't think this will happen, and it certainly wouldn't help player retention.

You will probably argue that players would use much smaller ships instead, but guess what? Skills are not a great barrier to those ships and pirate ships are available at very reasonable prices.

Your proposal would not help this and would change the very essence of EvE. It is not an instant gratification game and never should be. It is about building (and destroying) things whether it be your character, your social group in-game or the very items in the game themselves. Guiding and building you character is essential to all of those things and your choices have consequences (which is the very thing that makes those choices worthwhile whether they are right or wrong).

Not everybody will like EvE and that is fine as long as CCP remain a viable business. Sure they should try to change things gradually to keep bringing in new players but that shouldn't come from changing the very essence of the game.
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#329 - 2015-10-07 12:05:26 UTC
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Dror wrote:
Rivr Luzade wrote:
That's exactly what the game advertises.

What you call ham-fisted is what I call my experience of the game and my expectations on the game and the players. People can come in because of B-R and expect B-R every day, but they will not get it. Neither with no skilling nor with skilling, because it requires preparation. The amount of carriers is not earned in a couple of hours so that you can have a weekly B-R. Everyone, who expects this and leaves disgruntled because it is not happening, is no valuable or needed asset to the game.

That's a video with less than a million views. What's even being implied by posting that? Even CCP says that expectations aren't met.

I've described a method of providing everything the game is advertised as, and the forum replies can't respond on basic research data. There's really no discussion to be had, if the best reply you can muster is that you imagine "B-R"s being implausible if players can play however they feel like. There's a very simple A to B: getting ships and flying them. If SP disallows that, feel free to support it without any decent reason, but you're not providing data; and these responses are baseless. ..Nor do they bring and sustain subs. ..Nor does implying that they're not welcome, so please stop posting that. It's no prerogative of yours. That, you can be sure of.


There is a much simpler reason why B-R's won't happen very often even if you remove skills and allow any old pilot to fly any ship. Let's take an example ship...the Nyx. Very popular carrier I believe. It costs ~28 bil isk, so a new player enters the game, thinks 'I want to be in this weeks B-R' and goes to buy a nyx by using plex packs to get the isk to buy the nyx. That's about 24 PLEX, which is about £400 to me here.

Do you really think new players would do this? And when they get primaried and lose that ship in 10% TiDi just so they can watch that investment crumble in slo-motion? Somehow I don't think this will happen, and it certainly wouldn't help player retention.

You will probably argue that players would use much smaller ships instead, but guess what? Skills are not a great barrier to those ships and pirate ships are available at very reasonable prices.

Your proposal would not help this and would change the very essence of EvE. It is not an instant gratification game and never should be. It is about building (and destroying) things whether it be your character, your social group in-game or the very items in the game themselves. Guiding and building you character is essential to all of those things and your choices have consequences (which is the very thing that makes those choices worthwhile whether they are right or wrong).

Not everybody will like EvE and that is fine as long as CCP remain a viable business. Sure they should try to change things gradually to keep bringing in new players but that shouldn't come from changing the very essence of the game.

That's cherrypicking, but here's a "reply" from this very thread:

Dror wrote:
It's a pretty small achievement getting the 1.5B or so for a carrier. If nothing else, that's about a PLEX -- and $20 is like an outing at a bar. That being no option is literally worthless for gameplay. That helps nothing for mining and the ore prices, nor the potential purchase, nor the industry production, nor the content that comes from the capital. If newbies aren't in capitals, from what can come the B-R style of gameplay?


and another relevant reply:

Dror wrote:
An abundance of capitals can be limited as necessary through ISK payouts like bounties or another tweak of their appeal; and there are already few enough reasons for merging a bunch of fleets in one place [freshly so: JF]. Those capitals can be "anywhere", and they'll get caught more regularly [because they're more prevalent]. If that still ends up in poor infrastructure response, it's probably within fix.

Implying that every "B-R" has to be of a majority of characters in the game is neither the design direction, nor necessary for its essence.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#330 - 2015-10-07 12:35:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Rivr Luzade
Dror wrote:
That's a video with less than a million views. What's even being implied by posting that? Even CCP says that expectations aren't met.
[...] If SP disallows that, feel free to support it without any decent reason, but you're not providing data; and these responses are baseless. ..Nor do they bring and sustain subs. ..Nor does implying that they're not welcome, so please stop posting that. It's no prerogative of yours. That, you can be sure of.

Because CCP themselves have completely wrong expectations. One example: The industry teams. They were removed because CCP felt the number of people using them was not high enough, because people do not know about them or understand them (in case of new players) and that they only benefited older players. CCP never mentioned any number range or estimation of players they wanted to see who use teams, they simply stated the numbers were too low. CCP never really put out any illustrated, easily accessible and comprehensible guide or explanation piece and advertised the teams properly. CCP's other reason for their removal (benefits only older players) is a direct consequence of their failure in regard to the previous reason. Older/ more experienced players know what to do/where to look for things/how to do them. Of course, such a feature is going to benefit them more when CCP (and other players, but their efforts are largely in vain as people do not bother looking things up on the internet and never find out about potentially existing non-CCP-official player guides) fails to properly introduce, maintain and advertise a feature.

What kind of data are you looking for? The almost 3 dozen thousand of players who were logged into EVE every day last year and the years before? The hundreds of thousands of players who subscribed over the years? SP have never been a problem to any of them. SP have sustained and brought in subs every year for more than a decade. I do not care if they do not feel welcomed when they do not behave in ways that I deem worthy when they interact with me. I cannot stand players who only ask "How to do this, how to do that? Can you spare some money for that or this? Can you help me with that or do this for me because I am a noob?" Naturally, these questions have to occur every now and then and they are easier to ask; however, I also expect people to do some research before they ask and every now and then come up with a question like "Is this guide still relevant or up to date? What do you think about this route to move my capital? I have made 2B in the last month to purchase the carrier for our move, can you help me out with some fuel or a cyno over there so that I can move it from my own cyno further on to our staging?" This are the kind of questions that I expect from a player to ask that make me like this particular player more than someone who cannot even breath on their own. People who cannot breath on their own have no place in this game. Period.

Furthermore, you really encourage again that people should just buy PLEX to afford a carrier under your No SP Game vision? Really? This is in essence nothing more than giving CCP yet another money grab so that they make more bank for no added content or improved gameplay experience? You honestly deem it worthy to pay 20 EUR per carrier every time you need one when you cannot afford it with ingame activities just so that a player can fly one on day one after they joined your No SP Game vision? And still, you dare to call my argumentation out as unsatisfying and not worth the read?

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#331 - 2015-10-07 14:37:43 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Because CCP themselves have completely wrong expectations. One example: The industry teams. They were removed because CCP felt the number of people using them was not high enough, because people do not know about them or understand them (in case of new players) and that they only benefited older players. CCP never mentioned any number range or estimation of players they wanted to see who use teams, they simply stated the numbers were too low. CCP never really put out any illustrated, easily accessible and comprehensible guide or explanation piece and advertised the teams properly. CCP's other reason for their removal (benefits only older players) is a direct consequence of their failure in regard to the previous reason. Older/ more experienced players know what to do/where to look for things/how to do them. Of course, such a feature is going to benefit them more when CCP (and other players, but their efforts are largely in vain as people do not bother looking things up on the internet and never find out about potentially existing non-CCP-official player guides) fails to properly introduce, maintain and advertise a feature.

This makes it seem like industry is a main starter, gameplay setup. The fact that it's not, beyond the reason that efficiency and diversity are limited because of gating, makes this pretty irrelevant.

Rivr Luzade wrote:
What kind of data are you looking for? The almost 3 dozen thousand of players who were logged into EVE every day last year and the years before? The hundreds of thousands of players who subscribed over the years? SP have never been a problem to any of them.

Black and white fallacy. If the point is that there's a niche of players willing to play game design that's possibly awful, there're plenty of similar metrics for another game that might be called the same.. maybe for this conversation, that point is WoW or something. There's no assurance that a great game is played or that a low quality game is passed up. There's nothing more to be said about this idea. The request for data or logic in rebuttal to how effective primary-ing intrinsic motivation is remains.

The next paragraph makes it seem like the fresh subs can experience a large subset of the game, whether solo or with a corp. That's simply inaccurate. SP prevents experience. Fresh subs probably aren't going to instigate a cruiser in a frigate. They're definitely not maximizing their ships with fittings and T2 resources, nor provided with any upgrade path that could spark interest in a playstyle. Please stop pretending like fresh subs don't get in the game, realize how awful their industry and reprocessing efficiencies are and drop that option for more combat SP. That equates with fewer stocked stations. That equates with lower investment in other options, because a main feature is already shown as blockaded. As if they don't realize how inaccessible most ships are? "How much more inaccessible is industry?" This simple idea then permeates the game. Next, they find that their market orders are limited. This type of negative feedback is there for the remainder of the game, basically.. especially if they try to recruit their crew.

Rivr Luzade wrote:
Furthermore, you really encourage again that people should just buy PLEX to afford a carrier under your No SP Game vision? Really? This is in essence nothing more than giving CCP yet another money grab so that they make more bank for no added content or improved gameplay experience? You honestly deem it worthy to pay 20 EUR per carrier every time you need one when you cannot afford it with ingame activities just so that a player can fly one on day one after they joined your No SP Game vision? And still, you dare to call my argumentation out as unsatisfying and not worth the read?

There are more options than PLEXing. That's how it's a sandbox. Truly, you have no prerogative for dismissing a "playstyle" for what's a hobby, the quotes obviously referencing the payment option. On the idea that something's funny if it brings that level of amusement, CCP deserve the money if a player is having enough fun to spend money. That's contrast to deserving money because of not having fun.

Furthermore, if sub retention is "so low", how much of that comes with purchasing a character (rhetorically)? A 30B character is the equivalent monetization of less than 30 subs. The potential is some 900M, just for the PC gaming demographic. If any decent amount, of those that try an unrestricted sandbox game, enjoy it -- they are welcome to buy a PLEX as a hobby.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Cidanel Afuran
Grant Village
#332 - 2015-10-07 15:30:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Cidanel Afuran
Dror wrote:
So instead of replying on established science, it seems more interesting giving anecdote?


You aren't using science. You are trying to sound witty by applying whatever you read in your college textbook to a scenario where it doesn't work.

The game has existed in its current form for 12 years for a reason. Why do you think that is?

And yet again, EVE is more of a hobby than a video game. Comparing it to video games is not smart. Compare it to building model trains in your basement.
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#333 - 2015-10-07 15:39:50 UTC
Cidanel Afuran wrote:
Dror wrote:
So instead of replying on established science, it seems more interesting giving anecdote?


You aren't using science. You are trying to sound witty by applying whatever you read in your college textbook to a scenario where it doesn't work.

The game has existed in its current form for 12 years for a reason. Why do you think that is?

And yet again, EVE is more of a hobby than a video game. Comparing it to video games is not smart. Compare it to building model trains in your basement.

Do you have a point, or is this literally just projection?

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#334 - 2015-10-07 15:43:56 UTC
Dror wrote:
This makes it seem like industry is a main starter, gameplay setup. The fact that it's not, beyond the reason that efficiency and diversity are limited because of gating, makes this pretty irrelevant.

[...] The next paragraph makes it seem like the fresh subs can experience a large subset of the game, whether solo or with a corp. That's simply inaccurate. SP prevents experience. Fresh subs probably aren't going to instigate a cruiser in a frigate. They're definitely not maximizing their ships with fittings and T2 resources, nor provided with any upgrade path that could spark interest in a playstyle. Please stop pretending like fresh subs don't get in the game, realize how awful their industry and reprocessing efficiencies are and drop that option for more combat SP. That equates with fewer stocked stations. That equates with lower investment in other options, because a main feature is already shown as blockaded. As if they don't realize how inaccessible most ships are? "How much more inaccessible is industry?" This simple idea then permeates the game. Next, they find that their market orders are limited. This type of negative feedback is there for the remainder of the game, basically.. especially if they try to recruit their crew.

Considering that people, according to CCP Rise's own presentation on NPE and new players from last FF, do not even know what to do with the current "limited" set of activities and wander around clueless and without orientation, I see no reason whatsoever to open up more activities to new players and confuse and overwhelm them even more.
Furthermore, the example was about wrong expectation and expectations missing the point. This example demonstrate all that and how a new players expectations are in most cases simply not being able to be met because they are completely fatuous, the same way that CCP's expectations for the Teams were fatuous and not satisfiable People, and CCP, need to be taught to have proper expectations for the game instead of changing the game to meet illusive and ridiculous expectations.
Plus, if they do not understand the concept of "improvement over time in a profession", I feel pity for their inadequacies, but they are not to be made the benchmark at which the game experience needs to be oriented at. Not understanding that you as a starter cannot expect to compete with a more skilled player right from the start (like in any game and any activity outside the game world without a single exception) is in no way a reason to remove this progression. If you start the game, you do not understand how to refine, how to mine, how to handle the market, how to fly a ship, how to use certain modules -- beyond your pre-school-grade skills that you have. If you do not understand this principle and see this as a blockade so discouraging that you do not want to invest some effort into it, you are not fit for the game. It also does not result in lower supplies in a station or region, it does not result in lower numbers of people in space, it does not result in lower investments because someone else is already doing this if it is worthwhile.

Dror wrote:
There are more options than PLEXing. That's how it's a sandbox. Truly, you have no prerogative for dismissing a "playstyle" for what's a hobby, the quotes obviously referencing the payment option.

Furthermore, if sub retention is "so low", how much of that comes with purchasing a character (rhetorically)? A 30B character is the equivalent monetization of less than 30 subs. The potential is some 900M, just for the PC gaming demographic. If any decent amount, of those that try an unrestricted sandbox game, enjoy it -- they are welcome to buy a PLEX as a hobby.

Your first quote quite clearly does not reference subscription payment options. It is without any doubt about buying a PLEX in order to buy a carrier in order to fly around in it and try to create B-R. That has nothing to do with subscription payment or game time generation.
Buying a PLEX to be able to play an "unrestricted" sandbox is how a sandbox is supposed to be played? That is a playstyle you support and I should not have prerogative to scoff at that warped attitude? RL rich people should be able to afford the full potential of your No SP Game vision from day one, while other people are still limited in what they can do because they do not have the money beyond the subscription or the subscription PLEX to purchase more PLEX to buy themselves into the content of the game. You even go on to claim that capital use can be limited by ISK generation through limiting bounties, among other things. This would even more create a divide between RL rich people who can just drop PLEX on the market and those who cannot, further reducing the way these people can compete and act in your vision of a sandbox.
Buying a character for 30B is an option to get into a capital ship, most other basic characters on the Bazaar do not require double digit billion ISK to be paid and allow everyone to to buy them with a moderate additional PLEX consumption once. What you suggest is that it's ok to coerce people to buy several PLEX every month to be able to create B-R (or similar things). A fully and properly fit and equipped carrier costs ~2 PLEX. If you want to see B-R every week, that's ~8B a month worth of PLEX in addition to the subscription just to be able to afford this. I wonder how much fun you need to get every month in order to justify 160 EUR per month for a single character (multiply it with as many chars as you want to play) for a video game. it must be a hell lot of fun.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.

Cidanel Afuran
Grant Village
#335 - 2015-10-07 15:45:31 UTC
Dror wrote:
Do you have a point, or is this literally just projection?


I asked you a question. The question was my point. Let me ask again.

The game has existed in its current form for 12 years for a reason. Why do you think that is?

Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#336 - 2015-10-07 16:05:49 UTC
Cidanel Afuran wrote:
Dror wrote:
Do you have a point, or is this literally just projection?


I asked you a question. The question was my point. Let me ask again.

The game has existed in its current form for 12 years for a reason. Why do you think that is?




I wish I knew. I hate this game. I hate how it hates me back. I hate when the players hate each other. Mostly I hate that I can't stop playing it.

12 years proves it's a bad design. Most games last 18 months. 18 is clearly greater than 12... so math and stuff.

I tried to provide a graph, but I couldn't decide on what either axis should be for graphing 18 > 12. Can someone link a site that explains how to pick relevant axii for a graph that only has 1 dimension. http://xkcd.com/41/
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#337 - 2015-10-07 16:39:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Dror
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Considering that people, according to CCP Rise's own presentation on NPE and new players from last FF, do not even know what to do with the current "limited" set of activities and wander around clueless and without orientation, I see no reason whatsoever to open up more activities to new players and confuse and overwhelm them even more.

That's a very limited subset of any "potential" market. Maybe Iceland's average demographic includes those that would sign up for EVE, but if not, that's a limited argument. They probably didn't even have access to Google or, from the very low-end sample of stories, questions at all. That's definitely no suggestion for the average experience. If they couldn't be told that their information window was covering the location information.. or how to get back in to a ship.. that may give an accurate example of the first session of the game, but it gives no feedback on further play.

Rivr Luzade wrote:
[There's a] need to be taught to have proper expectations for the game.

If, basically, the game can't do that on the first experience (it can't -- expectations, for example, begin before coming), the implication is ludicrous. If, as studies suggest, motivation is a set, definitive process (inherent parameters effecting any game's value), there's nothing that can be done except updating the game. That's a worthy hypothesis, that if the game is affordable, enjoying it is on the game's design. Pretending as if "nurture" is the primary negative effect on sub sustain and entertainment is baseless. Research explaining motivation is great evidence for objective design. The main qualia is skillfulness. Undermining that process with gating is objectively non-helpful for value. That unimproved value starts at 0 because of the amount of other games.

Contrasting the prevalence of experience-type progression is a fallacy: appeal on tradition. There's a neat list of games without experience progression. A fresh sub already "can't compete" with those already playing the game, because they have no clue of the values of market items, ship and role effectiveness, fleet comps, demand, resource locations, etc. If they can't learn, why play? Can it really be said that they're learning, if they're not playing the niche? Can it really be said that they're enjoying progression, if the very basic nuances of motivation, defined by 100s of research articles and meta-discussions, are replaced with "git gud"?

Rivr Luzade wrote:
If you do not understand this principle and see this as a blockade so discouraging that you do not want to invest some effort into it, you are not fit for the game. It also does not result in lower supplies in a station or region, it does not result in lower numbers of people in space, it does not result in lower investments because someone else is already doing this if it is worthwhile.

How many characters interacting with industry and its supplies are directly correlative with how many stations are filled with items. That comes from market saturation in one station and from demand at another, filled by the increased production. If there's low enough demand, it's plausible that plenty of characters exit the niche.

Rivr Luzade wrote:
RL rich people should be able to afford the full potential of your No SP Game vision from day one, while other people are still limited in what they can do because they do not have the money beyond the subscription or the subscription PLEX to purchase more PLEX to buy themselves into the content of the game[?]

There's a perfect analogy here:

"The RL rich should be able to afford the full potential of the game through the character bazaar, while others are still limited in what they can do because they do not have the money beyond the subscription?"

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.

Lady Rift
His Majesty's Privateers
#338 - 2015-10-07 17:22:33 UTC
Serendipity Lost wrote:
Cidanel Afuran wrote:
Dror wrote:
Do you have a point, or is this literally just projection?


I asked you a question. The question was my point. Let me ask again.

The game has existed in its current form for 12 years for a reason. Why do you think that is?




I wish I knew. I hate this game. I hate how it hates me back. I hate when the players hate each other. Mostly I hate that I can't stop playing it.

12 years proves it's a bad design. Most games last 18 months. 18 is clearly greater than 12... so math and stuff.

I tried to provide a graph, but I couldn't decide on what either axis should be for graphing 18 > 12. Can someone link a site that explains how to pick relevant axii for a graph that only has 1 dimension. http://xkcd.com/41/



take a page from ccp and just dont label any axis. or title it. this second part is optional
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#339 - 2015-10-07 17:37:21 UTC
Dror wrote:
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Dror wrote:
Rivr Luzade wrote:
That's exactly what the game advertises.

What you call ham-fisted is what I call my experience of the game and my expectations on the game and the players. People can come in because of B-R and expect B-R every day, but they will not get it. Neither with no skilling nor with skilling, because it requires preparation. The amount of carriers is not earned in a couple of hours so that you can have a weekly B-R. Everyone, who expects this and leaves disgruntled because it is not happening, is no valuable or needed asset to the game.

That's a video with less than a million views. What's even being implied by posting that? Even CCP says that expectations aren't met.

I've described a method of providing everything the game is advertised as, and the forum replies can't respond on basic research data. There's really no discussion to be had, if the best reply you can muster is that you imagine "B-R"s being implausible if players can play however they feel like. There's a very simple A to B: getting ships and flying them. If SP disallows that, feel free to support it without any decent reason, but you're not providing data; and these responses are baseless. ..Nor do they bring and sustain subs. ..Nor does implying that they're not welcome, so please stop posting that. It's no prerogative of yours. That, you can be sure of.


There is a much simpler reason why B-R's won't happen very often even if you remove skills and allow any old pilot to fly any ship. Let's take an example ship...the Nyx. Very popular carrier I believe. It costs ~28 bil isk, so a new player enters the game, thinks 'I want to be in this weeks B-R' and goes to buy a nyx by using plex packs to get the isk to buy the nyx. That's about 24 PLEX, which is about £400 to me here.

Do you really think new players would do this? And when they get primaried and lose that ship in 10% TiDi just so they can watch that investment crumble in slo-motion? Somehow I don't think this will happen, and it certainly wouldn't help player retention.

You will probably argue that players would use much smaller ships instead, but guess what? Skills are not a great barrier to those ships and pirate ships are available at very reasonable prices.

Your proposal would not help this and would change the very essence of EvE. It is not an instant gratification game and never should be. It is about building (and destroying) things whether it be your character, your social group in-game or the very items in the game themselves. Guiding and building you character is essential to all of those things and your choices have consequences (which is the very thing that makes those choices worthwhile whether they are right or wrong).

Not everybody will like EvE and that is fine as long as CCP remain a viable business. Sure they should try to change things gradually to keep bringing in new players but that shouldn't come from changing the very essence of the game.

That's cherrypicking, but here's a "reply" from this very thread:



No, it is not. You keep on bringing it up. For a new player to participate in a B-R type event in a Nyx or Titan, he'd have to make a substantial investment in PLEX to sell on the market. And that is assuming he doesn't lose the damn thing as soon as he gets in it.

If you don't like this counter point, STHU about B-R. Roll

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#340 - 2015-10-07 17:49:23 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Dror wrote:
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
..The Nyx. It costs ~28 bil.

That's cherrypicking, but here's a "reply" from this very thread: [reply snipped]

No, it is not. You keep on bringing it up. For a new player to participate in a B-R type event in a Nyx or Titan, he'd have to make a substantial investment in PLEX to sell on the market. And that is assuming he doesn't lose the damn thing as soon as he gets in it.

Cutting out the quote that replies to this very idea? Here. That's no "substantial amount of PLEX" at all. The original statement is that 1.5B is insignificant. Are you making a point?

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.