EVE General Discussion

The introduction of PLEX has made it possible to increase the number of alts playing the game. Good candidates for this are: research alt, industry alts, mining alts, scout alts, cyno alts, Falcon alts...

I recall how close to every ice belt used to have one "input broadcasting" guy playing a minimum of 20 Mackinaws (plus Orca and freighter-in-belt alt).

This inflation of alts has caused one thing: the steady rise of PLEX price. Actually it's not "the" cause but one of the main ones.

Now, for CCP the first alts category is good: usually 1 to 3 alts per paying player, they provide gameplay value (stuff being created, ships being saved or exploded...) and improve players' game enjoyability (imagine a gate camper with no scout or a JF owner without a cyno, they'd need to resort asking people all the oddest hours).

The second category instead caused a massive inflation of stuff being created - like gold farmers did - prices rising. They'd steal whole belts for just one RL person making the other players' experience poorer. The extra-huge amount of ships, drones etc. lagged everybody. They played in a similar way to botters. Sure, there was no "algo" driving the alts but hey, pressing F1 once every 20 minutes is not exactly challenging. Actually it's a testament to what I was saying when I'd tell EvE *ships* gameplay can be quite poor and basic.
Most of all, those dozen alts each used a PLEX and each PLEX that gets purchased causes more demand and thus price raising.

Problem with this is, the "very low added value", "bot-alike" alts caused people to stop being able to purchase a PLEX for the "game useful" alts.

CCP did a good choice when they banned input broadcasting, they were losing 1:few value alts (and thus discouraging true paying main players) to feed 1:many pseudo-bots.

But of course, as a result, PCU dropped, and thus exposing the fact that indeed, EvE "non bot" playerbase has shrunk.

Now, there are of course lots of reasons for this, I have listed some.

Also, Malcanis is very right about the Summer of Rage. EvE was running like crap but developers were busy developing "smarty pants" and similar other hogwash.

However, what I am sure Malcanis knowns (he's one of the last "superior intelligence" players left) but does not say is: these days a company cannot switch into "bugfix only mode" and sit there for multiple years.
Yes, EvE was in a dire status and truly needed maintenance, but it's not players duty to be patient and throw money for years because a small-to-medium at best company WASTED man years in pet projects, barbies, self-made 3D engines (why!!!).
Therefore, once alternate games came out, they went for them. And who cares if they are shallow or [place here copy and paste excuse from EvE die-hard fans], they provide portions of gameplay that should have been in EvE since Quantum Rise!

Now CCP are hard pressed running-behind and this is the worst event that may happen to a company: to basically invent a genre yet to end up having to follow other companies that have been managed in a more capable way.

As I said in my first post(s), there's a dude who single-handedly raised $100M to fund a sci-fi game. It should have been CCP to grab at least the portion of that players who could have been "compatible with EvE". But no. CCP actually lost some of their own players who are "compatible" with that game instead.

This kind of shift is subtle and hard to notice, yet it can bleed paying playerbase if left unchecked.

To get back - again - to what I said since the beginning, CCP has to start delivering actionable content, stuff that somebody out of 0.0 corps can see and stuff which is maybe "shallow" for our "in house Heideggers" but gives a reason to come back to EvE to those who left, while still not breaking with the current playerbase. The worst possible case would be to create ugly stuff that would not attract anybody back yet make more of the current players leave.

The best thing they can do for EVE and the EVE franchise is to merge the different games together into one environment and experience as they already tried with Dust, but it just wasn't integrated enough. Different game genres in one universe where people from different genres have an impact on each others, and where you can go from one genre to another seamlessly.

That's how we'd take EVE from 2nd gen MMO to 3rd gen MMO, I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but in the future MMOs are comprised of "universes" that cater to all playing styles and gaming genres (FPS, RTS, sandbox, themepark, farmville etc).

In the future it's more about which theme is more your cup of tea, be it sci-fi in space like EVE of medieval like Elder Scrolls.

They don't go to nursing homes and find 95 year old dementia patients to give kidney transplants to. They do however medicate, care for and allow them to be comfortable while they make the transition into whatever afterlife they believe in.

This is much like Eve. They aren't going to permanently tie Dust or Valkyrie into Eve Online when they know full well the long term plan is to let Eve die of natural causes. The last thing they want is a aging, less free-time capable population of bitter vets to get into their new games to start telling all their potential new customers "how to play the game".




Edit: To the Minutia squad, yes I said They. "They" refers to a hypothetical imaginary group that controls all things in the universe. Thanks for letting me clear that up before it became the next 7 pages of discussion.

Bullshit. Its plan that would work with humans or other living creatures. Theoretically, you can use software millenia after it was created.

So much about dying. I hope you will learn about emulators also, one day.

Go play some SWTOR or something, I dont know, maybe a game like EA's, that will close its server right after selling next "sequel" of the same buggy shooter or something. Why even wait for inevitable? Just biomass yourself.

Yes I have been part of watching family members go out slowly over years of care and end of life treatment. But my personal experiences have nothing to do with the analogy in comparison to legacy software, so best we not talk about this on a level other than the generalization.

Everything has an expiration date. I don't mean to be the one to have to tell you that. I am not a good therapist type though so you will have to find comfort from one of our resident forum psychologists.

What a well placed truism...


And that is only a sad man hallucination.

I hope this condition you suffer will expire with time.

New word for the people you are talking to: "Homogenizers". Everything they experience, the compare it with things they actually like, and come to the conclusion that if EVE were just like those other games, they'd like it more. No appreciation of the extreme uniqueness of EVE at all, and if they were in charge, they'd kill that uniqueness in a heart beat because in their minds it doesn't bring in enough people.

I think one of them inadvertently revealed a big portion of the underlying motivation of the "EVE is Dying/CCP better wake up before competition comes" community. A motivation so key to there thinking that it does not naturally occur to those of us who don't share it. "Investment".

I've wondered since almost my 1st day of playing EVE, "if you don't like it, WHY are you still here, and if these other games are such big EVE killers, WHY are you here playing EVE instead of that other game". It just does not compute with me, especially how some of them PUBLICLY RAGE QUIT, then slink their asses right back here a few days/months/weeks later

. I think of these people talking about how Elite is better or how SC will have this and No Man's sky will have that, but they probably aren't playing Elite/those other games as much as EVE, aren't posting on Elite's or others forums near as much as here and so on. The list of games they said would kill EVE recently got bigger with Elite, yet here we still are. It's a foreign concept to me to stop playing a game I actually like to go hang out in a game I like less that has a community I dislike more.

But that's what they do, and I've been wondering for literally years why. Then one of them said "investment". They can't break the emotional chain between themselves and their "EVE stuff" and memories. And rather than evolve themselves, and break that chain, the come here and argue (as if anyone with power is listening), advocating changes to the very concept of a game that THEY CANT ESCAPE...not understanding that if CCP made those changes, not only would they not work, but THEY THEMSELVES would hate them...

...which ironically might relapse them from EVE and it's mental slavery-like hold over them lol.


TL;DR these people are extreme head cases. I think we all already knew that though...