Out of Pod Experience

Sorry to see you go even if we disagree on a lot of points.

Just some thoughts:
CCPs goal is, and has to be, to make money. The opportunities they offer are offers which you can take or not: it's up to you. Until now I've bought exactly 2 Plex which are save and sound in my redeemable items for bad times. CCPs is making money by an indirect approach which I find appealing: They don't sell SP they sell the extractor so it's totally up to the players!!!! if there is any injector trade and most of this trade comes from vets with multiple accounts and tons of SP. These players most likely also have a ton of Isk so I really don't see why they need this money but it's up to them
Same goes for the rest of things you can buy: Plex, skins, clothes etc. You may buy them for your fun but there is nothing that gives you any advantage.

In the end Eve is a good game if it was able to hold you for 7 years. Not many games out there that can do this and the number games that even survive for so long is very limited. Eve may not be as harsh as it was but there is still nothing out there that gets even close.
That vets are leaving is simply normal: If you have done everything a dozen times over they are missing the initial thrill so they leave to find that the other pastures are even more tightly tended then Eve.

fly unsafe

You rock.

While I agree with much of your expressed sentiment, I am both more optimistic and less pessimistic than you (perhaps just because I haven't played nearly as long to get bitter yet). I am still optimistic some, or even a large number of CCP developers understand what type of game Eve was conceived of and still honour the central sandbox conceit that the game was founded with. New features still keep players vulnerable, and some (like citadels) arguably do a better job at that than earlier features (like POSes).

On the other hand, the last 7 years has clearly brought many concessions to player-driven play in an attempt to capture a larger, more main-stream audience. Players have never been safer, richer, or more able to isolate themselves from other players. Abominations like highsec Incursions which enable players access to an impervious assets source, or the constant nerfs to ganking, awoxing, buffs to freighter and jump freighter safety, all make meaningful interactions and conflict with other players much more difficult. They also break the risk vs. reward balance of the game that incentivized players to leave highsec and set up empires in the past whereas now, the default gameplay encouraged by the mechanic is to grind resources in safety in highsec and only leave to participate in consensual, and thus meaningless, roams to fight other people at random.

This is where I am more pessimistic than you. I don't think Eve will go on indefinitely if turned into a mainstream, nobody-can-lose traditional MMO. As you say many of the mechanics in Eve are terrible. While pretty, things are imbalanced, repetitive, and sometimes boring. Competition, player interaction, consequence and the player-driven economy are what make the whole universe come alive and Eve a compelling game. If you neuter all that out of the game, what is left is not going to keep people logging in to almost 15-year old game no matter how beautiful the art department keeps the game looking.

The effects of all this softening already can be seen. As you say big wars are a thing of the past. Things are slowing down and stagnating. The approach of making every player rich and safe has not made them want to fight more and take risks - if anything people are more averse to loss than ever and now have more ways to avoid fights than ever. There are so few reasons to fight left or force a fight, that almost all combat is of the masturbatory consensual variety which while can be amusing for a while, doesn't contribute to the 'Eve is Real' feeling of harshness and permanence a PvP sandbox should have.

I don't envy the development team stuck with the task of making a harsh, persistent, PvP sandbox universe that is also gaining in subscribers in today's gaming environment. The temptation to dumb things down to increase numbers and satisfy the bean counters must be immense. But the problem is that Eve's main conceit, the feature that makes it unique and why it grew so fast in the early years was the promise of a harsh and competitive, player-driven universe where players could have a real impact on the universe is not compatible with a traditional, don't-ruin-anyone's-fun-style MMO.

CCP Seagull talked the talk of a player-driven universe when she took the reins but so far at least under her watch we have seen mostly nerfs to content creators (watch list removal, nerfs to ganking, buffs to Incursions, highsec awoxing patched out of the game) and less things happening in the game as a result. She did give us Aegis Sov which produced some content and hopefully will continue to do so, and her main baby, the new structures, are just coming online and do promise to give us things to fight over so I am willing to see how this goes, but so far her tenure has resulted in less player-driven stories, not more.

I think CCP is much better at seeing the forest through the trees and sticking to the player-driven concept of Eve when working on a new feature at a high-level (like Citadels) while they have a bad habit of pandering to safety and ease of development when reacting to a perceived problem or whining from segments of the player base. These cuts add up though and Eve is not nearly as harsh a game as it once was, and thus less interesting. Only time will tell if the new structures will breathe new life and provide tools for players to make their own stories, or will be too safe and uninteresting and the game will continue to descend into boredom.

Ok, I have rambled long enough. o7 to you sir and I hope to see you again in a few years when Eve is back on the upswing and interesting things can be done again. But if not and we are off doing other things, at least we both have all the memories this game gave us while it was still in its heyday.

Truly, I'm not sure why I felt like writing it down either. I posted it because I had gone to the trouble of creating a gigantic wall of text explaining why I'm quitting EVE...and I figured I might as well share it.

As for your 10 minutes - that is your own fault. HTFU.

Finally, I *am* making a change - I made it months ago - I have cancelled my subscriptions. As I say though you are still stuck with me until October 13th - complete with all my quirks and idiosyncrasies, such as a random desire to write/post this purely explanatory thread and the fact that I used my forum alt to do so.

I think you need to go back and read more carefully - maybe take 15 minutes this time. Because you seem to be under a misapprehension that I think CCP is ruining EVE or doesn't know exactly what they are doing with the recent changes...and that is pretty much the opposite of what I actually said.

I said the *metamorphosis* of EVE - not the death of EVE. Certainly the old EVE is dead - but the new EVE is rising and growing stronger - just as the caterpillar emerges from the cocoon as a butterly. I personally just don't happen to like the butterly as much in this case.

What you are seeing is the killboard effect. Do dumb things, and while learning you will do, it's forever on the killboards. So you only take fights you can win. If everyone thinks so you get this results. Goons didn't fight they just do "the smart thing". You are taking on miners in ships that you throw away like Faction ammo.
And if People take risk, aka consensual fights, you call it pointless. You are calling the only fights that are risky and maybe unbalanced meaningless and ganking miners in throw-away-ships meaningfull content?

Alts example is showing it: who risks a marauder on bad odds? If someone is risking you are assuming that they are not really risking it. It's not the changes that make people risk avert but the urge to be "the Best" and to "always win". So you really choose your fights and dock up rather then risking a defeat. Does it sound familiar while you are waiting for the next freighter who might (or might not) blast you to kindom come?
Eve is player driven and the changes are made by the urge of players to be l33t at any price. Not having fun blasting away ships is the goal, because that is meaningless consensual fighting, but ganking and griefing cause you get guaranteed victories and if you always win against pods, velators and ventures you are l33t...........
Don't blame CCP: look in the mirror and you see the REAL Problem and the reason why there are less fights. It's because many players have lost the ability to loose with dignity and accept losses as part of the fun. But to be fun you have to have a Chance even if you not grab it this time. In Freighters or barges you have no chance.

For those confused some conversation from this thread is spilling in here.

That is indeed the thread that finally made me want to put my thoughts/reasoning down into writing - so it is not entirely unrelated - but it is also a separate conversation, so you should probably take the discussion about wardec/combat mechanics back to that thread

[Edited. Didn't have anything to say after all. Except I feel the same way as OP].

What is your evidence for this. That is, how do you know it was not an unintended aspect of not wanting to create a restrictive WoW style game. That is, if you intend to have a game with few rules and thus, few restrictions things are going to come about you did not anticipate. So while CCP may not have intended to have AWOXing, it is a result of what they did intend...a game with few rules/restrictions on player actions.

This is my position. I am undecided as to whether to biomass or return sometime.

On one hand there are things that I want to do in Eve and on the other I can't explain how the skill injection idea simply disgusts me.

I've been away a year. I miss wandering around and being useless out there in space but there's so much that's just plain wrong that it grieves me to think that Eve has changed into something that I don't recognise any more.