EVE General Discussion

So you have to have two accounts to play Eve, so grind for plex or two subs, this is a major reason as it kills casual play.

Hi guys can someone be a scout for me as I move my freighter, hmmmm sounds interesting yeah it will be fun , lets do it yay!!!!

I know it is ridiculous in an MMO to make friends.

How about you logoff and uninstall so that the rest of us can get on with things.

No, really. Just logoff an uninstall. Idiot.

You want to move a capital ship with a valuable cargo..get a friend...how silly.

Dum-b-ass.

Really, can you just uninstall the game?

Less people are logging in not because freighters require scouts. Capital ships have always required support, and this is after all a social game designed to reward grouping up.

Why are less people logging in? Well like all of you I lack the data to say exactly why, and honestly, I am not sure even CCP with all the data could pinpoint the cause or causes given their inability to reverse trends. We can though pretty confidently say it is not the presence of ganking, wardecs, the vulnerability of freighters any of the other boogey-men that are constantly raised by certain segments of the player-base. These things were part of the initial game design and have been with us for the whole lifetime of the game, including the times when the game grew the fastest. In reality, the impact and risk of these things to players has been repeatedly nerfed so that players have never been mechanically safer.

In fact, it is this increased safety and ease of earning wealth that I suggest is smothering the game. CCP Quant's data show that New Eden is stuck in a chronic situation of over-production where we have been producing three times what we are destroying for years now. Incomes can be made with near no risk, with no need to take space or even leave highsec. Jump freighter logistics, which were almost risk-free before, are now completely risk-free with the Citadel tethering mechanic. Basically, CCP has removed so much of the risk and ability to force a fight, and provided income sources that don't require building or holding an empire, that people have stopped doing so.

The big coalitions got this and retreated to the invulnerability of lowsec - there is literally no point in holding sov. Perhaps killing the blue donut and leaving nullsec to smaller groups will be better for generating wars more often, but they won't be of the scale and consequence of previous wars. I am optimistic that this might stimulate activity, but fighting only to put your name on the map grows old quickly, especially after you have been steamrolled a few times and have the easy option of highsec incursions to fall back on. There needs to be incentive and reasons to head out and try to stake a claim on your space and to defend it. Perhaps once all the structures are implemented, those rewards will be there, but as it is there is no reason to take space or put something on the line when you can make an income safely in highsec and just roam outside when you want attacking others on your own terms.

Perhaps Seagull's vision of new space will provide the rewards necessary to get people fighting again for something other than just the fight itself which seems to be the sole motivation of most conflict in the game today and this was not always the case. The game desperately needs more real conflict drivers to induce players to spend some of the wealth that we all are accumulating on attacking each other for a meaningful reason. But this roadmap of hers is a long time coming, and each month less and less people are sticking around. On my pessimistic days, I am afraid it might already be too late and if or when we pass some tipping point of low activity, I fear there will be an astonishing fail-cascade of the player-driven market which will push a large fraction of non-PvP crowd whose primary game activity is to supply the market out of the game further killing activity.

This road of making everyone rich and safe only has one outcome, and it is complete stagnation of the game and death of the economy. Highsec can be safe, but it can't be as safe and lucrative as it is now, and even highsec needs motivations for players to engage with each other to give a point to all this grinding and building. Even the spaces outside highsec are far too safe with the powerful free intel tool of local and other such crutches that enable the evasion that prevents conflict from even starting. Players need reasons to fight, and the ability to force each other to fight - Eve Online is not sustainable as a consensual small gang spaceship combat simulator as has been the primary development direction in recent years. Such consensual fights just for honour and bragging rights should be the exception, not the norm as it is today, and most fighting should take place for strategic reasons or for direct piracy or resource collection purposes if you want a meaningful game.

This is just my opinion and perhaps I am reading the incomplete dataset I have totally wrong. Turning around the decline isn't my problem anyway, and it is up to CCP to produce a game that people want to play. Perhaps there are just not enough people who want this product in the changing gaming marketplace and Eve Online is doomed no matter what, but I think we can all say that this kinder, gentler Eve where being content is optional and no-one's fun can really be ruined is not working very well at retaining players. Maybe it is time to look at a return to the harsher roots of the game where taking risks and grouping up with players to leave the solo and safe space of highsec was truly rewarded, and actions had meaning and consequence is a universe much less saturated with resources and wealth.

Whatever the prescription, I think if this trend continues into the fall and winter as steep as Teckos' chart shows, drastic intervention will be necessary to save the patient. There are clearly many things that need to be addressed but CCP could not do wrong by injecting some meaningful long-term objectives into the game, and step hard on the accelerator to get that new Jove space or whatever Jesus-feature they have planned out ASAP. It is not enough to just provide shiny toys and a pretty sandbox and tell us to go play - they need to engineer reasons to both build sand castles, and bash each other over the head into the sandbox as well.

Black Pdero,

Simply that you are mainly left with perople who know how not to get killed and who minimise risk, and people who are scammers, griefers, power gamers and player killers and they are all so risk everse it is silly.

Sorry mate, you drove all the easy casuals away with mechanics that enabled easy rub nose in it kills, people went out of their way to kill new alliances by spies and thefts, all this easy rubbish you called emergent content has created a vacuum of inactivity and sloth, with low expectations. Couple of years ago I said we would get to this stage, yep not good is it.

Yeah there is over capacity in industry now, mainly because you have run out of stuff to blow up easily...

But some other mers were asked and refused saying it would cost too much and why was that?

The point is, what exactly, remember Teckos made it as if it was somehow relevant.

Asking a fleet to folow you around i.e. Escort duty, is stupid yes, thats what you were driving at i know but
Asking a corp mate to scout you about, web you into warp if needed isnt actually asking anything of them.

Y'all can still buy replacement ships from me. :)

--Eternal Gadget