EVE General Discussion

Let me play Devil's Advocate a moment here...

Yes there are resources out there to learn. That's what I had to do to learn.

Yes, you can come here and ask for help. That's what I did to learn and had fantastic people do just that.

Yes, CCP has tried (and apparently failed) at doing in-game or their own resources. They seem to have given up.

We must ask the question though, are we going absolve them of their responsibility to create and maintain a good educational system for new players?

I know a lot of you are willing to do just that, I'm not so certain I am. CCP makes a good deal of cash off of EVE. They have great resources and if you count the players among them, they have a dozen very viable ideas that have been tossed out there to them to fix their educational system... including the ability to encompass external game resources that are player created as well as inside the game player participation.

I would think it would behoove the CSM to take up the banner on this, sort through the ideas, maybe pick the top 3 and push it into CCP's lap as a mandate from the player base. Who knows, it might actually impact retention, maybe not, but maybe just a little. If anything, you'd ditch the chaff well before the trial period was up.

So... I'm advocating for the mentor concept again... call it "Project Mentor". It's easy, the vets can strut their stuff, and newbies will get a real taste of EVE while learning the ropes from the PROs.

To be quite honest, I stopped watching the news (it just makes you less informed) and play video games more. The real world sucks with real world buttholery from real world buttholes. I know in a video game like Eve people will be jerks, but I expect and even find amusement in it....it is just a game after all.

In short, people need an escape for the ****** reality that is RL.

Fixed that link for you.

Except that what I linked is the reality, and back to calling names like a typical ganker circle jerk.

Seeing as you decided to try this tactic lets lay it out so people can see it:

The AG players after a certain amount of time started to get some people who were happy to have some characters as criminals, these people started to shoot wrecks, a certain perrson in the CSM whose corp benefits from ganking jumps onto an issue which a lot of people have wanted changed and pushes it at a meeting with CCP. the reasons for that change in terms of wreck EHP is quite understood by a lot of people and is valid.

But it is given a push because AG players are now blowing up freighter wrecks.

CCP changes the wreck EHP increasing it from 500 EHP to 15,000 EHP for a freighter.

The AG were using the same type of ships as the gankers, frigates and destroyers to blow up freighter wrecks, but instead of being the ones to be shot at, in terms of trying to rep the freighter, trying to jam the gankers to enable it to survive, they had the same cheap and chearful level of consequence as the gankers. So in one easy change that strategy and the ability for offensive action on the same basis as the gankers is removed.

To give a real life example, we have a Charon in Palas destroyed by a 14 character fleet of Goon gankers, 9 are in SB's 4 are in Catalysts. The AG players now have to have at least 10 Arty Thrashers and likely more to blow up the wreck before they can scoop it, or perhaps a Tornado along with two thrashers. Gankers will say up your game, but they could not up their game to stop the frigates or destroyers blowing up the wreck, they had to get the EHP of wrecks changed so it was out side of the reach of the AG players to do this, which is what they have acheived.

So afterwards when it was realied what a buff this was CCP increased EHP for freighters due to the DCU change saying it was to balance off against a buff elsewhere for gankers. Except that it was much worse than that it went back to the status quo of the ganked having to sit there and take it and the AG back to trying to save it with limited aggresive actions for them.

The balance of this buff / nerf was massively in the favour of gankers and yet the gankers are crying over the buff to the freighter EHP.

But the biggest issue is that the AG players are left to just do defensive un fun actions, CCP removed the fun part of it by doing this.

So when people see this sort of thing it is no wonder that they think that continuing to play a game where these people have it so easy is not worth it, and the loss of these players is having a cascade affect.

There are many reasons for the decline in numbers but the most important one for me is that the people who just wanted a game to chill out with and to develop in while having a challenge was actually seen as just too destructive and loaded against them, they decided that they were not going to be patsies for entitled gankers and people like them so they walked and continue to do so. And now other people finding it more and more difficult to find content are also walking.

The AFK cloaky issue is still there, people are getting cloaky camped in Providence like mad with BLOP's dropping all the time, people are not logging in, the game does not reward you for logging in and doing stuff because someone with a lazy attitude can just set up like that and there is nothing you can do.

So when the lower level players have a perception that they are just there to feed easy kills and easy ISK to a group of players at the top they decide, nope not for me.

There you go and calling me an idiot with stupid links is not going to cut it.

But thanks for posting that, because every time you do I will write like this.

If you want to discuss this so badly then take it to your own forum posts. This is two posts you have derailed with your conspiracy bull ****. **** off to your own posts and leave others alone. I would call you plenty of names but they all get filtered out so quit being a self-centered, one topic asshat and take it elsewhere.

Ah but we don't get the game changed to suit our gameplay while suggesting it is something else, and he did say that he was also thinking of ganking.

Let me just quote the important part for those too lazy to link or who will link to different things...



But while he is not really a ganker, most of his corp kills and income came from ganking...

So decisions like this have an impact on player numbers, also lack of consequences for gankers have an impact, AFK cloaky camping which makes people not log in has an impact on numbers. I deal with cloaky camping in features and ideas, there is a thread in there that I have a great proposal to deal with it, my attention is purely on the AFK part.

This thread is however about why there is a reduction in player numbers so I am giving my views on why this is happening.

When Eve is loosing players it's about general thing. Some nerd or buff for ganking wouldn't make or break the game. That veterans leave is totally normal the question is if Eve can replace them with new players.
So the focus should be on new players and their information. IMHO there CCP made a big mistake with evelopedia but it can be replaced with Uni Wiki. In German there is the Pilotenhandbuch with covers every aspect of Eve even when it's not totally up to date any more. Exactly such a manual CCP should deliver with each Eve copy. Maybe add a chapter especially for noobs.
The main problem for noobs is lacking information on game mechanics. In other games that's not really a problem because death or failure has no real consequences but in Eve it may cost you the revenues of a week or more playing. To play around you need the money to cover the losses which is exactly what noobs are missing.
The only thing needs some changing are wardeccs on Noobs. New accounts, not the age of toons, should be excluded from wardeccs for 3 month. The 3 Month should start and end with the first account so additional accounts will not have these feature. And there should be some "wardeccs handbook " that gives tips to targets, because noobs often don't think about some options they have.

Sometimes my real life, as I am sure is the case for most folks, does not go as well as I would wish.

These are the times when I use Netflix, books and computer games to escape the stress real life causes.

I agree with most of what you say, the only difference is that I think wardecs /ganks are damagine the medium term players more than the total newbies.

It's true that a total noob that lose a ship needs time to recover and buy a new one, but they are usually ships that other corpmates can buy for hime easily ( t1 frigates, ventures, t1 exploration ships and so on).

The problem comes in my opinion on medium term players ( let's say 3 month to 1 year? ).

They didn't grasp the protection mechanics, the on-grid mechanics, the cloaking tricks, the covert ops opportunities, the difference of danger between hubs and so on so they put their stuff ( that's bigger and harder to replace) to dangerous, because wardeccers / gankers can scan them down and explode their ship easily.

There is also the huge "stay docked one week" problem that's not secondary at all, in particular for players that began to pay for a subscription.

The bad thing is that newere player using trials or similar come and go all time, it's normal, while the damage to the game base from losing players that are becoming solid is much bigger.