EVE General Discussion

Look, I totally get your point that people are more likely to stay if they get emotionally invested in the game. What sold eve to me was my first corp which helped me move all my things to a small lowsec pocket in amarr space where we would camp gates and roam about looking for fights. Some moments which stood out were my corp CEO helping me move all my things in her hauler (would have taken me 10 trips), and when a freighter jumped into our lowsec. Needless to say the freighter pilot instantly regretted his decision.

However you don't seem to be thinking through what would actually happen if all these isolationists left. You say prices going up would encourage more to mine, but that requires minerals be more expensive. Totally possible in eves market. Well EVERYTHING is made of minerals, so everything is more expensive. Sound good? Miners are easily replaced, but we are legion.

Personally I think a sandbox should allow whatever type of gameplay you want, and it should always be possible for players to interfere with each other. CCP have actually proven again and again they know how to manage different player groups who don't get along. Lots of people here complain about new players wanting instant gratification, but look at what CCP have done with skill injectors. I was first against them but now see they enable certain players to get what they want in a hurry but only at great expense, and only by giving money to an older player. Enterprising players have set up alt farms to take advantage of the change; it benefits everyone to some extent even if they disagree on principle, and opens the game to a new audience.

Literally the only thing this game needs is a decent tutorial. I liked the idea a few pages ago where on reaching milestones aura pops up to tell you some relevant tips. Like the "oh you're in a battleship, be mindful that small ships can get under your guns". A better tutorial would actually solve the issue you have as well. New players should absolutely not be encouraged to isolate themselves and should be told early on the impact they can have even in a frigate. I'd even suggest that corps can flag themselves as "accepting fresh capsuleers" and that new players on finishing a basic tutorial get tossed into one of those player corps.

Actually, you don't seem to be using the data that is actually available and has been since Eve Vegas last year showing the state of Eve's economy. It totally supports the view that as people leave, others just pick up the slack.

From this dev blog last year by CCP Quant (https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/eve-economy-update-eve-vegas-2015-report/ ):

"...contrary to some conclusions that can be drawn from the PCU graph, activity is not going down overall. If we normalize it by unique logons, we rather see those numbers increasing, meaning that those playing now contribute relatively more to the sandbox than the general population in the previous years, which is a great sign..."

You can also check the monthly economic reports in the devblogs that demonstrate, with real data, that this is still continuing:

February:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-february-2016/

March:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-march-2016/

April:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-april-2016/

May:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-may-2016/

June:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-june-2016/

July:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/monthly-economic-report-july-2016/

During the same period from February to July, the PCU count has been down significantly:
https://puu.sh/qtKAS/7a9e0557ba.png

So despite the slope of recent months, activity has remained virtually unchanged so far, showing that CCP Quant's conclusion last year (quoted above) is still holding at the moment.

Others are picking up the slack.

Carebears, just like everyone else, are easily replaced and none of us are more or less important than any one else.

So instead of assuming what might 'actually' happen because it suits a particular narritive, you can actually see it from the data.

The game's 13 years old. Yeah, no one can ever be replaced. This game will never last.

The data might be inconvenient, but it shows the story all on its own.

To be fair mining is a lot more boring than 4 years ago.

This isn't necessarily about new players.

Veterans would start mining as well if they'd perceive it as worth it.

Their added bonus would be that they'd have fun killing gankers.
And they might stop with the "fly a tanky barge" nonsense.

The last years have shown how people go the easiest path ...
... which is not only flying a skiff or procurer ...
... but worse, telling everyone to do so.

Sure there's still lots of retrivers and (it seems less) mackinaws ...
... put in general people tell miners only to switch to tanks.

And we can observe that easily out there.



Hey who wants to make a mining corp?

How about a 20,000 page instruction manual on every single thing you can do in EVE?

TBH they had a short tutorial when I started... Just enough to get you to the rookie career agents... i think I made it as far as step 2 before I closed it and went off to figure things out on my own...

My point wasn't that carebears are super valuable on their own, like Shae says everyone has just as much right to play how they want as anyone else. What I was saying to Solecist is that carebears exist in large numbers, and if they leave in large numbers the difference will be noticed. At least short term anyway. It is easily conceivable that CCP could make a change that affects these types of players, and since they won't try on their own to adapt they could leave in droves. This would be bad for the game economy and affect the rest of the players in game.

On the tutorial point:
A better tutorial doesn't necessarily mean hand holding, and a game like eve does need players to learn on their own. The current tutorial shows how to take missions, how to mine, and how to shoot. Just like your link this leads new players to think missions or mining are the game. Like it or not eve is massively different than most online games, and people generally fall back on past experience to know what they should do. Most new players will be from theme park MMOs, so the tutorial needs to say in no uncertain terms "your survival is up to you, you are not the hero, good luck out there". It should point players to player corporations so they can become involved in the social side of the game. They need to be rewarded during the tutorial for being proactive in learning instead of waiting on the tutorial to walk them through it.

Edit: also I wonder how the toy experiment would have gone if the teddy could give electric shocks to the kids if they did a certain thing. I'd wager they would stop playing with it very fast.

No one is saying anything else.
Well, partly, because everyone's turrets have the right to deny everyone else gameplay.

Fact is though, when you're afk, you're not playing.

An AFKtar-ish farmer isn't playing. (Drop drones, leave)

Ganker: 100% scout reliance, 10sec gameplay, 15min gcc: dock, afk
(Though the scout counts as playing actively in between ofc)

Miner: Lock roid, engage mining lasers, set alarm, go afk
AFKcloaker: Cloak, go afk.


All of these aren't really playing the game the vast majority of the time ...
... with the scout being a bit more active than the rest of them.


That's not gameplay, it's absense of gameplay.
Being afk means you're not playing.

Imagine a conference.

Just because you're sitting at the table silently ...
... doesn't mean you're actively influencing in a discussion.

Saying "i was part of the discussion" in this example would be completely misleading and wrong.

May I ask you this?

Do you really think that i.e. a player that decides to mine ores for the next 4 hours will stay in front of his pc for four hours pressing dscan and checking local while mining in hisec?

Do your really think mentally sane game developers think this mining mechanic is correctly played in front of pc all time?

Because giving my honest opinion there is a incredible level of duplicity ( hypochrisy ) in all of this discussion if we are discussing of mining for hours looking your ship still in the middle of the screen while pressing dscan and so on...

Personally I don't care if they go AFK. I've afk mined myself - I also used to afk haul, even while CODE. was at its most active. There are other precautions you can take to avoid being ganked...

Also pressing d-scan or checking local don't have to be done *constantly* - and can easily be relegated to a 2nd monitor as long as you do something at the physical computer itself...



However many miners *don't* go afk - they talk to corp-mates, socialize, etc. They actually interact with the EVE universe even as they mine for 4 hours...they just do it in a way that an outside observer can't see. That is all i was saying in my post.

For many people EVE just becomes a chat room, often for weeks at a time. I've logged in for entires days/weeks and never bothered to undock - but I was still "active" in my own way... EVE is strange that way. Though of course if that is *all* you do sooner or later you'll rethink paying so much money every month to do it. Thus many such people mine to buy plex, to fund their chat room. The ones who do it intelligently don't even get ganked in the process.