EVE General Discussion

You're projecting. Stop it.

Heh... carebear...

the last time I have run 1 mission or similar is years ago

Also, I am fondly reminding games that, when you died, you'd lose 1/3+ of a level, in a time when 1 level could take 1 month of frequent playing and all it took to die was for some squirrel to have some stupid "permastun" ability till you'd die (aka: subtle hint by the game designers to play in a group).

I am also fondly reminding pre-PLEX, pre $1000 jeans, pre.... crap EvE. When having a carrier was a sensible achievement, and a BS would sort of incute fear, not a "lol I go point it and orbit till it dies" (say because current fleet doctrine dictates using long range weapons) .

Just saying.

People leave eve because they don't enjoy it.

People don't enjoy it because they are bad at it.

People are bad at it because they don't take the time to learn the game mechanics and how to use them to their benefit.


Eve is a game made for people who want to win.

Pre-PLEX there were GTCs, and don't say nobody sold them. The GTC forum was extremely busy.

EVE has always had ways to buy isk if you wanted to badly enough, yes - but they went from the days of GTCs where it was kind of a hassle to buy/sell them, so most people didn't bother...
To the days of PLEX where they could be bought/sold with ease....
To the brief Somer Blink fiasco where people got "bonus isk" to feed their gambling addiction when they bought PLEX (and don't tell me that wasn't CCP supported, unless CCP is going to give *me* a "Stratios Emergency Responder" or other unique ship (only 3 ever released? - all to Somer Blink, as a reward for boosting PLEX sales)...
To PLEX + AUR, with all of the assorted new items you could then spend real-world money on and resell in game...
To the modern EVE, with PLEX + AUR + Skill Extractors/Injectors. And to those who claim the skill injectors are "just an extension of the character Bazaar" - you are idiots. It is now *profitable* to farm/sell SP, and people are doing it. In just the half a year since they have been released *trillions* of new SP has been created and sold just from the gigantic alt-sp farms. Anybody can set them up, many people are, and they are using their profits to expand their farming collections as well...And this *will* continue until the SP market crashes, one way or another.



You can argue that many games are pay-to-win, and they do just fine. Lots of people enjoy them. And certainly it is making CCP record amounts of profit. I'm not disputing any of that. And you would be correct - Pay-To-Win is now an accepted, common gaming model. It isn't inherently a "bad" thing.

But stop trying to pretend EVE hasn't become a Pay-To-Win game...because at this point it is really just too blatant to pretend any more.

Those of us (primarily old-school gamers) who don't like it are merely prejudiced against it. We certainly shouldn't be telling anybody else to hate it. But we *do* have the right to maintain our prejudices and be unhappy with it ourselves. And many of us will (or already have) unsubscribe over it, that is just the way these things work. If CCP does their jobs right, our places will be taken by more open minded gamers, prepared to play in the Pay-To-Win universe of EVE Online.

I like the way you immediately tried to feed the exact line of bullshit I asked you not to.

EVE has had ISK for game time and ISK for character sales since pretty much the beginning. Trying to pretend otherwise is the worst kind of whitewashing nostalgia.

People have been complaining about "pay to win" since the beginning as well. The actual definition of "pay to win" is "pay RL money to gain an advantage not otherwise available". EVE doesn't have that and it never did. It has, since day 0, had the facility to pay RL money to gain an advantage - CCP's very liberal policies on character trading and GTC sales ensured that.

I know you don't want it to be true because it undermines your "when I was young EVE was so much better in an indefinable way not supported by any actual metric!" narrative, but there we are. Your problem is with reality, and only you can deal with that.

And before you jump in and point out that "not otherwise available" - waiting 20+ YEARS for all the skills to train...that doesn't really count. The advantages are *not* available if you do not spend RL money...and never have been. It has always been a savings of *time and/or effort* above all else.

As I said in my last post, people are leaving because the game has stagnated. Being able to restock quickly with plex is part of this, but like many people have said already, ISK for cash has been possible for a long time. The real issue is corps and alliances have already got all the power/ resources/ whatever that they want. It is a bigger issue than individual players.

At the beginning, when eve was it's best, there was huge amounts of unclaimed space. There were not so many monolithic groups that are so large they are effectively out of smaller groups reach. These huge groups have carved up the best space between them and have left "worthless" space for everyone else. These groups want so badly to hold onto what they have that they even blue potential fun targets to preserve themselves, which makes sense as self-preservation obviously.

The problem is that there is next to no way to force the breakup of large alliances. They can only grow and grow, getting further out of reach of new startups. They aren't dumb, so they avoid situations that would lead to their breakup. CCP should implement some kind of "wildfire" mechanic which would occasionally cause massive destruction to corps and alliances to level the playing field. This would allow smaller groups to again fight to become large, and it would force the current large groups to prove they still have the skill to make it again.

Carriers and Dreads are made in lowsec though their components can be made in hisec. Supers and Titans can only be made in null sec. Also there is significant risk in moving bulky expensive items in hisec which you seem to ignore.

And those people in hisec have no interest in moving to lowsec or null sec, all you will do is remove content from people already starved of decent content.

Ok, so you guys have discussed the reasons for why less users are playing each year, Could we focus on solutions that do not involve CCP changing anything?

For a number of years I have done my best to provide content for Eve Online and have tried to put forward a few survival techniques that could of inspired a different type of game play to emerge.

Going back a few pages I saw that people were complaining about how easy it is to bump and eventually gank a freighter, the solution to this seems to involve having some friends to jam the ship bumping the freighter and another friend to web it it so it can goto warp faster. Can anyone see how being part of a blue community could help here?

I know your answers already, you're going to say that blue communities can't be organised and a proper leadership structure needs to be in place. I think you are wrong and that your attitudes and perceptions toward my views are ignorant.

Why not be part of a blue community? Why can't dudes who know how to escort freighters be part of this community and charge a reasonable amount of isk to escort freighters? Why can't freighter pilots join this community and pay escort services to get their freighters to their destination? I just think we should do everything we can to remedy the problem before complaining and going on strike.

I'm not trying to say CCP is perfect, all I am saying is the mechanics are what they are and we just need to get our thinking caps on and work out a way get around it. A big part of the problem is peoples attitudes toward the game, CCP has marketed this game in a manner that should show you that GABOS (Game Ain't Based On Sympathy) applies here fully, the gloves are off and you seriously have to keep your wits about you in order to achieve your personal or corp/alliance goals. This is my kind of game and I love it I love realism, I love it when odds are not in my favour, to me this is as real as scifi/games can get.

There's nothing set in stone that says CCP has to make the game to your liking. Like I have always said for a long time, the hisec populace has more power than they know. Take some time to understand exactly what pvp'ers are trying to do to you, learn the counter move. Once you've learnt it, teach it to someone else and at the same time be prepared to have other people teach you things about pvp.

When you are ready drop me a mail and I will assist in building this blue community in hisec and nullsec, We can have fun doing stuff about ganking and other problems in the game and we will help the little guy.

I hope this message didn't fall upon deaf ears I do not want to see my beautiful Eve Online go under please help me to provide a better experience because we are all investors in this game so lets act like it and take control of where this game is clearly headed.