EVE General Discussion

I'm keeping track on this thread and I have to say there is a lot of noise coming into the thread and it's useless.

It's quite simple -

Good Gameplay = Good game = Engagement

Guys - please stop focusing on this desire to attract new players - Business does not work in this fashion.

For a start it's expensive and a lot of the time your PR reaches the wrong people. That is why business focus on retaining current customers.

But they need new customers for the whales since the old ones leave.
Its all there.

They leave because CCP do a terrible job at listening to what we, as consumers of the game, want from their product. In the last 18 months they managed to **** off so many loyal players this is why numbers are where they are. Also remember CCP want active players to give a true reflection of engagement not 20 characters being controlled by the same player.

Like i said the focus is on retaining current customers, it's wasted money focusing on trying to attract new players - in many business models word of mouth is more powerful than any PR campaign.

But the current customers are not your 2003 customers.
If profile of the game was developed (broken as you would say) for the system that is selfdestructive, not for average gamer, but for those who are destructive for game, you may be very wrong with that retaining.
We need again average player, playing, having fun and paying subscription. Activities in game should be fun, is that mining, missioning or PvP.
Whales have moved to SC or elsewhere where they will have more power, and spaceships are not their main focus.

I see it as a game that is lacking in fun other than PvP and avoiding PvP. PvE is in bad state. Mining is on prehistoric level of development.
Skills and alts make it more feasible to have more power in sense of raw numbers, if you compare players on certain level of development, one who have more money to spend additionally and one with less money. Win=fun.

Bigger fish eats smaller fish.
The issue is environment must fit the smaller fish (PvE player maybe ocasionally taking part in PvP) for it to be flourishing. Bigger fish (PLEX buying PvP-ers with capitals and skill intensive characters) is only there to profit of the smaller fish.

Yes, good gameplay.
It should be their focus.
Players gave you ideas for next 20 years of development, CCP.

And they did not ask for overpriced stuff in NEX store, but they have been posting about lack of EVE shop.

Yes, and if player retention was higher, there would be less concern about attracting new players.



We need new players because.... the old ones are leaving due to dissatisfaction?



Let that sink in a moment.

I think you need to learn more about why population samples are used for research, instead of entire populations, and why 80,000 is actually a very large and very acceptable population sample for EVE Online. I also suggest you take another look at the method they used, particularly what they did with trial accounts. Trial accounts were not used, and the first fifteen days that we're seeing are the first fifteen days of people that stuck around.

And no, nothing about this dataset suggests in any way that CCP only wants 1% of the population to play this game. That's not the thinking here at all. The 1% is, 1% of the population sample got ganked. The other 99% lost ships by other means, or didn't lose a ship at all. Then they explicitly state that of the people that do leave, less than 1% of people cite ship loss or harassment as their reason for leaving, which is a completely different statistic again.

There is nothing in those slides, or in that data, that suggests CCP only wants this 1%. This isn't even data that shows what CCP want, it's data that shows what players are doing, how they're dying, etc.

Funny thing about humans...

- Some humans will believe anything you tell them no matter how ridiculous it is.
- Some humans wont believe anything you tell them even if you supply more data than they could go through in a lifetime to back it up.

Most humans tend to be logical and will consider other views, IF you provide proof of that view. CCP did a sampling because they are interested in knowing where problems lie in the game and its design. They wanted to know if ganking of newbies should be a concern that should be addressed or if it was a minor problem. Turns out its not a problem, it actually encourages people to stay longer.

You can believe or not believe that data/ CCPs analysis of it. That is up to you. But if CCP thought it was costing them money they would change it in a way that doesnt annoy the current player base to much. Most people come to Eve expecting pvp. People research games before they play them now. They look at what games are about rather than just blindly going into a game. Some players will still blindly try a game but most do a little research first to see if its worth the effort. So most people that try eve understand that it IS a pvp game.



CCP as a company is still quite healthy and still turning a profit. I feel they do lose their way when they stopped focusing on eve and started diverting attention to other games. Also the timing was terrible as they really started messing with other games and then the game market hit a snag. So that really hurt it.

But they do take steps to increase sales without changing the core gameplay. Rather than cave and just make the game like mainstream games, they have come up with ways to increase revenue and cut costs to remain profitable. Tapping the chinese market was a big one. They also refocused on eve and added more way for people to spend money on eve. They also have increased the amount of offers for plexes, aur, and subs.

So they are taking steps/have taken steps to remain a healthy company.

Ironically, its F2P/P2W games that are after ignorant people with a lot of money. One story was about Game of war. A guy spent all of his time playing it. He maxed out his credit cards. His wife told him if he didnt stop playing that game she was filing for a divorce. He took out a second mortgage to pay off the credit cards. He continued to play running them right back up. At last count he was into the game $40k and counting and she had filed for divorce. So the thing about that game is you can spend thousands to be on top today. But in a year, your going to not even be in the top 20% on your server unless you continue to spend money at that rate. In eve, if you spend $40,000 you could easily go a decade off that and never do a lick of PVE.

PVErs spend money just as much as pvpers. 8 boxing to mine is really a thing in eve.