EVE General Discussion

I played EVE Online back since 2007 and eventually quit back in 2013.

I gave away my 3 70+ mil SP accounts and pretty much forsake the game after the disagreements with the direction the game was going.

I recently returned with this new advent of "Free to play" that CCP was putting out and here is what I have to say:

If CCP wants to get new customers to this game and they're going to be sorely disappointed.

Having an impenetrable pay wall in what you can skill up and fly is not going to convert F2P to P2P, they are going to quit.

Not only is there a pay wall, but there are several other significant barriers which is both by the nature of the game and by some of CCP's policies.

1. The difference between an Alpha and Omega Pilot is staggering in not such the limit on skills and ships, but also due to the fact that Alpha Clones have only half the training speed. Meaning that skilling up fundamental core skills take twice as long. There is no way outside of implants/remaps that can be done to alleviate the slow training speed. Alpha pilots are going to do a lot of sitting around not doing a whole lot while having to wait days to get some skills done. Which is not a good way to entice new players when it'll take them numerous days just to get a skill from 3 to 4 let alone 4 to 5. Trial characters had free skillpoints/training acceleration. Alpha Clones have the complete opposite.
New Players already have restrictions on what they can do, while penalize them even further?


2. PLEX prices are outrageously high, back when I used to play PLEX prices were below 300 million and overtime the prices have continued to climb at its current price point at 1.2 billion. Which as a result, have caused many people to shutdown their accounts as it was no longer worth the effort to keep their accounts running through PLEXes. As a result the game has become heavily favored to those with fat wallets. After all why grind the amount of a full time job when you can just spend an hour and half of salary to buy yourself over a billion isk. It has become pretty much nonviable for the majority who PLEXed to continue plexing and playing the game.

3. EVE has a lot with its PVP with the adrenaline rush it can give. But PVE, well that's a different story. No matter whatever activity you do, we can all agree that we eventually dread having to whatever we have to do to make isk to pay for our ships/ammo/etc. Not only do you have to pay money to really play and advance through the game, you have to work another job to fund your virtual life.

4. Skill extractors/injectors has simply added another Pay to Advance element to a game that already pretty much demands that you have a subscription. EVE Online now has the things that people hate about F2P and P2P and provide nothing in return. A subscription game should not have to drive players to do massive microtransactions, has CCP forgotten about MonocleGate that almost lead them to ruin?

5. After over 8 years, EVE still has that annoying clunky right click menu system. I swear if nothing else grates on the players' nerves the clickfest and clunkiness of the game will get to them. I over the years had hoped for a smoother and more immersive experience but alas, we are still stuck with "Excel Sheets Online". The UI is still as cluttered as ever and the control interfacing of game still annoys me despite being gone from the game for nearly 3 years.

6. From the past 5 years, I have yet to see anything fundamentally new with EVE Online. Nothing like Apocrypha in 2009 that added wormholes that added a new dimension to the game. EVE Online has heavily stagnated because it has failed to truly grow as a game.

TL:DR

1. The restrictions on Alpha and Omegas are so great that it will not entice F2P to convert to P2P, because F2P hate impenetrable paywalls that have great restrictions.

2. PLEX prices ridiculously high that its not worth trying to grind isk up to PLEX accounts and in reverse makes it more profitable to just buy PLEX to get isk rather than spend the amount of a full time job to grind isk.

3. PVE is just awful and its something that people have to constantly do to fund their activities and it gets stale quickly.

4. Having a game that charges Subscription along with having massive Pay Advanced Microtransactions makes things worse.

5. Clunky interface and gameplay system makes it feel more like "Excel Sheets Online" rather than spaceships online.

6. Stagnant Game that has not shown significant changes or additional of new gameplay dimensions that makes it get stale after many years.

EVE's server count has fallen for the past few years, its numbers are down to when the game was in 2006.

The fact that EVE Online had to move toward this F2P combined with more microtransactions speaks volumes that this game is indeed dying.

After all Actions speak louder than words.

damn! you mean you have to pay money to play the full game,, what is CCP thinking.

ffs man,, ya know i had a mate log in the other night and he was going nuts because he couldn't log his 8 other accounts on at the same time for free. then when that sunk in he was also surprised he could not use a barge, what the hell do these people expect?

it's a carrot stick thing dude.

CCP dangles the carrot and we use the stick and with some luck some sub and stay and those that are happy to get the free to play time can stick with the limits it has.

at the very same time a new player joined and he was so so excited by everything he was seeing and to him these limits didn't mean anything for a least a month or 2, but guess what, after hanging with us for a week and playing and enjoying the game, he subbed for 3 months.

bottom line,,, to new guys this is fecking brilliant and well done CCP.

to returning vets,,, it's not such a big deal. let's them see the changes, lets them do some PVP but doesn't let them access the full game.

working as intended i guess.

For returning vets that's a huge restriction, no longer being able to use things you trained for longer ago without paying is certainly not "F2P" for them. Might as well just not have bothered in the first place.

F2P of 2016 is a lot different than F2P that was many years ago.

Generally if a player is not hooked into a game within 21 days, then no amount of time in the world is gonna get them hooked.

In these days, for players with money are people who want the most fun or enjoyment and unfortunately EVE has very low return in investment for the hours you spend and fun you get.

Ask a player these days, what would they rather spend their $50 on?

EVE Online that requires constant subscription, endless virtual currency grinding, time walls that cost money, dated gameplay and feel, being unable to do activities or player with others due to your low skill level that will take months if not years to catch up(unless you P2W with injectors).

Battlefield 1 with endless hours of fun and little required downtime and dedication to have fun and being able to play with other people regardless of how new you are.

EVE Online's system is from an age that will come to an end. The is the New Age of Gaming where all subscription MMO's come to die.

In all fairness the game is not really a player driven sandbox. That's hyperbole.

Think about it... want to make some isk in game? What are your options?

Ratting in developer created static and unchanging anoms, missions, combat sites.
Mining in developer created static and unchanging belts, anoms.
Manufacturing? With developer created blueprints with developer created material costs.

PvP?

Camping around developer created stargates, with developer created ships, that can't be modified or changed except in developer sanctioned ways.

Want to blow up someones stuff? Can you? Not really, unlike sandcastles at the beach that you can destroy when no ones looking EvE sandcastles have timers that send a message to the castle creator and become completely indestructible...

EvE is pretty much a themepark.

Having said that I'm not against everything I just wrote, some of them are necessary and good but there is nothing in the game that is player created and if there is its often nerfed out of the game due to whining.

Edit:

Lemme give you an example of what i mean: CODE. Content creators right? EvE sandbox yeah? EQ1: Themepark?

EQ1 which I'm playing atm on P1999 has a red server. EQ1 was around before EvE. On the live red servers you'd get a bunch of wizards running around telling people they had to pay plat to farm NPC's. Now wizards in EQ had this cool ability called Manaburn which basically turned all the wizards mana into direct damage (alpha) and 5 wizards could literally one shot you. So rather than spend all day getting one shot they paid plat.....

Instead of solar systems they had zones, instead of ships they had characters, instead of modules they had equipment, none of that equipment could be modified by players, it was static.

Its identical. No difference.

Now if we could build stations out of modular building blocks, ships out of modular hull components, modules out of invention and parts, stargates, defenses, etc (think minecraft) you would have a sandbox....

Too bad you gave away those accounts. You could have stripped two of them for SP and played the third account for "free" for years. Or if they were trained for what you want them to do, strip them monthly and pay only a small fraction of a PLEX to keep them going. Eve has been essentially free-to-play for veterans happy with their character since last February so the price of PLEX isn't really important.

Sounds like nothing is wrong with Eve, just Eve is no longer the game for you. Thanks for announcing that loudly, but honestly I don't think anyone here really cares about the personal fancies of yet another anonymous person on the internet. Move along and go find something you do like.

Unlimited Trial

It sort of depends on what your destroying though. A keepstar should take a lot of people a lot of time to destroy and it should kick a lot of ass when someone attacks it.

A mobile depot reinforcing though? Really? If someone wants to drop a mobile depot and leave it should be killable.

The other thing is we have a game that is international, meaning its populated by every timezone on the planet. Yet we have alliances that are American, European, Russian etc etc.

Now logic tells you that if you have a global playerbase that alliances could form global alliances, meaning there is really no excuse to say "our stuff should be magically safe while we're sleeping, its not fair we're a [insert country / region] alliance here".

If people want 23 and a bit protection then they should form alliances that can defend 23 and a bit per day by recruiting players from all over who can defend their own stuff rather than having the servers defend it making it magically unkillable.

But we're off on a tangent. True sandboxes flow based on player actions. I'm an Aussie if I want to come into your space and kick over a few of your sandcastles, even if they're small ones, then I should be able to and you CAN stop me by recruiting Aussies too but that's way too hard....

Ah yes, the good old "I can't do something that I want to do, therefore it's not a sandbox!"
Those timers you rail against exist for one purpose: to get fights. It's extremely difficult and to scramble all my supers to a pos bash when the enemy has enough dreads to kill it in one siege cycle. It's much easier to cyno them in 30 minutes before the RF timer ends, when people have head about the tower and are ready. And then we can have a giant super brawl. So, yes, the developers actually develop the game. You don't have perfect freedom to build a blocky abomination or genetalia shaped ship, or put battleship guns on a frigate.The reason why EvE is a sandbox is because the story is player-driven, not developer-driven.