EVE General Discussion

they all quit the game when they realized suicide ganking under the protection of high sec was commonplace and risk-free thing.

really makes eve into a joke of a game.

happy to hear that, just one point:
why give them what they want?
they are big enough to take it by themself

You still spouting this idiocy?

No offense but I think the claim that the free-2-play model has failed is baseless and crazy. The hype's down okay I can agree there. Otherwise this game is on a straight upward trajectory. Eve Online has it's peaks and valleys - I'm sure when whatever is next on the roadmap is announced you'll see another influx of new and returning players.

Have a nice day.

I guess only time will tell. If thousands of players have dropped subscriptions to become Alphas along with the rapid decline in active players, I would hardly call that a success. And winter is actually peak activity time for EVE players, so the fact that activity has been declining all winter does not bode well going into summer...

Roadmap? You mean the one that's literally been written in crayon for the past few years? To call it a 'roadmap' would infer that there's been an actual development plan. Fozziesov is a disaster... Citadels are a disaster... Alphas are an unmitigated disaster. In the short span of 6 months they've managed to improve and then completely screw-up carriers, fighters and capital industrials. I can't wait for FanFest so the bloodbath can continue in earnest...

Have they?


What rapid decline? How many players are active?

If you are going off PCU count, it is not; and has never been a measure of the number of active players.

https://youtu.be/h-jfvjMoe9Y?t=204

In particular, this slide:

https://puu.sh/uDuwy/d40321e21b.png

That's for 2014, obviously not now; but demonstrates clearly that PCU =/= number of active players.

How does forcing players opposed to a play style into that play style boost subscriptions?

MMOs have traditionally had around a 1 / 10 PvP to PvE ratio - that means around 1 of every 10 people will go to low null the others won't. The other 9 will be happy to farm / mission / manufacture while paying their sub.

Trying to force those people to do something they don't want to do is idiotic and counterproductive to EvEs longevity

The worst thing about Alpha accounts is you. Just an FYI.

Nobody is forced into any play style. Playing the game is a voluntary action. What you do in game is largely voluntary. When you overload your freighter with 7 billion in cargo, nobody made the player do that but himself. Clicking undock is a voluntary action. Nobody made the player do that but himself. Warping into a 0.5 system that many ships have to pass through is a voluntary action, nobody is making him do that. Not using a scout, webs, or even fitting a tank are all voluntary actions the player took.

You are whining on the behalf of players who have take several steps, each of which has increased their risk of gank. You are whining for people who are taking on considerable risk....in a game where is you take on too much risk other players will take advantage of it.

Seriously, answer this question: If I take on too much risk why should I be shielded from that decision?

I bet you can't answer that question.

You're reading too much into that comment, I think. The context is "take everything even remotely interesting away from highsec and put it in low/null." The comment you're getting worked up over I think can be summed up as "if you do that, then 90% of the players will just choose to not play, as that is also an option." I didn't interpret it to mean the game should be risk free, only that the majority of players are risk averse, which I don't think can even be reasonably argued.

I wish it were that simple. When you have a process that has spontaneous order and emergence, a sandbox, you can't "go backwards". Evolution is such a process and we cannot ever go back to the time when dinosaurs walked the earth (outside of the movies). As such we cannot go back to the "Good Ol' Days". What can be done is note that catering to the whiners like Hakawai and Infinity Ziona is not a recipe for success. Reducing PvP, reducing player interaction in EVE is not going to save the game. In fact, it has been very bad for the game in terms of players logging in, IMO.

I have to agree with Jenn aSide. When EVE said, here is your rookie ship, here are few things you need to know, now **** off. That was when the game was growing. Ganking was actually easier. Can flipping was a thing. If you were jet can mining you had to be on the watch for some can flipper. Hulkageddon was a thing, yet outside of that miner ganking was reasonably rare. War decs were cheap, yet there were lots of small corps doing war decs. 2-3 corps could band together and stand a chance and even force the war deccers back into station. All that is gone now, and gone forever. I doubt you can bring back any of it.

I also agree with Salvos, a NPE that is too good might be more detrimental than helpful. Too much hand holding can be bad. When I first started there was practically nothing on the capacitor other than these announcements that "the capcitor is empty". I was like, "WTF is the capacitor?" I was on my own to find out lots of stuff. That is called learning by doing and you know what, when you figure something out for yourself you tend to learn the lesson better, understand it better.

My son was a competitive swimmer. And one thing I learned from that experience is encapsulated by this little anecdote. He had some very bad habits and we hired one of his coaches for private lessons. She and I were talking one day and he was in the pool, he was like 7 in t he deep end with the diving well (i.e. very deep) and he was in the water "goofing off". I turned to him and told him to stop goofing off as he disappeared again under the water. His coach said to me, "No, that's good." I asked, "What?" She replied, "What he is doing. He is goofing off sure, but he is also learning. He is learning the path of most resistance. And he has to do that to learn the path of least resistance." I looked at her for a few seconds, looked at him as he disappeared under the water again while smiling, and nodded. Yes, he has to learn what will slow him down in the water so he can "not do that" in a race. It was counter-intuitive at first, but upon reflection it made sense. Eve is like that, first you must learn the "path of most resistance" before you can see the "path of least resistance".

Hakawai and Infinity Ziona are bad, not because they have ill intent, but because their good intentions will enervate new players; leave them less capable than if they had been left to their own devices. Yes, initially those devices would be ineffective and even ridiculous. But by having to figure things out for themselves they'd learn the mechanics better and in the end be better players. Players who can survive in the harsh environment of EVE. Yes, it is not a game for everyone. But so what? It was doing fine as a niche game. CCP should have not panicked if the PCU number stopped going up at a given rate. Bass diffusion models predict that kind of thing. The response the Hakawai-Ziona response was most unfortunate in that it is likely why the PCU started to trend down.

The solution, IMO, is not to make the game progressively safer. That has not been working, IMO. The solution is to return to the notion that in EVE you aren't safe anywhere except while docked and maybe while cloaked at a decent safe spot. Stop worrying about ganking, scamming and all the rest. You get that kind of thing in a sandbox game and it is fine. It teaches players who are overly trusting not to be. It teaches players who take on too much risk not too.

EVE players do not need to be molly coddled.