EVE General Discussion

As the title says I would like you to contribute what you remember during the years from 2011 to present day in terms of what happened in Eve.

The goal of this is to write a provocative article demonstrating how some of the decisions the devs have made have killed the game.

E.g. The goal of jump fatigue was to stop force projection. 4 years on after this change, it's my opinion this has contributed to stagnating Eve.

Appreciate any help you can give.

I would suggest looking back at the overall thrust of changes made to the game in the time frame you chose.
You will see that virtually all changes were made to enhance the profitability of the null sec cartels.

You do realize even the OP was meant to be provocative to get an reaction?

The constant carebearization drop by drop has turn the game into sov online. This may not be a popular opinion but please consider the new player experience:

When i started in 2010 high sec was rampant with PVP, i got plenty of fights on my first month, and not just from wannabe 1337 pvp veterans, but from people my age ingame, miners, small corps, big corps, mission runners... everyone was inclined to defend their own and try to pvp if the opportunity showed up.

War decs back then were only 2 million, allowing for newbros to wardec other newbros if they pleased, when they changed it to 50m it became a chore to keep up with 2-3 decs/week for smallgang newbies, and to top it, they introduced this "ally" system allowing the defender to recruit unlimited allies for free. So if you dared to pay 50 of your hard earned million to have a chance of a fight, you had to deal with Marmite, Forsaken asylum, and some other **** you couldnt face with a couple months ingame and 3-10 pilots.

This along with the introduction of suspect timer, the ban of PVP on Arnon (a pirate nest back then), and the constant bubblewrapping of new players, not only killed most potential for a newbro to pvp right from the start, but kickstarted (imo) a culture were risk adverse players teach other players to be risk adverse on a vicious circle.

I know, you can still train for a frigate in a week and go FW, but thats a much more standarized form of pvp, old high sec felt like a the true sandbox.

P.D: Im not saying is not possible anymore, some players still do, but you need to work much much harder, and theres no doubt the player base is way more carebear today than it used to be, they have it easier than ever, while still pushing for nerfs on pvp accesibility.

TL:DR The decline of EVE is a cultural thing; Players are more risk adverse now, and CCP adapts to the current playerbase. The more EVE steers away from its legendary "harden the **** up" mentality that made it survive as a niche game, the more generic it becomes, with the unavoidable consequences every generic MMO has eventually met.

Looking at wikipedia -

Incarna - Release Date: June 21, 2011

Walking In Stations - disaster .
Visual revamp of all turrets, mining lasers, tractor beams and salvagers design and animation - only useful for high spec machines.
Noble Exchange - huge negative impact.
Change of jumpbridge mechanics to a limit of one jumpbridge per system but in return a fuel bay increase to 30,000m3 from the original 10,000m3. - A great change resulting in "bottlenecks" for pvp.

Crucible - Release date: November 29, 2011 This was a packed release. I've noted the new features I personally hated/enjoyed

Increase in the number of deadspace anomalies - Made living in null more sustainable
Increase in payout of deadspace anomalies - Made playing the game more enjoyable instead of spending any game time grinding
Jump bridges no longer require you to have to enter a password if the tower is not configured to shoot at you - I seem to remember knowing the passwords for enemy poses and it created great gameplay trying to bump things out of the forcefields
Setup and takedown times for POS structures has been lowered significantly - Great change
Fuel is now injected into starbases using fuel blocks instead of several types of fuel - Great addition to industry
Introduction of a third tier of battlecruisers: Caldari Naga, Amarr Oracle, Gallente Talos and Minmatar Tornado - excited at the time but hardly use them now
Reblancing of hybrid weapons to make them more useful - needed change
Player owned customs offices with modules - Great addition to the game
Capital ship balancing to make fleet battles fair - Not sure that really resulted in what CCP wanted
Introduction of time dilation, which will scale relative in-game time to mitigate lag - LOL, no thanks

Inferno - Release date: April 24, 2012 (Pre-Release background enhancements), May 22, 2012 (Full release)

Overhaul of the war declaration system including the addition of war reports - Good intentions but the system, I feel, has turned into something CCP didn't want or for that matter the players
Updated incursions which yield greater rewards for players than before - Good change driving lots of content

Retribution - Release date: December 4, 2012

A revamp of the bounty system, which deals out payment on financial loss - I feel it was meant to incentivise PVP and I don't think it really did.
A revamp of the criminal warning system, dubbed "crimewatch" - Massively exploited in game
A rebalance of ships in the frigate, cruiser and destroyer classes - Never a fan of rebalance, you need things to be overpowered to create engagement, you also encourage counter game play
Addition of four new destroyers for each of the races with different attributes - They sounded incredible ships to use and I think they've just turned into something no one bothers with.
Addition of a new ORE mining frigate - MEH, mining.
Improvements to NPC AI - Killed the profession of Recon pilots, I find CCP's response to this astonishing, "NPC's don't care", Why don't they, the NPC and Recon pilot are trying to kill the same thing

Will do the rest when I can be arsed

One of the biggest things I hate about the game is how the game reacts for someone disconnecting.

Over the years i must have given up $1000's to this game because of superbly timed client disconnects and socket closes. Just this evening 2b has seemingly been destroyed because of this exact thing. Obviously CCP's logs will show nothing but in the rare occasion they do and you get reimbursement you still don't get it all returned. Hours of grinding giving up to this game and ****** things like this occurs and you're back to square 1.

Having played the game since 2004 over the years i've had some great fun, recently though it seems CCP are working hard at trying to give me a 2nd job, the 2nd job being part of this game.

Having played since 2004 I recent game decisions; the pending changes to moon mining forcing me to spend my time grinding is resulting in me finding entertainment elsewhere.

I remember all of the protesting when they opened up the actual store many years ago. Pilots all packed into Amarr and Jita shooting monuments to lag/crash the servers...fun on the bun!