EVE General Discussion

I started playing EvE just over 3 years ago.
There always seems to be the same amount of players at the same time of day, which is slightly over 50K at around 22:00 down to 20K at around 09:00. This has not changed in all this time, so I'm wondering What's up?
Could it be that players get frustrated about the limitations and leave, or basically the game lacks something to keep enough people interested?
Theories?

Yeah i agree. EvE is hard and most often too complicated for the very young to understand fully. It takes a special sort of dedication to play this game since most/all goals are set by yourself and there is no end other than what you decide the end to be.

Plus we dont ride around the stations on glowing pink lions yet, i play this game because it keeps all the whiny 13yr old WoW dweebs out of my face and also because the training system works much better imho.

Then over that time you should have noticed the average player count has steadily increased. Details available at eve-offline.

I logged on on Wednesday to a server with 10k on (it was shortly after patch after all), which used to be the actual daily average back in 05-ish.

The only hiccup recently was Incarna, where no growth happened and some people left, Crucible has seen people return and slow growth.

I play 4 accounts simultaneously, Some people play more,some play less. In effect the player base is much less than what we see online. If I couldn't make Billions then I certainly wouldn't have multiple accounts.
The growth and development of Eve depends on revenue so I am slightly concerned that no growth would lead to no development and that the days of the game are numbered.
And if it's TL then DR and don't reply.
Thanks

Whole bunch of reasons really, here's just a few of them:

Overall global economic situation means on average people have less disposable income for games, so fewer alts of old players and people less willing to jump into a new game.

In the last 12 months CCP have done a pretty good job of driving away their existing playerbase and generating negative publicity that will put off new players, resulting in the net loss of players. (Slightly reversed perhaps with curcible but to soon to tell lasting effects.)

Many people eventually tire of EVE either due to having reached endgame in however they choose to play EVE and not being interested in other paths to take, as the playerbase ages overall this becomes steadily more of an issue, increasing the churn of people simply bored/tired of the politics and general bullcrap that accompanies so much of the game.

There's only ever a certain size of niche for a game like EVE, it's entirely possible that CCP have reached the bulk of that potential playerbase and it's now somewhat slower getting to the remaining people that might try the game (let alone actually stay), resulting in less genuine newbies coming in (and hence net decrease in players due to increased losses as above).


Does any of that mean EVE is dying? Not yet, if CCP can make sure they keep heading away from FULLRETARDMODE you could well see some of those that left in sheer frustration at CCP returning, and a more general positive view of EVE on the intertubes could help return EVE to slow but steady growth. I don't however see us returning to the crazy period from around '07 onwards where EVE bumped the PCU by 20k in a couple of years, manly due to the frist reason I listed above, new accounts afterall have to be run by cc for several months in general before your average jonny newbie can even consider PLEXing.

My old "home" in '05 used to have no one in it, it was a high sec system with lots of stations (full range of facilities), agents, asteroid belts, and a 2/10 dungeon that was so dead I could run it whenever I felt like it. I moved out a long time ago when it started getting too crowded for me (around 4-5 other players in local).

I've been there since a few times over the last couple of years, just to see how the old system was doing, and every time there were 20-30 people in it at least.

EVE has gotten pretty big over the years and doing fairly well for an old game I think.

Agreed, also Destination Skillqueue the way you used to spam everyone on the forum with post "likes" even though you never read any of them makes me think you're an attention farming douche, and as such i scanned over your post assuming it contained nothing but drivel.

Translation: to get any real satisfaction out of Eve, you must be unemployed and living in your grandma's basement because it required 10 hours/day and a job and social life are difficult to fit in for the truly dedicated Eve player.

Do you know how hard it is to read the forums? Things move that fast if you are not a forum troll and live on here then within a couple of days things get away from you.
I only come one here to share ideas with people who I think could be interested. If I duplicated a post. MY bad sry.
A good flaming warms the bed.
G'nite guys.

Because,

EVE ***** all over lowsec and caters only to highsec bears and the huge 0.0 alliances.

It takes too long to get into the game, both in terms of SP and player skill. The amount of time it takes to be a potent PvP Battleship pilot could be cut in half. This is coming from someone who's already got the necessary skills. As for the learning curve it's not so much that the game is difficult but rather that things like aggression timers will be learned the hard way unless someone tells you about it beforehand.

The community is hostile and griefing has become one of the only profitable forms of PvP.