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In your opinion what do you think draws players away,

Author
Pohbis
Neo T.E.C.H.
#21 - 2012-12-11 00:08:49 UTC
Lack of easily accessible, fun gameplay.
YoYo NickyYo
Doomheim
#22 - 2012-12-11 00:11:48 UTC
Boredom....

The inability to watch another expansion that could have been great....fail under the weight of sloppy planning. Shocked

I had fun the first week, but it's all become the same old stuff. All the usual suspects playing docking games, and due to the mighty green button, no one can accidently suspect themselves for lols.
Without the ability to make mistakes, highsec has actually become a more boring place....not sure I like it.
If it has to be a feature, then it should be a persistent switch on the menu, like everything else.


I am not, nor will I ever be...Nicky Yo.... The question you should ask is.....When will they release the NICKY!

Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#23 - 2012-12-11 00:14:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Jame Jarl Retief
Oh, gosh, there's so many reasons...

The elitists will say stuff like "The game is so complex, only us, demi-gods, can play EVE. The puny brains of the rest of the gamers just can't cope." Funny part is, I saw some of these demigods try to play actual skill-based PvP games, and get horribly savaged.

The people with lives will say that they simply don't have the time to play EVE. Because, honestly, what can you do in EVE when you have 30 mins a night, and even that comes in 2-3 chunks? Nothing. Can't do jack. But in other MMO, you can log in, do some fun and meaningful and challenging (as in not 20v1, but XvX with similar gear, level and skill levels, so that's it is actually challenging and not a roflstomp) PvP in that time.

Some people will say it's because they don't like sci-fi, or can't connect with the ship being your de-facto avatar. WiS would have helped with that, but it's on hold now.

Some get turned off by one-sidedness of most things in EVE. First time they go to PvP, and end up in a 20v1, or what looks like 1v1 but the other guy is being T3 boosted by his alt account, and they get turned off. Most other games, PvP is based on player skill, followed by gear, followed by class. So that the outcome largely depends on player skill, and character skills and gear are a distant second, in EVE it's the other way around.

Some will say that they don't want a second job. And yeah, sometimes EVE feels exactly like that. Not even sometimes, but rather often.

Some will say the game is short on content, which is something I passionately agree with. Yes, it's sandbox, but even a sandbox needs sand in it to be fun. Without sand, it's just a box. That's what EVE often feels like. Missions and epic arcs were a step in the right direction, but as usual the development stopped well short of the mark and was abandoned like so many features before or since.

For some, it's as simple as EVE's travel system. They get a mission or something that requires them to take a trip, 20 jumps one way or something like that. They do it once, look at the clock, realize they spent an hour just pressing "warp within 10km" and "approach gate" and "jump". And then they realize that watching paint dry is more entertaining, and probably cheaper too. This was somewhat improved by warp to zero, but even so 2-way 20-jump trip (which in scale of EVE universe is a short walk) really takes it out of you after a long day at work. And considering entertainment value from it is, well, big fat zero, most people prefer to do something else, and sadly autopilot is not always an option.

And these are just off the top of my head. There's many, many others.

That is not to say EVE is a total loss. It has many redeeming qualities. Graphically it is one of the best MMOs out there. Its soundtrack is, in my opinion, second best I ever experienced in all my decades of gaming, and even then it's a close second. The truly tragic part is that CCP could have done so much more with it.
Aaron Adoulin
Universal Prosperity Syndicate
#24 - 2012-12-11 00:47:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Aaron Adoulin
Well I would say that Eve remains spreadsheets in space....( manage your stuff) ..and PVP remains ...tackle ....Rock, Paper, Scissors.

So not a lot of depth ...Fun stuff but not for everyone....

The one WOT trailer did a nice job summing it up really.

The real fun comes from the personal interaction and the Meta gaming but that is outside the sandbox.....

Speaking of sandbox is there a cat around here.... Sandboxes sometimes have aspects not everyone appreciates.
Krixtal Icefluxor
INLAND EMPIRE Galactic
#25 - 2012-12-11 00:49:21 UTC
Aaron Adoulin wrote:


So not a lot of depth ...


I agree with the rest of your post, but are you seriously saying this ? Maybe you mean not a lot of immersion ?

It's deep as all get-out !

"He has mounted his hind-legs, and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck."  - Ambrose Bierce on Oscar Wilde's Lecture in San Francisco 1882

Pretty GuyYeah
#26 - 2012-12-11 00:54:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Pretty GuyYeah
xxVastorxx wrote:
Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?



CCP nerfing something they used their first 21 days to train with no compensation and with the community telling them to 'adapt' aka starting over once more.

Post with your main.

A legend walks among us, a genius so significant he so dares to degrade himself as camouflage when you dispute.

Herbinator d'Arcadie
Arkadian Knight
#27 - 2012-12-11 00:56:19 UTC
People don't sub because EVE is full. A sandbox, yes, but in many ways an overcrowded one.


"Block" pigs. Refuse to fly with them.

Remiel Pollard
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#28 - 2012-12-11 00:56:41 UTC
xxVastorxx wrote:
Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?


The forums.

“Some capsuleers claim that ECM is 'dishonorable' and 'unfair'. Jam those ones first, and kill them last.” - Jirai 'Fatal' Laitanen, Pithum Nullifier Training Manual c. YC104

Pretty GuyYeah
#29 - 2012-12-11 00:59:14 UTC
New people also can't voice their opinion on the forums as bitter vets don't feel they are welcome and place bounties on them.


They first realise they have to use ALTs when it's too late.

Post with your main.

A legend walks among us, a genius so significant he so dares to degrade himself as camouflage when you dispute.

MNagy
Yo-Mama
#30 - 2012-12-11 01:10:03 UTC
Make EVE more about PVP everywhere and stop making it a carebear heaven.

Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#31 - 2012-12-11 01:13:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Vaerah Vahrokha
Because it's a sandbox but it's sort of canned and grindy and content is stale and mechanics unfun and outdated.

And the developers spend many months to fix what works and don't look at the mountains of unfun, repetitive and desperately in need of refresh content. No, making AI pop drones <> refresh content.
Krixtal Icefluxor
INLAND EMPIRE Galactic
#32 - 2012-12-11 01:15:42 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
Because it's a sandbox but it's so canned and grindy and content is stale and mechanics unfun and outdated.

And the developers spend many months to fix what works and don't look at the mountains of unfun, repetitive and desperately in need of refresh content.


FYI this would not apply to someone so spanking new they have not even subbed yet. Takes awhile to observe this.

"He has mounted his hind-legs, and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck."  - Ambrose Bierce on Oscar Wilde's Lecture in San Francisco 1882

Krixtal Icefluxor
INLAND EMPIRE Galactic
#33 - 2012-12-11 01:16:24 UTC
MNagy wrote:
Make EVE more about PVP everywhere and stop making it a carebear heaven.




Also, the shear number of extreme attitudes with no sense of any balance............like this.

"He has mounted his hind-legs, and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck."  - Ambrose Bierce on Oscar Wilde's Lecture in San Francisco 1882

Pyre leFay
Doomheim
#34 - 2012-12-11 01:22:47 UTC
The community.
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#35 - 2012-12-11 01:29:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Vaerah Vahrokha
Krixtal Icefluxor wrote:

FYI this would not apply to someone so spanking new they have not even subbed yet. Takes awhile to observe this.


As mostly PvP player in many MMOs, when I was new, the first thing I noticed was how it did not matter how skilled I was. I could not dogfight or something, pilot skillbooks + ship stats do most of the stuff.

I had to join "groups" and that involved an expecially torturing path just to be told the name of a corp public chat. Most groups would rely purely on blobs, another thumbs down for those accustomed to competitive small scale PvP in other games.

In PvE it was even worse. The tutorial missions were partly broken, the dialogs triggered only if using some wizard fore-sight to know when to be docked or in space etc. The 1-2 NPCs found in starter missions were basically static and dead. Coming from games where the NPCs kick ass and you struggle a 2 v 1 it was a shocker being sent against 20-40 NPCs.... and discover they were driven by static (usually range based) triggers and only able to spam the same shots.

Trying to "craft" would immediately see your 2 hours timeout craft tutorial mission depicted again a 3 days building queue. And the recipes were 20% mismatched with the mission requests / text.
Trying to "mine" would reveal to be the worst mechanic ever created in any game including pong.

Some of these things are still here, firmly stuck in their tragedy.


Took "few days to observe this". It was only thanks to the kind help from other players who soon became friends that I stuck and could overcome this initial nausea for a game I found lacking even for 2003 standars. I played other 2003 MMOs and they felt way more newbie appealing. Not easier or less grindier or "softer" but just better made to convince a new guy he was not playing a piece of rubbish.
Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#36 - 2012-12-11 01:32:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Jame Jarl Retief
Krixtal Icefluxor wrote:
Aaron Adoulin wrote:


So not a lot of depth ...


I agree with the rest of your post, but are you seriously saying this ? Maybe you mean not a lot of immersion ?

It's deep as all get-out !


It really depends on what you consider to be "depth". For example, combat in EVE is fairly cut and dry. Your setup is locked in the moment you undock. If you show up with scissors, and the other guy shows up with two machineguns, you die. Yes, there's a lot of numbers and equations that explain just how horrible your death will be in the grand scheme of horrible deaths, but the end is still the same.

EVE is "deep", but consider other games. Like a game with line of sight and collision detection. Suddenly, breaking line of sight (LoS) allows you to mitigate all but DoT (damage-over-time) damage. I remember being in a match that ended up in a 2v1 because my buddy disconnected. They had me dead to rights, but they got overconfident, overextended, and one of them broke line of sight to his own healer for a few seconds, which I exploited with a well-timed burst and dropped him. Suddenly a hopeless 2v1 became 1v1, with me nearly dead, and the other guy being a (very) survivable healer. What ensued was lots of kiting, and some cannibalism, until I recovered and took him on and won.

Now, let me ask you, can you do that in "deep" EVE? That is, you are fighting alone against a gank + logi. Can you get the gank ship to LoS his own logi? Well, no, you can't. At best you can perhaps lure the gank ship away, but if logi simply has a "keep at X km" set, he will automatically keep proper distance. How is that "deep"? Similarly, can you hide your ship behind an asteroid when you see a volley of missiles coming? Nope. In most other games, you can. Heck, in one recently released MMO many attacks have a parabolic trajectory, which grows with distance, and that sometimes means the attack can't be completed because the projectile will get blocked along the way. That is, you have clear line of sight to target, but because of the path the projectile must take, the target is protected.

That same game had an active roll mechanic, where your character would execute an evasive roll on command, avoiding all damage and control attacks. ALL of them. You could only do it twice in a short period, and if you got juked into it, you'd waste them on relatively harmless attacks and then the wrecking ball would come down and you'd lose. And it would all be about player skill - if you don't react fast enough and do just the right thing (roll in the right direction), you'd likely lose. Imagine in EVE being able to boost your ship's shields to absorb all in coming damage, but you'd have to do it the second you saw the attack coming, and you could only realistically do this twice per fight, maybe 3 times at most. But imagine what it would do to EVE combat, especially if turret fire wasn't instantaneous. Suddenly, alpha wouldn't be king any more. It would still kill distracted people, but someone paying attention would do an evasive roll or two and live with no damage taken! Suddenly, it's not clear-cut black-and-white.

Then, that same game had other interesting combat mechanic - various effects changed based on surroundings. An arrow, by itself, did damage but no burning. But an arrow passing through a wall of fire left by another class would become a fire arrow, and do more damage AND apply a burning DoT to the victim. Now, imagine in EVE a special ship type projecting a cone in front of itself, within which normal physics would be suspended. That is, if you get shot at, but you move, the projectiles and missiles would miss you, because they would continue flying to where you used to be (lose guidance/self-targeting/etc.) Suddenly, ship formations become very important.

Next, consider another MMO, such as Pirates of the Burning Sea. In many ways, it was similar to EVE. The difference was, different ammo types attacked different parts of the ship with different effects. Bar and chain against sails, grapeshot against crew, ball shot against hull, etc. You did not need to sink the enemy ship to win, if you killed all of the crew, it would be enough. The game also had melee combat. As in, you could board the enemy ship if it was slowed enough (either by forcing it to sail in the wrong direction depending on wind, by destroying its sails, by physically stopping it with another ship (collision detection, etc.), you could board it and duke it out with the enemy captain using swords and fighting techniques (three schools - dirty fighting, Florentine fencing and classical fencing, each with distinct abilities). And if you won that, you didn't even need to do anything else, you could even capture a ship without sinking it. Imagine losing a titan, but not actually having it destroyed, but taken by the enemy and used against you! In PotBS, that happened, a 1st class Ship-of-Line was captured by a pirate and sailed away. Also, the game had numerous other mechanics - weapons had specific arcs of fire, you could hide behind enemy and friendly ships to avoid taking damage from that ship (I once survived by hiding behind an 18 gun ship from a 43 gun ship, something you can't do in EVE). Depending on where you were shot, damage would be different - shots from the rear were most damaging, shots from the front mostly glancing. Again, doesn't exist in EVE.

Bottom line? Depth is in the eye of the beholder. In some ways, EVE is very deep. In other ways, it is childishly simplistic.
Sri Nova
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#37 - 2012-12-11 02:18:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Sri Nova
tedium.

its not the learning curve ,

its not the complexity,

its not even how harsh the game is,

it is the tedious nature of having to work to gain your toys in this game that causes people to leave.

not saying this is wrong or bad, its part of the core eve game play experience.

to keep people hooked into this game non stop requires something that keeps them engaged and prevents them from becoming fatigued by what ever system they have placed them selves in .. i.e. mining grind , pve grind, pvp grind, industry grind etc etc etc .

players with less skill points have far fewer options available to them and if they burn out in their targeted career they have lil else left to do.


thus why really excellent corps and corp mates are a key point of this game they keep the player engaged and aid in retarding fatigue.

Eve is by far the most diverse mmo in existence unfortunately players devour/ignore content at such a rate that it is near impossible to provide players with a system that constantly keeps them engaged in new and exciting content .

couple that with the additional overhead that nothing is free in this game, players who do not put forth effort will soon grow tired of doing the same ol thing over and over .

Again not really a problem of eve but more a problem of players not wanting to invest into the game.
Maggie Evenstar
Unoriginal Corporation
#38 - 2012-12-11 02:31:43 UTC
xxVastorxx wrote:
Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?


1. Complexity

2. Failure to complete the tutorials (I suspect)...it is VERY easy to miss some details and not be able to progress in the tutorials (this happens to virtually EVERYONE I invite to the game and I have to help them repeatedly just to complete the tutorials).

3. It takes too long to have the initial skills to do much.

If people can get past the 1-3 then THIS next point is the most significant IMO...

4. Failure to find a good corp/community in the game...and then stagnation and boredom. Unless someone is just obsessive compulsive about this genre, Eve gets dull very quickly as a solo game and/or early losses to griefers seem unrecoverable.

Bottom line, players need to get plugged into a part of the community somewhere/somehow. Existing players could promote this hobby better by helping promote players into the game. I don't have the numbers for his but it seems like once someone has had an account active for 4+ months they tend to be here indefinitely.




Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#39 - 2012-12-11 02:39:13 UTC
Maggie Evenstar wrote:
xxVastorxx wrote:
Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?


1. Complexity

2. Failure to complete the tutorials (I suspect)...it is VERY easy to miss some details and not be able to progress in the tutorials (this happens to virtually EVERYONE I invite to the game and I have to help them repeatedly just to complete the tutorials).

3. It takes too long to have the initial skills to do much.

If people can get past the 1-3 then THIS next point is the most significant IMO...

4. Failure to find a good corp/community in the game...and then stagnation and boredom. Unless someone is just obsessive compulsive about this genre, Eve gets dull very quickly as a solo game and/or early losses to griefers seem unrecoverable.

Bottom line, players need to get plugged into a part of the community somewhere/somehow. Existing players could promote this hobby better by helping promote players into the game. I don't have the numbers for his but it seems like once someone has had an account active for 4+ months they tend to be here indefinitely.


All else aside, this is probably the best, most concise and accurate answer I've seen to date.

Now that it's been said, that's exactly how I feel. If I remember right, I got over the 4-month mark in installments. Played a month, came back and played a few more weeks, queued training for the rest and went away again. Repeat until I pushed past that 3-4 month mark and finally put on enough "SP weight" to start throwing around, and things got a little more fun. Most people just never get that far. And old players do their absolute best to exploit, harass and otherwise abuse the new players instead of getting them hooked. Kind of like slaughtering your chickens as soon as they hatch instead of waiting a few months.
ashley Eoner
#40 - 2012-12-11 02:54:16 UTC
xxVastorxx wrote:
Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?
I quit the first time because I was frustrated with the fact that I had to wait 24 hours before really doing anything because I had to wait on stupid skills. The tutorial missions were done very quickly leaving me with nothing really to do since level 1s were still too tough for a fresh toon with little guidance and even less SP.