Player Features and Ideas Discussion

EVE has several problems with scaling. One is their PvE content will almost always be lackluster because they simply don't have the staff to produce new environments. That's why the majority of EVE starts out as procedurally generated content. Blizzard has a huge staff many times that of CCP and they can use that to produce huge areas of new content.

EVE's second major problem with scaling is the fact that while they've sharded us into constellations and regions people would still flock to places like Jita and the lag produced would force people to move to new trade hubs, but it's unlikely they would be particularly happy about it.

EVE's third major problem: EVE's existing players often feel they are superior to "casuals" and therefore abuse people in order to "harden" them. This one isn't really overcome-able since those are the players you have. It would take a major anti-harassment policy change and a lot of core players would leave. Just look at the ruckus caused by the change/clarification of the EULA that prevents people from impersonating others.

EVE's fourth major problem is that it's horribly mismanaged. They do certain things very well, but they've shown consistently that they don't know what about their game is actually successful and they don't know when they are overreaching. They've gotten better recently, but they still have a lot of stuff to figure out.

EVE's last major problem with achieving large numbers of players and the one that is most easily overcome is that their UI stinks. EVE's UI was bad back when it started and while it's improved lately, it's still been really bad for years. It's not even that it's hard... it's just bad. I know people who can't even figure out how to properly configure access to POSes and stations. If you know what you want to do and UI prevents you from doing it because it's bizarrely constructed, then that's a problem -- not gameplay.

EVE will grow and can certainly grow faster. I think I've been more impressed by what I've seen in the last year than the several years before that. I have hope that the game will continue to improve. Certainly I spend more effort on it than any other game and I love it's depth.

p.s. For what it's worth there are many people talking about WoW here who are talking out their asses. WoW has a lot of casual stuff and some serious hardcore content that only a very few number of players are ever able to finish. WoW has managed to create content for all of them and while they have many, many problems that I don't wish to see inflicted on EVE the idea that every WoW player is a whiny casual is just flat out wrong.

As for "casuals" in EVE I would point out the numerous ship replacement programs out there. If people really wanted EVE to be the harsh cruel game world they keep saying it is, then those programs should go as they represent the exact same thing -- zero effective loses except instead of Blizzard providing that benefit it's an entity like GOONS.

How to make Eve bigger then WoW:

I haven't read all comments so its probably been said already, but just wait a year or 2, eve numbers are steady or Climbing, wow numbers have been dropping the last few years, eventually the'll drop below us...

Eve is build to last, wow is just a resiliant one day fly

Allow men playing female characters to grind male characters played by other men.

Free to play would work if you had permanent and persistent death for non subscribers or those without a plex. You could deny them access to the market, but a better solution would be in drastically increase market charges and taxes for non immortal pod pilots and encourage them to become immortal by buying a plex or subscribing.