EVE General Discussion

Alright guys I've got this one.

At the moment, EVE cannot survive in the long-run, which is what CCP want the game to be a - a game lasting decades, not years. With biggies like Star Citizen coming round with one-time fees and no-subs, there's gonna be some serious questions asked by the players. Questions like this:

"Why am I still paying for this bad bad game when star citizen is a lot cheaper?"

This question will mean people will unsubscribe. We've also noticed a big trend in the MMO world going away from subs, that trend isn't fully done yet. But when it is, who knows what'll happen to the CCP.

The big business model transFORMATION

Okay guys, so here's how I think CCP should do it.

1) EVE becomes free. Anybody can make account, download and start getting scammed by goons.

2) CCP sells character slots, ship paints, golden pods and more clothes and stuff. Basically, CCP sells as much as it can that doesn't have an impact on gameplay.

3) Population of EVE rises. There are huge huge wars because there are so many people fighting and having fun.

4) EVE is a lot better, more dynamic. Look at all of the politics with 400k people fighting for a finite amount of space. Imagine 5 million people fighting for the same amount of space? It would be crazy. Absolutely crazy.

This would probably INCREASE CCPs profits as well. I'd recommend that they do this IPO on the stockmarket they were talking about, as that will get the big businesses interested and posting articles about this awesome sci-fi sim. All of the hardcore eve fans, like the mitani, will probably buy shares - so they'll have even more money to improve the game.

As they improve the game more people play and buy cosmetic items and CCP get richer.

Thoughts please.


Thread update:

Thanks for feedback guys, I think there are a few more points worth adding here.

1) CCP should also consider the option of buy to play. Perhaps a £39.99 to get access to the game client, but fees after that - this would ensure there is a paywall to supplement CCP profits and keep out the hacking community. With the increased profits, CCP would have greater confidence in following a strictly cosmetic cash4items scheme.

Buy to play has been an extremely successful model and I think it is particularly relevant to EVE ONLINE. Why? The model in GW2 has triggered slow but steady growth, this is the type of growth CCP has always been experiencing with EVE. http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/23/lead-designer-says-guild-wars-2-is-growing-its-playerbase/

2) Secondly, a steam launch as free to play would be a great bolster to current numbers. 0.9 of the world's population has a steam account. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/30/0-9-of-the-global-population-have-steam-accounts/

That's actually a good idea. For the dusties, maybe CCP could have firework guns that shoot fireworks and we can see from up in our EVE ships? Building links and funding the F2P.

It works with dust, why not EVE?

Free to play is a move made by developers of failing pay to play titles to avoid losing what they invested in development. Free to play doesn't really work unless you actually gain a substantial advantage from paying.

Then here's an alternative mr Andski sir --

1) EVE goes BUY TO PLAY. All current subscribers receive free copy of game. New people must pay £39.99 to play EVE, but there will be no SUBS!

2) Add the cash shop with cosmetics, clothes, paints character slots ect...

3) Rake in the dough, make eve better and profit.

There would be some people to kill, gank and scam - surely you can see the benefit andski?

NO! Now please give your stuff to someone deserving and click "Biomass".

Actually, I didn't think of this.

The EVE store page gets MILLIONS of hits every single day. When a game first launches on steam, it gets featured - so think about all of the people that would play? We're talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions over a 30 day period.

Does the community get ruined? Not at all. There is no EVE community, it's divided up into corps, alliances and coalitions. The CFC would remain as culturally pure as it is, while the hordes of new players would form their own groups.

Would the forums become more active? Yes sir they would, but can CCP deal with this? Yes they can. With the extra revenue from all of the attention, CCP would be able to employ more community managers to improve and manage the forums.

The CFC has 10k members at the moment. With these changes, a new coalition could have 100k members?

Think about the scale of the warfare we're seeing here. Imagine the biggest fight in eve history happening every single week. It would be crazy.

But I like spaceships and not airplains

F2P requires substantial compromises in game design because everything needs to be evaluated in terms of how it will affect subscribers vs how it will affect free players. There are some games which are designed from the ground up to work with the F2P model, and they work well. There are other games which are not designed for it, and F2P is nothing but a desperation move.


the additional players that EVE would get as a result of going F2P wouldn't be anywhere close to worth the design sacrifices.



...And you think that the average eve player would buy $15 per month per account worth of purely cosmetic items? Do you remember the Aurum store, and how successful that was?

CCP could create the same effect by making the universe smaller. However, I don't think any person would seriously argue (other than you, apparently) that having everyone packed together would actually be good for the game. In fact, there are regularly people asking for space to be expanded to decrease population density.



People dismiss F2P because it isn't just something you slap onto any game to magically make it more successful. It doesn't work that way. The F2P model does not work everywhere.

"EVE should go F2P"

I have no words for this but I do have this to say about EVE going F2P

..!.. o.o