Out of Pod Experience

The main drain of veteran players is the fact that any activity that doesn't involves PvP will burn out in about two years.

Thus adding more stuff to do that is not PvP -and ideally, content that allows to generate content- would help retain those who maxed up non-PvP and want to keep playing beyond PvP. They're a large section of the game and they've ben left to leave for years without batting an eyelid... changing that would surely help improve retention of veteran players, if not veteran PvP players.

As for noob retention, the main force driving noobs away from EVE it's veteran players too bored to interact with their peers, so they move from PvPing for the challenge to PvP for the "tears", or plain bullying of the more vulnerable.

There are only two ways to sort that: either make some players inmune to PvP (which would kill EVE), or ensure that PvP with their peers will keep being interesting to people who's PvPed everything he was willing/capable to PvP.

Regretfully I've never PvP, and really can't figure what could help. In a philosophical sense, human beings who don't grow bored with destruction always destroy themselves and so most of us are incapable to enjoy endless destruction. It may take one, ten or a million destroyed space pixels, but the sane between us are built to survive and burn out from those experiences... eventually.

Some of the things that would make me very excited about the game:

* Allow players to defeat or escape Concord
* Allow players to take control of empire stations
* Walk-in stations, spaceships and structures including POSes and gates
* Ship designer, just like the character designer, have custom player-designed skins
* Have a T3 version of frigates, battleships, capitals and why not POSes too
* Low flight into planets surface with ability to blow up at least ground vehicles and installations
* Proper integration with Dust, transport of clones and troops, management of Dust battles including battle deployable assets by EVE players per planet sector. Allowing players to design the battleground just like PI
* Allow capitals in high sec
* Legalise the use of drugs
* Multi-crew spaceships
* Support in-game video chat for 1-2-1 comms

These are exellent.

I would also say expand Lvl 5's to Hisec. People rarely do lvl5 missions. Make them HARD so that groups must do them, like sleeper sites. If you are solo, allow you to accept them and wait in a queue for other solo players interested to get players interacting more. one of the hardest things to do in Eve is meet people you LIKE to fly with. This is a way to meet them without the mindless Incursion blobs or going through 5 corps to finally find dudes you like to play the game with.

Give noobs a 60 day "easy mode" with no PVP. This gets them into their second paid month so they dont just quit after being ganked their second week in buying a great priced item from a losec system they don't know they'll get ganked in.

If we all want the game to be great, we need fresh blood constantly. Corps are a microchasm of Eve itself. If it isn't growing, it's dying...

You would have trouble doing current level Vs solo if they were in highsec as no carriers. A passive tanked Rattlesnake would do OK with enough skills.

For new players ... rename level 1 as level IV and rename frigates "battleships". This will allow them to tick off the "fly a battleship in level IV's " box immediately and let them get on with actually playing EVE :D

Good luck Brooks is almost all I can say, as I am probably right behind you. Gonna keep a couple accounts active just to cash in on the industry fiasco....no idea what I'll use the isk for but...

CCP needs some devs who think blobs suck and TIDI megablob warfare sucks even more...

Oh and anyone who thinks Jimbo 315 and his Goon Alts are "emergent" gameplay with a positive effect on the game needs to be sent packing.

This man speaks the truth. I ragequit after Incarna and swore I was done. Gave away ~7 billion in ISK and assets as well as my 120 million SP main to a corp buddy for nothing more than the character transfer fee. I felt liberated! It was wonderful!

I then began looking for a new game. 5 MMO's and 3 years later, I'm back. Luckily I kept 2 ~20 million SP alts so I'm not starting from absolute scratch, but I have very little in the way of ISK and equipment. And man did I miss it. I didn't realize how much until I got back in. For all its flaws and all the bullshit, there is no other game like this one.

Some ideas to make the game appealing for a borader audience? Softening some of the cruelty, seriously. That wouldn't mean making the game easier or whatever, that would be simple options as corp leaders have the ability to forbid members to attack each other - be it an auto kick with some sort of penalty or some hard coded "no you can't unless you leave".

The second idea would be making being a bounty hunter a real job. With an option to locate other people in the universe (it doesn't have to be precise, it could be some mini game like exploration), and stuff like that.


I mean the current game is all about deception and thievery, which is cool but I don't want to be like that every day. I like stealing some cargo, but I'd like to be able to hunt down people with fat bounties wandering in the universe, because there are no true bad guys if there are no good ones. I also definitely think that the concord should in a way involve players and lead to some pvp. Some people could also play the cops in low sec. That's currently not rewarded at all, because of low bounties vs the time it takes. It also means making being a bad guy more risky with potentially great players on your tail but also more rewarding (and I don't know how). Currently the risk/reward factor seems broken, it's either no risk high rewards (like stealing cargo or ganking a freighter/miner), high risks no rewards, or a weird mix of both.

I don't know how if this idea will be popular but that would definitely be a way to make the game more engagint for many people.

As a new player there's also something I find quite shocking. How am I supposed to compete with 10 years old accounts having let's say, 20M skill points? Catching up is a waking dream, and while it gives long-terms players an incentive to keep playing the game, it will certainly drive many people out of it too. There's no way to have fun if you can't even think about competing with older players in a way or another, if all you can do is sit in highsec for two years to train.

I don't have any ideas on what can or should be changed about the game to keep players interested, be they new or old. I've only been here four months lol. I can only really talk about what flipped the switch for me to keep coming back in the first place. I went from trial account to full because, after doing as much reading and searching for more reading as I could, I had a pretty good idea that this game was big, daunting, hard, full of people who want to compete, and the idea of "competition" is pretty loosely applied to almost every action you take. I knew that when I paid up, and I took it as a challenge.

Thing is, I learned that mostly from the EvE community at large. Like I said, I spent a decent amount time before I started my trial account and while going through the trial period moving from blog to blog sucking up as much information about this internet spaceship game my friends wanted me to try.

So maybe there is one thing I'd change: the advertising. A lot of talk has been floating around about how CCP will need to change it's advertising methods now that they are doing 10 small expansions a year instead of 2 big ones. Play up the hardcore side of EvE. Put a giant banner up on the main site that says "Everyone wants to kill you, and all of them are already experts. Have fun!". At the very least, make suicide ganker, awoxer, war deccer, ransom artist and whatever other "questionable" act you can think of as advertised careers in the game. Right now, the only one that's close is "pirate". Play up the challenge a little (I've heard it's been done before....kind of). Not being afraid to be the "hard" game might rope a few people in. It hooked me.

Granted, I'm a tad off and usually drunk. Where am I?

That would be Devs, they can already do this. CCP Falcon trolled us all last week with inline images in his posts.

I've been playing for 6 years now and I have two issues with EVE:

1. The challenge or whatever motivation there was is now mostly gone. I started as a miner and then graduated to mission grinding. After a few months of grinding rocks and rats, I left because it was boring. After a 6-month hiatus, I came back and discovered wormhole space. W-Space kept me entertained for a few years because it didn't allow me to let my guard down. If I got complacent or convinced myself I was safe, I wound up spinning in my pod in Pator. After a while, though, w-space became more of the same so I ventured to nullsec where I plateaued. I mostly log in for the conversation now.

I think the elements that promote passive gameplay or lazy griefing need addressing--moon harvesting should involve resource depletion; PI should require multiple characters to combine their production lines in order to create high-end materials; Ore should be tiered by rarity, and the rarer the ore the more mining lasers should be required to crack the asteroid's outer crust and to get to the nuggets inside; Cloaks should require some kind of charge or fuel in order to run thus forcing the player to take action or fall victim to his prey.

2. Space feels too restrictive. In open space, I want to be able to slow burn from Amarr to Jita. I wish I could travel from one system to another without using gates. If the beaten path is too hot for my cargo, I want to take the "back roads" and see what happens. I want to stumble across an orphan planet or moon and set up a base of operation for my illicit activities. Any enemies I make will have to track me down using locator agents and scanner probes. I want to fly my badly damaged ship into a planet, moon, or star and go down in a fiery crash than give my pursuers the chance to grab my loot. I want my sandbox to be a beach.