EVE General Discussion

What are you, an EA rep?

Are you a time traveller?

If *enough* of our money were in the tin, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It may or may not be true that subs are falling, but it's pretty much assured that they aren't climbing, and climbing subs are what CCP has said it wants.

Whether or not you or I want radical change, and whether or not we could ever agree on what consitutes "radical," significant change is on the way--unless CCP has abandoned the goal of major growth.

A big and lasting uptick in subs is not going to come from incremental change, or from marketing, or from vets being nicer to n00bs. It might come from whatever new space devs are going to open up, but it will be something big. Or from a lot of fairly large somethings. Perhaps CCP thinks it has hit on a formula to retain more vets more than luring new players.

CCP wants big growth, so you and I are eventually going to have to adapt to big changes. CCP hasn't told us yet what those changes are going to be, but they are already being developed. Be ready.

Everyone knows Eve is dying

There's no reason for anyone to keep playing a game (much less keep paying for it) if they are not having any fun with it.

It's unfortunate, but Eve is not for everyone. You can say them same thing for any game, really. No one game can ever say it's fun for everyone. Some people like playing something that has enormous depth or unforgiving hazards or sheer complexities. Others prefer a simple hack-and-slash or shooter. Some people enjoy competitive/cooperative nature of MMO's, while others stick with single-player games. That's kind of the beauty of the gaming industry; there's something for everyone. There's just no one-size-fits-all game. You just gotta find what's fun and engaging for you.

The only way Eve can gain a temporary but decent bump in active players is by going free to play, with in game skills experience instead of time based, or a shrinking of the eve map so as to squeeze existing playerbase into a smaller area.. A few black holes or stars going supernova might do the trick.

Neither is going to happen before Eve online reaches the end of its natural time, and fades like all, even the best, games. What we should really be looking for, is an EVE2, or EVEnxtGen or something.

I never said EVE doesn't have chess-like aspects. But whether or not EVE is like chess is a stupid thing to argue about, so I'll leave it at that.



Thank you for proving my point once again that so many on the forums jump to conclusions and over-exaggerate. If you actually think I said this then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you've misinterpreted my post. And if you don't actually think I said this, then it would mean you feel a need to lie to defend your position for some reason.

What I said was that skill and strategy are less important in many aspects of EVE when compared to the number of people you have on your side and the time/effort that you put in. I also never said that this was a bad thing.

That said, it is inherently more fun to resolve conflicts based on strategy/skill. Fighting a fleet of 7 with your fleet of 5 is a lot more fun than fighting, or being ganked by, a fleet of 40, or just avoiding such a conflict to begin with. My point is that while the ladder should definitely be possible, there is no reason why time/effort/numbers need to decide the outcome in every in-game conflict (and as I said, it doesn't) or why the game should be designed to encourage that type of (in many players' opinon boring) gameplay all the time.

Since it's inherently more fun to resolve conflict based on skill/strategy, that means that more things could be done in the game to encourage the first type of engagement in the interest of making EVE more fun for more people. That's it. That's all I'm saying. If that means giving players more tools/reasons to form-up together (e.g. distress calls in HS to call for help, more time before you're killed, think CONCORD that reps you instead of kill the enemy, idk...), or making EVE more localized to encourage smaller-scale engagements (see Manfred Sideous' proposed changes in F&I) then those are things that should be considered IMO and not immediately dismissed, as they are by so often, with a jump to conclusions or claim that EVE is working as intended.

EVE is best game ever. The weak need to be purged...this is no preschool playground.

No one wants to hear your lamentation while they are having a good time.

Wise up and ask for help if you can't figure it out for yourself how to minimize losses and maximize profit. Use your brain and figure it out. If you don't have a brain go play battlefield, WOW on non-pvp servers or solitaire.

Wow, this was so far left-field I don't even know where to begin.

Thanks. Appreciated.



I'm not really familiar with other MMOs, so I don't know if any exist where this is the case. I think twitch based button pushing is a skill. In EVE, by skill I mean things like how you pilot your ship, how you fit it, how you pick targets/fights/fleet comp, manage your modules, etc.


Yeah, that is strategic. But it's not always possible or desirable. My point is that if you don't come with more friends, the options are 1) no fight because you run, or 2) there is a fight but probably a less-engaging (and less skill dependent) one. Again, I don't have a problem with that. But the fact is many people don't find 1) or 2) as fun as the good fight. So shouldn't EVE do more to encourage the good fight/make it more common?


I do find it impressive that 40 people can get together and coordinate in the way that they do in EVE, yes. Perhaps you misunderstand what I'm saying or I haven't said it well. I don't generally have a problem that 40 have a significant advantage over 5. But I don't see why it has to be hard for 5 to find another 5. Or why 40 must give you an advantage over 5 in every conflict. In RL, you can fight in terrain that helps smaller groups engage larger ones. You can take valuable cargo hostage/create incentives for more surgical strikes. In EVE, the ability to do this is pretty much limited by your ability to split a fleet on a gate via aggression mechanics, but I don't see a reason why there can't be other mechanics that allow for this in *certain* aspects of the game. Also, things like the ideas in Manfred's thread which I interpret as localizing EVE (and thus increasing the amount of smaller-scale conflict that occurs).