Out of Pod Experience

To make a better game if they dont have it already

No matter what the uproaring voices of the extremely loud few cry in the forums or other venues, this always circles my mind.

I have always advocated for better research out of player habits in the game since like 2007.

Forum polling and other venues for communication are just skewed, and though the CSM is a good "stepping" stone it still falls short on many areas.

Wonder if CCP can actually endorse or use an Analytics Department that goes beyond the mere "economics" of the game.

All in all a very interesting read, as usual, wanted to share!

o/

Cheers!

BTW, CCP perfoms analytics on how players play the game. That's essential for their current development policy, which CCP Seagull has been implementing.

It also haves its drawbacks, though, as behavior analytics rarely answer "why" people perform their habits, and that leads companies into ignoring how to engage different people without those habits, aka "non customers".

The sheer amount of data on why EVE players are EVE players can hide the more important question on why non-players still are non-players after 11 years in the market, and what could be done so they became the players needed to replace players who go away.

"This is what works, so let's do it better" would have been a good development policy in 2007. But now in 2015, CCP needs desperately to figure what to make work when what works doesn't works.

That's the shallow world we live in.

I still wonder if CCP will ever realise that the new player retention issue is a social engineering problem
and can't be fixed with ruining the game by changing age old mechanics that always worked.

Yeah. There is a lot that can be done to improve the new player experience, I'm sure we can all agree on that. EVE however remains a niche game, the people that sub, and stay subbed, are looking for something different. For me for example, it's a combination of factors in the game that make it so attractive to me. For starters, it's in space, on top of being in a setting I enjoy, it's 'dark' sci fi, which I generally prefer.

More than just the game wearing those thematic clothes though, it actually feels like I'm in a dark cyberpunk space opera, due to the mechanics at play. That is the key difference, and it makes the game far more immersive. Even though I don't actively role-play, my character comes alive in my mind because of the themes, and how they are presented through actual gameplay. Whereas in other MMOS I've tried: "The world is great peril hero number 63317867706! Quickly go collect some flowers for my special potion of awesome! Only you (and 7427569597473 others) can hope to accomplish this! The descriptive term "themepark" is an apt one. EVE don't have none of that foolishness, which is probably one of, if not the thing keeping a lot of us.

Where the new player experience can be improved in my eyes, is taking the plunge and not trying to straddle the world of themepark MMOs and ours. Pick one and be done with it. Over a decade has shown they will get consistent (and from what I've read, consistently increasing) income from their niche market. Changing that would be a huge mistake. There is a reason the "EVE is dying" thing is a running joke in GD.

/rambling spiel

Just normal every day Evil or EVIL TO THE BONE! (TM)?

Also, I wanna watch.

Damn! I knew that was a mistake.