EVE General Discussion

Again no, I'm not making any argument for soloist. I specifically said there was need to emphasize or create social aspects in other activities. Either that or accept that several areas of the game are effectively pitfalls for retention. Not amount of focusing on PvP in the NPE will fix that fact. You say the best way is exposure to PvP, I disagree since the longest runners aren't just PvP'ers, securing a larger population than the pure PvP'ers as well. I'd say the data says people with variety play more and stay longer. If you have reason to believe a PvP specific focus creates more of those I'd gladly hear it. I think we'll both agree that the current approach doesn't do well at that though.

But to the idea that this isn't the game CCP wants, well if that is the case they need to change it rather than sweep it under the rug. I agree that the NPE is one sided, but making it one sided in the other direction creates the same pitfall we have now for a different set of players. Actually no, that's not entirely true; a number of non-pvp players still likely miss the thing they might be most interested in long term as the current NPE focus is on mission completion and hoping you understand what you are doing along the way with no idea how to continue down a particular path. Those players still miss out on a PvP focused NPE.

So it begs the question, are they just getting rid of the mission influence or actually pushing players into PvP, and further if they are, are there so few non-pvp players, which the graphs suggest is a no, to justify not having equally easy to access paths to other aspects of the game.

Agreed. Increasing the social aspects of PvE would be good for the game.

I quoted the reason above. "Socials" stay with the game (and don't PvP or PvE much), but of the other 4 categories, the two categories that do significant amounts of PvP stay 50% longer than the other two. That is clear evidence that PvPers stay longer with the game. Whether you can move people between these categories is another issue, but the goal of getting more new players into PvP-focused (or social) playstyles rather than PvE , Industrial or solo activities is an obvious strategy for CCP to take. Ignoring that data is just putting your head in the sand.

I never argued for removing all mention of PvE from the tutorial. Players need to make a living so they need to understand about missions, mining, exploration, industry and so forth. But those are not the main attraction of the game, and never have been. They are resources/activities to fight over for the real focus of the game, the PvP sandbox. However, those can come after. The "carebear trap" of focusing only on your ISK/hour has the terrible effect of making players risk-averse to the point they are reluctant to ever PvP as it doesn't make them ISK and they remain a carebear for the rest of their shorter stay in Eve. Or worse, they join Eve because of the large fleet battles they see on the internet, but are told by some carebear in NPC corp chat they have to mine to make enough ISK before they can PvP so they spend three months training mining skills and mining solo before quitting out of sheer boredom.

Get players into social, PvP groups and the PvE activities can come later.

Why are you arguing players should be pushed towards parts of the game that have demonstrably less player retention? This isn't a discussion about how valid or what playstyle is "better" or an attack on your personal playstyle. You can play in the sandbox however you wish. However, CCP is trying to find ways to get players to stay with the game longer and the most obvious route is to get more new players socially engaged and participating in PvP. Arguing that they should ignore the data and still push players towards areas of the game, your areas of the game, where more people quit out of some idea of "fairness" is just selfish. What is the harm including in the tutorial an hour where players get a sample of different types of PvP? Worst case they learn they don't like it and can carry on a non-PvP path. Best case, is that a whole cohort of players who quit previously as they were never exposed to PvP, stay with the game and become long-term PvPing Eve players.

The problem here is PvP in Eve is not that easy to be found.
Yes you can find lots of 'PvP' in 1 hour of your time but I'm not sure if this kind of 'PvP' will make you interested in the game. What you can do when you 'new, poor and skilless'?

Just few examples of PvP i'm aware of:
- gate camping
- docking games
- suicide ganking
- hotdroping
- suspect baiting
- solo (lol)
- fleet roams

Some of them need time and proper organization, some of them need cool expensive ships + all of them need skills. Really new player can't even suicide gank somebody unless this is capsule or shuttle: lack of skills.

If you get new players to fight other new players in their rookie ships you will only teach them how to "Unreal Tournament" without option to change weapons. No 'cool boys toys' would be available.

I remember "Need for speed Underground" when right from the start they give you cool car with all the stuff to get taste of the game. And then they say: want this baby? Go and get it! Implementing something like this in Eve Online would be 'too difficult' i guess.....

The problem here remains the same. You are exposing people to truths that directly counter what people want and need to believe. You are literally describing Dinosaurs to people who need to believe in fire breathing Dragons lol.

The ironic thing is that I'm a pve centric player (that also likes to spend some time solo, as a 'vacation' from people in EVE) and I don't feel threatened in the least by the idea that pvp (even the 'harsh' stuff like ganking) and social interaction is the way to go to increase player retention.

The main reason people are against the idea (despite the revealed facts) is the type of people retained. They don't like the "evil nasty PVPrs" the game already has, and the idea that the game could retain EVEN MORE (expanding the community as they say they want, just with the 'wrong people') is a nightmare to them.

But that trophy has an 8th place marking. How can my kid live through the knowledge that he is not the winner?

You do realise it was absolutely impossible for EVE to be a WoW clone right?

Lol, wow. You need to warn people before you say something like that. I only have one lung, and I can't laugh that hard for that long.

He's right, though.

If we had a consensual pvp server, it would be full of worthless idiots
who waste their time being proud of killing dumb AI that is no challenge.

Of course CCP would remove the ability to PLEX on this server,
though, because idiots don't need to think they can play easymode for free.

It would fill CCPs pockets. All these degenerated weaklings have a right to play too,
uninterrupted, on a seperate server, completely isolated from those who actually play the game.

They could call it EVE ONLINE: ID 10 T.

We would be rid of them.
They would be happy, not realising how everyone laughs about them.
CCP would make money.

Since the unfounded assumptions are flying free in this thread, I'll lead with this: None of Rise's conclusions surprised me at all. I even got a hopeful gleam in my eye when he observed that the safety was an obstacle between new players and what they wanted to do.

So, with that out of the way:



It's not a question of whether that statistic (or the "legal kill" statistic) would change, but whether the context would change. If getting people in corporations is the best way to retain them, then corporations dissolving or otherwise falling apart might endanger retention, yes? I emphasize might, because we're firmly in the realm of hypotheses here.

If true, there are some followup questions that are worth asking, and the explanation that "the corp died because it was wardecced" leaves out all the interesting ones: what were the points of failure? Were they necessarily all external, or were the most important ones internal? I've been in high sec corps that were wardecced, and we responded by consolidating, marshalling, planning, setting up fleets, and otherwise engaging people--to face nobody, as it turned out, but our leaders still did their best to make the experience educational and engaging for their members, and to give roles and guidance to its new players.

I have ~anecdata~ to the effect that wardecs and griefing aren't intrinsically bad, but that's not enough. I'd like to see Rise, or someone else at CCP, settle the question, and in an actionable way that leads to increased retention. And they should absolutely be completely open-minded about where asking that question takes them, because they know now that they can be surprised.

A few things bother me about CCP Rise's stats.
I know people who have quit eve right after losing a ship. My wife is one. But here is the issue:

None of those losses were due to a gank, or griefing.
None happened when the player was less than two weeks old.

CCP Rise's stats are interesting, but he may not be looking in the right place to see if there really is a problem.

I would like to know: How many stop playing right after a ship loss?
How many stop playing right after, or during, a prolonged period of war decs?

I hope we get to hear more about this. In the presentation, CCP did mention they were going to look at what happened to players just before they quit, to see if there were any patterns.