EVE General Discussion

The funny part of history is how every single MMO always have a "X will kill the game" crowd. No matter how big or small a game's community is, there will always be idiots thinking their pet problem will be the end of it. They are all always dying anyway.

That list of fails in the WoW thread is pretty good imo. We need to start building one with star citifail and fail : dangerous imo.

:D

I think ArchFail is missing. ^_^

You know, that pseudosandbox which is none. ^_^

Yay.
Another, looooong bait posts on one of Jenn aSide's pet topics with nothing new, only it is written in a different structure and order. So, thrilled.

Why? It is another of your bait posts. You just want to argue over and over about the same things like those people with their angels on a pin head. Boring.

I think we have all seen the gradual reduction in player numbers online...if it continues eve will certainly be dead within a few years. CCP are trying hard to get more new players and as ever they have a hard time keeping them. I know the internet is the natural home to trolls and cyberbullys and a great number of them migrate to eve. Its harsh unforgiving nature is manna to them.

I have been looking at the metrics and trying a little out of the box thinking, and am sorry to say that i believe the largest single reason for non player retention is P.L.. I respect and understand that they are 'lete' (lol) but their continual clubbing of baby seals is bad for eve in many ways. I believe they will cry longest and loudest when eve finaly is closed even though they are the major cause.

Case in point; the continual campaign against brave newbies, for the simple reason that the result is obvious before the start , they will win. If it ever looks like they wont then they just drop the supers. Now that they have won they are spinning' woops didn't want that win..wheres our content gone?' In doing so they have driven ( by my estimate 18,000 accounts from the game). I know a lot of those accounts would have quit anyways but feel a good proportion would have continued in game if they felt that they could actualy achieve something worthwhile. PL need to grow up and if they want content attack someone who can put up a fight.

As much as i hate to say this, i believe that the best way to fight PL (unless you are the goons or maybe N3 ) is to deny them content. That is not to fight them ever, Let them take all your sov, kill your POS. just never fight them. They will get bored and go away. If everyone treats them like the bullies they are hopefully they will leave eve and allow new players a chance to play on their own terms thereby allowing the game population to grow and us all to enjoy eve for years to come.

Those walls are social, which is why I'm very much in favor of the general thrust of CCP's push to get new players into corps.

There are and have always been people who are happy to strike out into the unknown on day 1, or else sit down and painstakingly research a style of play until there's not much unknown about it. Those people are contentedly playing EVE right now. There are a lot of other people who are absolutely terrified of "doing it wrong." Corps give them two benefits:

1) if there are veterans in the corp, they have excellent support to help them do things competently, and to recover as well as possible from mistakes;

2) if there aren't, there's a considerable difference between dying in a fire alone in an 0.2 and dying in a fire with friends in an 0.2, and trying to learn from the loss is a bonding/learning experience.

I believe--and before someone jumps on me, yes this is a personal hypothesis based on gossamer evidence, not anything more or other than that--that the thing that makes low sec scary to certain new players is the same thing that makes war decs demoralizing to them: all of a sudden, all the rules are different, and all of a sudden any feeling that there's a safety net under you is gone. Now, this feeling can be hopelessly overwrought, and it's easily countered, especially if you have corpmates. But it seems to be quite real. The fear of playing a game where you don't know what the rules are, and loss is "real," is understandable.

As it is, the game does a terrible job of teaching the game, which is part of the problem, but the rest of the problem is that the game is complex and emergent enough that other players will always be able to do a better job than any tutorial system, once you get beyond teaching the absolute mechanical basics.

by my estimate 18,000 accounts from the game


my bad, forgot to account for alts...so between 6,000 and 18,000 actual accounts

So now, as someone who is still new to the game this is certainly a stupid thing to expose myself to the forums that early, I'd usually lurk around a couple months to avoid saying too many foolish things.

But I think my opinion has more value as a new player than as the future grizzled veteran I could become.

Pretty much I strongly agree with your points, the importance of the corps and the sudden disappearance of the safety net. I was lured to the game when I actually realized that this was the only MMO out there that allowed you to actually build an "empire", militarily and economically, and I bet the multiple stories of the Goons and others Alliances and their clashes have attracted a lot of others to this game.

All I can say about the difference between high-sec and low is simple.

Until you have a corp you have no place in low-sec.
Worse, until you have a corp, you have not really started the game yet.

I can clearly see the difference between my first days in high-sec and the little time I spent in low-sec with a FW corp. High-sec is more like a giant tutorial, but one that only have 1/5 of it actually covered as a tutorial. You speak with Aura, do the carrier missions and then you think you are done but you actually aren't, you are still stuck in that zone that has no PvP, and no group of players with you.
And when people get sick of "tutorial"-sec and want to go after what lured them into the game, the wars, the real PvP, they try to check low-sec, and get ganked and demolished, and then wonder what the hell is so good about that game.

Well what is so great about that game is when you fly with other capsulers. This is where the PvP happens and when the risks/rewards of the game start to make sense. Lost your ship? Your corp can provide and help, they can even explain what the heck just happened to you.

The corps are the safety net players need. They are what would make a typical MMO player go from "OMG I lost everything!!" to "Ah! Dammit he got me good!", they are the best NPE, noo tutorial will teach players better than a corp.

I also like that example of Kira Tsukimoto of Brave (and yes I'm aware of the... difficulties probably surrounding her right now, I'm that new and yet even I heard about it...), as she said spaceships were not her thing but as soon as she joined a corp, hooked!!

This is what any player without a corp is missing, this is why they are stuck in high-sec, and this is why some of them quit. The only playstyle that works well solo is that of a ganker and only a tiny part of those who try a new MMO are of this inclination.

From my experience, after years of searching for a MMO after the usual WoW then hype-hoping from one game to the other, EVE is the only that made me realize what I was missing from WoW, a game with a goal, that asked for hard work and smarts, and that worked so well when you played it with others. A community of communities, one server, real reputations, compare that to "playing with countless unknown players that could be replaced by bots"-WoW and this is why I believe that this game will succeed in the years to come.

Despite the pessimism in this thread I believe if they nail the changes to null-sec, and they probably will, and make sure every player has a chance to get out of high-sec and get closer to null-sec, those numbers you are all discussing will keep rising, a lot.

The only advice I could give is to add an activity in high-sec that would put people together and make them act as a fleet for a time, it would introduce new players to being part of a fleet and make them meet people which then could lead to joining a corp,
and finally start the game.

As I said when you posted this as a (now locked) thread, no-one should be permitted a free pass "just because". It was Brave's choice to step in to the nullsec game, so it is entirely on their shoulders to survive it. "Expecting" to be left alone "because of the newbies" is a frankly pathetic standpoint, and anyone seriously argueing it should be ashamed of themselves. What pride is there in living in null if you are only there because everyone else "lets you" because they are made to "feel bad" if they take a swing at you. Other newbie-welcoming organisations have existed in null, and each of them had to man up and deal with the Lions and Wolves in their turn; some of them lived, some of them died, and that's how it should be.

It was far from a forgone conclusion with Brave, but they misplayed some of the hands they were dealt, I suspect, largely because they thought they would "be left alone because they are special". Well, newsflash, they aren't and they weren't. Now they have to pick it up, dust themselves down, and get back in the game if they have the stomach. And if they don't have the stomach, well, they wouldn't have been worth "leaving alone" anyway.