EVE General Discussion

It is also what Wizards/Hasbro did with 4th Edition D&D and dropped teh ball completely.

The problem with spoonfeeding and dumbng down is the new players it attracts are just looking for something new and shiney and disappear again as fast as they turn up.

If a game is relying on churning through new players (WoW does to some extent, so do FtP but PtW games) the turnover needs to be huge.

The end result is the same.

The moment you abandon the vets your game dies. The players who play for 3-6 months and then move on will continue to play for 3-6 months then move on to whatever the new thing is.

lol? Stop looking at serenity figures.

Well eve has become another routine. Nothing to explore anymore. SoV is consolidated 100% and no1 invades other regions. Even if that happens today, usually is a staged event from leadership (nothing wrong with that, just the way it is).

Lowsec is consolidated too. Big pirate allies grab lvl5 hubs and use it as sov. Try to move in a lvl5 system and see what i mean. And they got serious firepwer, dozens of titans and supers.(nothing wrong with that either).

Expanding the map through "wh like" mechanics would help. Also large portion of the game is isk grinding, which is boring. Not all players can afford multiple accounts.

Then you got plex prices. From 300mil to 1.3bil? Unless ccp provides an incentive for ppl to get plex's, ppl will terminate accounts. Or make plex the only commodity ccp will be in control of. 12mil lps use to get you 10bil isk, now it 5-6bil at best. This inflation on isk is tiresome.

Eve economy is too liberal - monetaristic. A health dose of Keynesian economics wouldnt hurt. Private decisions to fix prices, like PLEX will lead to bad macroeconomic outcomes ( or better macro-population outcomes). All other commodities (like POS-they used to be seeded on the market for a fixed price) have found their balance because they are subject to productivity, cost and abundance. Plex is not directrly related to the game, you use foreign currency, foreign to the game, and convert it to isk. Im sure ccp could fix prices on that. Plus that would eliminate RMT :)

My 2 cents

All well and good, but there's a reason those players move on and don't become veterans.

EvE is a very slow game.

Everything about society is going faster.

While I like this game because of it's slow pace, others dislike it for that very reason.

EvE seems to be more of a social experience with a game attached to it than a game first.

You log into eve, remain docked, be on voice comms, and you alt tab and play league of legends or watch Netflix until "something" happens.

Sadly, most people no longer have the patience to sit around and wait, which seems to be largely what EvE is. 99% waiting for that really amazing 1%.

Seems like life to me. Of course what you call wasting time I call preparation.

I think its fairly clear to everyone that there has been a significant shift in videogame demographics and preferences in the last 5 years or so (also from 10 years ago).

EVE should focus on the strengths of its niche.

Even though it cant compete for mass popular interest, it can still shave off its own share, as essentially the only game of its kind that does what this game does.

EVE is so niche, that it doesnt even have any competition in its class.
EVE is utterly uncontested, for what it is.
Not even SC/Elite are actually competition in this regard, though players do drain off to those due to similar themes.
This is a huge asset that many developers/marketers would dream of.
That you have a product that does things nobody elses product does.

I think the demographic/preference that this game would appeal to still exists, and probably has even grown abit, even though the overwhelming majority of potential customers with other demographics/preferences has grown explosively.

The kind of player who would enjoy EVE, remains somewhat of a constant, in proportion, I think.
No matter how many millions/billions play videogames, the kind of players who would enjoy this game remains at around the same percentual proportion, at perhaps something like 5% of the total market.

Advertising/marketing would help.

These guys/gals are out there, they just dont yet know that EVE exists, and is actually the "different" kind of game they didnt even know they were looking for.

I disagree extremely strongly with everything in this (except perhaps logging in for social activity, which really isnt an argument against EVE as you falsely present it, but rather, again, a strength of EVE, that vets actually do that. If you can get people to want to log in just so they can chat with each other, that is a huge achievement for a game.).

The kind of player who would enjoy EVE, has never been a populous or substantial % of the gaming market.
Not before, not now, not in any predictable future. That proportion of the growing market remains, to my mind, relatively the same.
It doesnt matter that tens of millions of brats enjoy LoL. That has absolutely nothing to do with EVE.

Furthermore, EVE does not consist of waiting (except perhaps from the perspective of SP to accumalate). Everything else, including that, is as the other poster stated, preparation and due process to create content for yourself.

I understand this is a alien and strange why to frame it, but it is nonethelss the correct frame of reference for a sandbox game such as this is.

More "fun" PvE is not a solution. The amount of missions available, for example, is completely arbitrary. You only read the mission text once, and sooner or later, after you grinded those additional missions 10-20s over, its the same boring **** as ever before.

What you and some other posters seem incapable of understanding, is that what would make PvE "fun", as it exists now and in future content, is PLAYER COMPETITION AND CONFLICT (ie: PvP).
Not only does that represent and fulfill the essential player conflict/competition nature of what EVE is, it is exactly that which makes even PvE activities exciting, dynamic and engaging.

Take for example exploring in null/WH with a dedicated data/relic hull. You have no weapons. You will not be able to kill anyone. But, what makes your exploration exciting, is that OTHERS will try to kill you.

Do you see?
You are engaged in the PvE activity of hacking cans. It has its own minigame, which frankly is quite tedious. Would you play the same minigame for "fun" if it was simply a Facebook game on its own? Hell no.

What makes it fun and exciting is PLAYER COMPETITION/CONFLICT.

D0O YOU SEEEEH!
*Flexes dragon tattoo on my back, for you to seeeeeh*

I didn't see any arguments against EvE in my post, I love the game and want it to still be here 10 years from now. The social factor is a strength of the EvE community, not the game itself. In a roundabout way yes EvE attracted those people in the first place but if all they do now is talk then they aren't really playing the game anymore are they?

Could you perhaps say why my suggestion for improved PvE is so disagreeable? I certainly do not mean improved as in better ISK-generation.

Edit: I'll respond to your edit here in an edit of my own.

I understand that EvE is a niche game that doesn't appeal to everyone, it is difficult for new players to get into simply with the amount to learn; and I don't mean SP, I mean player-knowledge. I don't expect EvE to have the same popularity as instant-gratification games like LoL and others but there comes a point where not enough players are logging in and an MMO dies, and you can see this looking at other MMOs. I would hate for EvE to pass this point and go the same way although I am unsure if that would ever happen, I believe EvE's playerbase is unique in that they will stick out the toughest of times.

Fun PvE will be difficult to create and it can't simply be "add more missions" as, like you say, people will run them and have them figured out within a week and then we're right back to where we started. I disagree though that the only way to make PvE fun is to add PvP; PvP is already everywhere in EvE and has every right to stay there but that alone won't make PvE fun. Your example of exploration is sort of a special-case; yes the fact that someone might find and attempt to kill you adds some excitement, however if you're flying a ratting carrier the added possibility of PvP doesn't make more fun for you. What I'm saying is that if a loss is a small enough fraction of your wealth then sure, it adds fun; but in more expensive ships (which most high-end pve requires) it makes you less likely to undock.

I do firmly believe that PvE needs to change and that doing so would bring in more new players than a reworked NPE or extra starting skills.