EVE General Discussion

I understand what Linus & Stoner are saying and wanted to add to it. I'm mid 40's and played for 6 years, from Sept 2009 - December 2015. I happily supported the developers via subscriptions for several accounts and sunk a few bucks into PLEX after the will to grind for even the smallest amounts of isk vanished.

I heard about the “early days” Eve but sadly didn’t get to live them. Used to think “thank god that went away” after hearing about bubbles pulling ships out of warp or having to actually bookmark a gate if you wanted to land at 0. It wasn’t all bad, however. For example AoE doomsdays were absolutely incredible. Broken? Too powerful? Perhaps, but holy **** were they beautiful to watch, and that should be worth saving. I don’t understand why something so extraordinary and unique had to be scrapped completely. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I’ve seen others talk about this before, and I lived the same experience: I friggin HATED this game the first time I tried to play it. Too hard. Too unforgiving. Too “learning curve.” A year later, I tried again and got sucked in. The difference was I simply followed the game’s starting points, H'edTFU like everyone else, learned the ships and the game mechanics, and was on my way. I miss those days. It made players feel good, like they had run the gauntlet and made it through. I don’t know that new players get that same feeling anymore.

For me though, and many others I believe, the downward spiral begins when you finally break into capitals, but the cause-effect isn’t readily apparent. Getting that first carrier is a pretty good feeling. You may not even know what you want to do with it yet, but dammit it’s in your hangar looking pretty. Then you get a dread. Sometime later, after months of grinding and a year or two of training, a super. You’re sitting back smiling, thinking “wow, I did it!” And then… the nerfs begin. I was lucky. The nerf happened before I made the investment, so I had a choice of whether to continue on the same path or not. Several corpmates weren’t so fortunate.

Fast forward to 2014. That old “wow, I did it!” smile returns, all warm & fuzzy as you gaze at your very own titan. You then spend months refining skills & fits, practicing and learning how to properly fly the damn thing. If you weren’t watchlisted before, you certainly are now (yeah I know, that’s gone too, sadly). There’s excitement every time you take her out for a spin, knowing just by logging in you're putting something of significance on the line, that even if you don’t **** up, there’s a chance something could go wrong and this loss wouldn’t be so easy to take on the chin. Then the powers that be start messing with the mechanics you’ve mastered. As if there aren’t 100 other things to occupy your attention, now you’re drawing lines in space. “Mr. Sulu, we’re going to fire torpedoes, but first can you please put the enemy ship On Screen and draw some lines and stuff up there, see if we can triangulate or something so the computer doesn’t have to do it. She’s busy counting backwards for some weird reason. Thank you, Sulu.”

My point is this: CCP has a terrible track record of nerfing things they don’t like rather than being creative and coming up with solutions that keep (mostly) everyone happy. From ship balancing to POS mechanics, they’ve never bothered to learn or embrace the most basic yet invaluable lessons of customer retention. If it’s broken, get it fixed promptly. If it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it. Above all, keep the customer happy. Nobody cares if they nerf a frigate; the isk expense is negligible and training cost can be applied towards other things. It’s very different when the nerfed item is very expensive and/or requires very specialized training to fly. Eve’s allure is its complexity. Part of that complexity is working hard to afford and training for years to be able to fly certain things. You can’t expect players to be understanding when they’ve done all that work only to see their goal nerfed into the ground in favor of something else for which they now have to do it all over again.

Because “Legacy Code” and their own stubbornness, they’ve gone with the cheapest, easiest duct tape “fixes” for pretty much every problem they’ve encountered, figuring if players do get upset, they’ll get over it. And they do, but the catch is they gradually build up an intolerance. They start becoming more agitated and voicing displeasure to other players and on forums. The more changes affect the things you value the most and have spent the most time working towards (capitals!), the more each instance of this eats away at you. And if I’m wrong about that, I’m still right. Another lesson of customer retention: perception is reality.

It’s not difficult or expensive to approach things differently, especially if it keeps your customers happy. If they’ve got this really cool new line-drawing weapon they want to introduce into the game, great!! Add it to something. If there’s nothing existing they want to add it to, create a new something, but ffs don’t rework an existing something just to feature this new item. If AoE doomsdays were OP, figure out a way to balance it, but if don’t kill it off completely. After 13 years, CCP still hasn’t learned not to screw about with the stuff we really enjoy and worked very hard to obtain.

Do I regret playing the game? Absolutely not. All the usual reasons apply: corp/alliance friends turning into real life friends with outings, weddings, etc. Friends sometimes still turn and ask, "What's that game you play again?" I don't bother to correct them. It’s still a very exciting game. There’s no other community quite like it. But after deciding to let one account lapse and see how it went, each subsequent non-renewal became a little easier. Do I miss the game? I’m here, reading the news, keeping

Not sure if it is 100% relevant to the thread, but it is relevant to me. I've actually cancelled my subscriptions myself, and am waiting for the timers to tick down. I shall cease to exist in approximately 2.5-3 more months unless something changes and CCP manages to change my mind.

As I've said before, my bittervet syndrome is beyond 5 - it has reached level 6. I'm actually going to quit the game finally I think...

(not over the state of wars - over the state of EVE in general - but that is a separate discussion and I won't go into it, nobody wants to hear me rant THAT much =P)

My point is this: CCP has a terrible track record of nerfing things they don’t like rather than being creative and coming up with solutions that keep (mostly) everyone happy. From ship balancing to POS mechanics, they’ve never bothered to learn or embrace the most basic yet invaluable lessons of customer retention. If it’s broken, get it fixed promptly. If it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it. Above all, keep the customer happy. Nobody cares if they nerf a frigate; the isk expense is negligible and training cost can be applied towards other things. It’s very different when the nerfed item is very expensive and/or requires very specialized training to fly. Eve’s allure is its complexity. Part of that complexity is working hard to afford and training for years to be able to fly certain things. You can’t expect players to be understanding when they’ve done all that work only to see their goal nerfed into the ground in favor of something else for which they now have to do it all over again.

Much as I hate to agree with Geronimo even to a tiny degree....Yeah, maybe the excessive killboard shaming of some groups is also a factor. Aside from the public killboards/etc I've seen a lot of corps really lay into their younger members for losses just using the internal corp kill records as well. Removing all records of kills might well encourage more new players to get out there and have some fun - but it would also infuriate 90+% of the EVE PvP Community, many of whom are inordinately proud of their killboards...quite possibly to the point of rioting or quitting... So it isn't really an option.

Exactly. Highsec wars are a microcosm of all the conflict in this game.

If you understand this why did you ask me to think about my statement to that effect?

Why should they have a possibility to resist? The Goons had no chance. That is just how the game works - sometimes you are just outnumbered or outgunned and you can't win. Baby seals are meant to be clubbed, just like all the other seals in this game. When you form a corporation, you throw your hat into the ring and signal yourself ready-to-be-clubbed, and to be part of the greater struggle for power and glory in New Eden.

That said, I am all for additional things to fight over and some structure that aggressors want to use but is vulnerable seems like a good idea to do that. It would give the defenders something to counter-attack and force a fight and generate content. But the fact that does not exist now does not mean wars are broken or problematic. Wars just enable the core Eve game play to come to highsec in a slightly tempered manner. Even if such a structure existed, I believe most defenders would still assess themselves as too weak, either rightly or wrongly, or be too afraid of loss to fight back and just stay docked up. Today, many of the POCOs are owned by highsec mercenary groups yet they never seem to be counter-attacked by targets.

We will see though. New structures keep getting rolled out and some of them will find use eventually by mercenaries so wardec targets will get their chance to strike back. Will they take it though?

...........

Why should they have a possibility to resist?............

The "broken spirit" is the result of game mechanics that make the "sometimes win" so incredibly infrequent, so fantastically rare, that they would rather play something more enjoyable. This is a game. If the players are not having fun, they go elsewhere.

Do we really need killboards? Exactly with name, date, loot etc? If you **** up with a ton of plex: Did it really happen when nobody knows? If you loose a fight did it really happen, for the whole of Eve, when just you and the winner know it? So will you be more eager to choose fights that you might loose if it's all over the killboard or if you can loose silently? Most people that play these games don't really give a **** if they loose a ship or two because they have the money to buy 20 new one in a blink but the hit on the killboard......

And the main problem with oppressive odds is just that there are not enough rules for wardeccs. Pay the price and that's it.
We need something like this: cooldown 8 weeks: target 1-5 toons or 1/2 of your corp max wardecc 1 Week, 10-20 or same size as your corp 2 weeks, 20-50 or less 200% of your corp 3 weeks everything else 4 weeks. So you have to change targets often if they can't really shoot back. The numbers may be high but decced corps don't have the same amount of PVP toons as Wardecc corps. This is just an idea based on the chance that the target has to fight back. The lower the chances the shorter the possible wardecc

I did step back and look at the big picture.

I saw the Goons not even try to fight against the MBC over the PH Keepstar, and why was that. Because there was no fun it in and no chance of victory. Look at the change in null sec with smaller alliances holding sov, its not perfect, but its a lot better.

My suggestion was to create a point of weakness for the war dec entities that gives them back functionality that they have lost with the object of giving those weaker people something they can have some success with, and something that could cause them to grow better and take the fight in more fun for both sides way. Hisec war decs on hisec entities what there is of them is akin to baby seal clubbing. I am not suggesting this to have the ability to win, I am suggesting this to have a possibility to resist.