EVE General Discussion

It makes it less likely you have a bias on that issue.




If you do not want to trouble yourself with the costs of having buddies in game, then yeah, having an alt might make sense. Everything is a trade off. People have to make these decisions for themselves.



Maybe you should toss them some ISK or some other benefit for their troubles. Maybe it is your own selfishness that is the problem. Or get a larger group of buddies so you aren't boring the same guy to death. Seriously stop treating your in game friends like pieces of ****.

Most of them are extremely rich, ISK is not going to do anything. One of them kept purchasing and reselling 2003 PvP characters and used a Caldary State Issue for PvP!

well that's a shame, but you did make your mind up and not go work for them. so as a dev you must understand the difference in roles of a dev and a player.

we don't show up to see a movie then demand changes to the story when we are not happy,, oh hang on,,,

feck this age of entitlement, people need to know their place and role in it all

don't get me wrong feed back is a good thing, but this feeling of entitlement because you pay a sub is a laugh. when you go clubing, if ya don't like the club ya move along, go see the manager of the club and make them demands for change,,, lol see how that goes for ya.

I am really sorry, I seem unable to convey the appropriate context for the matter at hand.

I am the first to have had loads of friends (and less than friends ) in EvE.
I have been guild leader of some 160 strong hard core guild in another MMO and officer in a 200+ members corp in EvE, I am really FINE with team play.

You don't have to convince ME how having friends is good or why someone should "stfu and adapt" and similar.

You have to put in the effort to understand (I am not saying "justify") and profile why others do like they do.
Because they are the majority now, you can't sweep this dust under the rug forever.

Who we are talking about here, is a very widespread kind of EvE (and other MMOs, really) players with very clear traits:

- loner
- their best breed pays 2 subs exactly to be as self sufficient and as loner as they want
- no ambitions, no grand plans, no emergent mindset at all
- very self-centered, loves menial, repeating tasks and "dailies"
- wants to "just be left in peace"
- typical activities he does, are short missions, mining (possibily during work lunch pause)
- gives up at the first serious signs of trouble / difficulty / challenge

He's the IDEAL CITIZEN OF OUR XXI century era, the guy politicians around the world worked so hard to obtain: a rather quiet, huge, obtuse mass of very harmless, easily scared sheep.
They are so many, a famous MMOs managed to raise and peak at 13M subscriptions because it was made for them.


Now, what happens to this mass of guys when they face any of the many EvE challenges?
They are loners, won't have friends to call for help. They are helpless.

They can probably take 1 wardec / gank or so.

Repeat it twice or 3 times and:

- their few "elite" are going to take enough strength of will to post a GD thread about unfair ganking.
- all the others just quit EvE, nobody will ever notice they existed or they are gone.


Now, why should you, oh my honorable forum warriors, care about all of this?

You should care, because like it or not, this kind of profile is common, damn common in every MMO. It's so common, you are going to hurt the bottom line when enough of them quit.


What happened in the past:

- steady players turnover, no sci-fi game alternative, CCP made attractive expansions, often with nice videos: a combo those low profile players love.
Some of them would quit when the new expansion turned "old", others would quit because of ganks / scams / whatever.


What happens now:

- fickle and unpredictable players turnover (world depression did not help), 3+ sci-fi game alternatives (one of which, a MMO, keeps spamming ads, something CCP stopped doing). CCP stopped advertising anything but PLEX sales (PLEX per se does not convey any epic space themed feeling tbh), stopped making frequent videos and stopped delivering expansions. Sure, continuous improvement is good and all, but we are talking about a precise player base profile, people who need to see the flashy new gadget / carrot to buy.

With this scenario, many of them just don't sub to begin with, EvE does not blaze in any more. Others quit because of ganks / scams / whatever.

With the fickle turnover, EvE finds harder and harder to refill the depleting ranks of those bad yet so abundant players.



Now, go on and keep repeating how having friends is a must, to stfu and adapt etc. etc.

You are exclusively talking over yourselves with ZERO impact, because those who are involved in this playerbase decline won't even read the forums before they go.




A dev has to understand what drives his customer base, otherwise he quickly becomes and unemployed developer. That's why I am trying so hard to analyze the issue at hand.

Bold calls, naming and shaming, repeating this and that are THE right and LEGIT way to play (wasn't EvE a sandbox where people can decide their own way to play?) is not going to bring back a single quitter. Not a single one.

Only analyzing why they quit and creating some sort of way to attract them back is going to keep CCP's economy healthy. That's what a (small, big ones have analysts for this) developer does: understand his customer base. HE has to adapt to the ever-changing market, not vice versa. He HAS to deal with reality, be it nice or be it bad. Shouting how HIS way is the right way, won't bring back a single customer.

Yeah, I hope I have explained it very well in the post above. Sadly, English is my 4th language and nobody teached it at school back at the time. I had to self learn it, with some creepy results

Eve has many emerging competitors that are taking players away. Eve game mechanic is getting old and familiar to players. Other games offer similar experience too. Fixing old issues cannot give the game edge over other competitors. Unless Eve can offer truly innovative features to identify itself, it will be increasingly difficult to compete for the same set of players against other new games that offer similar features and more.

Eve has truly innovative features that identify it,
the bears never cease complaining about them.

Okay so let's break this apart.

.) Eve has many emerging competitors.

No. There isn't a single thing out there or coming that's competing with the only continously evolving ...
... 13 years old ...
... single shard gaming universe.

For a game to compete with EVE it would have to grow like EVE. Organically.
There is no company out there that's both willing (!) and able to do this,
because it would demand slow growth and low population count!

The simple reason is that if you drop thousand, or tens of thousands of players ...
... into a virtual universe like ours (but empty) ...
... people will complain ...
... because there's no society or organization ...
... and barely any social structures.


Why?


Because you can't drop several tens of thousands ...
... or even hundreds of thousands of people ...
... into a single universe and have it work out.

And to top that even more, people like Goons or Dreddit would dominate such game right from the start!
And if it's not fully PvP based (not combat, but designwise) it will lack the realism to compete anyway!

It would need to be split up into smaller population servers to be allowed to grow by itself! :D
Or it would just be a PvE heaven, because the carebears would else have none of it! :D


.) Eve game mechanic is getting old and familiar to players. Other games offer similar experience too.
All factually incorrect as proven by dozens of devblogs and the lack of a game comparable to EVE.
Provide proof with your words!


.) Unless Eve can offer truly innovative features to identify itself, it will be getting more difficult to compete for the same set of players against other new games that offer similar features and more.

This sounds a bit like you heard it from a youtuber, considering the rest of your post.
The modern gamer type, who would have a hard time beating 80s computer games.

Reddit brought us lots of them. Brave Newbies first, KarmaFleet worst.
CCP already gives them what they want and luckily it's relatively uninterrupting for the rest of the game.

No one ever seems to consider how gigantically different things would have turned out ...
... if they all had settled in highsec instead.








I miss Tippia.

Throw it in the microwave?

Can you imagine the rage if we sat them down with a copy of Jet Set Willy or something similar where there are no save games and you start from scratch every time you play?