This put us in the position we’re in now - no regrowing player base because of the lack of safeties for starters. What good it is to have all areas being able to PVP just because why a few think it should be. But they do not run the game.
Running an alliance with starters and restarters since the changes in war mechanis allows me to know more about it. In the recruitment interviews I hear “I want to do [carebear content] and later on I will also try PVP”. Problem is that they do come to this point.
As a PvPer you seek to interfere with non-PvPer whilst its not otherway around. Wanting this is basically looking for easy targets. Thats why it needs to be more restricted. Explore your feellings.
New Eden has never been safe, and in fact, has never been safer. I can’t see how you can claim that “the position we’re in now” is because a lack of safety. CCP has spent 6 or 7 years now making all of Eve, and especially highsec, safer patch after patch, expansion after expansion, and the player base keeps decreasing. I think it would be obvious now the safety experiment has failed - more safety is strangling the game and not resulting in the influx of new players the care bears keep promising are just one nerf away.
Even since the wardec… changes in December the PCU has only continued down (Average: 3M 27k; 1M 24k; 1W 23k). It’s still too early to conclude anything, but there has not been a flood of new players coming who were just waiting for highsec to be made yet a little safer.
But this isn’t the topic. Like the wardec changes though, the 2019 AT cancellation is going to remove gameplay and goals for an admittedly small, but dedicated group of players. I believe CCP when they say both are temporary, and they intend to release both a revamped war system and a new and improved tournament format eventually, but removing gameplay without having a replacement ready is going to result in some players leaving and not coming back. I think they should have held even a token, pared back AT this year to keep the inertia going and those for that this is their game have something to tide them over until the new and improved 2020 tourney, but it’s not my game nor do I know what is going on behind the scenes.
This will hurt both the game and the future tournament if and when it returns, but perhaps it was the best of a collection of bad options. CCP though really needs to release some good news soon, even if it is still in planing stage, as it appears from the outside they are just bumbling around from crisis to crisis with no goal in mind for a year or two now.
I definitely would have embraced an 8 or 16 team tournament. Then it can be on two weekends, thus significantly reducing the time and effort commitment for CCP, but still providing quality content for the top end players.
I strongly disagree. AT should be something where everyone should have a chance to get a team together and give it a try. Otherwise it will become even more niche. The avarage player will care more about AT if they can relate to it more: Like seeing some of their alliance mates fighting in matches even though they aren’t dedicated smallgang people. The best thing CCP did to AT in recent time was adding the feeder rounds, as it greatly reduced the barrier of entry.
This. AT could always be relied upon to draw a lot of interest but when the barrier to entry was lowered you saw measurable increases in log-in numbers and interest. For several weekends in a row, alliance comms across Eve had people cheering and commenting on AT matches all day long simply because they themselves had a team in play.
Besides, the lower barrier for entry or larger number of initial contestants increases the odds of a surprise dark horse to introduce more excitement and interest.
Sorry, no or yes, its too early… In 2012 we had the changes in war fees that allowed the massive wardeccing and since then 6 years of it. And now we shall see an improvement within the next 40 days to judge it was a good decision? That masses of retired players instantly come back? No, it will be a hard way to gain those players back.
We are running our alliance since the changes with the objective never getting war eligble. We have also an other large german alliance with the same level. All gaining massive increase from players. From my own recruiting I have so many restarters, attracted from the change or at least welcoming it. From this position: it works out.
The war fees went up 25 times in 2012 with the clear intention of making highsec safer, not reduced. One of dozens of changes CCP has made to make highsec safer that has failed to increase activity there.
But don’t get me wrong, I have been a strong proponent for a social corp and will be glad if the increased social options increase the number of people sticking with the game so I hope what you say is a general trend. But there is no evidence that the stagnation and even decline of the game is because the game is “too dangerous” - Eve was more popular and growing when the mechanics were much more open and “dangerous”.
The only way that CCP will reverse the trend is by adding new and interesting ways for players to compete and cooperate in this game. Just cutting gameplay and increasing safety is useless pandering that history has shown doesn’t work.
Yet in the ‘updates’ page on your website you have not released any clue what the future entails in the long run. Yes it really looks like you are focusing on the game. More like cutting costs to please your new overlords.
Lets hope that this doesn’t become yet another victim of CCP’s notorious can-kicking. I’ve been playing this game for over 13 years now and what I recall from past behaviour doesn’t fill me with much hope for the future if I’m to be blunt.
You guys indulging in a pointless and expensive world tour is kind of understandable considering you can’t do anything in Reykjavik this year for fanfest. That’s a physical meat-space enterprise that, whilst I personally do not agree with, means that you keep the fanfest idea alive and still accessible for some.
However, a major ingame event like AT which was potentially accessible to all getting canned for a year is a move than can generously be described as myopic. Most of the playerbase would probably prefer you pull a Glastonbury and take a year out from the RL event than kick the AT overboard because of some ill defined reasons around the world tour “gonna be epic!!!1!11”.
All of these (and prior) changes to central facets of eve life sound like you guys are getting drydocked hard by your new owners. This is a daft move with potential long term repurcussions. You guys did an advert for the game a while back concerning unforseen consequences and emergent behaviour… Hopefully the unforseen consequences and emergent behaviour from this latest mis-step doesnt end up biting you on the ass.
In the spirit of Eve, players go and build a better tournament for yourselves this year.
This may not involve unique ships as prizes for the event. But capsuleers, you know already what to do, right? Someone go tell the Alliance Leaders to buckle up and get some for themselves.
There are so many empty systems, we may build suitable arenas in to host the fights. Although my preference would be for CCPlease to supply one member of staff to transfer the players and agreed ships to the usual play area and back, for the event. CCP have one volunteer on staff the community may shower with appreciation, right?
A player run event would take the organisation out of CCP hands and push their remaining staff safely back behind the curtain, where they build and maintain the game. There’s no need for them to invest time in running the game. But offering a suitable prize fund would be appreciated, CCPlease.
Perhaps we may get a few former council members to run this? You know the ones who don’t get justified abuse or cause incendiary player reactions. The ones that do have the capacity for organisation and the trust of CCP and players (yes, there are a few).
The problem with this thou is that if the systems are not in jove space any old ass hate can come and mess up a fight midway by warping to it. CCP would at least need to organize an arena, where only tournament entries can enter, which is at least not much to ask.
All what you do on this posts of your is just a rehashing of same old rationalizations about having access to easy targets. You never get tired of advocating for cannon fodder easy access?
The problem is that is a limited resource, aka keep watching the dropping numbers on players and retention.
You come from a broken culture who produce an insane stream of emotionally f… up individuals and as result you are captive in a logic trap who perpetuate a vicious cycle: the weak is bad and deserve just contempt, the weakness must be punished, so bully people and produce further more and more abusers.
Is a never end cycle of emotional trauma, nothing else… It have nothing to to with cultivating strength, is just a way towards emotional retardness and chronically lack of empathy.
There were already other player hold tournaments, you can check EVE_NT for reference.
However you will definitely need Tournament server Thunderdome, plus tournament tools to make things work.
Asking CCP for one member of staff is too much for them. According to people who’s involved in previous tournament, staff involved are not payed.
@CCP_Falcon - So let me get this straight. First and foremost you are putting AT on the backburner for awhile while you theory craft on how to make the tourney scene better. Likewise, you are also putting Eve Fanfest on hold as well? Seriously, if you want to scare the ■■■■ out of your userbase for the future, this is the way to do it.
When you can’t hold two critical events because something isn’t right and needs to be reevaluated, that doesn’t bode well for the state of the game. Both the AT and fanfest were HUGE events for the game. Especially fanfest. It was hype fueled updates on the game for the following year, brought money making opportunities not only to the company but the area at large, as well as all the local businesses. (Essentially an E3 for EVE/Iceland) It is the perfect “tourist attraction.” So saying you want to put it on hold, means you guys severely screwed up somewhere.
Honestly, this is the first time in my 15 years of playing this game, I’m wondering if there’s going to be a future. I’ll be watching very closely from here on out. Any indication the game is going further south, I’ll evac.
PS: I don’t buy this “world tour crap.” There’s an old saying and you guys seriously need to follow it. “DON’T FIX WHAT ISN’T BROKEN.” At least in terms of Fanfest. The AT, numbers are down but try investigating the issues instead of outright canceling it.
My understanding was that CCP put the fanfest on hold this year as the concert hall was closed during the regular fanfest calendar window… Or was that proven to be wrong?
I’m not sure what you are reading into my words here, but I don’t think anything I am saying is especially controversial. Eve Online is a competitive PvP game. If you don’t give stuff for players to work together to accomplish, and work against other players, activity is going to dry up. No, endlessly grinding imaginary ore to build stuff you can’t use because everyone is perfectly safe isn’t a long-term viable game. The game is already straining under the amount of safety, and activity just keeps going down the more buffs to safety and nerfs to content-creators that are added.
Wars are being redone and unless that revamp includes new or improved ways for players to interact, that too will fail to rescue the falling activity metrics. Cancelling the AT also deleted content and will result in less people playing this game to cooperate and compete with each other to win the championship. There is no getting around that, even if you have some hope in the dubious excuse that this is to dedicate more time to “balance”. I have said some harsh things about the AT in the past, but even I recognize it was a primary motivator for some number of players to keep playing this game and think deleting it, even if for only a year, is going to be bad for player activity numbers.
But clearly there are not enough dev hours in the week to fix these and a whole collection of other problems with the game as fast as everyone would want. I hope both wars and the AT come back soon in better shape and allow players to play their game again, struggling together with and against others to achieve their goals in the sandbox. Because just cutting and removing content from this game is not going to get it growing again. It never has, and there is no reason to think it will in the future.
sadly no responds what so ever. common ccp its not to late… listen to your audience revert this mess.
this is just an knife in the back of your most loyal players. the people who spend 1000`s of hours becoming the best of the best.
Sad to see it go. I suspect we will see an announcement soon on the new annual competitive event, Rorqual mining, it is the biggest gameply at the moment after all, so it only makes sense to make it competitive. Olmeca will be be the villain who will try to slow down the mining.
Time to stock up on the popcorn folks, this event is gonna be GGUUUDDD.
So, a bit different perspective here. First understand that I’m not disparaging the gameplay - I’m sure its a lot of fun for those who get to take part - and that I also believe there’s a bit of a smell of BS in the air surrounding the reason AT is on hiatus this year…
But. CCP alone is not at fault here. I used to watch AT pretty religiously for a long time, but when was it PL that rigged the final matches some AT’s back, I just couldn’t really be bothered anymore. I did sneak a peek every now and then, but never really got hooked again. Ultimately also only a minuscule amount of players ever get to take part and reap the benefits, which are considerable, with hulls worth hundreds of billions of ISK. Which also eat up a tiny bit of dev and gfx asset time each year, btw, for the benefit of like 0.01% players.
The whole format has gone stale. In part I also think rules are a bit too restrictive, but then again nobody wants to see the matches where nobody dies like in the past, and ultimately the matches should be about skill, not which combatants have the fattest wallets. I really do hope that they do come up with something fresh and radical during the hiatus.
Ultimately what killed my interest in AT wasn’t anything CCP did but, players. All I wanted to see was fair and surprising and varied fights, yet match per match teams had almost identical setups or perfect counters, because people more or less knew other fleets setups, somehow. Excessive metagaming killed AT for me. Dunno really how to counter that without making alliances also lose interest in the tournament.
