Alright, I have have a working theory on why so many people have quit in the last two years: Permaband.
Now as you can see, there is a pretty strong correlation between the release of new songs from CCP’s house band, Permaband, and free-falling PCU numbers as illustrated above. Now, from these data one can make several hypotheses:
-
Eve players don’t like Permaband. This theory seems unlikely given how well their performances are received, and that the release of earlier Permaband material coincided with increases in PCU counts. I think despite the data, something more is at play.
-
PCU numbers are strongly influenced by the quality of Permaband’s releases and bad songs cause players to quit Eve. At first glance this hypothesis has merit. Beloved songs, like HTFU, seem to cause increases in PCU numbers, while the worst decreases occur after misfires like Come Fly With Us. I mean, I get and even like the concept of that video, but it was a misfire on almost all levels and the final outcome borders on unwatchable. I think it probably did induce a very small, but non-zero number of Eve players to leave the game, but a closer look shows that this isn’t always the case. Warp to the Dance Floor also precipitated a big fall in player counts, but it a very catchy and enjoyable song as is Wrecking Machine for that matter. Similarly, Keep Clickin is a forgettable pseudo-sequel to HTFU which is probably best left out of the Permaband canon, yet it didn’t cause players to leave Eve. In total, it seems unlikely to me that very many people would quit Eve over a bad Permaband song, so I reject this hypothesis as unlikely.
-
Permaband is a barometer of the development direction of Eve. This is currently my favourite hypothesis to explain the above data. I posit that the theme of Permaband releases reflects the current development gestalt at CCP and are indicative of the current direction the game is going and this development direction is what primarily influences player numbers. The basis of this hypothesis is that songs that celebrate the core ideas of Eve: conflict, explosions, competition, and HFTU-ing are released at times the PCU is climbing, while the songs that go on about ‘friendship’ and hand-holding with your fellow player occurs when CCP is focused on these things and result in players getting bored and leaving the game. ‘The Friend Ship’ is all well and good, but I can go play other games with my space friends if New Eden is made too boring and safe so nothing is happening and the PCU plummets. Whereas if CCP is focused on stoking conflict, player interaction and enabling explosions (and Permaband’s song of the era reflects this) then the PCU climbs as players become more engaged with the game.
I think this last theory largely holds. HTFU and Killing is Just a Means both saw continued growth in PCU after release. Keep Clickin didn’t change much at all, which is somehow appropriate for a song that is not really about anything, while the Kumbaya-themed Warp to the Dance Floor and Come Fly With Us preceded alarming drop-offs in player numbers. The only one that doesn’t fit would be Wrecking Machine, which while all about the core idea of Eve Online - building things and then destroying things in glorious fire - it led into the sharpest downslope (at the time) in PCU numbers since the game’s inception. I can hand-wave this outlier away by saying that while the Upwell structures were intended to drive conflict and explosions which was reflected in the Permaband song, the implementation missed the mark and was botched a tad by CCP to be too safe and too boring.
Therefore, the TL;DR of all this is that people have quit Eve in the last two years because CCP has become fixated on turning Eve into “The Friend Ship” AKA a consensual small-gang spaceship combat game where everyone is a winner, rather than the competitive and cut-throat, single-universe/shared-economy that is sung about in HTFU and Killing is Just a Means. Sadly, it turns out that Eve is rather a boring game when everyone is flush with resources and has excess safety to the point people are more-and-more going to play other games with their space friends while they wait for something to happen.
The good news is that I don’t think any of this is fatal. Some strong corrective action is needed to realize ‘Eve Forever’, namely getting the economy back into order, putting some risk into nullsec, making these Upwell structures worth and/or fun to fight over, and ultimately releasing new space to shake things up. I do think though a lot of that decrease in PCU reflects Eve players doing less in game because less is happening, and spending more time elsewhere, and many of these players will rush back when something interesting is happening again in New Eden.
No doubt, Permaband will release a new song celebrating this upcoming renaissance all about conflict and fighting in New Eden if my theory is correct. One talking about shooting, stealing and grinding each other into dust and we can then rest assured that CCP is thinking again about making Eve great. However, the corollary of this theory is if the next song from Permaband is another one about holding hands and sharing hugs with your space friends, that would not bode well for the future of the game or the PCU.
