Any theories on why so many people have quit over the last 2 years?

[Dracvlad]

Actually I was thinking that about you, after I jumped in to your thread and reacted to your comment on AG and their fake toxicity, I told you that what you was doing was not much, I left your thread, but you followed me here, and you have used the same tactics as certain other players, aka SJW stuff.

Have you seen me in your thread since? Nope, did you come here to engage with me here, yes. So let me get this straight, you talk about Eve being a hard game and decry carebears, but in forum conflict you are a carebear, you cried about it and admitted to that here in this thread. You start talking about people stalking people when you followed me here and I am not in your thread and have not said anything since my reaction.

WTF are you?

[R-0-B-0-C-O-P]

Can you please stop? I’m experiencing real life grief. I may quit the game.

[Dracvlad]

If that is the case then PM me, if you are trying to be funny then it was in bad taste.

EDIT: Yep in bad taste, about the gist of it…

[LouHodo]

My 2isk on the whole subject.

Lack of major wars.

If there is no war there will be no real activity. While there are hundreds of small minor corp wars out there, or mostly non-factor skirmishes between corps no one has heard of and in regions no one cares about.

Think about it, the peak of activity in Eve was during one of the last MAJOR wars, that ended with major news articles being written about them.

So without a reason to really go to war, there is no real reason to risk anything, no risk no fun. No fun leads to people unsubbing to do other things that are fun. There is only so many trillion ISK you can make before you just dont care anymore.

[CowQueen_MMXII]

@R-0-B-0-C-O-P

If people want to discuss it they are free to, but I will continue to flag posts that are off topic.

And why again do you think that off-topic is ok in this thread? Because it’s not “yours”?

[CowQueen_MMXII]

@LouHodo

Lack of major wars.

If there is no war there will be no real activity

There might be explosions at the end of the tunnel: Goonies and Test suiciding stuff in the north and I also heard something about the rest of null also going at each others throats (forgot who and why and where exactly).

[Drago_Shouna]

@LouHodo

My 2isk on the whole subject.

Lack of major wars.

The only problem with that is yes it usually draws back some players, but when it’s over they leave again.

They do very little towards actually retaining players.

To my mind, that shows that a lot of players can’t find something else to do and rely on others for providing content all the time.

[Dracvlad]

Lack of major wars, well there are a number of wars active at this moment, the Goons and Test poking Panfam up north, down south Tri and CO2 are going for the Phoenix Federation who is backed up by the DRF. Furthermore with Test up north Red Alliance and the desiccated corpse called Stainwagon are having little nips at Estoria and Catch.

There is a very old and rich player base who will sub for big wars as they do not need to grind, some of those are active but will activate accounts with a number of assets on them. Many of those who appeared to have quit over the last two years are in fact those types of people.

[CowQueen_MMXII]

@Drago_Shouna

They do very little towards actually retaining players.

Unless they result in something like this:

Battle of B-R5RB

While this still may not help in retaining players that only came back to participate, it caused signifcant influx of returning and new players the weeks after. I remember that the number of players in the help chats almost doubled and may people referred to the media coverage of that incident as the reason they wanted to try Eve (again).

Even without such incidents, wars give you an answer to the question “and what’s going on in Eve?”. Always better to say “Capitals and titans exploding everywhere and a few thousand players are fighting in the north” than “not much”.

[Nate_Hill]

Compared to incursion they are not worth checking.

And incursion is only one expansion. What you said is what CCP have done for so many years.
Is it a shame?

New missions are not well designed. Do they exist?

Events are mediocre. Finding lucky clash site is boring and inconvenient. However it’s so good that it’s not necessary to complete all goals every day. I ignore that site.

Mining ship balances? You call this new content? And high sec miners still and forever use skiff as the only one choice ultimately.

New player structures serve null sec well. It serves me well too. When I sell plex I enjoys a surge of excitement for tax evasion. I don’t need to pay for repairing. That’s all.

NPC mining is a joke as funny as skiff’s ore hold capacity is an uneven number.
NPC mining is very annoying to new players.
How could CCP design so? It’s unbelievably terrible.

All what ccp have done these years is only for null sec players.
They forgot low sec players and high sec players.

[CowQueen_MMXII]

@Nate_Hill

New missions are not well designed. Do they exist?

“Anomic” missions do exist, they are significantly different than normal lvl 4 missions and, if done efficiently, they also net you more income per hour than incursions without the downsides.

@Nate_Hill

Events are mediocre

This may be your opinion, this may be also my opinion, but somehow there are many people who apparently like them. And it is content after all.

@Nate_Hill

NPC mining is a joke as funny as skiff’s ore hold capacity is an uneven number.

NPC mining is very annoying to new players.

Again, it is new content. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it less existing. And who said that new high-sec content must always be targeted at new players?

@Nate_Hill

New player structures serve null sec well.

They serve a lot of people well - adding convenience and safty in a lot of spaces. They affected a lot of activities: trading, clone jumping, ore compressing, unlimited private storage space and so on… It is not content that is handed to you just to absorb, but it opens possibilities and it means change that you can embrace or (try to) ignore.

@Nate_Hill

All what ccp have done these years is only for null sec players.

They forgot low sec players and high sec players.

Like “ruining” SOV warfare?
It is in the nature of changes in Eve that there are always many that won’t affect you (directly) and that there are also some that only have a negative impact on you.
I spent most of my time in Eve in wormhole space. Do you know how many updates we got there? Let’s just say, most of them could be ignored completely and the rest made many things worse.

[Nate_Hill]

You reply sounds reasonable. And I appreciate it.

But I have to point out NPC miners are designed to target new miners.
The purpose is to make them sick then make them quit.

Anyone who design this must be an enemy to CCP. LUL
Or just the real goal of CCP?

I’ve played EVE since Red Moon. I really feel CCP is unfriendly to PVE players.

[Garresh]

Funny. I literally just resubbed. Not sure how long I’ll be back, but I plan on sticking around for a while at least. The thing is…you can leave Eve, but Eve never leaves you. You always come back eventually. It leaves a mark on you, and is probably the only MMO I can think of that people remember fondly and don’t regret their time spent.

Anyways, I had the inklings of an idea back before my last break, and this thread brought it back to the surface…

Eve is really hard to play as a group with IRL friends. I know that sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. Eve is a game where you can do anything, be anything. Players who find their niche rapidly feel at home in the game. Even if the game changes, they’ve carved out their lifestyle, and they don’t want to leave it.

But if you join up with a bunch of friends, your lifestyle, your niche, may not be THEIR niche. I was a ninja salvager, and I still do some griefing and ninja looting now and then. I’m also big on exploration, hacking, archaeology, and general lowsec pve. So I split my time 3 ways between lowsec pvp in a militia(usually), lowsec exploration, and some highsec griefing and shenanigans.

My friends irl? One of them wants to ninja exclusively, and doesn’t care about much else. One of them wants to do an even split between mission running and trade, with a focus on industry and carving out a niche as a mission hub supplier. Another wants to just mission run and build a bling-pinata ship to the absolute max value humanly possible. And another is nostalgic about being in a lowsec corp back when politics were a lot fresher, and actually trying to carve out and defend a carebear space in PvP zones.

So we all tend to get back into it every so often(because you never leave Eve; You’re here forever), only to realize we need to make a lot of concessions and adjustments if we want to play together.

This isn’t meant as a complaint. In a game like WoW everything is all raids nothing but raids, so everyone can group up and always have a cooperative goal there. But WoW’s gameplay is just tragically boring. Eve is different. It’s gameplay rewards creativity and ingenuity, and allows players to be whatever they want to be.

But its greatest strength is, in many ways, its greatest weakness. Other MMOs like WoW retain players the same way facebook or tumblr retain users. All their friends are doing it. Eve by virtue of its flexibility and overwhelming options actually makes players who join together want to drift in different directions. And this means retention isn’t nearly as high as other MMOs.

No idea on a solution. How do you get players who are into politics, pve, griefing, exploration, and bling-ships to all find a common thread? And that’s just a small handful of playstyles in a game with literally dozens(maybe hundreds) of different ways to play the game. So many different lifestyles. That’s just my take.

[Gadget_Helmsdottir]

@Dracvlad

Quick question for those who think hisec content is fine, apart from hisec Incursions which tends to be run by elitist big mouths in my experience that is, what group content is available for characters of an age 6 months to two years?

All of it.
Inject away.

–Gadget keeps clean … for now.

[Dracvlad]

I added this at the end of my post, you seem to have ignored it.

Clarification: Group PvE content, something akin to level 5’s which require people to work as a team.

Lets add something to make it even more clear, interesting and compelling content for a group of players, so if you thing that level 1 missions are suitable for a group of 6 month to two year old players then inject seems about right…

[Dyner]

Probably because they see games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen (vaporware or not, you can still do more in it than EVE) and EVE: Valk; look at EVE Online and wonder why the game is so…‘limited’…

No actual characters (ie WiS). – I’m not ship. I can’t ‘relate’. Therefore, my ‘character’ is not important. It feels just like an FPS character. I drop in, do some maps, and leave. Having no attachment in an MMO is horrible and leads to people not really caring to play [frequently].

No ship piloting (I know some of jury-rigged up Joysticks/Keyboards with shortcuts. But by default…no ship control beyond point-and-click). – This means there’s no real connection to even my ship-self.

Lack of observable progression. – Watching a skill tick, saying it’ll be done in a month is just not fun at all.

EVE’s got so much potential…but CCP seems deathly afraid of trying out new extensions for fear of incurring the wrath of the players. – 'Course it doesn’t help that they tend to botch implementations of new features (ie WiS being only a ‘broom closet’ ).

[Vortexo_VonBrenner]

Why? A marked lack of

of course.

---

[March_rabbit]

@CowQueen_MMXII

And how many people starting the game already know what they want to do and what they need to train? This only works if you have a long time plan. Using several remaps in the first few months could also be considered a waste - in fact it would be the same kind of thinking that you have when neglecting learning skills.

How you could incorporate those into your learning schedule is also not the point, because that’s pretty basic math. That you had to do it at the cost of early game progression - where progression and some sense of achievement is the most important, because it will significant impact on wether you stay in or leave the game - is.

The same can be said about any activity in the game.

For example take a look at PvP. New person does not know tricks and how-to’s. He ‘invests’ skills and ISK into bad ships and weapons and gets wrecked again and again. Who’s to blame for it?

Or industry: you choose something to manufacture and invest ISK and time. When you fully invested you see that product sells slow or with loss.

You either accept that you might lose by choosing wrong turns or you spend considerable effort by optimizing your strategy long-term.

With learning skills you have exactly this: you either win short-term (ignoring learning skills and training whatever you want) or you win long-term progressing slower.

And don’t use magic word “new player” here: in the beginning you are “new” in every aspect of the game including Titan piloting or alliance management. Do you really want to have easier start for newcomers everywhere? At least when person is new to the game he has nothing to lose except time. Ships and modules are cheap and NPCs are easy to farm.

Anyway: i still believe that Learning skills was one of strategy elements of the game. And removal of it used wrong assumptions of certain players.

[CowQueen_MMXII]

@March_rabbit

With learning skills you have exactly this:

You don’t, simply because you always lose. The only choice: when.

@March_rabbit

At least when person is new to the game he has nothing to lose except time. Ships and modules are cheap and NPCs are easy to farm.

The first few days (or maybe even weeks) nothing is cheap. What you earn with mining is bad, mission payout even worse, some meta and the first t2 upgrades cost significant amounts and you are investing heavily in skill books and maybe start saving up for your first cruiser.
Of course, this view point changes dramatically after some time (which normally results into changing the next goals accordingly).

@March_rabbit

And don’t use magic word “new player” here: in the beginning you are “new” in every aspect of the game including Titan piloting or alliance management. Do you really want to have easier start for newcomers everywhere?

It has nothing to do with “easier” or “everywhere”, just with not driving them away through unnecessary boredom. Eve is still a long term game, the removal of learning skills hasn’t changed that. What it changed is that people can actually focus on training for ingame activities from the start without interruptions.

Being a new player is an important point, contrary to training an alt or being a returning player. Simply because you lack the capabilities to build any long term plan by yourself.

@March_rabbit

The same can be said about any activity in the game.

And just to stress it again: waiting is not an activity, it’s just boring. And while waiting for something that actually gives you some progress (new ship, new module, new activity…) may be worth the time (and actually can make sense to balance progression), waiting to wait a little less in mid to long term simply isn’t (at the very least in perspective to a game you are new in and that you might not even be playing anymore in a few weeks or months).

[Kaivarian_Coste]

The game jumped the shark when Erotica1 was banned. It had a chilling effect throughout the game and people became less adventurous. If you want to play a game where you’re cuddled and protected from your own stupidity, there are better games than Eve.