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

Communications Center General Discussion
548

He does that a lot.

There is a connection between war dec cost and grouping, to war dec the bigger alliances requires a deep pocket, 500m to war dec the Goons for example.

In effect the move towards larger groups was due to that and also the desire to become top dog, also a number of players were investing in the Merc business and were quite brutal about it. Then as content dried up as new players went straight to nullsec what was left was not interested in fighting, so the only real content was blapping idiots from nullsec alliances and that costs to pay for the content.

You see many null sec alliance players don’t bother checking if they have a war dec and bang easy kill, I had one mate bring his JF into Amarr and he suddenly wondered about the flashing reds, luckily for him he docked up. So I went in and got his JF out for him, but this is a key part of the war decker approach and it gets them a lot of kills.

I found some mercs were so desperate to find hisec entities that could fight that as soon as someone showed anything they all piled in on them, quite frankly it got silly and caused a number of promising corps and alliances to collapse and go into avoid mode.

Hisec is now really the indy alts of nullsec players in small corps that avoid this like the plague.

I kept my eyes on what was going on in the Merc area, as such I can’t really call them mercs, they are more like protection rackets now.

By the way the movement towards bigger groups and hub / pipe hunting happened before the watch list changes, some people refuse to accept that, but it had already happened before that was applied.

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549

The watchlist change did NOT trigger the mass deccing. Mass Deccing had already been going on in large quantities for years before the watchlist change. It may have added a tiny incentive towards it, but really, it made virtually no difference to the way the big wardec groups were acting and had been for quite some time.
People claiming it triggered the change are simply trying to convince CCP to reverse the change.

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550

thank you, i’ll definitely add it to my considerations. i’ll look for old forum posts complaining about the change…

551

It may not have added much more incentive to those already mass deccing, but for those who weren’t, it reduced their options so that mass deccing is one of few remaining viable options. In that sense, it may have added to it more than you are indicating.

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552

True, the groups doing the mass deccing probably grew significantly. But in terms of being a target for mass decs, the landscape didn’t change really. It doesn’t make much difference to a 10 man corp if the wardec corp is 100 or 200 people really. Either way it’s pretty much the same result.

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553

Well, if you have 2 100 man war dec groups, then it could be seen as a problem as some corps might get decced 2x.

Granted this is just speculation…

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554

Personally I’d be far too concerned with the possibility I might be paying my decers alts (meaning I was falling for a scam) to ever consider paying for that :smirk:

I might consider accepting “help” in return for an upfront ISK payment though… if they’re really as desperate for content as everyone here says they are they should be more than happy to pay :rofl:

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555

The game including its surrounding landscape is a mess (just read this forum and see how much noise is thrown into it daily, people just talk endlessly in circle, over the same issues since years, just for the sake of doing it). In-game logistics are a nightmare. The game is simply crumbling under its own weight. It’s too expensive, the content is obsolete and not renewed it’s only fine tuned and nerfed, vet players are also getting older and have RL obligations. New players don’t want to be cannon fodders or go through the extreme (up to 10 years without Skill Injectors) skill time requirements, competition has better alternatives, too much time consuming in order to do it right, PvP is a isk sink hole and too complex. Fleets are a must in order to survive but they are irregular, they are most of the time not running in your time zone, and on top of that they are boring except for the FC.

Basicallly these are the main reasons people leave and no new players stick to it in the long term. The investment is simply not worth it.

That simple.

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556

Why people have quit?

People have written a lot of reasons but missed the main point.

The main point is… in such a mature MMO, you don’t have just an ever changing game to deal with.
You have epocal shifts in your playerbase as well.

Content creators gone?
Ancient 0.0 alliances gone?

It’s not (just) because CCP love to nerf stuff and cause them to leave. It’s because what in 2005 was the apex of cool (PvP content creating, huge logistic trains and so on) nowadays is appreciated only by the elders, not by the turnover of newer players.

Newer players are usually busier, with far more alternatives to use their free time, have less and less the profile of a “computer enthusiast” of 10 years ago and more and more the profile of the general “sci-fi movie” spectator.

Spectator and busy are the two keywords here.

You can like this or not and the vast majority of today’s players won’t read your disagreement anyway. Because another of their characteristics is that they don’t read the forum.

Here, we are talking about elder people who used to have 8 hours a day (I include myself here) to play THE MMO 10 years ago, who today have 2 hours a day tops (due to family, work…) and share those 2 hours between EvE and other games + social networks.

We are talking about younger people who live with the concept of “selfie” (the most “solo” thing ever) instead of reaching out to a community. People who have grown playing Assassin’s Creed and other, incredibly graphic rich theme park games. Not playing sandbox games.

This new era of EvE players is incompatible with traditional EvE content. EvE content that remained so stagnant anyway.

When I stopped having time to play in large 0.0 organizations and later on, even stopped having time to play in a WH organization, I did not want to leave EvE.

I turned into “playing the markets” and PvE + small scale PVP. I really wanted to keep in touch with my beloved EvE (I am describing my story because it’s a blueprint of many others), even if it meant “scaling down” the involvement.

But each of these features has remained stagnant for a decade, small scale PvP took me too much time too.

Once I had acquired hundreds of billions (I am talking of a time when they were big stuff) and put all PvE content on farm, and got tired by the tiresome task of finding small scale PvP, I did what many others have done: quit EvE and play something else that I can afford to enjoy in my now limited time.

I have just returned to write this and now I’ll go again for perhaps 6 months - 1 year, until I see EvE adapting to the new world of 2020. If it can do that.

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557

I can contribute my reasons for being on the verge of finally leaving the game after 10 years of playing it.

Simply put, there is no content for someone looking for meaningful and long-term in-game occupation, and I know other players (who have responded to my posts on EVE-related blogs about the issue) who feel the same.

I am interested in cause-driven, story-supported, narrative-enhanced gameplay of doing something for a reason, instead of the “just for lulz” attitude a huge majority of players in the community have come to adopt towards EVE over the last five years or so.

This is not easy to explain, but if you read books like Empires of EVE and then compare the player-driven stories interwoven with game lore in those years (¬2003-2013) to today’s “let’s kill pixels for fun” attitude of players and corps who have no goals, no causes, no principles and ideas for their gameplay, you will understand what I mean.

In part this happened because the devs have gradually left the game in the hands of individual players who have no overall picture of what the universe should be like - they are only interested in figures they want to add to their killboards or wallets today.

One effect of this abandonment of dev oversight has been the unchecked proliferation of capitals and other formerly expensive ships, which has devalued all sense of achievement in the game and has evaporated the idea of alliance power and conflict for resources.

Aside from player alliances, another example of neglect is the Faction Warfare system. While the super-rich lore of the game would have you believe it is a grand effort of universe factions clashing for control of star systems, the actual reality of ISK-farming stabbed frigs orbiting random outposts in artificially limited complexes with no overarching narrative of conflict quickly dissolves that illusion. Why do you fight in FW? Why do you take this side, or that side? Where is the daily conflict for objectives? This has all become irrelevant in the absence of a sustainable, sensible structure in FW.

Similar examples can be raised in almost all facets of the game, but the underlying, core point is that when you adopt the “make your own content” approach to what players can find and do in game, it quickly devolves from a rich universe to a content-scarce, time-killing pastime where players spend most of their time looking if there is anything for them to enjoy doing in the long term. And after years of struggling with this, I have looked the reality in the eyes and admitted defeat.

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558

there’s a need to correct you. the issue you’re pointing at is not restricted to ship combat. CCP deliberately started to change the game towards consumers, who only care about fun, not like you who cares about satisfaction and long-trm gameplay.

CCP brings these people in. on purpose. because they’re easy money.

559

Your analysis is interesting and if I understand it well tackles the fundamentals of the game.

It is true that if you look at it with a more in-depth approach, the reason to leave is most of the time because of game structural issues like the lack of in-game focused purpose to actually play (vs. exclusively working on your or your corp wallet/killboard). I suppose that playing for fun and learning to PvP like in 1v1 was very popular in the early days, but is now a style slowly fading away.

I have been playing for 1.5 years now currently living in null space, and I am not yet ready to quit because there is still room to learn for me at this point, but personally I think in the longer run, I would quit and switch to another game for the same reasons as you mention.

My aim is still to get ISK only in order to finance 1v1 PvP. But I am more and more doubting this is even possible (working on my killboard, wallet, suicide ganking and collecting tears are just not my thing).

I would have hoped when I subscribed that with PvP rewards when you win a fight (bounty, loot, etc.) you could finance overall lost equipment and break even (that would be enough to play for fun for an hour per day), but its really not the case :frowning_face:. In reality it is much more complicated and you need alts many of them, recurrent/dormant ISK income, and that takes just too much time to operate and overall is too expensive for the vast majority of new players.

My long term forecast for EVE is I am afraid the same than what happened to Ultima Online.

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560

Well it’s all about time and efforts.

Previously if you want to read some good story you have to visit a library request a book and while you reaching library you’ve interfaced with environmental outside of your habitat, now you only need a devise and active banking account which allows you to stay on your sofa and get that book almost immediately after pushing download button.

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561

PvP always beats RP. All else being equal, the group that spends all its time plotting and planning how to out-maneuver its opponent beats the one that bothers writing lore.

Oh, and if the lore screams “DON’T DO IT, THAT’S EVIL!” and the mechanics scream “DO IT OR YOU’RE A SCRUB!”, guess what’s going to win?

562

I still use “old way” for reading. Still using paper books and alive librarian.

The reason is simple: many good books do not exist in digital form. And most possible some books will never be converted because they are not for modern “readers”.

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563

I thought it was all the fault of the ISBOXER ban ?

:thinking:
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564

Coming from a player who spent a long time in faction warfare and ended up pvping for the lulz I can say your analysis is spot on. I can’t help but wonder if my lassez faire attitude to pvp now is a symptom of poor FW implementation rather than the other way around.

There just ceased to be a reason to fight for anything meaningful when the Min / Amarr zone became an isk farm and literally nothing else. I only joined Gal mill the other day so I could shoot ppl without consequence at gates for a bit, but the utter dearth of targets (I’m still in lontrek) will see me go back to NPC corp and just shooting at anything because BOREDOM

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565

Farmers have the tendency to ruin the game for everyone else…

566

I joined the “dark side” for the same reason. More targets in low sec. YARRR!

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567

My post was about much more, and problems much wider, than “RP v PVP”.

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