It’s dead? They still have at least 6 times the number (careful estimate, last known number was 4mio in 2016 and a 10mio unconfirmed quote from a Blizzard employee regarding Legion - probably way over the top) of active players Eve had in its best year.
It might be stupid, it might not be for us and might be very well behind its peak, but dead is something else.
Both is not true. Took a quick look at Zkill and by rough estimates:
Freighter ganking was on its peak in 2015. Industrial ganking in 2013/2014, Mining Barges and Exhumers before that.
I am also pretty sure that back then the percentage of kills not ending up on a killboard was much higher than today.
Also, I think, that random war decs are much more common than they used to be, contributing big to those loss numbers. And even though, people may feel they have been ganked, they haven’t. Also a factor: Isk earning through kill rights.
What actually changed, is the mindset - on both sides: true gank, war dec, tricked into a duel (or whatever else) is all the same on the victim side. And the other side more often than not reverts to random violence - don’t choose a target, take any target and blackmail the rest.
This is part of the problem, but only part of it. The current mechanics are the other part:
Jump fatigue makes it necessary that you travel more through gates and take less jumps.
Entosis Ops require only a few people to be actively doing things while the rest is sitting there in case the enemy shows up.
Structure shooting requires only a minimal amount of dps. The rest of the fleet is just for show and again for the case the enemy shows up. In addition you have an additional timer and no loot from structures (except of course in wormspace).
If the enemy decides on some kind of “defense”, it’s more often than a real fight just a ■■■■ load of void bombs and a bomber wing or two.
The distance is not a main point here. The main point is that we travel all this way to just reinforce one more citadel. Not even blow it up or take a system.
Pretty close to the mark. I’m a retiree and though not young am new to Eve. Complexity, learning curve and commitment over years can put new players off, especially those familiar with less complex games and expecting the same of Eve.
Eve enforces a form of ‘perma death’ where a player can lose almost everything he/she has taken months to build in a moment. There are few gamers prepared to accept that.
If I lose a game of Chess or Go over hours of play I still get to keep the pieces. Not with Eve.
In a world demanding more and more of peoples time at school and at work, few would have the time and the focus for Eve. As I mentioned, I’m retired so have plenty of time available.
Perhaps Eve’s fate is to become a retirement village in space!
People who don’t want to play, or don’t like to play or jsut don’t play the “core” game have been getting little to nothing targetted at their lack of interest in EVE’s core game.
Thus they’ve been alienated and have been dragging numbers down since CCP focused on the “core” game, Rubicon being the begining of the current slope.
If you buy into CCP Seagull’s vision of space exploration and capsuleer ownership of space that she laid out at Fanfest and consistently since then, then I think you have good reason to be very excited about developments over the next few years.(…)If you buy into the space colonization vision, then I can safely say that you have several HOLY ■■■■ moments ahead of you.
On the other hand, if you do not buy into the vision, then with one exception I think you may find the next few expansions to be not your cup of tea. A few scraps will fall from the table onto everyone’s plate, but EVE is definitely on a journey for the next three years and you’re either part of it or you’re not. (…).
That was in 2013, when apparently it was going to take 3 years to go from the first structures to player-owned gates to new space. Obviously the road has become quite longer (so long that there’s no end in sight nor an ETA; not earlier than 2019 or 2020, 6 to 7 years after Rubicon) and yet what Ripard Teg wrote about those who don’t buy CCP Seagull’s vision is true: There’s not much for them, and so they quit because CCP doesn’t gives them enough bang for their buck.
Focusing development on the “core” game alone means losing the core players who don’t like the changes and also those who get nothing from development. This is why CCP is losing both “core” and “non core” players; they let the farm burn to save the barn, and that never ends well.
hot dropping needs to be nerf’d but we know fozzie keeps his friends safe and refuses to deal with it just like AFK cloaking… which is a pathetic trend of ignoring mechanics that need to be dealt with once and for all.
in your opinion and others, it might have been worst game mechanic. But for some who trained some or all of those skills to maximum to get benefit of training times over players who were too lazy to do so, it was not.
Proof? It took me all of 2 minutes to find proof via google, try it some time.
I did train them, on more than just one character. And despite what you or others might think, training to train is simply a shitty mechanic, because it further delays the already slow starting phase. And lazyness has absolutely nothing to do with waiting a few weeks until you can finally start training relevant skills.
If, for someone reason, the game design demands that there must be put “effort” (and again: waiting isn’t effort) into training there are other ways to achieve this.
And we all had been fully compensated anyway.
Posts from 2008 are worth ■■■■, because they have nothing to do with ghost training on alpha accounts. And where has ghost training for alpha accounts be labeled as feature? Proof?
Thread topic: it’s about players that quit in the last 2 years. There was no problem with declining players numbers in 2011. Maybe you shouldn’t tell stories from the stone ages and stick a little bit more to topic.
Yes… the topic is why so many have quit in the last 2 years, you are correct.
I’m stating the reasons which I decided to leave within the last 2 years. Yes, my reasons are valid and you asked for proof reference what I was referring, thus my reference to 2008 is valid, you want to argue just to argue.
I have the right to post reasons I quit and thoughts to why some might have within the last two years. My reasons happen to be a collective which date back to 08 AND before. It’s within the realm of the topic rather you want to put it under the carpet or not. You asking for proof as if I were making it up -when I clearly post proof, you dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into your perfect world.
I’m done replying to your responses as it only derails the OP. Have at it all you want. I have my reasons and my post is in response to the question. Have a good day.
Which you ignored in the first place. Even if would be true that incidents from 2008 led to you leaving in the last two years (well, since you are here, you obviously havn’t left), this is certainly not the reason for declining overall player numbers. It might had an impact back then or might not.
People leaving games for “reasons” is completely normal and doesn’t matter. Any individual reason doesn’t matter. Reasons that cost larger number of players (and therefore aren’t individual reasons) or even lead to (attention topic!) declining player numbers like in the last two years matter.
If you are a bitter vet holding a grudge because of something from 9 or 6 years ago or not, doesn’t matter - this is not the norm.
I was asking for proof that the recent (because the topic is about the recent time) ghost training was in any way labeled as feature.And no, it wasn’t. It’s all nice and so that it was in 2008, doesn’t matter anymore was changed/fixed/whatever and has absolutely nothing to do with the declining player numbers in 2015 - 2017.
???
Wow.
I remember when I started playing EvE over a decade ago, that I thought the training mechanism was quite novel. Much better than earning levels by killing rats.
The only time i’ve ever seen an advert for eve online was on Demonoid years ago between i think 2008/2010. It was just a simple animation/banner of a load of Naglifars blapping something with a catchy tag line. Except for emails i get of CCP every now an again i don’t think i’ve really ever seen any advertising for EVE. With a game this old that’s a big problem that CCP needs to address.
So I have been playing Eve for 14 years now and I have some thoughts about how the game has changed and its impacts on current player count.
Goals:
Eve is a sandbox and as such, it has no real CCP driven goals. Instead, it is up to the player or maybe their Corp/Alliance to set. Back when I started goal like; fly a cruiser, build standings, or make 1b isk were long term things. It probably took me a month to earn the isk for my first cruiser (and a week to loose it). Now days, with PLEX and Injectors, goals no longer take months or years to achieve. I created an Alpha for fun and within the first week had over 200m isk without really putting any effort in. If no goals exist, its hard to stay interested. Oddly enough, I think that Eve has gotten too easy. Its like graduating high school and saying you want to be an engineer, but then you buy your degree off a website instead of going to college. You wont be much good at your job, and you missed out on all the shenanigans of college life.
Jesus Features:
When I started, T2 didn’t exist and all we had were frigates, cruiser, BS’s and indy’s. Every 6 months or so, CCP would release an expansion that typically had some Jesus Feature that completely redefined my gameplay. Looking back at the early days of T2 gear, you had reactions, moon mining, POS’s, and ice mining all dropped on the player base. It brought a ton of new gameplay to the table. For what seems like forever, all we have been getting is rebalancing and recoding of old features. Sure we have gotten new features along the way, but nothing like the content increases of the early days. Something as simple as adding a new type of gear could go a long way. You start adding new resources to make it,. new ways to gather that resource, new ways to manufacture it, and bits and bobs that tie into each step and you develop a huge amount of new content to get both new and old players interested in.
I blame the upcoming removal of pos’s. Fine they’ve been replaced by Citadels, but Citadels are way too expensive for a small 1 man or 3-4 man corp, nor can they be taken down easily in case of a wardec, yes these corps exist, no they are not in anyway interested in being forced into a large alliance. So don’t even bother to start spouting the oft quoted line that you MUST play with others, if you want to be a sheep fine, some prefer their interactions with others to remain in the market place or with a couple of mates.
Yes I have been the large alliance route and been in some good corps, apart from TEST, they were really shite…but corps along with the inevitable bitching really isn’t my scene.
Solo play over the last 2/3 years has been totally ignored by CCP, that along with skill injectors and the dawn of “pay to win” along with the above isn’t doing the game any favours.
Now I’m only subbed to finish off some blueprint research, after that, if Fozzie and Seagull are still deciding the direction the game goes then i’ll probably let my sub lapse, the favouritism by those two to certain groups is just sickening at times.
Simple because they are not up to playing a hard game, note those that whinge when easy play is nerfed, this is especially notable when many of them say it should be a hard game but it never applies to them.
Currently the biggest whiners in game are those who are not able to alarm clock for Citadels and sov attacks, many of them are quitting due to boredom, or simply that they have not got the passion to alarm clock any more so they are begging for CCP to make it easy for them… Many of these were running around in Supers and Titans blapping at will prior to jump fatigue, well cry more mates now you have more fun localised conflicts.
Next biggest whiners are those calling for local to be removed because its too hard, they can leave too, bunch of whiny losers.
And best of all those people who are salty over can flipping and a decent crimewatch system, booo hooo to them too.
“Training to train” refers to the beforementioned and long removed Learning Skills.Two sets of skills (basic and advanced) that added one point per level to each attribute.
Skills were level 1 and level 3, adding up to ~4 weeks of skill training time per attribute to train at full potential.
Of course you wanted to have those skills early (and the goal was 5/4 for most people), but especially early on you have lots of other stuff to train to get you into the game.
The only “meaningful” game decision related to those skills was: “when do I want to have no actual skill progression at all”, because not training them was not really an option.
When they were removed all SP spent for those were reimbursed and all characters got attribute points almost equal to 5/5 skills.