While I don’t know the true answer to the OPs question, I tend to agree with this. I think CCP has spent too much time trying to coddle it’s way to success for EVE and actually made a game that is more boring than it used to be.
CCP seems to come down like a hammer on people who found creative ways to screw things up for other people and that did 2 things while failing to do a 3rd.
The 1st thing it did was chase the ‘creative trouble makers’ from the game. This sounds good to the ‘space sjw crowd’ till you realize that those bad guys were something to hate, and having something to hate tended to make people come back to the game, to get revenge or to show defiance.
Which leads to the 2nd thing , CCP killed the game for many folks who took pride in evading and fighting the bad guys. The people who came up with the cleaver counters and traps and anti-scam techniques.
But what CCPs softening of the game didn’t do was the thing it set out to do, it didn’t attract loads of ‘new players’ to EVE, because no matter what, new players aren’t turned on by a game that allows a ‘little’ misbehaving. Modern MMO players want the one thing EVE can’t do, which is total safety/guaranteed success aka ego fluffing.
IMO CCP needs to get back to those Viking roots and ditch some of the handholding. Let the bad guys come back, and give regular EVE players something to hate other than CODE or tidi.
As someone who has played on and off for a few years (the past year almost entirely off) here are my reasons I haven’t came back to the game. I never got into PvP and there are a few reasons for that.
You cannot login and do something fun and log off / playing solo is pointless.
To do anything really meaningful seems like it takes a long time to prep, with a decently sized group of other people, and a large amount of luck, and a lot of scheduling. There is really no logging in for 30 min - 1 hr and do much. I’m not saying I want everything handed to me, but I simply don’t have 3-4 hrs a day to play, and that definitely seems like the low end of the requirements to be part of something “meaningful” in the game.
While there are a vast amount of ships, you simply cannot fly something that does not complement the rest of your fleet, and there are large incompatibility issues between different fits/ships, or just straight out “that ship sucks”. Which partially ties into my next point…
The “Big Ship” incentive.
Everyone knows a large amount of people are drawn to the game over “Big Ships” such as carriers / mothers / titans. But the big ships are obviously the riskiest to use in terms of loss, and just not practical in terms regular use ships, given the large chance you will be dropped on by groups with bigger numbers of them, or bigger numbers in general. The use of such big ships is very controlled (for a very good reason) by any “good” corp / alliance and are very much “If your not playing for the next 3 hours your not going to be using one of them, or if your not part of an hours long op”
When people realize how overall impractical they are for smaller groups, I think it kills some of the dream they had for the game. I definitely understand now they are not nor were not intended for the solo player, but also think flashing a line of them at players during the NPE gives the idea that anyone can fly these, and while that may be true, it is obviously circumstantial / impractical for the average player.
PvE is just boring.
I have never done an incursion (part of that being my saltyness of it seeming like armor fleets are far worse compared to shield fleets, which again ties into being so limited in terms of what you can fly) so maybe I’m missing a pig part of PvE because of that. But after finally getting into a marauder and being able to absolutely wreck any l4, it was kinda “Well whats the point now”. Sure I can make a decent chunk of ISK easily, but what for? If I were to join a big alliance / corp I understand there are very often reimbursements or the such anyways.
FW seems pointless.
Other than bragging rights (which might be the point of EvE) FW doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t affect the story at all or anyone else who doesn’t engage in FW, from what I have seen is controlled by the same groups (kinda like the old blue doughnut theory, although I understand that was inaccurate) But I do appreciate that it seems to be a hotspot for small gang stuff, which is something I wish I tried earlier, but at this point I don’t see a lot bringing me back.
That was sure long and ranty (and salty) so to summarize:
Time required to do anything, limitations on ships you can practically use, “Big Ships” being very situational / limited to large and lengthy engagements (or just completely unusable to “casuals”), PvE (no explanation needed for that I think), and literally no reason to fly solo (yes I understand this is practically counter to the purpose of EvE…)
I didn’t mention crafting/trading/mining because those are just mind numbing activities in my mind.
I don’t want to sound like just another doomsayer, but take a look at the one year graph on http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility , it really doesn’t look good for the success of F2P. It has been 8 months since F2P and sure, summer dip, but I guess we will only know for sure in the winter if it did much.
This is coming from someone who really loved the game for the first couple years, and wish it has success in the future, but the nicheness, time requirements, and other limitations, I don’t see myself playing again anytime soon, and that’s OK, its obviously not a game for my playstyle, nor do I think the game should cater to someone like myself who doesn’t currently enjoy it.
It is interesting to see so many posters here making emotive pleas about CCP having to go back to its roots and intimating that this was a hard game etc., but the simple question has to be how many of these creative ways were down to poor mechanisms which often placed those said miscreants in a complete win situation.
Let me take Psychotic Monk as an example, when I joined in 2009 I read C&P like no tomorrow, because I wanted to understand who was likely to try and prey on me, of course this attitude comes from a long time of playing games and being a GM myself.
What did he do, well simply put he joined corps who did not check his history, dumb people basically and then he would awox anyone with a shiny ship using a neutral RR, in a way very similar to bumping in that for example ROBOCOP who has no real direct support from CODE or Miniluv relies on people being dumb enough to accept his offer of a web. In the first case the simple issue was that once someone was in your corp they could shoot you and they would not go criminal or suspect. What did that do, well in the end because of this most hisec corps stopped taking in new players and this activity died pretty much along with this.
CCP realised that this was destructive to new player retention and put in the Friendly Fire tick box, I happen to know that Pyschotic Mionk had stopped doing this before that was introduced, because his prey had largely stopped accepting people and it was only dedicated new player corps and there was little in there that was interesting to shoot, so it was dead anyway, but people of course blamed the friendly fire tick box.
You can all be emotive about it, but remember cause and effect and game balance and unforeseen consequences.
This is simply not true, though it may seem that way for people who don’t know how to do it or want to put in the effort to learn (which is a lot of current gamers).
I’m not an empire builder, I don’t do market stuff other than selling my deadspace loot and the only pvp I do is home defense stuff and joining alliance/coalition fleets to take a break from exploring and killing rats.
I used to jump a carrier into deep null sec and live out of it for a week while using my alt to run sites in hostile space (kept the carrier cloaked up, it was basically a mobile base/ammo carrier/loot holder). lost a few ratting/exploration Tengus but never the carrier. and before I could use a carrier (and before their were wormholes and mobil depots and such) I stage my ships in npc null and go on ‘fishing trips’ for signatures and anoms in sov null.
It’s irritating to hear people talk about how EVE is somehow only for pvp players or market types or people like Mittani, I’ve got 10 years of experience that says it’s perfectly doable to be none of those things and enjoy EVE. The problem is that people nowadays give up at the very 1st sign of resistance or loss, and there is nothing CCP can do about the sorry state of todays ‘gamers’.
Lets take aim at the watch list change, which was implemented due to every Super and Titan pilot being on it so that fights did not happen in nullsec.
In that list that Jenn has qouted this was another one that can be proved to be wrong, in fact small corp war deccers and solo war deccers would often get to know their target before war decking them, so the watch list change was not so much of an impact, however it impacted the medium sized specialist hunters like the Devils who found that it was too much work, but let me be blunt, the move towards trade hub and pipe camping by war dec entities had happened long before the watch list change.
Most hisec corps are hollow shells run by nul sec players doing indy, the majority of hisec corps do avoidance, in other words don’t log in, drop corp or close corp and re-start a corp, this had killed war decs before the watch list change. I had a debate with a solo war dec player and he was finding it impossible to find people who would operate or fight back before the watch list change.
What else could have caused that, well new players were being picked up by null sec entities like Pandemic Horde, Karma Fleet and Brave and were by passing hisec. Again it is incorrect to state that this is CCP’s fault.
As long as there is even a tiny spark of us, they will claim the game belongs to the evil people and they will ignore all the evidence that it isn’t. just look at now, how they keep inflating ganking and merc wars. they do so every generation, despite all the nerfs and continuous reduction of high sec player content. every time it’s as if none of these nerfs ever happened, they just set a new baseline, ignoring history.
No matter how bad it already got for us, they will not stop until we’re wiped.
If I’m reading it correctly, Yellow is commenting on something that also happens all the time IRL as well.
People agitate for ‘change’, they get the change they asked for, but (because reality is complex and defies simple changes) that change doesn’t deliver what they want. So the people who should have been happy and placated are back to screaming for some kind of change as if the changes that were made, that they asked for, never even happened.
At no point in time do the people screaming for the change stop and think “hmmm, ok we’ve tried this multiple times, maybe what we want is unreasonable”. No, EVERY.SINGLE.TIME they say ‘that last change didn’t go far enough, lets double down again and again until it works’!!
As IRL, so in game. The “nerf bad guys” types never stop to think that what they want might actually be not just wrong, but counter-productive. One CODE poster likes to call it the “just one more nerf will do it” syndrome.
On a side note, I read an article about (of all places), Applebees, and I couldn’t help but think of EVE and CCP and this very topic after I was done.
One persons negative is another persons benefit, the change with jump fatigue and reduction in jump range along with the new sov system based on enabling people to keep their sov defence timers within their active TZ has got me back in sov 0.0 and I am having a ball with it.
The re-design of capital combat is really good and I have been in fleets with caps doing specific roles, stop being negative, look at what you are moaning about and do something else, I did, as soon as I could see that the changes in sov had worked I went and joined a null sec alliance and am doing sov warfare and alliance fleet battles again and this time I can actually use my capitals.
This game is great, it has balance issues in some areas but it is a deep meaningful game that you need to set your own objectives for.
CCP have made many mistakes and I have pointed out where I think they erred, in fact they erred too far in making it easy for what people here call content creators, the simple factor is that if you create stale boring one sided results like bumping is, or the super/titan blobs running from one end of the map with ease, or locking people into easy 1v1’s like can flipping was, or making every mining ship have the tank of a wet paper bag when you enable small inexpensive ships to be able to blap all of them you will get a reaction, removing or adjusting poor mechanics will also get a reaction and of course people who benefited from that will be upset at losing them and cry nerf.
That I takes time for people to change and most leave before they adapted to EVE Online gameplay.
People play a game for “enjoyment” mostly. If they find too much things depraving of their enjoyment they will probably just leave and play another game like H1Z1 or 7 Days To Die or Battlefront or counter-strike or whatever game their friends play.
A few months ago, I asked 10 people to rejoin EVE Online as there is a free to play now. of the 10, 1 left our clan and PVP’s (but logs in for 1-5 minutes?), 1 mines occasional , 2 have RL issues but might rejoin, 1 just doesn’t log in after joining the clan. 5 others just rolled their eyes and told me how they felt about EVE Online and asked me to play another game with them.
So in my case half of the people I know and ask about playing ‘EVE Online’ roll their eyes. And let me tell you that they wouldn’t even do that with other games except for Goat Simulator maybe.
I believe this covers your whole post actually, but the below needs to be addressed specifically.
This isn’t an argument, or point, because social circles - people who share at least percentages of your interests and beliefs - are a thing. Plus, as a side-note: Quantity > Quality. Blanket statements that “more people playing is better” is simply not valid, because it depends on the person.
Example: Gaining 100k players in a week is great, until you realize that most of them are just farmers. In EVE that’s a big problem, because they do not actually add to society as a whole and minimize their part in the butterfly effect. They do not play the game for the game. See also: FW and how farmers ruin it for them and side-related: CCP! WE DEMAND MORE CONTENT!
At least for highsec, your observation feels spot-on. Silent local chats everywhere, instead of people publicly communicating with each other, having fun. Or maybe not. But at least they talk. Like it has been just years ago.
I went into a system with wardeccers in a hyperion. I could have easily killed the cruisers and dropped a hurricanes shields quick, but then I was permajammed by drones.
I take a cheap incursus out only to be nabbed by a rail daredevil who simply sits out of range.
I bring a myrmidon that apparently only costs 43 mill (according to the lossmail) and not only does it get a gang, but a carrier on support as well. Because it’s not like they could have killed it without a carrier right?
I’m at the point where i’m just going to assume videos like these are staged. Because if I had thrown isk at an active tank sleipnir it’d be solo’d by a curse. indefinitely. Everyone with him would just be whoring on the mail.
There was a goon scanning what I undocked, only me for whatever reason. So I got in the ship he scanned and sent a duel request. He proceeded to go afk and flew off in a catalyst about 15 minutes later. If you think you can find some players in lowsec just flying around doing their things for you to shoot at, don’t count on it because they probably already died a jump or two in.
