To be fair, he’s actually very much correct in that regard. The gaming market has shifted from difficult/competitive games to microtransactional reward simulators over the past decade or so.
I sometimes wonder if I am speaking to an active Eve player, in those cruiser ones I saw an 11bn Caracal get blown up.
Which is why I mentioned that it was designed to burn through ISK and assets that had been built up over a period of plenty, it is certainly what my Mentor felt and explained in a lot of detail. You did not fully read or try understand my post which is often a warning sign of an intent to troll.
No, the players rocking 11-figure fits are a tiny minority. This is not up for discussion.
Also, the gear being burned this way (pirate implants and deadspace items) are already rare, and don’t need increased demand. And ISK isn’t burned at all.
The 1v1 cruiser arenas had a high barrier to entry in fitting requirements - unlike a direct-access 1v1 filament would. These are not equivalent comparisons.
You posted what the opinion of your mentor is. Key there being opinion. There is no evidence one way or the other to back this up. Could it be a factor in CCP’s design? Absolutely. Is it the only reason? Doubtful. CCP has an entire separate Economy team working on spending down resources, and while they may be assisting the content design effort, it is unlikely that Invasion content is being primarily driven by this consideration.
More likely, based on the current gaming market, the arenas are meant to expand the appeal of EVE to a wider market so that more people are drawn to EVE. As such, making it a widely appealing feature is in everyones’ best interests. Thus, the suggestions in this thread to avoid spending development time on an arena iteration that would be unlikely to support that objective.
Yup. Around nine. But that’s enough to enrage a certain group of permanently angry people who don’t play the game any more but also can’t quit the forum.
Just from the quick analysis I’ve performed from the killboard data, it looks like a hefty chunk of the participants are “power players,” running large amounts of matches to work their way up the board. Very few players without established combat histories, or with very small ones. Looks like the average cost of a destroyer in the current circuit is about 24,000,000 ISK. Average pod cost is approaching 10,000 ISK (that is, empty), with differences mainly due to outliers.
If I had to predict the future, I’d say that as long as CCP offers unique rewards for competing, I’d expect a few hundred of the power players to keep doing these. The players who aren’t committed will drop off in number until their incidence of participation is almost zero, mainly consisting of players trying it out for the first time.
I don’t see more than a few hundred players taking part in arenas in a few weeks. But better rewards and more interesting formats could very well change that. Two conclusions stand out right now, however:
Arenas have a fairly low economic impact
Carebears are not participating
Edit: keep in mind that when I say there’s 2,000 active arena pilots, I don’t mean 2,000 in arena matches at any given time, but 2,000 who tried arenas at least once.