This is a message for CCP as a whole. (TLDR in the replies.)
Nearly 20 years ago, I started my account, and created my first character.
I was a part of a group of real life people who had all created accounts and had at that stage been playing for a few months already, and so I joined Eve to see what it was like.
I spent a week flying around high sec by myself, doing the newbro thing; trying to understand what I was supposed to be doing there, before giving up and forgetting about the game for 6 months.
After becoming housemates with one of the people I knew who was already playing, I picked the game back up, moved straight out to Paragon Soul, and never looked back.
Other than a few years around 2012 when I took a break, Iâve been subscribed and playing the whole time.
The important part about the above story is there was one thing that brought me into this game in the first place, then back to the game after a 6 month break, then again after I took my longer break around 2012, and finally has kept me in this game all this time.
That one constant that CCP triumphs as the most important part of this MMO they manage?
The community.
A community got me interested in eve in the first place, a community brought me back to eve; twice, and a community has kept me paying my subscription all this time.
It is no joke that the most important and powerful ship in Eve-Online, is a Friendship, and itâs the one most likely to keep someone, new or old, paying and playing.
Sadly it is this very part of Eve-Online that is slowly developing an insidious cirrhosis, fed largely by CCPâs addiction to alcohol. (read income)
I have noticed more and more over the last 15 ish years the great surge in concurrent omega accounts; allowing people to have more and more alts online at once.
People are spinning up alt accounts for all manner of purposes, whether it be to spin multiple ishtars in NS using bots, rat in pochven, run incursions, field multiple rorquals at a time, cyno themselves around, scout themselves, hunt for themselves, boost for themselves, logi for themselves, spy on other groups, be an industry empire, etc.
If there is an activity in eve where people can work together as a community, you can be sure the vast majority of ppl have a second account to just do it themselves instead.
If you want to move a carrier between stations, you donât phone a friend and ask them to help, instead you just burn your alt over and jump to yourself.
Hunting for a blops group; do it yourself and avoid the communication hassles.
Want to do some form of industry; do it all yourself and cut out the middle people.
Want to KRAB in a carrier or put a Rorqual on grid to mine; better have cyno, dread, and a FAX alts ready as thatâs what the big blocks often require.
Some groups will not even allow you to be an FC unless you can provide an alt.
FCs refuse to work with other ppl and instead will insist they scout themselves around.
One group I am a part of would prefer to not fleet rather than have their FC not have total control at all times.
Here are some PM chat log excerpts one individual was gracious enough to allow me to share.
As can be seen, given the option of teaming up and trusting another person or not playing eve, there are some communities out there that would rather the second option.
According to Pennsylvania State University, the 5x Câs that are fundamental to any community are: (copied from their website on the topic)
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Connection (The Trust Builder): Focuses on creating emotional bonds and authentic relationships among members before asking for support.
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Collaboration (Working as Equals): Involves co-creating solutions and working together rather than just receiving help or doing it yourself, as discussed in
this Emerge article. -
Communication (Candid and Clear): Ensures open, honest dialogue and clear expectations to prevent muddled efforts, according to Connected EC.
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Commitment (Long-term Involvement): Emphasizes sticking with the community for the long haul, as detailed on this Emerge page.
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Contribution (Measured Impact): Recognizes and measures the impact of individual and collective actions.
Disturbingly, many of these fundamentals are being rejected by Eve-Players in favor of the do-it-all-yourself with alts option.
As shown below these fundamentals are being avoided.
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Connection (Building Trust): If you arenât working together with someone on a venture that could be vulnerable to betrayal, how can you learn to trust that individual?
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Collaboration (Working as Equals): Many times important roles are performed by armies of alts instead of real people. Scouting, Eyes, and Boosters are prime examples.
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Communication (Candid and Clear): Communication cannot happen if people are only working with their alts, and not talking to each other. Communication is a skill, and skills must be practised to be maintained and improved.
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Commitment (Long Term Involvement): With the ability to be in more than one place at a time; identity is affected, if you exist in multiple groups, what commitments do you hold to each, and what commitments do you just take advantage of when the weather is fair?
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Contribution (Measured Impact): Often these days a playerâs value is judged on how many roles they can fill or jobs they can perform. In these scenarios single boxers like newbies are almost being pitied as near useless, and often pressured into spending more money to get more accounts, likely leading to burnout if they arenât ready for the extra workload.
All of these above examples and more are of situations where rather than working together to achieve a goal in Eve; further developing and maturing the community, individuals are instead choosing to become insular and do things themselves.
-- Alts offer insular people the opportunity to avoid those tiny little interactions that are the very foundation of what makes a community work, and the lack of alts can act as a barrier to progression in some groups.
Having alts has become an expectation, instead of an option. â
Further to the effects on the established playerbase, one can only imagine what the new player experience is like for a genuine new player.
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You join a group and the most active and visible players are running multiple accounts.
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Your eve heroes; the miners, the FCs, the hunters, the ones that are at the top of their field, the people you would normal strive to equal or exceed; are all running multiple accounts.
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If you want to rise to compete with much of the playerbase you have to create alts cause eve is a numberâs game making this a numbers race. (Weâre in a cold war with each other.)
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You ask your friend to help you move ships and he undocks his carrier and jumps to his own cyno.
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You want to FC and often you are required to have alts to perform fleet roles.
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You want to move into manufacturing, you are competing with people who have cut out the middle people by doing it all themselves with mining, PI, reaction, and manufacturing alts.
Suddenly Eve looks like a job and costs 3-5+ times what they had expected it would when they started.
Not only are they left to question if the game playstyle and group is right for them, now they are asking themselves if they want to make that kind of commitment and for how long.
Paying a hundred dollars a month or more for many people might put this game out of their budget.
And all the while they are seen as unable to contribute beyond what is locked away by skill points, and pitied for their lack of presence ingame.
-- Alts scare newbies away from the game, both through cost, and size/impenetrableness of existing operations. â
My next point is, the lack of the human factor in everyday activities removes a vector for content creation.
Trusting in another person who then betrays you and earns enmity has been a profound content creation tool for the entirety of eve history.
By not interacting with other people, not only does the community dramatically decrease one of the fundamental factors that makes a community work, the reduction in human interaction also allows individuals to more easily avoid being a part of the content, allowing them to reinforce their isolationist mindset and starving content creators.
Be it avoiding being tricked into cynoing onto a hostile keepstar, or by having a scout at the entrance to a ratting pocket pocket, or having a backup FAX, dread, and cyno to protect your KRABing carrier; alts provide a myriad of opportunities to avoid content in eve.
-- Many alts are specifically designed to allow people to avoid content, reducing the variety and scope of the larger eve story; the one we all write with every log in. (or log out.) â
As a final point, how can CCP be expected to make a game fun for a new player with only 1 account, and give them a visible path of progression and a final goal to achieve, while at the same time preventing an established player with new alts from taking advantage of, and abusing its newbie friendly mechanics, game knowledge, and skill level requirements?
Itâs problems like this that have been quoted as partially responsible for the addition of the newbro systems in the upcoming expansion.
-- Alts break game mechanics. â
Eve was once known as the game with the learning cliff.
Brutal to the core, and complex to boot.
However that cliff was not all doom and gloom,
Surmounting it required teamwork and dedication.
That was the true Eve-Online, not the graphics on screen, not the spreadsheets in EXCEL, those were all just supporting material, the community was and still is the real Eve.
The reward for working together and succeeding in early Eve-Online, was the pride in those efforts, the camaraderie built, and earning the right to survive another day.
Removing the teamwork portion of that equation is at its base level a reduction of community and the simulated universe that CCP has strived to maintain for these last 2 decades.
In my mind, Tranquility is unlikely to die like Serenity did; with one big block and no content.
Instead I predict that it will become a haven for the mega-boxers and uber-botters; people who get a kick out of being on top no matter what it takes.
Think of the people who used to live on the test server.
At the same time many new players will be left feeling under valued without alt armies of their own and unwilling to commit that much to a game they have only just started.
As my title states, CCP are alcoholics.
Omega subscription is their alcohol.
The eve community is CCPâs liver.
And the degradation of eve-onlineâs community through the lack of everyday community fundamentals is the unseen cirrhosis that is slowly eating away at that liver.
CCP, you need to find a way to get off the bottle.
I know youâre enjoying it now, but it wonât be healthy for Eve-Online in the long run, and thatâs important to some of us.
