Yes indeed…I have missed the fact that people have been whining about Eve ever since it started. Actually, no I haven’t. There was a thread on this very forum not long ago where it was pointed out that the first ‘Eve is dying’ post was just months after Eve started. I think that was in Mike Azariah’s recent presentation.
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It is, of course, your privilege to focus your attention on whiny trash posts. Your original point was that specific, detailed posts of what’s wrong and how to fix it didn’t exist, and they were always “vague generic complaints”.
The posts you requested exist, eg: Filaments require a re-balance .
You’re just choosing to wallow in the trash rather than seek the actually valuable posts. It’s kind of ironic actually, since “nothing exists but vague whiny complaints” is itself a vague whiny complaint.
But hey, you do whatever works for you.
apparently someone missed the memo that a prettier more immersive EVE wouid bring back all the players that left because of stale content and totally ridiculous industry changes.
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Well there was a certain person… Lets call them Disk Brubal to protect their identity… Who said that when something is prettier its inherently better, and cited Speed Racer (?) for some reason.
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Meh, hyperbole and misinformation, seems to be the only thing Destiny’s got up their sleeve.
2021, mobile revenues around $100 billion, PC/MMO revenues between $30 to $40 billion depending who’s data you’re looking at. So it’s more like 3-to-1 rather than 365-to-1. However by Destiny standards being wrong by only one order of magnitude isn’t bad.
The difference also has a lot more to do with being accessible anywhere at any time and using many small transactions than it has to do with “giving players what they want”.
Destiny’s ranking of the “top 3 requests” is also BS.
- No sensible game designer cares what players say they want (by volume of requests), they analyze usage patterns to find out what they’re actually doing.
- In the top 3 would certainly be the whiny high-sec so-called "PvP"ers requests for “more PvP (read ‘ganking’) in high-sec”.
- If I had a month’s Omega for every time Destiny has claimed to know what all the PvPers, all the miners, all the industry types, all the wardec declarers and avoiders know, do and want, as well as being well-versed in every era and area of the game, I’d plex all my accounts for the next 2 years.
Weird, how somebody with that much knowledge about every aspect of the game gets it wrong all the time. Oh well, bad RNG I guess.
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I never did believe that CCP was going under/bankrupt. So much hysteria from a small minority that CCP will close down lol. Thanks for the information @Kezrai_Charzai
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Part of me hopes Eve 1 goes pop and eve 2 starts so we can learn a whole new universe this map has been almost the same for years now, besides poch.
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Even MMO’s like Everquest and Ultima Online are still limping along after all these years. so it’s doubtful that EVE is going to close down any time soon.
But it’s also a fact the number of active accounts has declined by 20% since they decided to let @CCP_Rattati drive players away with his two year nerf crusade and then added a price increase on top of that.
So while EVE isn’t going to be shut down anytime soon, there will also probably never be more people playing the game than there are today.
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MMOs in general have declining populations, though only if you look at individual games not as a whole combined population. A lot of gamers will just move from game to game depending on trends, what’s new, exciting expansions, nostalgia, or what not. Every game forum is plagued with the game is dead/dying or posts blaming devs for being out of touch. The simple fact is, they try and focus on catching the attention of these “nomad” players for the hope to get access to their wallets while they stop at New Eden, if they stay great, if not, there are plenty more in the next wave of new players.
Long time players just aren’t as profitable as new players. We either sub for 24 months at a time, or use isk to plex and have already bought skins. So our opinions have less weight in the minds of those calling the shots and telling what the devs, who are often passionate about the game and genuinely want to make it better, should be doing with their time.
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ESO has actually started off terribly and been slowly climbing, they are constantly doing content updates thou.
So you got any examples of this? Was it the players that requested Rorq-fest mining, or did CCP do that to boost activity so they could sell the company?
Was it the players that requested selling SP? Or turning Nullsec into Farmville? I’m just wondering which player demands it is that CCP caved to that constitute “a compromise of their values”.
TBH I’m wondering if any CCP ‘values’ can even be identified since they’ve gone back on most promises as well as a fairly long list of greedy, underhanded and disrespectful treatment of the player base.
(Please note: I don’t call trying to turn a profit, or even raising prices, as ‘greedy’. That’s business. Greed is Monoclegate. Greed is “Hey old player, haven’t seen you in 3 years. C’mon back to EVE and for the small sum of $289 US we’ll give you the 12.1 Million SP you missed out on!”. Greed is selling ‘deal packs’ to new players that aren’t deals at all.)
Also, you’ve mentioned the T2 ship pricing as evidence of a “not broken economy” at least twice now. You may not have noticed, but this is due to a huge glut of T2 ships that’s been building for over a year now. Because they’re still being built, but they’re not being sold or flown or destroyed as much.
There’s probably several reasons for this. Fewer players is one. Players engaging less in the content these ships specialize in (a lot of which is PvP) is another. And the kicker is, these ships all require Omega access to fly. Guess what? Fewer subs, fewer Omega ships being flown.
(Plus of course the only reason T2 ship production isn’t “broken” is because CCP cancelled their “fix” for it after seeing the results of the T1 “fix”.)
Now maybe you’re only looking at today’s T2 prices and not seeing these other factors as part of “a broken economy”. Personally I only need to take a look at a couple years worth of MERs and the PCU chart to tell what state the economy’s in.
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where did you read that?
Very agreeable points and it can be seen as the population ages in all sorts of mmo’s or at least the ones I had played.
New players and sometimes the older players just want things straight away without the long grind.
Long ago grinding hours to produce an in game item felt both relaxing and rewarding, somene out there if you are able to still feel that feeling I would strongly suggest to hold onto that as that feeling is what mmo’s seem to have lost or losing. Now Pearl Abyss is a South Koren gaming company and to my understanding it will bring even more Koren type grinding New Eden but at the same time offer the easy way out which again is causing the decline in the mmo population.
Sorry to keep ranting but your comment did bring up some extremely important points.
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Don’t misquote me. This time I said it in reference to the fact that we did not have inflation. Which we don’t. And I did go on to say, that I don’t think the economy is in a particularly healthy state. And the first time I said it, it was in reference to guy promoting a conspiracy theory that CCP was intentionally trying to make things cost more to sell more plex.
Also, are you ■■■■■■■ with me, or was what I wrote just that unclear? Look, what I was saying is that I believe that CCP has been compromising on their values in order to appeal to a wider gaming audience.
Speaking of which, players may not have been asking for nullsec to be turned into farmville back in 2016 (iirc), but there sure is ■■■■ an army of guys out there now complaining about extrinsic rewards and everything that interferes with their ability to optimize towards boredom (i.e. ESS/DBS, cloaky camping (not as common a complaint since the changes), scarcity, blackout, drone assist, Fozzieclaw, whaling, and god knows what else). Players may not have asked for it then, but they’re certainly asking for it now. I dunno, but it seems to me like CCP made changes that appealed to particular types of players, which resulted in much large concentrations of those players in the game. And, it seems like the values of a lot of these players stand in stark contrast to other Eve players.
Oh, and apparently we think “broken” means different things, because I think that if the economy was broken, you wouldn’t have to dig through spreadsheets to prove it. I mean, when players of other MMO’s complain about broken economies, they don’t have to point to graphs of the velocity of isk, or even have to do any convincing at all. It’s because the majority of the player base is dealing with things such as it being impossible to buy certain things, massive surpluses resulting in some things being virtually worthless, rampant inflation, and/or the need to adopt alternative currencies. And, we aren’t seeing any of that, not even with capital ships (although, it’s probably not a good sign that people stopped building them).
Now, don’t get it twisted -I am not saying that the economy is all roses. I’m no economist myself, but I have heard more knowledgeable people than me point to things like the velocity of isk and production rates as evidence of problems. So, things could probably be better. But the economy is far from “broken,” and I seriously doubt that it’s in danger of imminent collapse, as some people have asserted every time CCP has made a change that they don’t like (i.e. blackout, scarcity, broker fee changes, and whatever else).
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Oh! I know this one! I promise I do!
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Seriously now,
Are we positive on the fact that PA is a starting point for the issues, real or speculative?
I honestly think most issues started before that. I too felt sort of relieved knowing PA was letting CCP handle EVE business as usual… but sometimes I think it would have been better if not.
Real or speculative.
In the quarterly/yearly reports and investor calls for Pearl Abyss. It is all out there publicly.
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Were they ever ? Was the deal more than a temporary portfolio fit for a game like eve echoes ?
Also, who here thinks CCP needs Pearl Abyss to continue their long history of design flaws slash mistakes that almost always get addressed if one waits long enough ? CCP is doing fine on its own, business as usual. Errare humanum est, et cetera 
CCP
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Well okay, so what values are they compromising then? Certainly they’ve tried to appeal to a wider audience with Alpha/F2P, and they’re trying to improve the NPE, and they’re adding in some goal-based directives with the AIR Career program. Those are all good moves that should’ve been done 10 years ago, frankly.
What ‘broader appeal’ initiatives are you looking at that compromise core EVE values? And what is this new, broader player base looking for that hasn’t been looked for since day 1 of EVE? Because TBH I’m seeing a much narrower base of EVE players these days, and the noisiest ones are the ones that have been here for 10 years farming the hell out of Null and want their 2 bill an hour AFK farms back.
And yes, “broken economy” does mean different things to us. When EVE is 3/4 an economic simulation game, and only 15% an actual ‘PvP’ game, and those economy players are leaving in large numbers because the economy isn’t worth participating in anymore… that’s what I call broken.
EVE isn’t near death, though it’s seriously unhealthy. And I’m not sure what it matters what your “army of complainers” or “people that don’t like the latest change” say. The game isn’t based on a hundred or even a thousand half-baked opinions on the interwebs.
The game numbers are there, in the PCU charts, in the MER, in the prices of ships and Plex and other items. And those numbers say, incontrovertibly, that things are looking pretty sad lately.
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First of all, I’m not trying to say that CCP hasn’t done anything I liked, that they’re the devil, or that there aren’t any devs at CCP that aren’t passionate about their work or the game.
However, there is evidence of them, as an organization, compromising their values on certain things, and I have varying degrees of suspicion on other stuff. However, the most compelling evidence is when they explicitly state their values/beliefs, and then do things that run counter to that. So, let’s start with that.
Direct Selling of SP to players
Pepperidge Farm remembers
Remember when CCP said that player driven economies were key to Eve design, and that it was important that all SP originate with players… because peperidge farm remembers.
Instanced Content
Instanced content undermines important aspects of the game
In this GDC, the developer formerly known as greyscale talks about all sorts of things that are fundamental to Eve’s design. Now CCP has done several things that seem to contradict the principles that Woodward stated here. However, the most incontrovertible evidence of CCP throwing their principles out the window comes with the introduction of instanced content (i.e. Abyss and those new exploration sites).
Instanced content undermines:
- Relatedness- the feeling that you are connected to, can influence, and be influenced by, a larger world and the players in it
- Competition
- Emergent Game play
- Variable World State - Competition/predation from players changes the world state, and prevents players from optimizing towards boredom
The Age of Abundance and the Aftermath
Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Rewards
I think you can also make a good case that the age of abundance was CCP moving away from intrinsic motivators (which are good, but hard), and going all in on extrinsic motivators (which are easy, but can cause issues). This not only encourages players to optimize towards boredom in order to maximize their extrinsic rewards, but there is actual scientific research that suggests that extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic rewards (this is known as the overjustification effect).
And on, a side note, I think we’re still feeling the consequences of this today. So, upping extrinsic rewards during the age of abundance reduced intrinsic rewards and motivations. However, that’s not the end of the story. See, researchers have also found that removal in extrinsic rewards does not result in a restoration of prior intrinsic motivation. And that is why we see tons of players complaining about the game “no longer being rewarding.”
Newbro PK/griefing isn’t a problem → I’m very concerned about newbro griefing
Why is CCP is suddenly singing a different tune
And, after years of essentially saying that ganking newbros wasn’t a problem, and that ship loss was the magic moment (provided players had understanding, hope, and support), we now have Rattati on stage saying that he is very concerned about newbro griefing, and presenting a slide that looks like it was authored by someone who wants permanent green safeties in highsec. Not only is this absolutely terrible analysis, but I want to know why CCP is suddenly singing a different tune. I mean, did something that was previously a “myth” suddenly stop being a myth? Or are they trying to lay the groundwork for throwing ganking under the bus?
Of course, this is definitely tin foil hat territory here. And there are other possible explanations, such as meaning and nuance being lost by trying compress a complex topic down into to two minutes of presentation, and good old-fashioned bad analysis. The problem with that, however, is that I don’t think CCP is a bunch of idiots, the way other players do. And I certainly don’t believe that they’re actually so stupid to actually believe the things written on that slide. I mean, there’s degrees of stupidity, and this slide looks like it was written by a card carrying member of the green safety brigade, who has no actual knowledge of ganking, and is basing his analysis entirely on misconceptions.
Anyway, this post is long enough, and I have other stuff to do. So, instead of getting into the weeds of all the problems of this slide, instead let me point you to this other wall of text.
It’s Not a Problem
It’s Not a Problem
It’s Not a Problem
It’s a Problem!!!
Alright, that’s enough. Of course, I want to argue with you about some other stuff, but I got other stuff to work on.
Edit: Fixed a few errors.
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