What’s your point? Those people are already playing games that are optimized for delivering a grinding and farming experience. They aren’t potential customers in any realistic scenario.
And CCP has to focus on the top market…
No they don’t. Again, the top market is already saturated and has no room for new games. Focusing on a market CCP is unlikely to grab any significant share of at the expense of the market they have near-exclusive ownership of is utter insanity.
the niche is shrinking and may be not enough to survive and CCP WILL have to focus their attention outside said niche or will perish and i bet they know it…
Yes, we get it, EVE has been dying since 2003, any day now the PvP focus will kill it and we can all go back to WoW.
And eve IS loosing players over a LONG period of time now…there are reasons for that…and -as CCP- you have to fight it…and not by keeping all as it is…
Yes, it is a completely different genre and I want to keep it that way. You’re the one who wants to turn EVE into WoW in space.
And I notice you’ve ignored the point about market saturation in favor of nitpicking at a “go back to WoW” comment, probably because you know you have no response to it.
And eve IS loosing players over a LONG period of time now…there are reasons for that…and -as CCP- you have to fight it…
There are reasons. PvP nerfs, stagnant and boring nullsec endgame activities, capital proliferation, etc. However, when CCP has nerfed PvP we haven’t seen a matching increase in player counts. This strongly suggests that the player retention issue has nothing to do with your desire for risk-free AFK farming, if people like you exist in non-trivial numbers they aren’t playing EVE no matter what CCP does.
You must be joking…the overwhelming MAJORITY of players that left were PVE players that were annoyed by the CONSTANT PVP favor this game is poised with…
There cannot be enough PVP nerfs…those are the ONLY hope for this game…
In contradiction to your claim I present the fact that even when CCP nerfs PvP the player count doesn’t increase, strongly suggesting that PvP is not the reason people are quitting.
Sure. And they can already do that in EvE - in the safety of hisec they are almost untouchable… as long as they don’t fly loot pinatas through Uedama or Niarja. Quite easy to memorize 2 systems.
Name any other space oriented MMO that is successful. Is Elite: Dangerous that? Or Scam Citizen? Any other?
What would be the point of playing EvE if it wasn’t constant pvp? If I want to play pve I can play single player games… X3AP comes to mind.
And where is your evidence that their retention failures are due to listening to people like me, rather than caring too much about F2P cash shop nonsense and PvE farming “events” instead of fixing the stagnant PvP endgame?
It’s made a lot more difficult too by there not being a great deal that EVE does really well that is unique any more.
Just what game do you think competes with the things EVE does?
No it doesn’t. People can already wall themselves off in multiple different ways. Industrialists and traders don’t ever have to undock if they don’t want to, people in nullsec can wall themselves off fairly easily, WH pilots can seal up their wormholes.
Nonsense. Industrialists and traders still have to participate in competitive capitalism with other players, and can only ignore combat PvP by having someone else take the combat PvP risks for them. And nullsec/WH players absolutely can’t wall themselves off, all of their defensive measures involve interacting with other players and threatening superior force to keep them away. Things like nullsec capital umbrellas are the exact opposite of obliviously ignoring the existence of other players and letting the game mechanics provide you with 100% safety.
Contrast this with the no-PvP highsec that Darlo wants, where you can ignore everyone else and sit there farming NPCs without having to have any interaction besides the occasional market purchase. Aside from buying ammo and selling loot you have your own private instance of EVE to farm and you don’t have to do anything to maintain it besides declare “I do not accept PvP”.
No, I rejected your idea because it used fixed age values and came with a whole bunch of caveats.
Exactly. You rejected it because it included limits that would make the PvP immunity only apply to actual newbies as they learn the game. It wouldn’t be a blanket nerf to PvP and a reduction in risk and effort for established farmers so you don’t accept it. You don’t give a **** about newbies except as a means to lobby for farming buffs.
You will never agree to any idea unless you get something in return, because you’re not interested in what’s good for the health of the game, only what benefits your playstyle.
Stop lying. I have already told you that I do not do PvP in highsec and therefore I have no personal stake in highsec PvP outside of the general fact that increased destruction means better profits for mining and industry.
Out of all the games I play, EVE is one of the easiest.
Uh, sure. What PvE games do you play that offer any meaningful challenge? And how do they have genuine difficulty, not just unforgiving reflex test mechanics?
If you know how the mechanics work you can usually predict the outcome quite accurately.
Assuming you know all of the information you need to evaluate the situation. An NPC will never do anything predictable, it will always follow the script as described in the how-to guide and as long as you follow the how-to guide you will always win. Another player can surprise you with a threat you weren’t aware of or expecting to face and completely change the situation on you, and then you either think fast and counter their move or die.
Eh, this isn’t entirely true. You can write your AIs to have a percentage chance of doing something weird in order to mess with people.
And if you give them a wide enough range of actions they become hard to write a how to guide for them also.
CCP just have very traditional MMO mobs that are brainless and there to be farmed for the most part and changing that is hard without your player base exploding. I mean internally they used to even use the same language as WoW such as dungeons.
This is true. It is theoretically possible to make unpredictable NPCs, as long as you commit to updating your content faster than people can figure out the system. You have to have constant turnover in content since you’re still talking about scripted behavior and can only delay the inevitable, which creates some massive problems of its own, but it’s theoretically possible to do. It’s just, as you say, a complete departure from the MMO norm that most players don’t want and CCP (and Blizzard, etc) shows zero interest in doing. So in practical terms a PvE game is going to be very predictable while a PvP game probably won’t.
Eh, I don’t think this part is essential.
If there are 100 different actions and 100 different follow on actions from a rng grab box of Npcs all of whom get an rng range of stats starting from a norm point that add up to a “point value for this site” which has it’s own range even if someone figures it out, a how to guide isn’t going to be very helpful.
Making systems where you don’t have perfect Intel is the main key. Take drifters. We know what their dps is exactly, ehp etc. Now what happens if you add +/- 10% on that on an individual level. Sure we can know the upper and lower bounds but now you can no longer see 5 drifters and go “I have exactly that much tank”.
And then we vary their orbit ranges. Add in a chance for them to do something odd like charge or warp to a ping… And you get the idea I think. It’s not about staying ahead, if you introduce enough variables the equation just becomes too complex to write a guide.
… which could as well mean that having PvP anywhere in the game is not a core issue that needs addressing. If the numbers do not change upwards or downwards it means that the measure itself at best addressing something else, not what it may have been intended for.
Now for an accurate fact. Anyone can talk and theorize about cause and effect of just about any aspect of the game and fill endless threads with all sorts of constructs. Neither you nor anyone else have solid data on players’ behaviour or activity. In some cases CCP themselves don’t know exactly what is going on - ex. the “highsec” population measurement being one that was rebuked by (part of) the player base who live e.g., in nullsec, have alts in hisec (Jita) which they keep online and were counted as “highsec” players while they see themselves as nullsec players.
Discussing without solid data is simply a waste of time. The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything may be 42, and you may try to interpret that number but odds are heavily in favour of entirely missing the point. Even with solid data multiple interpretations can have equal value, often because of unknown factors that require more research to even identify. Admitting that multiple interpretations are possible is the first step to actually finding a solution.
is indeed the property of a mature discussion with mutual respect. It usually results in adjusted viewpoints, something that is missing here, same for the open minds.
Your interpretation of 42, or me pointing out that 42 is being discussed ? The points MAY be good if they have a foundation in solid data. Then I would probably be the first to say “good point”.
Pardon my amusement, but you seem to have run out of ammo again, the wind out of the sails. And here I was, naively hoping for “open minds to take on board new information from perspectives we may not have considered”. That post actually gave me hopes for a good, mature talk, naively. Instead you have to resort to the already familiar smoke screen tactics and fire in retreat ? That’s no way of having a discussion.
And no !
We won’t call it a draw. You had your chance, again …
You’ve had your chances to express ideas (you said you weren’t paid by ccp and therefore couldn’t be bothered). Instead you prefer to single out words and parts of sentences and start arguing beside the point. When pointed out, in a polite way, that your “discussion” is not based on data you conjure up a new bogus argument about how I "have no ability to make any counterpoints etc. One indeed cannot make a counterpoint where there was no point.
Instead of admitting there are no solid data to have a solid discussion about you prefer to tell me and others to go away and not get involved, so that you can go on repeating the same opinion over and over again ad nauseam. In my book that means you deliberately destroy conversation, only seek a forum that hearkens to your trumpet sounds, aka you are a common troll. Expect some opposition.
