CSM 13 - High Sec Issues/Suggestions/Ideas

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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183

Seriously? You don’t even have to use 3rd party sites like Dotlan. Does anyone ever look at the Tranquility online status monitor? It seems EVE has been in a steady decline since about 2014.

I’ve returned to EVE about two weeks ago after a five year hiatus and immediately felt something wasn’t right. The Forge has always been a very busy place, but compared to what it was five years ago, the place looks empty. Alarm bells really started ringing when I noticed the distinct lack of activity around the Jita gates. It used to be that you couldn’t get to within 3 jumps of Jita without at least one person trying to scan your cargo… These days it’s empty.

Suspecting a severe drop off in the player base, the first thing I checked is CCP’s own Tranquility server stats. Yet as a CSM you’ve got the nerve to post in an open forum that there are “no metrics” to back up anecdotal claims on the slow decline of EVE players?

2013, CCP was boasting that there were roughly 500,000 active accounts. These day’s people are talking about 300,000. That’s a 40% drop in five years. It made me realise what all the rubbish is about you can buy with PLEX these days. Skill injectors, skill extractors, ship skins (most of them bad designs and not even worth my money), multiple character training, etc… Hell, I can’t log in for more than three days in a row without getting a pop-up trying to tempt me to spend some extra cash on goodies with PLEX.

A steady decline in player numbers/active accounts coupled with CCP trying to shove more options for micro transactions down your throat and it’s very clear what’s going on. You don’t need a degree in rocket science to realise that.

1 Like
184

No, I am not asking for more rewards.

From my point of view as someone in the VAST majority that’s comfotable with a risk/reward balance like that of agent missions and mining, CCP has been adding three kinds of new PvE to the game:

  • higher risk PvE, which is not our piece of cake
  • lame rewards PvE, which also isn’t our piece of cake
  • massive rewards to nullsec’s risk/reward, which is a middle finger to everybody else

What CCP has NOT done for 8 years, is to add content that haves a similar risk/reward as agent missions and mining.

It’s like if CCP was selling all the Coke they can and, instead of bringing more Coke to sell more and earn more revenue, they were trying to sell other beverages with minimal success and arbitrarely buffing the experience for those who picked Brennivin long time ago.

As a Coke consumer, I am appalled that CCP hasn’t introduced more Coke for 8 years (with a single exception) and all we know about CCP’s intent of adding or not more Coke to the game is…

Then there’s the fact that despite everything…a LOT of people play the old missions every day and a lot of people run them for years and years. Feel free to tell me if you think I’m wrong on this next point, but when we look at the numbers, the value proposition of re-directing resources to add new missions isn’t necessarily that convincing.

Straight from CCP Guard’s mouth. (Dev blog: CSM Winter Summit Minutes & changes to election process - #138 by CCP_Guard)

Yes, CCP is saying that, since people already buy all the Coke CCP cares to have, that’s the reason why they don’t need to add new Coke in order to have more Coke buyers and more money. Instead, they will bring different stuff, largely ignored by Coke drinkers, and will arbitrarily and gratuitously give a massive reward to brennivin drinkers aka nullsec.

No, we don’t want more rewards… nor more risk. The very first thing EVERY mission runner will tell you if you bother to engage them is: “missions are fine, but they’re always the same ones, I wonder when CCP will add new ones”. Yeah. Tell them that the last big thing about missions were Epic Arcs and they date to 8 years ago…

2 Likes
185

Endless missions could be a start, it doesn’t need the new ai or anything, and the player can warpout at anytime as he chooses so the risk is on himself trying to go the deeper in the waves.

Scout incursions, and other missions that security missions to look over, 9 L4 looking most of the same mining missions get boring fast.

186

The unfortunate thing that keeps most exclusive PVErs happy is something that EVE never really had and doesn’t really work well with its game style.
I’m of course talking about theme park style game play, CCP has done some stuff similar to this with there limited time events, however they aren’t really long enough or frequent enough to fall into the theme park style IMO.

187

Adding new missions would help out with tireness of doing always the same missions, but in order to be really useful CCP should use it to test other ways of delivering a similar risk/reward with a different format.

I’ve had several concepts and ideas about that, but they’re quite lengthy and I don’t feel inclined to discuss them without a constructive counterpart… One can’t fight every nullsec troll in the forums for 6 years without growing both weary and wary. :woman_shrugging:

188

Wrong. I played EVE PvE for 7 years and I am not a theme park player at all. I’ve never played a theme park for more than 3 months, and usually they last me about 6-8 weeks before I grow mortally bored.

But EVE… missions are the same, but there’s (nearly) always another ship to try, another fit, another tactic, another way to manage aggro, until you just can’t save the Damsel for the 42nd time without tearing your eyes from your face.

Whatever the time it takes before you reach that point with the current 400 missions in pool, it would be twice as long the tie ewith a pool made of 800 different missions. Sepcially if newer missison catered to the “reward creativity” angle of why people does the same stuff for literal years.

FAI, a three-room dungeon. First and third room are common, but second room it’s made of two gates: one leads to a pocket for a brawler fit and the other to a pcoket suit to a sniper ship. Both pockets provide same reward in roughly the same time, but it’s up to the player to pick one… or find a multi-fit ship that and run them both.

FAI 2, two chained missions. Sweeping thoroughly first mission will reduce the ships and reward from the second mission in chain. Conversely, sparing ships in first mission will improve the rewards of second mission -just hey have different damage profiles. The player decides what damage profile he’s happier with, first mission and kill everything or spare some so he can kill more ships in his favorite damage profile on second mission.

The beauty of the agent mission system is that they’re like piñatas: candies are mostly assured, but how and when you break it (and with what tool) is up to you. As long as the candies are good and you enjoy breaking the piñata, you’re set to give money to CCP for many years for a fraction of the effort they put in sophisticate AIs and perpetual PvP balancing.

189

This is a great great posting that represents both the mission runner community’s feelings and the apparent CCP/CSM’s disdain, dismissal, and misreading what the data is showing. Hey CCP Guard, we ARE telling you are wrong! Quit trying to bring NEW players in; first try to RETAIN your existing players. To do that, see what is working, add more of that and then introduce “new” game features to try to encourage new players. By failing to try to make an effective effort to retain existing customers, you’ve decided to try to use your efforts to entice new accounts, effectively telling current EVE customers that their valid concerns are of lesser importance than some theoretical new group you have yet to capture. Every established customer whose views are dismissed and then leave the game tend to become “salesmen” who sell the idea that people shouldn’t try EVE. Remember that one negative review equals 10 positive reviews; quit shooting yourself in the foot.

190

From what I have seen, the game has been stable for the last two-three years in terms of the average player numbers down from the high in 2013. CCP posted their highest revenue ever in 2016, if I recall correctly.

I didn’t say there were no metrics. I said I haven’t seen official numbers from CCP recently - if you’ve got them, let me know, because I haven’t gone looking and don’t have them in front of me.

191

Put the documents together, email them to me, and I will give them directly to the Devs. You don’t have to post them at all, if you don’t want to.

1 Like
192

You claim I’m wrong and then explain why I’m right.

193

Typical politicians answer. I haven’t seen any official CCP posting with those numbers either and to be honest I didn’t even bother looking for them. CCP’s own server stats are pretty damned official to me.

Rather subjective isn’t it? In an open sandbox like EVE, CCP can generally use two measures to gauge its success:

 a).	Active accounts
 b).	Revenue

They are still an independent company but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any shareholders they are accountable to. So I take it that for CCP, revenue will be an important factor. That still doesn’t mean it should be on the forefront of the CSM’s thoughts though. The CSM is there to address players concerns, problems with game mechanics and actively help CCP to come up with solutions to those. Its up to CCP to gel this together with their revenue stream. For a CSM to immediately grab for the “revenue” argument when the issue of EVE’s decline comes up in conversation, I’m not sure if this is such a wise thing to do if you’re trying to gain players trust in your abilities as a CSM.

Then again, I’ve always thought the CSM is a bit of a joke? Must have been for years considering how many players CCP managed to loose. Case in point: this is a thread about high-sec issues yet the person who got himself elected claiming he was a high-sec industrialist is nowhere to be seen. His interest in 3rd party development is probably more important than the current state of high-sec. Instead he’s leaving all the dirty work to a self-confessed null sec player.

Then again, I’m going to give you credit for at least trying though. You also appear to be keeping up with all the sh*t that’s been flung in your direction and that deserves kudos too.

Maybe 13 ain’t such an unlucky number as everyone thought. Remains to be seen. Good luck in your endeavours though. Hope it works out for you.

194

Most game features of the past felt interconnected, i.e. you run combat missions forLP and buy some implants which someone else will use to mine stuff. Or you mine stuff and someone else will use it to build stuff. You PI again for someone to build stuff. You live in WH and export T3C parts everyone uses. And so on and on. Everything interconnected.

But recent stuff feels isolated

  • Resource wars. Ore is used in the site only. Its some kind of pseudo ore which is not used anywhere else, and which magically disappears after leaving the site. If you could keep excesses and use it for something outside of RW, that alone would fix this. After all pirates come to these sites, they must use the ore for something.

  • Abyssal Deadspace. Triglavian ships and AD Might seem like T3C/WH, but with current drop rates the stuff is so expensive its never really used. Combat sites only is boring, procedural generation adds variety but its still just killing rats. Drop from AD feels isolated. There are mutaplasmids, yes, but decayed are ■■■■ and others are so rare, you best option is to sell them. And if only 1% of a 1% ever uses them, thats some design.

I posted topic on my view on fixin FOBs and RW.

They should really stop adding new features and fix that is already there and never used.

195

Let me be clear - I’m not here talking to folks because I want them to trust me. I don’t expect that, especially in this game. I’m here talking to people because I got elected and I’m going to do the job to the best of my ability.

As long as the game continues to make money for CCP, the game will survive. So revenue is absolutely a valid point to look at in terms of the health of the game, especially since EVE is CCP’s #1 revenue source. I would love to see more folks playing the game, and they always need to chase new subscribers - that’s how MMOs work. I’ve been hearing the “bucket with a hole in it” metaphor for more than a decade.

As I have said from the beginning, I represent the whole game, not one section of it. Others may not view their role that way, and that’s fine. But I’m going to do my best for everybody because that’s the electorate.

Thanks.

196

Most things in Highsec are kind of ok-ish…

But some things that i think need to be addressed.

1.) HighSec moon mining, the belts created by them should be attached to ACL’s, anybody not on that ACL or in the owning corp should go suspect. This could in turn add some content.

2.) In conjunction with my first point, Allow Player Structures to be able to lock up and fire on suspect players.

3.) War dec’s need a serious revamp, like a total overhaul.

4.) Finish module tiericide, we have enough skins in existence already, spend more Dev time where its needed.

5.) FOB’s at first were doable, then too damn hard, and now easily soloable…they need a mixed balance, please look into reworking them.

6.) Sometimes 2 fleets are evenly matched, if you discount the 10 or more neutral logi on the field…can not do much except die to that and best option is to blue ball the opposing side…boring. Neutral logi needs more than a suspect flag…as do neutral combat boosters(not mining boosters) maybe adding or changing something in the crime watch system could spice things up a little, or at the very least force logi and combat boosters into the corps that are at war.

3 Likes
197

When you learn chess. It starts with each of the pieces and their respective movement in isolation. Then you have beginner scenarios self-play like king v king + rook as a practice of using the pieces. But you reach a point in a short arc that you playing a complete game against another player. Either against another beginner for compatible player strength. Or against a coach/mentor that will be lenient for beginner mistakes. We are talking about one of the longest existing and successful PvP games of all time. Must be doing something right.

Eve is a PvP game? Then during the NPE there should be a fight. You have learnt what your tank does, what your prop mods and jamming does and what weapons you have option to. (Pieces in isolation). Have a go that this NPC. (K v RK). Now, you will be warping to this location - two ships enter one leaves. (you can choose from a selection of pre-fitted hulls). Welcome to what really happens.

And lock industry tutorial behind basic ship fitting and flying.

Because the NPE occurs in high-sec; so it put there.

Education - that is what high-sec needs. It needs it more than script-doctoring war-decs or limitations (lamentations) of permanent prop-jamming.

198

Can we get the mining drones changed back please.
The mining drones used to pull the amount mined from the rock the second it stopped mining the rock. Now the mining drones don’t pull the amount mined from the rock till they return to the ship. This put mining drones at a massive disadvantage when multiple players are mining the same rocks.

199

If your mining drones are, say, 10km from your ship, why should they be able to magically teleport the ore they mined to your cargo hold that is 10km away?

200

I am not asking for it to magical transport it to the ship, I am asking for the mining drones to pull that amount that they have mined and have within them to be removed from the rock that was mined.

201

Stay within 2,500 m of your mining drones for instant transfer is all I can suggest…

202

That is nice but to be in the middle of a fleet you can not be right next to a rock and even if you are that close it can take a minute or more for a mining drone to return from the far side of of some rocks.

While I am here I would ask for mining drone velocity to be increased also. I have just about maximum mining drone skills, the mining drone has a velocity of 250 m/sec that is a tech I ice mining drone and with a tech II mining drone the velocity is only 675 m/sec. While the warrior tech II drones are at 6,300 m/sec and valkyrie tech I are at 3,125 m/sec. The mining drones need to be brought to at least brought to a 1,000 m/sec or more.