No, I think that’s the right way to look at it. The reality remains that those who aren’t engaged don’t get their voices heard, and those that do are the ones that get listened to. So I need to hear from people who care and live in that space, knowing that whatever we do has to benefit everybody (assuming we can get CCP to listen, agree, and devote time to it).
The problem with this whole “do what the silent majority want” is that they’re silent. In RL, you go knocking on doors and ask them directly. In a game like this, there is almost no way to get folks who aren’t connected to suddenly connect and provide feedback. For the most part, those guys are happy and aren’t going to spend the time providing feedback if they think things are okay. That’s why, for the most part, the folks who don’t bother taking the time to vote IRL aren’t an issue because they aren’t the ones complaining. As I noted before, it’s hard to find ways to actively engage with players who are happy. They just want to log in and play.
What do you think would be a good way of trying to reach those players?
I get the feeling you’re asking for us to come up with a silver bullet - I think if it were easy or even possible to develop a mechanic to get folks who aren’t engaged to engage that CCP would have already done it by now.
Like I said, IRL you go door knocking. Online, you can send them emails, call them to take a survey, ask them to take an in-game survey, etc, but I still don’t know what kind of impact that’s going to have. It’s a Catch 22 - as you noted, the guys who have already decided to leave don’t care and will just leave. The folks who are still here and aren’t engaged are usually happy with how things are now.
So that’s kind of why I’m asking the folks who are actively here and posting to provide feedback.
You or anyone else will never fix or help highsec because highsec is too splintered on many fronts.
You got people who come in expecting to grind missions like it’s Diablo and pony up cash for plex to buy officer mods.
You got people who want to mine and do all the industry possible while at same time having no one poking them or their business.
You got people who want to explore yet what is there to explore when they all only do the same sites restricted to highsec.
You have people who haven’t a clue about the game yet they spam corps left and right sucking in new players and further spreading misinformation and illusions of grandeur such as building a great powerful group.
And toward the end you got people too scared to pick any fight outside highsec looking for easy kills.
I’M sure there’s quite a few more types that I missed.
Concord and the safety of highsec has created this facade that EVE can be aproached as a single player game too.
I believe you have already answered your question,
And to honest, that’s pretty close to home. Before I joined the Corp I am in now, I barely went into low sec and would slightly day trip into wh. My login time consisted of what I wanted to do. Mine, rat, missions, or exploration; all of these were available with little hassle die to where I based out of.
Now that I am no longer super active I have returned to high sec, but I see that high sec has gotten about as much attention has wh. I don’t see why CCP doesn’t make new missions with and without the new ai, or why we don’t have new anomalies. High sec feels old and dull, but I don’t think that’s how it should feel. One should be able to take a trip into null/ls/wh have some fun and return to different environment and still be able to enjoy themselves.
Also on a side note:: ignore players that talk about min/max as they are a loud minority.
Here it is what, in my experience, highsec PvErs expect from their PvE. It’s been talked about and supported by 20+ players (which in highsec, it’s an enormous amount of people to talk to). It also has proven to be a yardstick to determine whether new PvE will succeed or fail, based on how many of the points are matched.
Solo PvE is expected to be:
doable in less than an hour login to logout
dependable (the player can count on it as source of income)
rewarding (it delivers ISK, fun, or relax… -the player feels good doing it)
allow and reward creativity (doable with lots of fits, ships, tactics, skills… )
get expanded regularly to avoid staleness (meeting old faces it’s fine, unless they’re the same ones forever)
PvE players don’t want to PvP. They don’t want random challenges and don’t want nasty suprises and certainly they don’t want to die to a bloody NPC. They don’t want tough challenges with one and only one solution (ship-of-choice it 'til it dies). They don’t want to play with others and don’t want to feel like they’re wasting their time because CCP randomly rewards better other players or nerfs their rewards.
Do you know what Coke drinkers want? MORE FUKKING COKE. Not New Coke. No Pepsi. No homebrew beer. No Brennivin. JUST MORE FUKKIN COKE.
One more point, I would suggest you to ask CCP about the last survey on Abysmal sites. I ahve a hunch that CCP might have been surprised by a “overwhelming” response.
CCP, by the way, has never surveyed highsec players. Or maybe did and got them as wrong as Abysmal sites can be wrong. According to EDU presentation, they were run by a wopping… 5%? 6%? 7%? of the players on first week, whe they were the hottest sh¡t ever. 16,000 out of some 300,000… and wer’e to guess hwo many fo them died horribly and forgot about them. My hunch is that dedicated abyss runners might be some 3,000 guys. 1% of happy players, hoozzah after fuill time dedication of god knows how many teams in the art and coding departments.
If you think that your answer is right, you are as clueless as CCP, which gloats about how a small sliver of their player base ran the sites on week 1.
The customer doesn’t buys your product based on your view of it. He buys hit based on HIS view.
The Abyss matrix:
doable in less than an hour login to logout -check
dependable (the player can count on it as source of income -hell, no. A single defeat might set you back for 40+ Level 4s
rewarding (it delivers ISK, fun, or relax… -the player feels good doing it) -depends. If your life is boring and being afraid and pumped in a game is your fun, you’ll have it. If your life is scary enough to worry about a fukking game, you better stay clear of abyss.
allow and reward creativity (doable with lots of fits, ships, tactics, skills… ) -Gila and dead ships, yeah, very creative…
get expanded regularly to avoid staleness (meeting old faces it’s fine, unless they’re the same ones forever) -we’ll see. With Leshaks at 800 million, looks like it’s becoming really old really soon
You shoud look at it through the eyes of the (X-16,000, with X liekly aroun 300,000) who DID NOT run them. Claiming that “CCP does it but doesn’t works” will do sh*t to make it work if you don’t ask the people massively ignoring it.
offer a smaller manufacturing platform as a structure, including refining and compression - small corps should have the ability to make small lower cost (and probably lower efficiency) structures that can be hauled about as they change systems
Think container ship for the next class of freighters. You can haul a lot, but bumping/accelerating/ect can knock a container off the ship. Use current station containers (of all sizes) for the container ship. Factor speed based on total mass
Fix the Agency - it is useless
differentiate the mining barges like they used to be - 1, 2, 3 mining lasers, maybe provide a ship that is intended to be a drone miner and offer special drone that can only be used with that ship (heavy mining drones anyone - slow - clumsy but with a big cost and yield)
Think - are there redundant skill books in the skill training system? Should they go away?
CSM define what the goals for Hi-Sec are and what the requirements are. That will give CCP and yourself something to think about and from that requirements for what should be done.
what are the key performance indicators for Hi-Sec? Conversion of Alpha to Omega, Dead miners? Number of active players? Until you have (6) and (7) you don’t know if Hi-Sec is working or not.
This is a crutch of a null sec player. It has a simple counter. If we do not have high sec for players to start building knowledge in where do we start the newest players?
This question will instantly get every single power block demanding they start with them.
Well, it all depends on exactly what CCP can actually do within reason to categorize the type of customers using their database. We may be assuming CCP has far more capability and skill than they really do, but assuming they have the talent and info to gather the information on HS pilots, what I would think they should do is:
Seperate all pilots into primary or secondary (alts) based on time undocked. Players who spend a lot of time in HS and remain docked are probably involved in manufacturing and/or market manipulation. Their current needs are being met for the most part; further effort should be made to get more data from them, but it would not be the primary focus point.
Taking ONE account as the primary, chose those that spend the most time undocked in Hi-Sec doing whatever activity and split them into categories based on years spent in EVE.
Select a small random portion of each category and send them a survey that is WELL DESIGNED and leaves plenty of space for feedback.
At the head of each e-mailed survey have something along the following lines:
"CCP is sending you this survey so that we can better access the needs,wants, and current state of Hi-Sec ONLY!! Our computer tagged you as a mainly High-Sec player so we are asking you to spend some time and give us an honest and detailed reply. If you think everything is fine, tell us. If you think there is something that needs to improved or changed, let us know in the survey exactly what you would like to be done.
Know that you can choose to not reply to this survey and we will take your name off the list for any future questionnaires. This will also limit your future chances to see any change you want in EVE’s Hi-Sec, although you can always post in the EVE forums or contact a CSM member. Now is the time to be heard; put up or shut up."
Put a weight factor based on the number of years someone has continued to play EVE; hopefully they have been around enough to know what has been tried and what changes are off the table (Gank-free Hi-sec!!) Rate the responders based on any specific details or extra effort they did in doing the survey; note them for possible future contact.
Put all the data together into a new survey, listing the possible changes based on 2 criteria: a) most popular ideas and b) ideas thought to have extra merit by either the CSM or CCP devs. Eliminate any ideas that breaks the boundaries the devs are not willing to go past. Send that new email out with the same disclaimer header and asking for feedback. Wait for the return replies.
Have the CSM and CCP together sit down and review the findings. Congratulations, you have achieved a far more accurate read on the Hi-sec players than ever before. Took extra effort, but now you have a more representative sample to base your future plans in EVE’s development.
…or perhaps I’m a bit too optimistic on just what exactly is CCP’s and the CSM’s intent in regards to HS.
The biggest issue with high sec, and it’s a really big one, you have the biggest population of eve who mostly want to play by themselves all attempting to offer suggestions that are purely self gratifying in the nature of the suggestion.
You can use your in game map and show the number of active pilots in the last hour, high security space glows while low and null are mostly just lines.
According to the data you so kindly linked the busiest system in null has about 3355 jumps in the last 24 hours, while Jita has 43,000 jumps in the last 24 hours.
Can we have the loot tables and loot drops looked at? I have only been playing about 1 1/2 years but the drops feel off to me.
Can we also get better notifications about the changes to the loot drops and loot tables for high sec? I might be missing it but I have never once seen it on the log in/boot program like the other news.
Sure.
Before the loot Nerf.
Before being flagged as suspect.
Before lazy people decided to camp the sites with tornados so they can steal what they are too lazy to earn.
Content is nearly dead to typical high sec players because null can do the sites with a cap shield.
