Dear EVE, here is why I say goodbye

New Citizens Q&A
83

Nope.

BOB held because it was the most disciplined and professional big alliance + biggest supercapital fleet + MC supercapital fleet and game mechanics which made their commitment in defense work it for them (so not single handedly). Not because of SP or ISK because they had those even after alliance was disbanded right? With that logic they would continue and just reform. And they had nowhere near 80% of eve against them.

4-10 times bigger numbers (even if it was truth and it is not, maybe if you just count sheer membership base of involved sides) did not mean much back then due to DDs mechanic and no one had more titans than BOB + they had balls and knowledge to use them. And again this is not due to SP but ISK only, they had industrial infrastructure for years which made this possible. And that game mechanic is the main thing that made it possible to defend for so long. And that ISK was gathered while they were training skills :smiley:

Do you know why they had very long experience in pvp? Because they had time to practice it while they were training skills ^^

Also, there are numerous battles they have lost against equal sizes (or even smaller) fleets as well. Which did not decide the war but just show that they are not invincible regardless of SP/ISK.

BOB was not the only high SP old alliance in the game, yet goons / test were both very young allainces consisting of new players. If your logic was true, there would be other BOBs and goons / test would fail.

Nowadays you have corps/alliances which still mainly focus on new players and they are doing great. They are powerful and dangerous.

You need ~1-2 months to learn to drive a car. Yet you need to drive at least 100k km without incidents to be able to say that you are good driver. Why do you think this should be different? Of course there are cases for some above average intelligent and hyper active players which could do it fast. But average player with average activity might need even more time to have enough chances to test, train and master his skills.

Yea, eve is dying for 13 years already. This exact business model is what keeps them being niche and staying in the market for so long and so successfully. Eve is not a game for average gamer and I think we all take some pride in that. Subscriber numbers are matter of seasonality, marketing etc, they grow and lower during the time, that is business. Losing market share to which competitors exactly? All games in general or MMORPG only or some exact game in the niche? I might be wrong but I do not know of any going games like EvE.

If they make drastic changes to game they will lose what they have now and surely will not get enough of new players to overcome it.

It might look to you, guess you are not really business savvy to check the financial reports. EVE is not a problem for CCP it was other projects - which are funded by EVE. Nice manipulative narrative switched to “worrying for the game” but it is shallow empty talk.

From a business point of view they have already did mistakes which harmed their relationship with old, loyal customers - injectors to help new players. Which of course did not work out as intended but “CCP” :smiley: Making game easier would just make it worse.

EVE is easiest ever, making it more easy will make it EVE:GO and it wont last long that way. Since you do not like it, good luck with new games, take care, don`t let the door hit you.

P.S. Can I have your stuff?

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84

There is a lot of truth in this post.

Too many things are locked deep in training trees, and too many give very marginal improvements, for too great a time investment.

now it is easy to have a straw man argument and claim that everyone wants it easy, but thats not what is being said, at all, the balance itself is actually wrong.

separating classes into racial, was a thoroughly retrograde step. It loaded the training debt onto those mid age players, and created a plateau, where many feel training is of minimal benefit, yet still being essential, instead of being an encouragement.

I am fortunate, I am well past that stage, and even benefitted from it, but new players (or any alts I might want) either get discouraged or feel that the only practical solution is skill injectors. some you keep at that point, but most will leave. (as you are no doubt witnessing)

There is an absolute argument that training time makes for “stickier” players after investing so much time, but that is countered by fewer reaching that point. Make the training time feel valuable, rather than a grind to be endured.

A balance somewhere is required, and setting skilling requirements just to make people wait, with little medium term benefit, is not the way.

Eve should never be easy, but should feel rewarding for the time and effort expended.

85

If it’s not worth the investment, do not train the skill. Too many people saying “whatever skill is not worth X weeks for X % boost”. If the % boost or the newly usable ship / module is not worth the length of training time just train something that is worth it.

Why anyone would train something they don’t consider worth training is beyond me.

It wouldn’t feel rewarding in the slightest if it took no effort or time to do.

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86

Well, I spend hours every day in the help channel so I’ll take that experience over a 30 minute sample if you don’t mind. Besides that, I am a new player, so when it comes to speaking about the new player experience in 2017 I have a massive advantage over you.

It’s a bit of a forum cliche to argue that anyone who doesn’t support your hypothesis is an exception. It seems to be fairly common on these forums for veteran players to speak on behalf of new players, turning guesswork and speculation into ‘fact’ while on the rare occassion that a genuine new player speaks up for themselves, that factual evidence is just dismissed.

The ISK struggle is not real.

Project Discovery alone can make you a million or more in 5 minutes. Yesterday in the time it took me to fill a Retriever Hold with 6 million in Plagioclase Ore, I had also made 8 million from Project Discovery. That is 14 million in less than an hour as a miner, widely regarded as one of the lowest income activities for new players. Nothing exceptional.

I once made 100 million in a day because a Drone in a High Sec combat site dropped loot worth 57 million and on the way to Jita to sell it I salvaged a wreck outside the station that had 47 million worth of Intact Plates in it. This was in my first month, using nothing more than an Algos and a Salvager I module. Nothing exceptional.

165 million? It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. On a bad day I make 30 million without even trying hard. It’s absolute nonsense that it would take a month or 2 or 3 to make 165 million for a new player. It takes 5 or 6 days.

I’m not going to argue with you, at this point you are the equivalent of a white person telling a black person you know more about what it’s like to be black than they do. You know nothing Varanik Rendz :wink:

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87

2017 New player here too, 165m ISK is not too easy ( a newbie needs some time to train for a retriever, btw), but it is not impossible either. I do not concentrate on ISK hoarding, but on to find out what’s most fun - I try this and that, but being a carebear is somewhat limiting the action :wink: . I reckon I have made 200-300m ISK per month, but for I bought all these expensive ships and fittings, it’s just a guess (at least in my opinion expensive, but if 165m is just nothing, well…).
Opportunity always means leaving other opportunites undone. But hey, every player has to deal with it. It’s called freedom!

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88

Sorry Teckos but those stats and all of the other information released in that oft mentioned study are worthless as proof of anything. Well that’s not quite true they were a wonderful marketing tool and people like you that buy into them without questioning the study itself are proof of that.

In reality it is that presumably random nature of account selection that is the biggest problem with the conclusions.
Was it truly a random selection, or did CCP cherry pick accounts to insure that a predetermined result was achieved?
If it was truly random what percentage of those 80,000 accounts had been shot at and left versus those that were shot at and stayed? This one aspect alone could make a huge difference in the conclusion reached from the study. If the majority of them were shot at and stayed you would get a different picture than you would if the majority had been shot at and then left. For the statistical analysis of this situation to be valid accounts would have to be chosen carefully not randomly. Even then the data would be questionable because if you really want to know what the factors were that caused people to leave the game you need to study people who actually left the game, studying those who still play is worthless.

I really do not need to go into all of that statistical analysis angle to question the validity of the conclusions drawn. CCP markets EvE as a place where you will get shot at and that you are not safe anywhere. If the data proved that this core tenant of the game was actually a major factor in players decisions to leave the game, do you really think they would publish that information? do you really think they would have made it part of the keynote speech at fan fest? Even if CCP would how about their investors and minority owners, do you really think they would be happy with CCP publicly acknowledging that a core tenant of the game actually posed a threat to their investments? No CCP Games is not wholly owned by the staff and founders they have minority owners and investors.

89

I have made 200-300m ISK per month, but for I bought all these expensive ships and fittings, it’s just a guess

So it would be fair to say even without concentrating on hoarding ISK as you say, that in 3 months you will be well on target for a billion ISK? The comments above that I am replying to suggest that 165m in 3 months is a challenge for new players, and even go so far as to say that a billion would take a year.

I think it’s clear that such comments are nonsense.

I am not trying anywhere near as hard as I could, and neither are you from the sound of it. While 165m might still put a noticeable dent in both of our fortunes, it’s certainly not the ‘simply impossible’ target some want to make it out to be.

90

You know… That still wouldn’t solve the SP problem. As you two stated you make roughly 200 to 300M per month. Yes you could clearly buy small skill injectors but… It’s not worth it. Assuming new player didn’t hit 5M SP you’ll get 100000 SP. On average new character without neural remaps gains 1800 SP per Hour (unless you train skills with charisma as primary which will make SP gain bit lower). That means Small Injector will give him/her equivalent of 2 days 7 hours and around 30 minutes. You’d spend over half of your monthly ISK income less than 10% increase of SP gained during that time. That percentage will dwindle even further if you use implants. In fact the only case when Injectors save you more significant amount of time is when you combine them with neural remap and assign SP to skill outside of your chosen attributes. And that is something that new player is unlikely to utilize. In the end Skill Injectors don’t hold that much of value for new players.

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91

This is a far more accurate statement regarding new players and skill injectors.

It’s not that new players can’t afford them it’s that the value of them in terms of SP gain is minimal especially below 5m SP (I am at just over 3m SP after 2 months).

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92

Yeah, still trying to figure this out. Of course, early on my friends delayed (longer than me) training learning skills. Then when I was really racking up the SP and was out there in NS alliances with a BS with T2 guns and they were not…they finally trained them. Of course they complained about training them, but I kept telling them, “If you had only done it earlier it’d be over with by now and you’d have more choices as well.”

93

Based on what? Why are they meaningless? Because you don’t like them?

Ever heard of the principle of charity? In short it means that when you are discussing something with people you do not attribute being a liar to them. I could do this with you and say you are simply lying. It means nothing you say can be trusted or taken at face value. It is a particularly dishonest form of argumentation. Please do not do this…use the principle of charity.

Watch the video, they go over that. Most were not ganked. IIRC it was like 99% were not ganked in their first 15 days. So newbie ganking is not really an issue.

So that means they had about 800 accounts to look at that were ganked. That is pretty good, IMO. As for “shot and stayed” and “shot and left” that is what went into the average length of stay. Those shot had a larger average length of stay, those that were not shot at all had the shortest average stay in game.

Sorry, your post so far tells me you really don’t get statistics and probability theory.

94

You do know that value is subjective, right? Just because you do not think it worthwhile does not mean others do not.

You should stop telling others what they should and should not do with their ISK…it is kind of arrogant.

95

Because you need to train it to 5 in order to fly Capital Ships and or Freighters, the only ships this Skill gives a bonus for. If you train it to 4 only, you have wasted time for nothing. It basically is a time-sink, I guess back in the day with the intention to prevent EVE becoming Capitals Online. Did work well, did it?

As it says in the Skill Description:

  • The advanced operation of spaceships. Grants a 5% Bonus per skill level to the agility of ships requiring Advanced Spaceship Command.
96

In other words, it is worth the time to train then.

And the training difficulty is simply there just to piss people off, clearly. There is no way game balance could be a factor. :roll_eyes:

97

In other words, this skill (Advanced Spaceship Command) is working different than any other Skill as it offers zero progress to anything on Levels 1 to 4 and only becomes effective with Level 5. Effectively it is not %5 Agility bonus per Level, but 0,0,0,0 and finally 25% for Level 5.

P.S. I don’t think passive-aggressive expressions such as your “There is no way game balance could be a factor. :roll_eyes:” are really helpful to get to the core of it, because they offer no new thoughts. As I said, historically it was probably to prevent EVE becoming Capitals Online, but this - amongst many other things - could use a review. The goal of game balance, as you insinuate it being a reason for the layout of the Skill, is usually one that specifically takes development over time into consideration. So if in EVEs example a player who started in 2010 is not just proportionally (to years played) advantaged over a 2016 player, but exponentially, then the game becomes unbalanced to a point where things could fall apart. Thus old decisions need to be reviewed and what might have been a good balance decision a few years back might be a negative factor today.

98

I don’t know the details of the study, so I will just take your word for it, of course with principle of charity.

The thing is that I easily want to believe it is true, new players who lose a ship in any form of fight, are more likely to stay. Without thinking too much, it immediately makes sense to me. Social Interaction, feelings of true consequence and all that - it makes EVE what it is.

What @Donnachadh seems to be argueing for is to always question the framing and proceedings of a study. I think he is right about it.

Since I don’t have a tinfoil hat with me, I’ll not assume CCP ordered a fake-study. While it is totally normal business conduct to pay “scientists” to make a study about a product with a clause for non-disclosure in case the company doesn’t like the outcome, I don’t see what CCPs intentions could be in the specific case. Just doesn’t make any sense.

From the pure numbers though, that you @Teckos_Pech provided, I would have to ask myself wether or not I should allow myself to use this study as logical/factual support of my positive feeling towards ‘early PVP = higher chance to stay’.

Simply put, it could be nothing but correlation. From what you say I don’t see any argument that allows for logical conclusion and while I’m totally willing to believe it is true, I will have to look for more conclusive answers to prove that feeling right or wrong. What the numbers clearly seem to show though is that rookie griefing/ganking wasn’t a major factor in people not staying. That seems already very clear from the 99% vs 1%.

For the question why people stay - I mean if you just pose the question the other way around: what is the chance for someone who decides to stay in game to get ganked or find another form of PVP within their first 15 days or first month? Of course it is higher than for people who already lost interest in the game after a day or a few and end up doing nothing. This could then again look as if ganking is a positive factor in the decision to stay rather than the natural outcome of that decision.

99

165M is a lot for a new player, not ungraspable, but it has meaning. As @Jaquan_Wessette replied with numbers afterwards and you @Sindara_T_Soni agreed, it just doesn’t positively influence SP progression by a meaningful amount.
1 Billion in 3 months is not bad, it is still a lot for new players, but it is still not getting you far in regards of SP. If I’m not mistaken you will need 112,5 Large Skill Injectors to get yourself from 5M to 50M SP, which sums up to something around 90 Billion ISK. With normal training it takes you at least 2 years even with +5 Implants and optimized remap. While 50M SP sounds a lot while looking at it from below 5M SP, it isn’t really a lot. After 2 years of training or spending 90 Billion ISK (the equivalent of a bit more than $1000 if buying the large PLEX packages), you will still have major holes in many support Skills, can effectively fly only fly a limited number of ships in a limited number of roles. Of course you can make decisions in which direction you want to go, but sooner or later you’ll find out that training everything to 3 just doesn’t cut it in a competetive environment.

That being said, you’ll want to aim for upwards of 100B ISK a year as soon as possible until you find out that in real EVE you don’t only need a nice group of friends (really the most important part), but also alts, who again need SP/time/money. And finally you’ll want to fly the ships that you trained into, which again costs ISK especially if you enjoy PVP.

If you opt to make the 100B in game rather than buying PLEX, you will most likely spend a lot of time in the game, enough that your in-game experience and Skill in doing stuff will rise much faster than your SP and quickly you’ll end up knowing things you want to try, but you will have to wait/grind for another few years or pay another few $1000 to get there.

As an alternative you can always start a new char, spend $500-1000 once plus the monthly subscription and only use this char for one very specialized role. I personally think that kind of sucks though.

100

You did read the whole thing right? Cause you seem to be missing the math. Newer players (not new characters as there is a difference) are roughly able to make 200-300M Isk. In 30 days. There are also slim chances they even dare to touch neural remap as they probably lack solid grasp on what path they wish to pursue. That mean the Small Skill Injector would increase their total SP gain during those 30 days by roughly 8% or even less if player jacked +3 Implants.

Speaking on topic I have to agree that current skills system can be discouraging. Especially since the game doesn’t exactly do a good job with explaining the newer player anything related to it. Couple that with the fact most newer players won’t even know which path to pursue which even further extends that training time and you have an easy recipe for dropping the game. Been there couple of times. Due to couple mistakes and early move to Syndicate (joined corp there day after I created this char) my ISK income was poor and despite my corp mates’ help I really couldn’t focus on finding that one enjoyable thing leading to almost extreme case of “master of none”. Yes my Isk situation is much better though still not amazing and I found my passion exploration but still my skills are quite messy and I at get at best average results.

The worst problem I see with skills are misleading and needlessly convoluted requirements when it comes to ships. Let’s take Jump freighters. Core skill here is simple and requires Advanced Spaceship Command a level IV and Industry at level V. Not to hard huh? Even for me it would take barely 11 days to train. And then you look at actual ship requirement… Racial Freighter at level IV which requires Advanced Spaceship Command at V and racial Industrial at III and additionally Jump Drive Callibration with its requirements. That will make… Oh 65 days. And then I’d still need two to three months to max out those support skills since most Nullsec groups will place their logistic hubs well beyond range of freshly trained JF. Additional skills can pile up really quickly and you may not see actual benefits of them for a long time. Or none at all like with Ice Processing skill prerequisite - hydromagnetic physics. Sure it has its uses for a certain T2 manufacturers but for Ice Miner trying to maximize yield from ice ore so he can sell materials or build fuel blocks it’s basically a dead skill. Dead skill with an expensive skill book.

So yeah IMO that area of the game could use some improvements. Maybe a better guiding tools, maybe lowering the bar for more activities to be done at least on acceptable level so the “finding your way phase” wouldn’t hurt player too badly in the long run.

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101

Why would I learn to spell? English is my third language. how many do you speak?

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102

Yes I know it is you are or you’re. Never cared to be bothered to be honest. Don’t have the time to worry with trivial things like that. I will leave that to the small people.

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