Firstly I need to say that my observations are… observations. There is no raw data to back the following statement up but I can’t help but notice that …
… with the rise of Discord, EVE content provided by communities plummeted.
Discord saw the rise of the epidemic known as the “ping warrior”.
While Jabber for example was only used by the largest alliances and coalitions such as Goonswarm for example, the broad availibity of Discord creeped the “Log on for Ping”-Mentality into every size of group. When there is nothing pinged and planned on Discord. There is nobody logging on. This has plagued many communities I have witnessed myself and heard from, from my old EVE friends.
Often I talk to these old friends that seem to miss the times when there was just more content and it all boils down to this single statement “we just logged on and did things, see whos there and whats up”.
This clearly correlates with the notion that todays EVE Group Gameplay is almost entirely based on logging on only for pings instead of spontanous content and fun found in the game itsself.
I would argue that Discord, especially to small to midsize groups is counterproductive to a healthy community and provided content.
I mean you are not wrong, but its something that has always been around. I have lost count of the number of people that have been in corps with myself that log on, ask what is happening and if there no corp op (of any kind) they log off.
I’m not sure if that is something with the people in that they need their fun created for them or if its something with Eve that doesn’t get people to undock on their own.
What I found so far on my industrial alt is that most people have chars in zero space and just moonlight in other areas of the game. I joined a corp claiming to be a high sec industry corp but in reality they were just some alts of people in WH and zero space who never really logged in.
From my personal perspective of being an active newish player and pilot I’d say that it’s all about finding the right type of people to play with, instead accepting to deal with lazy ones with 17 accounts.
Well, on thing to consider is that the player base has gotten older -which means that they are more likely to have careers and families competing for their attention. Thus, a lot of players probably like pings because it means decent chance of a fight, as well as SRP coverage (don’t need to do a bunch of PvE to replace lost ships)
Thus, it’s not necessarily that discord led to the ping warrior. In fact, it could be the other way around. It’s possible that aging player base was looking for a gaming experience that was more compatible with their current lifestyles, and discord ended up being the tool they used to achieve those ends.
But, I’m just speculating. I’m an autistic, neckbeard-having, no-life. So, I play all the time.
This argument is absurd. The functionality to send people notifications is not what is causing people to not log in.
What I see happen here is players falling out of EVE. Not using Discord will not stop those communities from failing. They could test this by forbidding their members to use Discord. There won’t suddenly be a swarm of players coming back.
What EVE needs is new people from the outside. No-one is playing the same game forever. If someone wants to play EVE with their community, they’ll log in just to talk, even if nothing is happening in the game at the moment.
If you have players so disengaged they neither want to talk nor to play, banning pings won’t help a thing. You need new players.
We were using technology like this long before Discord was a thing. For as long as I’ve been playing (2007), there has been some kind of messaging software used to summon people to log in for stuff. I remember the hell I had getting Jabber to work the 1st time.
Hell, at one point I remember breifly using an app that sent pings in the form of text messages, can’t remember the name.
The OP’s problem isn’t with Discord, his issue is with Alexander Graham Bell, but that guy ain’t around anymore. You can’t stop people from communicating out of game.
I agree with an above poster. The problem is not necessarily a discord problem it’s that most people are not self starting. They are lazy and want content fed to them. If a FC is not doing something do they organize something to do on their own? No. So they only respond to pings because they are guaranteed that some FC is on and providing content at that time.
I see a lot where people log in and see a few people on and go is anyone doing x activity they are interested in. If no one is then they log off. They could have easily started something and people would have joined them but they wanted someone else to spoon feed them the content.
I think a lot of people are in that state. They do not want to do something on their own, much less devise something to do cooperatively with others.
Perhaps the game is lacking in fun and interesting solo content that can hold players for years? I have my doubts about that, but I have only been playing since last year so I do not truly know.
I see what your point is, but I think it hardly depends on the player group.
At my corportion, the players log in when they have the time - for me 2-3 days for example.
In addition, some people will come online at additional times. When there are some good oportunities, I log in at additional occasions (and get my girlfriend angry :-P). Without Discord I woulnd’t get the ping, wouldn’t log in and may my corpmates are missing numbers because of that.
I struck out on my own cos I literally couldnt be bothered with “monday night roam”, “talos tuesday” “friday freeforall” and “MANDATORY FLEET CALL: USE DOCTRINE D”
I don’t know what this ping thing is, but I’m guessing it’s messages targeted with the @ symbol or something, not a measurement of latency and network speed.
When I’m playing Eve I close everything else, it just gets in the way, no web browser, no graphics software, no music playing off youtube or something.
I have found that Discord is a distraction, doesn’t add anything I want to Eve other than as a place to put screenshots of neat places in Eve for people to look at when, or more importantly, if they feel like looking.
Something I do not like about Eve is the need some people have to be looking things up on the web all the time, part of this is because CCP doesn’t (and for good reason in some cases) include things like the Eve university wiki in game and people seem to need to know everything before they do stuff.
Suddenly flying off on adventure turns into a waiting game as people look stuff up, decide they need to totally rebuild their ship which naturally can only be done twenty five jumps away and so on.
When I was in a corp that used discord I would log into Eve and at some point I would be asked “did you check discord?” my answer was always no, why would you put something in discord when you could just mail me in game?
Personally I don’t have the bandwidth for running comms, and that I suppose is a realistic use of discord, but I neither need nor want comms, even if I could use them. To me it would just be noise and I would be very likely to just take off my headphones.
The other thing that drove me nuts was having to switch back and forth, “check discord, we posted stuff yesterday” so there I am floating in space with Eve backgrounded being a target while I try to figure out what they were talking about, where it is and why I need to be reading it. On top of that, unless I mute the whole server it’s constantly going DING in the background.
The only thing that discord has that Eve doesn’t have built in is comms and the ability to post pictures, and that’s good, I don’t want a flood of stupid “memes” because someone thinks that someone else’s picture is better than what they could think up and type for themselves.
Discord has it’s uses, but for me Eve is hardly one of them.
free and easy way to get people on comms in occasional fleets, goes well with the new Fleet Up!
extremely helpful way of showing rookies how to do certain things in EvE, from UI use to probing and piloting, as you can simply stream, or let them stream so you can figure out where they’re stuck.
Come to think of it, would it be feasible for ccp to make a multi discord rookie help channel with streams for rookie help, with slots for helpers to show solutions live ? Brain fart perhaps.
Hahaha!
Yes!
For me fleet doctrine is simple: “fly what you love to fly, if you start dying I will try to help”.
People flying ships they don’t enjoy flying doesn’t make for a happy fleet at all.
I dunno that it’s had a negative impact on Eve… if nothing it’s brought people closer together. I could see an argument where X player discovers Y player also plays a completely different game, and both of them spend less time in Eve together.
