This post is more to point a shining light to CCP.
For the past 7 or so years, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Why eve online feels lonely, yes a lot of players are gone but the social aspect of eve has disappeared, an important part of the game for new players who join. There is a divide in the social aspect. When a player joins a fleet, or joins a corp etc, it’s quiet and they end up quitting.
Why is this you may think, it’s because every established player is now using discord to text chat.
I’ve noticed this recently, recruiting new players to corps. They don’ want to download discord so they cannot experience the full social part of the game, there is a divide.
CCP as a feature improvement, I think you should focus on changing or improving aspects of the social aspect of eve online. It’s not just chat, eve mails are not really used anymore either.
I honestly believe the issue with new player retention is NOT the game content but has EVERYTHING to do with the game social aspect with other players, it’s totally shifted out of game to things like discord.
Suggestion:
3rd party API for chat integration, such as messages posted in corp chat etc to pull them into discord or something.
ª Probably open to abuse but base some kind of new in game social skills on people rating you as a good help or conversation in local chat or something and gaining rewards on it.
• Re-invent the chat UI and mail UI.
Just ideas off top of my head, which will have flaws buy you get the idea.
3rd party tools are and will be superior to the ingame stuff about socializing CCP can come up with. This is a fight CCP can’t win. They actually are on Discord, there is an official EvE discord.
… the other more severe issue is social media overload, there is just too much, you can follow and get lost or lose your mind. I think for my generation who grew up in the 80s/90s and were watching the whole digital world unfold around us, and we shaped it, it’s mentally “manageable” … but the “digital natives” were thrown into all this mess without any time to accommodate.
The game needs Voice Chat.
I don’t need Discord for anything and I don’t see why I should add yet another privacy invasive application in my life for entertainment.
Please dont give CCP any ideas. They seem to be finally back on track as far as fixing EVE. We dont need them to go mess around with things they dont understand
That seems to be the usual excuse to avoid maintenance cost. It’s the same excuse I read about Captain’s Quarters a few days ago in that thread: “Only used by 0.2% of players”.
What was the excuse to scrap Walking in Station? I haven’t got to reading all about that yet.
I think the Voice Chat they took away wasn’t up to par with the Mumbles & company and instead of spending time and money to improve it they decided to cut cost.
An MMO needs an in-game Voice Chat, there’s no two ways about it.
You can believe what you want but the truth is that I was already playing (I’ve been playing since 2003 with different accounts) when there was the option to use EVE Voice and except for the beginning because of the novelty, after a while nobody used it. They always used the external programs I mentioned before.
And it’s obvious that you weren’t playing when the players’ rebellion happened when they found out that the lack of maintenance and development of the EVE core was due to WiS and the golden monocle…
Turning off voice chat is one of the first things I do in games because am not interesting in kids and child minded adults crying and whining over their lost space pixels and whatnot usually with their extremely squeaky voices on top.
I guess we could see more Bonus Room situations pop up if this was re-introduced as it is much easier to get some random guy you meet in space into an in-game voice chat than into a third-party one. Just a can of worms to be considered.
In general I have nothing against it if it’s optional… but CCP tends to make things mandatory at least after a while, so yeah who knows if it’s worth the trouble as I’m also sure based on CCP’s track record that this new feature will break things left and right and probably won’t be fixed until a year or so later if ever and probably will make client lag even worse as it is.
Hi, Aiko.
How would the new players do lvl1 missions in Lowsec or NullSec?
How would the locals of Low or Null differenciate between genuine new players and scouting alts?
Why should the locals of Low or Null put up with new players mining and ratting in their territory?
outside the game voice chat isnt anything new in the mmorpg world. in game voice is not required at all. anyone not downloading discord probably isnt a serious recruit or extremely anti social. no real loss.
If you read about captains quarters, you read about walking in stations, because you were limited to one room IIRC. It was fun for a minute but was resource heavy.
No it does not. Last night my girl and her griends were playing fortnite/D2. They were using Playstation party chat over in game chat.
I think if it’s a good voice chat ready to go in-game players would use it for the convenience of not having to have another intrusive program open on top of the game.
What I gether from this thread is that EVE players cannot have good things because the devs are incapable. I’m not saying they are but this thread’s replies certainly suggest that.
its always been that way since the “golden age” of eve…so like it said using mumble isnt some new thing. Having said that i have alt in a fw corp and people talk in the ingame chat. yall are making somthing a issue when it really isnt one.
Id rather CCP fix null sec than wast time on a voice chat that will see little use.
I know we all don’t like being wrong. But what is the issue with the statement? It’s definitely worth looking into the data on this. This game relies on external companies such as discord for the raw text communications, I’m not talking about voice comms here. You don’t need to switch from in game to out of game to use that… text chat however you do unless you’re lucky enough to have two screens.
The games social aspect has been split, vets use out of game chat, noobs use in game chat. It’s a lonely place and it will affect retention. How do I know? because a noob who joined my corp told me, “why is it so quiet?” and thats why he’s not been on, we mention discord he’s just not interested. He’s playing this as a game, not a full flight simulator setup. And then BING, I realised that’s the same reason as a returning player i Keep stopping on return, it’s the in game social aspect being shipped of to discord.
Discord isn’t going to go anywhere, but CCP can work on integrations to streamline them both to work together.
You have to be pretty stupid or in denial or any negativity to think that this social aspect has no bearing on player retention.
