I am reading these posts, and I find some of the arguments simultaneously hilarious and sad.
EVE needs players, but EVE does not need all types of players. We can get along well without cheaters and gold-farmers. Why people attack each other and their playstyles is a mystery. The various styles are in competition and the arguments seem to be (tears because crime isn’t easy enough and the servers will go dark if it is all a theme park VERSUS tears because mining/industry isn’t easy enough and there won’t ever be enough players to keep the servers from going dark). MY comment is that the competition is fun, and there are unexplored doctrines out there yet which could tip it either way waiting for the right players to use it.
As for the emphasis on player numbers, Fie on your numbers! EVE will never be a truly massive game because it is too much work to learn to play it well for the casual gamer. That is one of the things that impresses the people who continue to play it. I think I shall once more focus on making a doctrine to do something unexpected and unconventional and hope some players find it valuable enough to make it work.
Meanwhile, the forum goes on with scare tactics which don’t do well at stampeding EVE players because EVE players are mostly smarter than that. What I would like to see is that CCP/CSM get together on a mechanism of extracting creative content from the players for these storylines rather than trying to do it all themselves. I mean players write part of it now with ships, resources, guns, etc.
For those complaining about not enuf or too much PvP, ah well, if you just pull that cogwheel there then the machine will all be Ok, right? right? Oops!
We have a rare game here. There is no other which can compare. I see new players make comparisons, and then I see the remaining new players eventually look at entering new players making such comparisons and then shaking their heads, realizing that they have risen above that.
We don’t make a better game by dismantling its parts. We make a better game by submitting ideas in writing as storylines in addition to developing doctrines and finding new niches which every change affords us. True, CCP certainly would not be able to implement very many storylines, but think what a hit a compendium of player contributions to storyline could be as a separate publication or adaptation… It won’t ever reach the mods offered on open-world single player games since those games essentially change by the mods you incorporate, but it would definitely be fun to see what we, as a community, can do, including the Whiners with Diverticulitis.
