You should stick with one version of your story. Either F2P causes “inevitably utter trash” game design, and presumably subs somehow support better design, or EVE with it’s sub model also ended up with utter trash that drove players away. In which case, going F2P causes no loss of quality in the game - it was already trash.
EVE lost 50% of it’s player base from 2014 to later 2016. Going F2P brought those player numbers back practically overnight. That is a difference directly attributable to the subscription vs. F2P models.
Unfortunately, you are correct that the poor game design is an equally big factor. F2P brought the players in, but CCP didn’t improve the game in any other way. They just opened the doors and assumed the game would be fixed. Old players and new came, looked around, and decided the game was still barely worth playing.
EVE with bad game design and sub-only model was dying rapidly. EVE with bad game design and F2P is dying somewhat more slowly. F2P can’t fix this, only better game design will.
I only can say THANK YOU CCP for Alpha idea. I realy enyoy. I am Alpha Myself and i am so proud ;). So much ways if you Ask me to make for plex Exploring, Combat sites, Escalations, Missions, Triglavians, Anomalys (random expensive loots from 500k to 100 mil) Null Space, what more peoples want???. Today Eve so Easy for play you just need little more time when you alpha and passion.I am only grateful for all this and especially for just log in every day and to see that game is still alive even if so much peoples tell every couple of days that game dying. We ALL GONNA DIE so will the EVE so stop complain and little enyoy in EVE
There is no inconsistency between the two as long as you understand the basic concept that there can be more than one way to ruin a game.
F2P will almost always result in a terrible game because the F2P business model requires game elements that work directly against having a fun and interesting game. Essentially you have to make the basic game suck so that people are driven to spend money on premium stat upgrades/loot crates/XP buffs/etc, and do so in a way that requires a constant grind and/or constant purchases.
A subscription-based game is free to omit that kind of nonsense because income is a flat $X per player. Game quality can take priority over exploiting gambling addiction and all of those objectionable mechanics no longer have any purpose. But obviously this freedom doesn’t guarantee success. There are still plenty of ways to screw up a game, the F2P concept just isn’t one of them.
In the case of EVE declining subscription numbers do not necessarily reflect the subscription business model at all, there are plenty of potential flaws that F2P would not have solved.
Going F2P brought those player numbers back practically overnight.
So what? F2P didn’t bring back the customer numbers, it brought back a bunch of leeches who contribute nothing to CCP’s revenue beyond vague ideas about being “content” for paying customers. And TBH those alpha numbers are almost certainly inflated by EVE’s current players at the time suddenly making a bunch of free alts.
Yeah, sure, the only thing wrong with F2P is that it’s different. Nobody could possibly object to a business model that is essentially “sell meth to children” as the #1 game design goal…
FFS…it’s not about better or worse, the fact is the industry has changed massively over the last 15 years. Shake your fist at that fact all you want but it wont do a thing…
Subs are better but those days are long gone…move on…
If the industry was jumping off a cliff would you follow them? Lots of companies deciding to get into the meth dealing business and cash in as much as possible before running their products into the ground (and/or getting their business model banned by the government) doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for CCP to do. EVE has survived for as long as it has because CCP understands their market niche and stays with it, the moment they make a F2P WoW clone is the moment they officially kill the game.
If EVE goes full F2P instead of subscription, complete with the mechanics required to drive demand for cash shop purchases and make a F2P game profitable? A month or two might be an optimistic prediction. The game might not even make it to the end of the first week with any meaningful player count, and most of the active players would be people trying to go out in a blaze of glory with their accumulated assets before the servers go down.
If EVE stays a subscription game and CCP makes good game design choices? EVE could be around indefinitely. But that would require keeping the subscription business model and avoiding the F2P trap.
If the only thing you can come up with to discuss is nitpicking about referring to CCP, the people actually developing and making decisions for EVE, instead of the parent company then you have nothing useful to say and can GTFO.
Sorry, I didn’t bother reading all of this. Is this another give me an award for just showing up thread or did the OP have anything intelligent to point out?
