Using two moving averages and the number of unique people (instead of online alts) would be enough to me.
How many of those online users are scouting alts, mining alts, ganking alts, market alts, etc alts?
I have been noticing many people claiming to be new to the game tough.
In the other hand, since I joined EVE years back people were already saying that EVE was dying… well, the game is still here and it’s full of people until this day. But other games are obviously dying, but not EVE… I just wonder if we have more alts than actual new players.
Me my husband and brother and family overall like 20 omega accounts. Alfa accounts like arx 50 and alts related alts 150. I do login alts for several reasons but i dont stay on them … so i would say my family has 200 of these logins… not 200 players lol. So as an active PvP player i can share my subjective idea out of observation over 10 years… Actual player numbers dropped far more than OP reflected. This is my humble observation as someone who create content, hunt and interact with community daily bases… out of that interactions… My brother specialised on trade. My husband ceo in null … well im chairman of RvB kinda 7/24 bombarded by info and comms rest of family has not much interest on PvP .( i suspect these carebears are adopted ! If my mom was alive i would say she had been playing eve online and 71 years old )
Currently EVE Online biggest 3 challenge :
Low player retention.
High risk aversity
Balance tipped over behalf of grinders not fighters.
Now if we look at these 3 its very easy to see how they are entagled.
Player retention rates are very low because CCP doesnt know the term “ INTEGRATION “. If they have any psychologist (/ social , behavioral , cognitive whatever is ) they MUST fire ! If they dont have one they must hire one !
They have ZERO integration strategy politics or understanding . And as long as they dont work with someone they will keep fail.
When a new player start play eve online first engage an extremely inadequate tutorial. Which one of the shortest tutorial i have ever seen in games. They of course rookie help channel flooded by a simole question : how to open their “stash” lol.
But thats not that much simple… start up doesn’t promise anything else that gets ganked in their ventures to a players who come from PvP games and get used to PvP playstyle. The second they understand they cant hit lvl 100 in a week they leave. ( which i love these aspects of EVE and I know how to tackle the challenges, ) What makes them leave are NOT these facts… what makes them leave is they cant get integrated and oriented about how to tackle these facts. )
But most of these players actually would like to try before they leave … but they are intensively brainwashed in rookie chat that they need to mine produce make isk PVP require a lot of isk and they cant do pvp without skill points. Which is TOTALLY BS! But they believe and retrieve… leave the game… but miners and more PvE minded players still have a way out due to they dont complain about main initial grinding and trading process… they complain about gankers not give them peace to grind…stay and begin to build up layers over layers…
Eve loosing FAR more PvP oriented pilots than PvE oriented ones.
Thats also feeding risk aversive player style . Research proven that there is a strict connection between risk adversity and long-term ( delayed ) gratification …There is a way to solve that dilemma in the stage of INTEGRATION but well CCP doesnt know the meaning of it even because i cant see any reflections in game so far in their applications and decisions . Activities measure by isk per hour but nor fun per hour most of the time… and isk seems like not tool for happiness but it become source of happines proud and Ego satisfaction. And z killboard still a measurement of success and proof for many PvP organisations in eve and entrance expectation. Which feeds even more risk averse attitudes.
Other thing … that i dont know how much it supports but fact !
We have so many Red Federation pilots returned recently . Old PvP veterans. Who eager to get into their ships and take fights… but when they learn the Otela mooved to somewherelse and their 3000 bs down fitted rigged ships and assets are in Pochven … they doesnt leave immidiately they seek ways how to moove that amount out of that N PC station and null sec … if we run an operation for these pilots every second dat it took our days to complete and you can guess the results… So they are looking at hull prices get chooked… look at rewards from some pve activities and general condition of starvation period…We give them ships free bowheads outside fro unlimited reshipping we get them in comms talk… But we cant always be succesfull to calm their resentment!
They leave before sub and play… Atm we have incredible more blue pilots than reds… and far more returners in blue than reds…
I think this simple out of experience example even may tell lot of things…
But none of these actually self enough to be a reason … its mixture of several different aspects in different lvls which i cant mention here already wrote a wall. @CCP_Dopamine@CCP_Convict@CCP_Aurora
As someone who IS new, and is currently debating whether to continue playing or not, I can shed some light on the in game issues that make me not want to stay:
I don’t like being a perpetual prey item. I get that this is a pvp game, but as a new player, I cannot compete with a griefer that gets his jollies sitting at a gate blowing everything up that passes. That’s just one of a few hundred examples of how new folks are screwed over. That isn’t to say there are not really nice folks playing the game… but it doesn’t take that many bad apples to make it “unfun”. A little risk is reasonable… but come on… it has gotten silly.
I hate to be a critic about someone elses coding, but they’ve had over ten years to debug this code. There are still a lot of things that are just cumbersome, or that “work” but could be improved. For instance having to repackage any item that gets equipped before it can stack. Or having no subdirectories available in item listings for hangars (yes I know about containers, but no containers within containers).
My current item that I may “rage” quit over… yes… “rage”… is not being able to release bpos from a disabled industry module. Apparently my work on them over the last three months (pretty much my whole time in this game) is going to be made into a loot drop in a war that I didn’t know about or have any control over. I don’t even know if its a “bug” or a “feature”. I can’t even get a straight answer from a support ticket. What’s worse, is I had a base disable their industry module on me back in november. I was then able to at least recover my bpos. I can’t even start new research tasks as they still count as open jobs. THIS is the kind of thing that makes new players want to walk away.
There seems to be an ever loving push to get people to leave hisec… The ONLY reason I seem why anybody would want that is to purposefully introduce new small prey items into lowsec to allow the old griefers something to hunt. I’m sorry… I’m not going to PAY MONEY to be a prey item. Life is too short.
There is a “risk” vs “reward” mantra going on… but “effort” should also be in there… it takes a lot of time to do a lot of things in this game to earn a modest amount of isk. Not everyone has a PC capable of being anything other than in “potato” mode… I get to play with a touchpad. Viable ship to ship PVP is not really an option for me, no matter how badly some manager at ccp wants me to do it. Quit trying to force it down my throat.
Evil, inconsiderate, self serving morals are ENCOURAGED in this game. Why would any parent who figures that out even ALLOW their kid to play this game?
There are no real reprocussions from being a criminal, griefer, or scammer. Society needs some semblance of law an order to function. This game tends to ignore the value of “society”.
The management keeps statistics on the “state of the economy”. They have no meaning… why? Because people put up bogus buy and sell orders with the intent of scamming others, or to manipulate those very numbers. Again… this is also another way the young fish get preyed on.
Just my 2.5 cents on the topic. Apologies for the “rage” one.
This only really happens once and it serves to create in the mind of the players the existence of gatecamps and gatecamp mechanics as a style that is possible in EVE. Then people grow up and realize they can avoid them pretty easily. And it stops being an issue.
In fact, people have gone out of their way to create 3rd party tools to help you even more. EVE - Check before you jump!
Stopped reading here because every sentence that starts like this from a random kid on a game forum comes from a place of zero knowledge / experience.
That’s the risk you took when you used someone else’s public structure without doing your research. Learn from it and do better next time.
Lmao, you should have taken the time to figure out the risks of using someone else’s public structure.
Yes, because Highsec is garbage.
First off, no. There are greater risks and greater rewards out in low/null/wormhole space.
Second, you’re paying money to make pennies on the hour in a video game if all you do is stay in highsec. Mining an entire asteroid belt may take 8 hours and net you a nice 25 million isk each day. Where as in nullsec, you can snag 45 million isk in a single hour by clearing 3 combat anomalies.
15 million isk every 20 minutes in nullsec running combat anomalies.
Your view here is incredibly skewed because you’re purposefully staying in a region of space that is not intended to be very lucrative.
This would be like staying in the beginner areas of an MMORPG and complaining that you have to kill way too many slimes to level up when you could progress to more difficult places and level up faster with monsters that grant more (but intentionally choose not to).
They don’t, but it’s hilarious that you (as such a new player) think they do.
I wish that were true… I’d love to be some “random kid”… but I’m a EE and Software Engineer with over 30 years of experience. I know what I’m talking about, both in code and in managing software projects. Get over yourself.
In any project there is a paradigm that developers get into of “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken” and they stop looking at ways to make the product better. New features are great, but sometimes taking a step back an looking at what is already there can actually give you a better return. Things get done and nobody ever reviews them again. They get blinders on. If you fail to at least pay attention to the things that “new” eyes point to when they see your work, your product will never be improved.
That’s just it… I had the same experience at a different structure and was able to recover the bpos. Why would I believe the behavior had been changed? There were no posted code changes for it… so is it a bug or an intended feature? Are the bpos loot or will they go to asset safety? Is it reasonable for me not to be able to at least reuse those job slots? Anyone know the answer? I can’t seem to get one.
Only to you… the griefer looking for prey? New players will take at least a year to even be able to fly ships even remotely close to what you have… the training tree somewhat mandates that…
Not everyone just plays to make isk… that may seem odd to you… but it really is true…
And not everyone is able to run those combat anomalies… I for one am using a laptop in potato mode… It’s not for lack of cpu power… its the size of the screen and intel video support. And you might also not realize that not everyone finds that style of play enjoyable… amazing huh?
I know for a fact that buy and sell orders get put up with the intent of scamming folks… I see it everyday. Do you even understand how the buy/sell order system works? And how screwed up it is? When someone can offer to buy anything at a fractional value region wide, and you have a new person trying to sell something, or someone that just gets into a hurry… you don’t see an issue with that? Or when someone puts a sell order up at 10x or 100x the actual value hoping someone won’t notice and accidently click through it? You never have seen that?
Or when someone goes to an obscure station and posts 500 shuttles for sale at 50 mil a pop just to bring its regional average up, you don’t see an issue with that?
The player market is broken. There are not enough people to drive it effectively. It is too easily manipulated.
No, it means you weren’t paying attention and didn’t realize that the owner of the structure had refueled and re-onlined the service.
My alliance has a new player skill plan that gets people into fleet fights within a few weeks. You don’t even need the overwhelming majority of skills to start engaging in new player activities. What are you even talking about?
You can literally AFK in a drone boat with zero effort as CCP has reverted the drone auto-aggression changes. But you wouldn’t know that because you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.
…so now you’re just gonna double down on the lie?
I’d LOVE to see an example of buy and sell orders put up with the intent of scamming folks.
Yeah, I see zero issue with this.
First off, you’re lucky someone is offering a REGION WIDE order, especially because after you’ve sold your goods to it, the lister has to PHYSICALLY MOVE THAT ITEM from the station you sold it to and move it all the way back to a main market hub. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t even be able to sell anything unless you hauled that stuff yourself directly to the market hub. You’re paying for the convenience, dear.
Second, that’s not a scam, lmao.
First off, you get a warning if the price is that different. If you click through the warning, that’s your fault.
Second, like with buying goods, if something is listed on the market, that means someone PHYSICALLY MOVED SAID GOODS to that station, and then listed it there for you to purchase. Again, you’re paying for the convenience of not hauling the junk yourself.
Do you actually expect Jita prices in some zero traffic dead end pocket? Get over yourself, kid.
Ok, but that isn’t the topic of this thread. In fact, more people seem to be staying over the last year or so, meaning likely not everyone things as you, but let’s take a look:
The game has always been this way - we are all vulnerable to each other. It’s been this way for 17 years and it is fine if you don’t want to play such a game, but it is hard for me to see that this is a problem since nothing has changed. Maybe the power gap is too large for new entrants which could be a real issue closely related to your complaint, but CCP has been working on addressing this and veterans are still prey items for everyone else.
Yeah, legacy code and the realities of commercial software development. This is at best an annoyance and not what is going to drive anyone who likes the game away.
The consequence of an active decision by CCP to design game play around structures by giving them advantages and trade offs, risks and rewards. You suffering the consequences of those risks isn’t a problem. Maybe the risks need to be explained more or something, but complaining over the fact that you made a choice and the dice came up snake-eyes this time for you is just complaining about losing something.
Being able to lose something is a core idea of this game. Only wanting to play games where you can’t really lose is a common trait of the modern gamer and is perfectly fine, but that may mean that Eve isn’t the game for you.
There isn’t really. There is just an attempt by CCP to implement the core idea of risk vs. reward. There needs to be rewards for taking more risks or people won’t.
So yes, as a result there is definitely built-in incentives to leave highsec but that is perfectly intended. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but then you don’t get the most delicious cheese. And yes, one of the purposes of this is to get people to offer themselves up as a target in the more dangerous spaces for the other players.
This is all intended.
It definitely is. In fact, Eve is considered by most to be a very grindy game which is another way of saying “effort vs. reward”. CCP is actively trying to make the game even more “effort vs. reward” with their attempts to reduce low-attention gameplay by AFK, semi-AFK and multiboxing players.
CCP may dangle some free daily gifts in front of you as part of their annoyingly transparent psychology trickery, but the vast majority of power and resources in this game come from players actively interacting with the game (AKA grinding). I don’t see how you believe “effort” isn’t rewarded.
This one is bigger and debated endless, but again this is intended. You can’t have good without evil right? And societies don’t have value if you can do everything yourself, no?
Let’s leave this as “working as intended” again. Eve is a hyper-capitalist dystopian world simulation. Maybe parents shouldn’t let children play in such a place unsupervised, but it also is just a game with imaginary items and no one really can get hurt. So I’ll just say it is a complex game for mature players, and maybe not everyone’s cup of tea.
That’s fine, but that’s also intentional.
The statistics on the macroeconomy seem largely correct. Perhaps some are missing or lacking detail, but they aren’t effected by buy/sell orders. Players can manipulate the numbers by selling to themselves, but I think this is much less of thing in the larger items than most people think. Manipulating thinly-traded niche items is one thing, but moving entire markets at the biggest levels is only something that can be crudely influenced, and only by a handful of players.
That said, the market is player driven and is influenced by all of us. That might mean that your profits are pushed down just by changes in supply/demand, or by your competitors just trying to play the game like you. The fact you didn’t make a profit doesn’t mean it was a “scam” but is just how a living market functions - profit opportunity are usually quickly filled, especially if that can be done safe and easy, from highsec.
None of these issues are really new and most in fact are intentional game design choices that been around for 17 years. It is hard to see how this might explain a recent drop in players, claimed (incorrectly) in the OP.
I think the problem here is just mismatched expectations. Either Eve isn’t the game for you, or maybe you just haven’t got yet what Eve is trying to do. Maybe step back and look down from the top about what this game is really about (instead of bottom up as an “industry simulator”), and then you can approach it from a better, healthier place, or decide that this game isn’t really for you.
Normal conditions and many cases i had rallied on you,. But i must admit… im admiring your patience and passion … how you explaining and answering that post is amazing …
but also sad situation… I have read all his complaints very carefully …
Here is some of my observations :
He havent gain hollistic understanding about eve online econsystem yet. He has no insights about how devastating results can bring for rest of new eden if his wishes fulfilled.
Since CCP has no integration politic you are there today and effort to make some sense.
Games exist with rule sets . Adaptation skills and learning is important 2 aspects of surviving in eco systems we engaged. There is many more but these two life and death success and failiure…
resisting reality and being clingy to “ how you wanted to be “ then “how actually is “ cause huge delay and failiure on this adaptation progress because it prevents accepting ,learning , and adapting .
I am in very close contact with “New to Eve “ pilots for years now intensively… i had seen new players who made themselves omega in first week of the game they are in … i had some proteges who killed me in solo fights before they reach out their first 30 days in game. Reach out hundreds of kills but half amount of deaths … doesnt bother with dying doesnt complain at all die clean and repeat…
But i have also seen players join game and rage quit because of lost their ventures to high sec suicide gankers.
My eve life started the day i have suicide ganked… and i came to place where i am today… but it ends for some players the day they ganked…
This is not about game design… this about personality and how we see the world handling a game our attitude and perspective.
Sushi is art … but not for everyone … and not everybodies taste… i can eat everyday love it … some people despise even without taste it… some taste only one piece and hate without try other types… some tries all the way learn and make decision if its for them or not …
But all these things doesnt change the nature and existance of sushi
This game gives you the space to make your own society, your own patch of civilization in the chaos. You need there to be evil, in order for there to be good.
Sure… just pull up most any ore or mineral… there is usually someone that has place a lowball buy order of 0.01 region wide even if that ore or mineral is worth 10000. That’s a scam. They are just hoping someone will come along that doesn’t know the value of what they are selling, usually a new player. New players have no idea how the buy/sell orders function, or they are hoping that someone comes along who just isn’t paying attention. They foolishly trust what is offered. if someone just wants to get something out of their inventory, they can space it. It isn’t a matter of “added value” by having to then move it around… It’s a “scam someone out of their labor” THEN move it around at a higher profit.
That’s just it… they haven’t been “lost” yet They are stil there taking up a job slot… I just cannot release them from the industry module. There is no documentation stating that as a penalty anywhere. What’s more in November it wasn’t a penalty at all. I was able to remove bpos from a disabled industry module (I don’t know if was disabled by fuel, attack, or on purpose by the station owner). The current one was by an attack sequence that I wasn’t even made aware of… I had no idea it was even occuring.
I cannot even trash what’s there and move on until that base is either entirely blown up or someone manages to re-enable that industry module. The station owner could not do it… so not only do I lose the bpos that took several months to get to that level (pretty much my entire game time to this point), but now I lose yet another week waiting before the jobs slots can be reopened by a cause that I have no control over. I cannot even get a response from a GM or Developer that says “That’s how it was designed to work” or “Oops… that’s a bug”. It’s just been a black hole. If it was designed to work that way, then where is that documentation or tutorial explaining that consequence? Shouldn’t there at least be a way to release the slots?
Not necessarily. It’s only a negative attitude that automatically assumes that.
I often put low mineral buy orders region wide, not because I want to scam people, but because I am prepared to do all the travel region wide, to pick up small volumes of minerals from all across, including lowsec systems.
Players can quickly reprocess loot (rather than as many end up doing, trashing it because some players don’t like have a build up of assets across many different stations.
So people can sell really small amounts of minerals, that often they might not have got anything for before and they dont have to even think about moving them out to highsec, or closer to their industrial centre, etc.
I do that work instead, and for my time and their convenience, the price is set low.
Not really. I mean this is quibbling over semantics so call it a scam if you want, but a scam usually has to involve some deception or something. Making a lowball offer, especially one like this that actually requires significant effort on your part, isn’t really deceptive. Have you ever looked at how much time it would take to collect a bunch of ore scattered across all a region?
Maybe some people are hoping someone else misclicks or something, but you will always have lowball offers when you have a free market. Some people will always think someone else is overcharging, or underpaying for something but that is because everyone values things differently, and that is how price discovery works.
Sure, the rules around structure combat are confusing and seem to be constantly changing.
The reason you can’t cancel jobs is there is a war in progress over the station and that has paused things. It will be resolved one way or another soon enough, especially with the latest changes that make it more worthwhile to fight over stations.
This is the kind of game Eve is. In order for there to be game play around structures, there needs to be timers and rules like this to put things at risk and give time for players to form fleets and challenge timers.
However, unless I am completely mistaken your BPOs will go to asset safety as soon as the station is destroyed, or if the station is defended successfully, you will be able to cancel the job and retrieve them. That isn’t true for all items in an active industry job, but BPOs don’t drop, at least when asset safety is active.
You really just need to wait a bit for the fight to play out over the structure. Eve can be a slow game, but if you were willing to wait months to research some blueprints, you can wait a few days to get access to them again.
Excellent well spoken post. I agree with many aspects of your argument. As a player who threw in the towel because of Scarcity. I understand the pain. I never understood why people get upset over Mission/Mine orientated High Security players. EVE in my opinion is like a new Steak House owners who keeps getting surprised that over 50% of their customers order “THE FISH!” Most owners of the Steak House would scratch their head or even maybe expand the FISH menu. As long as the CA$H is coming in, who cares? EVE decided to take a different play. They reduced the FISH option figuring their loyal customers would start buying the 20 oz ribeye! Well? As a person who loves English Beer Battered Fish. I just decided to go to another eatery. Here is what I would do if I ran EVE.
1. Develop some new Missions! ~ People want to eat fish! Let them eat fish!
2. Return ORE back to High Security. ~ Hard to get excited mining Veldspar all day.
3. Eliminate the ability to become a CEO until you have 25 Million xps! ~ Encourages interaction by not allowing mini kingdom building.
4. This would be hard. Maybe impossible? Voice comms in local. I would also allow players who own sov the ability to set the systems back ground music.
5. Return the ability to see another Pilot’s standings. Add flavor.
6. Cancel the CSM. ~ I have mad respect for them, but ASK ME what I want? Not another Customer.
7. Return to pre moon mining in High Security for ore.
Giving people what they want is what EVE should be doing. More Pilots in the game leads to more opportunities for all. I alternated between Missions and High Security mining and was damn happy for 11 years. Once in a blue moon I would sail into trouble (PVP.) I stayed away from/moved out of WH/NULL space because I could not commit to it.
Obviously impossible Sir. However CCP/EVE does have player data at their finger tips. They can tell you what the majority of people are doing verse what THEY are saying what they are doing? It like if you ever ask anyone what they do with their home Computer. Homework, job, research, watching movie are always listed as the PRIMARY focus. PORN is rarely said, but the computer Statistics data tell you a different story!
This is very valuable insight and you put your finger on a fact which is also very difficult to put into words. Outstanding evaluation … See through this and work on the reflections can be a break through point…
that’s a nice analysis and shows how things can go wrong…but there’s no evidence the sampling is being compressed or the drop is the result of this special type of artifact…none whatsoever. There little reason to question the OPs conclusion that there is a real drop, though small and rather gradual.
And even us analysis types don’t have available access to what I think it a far more important question…player (versus accounts) that log in.