Are the devs at blizzard saying the same thing? Addressing mass losses of players is important no matter who the customer is. I’d be worried if I lost even 5% of my business, EVE loses something like 94% of all players who try it.
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@Mike Azariah I am a bit confused about you saying that you do not understand why people are leaving. You have played the game and been on the forums long enough to know the main reasons very well.
Of course there are drama queens that blow things out of proportion and want everyone else to know they are upset and quitting…but…
There often seems to be an expectation that everyone in Eve should be mature, see things rationally, and somehow know the best action, but the reality is different -
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You know there are children playing Eve. Can’t expect them to be as mature as adults.
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Some people are on medication, have emotional, personality and other disorders. Negative emotions can be extra intense and hard to control for them.
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Some people are in bad situations in their life. Maybe lost their job, a loved one, a pet, suffering from depression. They will feel strongly enough to rant if there is yet another bad event.
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Not everyone has the same levels of social interaction, experiences and maturity. Some folks who play Eve are quite lonely in their real life and have not learned the skills to deal with others when there is hostility (even though it is “just” ingame hostility)
I firmly believe that saying “can I have your stuff” does not help and is one the same immature level as ranting about quitting.
Instead, I think that calmly telling the person where they went wrong and what to try and avoid is far better. That is why I appreciate the players who take the time to give positive suggestions and advice. If they apply the advice then great! We have kept another player.
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I don’t think everyone knows this, or that they have a romanticized and distorted view of what the freedom the game is touted to offer to be whatever you want to be really means.
Again contrasting with Final Fantasy, I have no control over my destiny. I am the warrior of light (or darkness or whatever flavor of the day) and I can make no choices that meaningfully impact anything in the story. However, I would posit that most people still consider themselves ‘free’ because nobody can interfere with what they do. They are free from interference from the other players.
In Eve, I am a capsuleer with no destiny what-so-ever. Eve won’t tell me what to do, or even give me much of a hint. There are few events that are scripted so that they have to happen to advance, or even a path of advancement that is ever clearly defined. This is a different kind of freedom. One people don’t recognize so easily because they can be stopped. They can be interfered with.
Freedom is not a guarantee of an outcome, or an assurance of success, but for some reason people think of it as such. Freedom is the ability to determine for yourself what you want to achieve and to select the means by which to achieve it. Freedom demands effort from the free. Freedom opens up the possibility of failure by giving you the freedom to make the wrong choices and making you work to find the right ones. Even outside of Eve people struggle to grasp or appreciate the responsibility that comes with freedom to choose.
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Considering that CCP claims that 24M players played over the livetime of EVE, there are a lot because I don’t see not even 240000 players. 
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every day as you log off or switch characters you can click the thumbs up or thumbs down button. you can also type a message to ccp in the box. the forums allow more space to explain yourself, but are subject to trolls and people that just dont share your view. use the tools provided. i am sure they have assigned someone to review them. good luck in your journeys and remember to give your stuff to some new player that didnt ask for it.
Speaking of that: Would be nice from CCP to give us some insights into the data they gather from these 2 buttons and the feedback box. And I still want CCP to use their so far useless rewarded survey tool that they sofar wasted tons of development and marketing time on to ask people about their opinions on all sorts of different matters regarding their development of EVE. Other developers do that on an almost obnoxiously regular basis and CCP also claims that they value our feedback above all else (/s).
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Eve’s not only a game about confrontation and survival, based on the simple goal of “build and destroy”, but it’s a game that is also confrontational. People are confronted with their own limitations (adaptive abilities, learning, social interaction, leadership qualities, etc) at some point in their Eve career. Those who stay fight their initial limitations, grow, become real Eve players who develop themselves. Those who quit make their initial limitations permanent ones, at least where this game is concerned. That’s the distinction I think I see between both groups of stayers and quitters.
Convincing new (and some veteran) players that there is always a way out of these perceived limitations, be it knowledge resources, support from other players, etc., and that no one is sentenced to an Eve career of solo play or suffering, could be a valuable addition to the NPE.
The jungle that is Eve (the game, not its community) requires players to seek each other out, instead of trying to survive in an insular way. Belonging to a group, with group support, is the surest way of coping with not only the difficulties of the game itself, but also to grow as one of its players.
How people cope with being confronted with themselves is a very individual matter, the one that ends with “Eve is not for everyone”.
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I think you’ve brought up a much larger social issue:
When one person’s happiness depends on making someone else unhappy, what is to be done?
(It’s a great discussion, but won’t be solved here (if it can be solved at all)).
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Can you imagine if the game had permadeath? Maybe the population would be higher, just as IRL we didn’t go extinct because dying was permanent.
Permadeath exists ingame in one way - basically when a character is deleted.
Well I think the increase in RL population is due to procreation and offspring, not because of death. And in the game you can’t make babies…yet… hehe
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They talked about having a permadeath mode for some characters, the idea was floated years ago but abandoned. Maybe with a bit of digging I can find it and link it here.
I just don’t see this as exactly that binary situation.
I did not die often, but I did die on occasion. I admit that it does tick me off a bit to be outplayed, but it only lasts for a short time after the heat of the moment. I like to plan, strategize, and think about how to overcome problems. Even today I spend most of my time trying to solve problems or planning how I will advance my own ambitions. I’m happy to do this, in game or out, and losing a ship or three gives me more excuse to plan, so it doesn’t make me unhappy in the long term.
Other competitive games aren’t much different. There is some temporary frustration when you lose, but there’s also the motivation to beat the challenger who bested you before. That’s a source of fun for some people. On some level, I enjoy being hunted. I enjoy coordinating a plan. Without people to shoot at me and give me an excuse to apply myself, I’d have been bored out of my mind.
I don’t think of these people as harmful to the game, or harmful to me. I think of these people as the game. Without them, I don’t really feel like there is one worth playing. They didn’t make me unhappy. They made me think.
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It’s that friction zone that makes Eve the game it is. Yin and yang.
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I get it from a business POV why not to have permadeath.
And from a gameplay POV it is a good tool that you learn from a mistake and can come back to do better.
But it’s also strife with abuse.
If other mechanics in the game can be nerfed because of the claim of abuse, this should be too.
I think it’s a question of values, you see many rage posts from do-nothing small time people that are just victims getting butchered repeatedly because they are too weak to fight back. The stronger players accept death and take steps to maximise their victory chances.
Perhaps this pattern is visible IRL too? Are city dwellers more likely to be weaklings depending on others? Farmers would be more self sufficient, in countries outside the USA it is practically expected for a farmer to have a 12 gauge but inside a city you will see hysterical cries around gun control (despite the real need for firearms in a city being much higher I think).
Does it translate to MMOs? It’s a stretch but maybe it does.
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I leave Eve nearly every month i’m so pissed at CCP right now, but every month I still pay that £11.99 to keep the skills ticking over. Log in every day for a few seconds get the crap from the daily log-in log-out then play Wow that’s how narked at CCP I am. Look what you made me do CCP re-subbed Wow ffs.
As for people leaving I quit posts, I feel for you all I really do. Most people would just uninstall and never look back, the ones that are posting actually give a ■■■■ and should be a least given an ear. Can I have your stuff, is as ever a timeless classic.
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because when some people lose at poker:
or in online games:
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Francis is a skit (top gif)
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