Greetings to all.
I will share my view on EVE.
I ask administrators not to transfer this article to other sections of the forum.
This article contains a lot of words, if after the second paragraph it’s hard for you to read not here 
Important! This is the view of a person who plays solo sometimes uses 2-3 accounts.
Let me start by saying that EVE is a unique game, there is no one like it in terms of player interaction with the game universe.
But the game has a number of mechanics and game design solutions that inevitably lead to an outflow of players. Which are superimposed on the world situation.
Taken together, this gives an extremely negative effect on the game, while, in my opinion, the “root of evil” is the mechanics of the game, and world problems make these trends more acute.
I will give a graph of the number of players.
It displays an objective picture of people’s interest in the game.
I have been playing since 2014 and I can describe the processes that I saw with my own eyes and try to find an explanation for them.
I will outline the problematic / repulsive moments of the game. Let’s separate the problems of game mechanics and economic policy.
- Let’s start with the easy-to-understand game mechanics:
This is more of a conceptual feature of the game, namely the way to move from point A to point B.
This can be done in two ways (I am considering the movement of the ship to a specific point in space, so the movement of WX / filaments is not considered in this paragraph).
Firstly, this is a passage through the gate, and secondly, the cyno.
And where is the problem here?
The answer is simple, moving the cyno requires a drive beacon, i.e. the second window and a small number of highly specialized ships (blackops / capitals) can do this.
With the second point, everything is much more complicated. Currently, there are ways to intercept ABSOLUTELY ANY SHIP! (if you think that invisibility and 2 seconds will save you, then no) Of course, with the proper approach and the number of players involved.
This leads to the following situation, you go to a new location and see Araza, a Saber and an interceptor hanging on the gate, “lost” drones or any other debris at the exit distance from the gate.
And here comes the understanding that regardless of your skills, your ship, you will die (if you don’t have a rescue team on hand), your ship is still invisible and invulnerable, but you have already lost it. Ask why? The answer is simple, they immobilize you and use the “call your friends” module, and you were 3 against one, and in a second there were 13 opponents.
These mechanics have led to the washout of solo players and small teams from the game, they either left or joined large alliances.
And I’m already hearing “You just don’t downgrade the mechanics of the game/Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose/I like to drop, it’s fun/Use a scout/You get beaten by blobs - that’s your problem” and a lot of that stuff.
I state what I see after flying through many regions, several weeks of filaments and flying through lowsecs and entering the WH.
*In 0, I see 2-3 Ishtars in several neighboring systems, they fly away when a new pilot enters the system (Is this really normal? When hundreds of players on the same ships do the same actions at any time of the day, if these are bots, then this is not surprising if they are live players …), then 10+ empty systems, a repeat of the situation. If the place is next to a large collective, then more diverse ships begin to meet.
Sometimes, very rarely, you can find a trap on the gate. Usually these are walk-through systems and the typical target is a scanner. Often there is a variant of escalation, cyno.
And it’s not like that? Everyone does what he likes.
The answer is simple, if there is a risk of losing, no one will fight with you.
It turns into a clown show. You will always be given a counter-setup, with zero chance for you. You can fly in a marauder, find a DED complex, and the locals will find you there, but in 90% of cases, everything goes according to one scenario. They find you, ambush the gates and … nothing, they just wait.
Typical dialogue:
ckillc > Should I wait for the fight or do you have no desire today?
XXX > coming
ckillc > Destroy anything that can jump on cyno and I’ll consider your expectation)
XXX > no cyno coming
ckillc > You have 20 pilots in 1 hop. I flew to find a fight, not to die from the fact that someone could find the f1 button)
XXX > ckillc ^^
XXX > actually no fight …
XXX > no one is coming they prefer farming
ckillc > Seriously, I flew into one of the most pvp oriented alliances in the game. And I hear the information “a step away from you 2 marauders”, the answer is “we are farming” 
XXX > too far from the staging ^^
ckillc > I understand that the most convenient frag is on your alliance’s keepstar andoc. Are you catching?
ckillc > ?
…
The remaining 10% is a LONG fleet gathering that will definitely win. Arrival of 20 ships to the site (usually a fleet with bonuses and logistics). Departing target, with a corresponding comment in the chat.
Lowsek is a swamp, deep, viscous and with a bad smell. Here the vast majority of residents are droppers …
I once did an experiment, flew from Caldari lowsec to Amaran.
Local census results: cyno, emptyX, cyno, emptyX, gate camp, emptyX, ventura digging gas…
*WX
Do you have a team of 10+ players? You will be interested, there will be fights, there will be income. If not, then you have nothing to do here. Big problems with logistics and navigation (I emphasize when there is a lot of division of labor) and always an overwhelming advantage of the enemy.
*Pochven
Fleets that a dreadnought cannot penetrate, comments are superfluous.
• Let me sum up the intermediate result:
The game for a solo player or for two or three friends is not playable.
Now let’s touch on the economy:
I will just give a link to my post, it is interesting from the point of view of general processes, there are graphs, analysis, specific figures. The data is somewhat outdated, but the trend remains the same.
In short, the developers’ decision to increase player spending due to an overabundance of money and resources is (I apologize in advance to CCP) one of the dumbest decisions possible. The game has the ability to make money out of thin air, and yet there is no issuer that regulates the total amount of money and it is possible to extract huge amounts of resources.
Just imagine, in the real world, a small group of people managed to earn a quadrolion dollars and extract more fossil resources than the entire society spends. The solution is to triple the prices of consumer goods…
The excuse about the crisis of overproduction looks (it is) a pathetic attempt to justify their mistakes.
Maybe it’s worth limiting the sources of endless money and resources, and not getting into everyone’s pocket? Clever thoughts haunted CCP, but they were always one step ahead 
• Now back to the online chart.
Consider the last 2 years.
The “epoch of scarcity” began with the beginning of 2020, this is noticeable in the price of ships, the graph is in the article.
This was supposed to hit the number of players seriously, but covid restrictions drove a huge number of people home. This led to the growth of online in all games.
Attention geopolitics!!!
It seems the circle is closed, the loss of 1/3 of the players in a short period of time. One caveat, the crisis will get worse. On the map, statistics on the popularity of EVE from Google.
There are complex processes going on in the world right now that affect the game in a simple way: people have less free money, they give less to the game - because of the fall in profits, the price of the game increases. (Do you remember the time increase in the game?)
In Europe, energy prices will rise, and the economy will fly into the abyss, the countries of the former USSR are now cut off from the game because of the sanctions wars.
In such conditions, it is not necessary to expect an increase in the number of players.
End of alarm.
Dead space will become completely dead.
I’ll tell you a secret for CCP, any new content revisions will not help raise online. They are cosmetic.
I will offer a number of fundamental changes in the game:
- Changing the movement mechanics:
*All! Ships can jump (mechanics similar to cyno) to a random point in the system. (introduction of a mechanic for tracking jumps / restrictions on the transition by special structures / sensors of the ship) (fuel is limited, endless jumps will not work).
*Working gates only in highsecs and lowsecs (in lowsecs paid use), in 0 gates on private maintenance, they spend fuel when used, access is configured by the controlling party.
- The goal is simple, remove the problem of moving around the universe
- Make a restriction on the use of cyno, enter an activation delay / bandwidth limit.
- Make a “Surplus Era”, people do not have to choose between two jobs, in the current situation the choice is obvious.
These measures will expand the audience of the game, if there is an opinion that cyno adherents will leave the game, then I consider this a delusion.
There are those who could master 1.3K words?
Thanks for reading, maybe CCP won’t let space die forever.
