The Ancient Gaming Noob did an article based on the “Understanding free-to-play MMO retention” study. AFAIK the original study was published via superdataresearch but is sadly no longer available. I’ve brought up both the study and related articles a couple of times in the past, only to have them ignored by the usual suspects; presumably because it didn’t fit their narrative.
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That’s a good link thanks.
you could not be more wrong on everything you just claimed here…
I thought you were dumb, not stupid…
but anyway.
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This is the issue:
Then look at how many wars they have at the moment, 40 in total at the moment. There are plenty of wars in hisec atm thank you. Aiko gets it wrong again.
But the real question is this, is this really war, to me it just looks like a whole lot of farming…
Being a carebear is a personality trait, and not a choice of gameplay style.
My industrial alt isn’t a “carebear” because the person sitting behind it (me) does not argue against the existence of PvP, or the ability of other players to be able to attack them at will. I don’t play on Destiny and say that “I want more wars and ganking in EVE,” and then get on Buildin’ Bob or whatever and start posting about how I wish high-sec had no PvP so that I could mine and haul in peace.
What kind of convoluted chop logic is that? Seriously.
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80:1 kill/death ratio. Well i suppose that’s a slight improvement…
He’s not saying that you can “deduce” anything here, he’s saying that the two correlate, and he’s right. This has been known in the games industry for years.
Here’s an article that goes into it in detail written by a guy who literally does monetization analytics for mobile games: The Science & Craft of Designing Daily Rewards -- and Why FTP Games Ne
There’s a reason that daily login bonuses of some type have become so ubiquitous, especially in Free to Play games, over the last several years. They do help keep people playing.
The only thing you can judge someone on is what they do and what they say though, and generally “carebear” is thrown around to describe both a general playstyle and an attitude expressed on the forums, and it kinda lacks nuance.
Most often it gets used to refer to “someone I disagree with” as a kind of gatekeeping purity test.
I’ve been called a Carebear at various points, and also accused of hating High Sec, sometimes in the same thread.
We can define terms however we want. What’s important is that we know what each other references. For simplicity’s sake, when speaking with you, I will just lay out the entire description when talking about “carebears” or “casuals.”
So when referring to carebears, I will say “players who argue for the removal of nonconsensual PvP” and when referring to casuals, I will say “players who play for a limited amount of time.” Similarly, I will refer to these groups from your perspective as “players who only wish to engage in PvE” and “players who don’t wish to expend time and energy on the game when they otherwise can.”
We will be discussing four distinct groups of players this way. Maybe I will shorthand them as “PvE-only,” “PvP-averse,” “time-limited,” and “effort-averse.”
Hopefully we can stop arguing over semantics that way.
Not everyone gets to be good at video games, so this is completely natural and acceptable.
If they don’t want to invest energy into learning the game, that’s on them. I don’t see why the game needs to be brought down to the level of the lowest common denominator just to cater to them, when plenty of such games already exist.
No, I’m not mean-spirited against everyone. I am only saying “good riddance” to the people who choose to whine and complain instead of asking for advice, and trying their best to learn.
You’re equating violence in a video game in which shooting stuff to blow it up is arguably the central focus, to real-life violence.
This is basically anti-video game rhetoric from the 90s. If this is what you truly believe in, why are you playing video games, instead of writing letters to your local government officials in order for video games to be censored and banned?
I’m playing the game according to the rules presented to me by its developers. Those rules include, among other things, the ability to pay a certain amount of money to an NPC entity in order to be able to declare war on another player corporation, or to be able to attack a person anywhere in space, with varying degrees of consequences.
Are you saying that these are not the rules of the game?
Then the issue is with the description, and not the gameplay. If you argue in favor of changing the names of certain in-game things and concepts, such as “high-sec space,” then I will support you.
But if, after 17 years of the game existing in a certain state, your argument is that the rules governing certain areas of space need to be changed in order to more closely resemble their descriptors, then you’re on your own.
A corporation isn’t any more “social” than just creating a chat channel and inviting a bunch of people into it. What a corporation does is confer very specific bonuses, such as the removal of the NPC tax, the ability to anchor structures, and the ability to have corporate offices with shared hangars. Players who choose to make use of such features have to suffer from the drawback of being vulnerable to war declarations. This is how it’s been for 17 years.
If they don’t want wars, then they can sit in NPC corporations and pay the NPC tax, while at the same time still play with their friends in a social capacity. They can have dedicated chat channels, and join fleets together. Seems quite fair and balanced to me, actually.
{citation needed}
{citation needed}
I am claiming that players who are not willing to expend time or energy (when they are otherwise able to) are bad for the game. So according to your definition, yes, I am.
{citation needed}
Overall, my takeaway from all of this is that you’re trying to defend the presence of two specific groups of players in this game, based on your own definitions:
- Players who are only interested in PvE gameplay (for whatever reason)
- Players who are not willing to expend time or energy (when they are otherwise able to)
I am completely fine with the first group, and so is everyone else.
I am not fine with the second group, which is almost universally despised by EVE’s player base. You are saying that these players are critical for EVE, and should be given priority design considerations. You are advocating in favor of restricting/removing nonconsensual PvP mechanics so that this particular group is catered to at all costs, even if it means that players like me will leave instead.
Why should players who dedicate themselves to the game, and spend time and money on it, be spat upon so that players who don’t give two shits to do some reading and practice, who are able to spend time and money on EVE but choose not to, are coddled and catered to? You have yet to prove to anyone why this trade-off is a worthwhile pursuit.
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It is fine for them to stubbornly keep playing a game that is not well suited to their needs. Nobody is proposing that we ban all of their accounts and blacklist them from subscribing again. But it is 100% appropriate to question why a PvE-only player is playing a game that operates under design constraints that make it inherently a very poor PvE game, and to reject suggestions to pander to these players at the expense of the things that EVE does well.
Just a simple example : systems with truesec >0.45 are labelled as “high security”. That term alone is wrong. You don’t have security in HS.
Utter nonsense. You have security in highsec, CONCORD imposes a significant cost for aggression and allows most players to operate with relatively low effort spent on avoiding PvP threats. For example, the only time I have ever lost a ship in highsec outside of deliberate choices to forfeit my CONCORD protection and engage in PvP was a time when I was lazy about autopiloting a cheap hauler (and I’m pretty sure the ganker clicked the wrong target and regretted their mistake).
What highsec doesn’t provide is absolute security, and absolute security is never promised. It is not CCP’s fault that you can’t understand the difference between “the highest level of security in EVE” and “absolute immunity to loss”.
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I think you two are talking past each other to some extent, and assuming some things that the other didn’t actually say.
That said, I would like to make a couple of quick points here…
First off, there’s actually quite a lot of casual (in one way or another) players in Eve. I spent a long time in Eve University and I can say from personal experience over 11 years in this game that a surprising number of players either play Eve casually and don’t get super into mechanics or meta-gaming or whatever. They’re just happy to fly around in an internet spaceship and mine or shoot NPCs or whatever.
I think it’s also pretty fair to say that if you removed all of these “casual” players that the game would end up being very empty indeed.
You can see this any time CCP talks about the average age of a character doing something, though the best example for this used to be the CSM election results but CCP stopped posting that data. Probably because people like me used it to extrapolate all sorts of fun things…
Anyways, the average character age has always been fairly low compared to the age of the game, and this is in part because there are a lot of casual or new players, and often there’s not much difference in someone who is a long-time casual player and someone who is new, except that a lot of the new players are willing to learn and the old-timer has made a conscious decision not to bother.
Side note, I’d argue that most people don’t actually have an issue with these people, because every one that I’ve ever met has never posted on the forums. They mostly keep to themselves and find something about Eve relaxing or fun inherently.
As for the new players, it’s literally impossible to teach a new player everything fast enough. This is one of the reasons the constantly improving NPE has been a significant priority for CCP, because the fire-hose that is Eve needs that adapter nozzle or new players gets overwhelmed.
This has been the case to such an extent that back last decade CCP actually considered giving Eve Uni special status (which they said a hard no to) because there was such a difference in retention between players who went through Eve Uni and those who didn’t.
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There is no argument to bring the game down .
MY argument, was that people who don’t know the game well are what other people are hunting. My argument, is that those player have always been a important part of the player base and disregarding them as not worth keeping is a nonsense.
I am not talking about people who want to remove ganking from HS. I mean I can understand them being butthurt and believing that there is nothing they can do against people who just want to prevent you from playing - in a sense they are right.
You were the one making comparison between video game and real life. A comparison is never a good argument, though it can be a good example for a good argument.
BS. I was saying that just because they chose Eve, does not mean that they chose to be ganked. You claiming it means anything different is just BS.
I fail to see how this is related to what I argued about.
I repeat what I wrote : you have your reasons to play Eve, they have theirs. You claiming it makes no sense because you don’t know/agree with their reasons, is just nonsense. You are not the one making the rules of what is acceptable or not.
IIRC I already made such a proposal. I indeed believe there are some terms that are poorly chosen and lead to misconception of the game.
I am not advocating for changing the gameplay. I tell you, that what other people perceive can be very different from what your perceive : if systems are called “High Security”, then people expect security in them, not retaliation.
Another example is the insurance : people believe that insuring their ship will allow them to have their ship again.
All that is to say, people may have very valid reason to have a different view on the game than you have.
You can’t claim that they don’t share your view on the game because they are wrong, or not willing to make efforts.
Recently I told a 10+yo vet that NO, if someone shoots your MTU, your drones won’t “defend your MTU”, giving him license to kill you. He had been refusing to play with drones for years for this reason.
That’s what I was telling you : people may have a different approach on the game, and their approach and view of the game actually make sense.
Especially if they just want to spend some time with friends in a video game.
It can. You can more easily share fits withing a corp if you have corp hangars. you also can share BPOs for people to build their own stuff.
Also you can make corp fits.
I give ships to people all the time, 1 week ago I met a newbro trying to do an anom, gave him a caracal for anoms and a destroyer to salvage (turned out salvaging anoms is bad), also explained him how to use BM.
A few weeks before gave a drake to do L3s to someone.
So I mean, if you are with friends, there’s no reason not to do a corp just for you.
It’s the definition : if you don’t want to spend a lot of energy learning complex things, you can’t learn them.
The "they are otherwise able to " is too much.
You don’t know if they could or not. It’s a nonsense to make such an assumption. They WONT, and that’s how they are defined.
No I am not.
I’m telling you that removal of war was a good thing for those persons. I am not arguing for anything specific for them, but rather AGAINST the idea that those person are a “good riddance” and are not a loss for the game.
Those persons are the one that the warrdecs were removing from the game, because people who invested a bit knew they could leave the corp and make another one.
The single fact that CCP took actions in favor of this group tells you that it is an important part of the player base - at least important enough for CCP to consider it.
strawman.
This, so much. I always am helping newbros (personally, with discord, fits, trying to find them a corp in null, teaching them WH, etc. I get nothing AT ALL of that) and its a pain the amount of thing they have to learn. Also a pain the amount of things that actually means something different in the game and IRL. And how you have to tell them to focus on the topic at hand , because they have so many questions. “so what level of WS starts the pointing rats to be in, should I start invention, …”
Today I was asked “why did they killed me” and it was difficult to explain him that was a bad question.
But why are they important? Their play style deliberately avoids interaction with other players, they might as well be background NPCs. Are you referring to their “importance” in that they might buy some F2P cash shop items and therefore contribute to CCP continuing to see EVE as a profitable product?
if systems are called “High Security”, then people expect security in them, not retaliation.
Retaliation produces security by deterring attacks. And so high security gives you exactly that: a high level of safety. It’s not CCP’s fault that stupid people make the assumption that “high security” really means “absolute security”.
Another example is the insurance : people believe that insuring their ship will allow them to have their ship again.
Ok, stupid people exist. What’s your point?
(And no, you can’t make a real life comparison here. Real life insurance gives you a check that may or may not cover the cost of an acceptable replacement, it certainly doesn’t magically give you an exact duplicate of what you lost.)
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Yup, I spent a good few years in Eve Uni, and I recall Kelduum saying at one point that the average time between joining the corp and graduating was something like six months, and that was back in 2014 or so. Granted most players knew a lot more than the bare minimums at that point, but it was still a lot to take in.
That was also with stuff like the Ship Replacement Program and other stuff softening the learning cliff.
I don’t know if that number has gone up or down since then, but that was also around the high water mark for game population and what a lot of people seem to consider the “glory days of Eve” so if that was the good times…
Quick thing though, I don’t think this is really correct. People can learn things with “less effort” it just takes longer and more exposure to learn the thing. That’s exactly part of why Eve Uni takes so long to graduate people on average, even though you can be out and graduated in a month or two (or at least could back in 2014).
Seriously though, I think both of you should take a deep breath and stop assuming the other party is 100% wrong about everything. You’re both nitpicking and talking past each other, it’s not making for a good discussion, and it’s hurting the points both of you are trying to make.
Instead of solid debate from two view points there’s just a bunch of points scoring and nit picking going on…
I think that’s not the case with Eve.
The reason being, doing any new activity in Eve requires to invest time, money , learning into that activity.
So the effort, I believe, are made by other people (in my case, me.) So people who are not making ISK, and not willing to spend time to learn things, need to meet people who have the isk (… me) and the knowledge to teach (me and friends)
I think most people actually know that . IMO it’s a common knowledge, that was makes a player like Eve, learn Eve, adhere to Eve, is who he meets and how he is shared knowledge and ability to act.
That’s not always true.
Players who don’t know the game well usually don’t have a great degree of wealth, and happen to be incidental kills. They aren’t targets so much as they’re supplementary content.
Even if the casual (according to your definition) players leave the game for whatever reason, a “food chain” will still exist, because some players are simply more aggressive, skilled, and driven than others. The hierarchy might change a bit, but there will still be hunters and prey.
It was merely a way to illustrate the argument that when you’re in the market for a product, you should make a purchase according to your needs, instead of selecting randomly (or just going by the art on the box). You took it a step too far.
They chose the possibility to be ganked. Just like they could choose the possibility of getting heart disease by eating Big Macs.
To purchase something without due diligence and research is willful ignorance, and I’m not willing to excuse it in any shape or form.
I don’t make the rules, I only follow them. The rules state that I can pay a fee to declare war against corporations. This has nothing to do with what is acceptable or not, and everything to do with what is possible or not. If their reasons for playing EVE are to be able to farm PvE content in peace, then those reasons don’t mesh with the actual rules of the game, which make it possible for other players to interfere in their activities.
Then I agree, both the descriptors and documentation could be vastly improved. You can have my signature on that.
I don’t think that’s a matter of view, but a matter of lack of knowledge. A player can have a “view” with regard to the game that will change in time as they learn it. But that actually does mean that views can be wrong/invalid.
Those are fairly tangible benefits of corporations that directly boost efficiency.
It is also willful ignorance. If you don’t want to spend energy, as opposed to not being able to, then don’t expect nice things to happen. Yes, these are the people that we actually dislike in EVE. Good riddance.
That’s why I categorized them separately. You were speaking specifically about players who don’t want to put in the effort, and disagreed with the definition that I leaned toward. Now you say that they’re one and the same? No, I disagree; there’s a big difference between players who straight-up don’t want to put in the work, and those who have a limited time to play, but when they play, do put in the work.
And by removing wars, the game loses players like me. Are you saying that this is fine?
I will therefore refer you to your own words :
No they did not chose the possibility of having a heart disease.
Dude your comparisons are just complete garbage. Stop trying, this is leading nowhere.
You are not making a point which they can illustrate. You are making them your sole point.
Exactly. To add to this, EVE’s ship design forces PvE into the prey role. And if/when the assorted mission farmers and “MINERALS I MINE MYSELF ARE FREE” idiots leave the game it makes those activities more appealing for PvP players. There will always be mining barges, mission ships, etc, it’s just a question of who will be flying them.
I will politely disagree. The negative health effects of eating fast food are widely known, just like the existence of nonconsensual PvP in EVE is widely known.
If someone starts screaming “I do not consent to any negative effects on my health!” before shoving a cheeseburger down their gullet, that doesn’t count as some kind of protection against adverse outcomes. The nutritional information and ingredients are all written out; the onus is on the consumer to make the right decision at that point.
Fortunately for these companies, the world is full of people who willingly make terrible decisions. Just like I see coworkers stuffing Quarter Pounders into their maws twice a day, so too do I see many gamers play games that are bad for them. It’s not just EVE, too. I play many hardcore PvP survival games, and the forums of every single one are full of people complaining that they got killed while trying to farm items, and asking for stuff like PvP toggles to be implemented.
And as such, I’ll continue to receive dividends from my fast food stocks, just like I’ll continue to have fun in these games, and enjoy killing players who have no business playing them.
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Whatever.