So that’s a no then. You don’t have anything showing that ganking is on the rise.
Am shocked…
I don’t know CCPs data, and frankly I haven’t been back long enough to really understand the state of the game. That said I think there are two groups CCP should focus on: new players and old ‘retired’ players
Naturally the strategy for each will need to be different. From my own experience as a player from 2006. I left because most of the corp had left, so I followed them to several others games. I was always tempted back by EVE but never came back until now for two main reasons: 1.) I didn’t want to be lost in a game used to know well, and 2.) My other former corp mates were not coming back.
That changed this time, four of us decided to come back. Long story short we kept looking for a sandbox game that wasn’t EVE and never could find it (Archeage was an option due to its pvp system but they make crime non-viable in the re-launch) and the fact that I was going to be with old corp-mates mitigated the fact that I would be lost for a while.
I can’t speak to what will draw and retain new players, but I will say that to bring back old players CCP should focus on bringing them back together. EVE is a highly social game, and bringing back former players should account for that fact.
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Considering the massive box office success of The Joker, I think people are hungry for “anti-woke” entertainment. Eve Online was once infamous for being sadistic and hyper-capitalistic.
MAKE EVE GREAT AGAIN.
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Yep…banning PVP from high would be a good start to that…
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Or we could ban you from the forums. If you’re going to troll you need to at least be entertaining about it.
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yep…someone with a mainstream opinion has to be a troll in a game where 0.5% of all players decide via csm(aka goons) what is "best " for the game…
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CCPs been doing “Time of Chaos” and with the safety controls programmed into the game, they could make it impossible to activate hostile modules in high sec and see what happens.
I’m not opposed to high-sec gankers. I’m not one of them, but I like them being in the game. Still, as my post says here, I’m not opposed to testing what would happen if combat wasn’t allowed in high-sec for a little while. Just like they tried black-out, they could try this, and see what happens.
I think they need to make more low-sec though, and maybe turn the faction high-sec areas into four islands as has been discussed elsewhere. Muahaha. However, I don’t recommend tinkering with both security levels and making high-sec crime impossible at the same time.
I know the suicide gankers are going to be pissed with this suggestion. I also think the results of the test will show its a bad idea though… but, I’m still down with the idea of testing for the data. Heck, maybe people would move into FW or into low-sec, maybe it could be good. I doubt it, but maybe.
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No matter how much you hype the game keeping them is the real battle. CCP already acknowledges their failure in this area yet continue to do little about it.
A pretty interface, simplified explanations, and trinkets for daily logins may help short term. In the long run, when they realize there is no development roadmap to the future they have to ask when is the next thing? Updates Should they look into EvE history they would likely see promises not kept. Original Structure Concept Observatories & Advertising Nexus left out, structure destruction watered down to and Asset Safety System. Command boosts and Rorqual buff then the 3 pillars of mining followed by nerf after nerf
EvE is NOT dying anytime soon. I am still playing, I still see it as a great game as do many other veterans. However, since PA acquisition of EvE, development pace has slowed and personnel turnover has increased. Changes are occurring but in no discernable pattern. Once acclimated to EvE, new players really have no answer as to what is next so they tend to leave to find something else. At the moment EvE is giving up market share among young new players. Without correction, this is fundamentally unsustainable.
Reducing the power gap between newbies and veterans would be a GREAT start. No-one’s going to wait 3+ months to train skills just to participate in PVP. Maybe buff the T1 hulls as well.
CODE. can take newbies out on PVP runs after just a few minutes of training (Gallente Destroyer I). Boom!
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I disagree that you need months of training to pvp. It’s not lack of sp that makes you ineffective as much as lack of game knowledge and number of friends. Both can be solved by reaching out to other players. Be talkative and respectful.
Got blown up? Ask the guy that killed you what went wrong and what you can do different.
As for T1 ships, i do agree they feel underpowered. T2’s (well assault frigs and hacs, hictors and recons) have been buffed a few times to keep them relevant against T3’s. But T1 have been left behind.
Funny thing is, T1 ships are (imho) the best balanced ship classes and the most fun to fly.
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2 things would bring my 4 accounts back:
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A proper full expansion. Not the booster packs Eve is known for, a full expansion that provides a similar amount of content to what you see in other MMO expansions.
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Reverting the cyno change. My main motivation for playing was cap escalations. I lost the pvp shakes in subcaps years ago, they just aren’t fun to me now as I have too much liquid ISK to make them feel exciting/risky. For me putting supers on field is what gets me tense and the palms sweating. CCP seem to be moving in a direction which discourages the supercap fights of old - which is bizarre as reading a PC Gamer article about BR5 is what brought me to the game. They are missing so much free advertising by preventing them + causing cap accounts to unsub (3 of my 4 accounts are dedicated cap accounts, all unsubbed the day the cyno changes hit).
I continued to sub my subcap account, it was my first account and I consider it my main, it has the most SP, but subcap pursuits are boring when you reach a certain amount of ISK. My accounts can also triple box t5 abyssals for 800m/hour, hobo dread in a c5 WH for 1b/hour, I have 4 rorq pilots which is 500m/hour and 3 of them have decent indy skillgs for building capitals. Using subcaps when you have that kind of ISK generation is just boring, losing a stratios in a roam is <1 hour of pve to recoup. Losing a 60b titan on the other hand!!! That’s what i miss, the sense of DANGER.
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So what does that have to do with the cyno changes?
So most cap escalations start from nothing and rapidly escalate as each side attempts to dominate the field with bigger and bigger toys. In the old world anything could fit a cyno making that escalation very easy to achieve. Essentially there are now 2 issues to work around in escalating a fight:
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Cynos cannot be fit to doctrine ships - An escalation will typically start as a subcap fight. For example you could be in a Munin fleet that lands on grid against an enemy fleet of Eagles. Eagles have greater range and damage so you start to lose the field. You can no longer drop that cyno to start the escalation process to attempt to reclaim the field. Recons are no competition for Eagles, they have paper thin tank compared to HACs, if you bring a few to help escalate, they’ll just get blapped off the field before you can use them. You can sit them cloaked, but again the second they drop a cyno they’ll be blapped OR you accept you’ll be bringing your caps in 150km off grid, which makes them pretty useless post HAW nerf.
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Cynos cannot be fit to caps - Your first wave of escalation is usually to dreads/carriers/fax. To escalate to supers once regular caps are on field you need a capital with a cyno fitted. Any subcap will just get blapped by dreads in <1 second. So again you’ll need to position your recon off grid, say 150km away - in which case your titans are going to be useless.
CCP are moving away from supercap fights which is why my 4 accounts are unsubbed.
You can argue whether subcap or cap gameplay is more compelling in general, but for my personal circumstances - and for a lot of other null sec residents - cap gameplay was what we played for. I longed for that ping to come on Discord calling for max caps to form up. They just don’t happen now. The game needs more caps to die and null seccers want to risk them more, but CCP is making that difficult.
I can never know, but from what I see in alliance chat and forums, my hunch is that the drop in players is mostly players like me from null sec. You can’t just nerf caps (HAW nerf, cyno nerf, blackout) and expect cap pilots to continue to sub, we’re not idiots, we recognise CCP is actively shifting away from our playstyle and we’re choosing to play another game instead.
That could ultimately be good for the the game, it could be that when you reach bittervet status like me that you’ve effectively won Eve if all that’s keeping you is cap fights.
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More gifts and faster training for new player-characters?
More Hi-Sec content?
(Maybe Incarna was the way to retain those people looking for MMOrpg style game?)
Make subscription cheaper for sure. The game is awfully expensive in the long run.
Boost Alpha clones training restrictions?
Started in 2211, and I am back now after a 3 years break: back for the fleets, and solo explo in nullsec. But the tabs and spreadsheets apready burn my eyes so bad. Not sure I can hold for very long…
Here’s the problems as I see them.
In the real world the market has shifted. So, basically, people have less cash to spend.
In game it is easy to die. Sec Status in High Sec might as well not exist.
When you mix the two EVE becomes pricey as games go.
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I think the cyno changes were done without much thought. The “industrial cyno” was added on at the last minute as an afterthought. There was some stupidity involved with the old cyno system, like any cheap frigate flown by a throwaway alt being able to summon huge capital fleets.
I don’t really understand the cyno issues, but I recommend a more specific set of change requests, rather than telling CCP to “Undo the cyno changes,” which I think is unlikely to happen.
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As a player of 4 years I was able to PLEX to cover my butt. I recently had 2B spare for a flutter ( which went south, and yet didn’t break the bank ).
The PLEX system is good & useful, but…
I don’t get how £2.50 a week ( the price of a subscription near-enough ) is back-breaking. So I will disagree there. Subscriptions are fine. Even in severe financial crisis ( as I was ) I have just been able to get my accts back to ‘paid’ again. I PLEX’ed, whilst patching up the real world.
For me the issue is teh spawn point. Here’s a ship, f*ck you. The market has shifted, & this can be a rough game.
A bit of bad luck due to gankers ( as sec status might as well not exist ) and your new ship is gone. With no saved game. That’s the expensive bit. If Sec Status actually meant something then that would help.
Well, that’s my belief anyway.
Yeah, CCP keeps hoping that player corps will step up and train the newbies. That seems to be less and less true as time goes on. Most of the actively recruiting newbie corps these days are really just moon harvesting slavers that want to exploit the newbies for their own profit.
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Or you evac them to Null; where they can at least stand a chance of seeing the baddies coming, and can shoot first if need be. High Sec needs work.