If it is actually Balos his English is improving, so he’s got that going for him.
He may be getting schooled in more ways than one.
5 Likes
Well that seemed to stop him…
1 Like
You can’t get more people to play EVE without changing it into something that the old guard will neither recognise nor accept. EVE just is what it is and the playerbase will remain roughly in the same ballpark. A wipe/reset/meta shake-up won’t change much - all the out-of-game networks and chains of command will remain intact.
2 Likes
Jonah, you should be on the CSM. You’ve got a central perspective that could be valuable, you’ve been a forum presence for years, and you’re smart.
Most of us criminals could never win.
Ever considered running?
1 Like
How to get more people to play:
- Make Eve Great Again by going back to dynamic live event content that makes the news.
- Bring back Chronicles and more novels that makes Eve a “story you want to be a part of” and not just a game.
- Bring mystery back to the game and make space seem like space by making rewards more random.Think “gold rush”. Not everybody going west for the gold rush (USA late 19th century) knew they were going to get rich, but they were willing to take a chance.
- COMPETE with the other games and let those who want pew pew to actually be pew pewing within the day. Not everybody cares about lore, chronicles, etc. One of the best parts about Eve was that if all you wanted to do was PVP, then that’s what you got. If you cared for lore, cannon, storylines, and all that, then that’s what you got. Make it possible for BOTH types of player to actually get what they came here for. I have met countless people who told me “Oh I tried that game for a few hours and when I found out (insert what they came for here) that it would take months of (insert some activity they didn’t care for) I said 'screw that1"”.
How to get more people to stay:
- Give players “career options” that are intermingled with empire and NPC factions and FW. In FW for example, let players be issued military issue ships based on their rank and performance. Plus…
- Let NPC corps wage war on each other, definitely including Navy factions of the empires being constantly at war. This gets new players fighting each other while “young” and alongside and against experienced players. There has to come a day when Native Freshfood has a beef with Aliastra.
- Overall the idea is to get players into PVP FROM THE START and not fall in love with expensive bling boats that they had to grind endless for and become risk-averse.
- Use copyright rules to eliminate anybody using Eve content and references to their own agendas and views. Yes I refer to the “we ganked this guy now we make fun of him” blogs and websites. It does not matter who and what, NOBODY will stick around to be the butt of someone else’s joke. And yes, “CASE BY CASE BASIS” is a good thing because my fellow Americans make a sport, game, and hobby about gaming, lawyering, and lawfaring everything they come into contact with.
- Keep PVe content fresh. The jokes on the “content” crowd. The golden age of Eve was before everybody got sick of the PVE that has not changed much since 2011. There is only so many times you can gather up Defias underwear for the quest giver… oh wait where am I?
- Balance the “group content” with “solo content”. This notion of “hurr durr group/solo better than solo/group” crap has to end. Everybody has their own story, their own RL needs, their own time, and need to be able to fit into that. The “he who has the most time wins” model, though realistic in a “gathering” concept since you have to be there to get there, drives people off. Let it be so that the guys who have nothing else to do can play it there way, but give almost an entire DIFFERENT game through choices to the casuals. One player can go through a phase of being a casual, to playing Eve all the time, then back to casual, repeatedly over the years. Things change. But when there is no choice for a player they stop being players. It does not matter who feels what is superior: people have the right not to stick around and that’s what they will do.
- Police the conduct of miscreants so players are not afraid to at least talk to each other. Thankfully now at least a noob asking a question in local does not get them a wardec, but there has to be stronger enforcement of player conduct. It’s not “free speech” to be an a**hole after all. And I don’t recall speech ever being truly free anyway. Why should driving players out of the game be free? No. no “code of conduct” poorly written so bored campers can report-spam ship or player names and ninny about it. Yes, “case by case” basis.
- Stop with the “balance passes” they have been a cancer since 2013. Players find that perfect fit of a ship and skillset they actually spent a long time putting together, and then somebody comes along and says “too many Drakes” or something like that. Instead of balance passes that made every ship the same except for skin and weapons choice - which is just graphics in the end - just rely on new additional content to outdo existing loadouts and force players to adapt. This keeps them guessing, experimenting, fighting, and coming back.
7 Likes
Nice to see all the EVE-standard lunatic claims suddenly popping up in the middle of the thread /lol.
Gamers in general prefer balanced PvP. The evidence for this is clear. So EVE may be a “PvP game” (though IMO it’s not), but it’s not a kind of PvP that interests most potential players.
By normal gamer standards:
- EVE has very little combat
- Much of the small-scale PvP combat in EVE is boring. Either pointlessly one-sided, or just a dice-roll
- One-sided combat is so common because that’s what makes the most sense in EVE. Of course the “strong” should oppress the “weak”.
This is what EVE’s players have done with the “PvP” part of the “sandbox” that newer players see.
There are occasional large strategic battles which would be interesting. But for a given beginner, what are the odds that they’ll ever participate in one?
In fact EVE isn’t really a PvP game by anyone else’s standards. It’s a competitive game, where most PvP games have plenty of combat but not much competition. But EVE is a competitive PvE game that allows combat.
It’s fun to see all the wild claims though - EVE players have been working on lunatic assertions that buff their egos and justify their behavior “since forever”. And they’ve hijacked gamer vocabulary, redefining common words (like “PvP”, and even “carebear”, which apparently represents a subtle philosophical principle in EVE /lol) so it reads like self-parody to an outsider.
EVE could still be fun for a much wider audience. It doesn’t have to consume beginners.
But it’s almost certain that applying the “sandbox design principle” will always converge towards something like today’s EVE. That’s why the bittervets use the term so often as a “magic wand” - they don’t want change, and “it’s a sandbox” is (in their crazed eyes at least) the irrefutable argument to keep things as they are.
But the sandbox got EVE to where it is, and we’re in a thread about changing things to attract more long-term players.
6 Likes
Ok. Glad we left behind the idea that all new players are called carebears by others. Because it is wrong.
Now you are not right in thinking that new players are or were something special in “old-school EvE”. Yes, they have it harder than rich and experienced players but everyone started from the same point (at least it was before all this “think about children” crap starting to change the game). Everyone had some small amount of ISK (5000 if i’m not mistaken) and something like 50k SP. And yet we managed to grow and survive.
Your idea that new players (players of 2019) are unable to start in these conditions means that they are somehow weaker than us. I don’t think it is true for every newcomer.
But let’s agree that they are weaker than older players: what makes you think they will be able to be on the same level later? You know: you won’t be new player forever and at some point you will join big boys and will have another level of game. And again you will meet richer and older players. What’s next? Will you ask for special treatment forever? Or you believe somehow mindset of weakling will be left behind by crossing some magical number of ISK or SP? I don’t think so.
2 Likes
Do you think removing opposite team (or restricting opposite team of interfering while you have control over ball) in Football will make the Football more fun and engaging for all players?
2 Likes
March
This is a great example of self-parody.
Your opposition has a history of pointing out that sports universally create rules to make the competition fair (like weight classes in boxing), or are highly exclusionary, selecting only “the best of the best” (athletics in the Olympics, US professional sports). And that all team sports need referees.
Your example is interesting because it’s so wildly unrealistic, and also has an “anti-rookie” undertone.
3 Likes
Haha very good
EVE Online already used to have more people playing it. That changed when CCP comitted itself to “player oriented design” and prioritized nullsec playstyle (own space and pew pew for it) over the rest, thus leaving behind a funny amount of players.
EVE is not going to grow back. It was larger when it did things that weren’t “core” EVE, but now it wouldn’t grow larger even if it did those again.
EVE Online had many chances to become “the ultimate sci fi simulation” while MMOs were a thing and there was no competition. Now it’s a niche product in a dwindling videogame class and the market just departed that stage years ago. MMOs are a thing of the past and any chances EVE had to keep a healthy niche population were thrown out the window with the Rubicon plan from 2013.
CCP comitted to having less players, more engaged, paying the same or less money. What oh what could go wrong? Just needs to have less developers, more comitted, being paid the same or less money -starting from being paid sub-industry salaries while working in a godforsaken frozen rock in the middle of nowhere.
2 Likes
You are right in most what your saying. Tho even if nullsec is the main game. There is still sooooo many areas that can be improved and expanded. To do this would give absence of importance even outside main game ( as you say).
And as I stated before, eve can change to make it better.( I personally think eve is a very good game, that offers a lot more than other mmo’s) but having played it since 2004, I find the game big enugh to include more stuff, more “on edge events”.
I would really like to see a overhaul in a lot of eve.
People in eve would not like it based on that they already have fixed income and safe areas but…
Personally I got a few trillion isk invested in stations all over new eden, and even tho the passive income is good I would not mind a problem now and then.
Change routes… make us move the stations after a while, remove invulnerability, or even add free attacks on stations( whatever). The money is nice but the panic is better.
So to conclude my thoughts.
I got a very good place in eve, I got influences in almost every area in new eden, a finger in every pie.
This has been for a while now and sure it’s nothing to complain about really.
But I would love to wake up and find everything in eve is changed( drastically). Whatever crazy idea you can think of would just make my login exiting( even if that means I lose 80% of my assets).
But that’s just me.
1 Like
That analogue is terrible and doesn’t represent the reality the least bit.
What happens in a real sport is two equivalent, balanced teams meet on the field where both teams have an equivalent chance of winning and your additional rules would not make the game more interesting. If the level gap is significant, the stronger team, say a national team playing with an university hobby team, can offer a handicap to make the match more interesting in the spirit of good sportsmanship, though your rules would be ridiculous even then. Perhaps restricting player changes or having one player less on field for the stronger team would be more fair for both teams.
But that’s not what happens in Eve. The Eve equivalent is a national league football team forcing a match on an university hobby team, completely trounce them, have them kicked out of the club for being so bad and post videos of the game on Youtube making fun of the terrible play. If the university team is stronger than expected and has even a slight chance of winning, the national team will just sit on the benches refusing to go on the field and smacktalk how the university team is not worth their time until the match time runs out. Or bring four other teams to play with before having the match.
4 Likes
Raising the required intelligence bar above ‘Toddler’ again would be a start.
5 Likes
You’re right it is not a very good analogy, but no teams are not balanced generally speaking. Some teams are better than others. In the Olympics the basketball team from say…the Philippines is nowhere near the caliber of the US team. In swimming the US and Australians tend to be very dominant.
But using teams is bad because there are very clear rules on what is and is not allowed. EVE is not like sports. There isn’t a referee to come and tell you not to bring more players. Or to keep a third party from joining in or whatever. Sure there are rules, but in terms of what you can do in any fight there is tremendous leeway that is simply not present in sports.
And yet you continue to run with a flawed analogy…sigh
Yes, it is just you.
People generally do not like uncertainty. You can see it in many aspects of the game. People want to either eliminate or get a some sort of idea of that uncertainty. And EVE is all about uncertainty and those who are better and mitigating the effects of that uncertainty are the ones that tend to do better, IMO.
And to be clear by uncertainty I do not mean risk. Risk is quantifiable. Uncertainty is not. That is, uncertainty is risk when you cannot quantify all aspects of the risk in question.
Now, you want to add to uncertainty not via other players, but via CCP. My guess is that many players won’t find that all that appealing. Losing all your stuff because the other players were good is one thing. Having a Deus Ex Machina come along and screw you over…not going to sit too well is my guess.
1 Like
Actually Keras_Authion was commenting accurately on a very flawed sports analogy made earlier by a bittervet.
You’re “moving the goalposts”.
BTW - that “uncertainty” argument is potentially interesting, but it rapidly degenerated into a “Straw Man”: “even if change was justified, CCP would ruin everything anyway”.
Everyone gets that players who enjoy EVE as it is don’t want to change it. But that’s 100% of your collective position - the rest is just self-justification. The irrational assertions and claims don’t mutate a selfish objective into an inevitable outcome.
people arguing with a balos alt. 
3 Likes
This kind of comment is like when some semi-literate starts criticizing my grammar.: “If you can’t find anything else, go for vague (or in this case, entirely incomprehensible) statements and hope it has some effect”.
For me, this particular arc in the thread started when I pointed out that EVE isn’t a PvP game: it’s a competitive PvE game.
I did this because there were so many attempts to justify inaction based on spurious claims (many based on the eccentric EVE-unique definition of “PvP”).
It’s clear EVE isn’t perfect. And hence that it can be improved. Similarly, almost everyone would prefer the number of players to increase.
Which means ex-players returning, more new players trying out EVE, and more of those who try it staying. I don’t see how leaving EVE exactly as it is will further those objectives.
2 Likes
It proved effective this time.
Even though @Elena_Laskova has no face (!!!) I think xe defined what the game really is very well.