Unfortunate, but true, especially when talking about the darker side of eve; IIRC devs are forbidden to partake of some of those activities while employed by CCP.
In addition, Eve Uni’s wiki gets a silly amount of hits from Iceland…
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Notice, the earth is only flat for a certain period of time, until it becomes more normal.
It’s like trying to roll a grave site boulder over someone by sheer force, it will eventually lead to more normal issues.
You also get vacation pay eventually.
is the reason ccp dont have one, its always been more up to date than anything they have done, so whilst i will shoot and troll e uni in syndicate all day long (figuratively) i do in fact have a massive amount of respect for them and try to keep the ships i use light and non oppressive.
Yep, so comprehensive that CCP use it in order to understand their own game.
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Lugburz
As far as I can make out from the forums, this is happening:
- A moderate but steady reduction in account numbers
- Significant growth in the proportion of “low-end” accounts (a natural result of the introduction of Alpha Clones)
- A change in the aggregate proportion of people to accounts (more alts per ISK-rich player, more botters and more bots per botter)
Not a death spiral, but moderate growth in paying customers (people, not just accounts) would be a lot better. And bots, despite being a (limited) proxy for PLEX4cash purchases, are a very negative signal to new players
Recent spike in accounts made are ikely directly linked to an offer on steam too; and its likely mostly the same ip’s that already play.
All of which is speculation.
- CCP haven’t released player account numbers for some years, the only data we have to go on in the logged in user count.
- Alpha account numbers haven’t been released afaik, all we know for sure is that there is a tremendous churn rate which needs to be addressed.
- Average accounts per player is still 1.6 afaik, those with accounts in the double digits are an outlier. Botters are another matter entirely and I would like to see them terminated, with extreme prejudice.
Not a death spiral, but moderate growth in paying customers would be better. And bots, despite being a (limited) proxy for PLEX4cash purchases, are a very negative signal to new players
That’s quite possibly the first thing that you have said that I can agree with.
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Faction navies for new players or alphas only to join might be interesting, like from the empires that are basically at war with each other but because of a skill point limit…
you dont even need it to really be profitable for the players, or even have specific systems (like fozziesov or facwar)
In effect you could literally just do events everynow and then that the devs could lead. The rest of the time it would basically be like rvb.
Occasionally they should get given the odd treat in the form of a botter being transported to their location by Bob the merciful; via the hands of CCP.
occasionaly we should all get them 
Plonk the heavily botted systems on a reinforced node or three, and light a Polaris cyno that can be jumped to from anywhere in the galaxy without a jumpdrive.
Legend has it players were teleported way far out in systems, so far it took hours at warp to return. I never knew anyone this happened to but back in the day it was a commonly held to be true.
you know thats not actually a bad idea, y’know that a stable wormhole opens up to the area they are botting in; it works on a couple of things too…
- botters cant really bot or keep getting caught
- alliances really wont want people to be botting especially if they cant just simply camp the wormhole for whatever reason.
Yeah, they could do things like that until they changed how far out you can go, so could we.
Back in the day we had safes way outside of the system diameter. Normally achieved by bouncing off a star and lighting up the mwd to go in whatever direction you were flung off in, then going to sleep.
Dammit, that’s half of my yearly quota of not actually bad ideas gone…
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Now since this thread is about, how to get more people to play eve, I guess how to get ppl who played before back into the game counts as well.
Before I present this idea, I want to point out that I believe that it does have the potential to totally wreck EvE if the playerbase that exists nowadays is really that unable to adapt, or it could make the game a whole lot more interesting again. I certainly would enjoy it and potentially would return to EvE in the following scenario:
Disable the weapons and jamming on concord ships. Only let concord tackle people who do crimes in high sec and prevent them from docking / jumping as long as they pilot a ship. If they have not been destroyed until 15 minutes before downtime or any agression that triggers concord occurs within that timeframe, concord warps in a cleanup crew that destroys the ships.
Now before anyone screems that I am just a CODE fanboy or griefer or anything like that who wants to have the option to gank multiple people with a single ship:
Yes, I have done my fair share of ganking in high sec for profit, but I would not return to the game for that. I would return to actually fight criminals.
Now here are the positive effects I would expect from such a change:
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Ganking organisations have the incentive to actually fit their ships for a proper fight, instead of just going into fights with paper thin pure damage fittings. -> more player interaction
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Commiting crimes does not require an overwhelming force anymore in order to ensure that the target dies within a few seconds. -> Potential for small scale fun fights or even 1 v 1s, where the person(s) who is (/are) getting attacked still is (/are) assissted by sentry guns and / or faction police. -> Sometimes higher chance to actually defend against a gank attempt.
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Criminals not being able to escape are potential content for a lot of people. -> More player interaction
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People who get ganked themselves can get payback themselves with certainly is more satisfying than having the magic space police blowing up the attacker. -> More player interaction.
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Anti ganking becomes a lot more interesting as ingame activity, as it offers actual fun gameplay, rather than hoping to fire of a shot on a ganker in the hopes to get a killmail. -> More player interaction
Other effects I would not entirely classify as positive, but still offer new options for interaction:
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Profit margins for traders potentially increase and “professional logistic companies” gain more importance rather than being used merely out of lazyness.
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Logistic companies like Red Frog could enter into negotiations with high sec pirate organisations to be left alone in return for a fee or even could negotiate to recieve help from those against other ganking organisations. (While technically this is possible today to, diplomacy and general negotiations between those entitys become a lot more valueable). -> More player interaction
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High sec pirate organisations get an incentive to fight against each other to gain control over certain areas. -> More player interation.
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Gates can potentially get shut off completly, which gives the “good guys” incentive and time to form up and prepare for a proper fight, rather than having to constantly having to rely on being in the right spot at the right time. -> More player interaction.
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Trade hubs potentially become less attractive and there is more incentive to trade locally rather than transporting goods through bottleneck systems.
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The service of transporting goods becomes a lot more valueable.
Other potential effects:
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Trade hubs could get completly wrecked by large organisations. (The big question here is… are people willing to adapt and spread out more rather than focussing trade in just a few systems).
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Sitting at a gate with a force that is so big that it can not really be opposed by anyone, get´s a lot of characters stuck for many hours -> they don´t get destroyed, they won´t be available for other things like defending POSs, or defending their space in 0.0 (if they have any). So deploying a large force into high sec does leave them a bit more vulnerable in other areas of space.
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A large force like in the previous point also won´t be able to switch to a different location until they are destroyed.
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More incentive to team up for PvE activities (strength in numbers). -> More player interaction.
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PvE in high sec becomes more dangerous
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A whole bunch of new options for mercs to make money -> More options for mercs to do what they enjoy -> potentially less focus on wardecs as there are a lot new opportunities to actually get fights and not just shooting structures out of boredom.
Now I want to say again that at this point with so many large and well established organisations at this point might completly wreck high sec, but a change like that would have the potential to get me to return to eve.
I am not trying to push any change into that direction and I am sure people will come up with lot´s of arguments of why a change like that is impossible. I am stating what kind of change it would take me to return to the game and actually get invested in it again.
So keep your pitchforks, where they belong :).
Additional info that does not have anything to do with the above stated idea itself, but is still relevant as it paints a picture of what kind of gamer I am:
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I have been playing computer games for the past 32(ish) years.
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I enjoy games that are really hard, where you have to try over and over again.
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I started with games like Ghost´n Goblins, that were so frustrating that I might have killed one or another joystick even at a young age, but still kept trying and trying over and over again.
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If I play a game today I play it on the hardest difficult setting (if there is any)
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In games like Path of Exile, which offer a hardcore mode with permadeath I definetly choose that mode, because it´s challenging and forces me to up my game again and again.
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I don´t just copy whatever streamer x is doing in game y. I test out a lot of things myself and if I can´t completly figure out mechanics myself I go and try to find information to clear things up.
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While I hate cheating in FPS games like Battlefied, I don´t go arround and cry about it all the time. I rather see it as increased difficulty, to play against people who use stuff like wallhacks, ESP, damage modifiers and that kind of stuff. They deserve to get banned for cheating, but I don´t whine about it, I rather put some effort into getting good enough to make decent rounds even if cheaters are present.
(I fully accept that this certainly is not always possible to achieve though, some cheats you just can not beat, but I would never try to change or blame the game for the failings of other people.)
“Why am I writing out this part?” you might ask:
Quite simply because this is the kind of player profile that EvE has been attracting from the start until many years later they decided to aim for more mainstream gamers and step by step alienated their old playerbase, people like me.
During those years EvE was slowly, but constantly growing, even in times when the competition already stagnated and other Sandboxes like Star Wars Galaxies already completly died, because they did exactly what CCP at some point started to do: Move away from their vision of a sandbox game in order to attract more people.
The problem EvE now to a large degree has, is that it has lost it´s identity. It´s not the hardcore game it used to be, but it still does not appeal to a mainstream audience either. To a large degree the game is kept alive by diehards who mostly stay for the bonds they have forged over the years and in that way are emotionally connected to at least a part of the community. CCP is in luck that there is still no game out there, that can offer what EvE used to offer, otherwise I am pretty sure a lot of established players / corps / alliances would wander off to those games together.
not really…
Cause you can be a miner…
And if i do not like you, i will drop a fleet of alts and bring friends with their alts…and mine every damn rock out from under you…
That too is non consensual PvP, a core element of EvE.
A carebear will complain that is not right, and want to change the nature of the game to avert such from happening to him.
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it is outrageous, that demand…
You have no right to anything in EvE that you are not willing to protect…that willingness meaning to buck and actively do combat…or take proactive steps to mitigate your risk.
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So, the questio… How to get more people to play eve?
I think (opinion) that question is or must be closely tied to “How to get more players sending CCP more money?”
Topics that may or may not be controversial:
WiS (walking in stations)…attracting the players that might not venture into space, think that view is wrong cause of games like Star Trek online and similiar. Players there do indeed grind for stuff, but they are forced to dock in stations and places to have any real interaction with the player markets, a variety of specialized vendors as well as common ones for special goods.
This can be done in EvE as well…and expanded on.
1.) it would give everyone using apparel a better reason for use, creating fashion contests, and other such content. (including hey where did you get that uniform? answer:oh Im omega, or it was a 1 time limited thing years ago, etc etc)
2.) Market, station traders have to have offices or what not, real banking npc services can be introduced, and actual stock market system can be created and such…players will have to physically interact somewhere in the market section of a station for such endeavors.
3.) Corp offices…they are limited in NPC stations, they can be physical places with rooms, and layouts, and furniture and all sorts of things that CCP can capitalize on with the NES, Plex, and RL cash to subsidize income.
4.) Actual in game gambling, slot machines - npc controlled, speciale prizes (that might be just certain vanity items or items that count as secondary currency), in game Poker tourneys and such…old AT ships or BP’s for them could be a NPC CCP yearly tourney event…the top 3 of such get cool prizes, etc etc.
5.) Billboards in space can be taken down…you can watch the news and stuff like that like in the old Captains quarters from various other screens in station…maybe even in a player operated bar (cause th guy has retired and wants to operate a saloon these days)
Thing is the list can go on and on…and maybe players that like that level of immersion will join the rest of us in space…cause they are more immersed into the game universe…and maybe just maybe they give CCP more money…whether they are in space or not.
Dust514:
Take its base planetary stuff…and severly expand on it!! Give us real colonies, and Starports, and landing/walking on planets!!
And so what if someone wants to play as a baseliner…we spacers dont have to do it…but someone that wants to dig in the dirt of PI stuff, manage planetary factories, fight on the ground and stuff…and pay a sub to CCP to do so!? Let them, its more players, doing more stuff…and Capsuleers can ultimately own the rights to colonies…we just have players mangaing and doing stuff for us now instead of us messing directly with PI.
Just some thoughts…
TL;DR - the real question is just not “How to get more people to play EvE?” it is “How to expand CCP’s financial growth and the game universe at the same time?”
EVE Logic: start with a false claim that evil carebears are demanding something that will change the game for the worse. Conclude that EVE is perfect in every way, and must not be changed or it will disintegrate.
The truth: the biggest (perhaps only) actual carebears in EVE are nullSec sov-owners, who have huge incomes, are combat averse, have no need to fight, and, together with botters, are the biggest actual whiners and beggars in EVE.
Take a look at the “Price of PLEX, Market Intervention Required”, which is full of requests to actually damage EVE, for some insight into “the truth about EVE in 2019”.
Or read and reflect on the last chapter of the book “Animal Farm”: the bit where the other animals notice that the pigs are becoming hard to distinguish from the human farmers.
How about making some constructive, on-topic suggestions instead?
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