How to increase eve player count

Communications Center General Discussion
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So I have been playing on and off since 2012. The number 1 thing I can say that would of kept my interest earlier on would of been shorter skill times for getting into pvp Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers

I believe by cutting down train time on Frigate tech 2, small guns tech 2 and basic piloting skills, Including armor and shield tank skills for small and medium ships, you could increase player count.

Also Scarcity doesn’t fix anything it just changes the economy, you created a player base economy,

The economy will always right itself to economic changes , so I don’t understand the point of scarcity.

Beyond that making training more tailored for pvp experience and pointing players in that direction early on would be beneficial.

I was 1 of those players who were scared to venture into lowsec and nullsec until I understood the mechanics. They aren’t blatantly clear, yes you can die. But people don’t understand coming in early the totality of that. Put a training mission. In give them a Shiney cheap ship and make sure they lose it, then make them earn it back.

The moral here is for the proliferation of the game stop pushing people to buy more plex and start attracting more players to eve, through making the game play easier to get into for new players, once you have a surge in new players demand for plex will increase.

edit:

I see many people have varying opinions here, my point was that current state of play puts too much pressure on new players coming in needing an high level of skills to get into significant game play, yes there are opportunities for fun play in low sec for new players,

Let’s all hop off our ivory towers for a second and remember what being like a new player was, we didn’t have 100 million is laying around or a billion isk, we came out in our corvettes and started learning the game. Some of us remember mining in vexors haha.

CCP is too focused on revenue and not focused enough on game play, if you focus on the enjoyment of the game you will increase player count. some ways to do this…

  1. don’t cut off 1 whole faction in highsec from the other 3… Talking about Amarr, you MUST jump through low to get to Caldari space and its camped 24/7 so new players will have a horrible experience just trying to get to their friends.

  2. Don’t make popups to buy things for real cash, that creates a pay to win feel.

  3. Allow wars in highsec again. It created content, I shouldn’t need a 400 mil isk structure or the person I want to fight in order to declare war. they are flying around in 2-8 billion isk ships with no consequence of war, doing this in the past required being in NPC corp, bring back proper wars.

Beyond that guys this is just a collection of my opinions. I don’t think cruisers should be easier to get into but frigates and destroyers with tech 2 guns should and small reps should.

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considering new players, unless they straight up become Omega upon entering the game, cannot use Frigate Tech 2. Tech 2’s can sometimes still be overshadowed by the faction counterpart.

training time has been the same since i joined and its never been a problem. Would you prefer to go back and add learning skills?

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how to increase eve player count: dont try

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That’s a double-edged sword. What you suggest also means that gankers will be able to skill into ships with T2 weapons twice as fast…

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Still, sometimes I still think it weeded out the weak?

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I got lucky and joined after they were gone. 2011…

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I got my sp back, but in those days, it would have been far more important to continue to train up like today.

Edit; The funny part was when my corp mates said just breath and do it. Do you know how hard it was to just sit on your hands at that point in the game?

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They already sped it up significantly. you get more SP to start, bonus SP, login SP, holiday/event SP, skilling spree, injectors, implants, cerebral accelerators, etc. What are you complaining about? It is insane how easy it is to gain SP these days.

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Me?

All I said was it weeded out the weak way back when?

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The OP not you.

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Sorry, I hope you understand the defensive mindset of the forums.

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This could follow almost any story, and id probably laugh my ass off.

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I dont get it. Its already easy to get into t2 and there should be a feeling of progress in the first months of eve gaming.

Eve is no game for players that are into instant gratification. Eve is long term. Its part of eve to wait for some things. How long do you need to fly frigs in t2? 2 months? is it even faster?

Actually i think, that a rework of missions would help a bit more. Missions is a “newbie-lvlup” start. You go from lvl1-4 and learn the according ships by doing it. A lot of people started that way. If those would be a bit cooler AND could perhaps escalate in other activities (for example mission escalation but you need to scan down something to go on, or mission escalation and you need to go in a abyss space) it would help far more to get people that come frome “theme parks” to get used to a sandbox.

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Not sure why you replied to me and not the overall topic…

But i do agree that missions need reworked as well, but where they are mixed in with spaghetti code, it’s a lil bit harder for that.

As far as T2 frigs, they are easy to get into, but if you are not an Omega pilot, you don’t have access to them anyway. So idk if OP was trying to infer that new players need to fly T2’s when they don’t have access to them.

@Kaleic_Karrif , Currently I have Spaceship Command at III, Navigation at II, Evasive Maneuvering at I, on an alt. To sit in a Crow/Raptor would take me 26 days, 6 hours, 11 min and 10 seconds… LEAVE THE TRAINING TIME ALONE…

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Sorry :wink: wrong reply button.

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Training times are faster than ever before, and the result is that retention is down and less people pvp.

It’s not SP holding you back. Even if you could fly a fully skilled assault frig, you’re still going to die a few times before you figure out how things work. It’s just going to be more expensive to lose T2 frigs than insured T1 frigs and dessies.

But if you really want to train faster, take out the wallet and buy injectors. They are designed precisely for instant gratification types.

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Always thought the mistake eve made was skill based on time rather then earning them thru grinding. Game is complicated as ■■■■. Every update they make to simplify it overcomplicates it further. The wikis and guides are truly outdated. Hell sometimes the patch notes, which are the only help, are even wrong.

It is what it is. All they can do is add content and make slight adjustments. The programmers today arent what they were 15 years ago. There are no more john carmacks, sid meyers, or chris roberts.

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I always loved that EVE was skill based on time rather than grinding. Grinding means people would have to choose between spending time to get ISK for new ships versus spending time to get skills to fly new ships. Grinding would mean that more wealthy people spend ISK to grind their skills faster than new players, which creates an economy demand based on grinding skills, rather than an economy based on producing items.

I’m glad EVE has automated training and that the only time you need to spend is to get new ships or to have fun in new ships.

I don’t think cutting down that training time will increase the player count. It will increase the cost for new players to continue playing, so I would even go as far as to say it might reduce player count.

T1 ships are perfect for new players: learning the basics of the game in T2 ships is needlessly expensive.

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I’m glad it’s not from grinding. I personally think the XP grind in a lot of games is stupid plus it doesn’t really fit as well with how Eve works.

But you know what? Technically they added grinding for sp when they added injectors. You can grind ISK and buy injectors. Also the diminishing returns as you get higher sp is just like other games where you have to grind ever more XP per level.

So Eve has the choice of grind for sp if you want or not if you don’t.

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It is a problem. 4 personal friends left for exactly that reason. “I have to wait 6 months to fly this cruiser with you?” He asked. “ya, or spend 20x the price on some faction stuff and still be gimped because of low sp” his reply "and there’s nothing I can do short of spending cash on injectors?* And then when I told him “nope not one single thing” he laughed and said ■■■■ this game.

This time based skill stuff worked back 10 years ago. It doesn’t work today and it’s why the game is never going to grow. The training requirements really need to be looked at and the times lowered dramatically for most everything below caps.

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