I liked the CCP recruit a friend advert, some did not

Communications Center General Discussion
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You have several points which are important because it is your story. Which is all true for you and I’m sorry you feel this way.

Sadly in real life, we do not live in the StarTrek Universe, on a Federation planet where money does not exist, and we all can follow our hearts and wishes sanscash. Some of you are IRL space rich, so this does not apply to you.

The game is run by a company, which needs to pay their staff, who run the servers, buy equipment and pay electricity bills etc.

Some people have cleverly (which is easy as the player base is incredibly intelligent) found way to PLEX their accounts, reducing the cash flow but increasing the demands on CCP’s Corp wallet.

Now, by getting new players in to replenish the corp wallet is a great idea, and you may argue about the execution. (I would like to see more ads BTW, especially attached to all those youtube, streamers etc.) But they have done a good job.

A few things you said didn’t make sense. If you are concerned about tidi, why are you there? There are so many places you can be alone-ish in EVE. Check dotland.

The sandbox name at the time EVE was created was used. But many games and time may have changed that. And after 15 years it should be celebrated not admonished.

Gang mentality, it doesn’t take an average IQ of an EVE player to figure out, that there is safety in numbers. I have seen some weird bullying mechanics allowed to play out. And yes it will eventually be one blue donut.
For PVPers it will be a like being in a Nightmare(without cap) - for carebears like myself that would be awesome.

I would like to hear your suggestions as to how to make EVE more sand-boxy, without breaking it. Yes, it is more like kitty litter because you need to have EVE type blocks to create an EVE type universe. As to what size you would like the blocks to be should provide something to reach for. Perhaps then the kitty litter looked like sand then, but that’s progress.

It would be interesting to be able to create new types of ships, from the ground - The t3 cruisers come close, and are very sandlike. We already now have a random way to create new types of modules.

Perhaps a constructive proposal to CCP will help. I have a few Feature requests. ;'D try one.

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Hello there. I am grateful that you took the time to reply, made me log in. :slight_smile:
The Recruit a Friend advert is professional, it has quality production and just the right, light, touch of humor that is so hot right now. The people in the advert are nothing like me though, so perhaps CCP missed the mark, perhaps they are advertising to themselves rather than their possible customers, who would be their existing customers who actually have friends that they have not tried to recruit to EVE in the past. Or perhaps CCP thinks that all the new Alpha players who are youngish professionals and then maybe converted to Omega are their target for this advert.

I dunno. The ad didn’t make me run out to make friends to try and then hustle them to join EVE. But that’s not just because of who the advert was targeted at but also the activity the advert showed. And I have no friends.

I believe in the magic of space. We are meant to move, that’s our purpose, to explore and go further. Space gives us the dark places to shine light into. Not just that space above us full of stars, but the empty space of imagination in which we can construct all sorts of toys. Some, they called it a sandbox, but it’s more like a starbox.

At this stage most of EVE is a game of throwing rocks.
We throw rocks at rocks to get smaller rocks to make into rocks that we can throw with rock throwers at other rock throwers. Which can be very exciting, especially when you add special effects like laser lights and explosions to the rocks.

I am greedy though. I want more.

For a start it would be nice to have a quick rock throwing game, say 10 minutes. A quick simulator for duels etc.

It would be nice to have perhaps a Standing Orders type system that kicks in when a node crashes or when TiDi gets too much, so that your Objectives are pursued by the ships after we all get kicked. So we don’t end up with things like this current zombified mess of UALX -3

But these are just cleanups to streamline the game and make the play flow into fun.

Letting players make things is scary. Apparently game makers hate this fear. Everything must be controlled, even their forums, controlled until the scary dies. But freedom is not that bad. Currently there is an EVE Reddit that has moderators on strike, and there has been absolutely no discernible difference in the amount of information the Reddit creates.

Making a place in space is high on player’s wish lists. We all seem to want our own territory, our own home.
We all seem to want to belong too, even if it’s just a o/ to someone you mine with in high sec and never speak to. Although I do tend to go a bit crazy and look like an aircraft director o7 o/ o// lol \o \o/ /o\

I am easily amused, which is why I love the deep magic of mining: throwing rocks at rocks to make rocks.

And why I enjoy forums. :slight_smile:

Let players make things, and try not to confuse contention with content.

Ship designing, clothing designing, small habitat designing, things that make us sit back in the sandpit and feel like being part of the sandpit, rather than gang up to kick other player’s sand castles over and pick up broken pieces of sand castles as content.

I understand that destruction is part of the need for EVE, it’s a closed system after all, but if your planet colonies, ships and hangars can persist while you are offline, perhaps there is more room for other player created content.

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Not counting the fact that the screen shows he played game offline and using media player, then yes.

Or was that tongue-in-cheek allusion to CCP marketing? Mostly offline and using nice, epic vidios? :thinking:

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Plex actually results in MORE cash for CCP than subscriptions just an FYI

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I totally like the clip for the new system
I totally disliked the changes to RAF

I still dislike the new system. Making Nice clips for any “feature” doesn’t improve it.

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Here’s that big heart symbol - Swosh! Friend request coming your way, to increase the blue donut for sure.

Perfection is an aim, not a milestone. I remember when Homeworld was perfect, and so many other games, that allow Emerson. The graphics, story line, missions, ships, I still love that game. And thats why they could not beat it. Even with Deserts of Kharak, I would rather play the original homeworld.

Why did I mention homeworld. Moving factory, resource, carriers that are battle platforms. Phew. Maybe the triglavian mothership is that?!!

Well, young professionals will be able to afford the sub. It’s not 100%representitive of the players of EVE, but it is the paying kind.

Would you really make a rock-throwing game or a duel simulator? Neat.

I think you have a point, to be able to use the EVE building blocks to make something new. I don’t know if the game has one of those drag and drop interfaces like little big planet, Minecraft or space engineers.

So it could be difficult, near impossible. The first step would be to ask CCP, a CSM.

All the best

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Yes I agree. To expaand my brief overarching point.

  1. Plex is created from outside the game. Money is converted to plex.
  2. Plex is use for mulit thingies, game extension and skins… probably more.
  3. If no one paid cash for plex, and everyone decides to fund their game from activities, plex would eventually dry up.
  4. Because it is a finite resource created outside the game, by cash.

This is why it’s a good idea for professionals to join and buy plex. ;'D

Hope you understand.

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I rarely have one meaning to any word, but that’s the same for all of us. And not just because of our personal history and learning nor the teachers who bashed us into job factory material.

For example, for some reason people equate professional with good, we assume it’s good to be professional, for some unknown reason. When the root of the word would seem to come from to profess, to talk from the heart, now that sounds good to me, but I think the other meaning of the word professional i.e. “suit-wearer” is not good.

Or let’s look at the phrase “Recruit a Friend”, which is to say, take a friend and turn them into a recruit, turn them into a product. The whole phrase has evil in the shape of dehumanisation.

Not that evil is that bad, at least it’s better than the word professional.

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Trying to simplify content creation is best because success becomes easier to achieve as fewer variables are needed for simple changes.

For example, we know CCP can let players create things for the game of EVE.

Unfortunately that creative content is advertising.
We can make billboards in space.
…and the crowd went wild.

I mean who wouldn’t want to sign up to a game that’s about exploring space and then see advertising which is all about desperately trying to get people to sign up with other people.

Who wouldn’t want to sign up to one of these intergalactic Avon/Tupperware/Veldspar groups.

Gladly there are people making online EVE content that is good. For example there is a youtube of Black Legion doing a break-out mission for some of the stuck dreadnoughts in the UALX-3 system. That’s new, it’s topical, it was fun to watch!

CCP should be able to let players watch that in-game. If a billboard why not a youtube?

So that’s a minimalist change to letting players create. The benefits are that it happens in-game, it allows variety, it involves actual players, it arouses interest in whatever the hell the creators are talking about (let’s face it out-of-game stuff like the reddits makes no sense to new players).

CCP should be throwing PLEX at creators who make them feel something, because if CCP watches something and feels something, it’s good for EVE and what’s good for EVE keeps CCP in sweet sweet sweet Surstromming to keep their creative juices flowing.

And that’s good for everyone.

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We can make ads, but we can make ads for lore stuff too, like with that “SOE, fly with us” ad. Dont know how CCP is looking at that stuff now tho, when its a lot of ads there, nothing but ads, bleh. :nauseated_face:

When CQ screen was a thing and CQ itself was a thing, I made custom presentations and music vidios on that screen, and even helped others do that. But it was all personal stuff. It was good that way tho.

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Ad had a great sense of humour and definitively 's true to the nature of the game.

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This is where CCP stopped reading

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EVE is a screen, anything can be made on that screen, but CCP wants to constrain itself to a very particular type of content. Something along the lines of groups of people shooting each others’ ships. That’s the universe of EVE, according to CCP.

Let’s take a look at another game. It lets you play for free and you can create nearly any content you like, in any media you like. This game is hugely successful, although once it got past $20 a share I thought it became overvalued.

Yes. The universe/game/social network of Facebook.

Which gave the players more freedom and they got more players.

EVE and Facebook are the same activity, sit at a mainly visual media and click a keyboard for fun. Except Facebook went hard at free-to-play and player freedom. And in the earlier years a game company helped them with the whole Recruit-a-Friend (Create-an-Alt) system. Zynga, of Farmville fame. Probably responsible for the most fake accounts on Facebook, still. Which I am absolutely sure happens in EVE and which to me means people end up with too many accounts and then burn out and then quit, sort of the opposite of the desired goal of Recruit a “Friend”.

I can understand why people do the whole Recruit-an-Alt thing though, they love playing EVE and want to succeed and explore everything and pile up wealth and riches beyond dreaming. But that Isk is just spacedust.

CCP probably just needs a small insight into how to get their dreadball of Friendship Recruiting rolling. I don’t know what that insight is, but I wish them well.

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I don’t even know whats going on in this thread, but for some reason I think reading it will give me a headache.

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Playin’ chess and watchin’ underclass TV shows written for jobless folks are the same thing.

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99% agree with what you have said because I value an opinion clearly started, without swearing or superlatives or generalisations.

We all learn, we all different.

And some have more friends than others.

Did your try out space engineers?

Thanks for your comments dude.

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You can do it many ways, now the option is:
recruit people or not.

and then are you going to use the link to do so.

using the link could mean that you all benefit and get a kickstart skillpoints rather than slogging it.

I don’t think it was wrong just different. I hope you can see it was for the greater good.

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I was happy to oblige with some quick commentary.

I haven’t tried space engineers out.

Shortly I’ll be off again bashing words together in other forums. Not game ones sadly. So it was quite relaxing having a chat with you.

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CCP doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of how to recruit players. Or maybe they do and their scheme is wildly successful and makes millions for them? Who knows. All I’m doing here is talking about what I think and that could be right, wrong or indifferent, all I know is that it’s what I think, at this time, on this topic. :slight_smile:

Facebook shows how to do crazy wild expansion using free-to-play. Give people freedom.

Recruit a Friend seems more like a 2 for 1 Tuesdays Blockbuster special promotion.

It seems a little bit like a low rent Ponzi. :slight_smile: But hey, it may be fantastically successful, hundreds of new players may be signing up ever day because of it.

Which highlights another problem, nobody knows the numbers, we surmise from players online, then say triple that for active players then maybe triple that again for recently active players. So maybe 100k people recently playing EVE?

For a recruitment drive to be successful how many do you want to add? Over 10% for sure.
10% loss of players per year could be expected to be normal. So you need 10,000 new/returning players a year just to stay at 100,000 players.

Paying people to bring their friends, that must work, I mean CCP has been doing this scheme for years so it must yield fantastic results, otherwise they would have instituted better systems after all these years.

I’d prefer that players get rewarded for doing stuff that makes people feel things, because at our core, emotion is why we buy things. If it wasn’t car ads would be very different.

Thanks again. Bye Ryan

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Trolling and getting a Nobel peace prize, the same thing.
Getting a response to trolling, winning the world series the same thing.
Obama and Trump, the same thing.

Depending on a personal point of view yes they are the same. And somehow your responses are not that cynical or clever.

It’s not a MENSA test.