I believe the biggest problem with this game is deliberately placing solo players at an extreme disadvantage and trying to force them to join corps… Countless new players have quit the game over the years because of it…which translates to a huge loss in revanue… Here are some suggestions to try and remedy that problem without affecting the exciting cut-throat nature of the game…
A solo mode just in High Sec where new players can learn the game without being bothered by other players… Not a connected solo mode like in ED, but a seperate solo mode that can’t be used to take advantage of the main game…
An arena mode where players can test their ship fits against different enemy scenarios where players don’t loose a real ship if they are destroyed… New and veteran players alike would love something like this to test their fits… Even further, allow players to choose the enemy ships, their fits, and the number of ships to fight allowing players to have full control over creating combat scenarios…
Have security rank level be proportional to the time it takes for Concord to show up… The higher your security rank, the quicker Concord shows up to protect you… The more new players complete the missions, the better protected they will be…
Give pilots a camera system to see outside of stations when docked instead of deliberately blinding players at stations to give an unfair advantage to gankers outside stations… Remember how they changed the markets and listing structure about five years ago upon how real world markets work (which was total BS)??? Blinding pilots in stations couldn’t be further from reality… Having a station camera would help new players to protect themselves while opening up a new dimension of surveillance for gankers as well…
In conclusion, I believe that these suggested changes would help new player retention without adversely affecting the nature of the game…
I think the biggest challenge is providing content where players can just login for an hour or so whenever to play EVE, ie: geared towards the casual player.
A form of this already exists, in that the security penalty a ganker receives involves a formula that includes the security level of both players. The formula is…
No, the game is just fine as it is. Bear in mind that gankers have to dock and undock too, with their loot ships. If you’ve ever seen MacGybo’s videos on ganking, you’ll see that one of his issues is he himself having his loot ganked. Docking and undocking is supposed to be a perilous time.
I disagree with the point/s the OP tries to make and the solutions to what they see as the problems.
It’s basically a re-hash of ‘Gankers are Bad’, ‘Think of the Newbies’, ‘Make Solo Play Better’ - all of which have been recently aired on the Forum, debated to death and, eventually, terminated by ISD. Which is the likely prognosis for this excursion into the realms of fantasy.
I don’t think the game is capable of being ‘reignited’, any more than nullsec was susceptible to ‘reinvigoration’ (or whatever the word was). At least, not without effectively dismantling what the OP calls ‘this great game’.
Well, it is an MMO. What does the second M stand for again?
1: We already have restrictions on what PvP activities can take place in the rookie systems. There’s plenty there to learn the game, but not enough to make a living. Eve is not a PvE game with PvP elements, it is a PvP game with PvE income streams.
2: Duels exist for this purpose. The only fits requiring testing in Eve are for PvP. All PvE content has had the fits required to do them most efficiently min/maxed already. They’re usually included in the tutorial on the content. There is no amount of PvE content that will prepare you for PvP.
3: Wouldn’t matter to most gank targets. Not one of my miner or hauler alts have ever done a single mission, not even the career agents.
4: You realize you’re literally invulnerable for a while after undocking, right? Undock, look at overview, dock if you don’t like what you’re seeing. Also, instawarp bookmarks are another thing. Unless there’s a bubble on the undock, you’re gone before they can ever target you.
Nothing you suggested will improve player retention. In fact, with the data that CCP has released in the past, your ideas would be directly counter to what their data says makes people stay.
Do you have any evidence to support this opinion? I personally don’t feel solo players are at all that much disadvantage. Yes, CCP does try to herd players into larger corps and alliances, and generally towards Nullsec as well. There are potentially larger rewards for heading in the direction CCP is pushing their ‘sandbox’ towards, but this isn’t the same thing as placing solo players at “an extreme disadvantage”.
Your points are also mostly small tweaks on existing systems, they would have little impact overall. Solo learning mode? Those are called “Starter Systems” and “Career agents”. Arena mode? Test server, duels and security missions. Differences in Concord response time? System security levels.
The station camera would help in a small number of cases, but then, reducing the ridiculous amount of “undock followed by black screen pause time” for all the players who aren’t running EVE on a higher end system/SSD would likely help more.
More effective than “solo non-interference” mode would be to advertise EVE as it actually is: a dog-eat-dog dystopia where there’s as many cut-throat mercenaries, pirates and scammers as there are hard-working space entrepreneurs. Where your brains and your guts count for more than your morals. EVE might get fewer signups in that case, but more of them would be prepared to stick around.
It would also be more effective to tell newer players about the nature of EVE PvP right up front, rather than sending them off to be miners with a pat on the head and “it’s the cool way to earn ISK!” nod from the NPE.
Players can still play solo in a corp, btw. But CCP doesn’t encourage that kind of corp in any noticeable fashion.
We are. We just multibox everything to compensate.
This game is infinitely easier with a good support network, some of us just provide our own.
Yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and say it. If your “black screen pause time” is longer than the undock invulnerability timer, you need a better potato to run Eve on. Maybe don’t undock in Jita, jump clone in and out and have everything couriered to Perimeter.
This was how Eve was promoted at its height, back when the Devs had a band.
It’d be better to auto-enroll new player in FW at the end of NPE. There’s good money to be made there, you can limit the fights you want to take by size of the site you enter, and requires learning PvP.
This is absolutely the worst way to play this game. I’ve been in numerous highsec social corps, and the ones that weren’t dead chat channels of netflix watchers were the exception.
You cannot learn EVE without interacting with other players. If you play a Solo EVE, you will be introduced to a wholly different game once you leave this mode.
You have tether on structures as well as View Outside. On stations, you have 1 minute of undock invulnerability to check what’s what, redock, undock again and repeat.
I think it can be…but it requires people doing the totally un-expected ( like with the Augorors ). To me it seems people have settled into a certain mode of safety, assuming that nobody will do certain things. Those anti-gankers at Uedama, for example, sit there with a sort of ’ haha…I’m so cheap nobody would dare attack me ’ attitude. That’s precisely how things stagnate.
i think you’re right. That part of my comment was uncharacteristically sloppy. What needs to be reignited is not the game (inert, 0s and Is, pixels) but the players.
Since the game began (I guess), the way you do that is by providing tools and an environment which encourage players by rewarding creativity and restoring a sense of Adventure.
Just like in Life, there are folks who don’t want adventure, risk, uncertainty. Well, EVE caters for those, too. Otherwise they’d all have left by now (wouldn’t they?). But here they still are, whining, weeping, wailing.
I genuinely don’t get it. CCP is walking a razor-thin tightrope; one very wrong move, and - Whoops! - bye-bye EVE.
I’m grateful for what those devs and designers do. I don’t like it all, but I’m just one guy, flitting about in Molden Heath. I play solo; I enjoy what I do; I’m fine.
As for new players; some will stay, some will leave. Some will stay, then leave; some will leave then return (as I did). It’s always been like that; always will be. Get a grip, OP.
No it does not.
He asks that “The higher your security rank, the quicker Concord shows up to protect you”
Not that the higher your security rank, the bigger the penalty for the attacker.
