Hmmm. maybe most of the haters making new characters…thats about it id say.
It’s still early to write it off completely, as we always see a drop in player numbers over the summer. But the metric seems to be how many players last past x number of days, weeks and months. Only FC knows for sure if the player conversion/retention has been helped by Exordium. My bet is that it hasn’t - at least significantly.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Cradle of War had to be one of the most lacklustre expansions in recent memory. It’s really just a glorified patch to tide the playerbase over the summer until something “meatier” in the fall (maybe).
Military Campaigns had promise - but the minimal interaction pretty much made these DOA for most players. If I don’t want to venture into low-sec for FW, I’m basically left with “hack in high-sec”. Actually, nix that - hacking was already completed…
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So it’s space managed by CONCORD and AIR, but where did it come from? Has it always existed? I feel somewhat scandalised that CONCORD kept the region obscured from capsualeers for so long, yet its unnatural symmetry suggests an artificial creation. This is the narrative I’ll be exploring.
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We’ve been given an explanation, it’s just an awful one. AIR developed a magical new long-range warp drive and sent ships to Exordium a couple months ago to construct the new stargates, explicitly for the purpose of making a training space for capsuleers (you know, the demigods that have given everyone so much trouble ever since they gave us immortality a couple decades ago which pretty much everyone agrees was a bad idea) and CONCORD sponsored it as a diplomatic space for the empires and also install malware in our pod goo so we can’t attack people there (but NPC rats are better at piracy and somehow managed to disable CONCORD’s rootkit). Exordium didn’t pop out of nowhere, the stars were already there, but the entire region was previously determined to be absolutely worthless by remote scans and thus not worth the enormous expenditure of colonisation but I guess now we have the money to do it as a CONCORD vanity project. It’s ugly and symmetrical because it’s explicitly artificial and CCP just kind of forgot about all the previous lore about how stargate connections are very finicky and the gates not only need to be very deliberately positioned in each system but also that each system itself needs to fulfill a long list of conditions and some connections just aren’t possible to create in the first place.
Basically IC it’s a massive boondoggle to justify the exorbitant SCC surcharges. Where are the capsuleer representatives on the Inner Council?? I say, no taxation without representation! Someone needs to dress up as starkmanir tribesmen and throw Quafe out the Jita 4-4 airlocks to raise awareness for this grave injustice.
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2D map view is a logical abstracted view that is not founded on physical reality. Switch to 3D view and you will find that Exordium systems are placed all over randomly and the jump connects all have a different length.
It amuses me how so many can’t grasp this…it is as since the 2D map mode was added, all previous knowledge got lost somehow.
2D mode now focuses much more on topology, mmkay? No one prevents you from switching to 3D mode to view geographical features instead.
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Never ask that to someone who’s half Italian! 
What Have The Romans… - Monty Python’s Life of Brian - YouTube
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Will Exordium be the final nail in EVE’s coffin…?
Huh? You have to explain that one please, Arthur.
There’s nothing to do in Exordium, except remain and get really bored, leave for any other type of space or quit. I’m leaning towards quit…
Um, that’s kind of the point. Not the quitting but to leave for greener pastures. It’s a starter area. There aren’t supposed to be big exciting rewards there or the place would be farmed by older players. You stick around there long enough to learn some basics, get comfortable with the game’s mechanics, maybe get recruited by a decent corp and leave.
I don’t get what’s so controversial about that or why you feel a little time in there would lead folks to quit. After all newbies aren’t forced to stay. They’re free to leave any time either via the regular gates or the shipcasters.
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I think Exordium is a very poor representation of EVE, but hey - just my $0.02.
You continue to over analyze the whole concept of it…so much that you make a few positive posts about it, then turn right around and poke the proverbial hornets nest on a somewhat negative post to stir the masses.
Its designed to do exactly as you describe. Its to train enough to figure things out…then become a drag and unfun experience. Yes, a few may quit thinking the entire game is like that. Thats when we must step in and show them the way.
Ive said it a few hundred times now. You cant expect a zone like this to work and produce new players like an assembly line all on its own. We, as the older and wiser crowd have to put a little human effort in it for the system to work. The issue is nobody wants to do that so the zone will be a huge bare bore fest.
Go there and put in the work. Go teach them that the game isnt a huge bore fest after all.
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We’ll see what FC’s plan is for the fall with it.
I havent had the time otherwise id be on there on my alt doing exactly that
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Honestly, what’s to know? It’s T0 filament/L2 agent/0-grade ore. Essentially worthless. Unless you’re handing out free ISK, free ships, free advice or actively recruiting - there’s not much point in making any trip to Exordium.
And maybe that’s the whole point (Exodus for the rest of us).
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Announced at the very beginning.
Thats all it was designed to be for.
Youre right, there isnt. Stay out of there if you feel the work you could possibly contribute isnt worth your time.
I feel a little deja vu here…like ive said all this before…hmm too many posts to try and remember who said what anymore.
I hope this puts it all into perspective, but im sure the hornets nest will be poked again in the very near future.
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I think the main discussion is again along the line that if you don’t experience “the real EVE” soon enough, then your interest in the game might be lost before the world and its possibilities actually open up for the new player to experience. With the old concept of a starter system surrounded by the “real world” you just came to interact with the real world when you ventured out to buy something or to just look around.
The problem is that i can’t judge how it is for a new player in Exordium as i have too much experience with the game. I played the tutorial for a few hours with a new character and then just stopped it as i fell asleep doing it. So much text and clicking for so few advancement.
The tutorial as it is is just inaccessible. You have no real overview on where you are in it, you can’t skip parts, only the whole and you can’t reaccess it. I wished i could skip the early parts and continue somewhere later, but no, i had to stop it altogether.
For me it is the “small things” that are missing and give you some basic adrenaline…like flashing people that have just killed someone, container theft, Incursion warnings and similar stuff that the design of Exordium disables.
I am an old player. I get bored if my hand is held and i am told i have to click here and there for hours prolonged by text to read. I love to find out stuff for myself and started playing when there was ZERO tutorial.
So in order to find out if the player retention got any better, FC has to do at least a feedback and player analysis with actual real new players, not with veterans trying the stuff out.
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What have you ever done to earn a bitter old vets respect? 