Is CCP finished as a viabke entity? Look at the evidence:
Massive round of layoffs
Obliteration of the community team (o7 show)
Abandonment of Valkyrie and sale of entire VR division (failed $995m sale of CCP)
Lackluster FanFest (15th anniversary, no less)
No FanFest in Iceland next year
No new expansions or features on the roadmap
Into the Abyss went, well… into the abyss
Executive producer shown the door (no replacement)
Outsourcing the AT for the first time ever
Long-term devs (particularly artists) leaving
Push into the mobile platform with not one but two games
Impending release of another 1st person shooter in the battle royale market
Drastic changes to the recruiting program with no advance notice
Failure of Alpha clones
Inability to attract and retain new players
I’m just waiting for long-term devs like CCP Rise, CCP Fozzie and CCP Falcon to announce their departure. If the writing isn’t on the wall now that will be a sure sign of the end days of EVE.
But the main reason it would die is from lack of players. Eventually what few people are left will have bought all the skins and SP they want, gotten bored, and left the game.
Selling gold is usually the sign that a game company has given up. It means people will play for months instead of years. And that’s not good for a niche game.
Remove all the ratting alts, bots and accounts used for RMT and you’d see a huge reduction in the number of ‘active’ players. Anyone wonder why there’s been so many anti-WarDec/anti-ganking threads? The wolves are finding fewer and fewer carrion to plunder and have stepped into high-gear to maximize exploiting what few high-sec whales remain so they can continue playing for free. If you can’t be part of the solution you can at least prolong the problem…
This is no doubt driving both new and existing players away in droves, but no one at CCP has the foresight to step up and address this because it would upset the null-sec PR apple cart (and the pushback on r/Eve).
I don’t consider myself a bittervet. But for some time now, CCP does everything they can to push me into that direction.
It’s just sad if you think what Eve could be if they had invested just a fracture of the money they burned with different failed projects (VR, World of Darkness, and so on) into this game.
Instead we get the same promises every year at fanfest and nothing happens. The time they need to release a new citadel structure is allmost enough for many other studios to release a new game.
Module Tiericede? Started good, but suddenly there is no time for that. Announced dedicated balance team? canceled. Community Team? Fired. Jump bridges and all the other structures they announced years ago? Just the old soon™.
And after so many years, i’m also tired from the old “legacy code” excuse.
I understand that it is important for CCP to have a second mainstay beside Eve Online. But at the moment it just feels like they had enough of it and just use it as a cashcow. Their luck is that they have no competitoners in that special segment.
And no, i don’t blame the coders, the graphic team (which does an AWESOME job) or the other dedicated Devs at CCP. It’s a management problem that they don’t get the resources to work with at their primary source of income.
All I can hope is that they’re really just quietly working on making the client so streamlined and efficient on both the servers and the players that we eliminate TIDI as a reason for their complete and total silence on subjects.
Well, CCP has brought it all on themselves when they do fold. They have told everyone who knows anything to either shut the hell up or to piss off and die. You cant help people like that no matter how much you may want to.
Rather than fix a lot of really serious issues in the game, they elected to tell everyone to piss off and kept dumping more and more into stupid crap that means nothing.
Then, let us never forget the really stupid parts that they have done:
1 - Let’s piss off all of our paying members and bring in non-paying members…cuz that makes sense.
2 - Let’s call everyone who says there is a problem whiners.
3 - Let’s blow a ton of money on stuff nobody cares about because…full wallets!
4 - Let’s take our pc game and put in on a console…oops…pc gamers ≠ console gamers. Talk about a noob mistake there!
5 - Late’s dump a ton of money into VR! Oops…not everyone can afford VR systems:(
So, yeah, CCP has done this to themselves for sure and they will continue doing it till it is dead because they will not listen.
Or as someone smarter than CCP once said: The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
What they need to do is fire the people who are either unwilling or incapable of doing their job(s) and replace them with someone who will.
I volunteer;) but I am bringing an axe and an attitude.
Yes alot of what’s been mentioned above reflects my feelings too regarding the game .
There’s not enough coding work done or optimisation for performance,art department is working mostly on skins instead of getting ship hulls redesigned in greater numbers.
Hmm, i disagree with this point. Alpha clones are, in it’s core, an extended trial version. I know some players in my own corp who use this opportunity from time to time to crash in and say hello. And sometimes even sub a month or two because they have fun to hang around with their old pals and want to use all the stuff they have.
They would not have introduced the feature if they were not concerned about subscriber numbers.
No one in a profit oriented business give out a free lunch without good reason.
Your point is a clear example of that reason. CCP was hoping those old players would return to the game as Omega Clones at some point. It was a calculated business decision.
This should be in the “terrible ideas” thread: new NPC freighters loaded with billions of good loot (not from players, since I guess there aren’t any left) start travelling the trade routes. When the bumping or shooting starts, the NPC would post in local various pleadings and tears culled at random from years of examples stored in CCP’s tear database. This would give hunters, wolves, gankers an infusion of new content, and they’d still lose all their ships to CONCORD.
First I heard the executive producer wanted to be with her family I guess I heard wrong.
Second I don’t see Alpha clones as a failure, I am sure some do but as failures go with CCP I don’t really consider this one.
I don’t see how CCP thinks they can compete with something like Fortnite. It does seem like a lost cause.
I also see a trend where CCP likes to get in where they see the most players. Not necessarily because all players want to play that particular game but because its whats best out at the time. How do you explain to someone its not the type of game but the game itself is the reason they are playing. I think every fps I hear CCP developing will be a disaster, where they should be doing something like teaming up with Chronicles of Elyria (who was looking for someone like them) and making a game closer to what they know, an RPG.
CCP only sees numbers they see the most people playing a FPS so they say they will develop one then. It seems like a path to little thought and particularly bad insight into the gaming community for a company that is supposed to be on the pulse.
Even if (and that one is a very big IF) CCP gets to finish their module-cide and does some balancing work, it is too late anyways.
goons don’t want to give up their farmville-bots and every new player would still be faced with the following:
New player wallet shows 10.000 isk
New player can maybe make 10 million if and only if player does the tutorial missions (I didn’t so I was struggling a lot then)
New player gets a ship and spends all his isk on one boat and to satisfy his curioucity goes to lowsec and looses ship to 3078570284792569725627954 titans gatecamping-bots
New player get 1.2 million insurance and wakes up in his starter system
New player goes to jita and looks at market to by level 1 mission boat
New player logs off because he no longer can do anything
New player un-installes titan (formerly EVE) online
New player tells 2 friends about it
New player made 500 people, formerly curious about titan online, not even download in the first place
A satified customer always brings 5 new customers but a not satisfied customer removes 20 customers and for this new at early in the morning, I didn’t even have to go to business school.
So just keep your titan online and infinite-farmville isk.
I am a returning player who was out the game for about 4 years and left due to real life issues and probably the game feeling stale. Always kept my eye on Eve because it was one of my favourite games. I returned at the end of last year and joined one of the biggest alliances and have absolutely loved it. I get access to vast areas to do PVE and have regular opportunities to go on fleet operations so the game feels very fresh to me and doesn’t show signs of decay. If I compare this experience to my high sec life I can see why new players don’t stay, high sec is dangerous and you can’t trust anyone. Null sec is safe and I know who I can trust. I for one hope Eve remains as the null sec community seems to be thriving from what I’ve seen. I’ve met some great people and feel part of the community. This is the side of Eve that new players need to experience which will keep them as paying customers. Only issue is the skill point requirements to fly and fit the necessary ships to be combat effective.
