As much as CODE probably deserves another thread, I’m going to go back to the OP. Another decent video from the Jin-ster, which list real failures and gives reasonable ideas for CCP to get back on track in 2020. Realistically, the dysfunction/lack of direction at CCP will not change, and this year will be another series of missteps, with the odd success popping up, and we will continue our slide into inertia, but one can always hope for a change in direction.
While I probably side on the fence of Eve-is-better-off-without-the-old-format-AT, the way CCP has treated tournament organizers and aficionados is deplorable. I’m sure CCP still has a revamp 2020 AT on a whiteboard somewhere which is why they are loathe to declare it dead, but I am very pessimistic they will ever get to it. Like always, other stuff will keep it off the table and they will remain silent, 'til I guess shortly before Fanfest when they will have to announce it not coming again this year and hope the good news at Fanfest drowns out the complaints. Unless they really have started real work on it, in which case we’ll hear about it in the next weeks. But probably not.
The rest, well, there is a serious lack of direction at CCP. Turning dials and looking at metrics may help figure out some game design issues, but a fun game it does not automatically make. Nor does adding more monetization. I mean, maybe more avenues of revenue are needed, but a game developer shouldn’t be surprised when people keep leaving when they keep squeezing harder without adding more real content or gameplay.
What is needed is someone to articulate a vision that is fun and awesome and show some progress towards that, not articulate a cool, but vague vision, but then do nothing but add more monetization, tweak/nerf/remove/replace existing game systems, and spend 80%+ of their time on an NPE that existing players don’t see.
New players aren’t going to save Eve. Or at least, tweaking the NPE to retain a few percentage more players a few weeks longer isn’t going to revitalize the game. Yes, the NPE looses a terribly high fraction of players early on, but it is the serious, well-known structural problems related to the economy, accessible content and the power gap between incumbents and new entrants that remain unaddressed that keep the game from growing again. Like, what does a new player fresh out of the NPE actually do in modern Eve? And year after year those issues remain, or even get worse.
I don’t think it is easy, or maybe even possible to keep a game like Eve going for decades so the development team has my sympathy. But as Jin’taan neatly laid out, there were so many mis-steps last year it’s frustrating to watch CCP squander so much goodwill. So many people want Eve to succeed, yet CCP appears from the outside to be almost grasping at straws. Clear and consistent communication explaining why things are happening, what they learned, and where they are going would go so far to keeping most of the players happy, or at least on-board, yet consistently CCP fails to project or communicate that they have a vision and know what they are doing or where the game is going.
Is the game in 2020 better than the past? Certainly aspects of it are, including PvE and the NPE, but player activity metrics and general sentiment would say no, the game as a whole is not better. It isn’t more active, and it isn’t more fun. CCP has neglected the core gameplay of Eve for years, focusing on first re-engineering flawed systems, and then chasing the PvE masses that never came. It’s time to get back to basics and not only focus on the core gameplay, but spend some effort to convince the general player base that fostering a competitive PvP sandbox game is once again, CCP’s top priority.
I’m at heart an optimist, so I have high hopes that the ‘Fight or Flight’ Quadrant will mark the start of a renaissance of PvP sandbox gameplay, and that CCP takes the message of this video to heart so Jin’s summary video of 2020 has a much different tone than this one. But the pragmatist in me wouldn’t bet on it.
White knights are so fun and easy…actually, this is my therapy!
