Mark, every plex that you can buy for isk on the market was once bought from CCP by using real world cash.
It does not make any difference to CCP’s revenue whether you plex or pay sub conventionally.
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Actually, it does make a difference. Last time I looked, it cost about $USD 20 for 500 Plex. It cost $USD 15 for a one-month sub.
Combat sites just appear when one is finished, no need for probes.
There are ships that dont appear on Dscan, also cloakys wont appear on Dscan.
I agree they can watch graphical changes around gates, I don’t think there is a 100% sure way for a bot to tell if someone has left the system.
The changes have made bots revise their tactics, apparently they use 4 pilots in mryms bc to bot.
Hilmar will just focus on MAU/DAU. He’s got a vested interest in not listening, at this point. I don’t think anything’s going to make him listen.
So we have to make his bosses listen.
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The point is that bots will always adapt.
The adaptation for Blackout would have been quite simple.
Another game i play has never had a “local” yet the botting problem is very real.
It has a setting called “flee on sight”, don’t need probes or Dscan - As soon as something gets within a set range the ship automatically warps off. The maker of the bot even added something that can see cloaked ships, so approaching cloaked has the same affect - Target warps off.
I hope he does stick with MAU/DAU and that his bosses are smart enough to see through what it actually represents.
I like to think PA wants people to enjoy playing their games and are not just another “lets try this and see what happens” gaming company.
Happy players will always recommend the games they play to others - Players being “encouraged” to completely change how they have played for many years are far less likely to do the same.,.
CCP have to realise, word of mouth is the best advertising any company can get. Happy customers are the best advertising.,.
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What Null does not seem to be capable of understanding is that CCP is listening just not to Null and the CSM and the results are great for the long term of this game.
Judging by what parameters?
Players down, content down, new player retention as bad as always… but somehow this is good for the long term of the game? If this trend continiues there won’t be any ‘long term’ perspective for EVE left at all.
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When you try to fix problems that have occurred over a 10 year span you expect the entitled players to whine and leave and hope that your player base comes back now that you have fixed the problems that caused them to leave. So yes the players will go down before they are up but it is a lot less of a loss when those players mostly do not use cash to play.
Players do not return in any meaningful numbers, not even enough to make up for those who leave hence the drop in players online.
And again everyone apart from Alpha accounts are in a direct or indirect way paying cash for their subscriptions as has been stated and explained to you numerous times in this thread.
What you don’t seem to understand is that null and the CSM have long advocated for changes that will actually promote the long-term health of the game, and these don’t do that. Tell me: what impact does the Blackout have on Empire space? Hmm? How do these changes impact beyond nullsec?
And if they don’t, exactly why should CCP be listening people—like you—who demonstrably don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about?
Now, it’s all well and good to say ‘CCP is listening’ to HS… but HS, by and large, isn’t talking. The vast majority of the players of EVE Online, and especially those in High Sec? They never actually engage. They don’t. They don’t go to EVE meets, they don’t talk to people on the forums, they don’t even tend to engage in local. And CCP knows that. Guard, Rise, Fozzie, Falcon, they’ve all openly said as much. So if those people aren’t engaging, if they’re not speaking, what exactly are CCP supposed to be listening to?
And lowsec? Most of lowsec cares about the Blackout only in terms of going into null. They care more about the cyno changes, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but LS JF pilots don’t seem to be too thrilled with the cyno changes, either. So exactly who should CCP be listening to? The wormholers who blew up in a fit of sudden rage all over /r/eve as soon as Hilmar said he wants to make it so rolling wormholes can’t be done reliably or safely, at FF@Home?
Wait, no, they’re not happy either. I guess he can’t listen to them, either, huh?
The results of the changes so far are not ‘great for the long term of this game’. The results so far are ephemeral, and fleeting. So what happens in the longer-term? Rise is talking about increasing the faucets, to increase the rewards for living in null. Well, that’s great and all, but unless the underlying issues are addressed, that’s not going to do what they want it to do. It’s just going to make it so that if null groups get organized, groups like Legacy, like PanFam, etc, you’re going to see the same thing happening in their space that you’re seeing in Delve. And remember:
Delve is up during the Blackout. Up.
Making nullsec someplace that smaller groups can’t effectively live in because they can’t defend their ratters and miners, while the big, organized groups can increase their earnings… that’s not ‘great for the long term of this game’. It’s kind of exactly the opposite. So what happens when CCP opens up the faucets a little to ‘balance’ the deficit they’re seeing now? Well, we make a metric buttload more ISK. The other organized groups make a metric buttload more ISK. And the little guys are still screwed.
And that’s not ‘think of the children’ crap, either, it goes directly to the stagnation and systemic issues that have been going on in null for years that CCP has known about, and hasn’t addressed. Rorquals are too good. We know they’re too good. We told them they would be too good. They did it anyway. Rorquals, even now, even with Mining Drone IIs are still better than max-yield Hulks with boosts. That should not be the case. The Hulk should be slightly worse than the Rorq, but slightly better with boosts. That way, you bring out the Rorqual to provide boosts to your group of Hulks, or (more likely) Mackinaws, but the Rorq’s still worth having out there.
Supercapitals are an absolute requirement if you’re going to hold space in null. But that means you can’t afford to risk your supers. So nobody does. As a result, they don’t die in any significant numbers, and we see these massive super fleets building up to the point where guess what! Nobody can actually go to war, because the defenders will just drop Supers. And if you bring your supers… whoever has the smaller supercap fleet won’t fight, they’ll just withdraw and push someone smaller aside.
All of that is bad for the long term of this game, because it leads to an ever-accelerating cycle where the big blocs have bigger and bigger superfleets, and so are more and more secure from everyone but one another. That causes stagnation. That kills off major fighting. There’s no point to it. So nobody’s going to bother.
The cyno changes only make that more the case, because the organic escalations that used to result in accidental bloodbaths like B-R5RB won’t happen. Nobody’s going to take the time to go scrambling force recons in order to throw good money after bad. Effort required to slog through tidi just to get into position to light the cyno will trump sunk cost fallacies.
So you just keep on accumulating more and more supercapitals under all of these changes, nice and secure in your space. And when the faucets open up again, the gap between the haves and have-nots will just get wider, faster than ever before.
So tell me: what impact do you see these changes having that’s ‘great for the long term of this game’? Because none of the people who are letting their subs lapse are losing anything. None of them won’t be able to drop a few bucks in 6-8 months and come back with all of their supers and titans intact. Even if asset safety goes away, the only people who might go on a campaign of Exterminaatus on hostile staging keepstars… is us. And we’re not going to do it during this ‘Chaos’ nonsense.
So let’s hear it. How do you think all of these changes will play out in a way that’s good for the game?
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“If words were like water, the forums would drown us all.”
Bitch all we want, it wont help…
Hey man, news flash. Players who left 10 years ago are not your player base. The people who stayed and played are. The player base is cratering.
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except it hasn’t. It has been stated by people who want to believe buying plex of the market is paying in cash. It is not, CCP could make up an automated sytem and just add in an isk sink to withdraw a similar amount out of the game. Same as all the plex CCP confiscated off botters.
It is a very simple principle, if you are not paying with cash, then you are not paying with cash.
News flash, customers likely to pay you money are your player base.
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Players who PLEX their accounts drive sales of PLEX to people who buy PLEX in order to make ISK with them. Every Omega account is money in CCP’s pocket. People who haven’t been playing for years are not.
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Please don’t bother with the walls of text. Especially now you are talking about how much a business cares about people writing on the forums.
It was the forums, CSM and the null devs who got CCP in this mess.
In other words, you have no idea how these changes will play out in a way that’s good for the game. You just think it’s good for the game because peak users dropped by another 2k this week, and reddit tells you that’s good.
It really is funny how every single time you run into a ‘put up or shut up’, you go run away for a while.
So, once again: how is CCP supposed to be listening to more than null and the CSM if the people you claim they’re listening to aren’t talking to them?
How do you see this playing out that is ‘great for the long term of this game’?
Oh, and one more, because it bears asking…
Which ‘null devs’? Larrikin? He’s always been more of a small gang guy. Fozzie’s from LS. In fact, all the ex-player devs I can think of are from LS. So pray, which devs are you thinking of?
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Surely the huge fleet of returning players will arrive any day now. Let us know when they do!
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No why would anyone expect that. You would hope for a return AFTER. risk vs reward is corrected properly and only a few at the moment.
As EvE improves so will the numbers but it will get worse before it gets better. After all you have to get rid of the entitled players first.