Ok, so… first, yes, obviously there’s been a general gradual decline in EVE Online. The only way to even begin to evaluate the Blackout would be to look at the decline of the last month relative to the rest of the year, compared to the same period last year relative to the rest of 2018.
Now, these dates don’t line up perfectly, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but the Season of Skills also throws it all off, so there’s really no way to be sure.
So! 2018:
Summer 2018:
Summer 2018 saw a drop of 10k vs all of 2018.
This year so far:
And the last month (July is traditionally the lowest point of the summer):
That’s a drop of 8k, or ~27%
So. Last time I looked, 8k and 27% are bothsmaller numbers than a drop of 10k / 33%. But here’s where it gets fun!
We have no idea what that means because of data pollution by the Season of Skills, and our limited ability to parse that data.
Of course not, I’m only looking at the period since the blackout started and trying to figure out where all these “new players” are.
Or is it that blackout has met with such resistance that even with all these new players numbers are down.
That would mean thousands of established players have stopped logging in over the last month and the low numbers are being bouyed by “new players” who really should not be included in any way when it comes to permanent changes to the game.
History tells us - Player retention in Eve is terrible, my guess most of the new players that started at the beginning of Blackout have already stopped logging in - Not because of Blackout but because that is and always has been the nature of Eve.
If as CCP stated recruitment is up - WTH is happening?
I’m terribly afraid CCP is going to do their usual trick - Fudge numbers, manipulate data, be less than honest with their findings - All to push through more change that only harms the long term health of the game - MY GAME.,.
Goons camping half the map had a similar affect as blackout for those areas. I am only basing this on the numbers prior to goons camping. Obviously there are dips, high and low over a short period of time, but the decline since may numbers are almost staggering.
Uh, they’re really not down. They’re down in as much as there has been year-over-year decline for… years. If you’re seeing “down” in that chart, short term, post-blackout, you need to get your eyes checked, especially with respect to the spring-summer delta seen in previous years.
No, we didn’t. We were on campaign in Tribute. The NGSA’s cloaky campers were still wherever Boat had them, but they’re all a bunch of AFK cloakers who login, minimize those clients, and do other things. Just like literally anyone could do.
We did not have ‘a large portion of the game camped’. Sorry. We weren’t even camping most of Tribute while we burned it. We were just moving fleets through it at all hours of the day.
They are way down (as in established players logging in) IF CCP was telling the truth about all these new players over the same period.
Losing established players is my concern - New players mean nothing if all they do is join Goons because it is safe.
Sadly this is the direction - I won’t argue with Arrendis about this but have a friend who is a recruiter in a Goon friendly alliance, he told me he has had more players/corps contact him in the last few weeks than in the last 2 or 3 years. This to me is a really scary prospect - The last thing we need is for the biggest blob on TQ to get bigger - Due to poorly thought out change by Devs and management (I personally single out management as I’d hope devs know better but have to follow orders from above)
Drone lands were camped, I have the killmails lol. Nice try, but yes Goons had hundreds of active systems camped. Also, they were not inactive with screens minimized as anytime anything larger than a cruiser was undocked, we were dropped on by 60+ goon fleet.
You won’t argue with me about this because I agree with you, too.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’re gonna do our best to keep our recruitment high, but the game’s healthier if everyone else is busting their ass to take care of newbies, too.
During May, yes, we had multiple SIGs deployed up there. During June, BlackOps was still doing a little work up there, but that’s just BlackOps. That’s like… 100 guys, tops. That’s not ‘Goons’. That’s basically our version of RocketX’s NSH/Phishing Crew, and amounts to only a tiny fraction of ‘Goons’. There’s gotta be a dozen groups of that size, from all different groups, doing that all over New Eden, including doing it to us.
Well, no, they’re actually not. Relative to previous years, it’s actually a smaller summer dip than we’ve seen in past summers (scope 2017 for a fairly extreme example, with a January PCU around 47,000 dipping to around 27,000 in the summer). That’s what Arrendis was saying.
My point was, it had an affect on activity, that is why I don’t look at those numbers. I will concede there is a yearly summer drop in activity. Comparing July 18 to July 19, there is still a 3k drop in activity when previous years it was about 1k. The peaks and lows however are showing a much much greater drop from a year ago and earlier this year. while this is anecdotal, I personally know of atleast 50 accounts that have been unsubbed. In my experience, I am unable to play. My character is only a year old, so I do not have 100k skill points and massive reserves. I basically did industry and PVP when I had a ship that was decently fit or met doctrine alliance. I’ve recently lost a lot due to blackout and crappy goon botters running 8 man fleets bombing miners. Without the ability to replace my ships with income from selling ships, I can’t replace my losses. I used to spend about $40 in plex a month on average plus 2 accounts. The PLEX I bought used to go into skill points, but if I bought it now it would be used to replace ships and mods I’ve lost do cloaky bombers too chicken to actually fight, but decloak, launch bombs and warp off. Again this is anecdotal, but that’s money CCP lost.
Uhm… say what?
So, First Saturday in Jun, at 1800 EVE: 31k
First Saturday in July, at 1930 EVE: 30k
Last year:
First Saturday in Jun, 1930 EVE: 35k
First Saturday in July, 1800 EVE: 32k.
Are you sure you don’t have your numbers backwards?
Also:
You know people don’t bot bombers, right? They might multibox, but in order to do it with any accuracy, they have to actually be at the keyboard. Otherwise the bombs completely miss.
Lets see, first off I’m retired and doing my best to enjoy it and Eve is a part of that.
Secondly, I like the friends I’ve made over the years playing Eve and so am concerned when some of them just stop logging in.
The harder CCP try to “fix” the game with dumb shite the more long time friends leave the game. Sorry but i find that concerning.,.
It would take thousands of players letting subs lapse in a short period of time for CCP to even notice.
Even then I’d bet they would find some way to spin the data to make it look like a positive thing.
