There is a lot of talk about why people are quitting, why we need new stuff all the time and OMG we must attract new players. That ain’t necessarily so; we’ve got plenty to do, plenty of ships, structures, weapons and just stuff for players to just go out there and create all the content, stories, drama and nastiness they care to. This game is not for the flash in the pan types, nor should it be. CCP must realize that stability in game play and mechanics is not a bad thing as there is already more to do than the average player can get around to doing in any reasonable amount of time. The twin mantras of “Maximum profit no matter the cost” and “Grow or die” simply does not apply to Eve. CCP can survive and do well down through the years with a stable, long term membership composed of players who know what they want and will remain in game as long as it provides some degree of satisfaction. Note that I did not use the term “fun”, there is not that much “fun” in this game, but there can be long term satisfaction with goals accomplished whilst managing to survive. We do not need constant “Nerfing” and “Buffing”, if it works it does not need fixing.
ok…
I have to admit there is lots of exciting content in Eve that is player created or NPC. The one thing to consider is that most player driven content involves an investment of time.
I think many people quit due to lack of time.
Hmmm. I think Eve could have some real world links, lets say your structure is attacked you could get text messages on your phone from Eve letting you know how much time you have to defend.
Or if your corp was going on an important op perhaps the CEO can send notifications to corp members mobile phones from Eve. Obviously privacy would be protected and people would have the choice to receive notifications or not.
Would be great if Eve could be more time-friendly.
You can use groupme, which is a free app that a corp can use to stay in touch with each other outside of the game.
Though you are probably talking about a function built within the game.
Aaron, you are onto something with time investment. I’m a newbie and have been wanting to participate in Eve for a number of years. Just reading about it made me hesitate to join, and I held off until I’ve retired from working and would have more time. Even with the excellent orientation, I felt the need to join Eve University, so I could learn and practice. There is a certain amount of ‘study’ and ‘learning’ that is necessary and that I quite enjoy. The depth of Eve is impressive! As a person who enjoys learning and experimenting I find it quite exciting.
I’m also quite humbled by the number of years that more experienced players have been a part of the universe. People have been playing since 2009 and even before. I’ve attended a number of online seminars with the University that have instructors and experts that are the equivilent to anyone out in the real world! ( I know, as I am one of those real-world experts with the skills to support it) To listen to these experts and learn from them is an wonderful experience. I’ve learned that after 8 months in Eve, I’m OK, and that if I just invest time in the areas I’m interested in, there will be people more than willing to help me on my journey.
Having described my experience in the first 8 months, I’m not sure how you would get a new player to commit to the learning and studying if they don’t come in with that attitude and desire. When we say, ‘don’t fly what you can’t afford to loose’, we also mean, ‘when you loose make sure you learn from it, as that will always be part of the game’, even to the extent that in Eve University you have to comment around what you learned when your ship shows up on the killboard.
It is truely a universe. How you convey that type of open-endedness is one of the challenges. It’s not as simple as ‘blowing ships up’! I’m certainly glad I’m now a part of it!
My content became starting my own corporation and hoping to recruit players that were interested in learning about what I enjoy in the game and my methods for how I make ISK and find PVP and create content 
The game’s always been about being your own entertainer. Setting your own goals. It’s an entirely different game design and philosophy if they made more content on your behalf
content 
I agree. To enjoy the game to its fullest you need be creative about your goals and the ways to reach them. And depending on those goals you will have to conmit time to a certain extent, just like @Aaron said.
That is also the reason why I have a kind of on and off relationship with the game. I don’t always have the time which I would need to play the game how I would like. So I don’t even start and play other stuff instead wehere I can just hop on and off. (Like a round based FPS or a single player)
That’s what I learned most about myself and being a CEO. I just don’t have the time to do it right.
Maybe find a trustworthy individual to split the work?
I never was in the position to lead, but delegation tasks seemed always like a key to success to me. Or at least like the key to avoid burnout.
said the lone wolf 
to the CEO 
lol ^^
No. Just, no. When it becomes an option, it will get to be a demand. Like, “install the app on your phone and set yourself to be available or you’re fired.”
Smartphones already ruined work/life balance by constant availability to your RL boss or company. I wouldn’t need that in a game as well.
OTOH, EvE API already allows to read ingame mail (even from the corp) outside of EvE already. And there are things like Discord and TS3. And for a reason I’d never join a corp that demands constant presence in either one.
If only CCP would agree to this. Recent advertisements (and some would say: many game changes also) gave a different impression.
It’s a fact that the Eve player base is getting older and adults have career and family responsibilities that cut into their game time.
A lot of activity in Eve is time intensive and you need to be logged in at the same time and place as the people you are interacting with to make it work. Corporations use external tools like Jabber and Slack to maintain communications.
Personally, I want my content waiting for me when I login and I don’t want to depend on anyone elses schedule. While interaction with other players is the main attraction in Eve I want that interaction to be asynchronous so I can fit the game into the time I have available.
Eve industry and markets fit this play style perfectly.
The problem developers have with “new and interesting” content is that it becomes old and stale very quickly. Newer technology like procedural generation can counter this but I suspect Eve players would complain loudly if CCP gave us procedurally generated combat sites that are different every time - we seem to like the 100% predictable ISK faucets we have now!
I don’t think CEO’s can demand when people must be available to play. Most CEO’s just ask if youre online within whatever world time-zone. IMO no mature and reasonably minded CEO would ever try to dictate what time you log on due to real life responsibility.
What I’m talking about is the ability to keep members well informed when they are not playing Eve. Some people like to be automatically informed about eve events so that they can only spend the time they need to on eve.
As you mentioned the Eve API and Discord have features where you can read corp mail and keep in contact from anywhere.
I suppose it is in CCP’s interest to not do what I suggest due to their current online numbers being a marketing tool. “30,000 players online Now!!” would look great on an advert. They obviously want us to be logged in for as long as possible.
I beg to differ. I had been in a corp where CTA’s (Call To Action, for the newbies out there) had been a real thing. You were ‘asked’ (note the quotes) to be present at a given time for a larger fleet action, like defending a POS/Sov structure against an impending attack, and if you weren’t there, there could have been sanctions. Sure, missing out on one could be overlooked, but if it happened several times it was not. Results could be not being invited to a mining/wh op or in repeated cases being booted from the corp. The corp did shut down in the meantime, but I might have not cared about disciplinary actions anymore or left the corp on my own volition by then. Today it would be called “burnout”, but that wasn’t much of a word back in 2011.
So yes, CEO’s can (and sometimes do) demand your presence at a given time. Much like in RL.
anything that can be repeated over and over and over and over and over and over…etc…loses its “fun” after a while. Even PVP can get rather boring when you have no targets, run through the blue doughnut unchallenged, etc. stop trying to change the game for “fun” that will die out in less than a month.
Incursions used to be a challenge, than the players adapted and it became boring because every site has a pattern, they know exactly how many ships and what ships, and where.
Anything new and fun will simply be adapted to and have the fun taken out for the sake of making isk as fast as possible.
They are a real thing in quite many (mainly null-sec) corps and alliances. But normally it is more like this:
- if you can make, please be there
- if you are online and some kind of OP is going on, prioritize this OP over other activities
- in average, be on at least five (realistic example) OPs per month
When you join a corp in an environment where such fleet operations are part of the game play, I’d say that these quite reasonable expectations.
Of course, there is also the other side to it: people who are organizing such fleets should try to make it easy for members to participate, keep them short if possible for all the boring stuff and try to mix some fun things among them (like organized fleet fights) if those don’t happen be themselves.
Even if you get targets. At some point most of them are just a +1 on the killboard and it doesn’t really matter anymore how many you kill. It’s not shooting things for the sake of shooting things anymore, it’s becoming looking for the extraordinary and exciting, something not seen or experienced before. Something that naturally becomes harder the longer you are doing it.
But enough bittervetting. There may be more than enough people being happy with shooting the same kind of stuff over and over again as there are also enough people who don’t do much else than flying lvl 4s or mine all day or whatever else.
That’s basically the problem with PvE as a whole: Learn → adapt → routine.
It might get a little better with more complex and dynamic PvE content, but the principle stays the same.
The only solution is to bring some ever changing variable into the mix (most commonly in the form of another player) that takes the predictability out of it. It doesn’t really matter how this could be implemented, because it directly leads to the next problem:
Players are (at least in some regard) lazy. Is the effort per gain is better in something else, they will most likely go back to that.
Null sec anoms are a good example for that. The problem isn’t exactly the isk per hour someone can generate with them - 50m per hour in an Ishtar or 120m per ratting carrier isn’t really that great (the scap income is quite good though). The problem is that you can (more or less) start and stop ratting at will, don’t need any real preparation and have the Isk directly on your wallet with no extra effort.