I’ve paid a sub with real money for as long as I’ve been playing, almost 13 years. I also buy PLEX when it’s on sale and also buy the various Pack deals if they include Omega time, SP’s and PLEX.
I also have 4 accounts with a total of 11 characters. This is my main character and this account is the only one that’s Omega. I did have my other accounts subbed and buying stuff for a while but I let them turn Alpha due to game changes done over the past couple years.
Despite what changes may happen in the future, I’ll continue to keep this account subbed and training skills along with buying stuff for it, up until the day CCP shuts down the servers.
I think that report covers the pandemic bump when everyone was locked in and returns to video games. But, who knows? Maybe skins really is where its at.
As a long term player I know about the summer vacation lull. That doesn’t mean you can take a 5 year stretch and say eve is just find in the CMO.
The only way you could take a 5y run and compare is if you could some how verify that the PCU in modern times came anywhere near the old days, at least in a spike or something. Otherwise you are just using the glory days of the past to boost the current game up.
Comparing modern eve to what attracted many of us in the first place is no longer a fair comparison imho.
That 3rd quarter report is interesting, but reflects conditions around half a year ago. It also represents the time a year post Blackout, when subscriptions and participation in EVE tanked. Not saying EVE is doomed because I still have plenty of daily hours where my home constellation is busy, but I have noticed an increase in off hours “abandonment” of certain systems. Will be interested in next quarter’s financials.
And similarly you cant look at a period of 6 months and make any conclusions. 6 months of data is a meaningless sample given the difference in external factors across any 6month period.
For example take Apple. Their second quarter (at least i think its the second one. I can never remember which order they go) earnings are always way down on the first quarter. That’s because the first quarter covers the holiday period where people are gifting and usually includes a fair bit of purchases of the current years phone.
As a result the revenue for the second quarter report is always massively lower. It doesn’t mean that apple are now doomed. It means that external factors impact numbers. If you look at that 6 months of data in isolation you would incorrectly determine that apple are selling less and have a problem. If you look at it in the context of year over year you actually see the dip for the time of year is normal and year over year they are actually selling more.
Similarly taking a 6month sample of eve tells you nothing without comparing the same six months to years before which is as close to being able to replicate external conditions as you can get. However this year not so much given lockdown fatigue and people getting tired of using computers full stop.
If 100 people use something in January and only 70 use the same thing in July it can be presented as a massive loss. But if you zoom out and look at every july and see that its always around 70 for that time of year then you can conclude its normal. Same data. Different ways of interpreting it.
Bottom line. The smaller the sample thats being looked at the greater the potential for making incorrect assessments of the data.
I’m not drawing any conclusions on how healthy eves numbers are or whether its in decline. All I’m saying is the graph being used to justify that position is meaningless. It’s incorrect and misleading use of data.
In eve after playing for 16 years I use as F can figure out whats happening on such a time scale. Further - if the game bleeds out in that period its not like there’s going to be a magical spike in return player pcu. Thats the flaw when you wish everyone away – they don’t ALL return when the seasons change and fall hits the northern hemisphere.
Some of us have suggested that instead of peddling the features of eve off in an itemized nightmare of skins and plex and really weird content — maybe try to actually figure out what the loyal base of fans want besides hosting a zoom with your CSM.
you put a asteroid belt here , a mission hub there , a wormhole on the other side and let the players do their thing
oh , i will become a miner…
i wil be a mission runner …
i will be a industrialist i will sell stuff to this 2 guys…
i will be a pirate and prey on those 3 scrubs …
what a bunch of weirdoes , i don’t want to be near them , im going for that hole
Perfect ! Freedom , player created content . The good stuff .
but them the devs … i will put a bunch of npcs pirates on that mining field , and close that station , but the other npc forces will attack the npc pirates , and all players will have to cooperate to bring the great empire of Yakthoob back for , reasons ,
I doubt it will be dead soon, but i would cheer if player retention kept dropping and new players coming in dropped also. Some of the stuff they have done recently has been very centric against solo players and PVE players, and in favour of gankers/pvp players. Things need to be more even/equal…
The game will only be properly balanced when individual solo players are able to individually take on and defeat massive multiplayer alliances with thousands of members.
Actually you gankers have been doing just that as a single player when multi-boxing large gank fleets and taking out valuable supply runs of many 0.0 alliances. In my view that is unbalanced so it appears you agree with me
In other words the issue is with excessive multi-boxing and always has been.
The game will be properly balanced when s#@$ moves made in hi sec have a reasonable, direct and combat counter balance that’s not tantamount to dressing up in a sheeps costume with a slap me note.
