Might be flagged as an old fart here for saying this but:
Less was More, and actually forced you to interact with people and collaborate to build stuff together.
Like in an MMO, you know.
If you want a single player Sci-Fi game, why not go to Elite Dangerous or No Man Sky ? Plenty of Sci-Fi out there that follows your vision of what a sci-fi game should be âŚ
But noooo, you have to come to the ONE game thatâs totally unique and trainwreck it with your aspirations, because somehow, devs listen to your demographic a lot more now.
Less was more. Now less isnât more. Times have changed and we ask for more for our buck. Times are hard and we work the equivalent of two peopleâs jobs in one position for less money because the boss gets greedier by the year.
I agree with you that collaboration with other players is important in a MMO. Still, that doesnât mean we should be content with just sticks for 20 bucks a monthâs subscription. Some carrots are nice, too. Add potatoes and onions and cauliflower and broccoli⌠then weâll talk.
I do play Elite once in while also. But Elite and EVE are two different beasts.
No Man Sky looks boring to me.
Iâm sorry but I personally havenât asked for much. I havenât asked for nerfs or a subscription hike or SP Injectors or Packs with badly-fitted ships or bad to no communication from CCP or anything like that.
I like the game, too, you know. I donât want it to be dumbed down.
Iâm sorry that my login reward is breaking your game.
Thatâs the thing thou high sec is huge 1 group can only control small areaâs and if the people living there dont like it they always have the option to change homes or fight back, it might even give them the chance to explore things out of high.
Maybe as an extra bonus any feudal lordâs become attack-able by any other feudal lords in high sec without concord assistance so its perma wars vs everyone else that dares hold any high sec territories.
Getting syndicate wars vibes even thinking about it lol.
Thatâs exactly what black flag does. And they do it because clubbing seals is easy kills. Is that really the kind of behavior we want to encourage? Keep in mind that the devs made their war dec changes because groups like that were driving away large numbers of players.
When I joined in what, 2010ish, before peak PCU, pretty much every corp was perma-wardecked, didnât matter what security of space. This was a long time ago when starting and maintaining wars were different. The effect was the same though: you got shot at a lot. As a consequence, everyone, including in high sec, was expected to grow teeth. Because, if there was one constant, everyone was going to get clubbed.
There are only baby seals now because changes to the game make it easier for players to deceive themselves and delude themselves into thinking that baby seals should be a part of the game, and that itâs OK if they become a baby seal. It is not. The clubbings continue unabated.
The people whose fault it is that baby seals are getting clubbed, are the folks who make themselves baby seals. The clubbings are always constant and predate them. If there were no baby seals, there would be no clubbing of baby seals.
People have this backwards and think âremove the clubbingâ is the solution. It is not. Grow teeth.
So, sometimes you write a useful post, and sometimes you write stupid stuff like this. Thatâs ok, itâs not a reflection of âyouâ as a person, but on your lack of understanding of a game as an ecosystem.
The average EVE gamer isnât looking to be a space bully or pirate. The average EVE gamer also isnât looking to be a victim of same. When you institutionalize bullying and extortion rackets in your game, the very few will target the very many. As the process becomes more mainstream and less âfringeâ, a few more people will shift from the âI donât victimize and extort weak targetsâ to the âhey look, piracy is fine, itâs better to shoot than get shot at, right?â.
And a comparatively large number of players will say âYeah, screw this Iâm out. Gameâs not worth it.â. And either quit, or not undock, or move to a bigger protection racket in Null.
The productive, economy-oriented PvE player (who get called âweakâ because theyâre not in a PvP fit) will not âgrow teethâ. Itâs idiocy to expect them to do so since you canât do what theyâre doing (mine, haul, PvE) and have comparable teeth to even a 2-man gang of pirates.
Thatâs the whole point of high-sec piracy and wardecs, is selecting targets that canât win. Case in point - from 2010:
Untrue. They were always there, and theyâve always left due to EVE game mechanics. The difference now is, every gamer alive has 8,000 more options to do with their leisure time than they did back then, and EVE is steadily losing out as a source of âentertainmentâ.
Any time you design a game to have 20,000 sheep and 3,000 wolves with little to no restrictions on the wolves, you can confidently predict the sheep will start disappearing.
Thanks, thatâs the best compliment Iâve ever gotten in Eve from a stranger. It replaces my previous top compliment, from a Russian using a translator, who said (yes in all caps) âYOU ARE A MOST ADEQUATE PILOTâ.
That being said, I disagree with what you posted.
This language codifies a certain bias. A certain world view. Thatâs OK. My bias is different. But it prevents being able to discuss the topic. Am I supposed to say âyeah, me and the other bullies are hoping to turn more people into bulliesâ? It sounds stupid to you, because I agree with you, it does sound stupid. I donât want more bullies and butt holes.
If I were to instead say âyeah, me and the other PvP-enjoyers are hoping to turn more people on to PvPâ then I think ânow weâre talkingâ but I have to walk right past your words and kind of blow you off in a way, which certainly isnât constructive either. Because you may or may not feel engaged or adequately heard by this new turn of conversation.
Yeah, I agree. Eve isnât a game for everyone. It is niche. Thereâs various ways to play. Iâve seen gameplay styles I care about gone completely when I returned after 10 years, new ones sprung up. Everyone tries to protect their own gameplay style. New releases always require adaptation. It burns people out. People come and go. We all want a healthy game. No one can agree what that âhealthy gameâ is.
Let me tell you a story. To prove Cilly wrong once I bought a porpoise and offered free mining boosts in Heimatar. I only hung out with like 5 strangers in total. One of them was in an Orca. I still talk to them. Theyâre the kind of person that was into mining and PVE and building cool ships.
We hang out in a chat room, and occasionally send each other messages. Once in a blue moon, just to catch up and see what the other is up to. I donât think the person is on disability, but they have health problems, and I like making sure theyâre OK as a cool person I randomly met. So we rarely get to talk.
Fast forward a year and a half later, theyâre in wormholes fleeting up and pew-pewing. Whereas before they didnât. Iâm not saying itâs because of me. Iâve never asked. But at some point I stopped telling him âI am mining solo in Great Wildlandsâ and the stories turned into âI got blown upâ. So their stories stopped being âIâm mining todayâ and became âI am in a YouTube video because I fleeted up and shot at people in wormholesâ.
Individual people can do change and try new things out. Not every body is capable, as you say. But I believe most are. Sometimes they donât really need a push, but just need to hear someone they know say âSo I tried something different today and had funâŚâ
They can still bust out their orca and mine. But they also have the mentality that they are not helpless and can fight back.
I can see how you believe that. I disagree, Steam and consoles of the early 2010âs still had plenty of leisurely games and the MMO market itself was more competitive at the time (see all the popular MMOs that have since shut down).
I tend to view it as a âgamer mentalityâ change. Thereâs simply 10 more years of what a âpvp game should beâ entrenched in the market which influences peopleâs mentality going into Eve. So People that get the jarring experience of having their expectations violated are more likely to view Eve as an âoutlier in need of correctingâ than just âsomething adjacent to mainstreamâ.
I really donât think it makes all that much difference. I started online gaming with Team Fortress back in 1998âŚand that wasnât due to it being one of the few such games available. It was fun. I played for about 2 years, and then stopped, even though TFC is actually still going 24 years later. I didnât leave it because other stuff came up. Same with Counterstrike. I just got bored of it. I think everything has a natural cycle of interest. Sure, people can be lured away by other games, but the boredom with the existing game has to be there first.
Well, a lot of that is due to the difference in the way the word bullying is perceived now, vs. the way it was when I grew up. Back then, it was considered âit happens, the world is like that, you canât avoid it entirely so learn to deal with itâ. Which is kind of the EVE way. (With a couple key exceptions I will get to shortly.)
Nowadays bullying is widely considered a social evil to be eliminated as much as possible and controlled on the bullying side rather than on the victim side (âlearn to deal with itâ). Which is sort of the way EVE is heading (though not really).
One of the key exceptions here is the difference between âback in the dayâ when bullying was perceived to be the somewhat larger kid pushing the smaller kid onto the parking lot and teasing him. And the more recent bullying version, which is gang members extorting and recruiting from younger kids, and bully packs swarming and beating or even killing their targets.
Unfortunately the ârosy viewâ of bullying as just a simple playground problem to be sorted out among the kids was never really accurate, and just like domestic abuse, child abuse etc. was always a much bigger problem than people wanted to admit.
And itâs similar in EVE. RL bullying isnât handled by teaching the smaller kid how to punch better, and EVE bullying isnât handled by telling miners they should âgrow teethâ. (Keeping in mind Iâm well aware of and support the view that any serious player should learn all the many tactics for avoiding ganking. But most players arenât âseriousâ players.)
Some of it is also because your phrase âyeah, me and the other PvP-enjoyers are hoping to turn more people on to PvPâ is part of that ârosy, pretend the problem is just a little snagâ view that ignores reality.
The reality isnât âhey weâre turning players on to PvP with wardecsâ. The reality is, and was proven to be, that a very small number of corporations made a massive practice out of wardeccing everybody and everything and it was driving players out of participating and out of the game.
Thatâs what happens when you put 3,000 wolves in fields with 20,000 sheep and let them run free. Thatâs simple ecosystems, not wishful or rosy thinking.
This, to my mind, is a bit of a cop-out. You donât need everyone to agree. EVE only needs an environment where there is a rational life-cycle and career path for PVE, mixed PVE/PVP, and PvP-only players. This isnât as impossible as everyone seems to think it is, but it certainly isnât going to happen in an environment that requires an endless supply of fresh new sheep to keep the wolves fat and happy.
Everybodyâs got a story and an anecdote. But anecdotes donât translate well to mass behavior. People do what they do for the reasons they do them. As trite as that sounds, it translates to âif the incentive, risk and reward cycle isnât working and semi-balanced, then the game will breakâ.
And in EVE, it isnât balanced, never has been, and after the first 5-10 years of âexploring a new game worldâ (which is a rosy time for any large MMO), the game has just been getting progressively more and more broken.
Well this kind of ignores the fact that I just linked you an article from 2010 making all the same points Iâm making here, and showing that the situation wasnât really different back then. Also ignores that mobile games now make up almost half the market, or that more than three-quarters of all revenue comes from F2P games, or the kind of gaming explosion that saw Steam release 336 games in in 2010 vs. 10,696 in 2021.
This isnât a âgamer mentalityâ change, or more accurately, itâs gamer mentality, changes in leisure time usage (2 hour chunks vs. 30 minute chunks) plus vastly more choice and options, plus the fact that far more of the cracks in EVEâs design show up after 2 decades than they did in the first 8 years.
EVE canât survive on the model of endless sheep to feed the wolves. It can survive on a model that takes a more ecosystem based approach.
