So… not current data on how the game IS doing, but old, probably out of date data which may or may not reflect the current state of the game.
During weekdays, random hours when both US and EU playerbases are mostly not present, the game hasn’t dropped - that I’ve seen - below 10,000 concurrent players. Not total daily, but the number logged in. World of Warcraft, which remains the largest MMO in the market, tends to drop as low as 30,000 in those same off-peak times, and Guild Wars 2, which is still regarded as quite a popular MMO with a good population of players, has PEAK playercounts in the busiest times on the busiest days of less than 8,000 lately, and was described as “one of the most popular MMOs” based on its stats for this year.
So I think it’s fair to question the claim that EVE is in anything remotely resembling a “dire” state as it stands now. Even if those player retention numbers are still accurate, that claim isn’t.
And… again… if you’re going to say something like that, you need a source to back it up. “If anything” doesn’t support your claim when you aren’t providing any evidence to back your assertion up. Also, you’re providing a source without even sharing any indication of its age, except the admission that it’s an old source, while refusing to let others use old sources (sometimes even when the source is one you’ve tried to use in the conversation yourself) because they’re outdated and not relevant to the current state of the game. So, either provide actual evidence that supports your claim, or back down from the assertion you can’t support.
While you don’t like my evidence, I have explained where I’ve seen evidence that appears quite strongly to contradict your claims. I don’t have it documented, but it’s very easy to log into the game and check if my claims are valid, because it’s based on actual current events that are actually happening continuously in the game. It’s current, and easily verifiable by just looking at what’s going on while you play.
I didn’t say you needed a link, I said you needed a source so thanks for providing one which doesn’t actually back up that statement I was asking for a source about, but might back up one of your other claims (which had previously been without a source).
And thanks for confirming the age of that one too. That said…
NOPE. It supports the view that I know how to read. And how to click on links to previous topics which have been closed. And that I can see other people talking about the fact that what I mentioned was a thing that happened. I can also see that you’ve done it in one of the topics I’ve posted in as well as having done it in closed topics in the past. Maybe you should get better at keeping track of your own words…?
I cited evidence I’ve seen, and provided a source which you can use to check. Same thing I asked for - and was given - just now. So… no. You can check my information from the source as easily as I can check yours, because we both know where the other got their information from, and have access to it if we want to check whether it’s correct or not. You still haven’t provided anything to support your assertion than player retention is as bad as it was 3 years ago, but you’ve backed up your claim about the game not being profitable (which you’ve made unclear statements about since you’ve separately said it’s making a loss and that it’s seeing reductions in revenue, which implies profit, but not growing profit).
EDIT: Checked your source, and… yup. It’s losing revenue, not losing money. It’s still making a profit, but by a smaller margin than it did in previous years. And there’s extenuating circumstances which could be seen as major contributors to the decline in profit (still not loss ofr money) during this year.
The utter hypocrisy just never ends. It was only a few days ago that you asserted that very same graphic was irrelevant as it was several years ago. Now you are quoting it ! Every frikin time you post you do something like this. You just slither about from one act of unbelievable hypocrisy and double standards to another…utterly oblivious to the sheer number of times you have contradicted yourself.
And if that graphic is now suddenly relevant…then all the conclusions I myself drew from it are relevant and true as well. It is 100% clear to anyone with a brain that the 9000 or so lost within the first week is FAR more than the number of under 1 week old noobs ganked. But you could not care less about actual facts.
You’ll just slither out of it again with yet more mealy mouthed hypocrisy, contradicitons, and double standards. It’s pretty much what we have now all come to expect from you !
Don’t bother responding…as the stink of hypocrisy in here is already too much for me.
Your experiences line up perfectly with mine Omnis Decline.
As you point out, much of these proposed “fixes” don’t really help new players, but just serve to infantilize them, and push the moment to when they first get ganked down the road to when the stakes are higher, while watering down what makes EvE unique in the market.
This is just a hunch on my part, but since so many of these “fixes” seem to be solutions for lazy veterans to allow them to continue to be lazy, and not solutions for new players, I have concluded that they are just attempts by veterans to allow them to AFK mine with fits for maximum production, or allow them to autopilot valuable cargo in shuttles, or not have to learn how to protect themselves from ganks while they do missions in blinged out ships.
Your posts are excellent @Omnis_Decline! Don’t allow others to silence you with their attacks disguised at the protecting hand of Big Brother.
Here’s the thing …and its something nobody ever seems to mention in noob ganking threads even though it is probably the most relevant thing of all…
A brand new noob has only just completed the NPE in which he lost a ship and is told he’d die many more times but is immortal. That noob is primed for more loss. It’s what that entire part of the NPE is all about !
Yet we have idiots telling us that this noob, primed for more loss, told of the dangers of Eve, is gonna suffer major psychological trauma and abandon Eve and end up having to have hypnotherapy counselling alongside reformed flat earthers and alien abduction post-proctology victims if they lose another ship.
That really is this thread in a nutshell, for those who want to skip 1170 posts.
Plus, citing sources regardless of what other people do with it does nothing but make you look more knowledgeable and give’s heavier credence to your argument.
Well no, the really ‘funny’ thing is how you just make up connections between things…out of the blue. You forget the old maxim that correlation is not causation.
FACT :- Ganking has existed in Eve for at least 10 years, and during periods when the player base was not falling. How does your theory explain that ?
FACT :- Stats showing the large number of players who abandon Eve during the first week cannot possibly be explained by ganking of large numbers of noobs. Even a ridiculously high estimate of the total number ganked every week ( noobs and oldbies ) is a waaaaay lower figure than the 9400 or so who leave during the first week. The total number of non NPC kills in highsec per week is something like 4500. The total number killed by more than one person is around 1200. The number of noobs actually ganked during that first week is way less than 100. Data you can easily gather yourself. What is making the other 9300 leave ? There is no way 9300 noobs a week are being ganked…as there are not even half that many kills in the whole of highsec !!
FACT : Noobs join a game in which the very first thing they do is lose a ship. It even goes on their personal list of losses. So how can you have the sheer gall to rattle on as if noobs are totally unprepared for ship loss ?
FACT :- Noobs loose not just one but TWO ships on level 2 security missions. They lose those ships regardless of what they do. So by this time the noob has lost 3 ships…all part of Eve itself.
FACT : More noob Ventures are lost in 0.7, 0.6 systems to NPCs than to gankers. In fact in the whole of highsec more ships are lost to NPCs than player PvP every week.
I know that asking for hard numbers on this is going to be futile, but I am very suspicious that it is harder for a new player who just lost a frigate that was given to them for free from the AIR missions to recover from having their frigate shot than it will be for an older player that has sunk everything they own into their first procurer, or a mission runner that has sunk everything into their first golem.
It may be because I am an old head, and I remember how exciting it was to work my way up the frigate line to be able to mine in a destroyer. I lost frigates for silly reasons, and it was not such a big deal back then.
If CCP thinks that new players cannot recover from the loss of their first venture, I suspect that it is because the player was given their first venture from CCP, and did not have to scrape up the ladder mining from a corvette, saving up for their first frigate, then moving up the frigate line saving up for a destroyer.
Some people know what they are about, and will will benefit from a boost up, but it seems more likely to me that giving players things at the beginning makes them less resilient to loss.
CCP can go to their own conclusions. They own the game. But from my experience starting out playing EQ, and then watching MMO’s in general become easier and less immersive as the years go by, it feels like the player base have also become less resilient to loss.
I am curious if you can quote me ever saying one thing or another about p2w microtransactions. I also have not complained about the covid lock-downs in Chongqing, or the road construction in front of my office, or my cat killing rabbits and leaving them as presents for my wife. Do you make assumptions about my feelings about these events as well?
I guess you are trying to say that I am hypocritical because I don’t complain about CCP selling skill points, plex or ship packages, while I do complain about the call to nerfing suicide ganking. If you want to know my feelings about these other aspects of EvE Lucas, feel free to make a new thread about it, and I will join your in the discussion. However, from what I have seen the big topic of discussion on the forum is the constant cry to bring out the nerf bat against suicide ganking, and so I made my post on the matter.
I have been mining in a venture and seen the retriever in the same belt get ganked while no-one bothered with me. To be fair the retriever pilot was very salty, and made a big fuss about the gank. He ever threated me when I retrieved his mining drones (I gave them back to him). I do think you are on to something about salt being a motivating factor in ganking, but of all the reasons that is the easiest one to remove through education.
I note that you are ignoring the ganking that I think is the most interesting, and the one that I hear the most complaining about online (although not in these forums) those being the ganking of haulers and mission runners. These are the two that cut closest to home for me personally, and the two that I am positive are just veterans complaining.
As far as having rational discussions with you Lucas, I tried that, and it is impossible. You are the one that claims that context allows things to mean what you want them to mean in one post, but allows them to mean something else in a different post. I have pretty much given up on rational exchanges with you, because you do not argue in good-faith discussions, but just attempt to use rhetorical tricks to spin out of things that you clearly said three posts up.
As you laid out your qualifier here, does that also mean you don’t care about your own opinions because you’re also guilty of harassing and insulting people here on the forum?
I don’t think anything is safe when CCP is losing revenue. If ganking isn’t removed, I believe fundamentally, how it works needs to change greatly. There could be a need for it in high-security space, I believe it is very unbalanced today and needs additional adjustment, but making mining ships and T1 haulers stronger is a little unbalanced. I would like to see less loot dropped, or Omega locks, ship caps, i.e. you can only use so many ships on any gank, and the damage is no more like a structure.
We can look at the long history of alts, skill injectors, walking in stations, ship skins, and a whole list of things CCP had to turn their back on. Don’t think this isn’t something on the chopping block to bring in more players and revenue it most certainly is.
Woah ! So you just disregard the well over 95% who leave for other reasons as ‘beyond hope’ and never once inquire into why they left but focus solely on a ganking reason for which you don’t even have any definitive figures or player ‘reason for leaving’ responses ?
That just smacks of extreme bias. I mean, you don’t know that the smaller number who may have left due to ganking would not have left anyway for the same reasons the other 95% left.
I’m FAR more interested in that other 95%. Comments I see in Rookie Help go a long way towards suggesting that the sheer complexity of the game is too much for many. I’ve also seen a lot of ‘Im bored…what should I do ?’. The FEW times I’ve seen a ’ I lost my ship’…the noob was always advised they could easily get another one for free from the mission agent.
So why are you so obsessed with ganking, which in fact only occurs in a small region of Eve at any one time. I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon mining in a Venture in a 0.5 system and never once saw a ganker. Even the local corp, which does ganking, couldn’t be bothered ganking my alpha noob.
The only hassle I had was from NPCs…and I’d forgotten just how useless noob drone level skills are. Where’s the bleating thread from you protesting to CCP that I could easily have lost my Venture to rats and might have left the game as a result ?
I would prefer just to get rid of it to be honest.
I am not sure that the loss is unrecoverable, it is more of you are not deep enough in the game to be captured, and there is a decision point, f’k the game or keep going and recover. If the experience wasn’t good enough, most move on to a new game rather than try to figure out how to recover.
Losing things in Eve is part of Eve, I am a big support it is how you lose those. Can you have game play back, what is a counter play to gankers? if there is no, and nothing you can do, well ganking is a one sided game play that needs to be moved to low sec, where if I get ganked, I can just go kill you, you can’t game the kill right program, or anything else…
Because it is in the way of thousands of new players coming to the game to maybe one day venture out to low, null and wh. It adds little good content, no one would miss it but a handful if it was gone, and the players that do, do it, can still do it in low, but you might have to actually play the game to gank there.