I guess players ate already getting killed in Exordium. Guess that didn’t last long…
Also someone is mining and filling up the market with veldspar-0 and scordite-0 who surely shouldn’t be doing it… 
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Today’s new player generations want instant gratification and get bored superfast.
I guess thats one way of saying people have high standards.
It is not that unfortunately. It is a medical condition that needs attention from parents:
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That is the wrong way to look at it imo. Children have high standards is not a mental defect. But its off topic
Yeah, let’s leave ADD and the Times of India out of the discussion…
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I don’t doubt that EVE needs more players. But here’s the thing. When people quit, there is ( or used to be ) some question thingy asking why. The problem with questions is that some reasons are more likely to get a response than others in the first place. The very nature of questions can sway the results. Thus, someone who thinks ’ the game is too expensive’ ( which actually it isn’t ) is more likely to respond out of grumpiness than someone with ‘the game is boring’. After all…if a person is bored enough to leave…are they going to actually have the motivation to respond to say so ? Bad customer reviews of stuff are usually full of grumpy people who had a bad experience. I’ve yet to write a review of my vegetarian steak pies to say they are boring ( which they are )…I just stop buying them.
We’ve all seen it on this very forum, where people who lost their ships or have some bad tempered grump come on and give the ( false ) impression that EVE is full of ‘griefers’ ruining people’s time. They are a vocal minority. Rarely does anyone come on to say ’ I was totally bored '. They just quietly leave.
In fact CCPs own stats from the 2015 fan fest show that only 1% of noobs who left within 2 weeks were ganked. You have to wonder…why then did the other 99% leave.
I don’t doubt that CCP want to fix ‘the problem’. I just think they are fixing the wrong problem.
To me the real issue is boredom, and the solution is not to make EVE safer but to make it riskier. But hand in hand with that would go a much larger noob starter stipend, maybe even a special noob ship insurance, and so on. Don’t eliminate the risk…the risk is half the reason people play the game. Increase the risk…but provide for faster recovery from losses.
That will satisfy both the bored people and the ’ I lost my ship…bwahh !’ people. Everyone’s a winner !
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Boredom for $200 Alex.
I’m not a game designer, and I don’t have access to FC internal metrics for user retention. However, I am a business owner, and have been for many years, so I’ll speak to general business practices.
Any company that’s been in business for 20+ years isn’t going to pivot on a whim. They certainly aren’t going to make fundamental changes to a successful product on a whim. So I have to believe that if FC is spending the time and resources to build a new starting area, they’re doing it for a reason. If they are making that starting area PVP-free, they’re also doing it for a reason.
We on the outside of FC look at these decisions, and we may scratch our heads. But we’re the proverbial blind men describing an elephant. We don’t have the visibility to see the entire picture the way someone in FC’s data analytics department can.
I doubt very much that FC has made the business decision to implement Exordium because of what anyone has posted on Reddit or on this forum. I also doubt that any survey data was weighed heavily in this decision. I would assume that this pivot is in response to the mass collection and analysis of data, management’s interpretation of that analysis, and the financial projections the data indicates.
Exactly. To you, a data point of one. FC has your data point and the data points of many others to consider in aggregate.
Recognize that this is projection. Risk is half the reason you play, but you only have your own direct experience to work with. You don’t have insight into the motivations and preferences of every one of the thousands and thousands of existing EVE players, as well as the millions of potential EVE players out there in the game market. This isn’t to say FC does, either (necessarily). But, I’d expect they have a lot more and varied data than you or I do.
Where I land on this is simple. EVE is run by businessmen who are looking at the present and future game market and trying to figure out how to stay in business and grow their profits. They do this by attracting new players and retaining existing players. Given the age of EVE, this is particularly difficult, since long-time players may have very different personality traits, values, and preferences than those of a younger demographic entering the gaming space today. FC has to walk a narrow line to appeal to the majority of their customer base.
EDIT: My point with that last paragraph is that I’m deferring to FC’s judgment and taking a wait-and-see approach.
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FC just spent $120 million to reacquire EVE from Pearl Abyss. They also have a $100 million outstanding loan to Pearl Abyss (although this may have been renegotiated as part of the acquisition). Revenues were up $5 million last year but so were losses - to $28 million.
Frontier and Vanguard have to succeed; there’s a lot riding on them. EVE is the proverbial cash cow right now that everything else hinges on.
I’m not sure the point you’re trying to reach, Arthur.
Certainly, EVE is a credit on the balance sheet, while Vanguard and Frontier are (presently) debits. Therefore, it’s in FC’s interest to maintain and grow EVE’s profitability. So again, they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing with Exordium if they didn’t think it would maintain and/or grow their bottom line.
That’s my point. For the past few years CCP had Pearl Abyss to fall back on for losses, loans for development, etc. Other than the Google investment they may not have the same financial cushion to fall upon.
So now more than ever EVE needs to thrive. Hence Exordium. I think it’s a step in the right direction and long overdue. But time will tell.
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Gawd, I am so sick and tired of seeing gankers post that old 2015 company propaganda BS as factual truth when CCP Hellmar basically debunked those claims in his 2019 presentation: EVE Down Under - Beyond The Friendship Machine..
And now Eve Online is implementing a ‘Safe Space’ for new players that’s free from PvP actions…
Anybody with half a brain can easily surmise why that’s happening…
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Ask yourself how many people really see an advert for EVE and think ’ OMG…I must join that and spend 8 hours a day watching a mining laser’. Of course people join for the risk. The trouble is they get led down the ISK/hr path and turned into carebears. Ironically the game makes people risk averse by not providing enough of it that people get used to it and learn to handle it and enjoy it.
The problem with EVE is not too much risk…it is too little. I think that leads to noobs either getting bored, or leaving when they do encounter risk because they just were not used to it. Noobs need to be losing ships every day. Give them full insurance or something for 30 days.
Eventually CCP will realise this.
Players
Players aren’t turned into carebears; they’re forced into this role to generate an income. The large alliances not only have fleets of carebears but a massive amount of passive income to fund their PvP efforts.
It’s easy to be critical when you have unlimited resources.
That’s nonsense. Not only does he not debunk the 2015 stats…he restates them. He gives the exact same figures where 90% leave within the first week. It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest all those 90% were ‘ganked’.
I’ve been in null before, they never forced us to rat, they actually wanted members to be in pvp fleets more. They will often times supply the ship even nowadays. Players choose to carebear.
Heck a lot of newer lowsec players earned their money doing FW.
The fact is that null alliances generate a lot of passive income, ie: renting, ratting, etc.
They do earn some income off ratting yes. But the ones I’ve been in do not actively force players to rat.
CCP (FC) really hasn’t provided anything substantial in over a decade. If they’re (FC) moving forward with Exordium, they must have their reasons.
There are probably numerous factors - ganking and scamming included.