You’re comparing a sandbox environment with a scripted event and calling it gentle to boot.
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Something completely new I would like to see is that in addition to the 4 normal factions you can create a character in one of the pirate factions. You are -5 sec status from the start and begin your journey in nullsec.
This would mainly be targeted at returning or bored old players who want to try something new with a black slate and some additional challenges to try to survive and thrive in a probably pretty hostile environment without any meaningful resources to start.
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That is one hell of an assumption. Better more interesting PvE and reduce the easy risk free farming of hisec players. Done. Ganking is still a feature, so no issue there, easy kill gankers have given up, but I believe that is part of their play to say look what you did with this three minute thing you have destroyed freighter ganking with it, they want a buff to their so called content.
Eve should be hard for everyone and that includes freighter farming gankers too. It got a slight bit harder, and they gave up, so much for being content creators!
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I linked you a young alliance full of young people.
Here’s a war of that alliance against a young corp.
War: Jedi knight Meditation universe X vs. NewEdenIndustries
Your turn.
I asked a question. However, how is the mission where you are being pitted against a large group of hostiles any different from a gate camp in low sec? And what do you want? That the tutorial feeds new into low sec? Or that they have to find PVP on their own in low sec so that they can finish a tutorial step? You know what? I have suggested something better in the past. A system that gives newbies for instance something to transport from their school to a system on a high sec island or an area behind a low sec short cut. They can take it and probably die on the way or take a different path into low sec or take the longer high sec path.
You, on the other hand, only throw around buzz words without any proper suggestion. Moreover, you only throw around suggestions that are bad.
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But not a corp of new players.
For new players to have better access to vets who can support amd guide them.
For active corps with good leadership to not be obfuscated by bad corps lead by bad people.
This thread is too broad for individual suggestions. You think I’m going to write out an entire manifesto?
No. I’m talking about a general direction for the games future that will engage players rather than slowly bore the game to death.
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So you want EVE University. Good that this already exists.
Good luck with that. The point of EVE is that you forge your own destiny. You have the tools available from day 1. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that many people do not want to be the evil minion. They just want to play spaceships in space.
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Just logged in - Screen is loading at least 5 min. ( , 16k dish, SSD, i5 core, 1050GTX 4Ram ), horrible UI - text is so small is hurts my eyes - I wear no glasses.
Scrap that piece and make a new game.
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We had that at one time when you had to errect a POS to mine moons, there was only so many that had the substances needed to build the T2 and capital stuff. Count tell you how many times Deklin and Fountain flipped just so the conquering alliance could lay claim to moon goo!
My ideas to improve the new player experience:
- Give new players better opportunities to make money. For example: why does AFK Venture mining pay better than active gameplay via level 1 missions?
- Improve user interface and instructions. Example: why do I have to leave the game client and go to YouTube or Eve Uni Wiki just to learn how to do something in Eve?
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I’m trying real hard not to come with a list and give the answer the same urgency implied by factoring to a single move:
I think one radical move would be intervening the current SOV mechanics, exploiting it’s potential as conflict generator.
Perhaps by making Sov to bleed to adjacency depending on activity within each Sov holding entity, we already have indexes, which derive from actual activity. These can fit into an equation that produces a number which gives or takes SOV holding ability in the immediate systems.
In other words, for an entity to own huge areas will take huge indexes, therefore creating a sustainable threshold.
This, would evolve into small entities creating advance posts no matter the size of the entity being under "attack" because all it would need is to raise indexes and not entosis no structure.
This equation would derive also the "flyability" of ship types. Meaning that only top strongholds would allow the projection of Supercaps and Titans within themselves or within equally high entities in a confrontation. This will force to fight only in the terms the entities can "afford" given their possibilities.
I know it sounds weird but you asked and my answer in short is:
The only way to revert the decline is to make a SOV move. One that explodes big entities and give small ones the chance by activity, not by force or deployment ability. The rest is just me blabbing BS.
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Sry IDK how to make this ^ look better… be patient.
We used to have more. You know, when retention was better.
But what version of spaceships in space supports growth?
Not everyone wants to play space trucker or space miner. There’s a balance between safe and violent. Right now things are too safe.
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You make PvP and other forms of direct competition (with risk of loss) interesting for newer (and older) players by giving them opportunities to engage in PvP with a reasonable chance of getting more rewards than losses.
Very few players will engage in activity where their expected losses are greater than their expected rewards.
Very few players will engage in activity where the uncertainty factor is too large. The uncertainty factor is the sum of questions like: will I be able to find a decent PvP encounter, how much do I need to invest to have a chance of winning, what is my expected win reward vs. loss cost, what is my chance of winning, and how long will all this take?
EVE has simply progressed to the point where the discouragement factor of new players (and intermediate players) constantly going up against more skilled, better supported, better geared, more experienced players exceeds the excitement factor of heading out in a ship and looking for a fight.
Older/better established players can more easily replace losses, fit out better ships, have more alts/support groups established. The playing field does not even faintly resemble anything a newer player can compete in with reasonable chance of success any more. The best they can hope for is to “not lose too much” while paying a sub for a year or two to get mildly effective skills, ISK and fits.
CCP needs to start setting up game mechanics that allow players of different levels of relative advantage to compete with some expectation of rewards > losses. Faction Warfare could do this, Resource Wars could do this, and re-designing the way security sectors below about .8 or .7 could do this.
Adding in daily missions similar to a blend of the Skilling Spree/Event taskboards we’ve seen recently could also have some impact, so long as some of the daily events involved PvP.
Adding in points of some sort for merely engaging in PvP regardless of win or loss could also have an effect.
Listening to the folks braying “EVE was fine for me back in the day and what we need is to go backwards!” will simply lead to an ever faster decline.
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Yes, we used to have more. Like CAStabouts (I think they are still active, though), Appetite for Destruction, Agony Empire and some more. All in times before CCP forced capitals down our throats like farmers pulp down the fattened geese. In a time before @CCP_Hellmar was allowed to let his devious greed run wild with macro transactions.
Well, reasonable safety does. Not so much focus on capitals did in the past. But I think the problem also lies a lot deeper. People simply do not want this kind of dangerous uncertainty anymore if they are the pigs that other people prey on. Those people have died out and new people were conditioned by Farmville et al. to be mindless zombies instead of intrepid minds.
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I don’t know if you need material rewards as much as just be able to have fun doing it and not have to watch your back for a month after the fact.
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What’s reasonable?
Cause players are bored/confused out of the game right now.
Very few are shot out of the game.
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What makes you say Eve is in decline? CCP management insists it is not.
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People talk about having fun, but if your fun costs resources then those resources need to be replaced in order to continue ‘having fun’.
EVE is not ‘fun’ in general and never really has been. This is the issue with the disconnect between CCP management and the player base. CCP (and some players) think people play ‘for fun’, and that “being in a harsh and unforgiving environment where death is always close at hand” is somehow ‘fun’ for people.
This is not the case. People talk about fun, and even have fun (sometimes)… but really they are mostly playing for (and paying for) the right to be in a competition, or to imagine themselves in a certain way (such as a hot pilot hunter-killer, even though they actually do all their ‘hunting’ in the safest space they can find, against targets they will almost certainly win against).
EVE is not even designed to be fun. It’s got the most boring combat system of any game I play. It takes way too long to get things done. It has minimal content (besides PvP) that gets boring really fast.
EVE’s primary success has been because it portrays itself as a giant canvas of ruthless competition with no holds barred. But while that seems interesting, once people get a look at the reality of it, they stay away. In droves. The numbers speak for themselves.
If PvP is not at least close to sustainable without having to do lots of grind outside of PvP to replace losses, then most people won’t do it. Most people have never done it. EVE has never been a PvP game… it’s always been a mostly-PvE game where PvP is present enough to drive all the PvE. Simply because that’s the way the economics of it work and that’s the way most people approach games.
CCP needs to start designing/changing EVE for the real way people play games, and not the imaginary people they have in their heads. Because the real people are leaving/not staying, and the imaginary people only pay in your dreams.
8 Likes
Maybe its just numbers!
Less players on line.
Less ships killed.
Less ore mined.