Good, because it looks like CCP went full retarded. Never go full retarded.
Wut. As an alpha I can do the following:
Mine
Explore
Mission
Rat
Haul
Build
Trade
Scam/steal
PvP
This is all normal gameplay, and I can do that for free, for as long as I want. I just canât do it in the best ships, with the best fits, with optimal skills. Thatâs the F2P restriction.
You can do fractions of those things.
Minning, but Venture only.
Explore, but without cloak.
Mission, but the (realistic) limit is lvl 3 and that is rather hard.
Haul, but only in rather weak T1 Industrials.
Build, but only limited items and only four production queues.
Trade, but with limited orders and contracts and with higher fees.
PvP, but with lesser modules and ships.
I left out ratting, because itâs too generic and scamming/stealing is also more of a soft-skill thingâŚ
As I said:
Sure, you can do lots of stuff, but canât do many things well enough to actually compete. Doesnât mean you canât have fun with it or even success, only that from an Omega perspective itâs just severely gimped on all levels.
1 Like
well maybe you can still do fw with a stabbed frigate and plex that way
i dont know if that works anymore i dont even understand a thing about fw
ive tried to do it before but makes no sense to me
Iâm OK with the alpha situation as they can try stuff and get a taste of it but not really do it properly which is probably how it should be, itâs supposed to be a tease. Also, most Alphas that leave high sec probably wonât last longâŚgood fodder.
Alphas are an unlimited free trialâŚbut not a very good one at everything and if you like things then it probably is quite frustrating after a while. CCP has it about right really, as a 5.5 million SP pilot sure has itâs limitations even without those on top of it imposed by CCP.
I would have thought the more Alphas around the better for the vetsâŚhaha, should be all encouraging it. And as for this frig offer, well, itâs inconsequential really as $5 worth of Plex is exactly that whatever way you look at it, with a crappy frig or two attached.
Whatever. No need to have any dramas about itâŚjust the usual BS marketing etc.
Although, I did like the comment far above from someone that this is CCP at itâs finest teaching new players about being scammed from the offâŚvery funny, definitely some irony there.
Shareware. Free to Share. Freeware = Free to Play. Shareware, as i remember my collection, had a limited amount of levels, which also hid additional things only found in these levels, or were a smaller version of the same game. Youâre right, actually, though of course nowadays Shareware doesnât exist anymore, because sharing over disks or CDs isnât much of a thing anymore. It was a product made for the sharing culture, which was born from the culture of âpiracyâ (which was simply everyone sharing everything, because no one really used the term piracy back then anyway)
So, yeah, youâre right. How does that change anything i wrote?
Cheese samples are cheese that is free to eat. You get it handed to you, it costs you nothing and you are not obligated to buy cheese. How is it not free to eat? A movie trailer is free to watch as well. These things are free to play, eat and watch. Free as in âfree of costâ of course. What is your point? That things are for free arenât for free? (Time doesnât count here, because none of these examples need work to be done. Minerals i mine arenât free. 
)
Stop with the marketting usage of free to play. A shareware game is free to play, until you buy the full version (which isnât shareware). A cheese sample, btw, is a flawed analogy, because the cheese sample actually provides the full experience of the cheese, unlike sharewaregames and trailers. Itâs just a tiny amount only.
Anyhow, even if your counterpoint was actually valid (itâs not, because playing EVE has no cost for those who donât want to pay): a considerable amount of the game is accessible to everyone. People only miss out on ships and items, but barely on content. There are no social limitations (the biggest part of the game) and no one is being locked out of any content. If an alpha wants to do content he might not be able to do in his limitations, he can still group up with other alphas and figure out how to run this content anyway.
Thereâs a huge amount of things to do, plus all the social stuff (scamming, theft, awoxing, coop-play, fleets, isk-doubling, bumping, ganking) being openly accessible. The limited amount of ships changes nothing about the huge amount of game thatâs freely available. Can you elaborate how the ships are limiting âin realityâ ? Iâm apparently missing something.
CCP may have removed some cumbersome game mechanics und added a little comfort here and there, but significantly easier? Just no, didnât happen. Every artificial barrier dropping means that there is initially a bigger choice of actions, increasing the felt complexity for newer players.
The parts where the game actually have gotten easier, are rather limited.
First of all must i ask you not to parrot CCPâs words, because they donât count as your own. Comfort, btw, equals âmaking things easierâ, because everything thatâs not comfortable obviously demands that someone has to put effort into it. Effort is the enemy of comfort. One manâs comfort is another manâs challenge. Which type of player would you prefer? Someone who doesnât mind effort, or someone who demands comfort? Do you understand the different mentalities between these two?
What got significantly easier is âsurvivabilityâ, at least in highsec. Not where Remiel is around, though. (
hi; iâve added this to make sure i donât accidentially step on your toes :D) and nullsec is mostly a safe haven anyway. What got significantly easier is avoiding shooting yourself in the foot, aka being protected from your own mistakes.
CCP added things that werenât needed for over a decade, because the people didnât need comfort or protection.
- the protection button (which is actually several points all by itself)
- a warning when you forget the cargo for a mission
- a warning that tells you when a route goes through lowsec
- Autoretrieval of drones
- the whole NPE that now showers you with isk and stuff (which creates a completely wrong, initial impression of the game)
- Mechanics that give you something to do, so you donât need to figure it out yourself (which isnât hard at all, yet apparently thereâs now a significant amount of people who are dependent on others to tell them what to do)
- etc, etc. Probably.
People who donât want to be reminded that they make mistakes obviously will love most of these changes. People who are willing to learn and can watch out for themselves (like checking a route on the map) got significantly nerfed, though.
What CCP made significantly more âcumbersomeâ, btw, is doing things in highsec which were easy to do for over a decade. (I use that wording a lot, i know). Things that were fun for many people and made highsec more alive. Can flipping or theft in general, awoxing, contract scamming, hunting and finding wartargets, (etc. probably)
The german channel isnât much of an example. Try the official rookie-help-channel instead or eve-offline with itâs numbers showing the newly created characters. It doesnât matter much, though, because a continuous small influx of new players happens, and over time this adds to a big lump of people.
Suspect doesnât necessarily limit you from doing things, just other people are allowed to attack you freely. Criminal status does what you say, resulting in desctruction of any ship you enter high sec space with.
Weâre talking about new players here. Your perspective is one of an old player. For a new player, suspect state is a serious problem if he wants to do what people easily could do for over a decade. When a noob is yellow blinky, older players will shoot him down. For the noob, itâs equivalent to GCC, because he canât do anything else but wait out the timer or keep exploding. All he wanted to do, though, is dare. Now he has to go through lots of thoughts (protection button, a psychological deterrent) and then gets heavily punished (being FFA for 15min).
The fact that you canât concordoken yourself anymore (unless you are really, really stupid) doesnât make the game much safer.
It makes it safer for him and protects him from his own mistakes. A significant change for the game as a whole, which grew around people who learned from their mistakes.
For some reason player count was highest when high sec was a much more dangerous place and ganking was more common and much easier (of course, this may all be conincidental).
Itâs not coincidential. The realization just hasnât set in yet, or in other words: it didnât make âclickâ yet. Highsec was the breeding ground for EVEâs culture and CCP nerfed that significantly.
PS: No one ever talks about all the fun things CCP made harder or more complicated, which were common for over a decade and in no way or form negatively influenced the growth of the game. I hope i didnât miss anything, for some reason chrome on this tablet (finally not on phone AGAIN) keeps crashing.
No. Nonononono.
Minning, but Venture only.
Explore, but without cloak.
Mission, but the (realistic) limit is lvl 3 and that is rather hard.
Haul, but only in rather weak T1 Industrials.
Build, but only limited items and only four production queues.
Trade, but with limited orders and contracts and with higher fees.
PvP, but with lesser modules and ships.
Mining is mining. He can do that. What ship he uses doesnât change at all that the content is available. No matter the ship he can still mine. And he can do so in a lot of ships, up to a cruiser. Just like people did it before there were even battleships. Exploration is exploration. You donât need a cloak, it just makes it less comfortable! Etc, etc.
The content is available. Certain tools to run this content isnât, but that does not change the fact that the vast majority of content is accessible to him. The tools he can use, do not change the content. Mining will be mining no matter the ship. Same goes for exploration, hauling and all the other things.
And while this is theoretically not very limiting in what ativities you could take part in, it is in reality.
Sure, you can do lots of stuff, but canât do many things well enough to actually compete. Doesnât mean you canât have fun with it or even success, only that from an Omega perspective itâs just severely gimped on all levels.
You responded to yourself?
1 Like
Quite simple: a free portion of a thing doesnât make the whole thing free. A sample remains a sample and a trailer is just that, neither is a relevant part of the whole thing, just a very limited experience.
The fact that you can play a part of the game for free doesnât necessarily mean that the game is free to play, just that a part of it is.
We donât need to discuss this further, we can just keep the following in mind:
At a party with free beer, I expect not to pay for any beer at all for the entire party and you are already satisfied when the first sip of each glass doesnât cost anything (No, you wonât get another before you paid for the one you sipped from 
).
Show me where CCP used those words. Which of course, doesnât matter, because they could be very well true.
Trying do dismiss an argument like this, makes you look like an asshole by the way and not like someone who tries to participate in constructive discussion.
Do you? Seems like you want that people put effort in the game just for the sake of it. Letâs play chess with 50kg pieces, takes more effort, making it a harder game for a more elite type of player. Or maybe we realize that this has absolutely nothing to do with the core experience of the game and just shouldnât take any effort on that level.
And by saying âthat levelâ I mean only that.
Here are some examples:
Learning skills: â â â â â â â â mechanic that just delayed actual gameplay, making the first few weeks more boring than necessary.
24h Skill queue: forces players (foremost newer ones) to either forfeit some skilltime or to put in some extra effort (here is that word again) by shifting skills around or logging in at off hours - was even worse before without any skill queue.
Medical Clone insurance: just a âmandatoryâ fee for dying with some danger of skill loss for the stupid.
There are more, but those should be enough for now. They have one thing in common: they have nothing to do with actual gameplay. In fact the actually worked against it: delaying the start phase, potentially forcing players to skill stuff they donât really need at the moment or putting extra costs on losses, making people potentially more risk averse.
Some answers to that:
- The low sec warning (at least when trying to enter a low system) was already there over seven years agon when I started playing.
- Same goes for career missions and the epic arc which are the places where a new player gets most of his early income. The actual new NPE has different problems - foremost that it doesnât fit the Eve theme.
- When do drones get auto-retrieved? or do you mean probes?
- Towards the safety button, I have mixed feelings. I can understand why itâs there. It wouldnât be needed if related mechanics would be explained better.
- And I also donât like the current event (some of the former were in many ways better). It annoys me by being so visually dominant (at least at first), it offends me by its ârewardsâ and the focus on shooting rats, it unimaginitively copies the concept of daily missions from other games and on top it doesnât even work correctly.
It is the official german help channel. Where if not there should new players be a relevant part of participating players?
The official rookie help doesnât say too much - as well as new characters created. We need new players playing, not alts created. In a healthy environment, I would expect to be at least every fifth player (or more?) from 2017 or end of 2016. That is definitely not the case. Influx is only part of the equation, retention is the one that matters. in 2015, 1.5 million people signed up with Eve, 51% quit after less than two hours (EVE Evolved: Fixing EVEâs New Player Experience (again) | Massively Overpowered). Of course, we didnât get any numbers of retentionr ates after that, but I am pretty sure they would be depressing.
No, I 'm talking about the mechanic, nothing else. Itâs the same for all players. Except: new players have to figure out the safety button (you donât like) first which, at the very least, should give them some new questions and a warning that what they are about to do might not end well.
Doesnât change too much. Itâs still not a safe game and he will most likely manage to get himself killed by his own ignorance/inexperience/lazyness.
While I tend to agree with your opinion on that, Itâs only that: an opinion.
Let me give you an alternative one (which might or might not be completely â â â â â â â â ):
People back then found ganking rather acceptable because it was more widely believed that it targeted the weak and unaware and therefore deserving. Today, ganking (and the related activity of wardec griefing) feels like randomly targeted acts of terror, hitting even those that âplay by the rulesâ.
That and the fact that the perceived amount of complaining about this topic in the forums has rather grown over the years, have given the game an image of âgriefers onlineâ driving new players away faster (after their first few bad experiences) and keeping more potential players away.
2 Likes
In my opinion:
More difficult = more challenging = good
Harder = more tedious/laborious = bad
Yes, I know itâs a rather fine distinction I make between âharderâ in the sense of more convoluted or awkward or laborious (chess with 50kg pieces is an excellent example, CowQueen), and âmore difficultâ as in more skill/talent-intensive, and you likely will not find this distinction in a dictionary, necessarily - but once elucidated, I think the concept makes good sense. So-called âbusy-workâ (such as jumping three sectors only to realise the cargo isnât in the hold, double back, collect, retrace) is not âadding to challengeâ in any way, it is only adding to ennui. Also, I like to view things in terms of in-context consistency: capsuleer in the distant future likely has some automatic warning systems and self-checklists to warn about things like this, I would think.
2 Likes
And suck at it. No problem at not being competitive at all. Who minds having an income auf 1.5 m per hour (I made this up and wonât calculate how much it really is) when the guys around you make ten to 15 times as much and get the deals with the local industrialists.
It makes it also much more dangerous and therefore either limiting you to high sec or significantly increasing your chance of wasting your time.
You take longer, itâs harder and the chance of getting your loot home safely ist way smaller and as a new player you lack the experience to compensate at least to some extend.
Sure, itâs the same thing. Or maybe, for many itâs just a waste of time⌠probably depends on the outcome.
Accessability doesnât mean much if there isnât much of a chance to reasonably manage the content. How and how well you are able to manage the content also change very much the perception of the content itself. What you might do semi-afk ass while watching Netflix, might be a high risk activity for someone else: like scanning a wh system without cloak for example.
For you, itâs pressing a button every few seconds and adjusting the probes a little, for a new Alpha itâs a lot more pressing and adjusting, keeping full attention on his surroundings and might very well end in some wild chase through the system - or a rude awakening in high sec.
No, I just quoted the relevant part of my post that made the difference between âan Alpha canât do this thingsâ and âan Alpha canât do these things reasonably well enoughâ, because Mr Blythe seemed to have some troubles differentiating those two statements.
1 Like
So-called âbusy-workâ (such as jumping three sectors only to realise the cargo isnât in the hold, double back, collect, retrace) is not âadding to challengeâ in any way,
But it does! the challenge is not being so mindless, and the game punishes you for it. i believe i made that clear, but apparently i didnât. the 50kg chess pieces are so far offâŚ
again, as i said: people are being protected from their mistakes. if you donât like making mistakes, then stop making mistakes instead of rationalizing why CCP should (or has) implemented âfeaturesâ that protect you from them. (which, btw, means youâre doomed to repeat them, because you refuse to learn)
Thatâs what i am (one part, out of several) talking about. itâs supposed to annoy you, because itâs your own fault. no other game had this and no other game was so punishing and unforgiving even with details. if you think people quit over this, then the only sane reply is: good riddwnce, because you refuse to learn from your own mistakes!
details like this added character to the game and underlined itâs harsh and unforgiving nature. ya know, attributes people were actually playing this game for.
i will respond to the big posts when i have a bigger chunk of time and when iâm not on the phone. And yes, i meant probes. sorry.
By your definition of free to play, WoW is free to play too, btw.
And i wouldnt agree on that either.
2 Likes
I like the harshness of the game, but I also like the human spirit that exists within, too.
Humans solve problems. Some Humans solve other peopleâs problems.
- Eyes not working so well due to too much time reading? Wear glasses.
- Mind doesnât remember things better than someone else? Use this new technology calledâŚwriting.
- Forgot the exact calculations that decide how quickly the fuel in your vehicle will be used? Thereâs a fuel gauge - and maybe even a warning light.
Iâm all about difficult gameplay and meaningful decisions, but I think that Felyx_Ravencroft described the difference between a Quality of Life change and a crutch quite well.
Some decisions make the Game boring, and boring games donât get played.
âGadget - still playing âŚsticky notes helps.
3 Likes
+1
To me, thatâs the crucial keyword here. For a game to be satisfying to me, it needs to revolve around important decision-making (thus, anything with a âwin buttonâ doesnât last 5 minutes with me, if even that!) - the more Iâm scratching my head to make a correct decision, the more I like it. But wrestling with the UI is NOT such a meaningful decision to me - that merely impedes me from engaging with the loftier content that the UI is meant to interface me with. Stuff that gets between the decision and my implementation of that decision is not adding value or challenge, it is merely an irritation.
Of course, different players will define their demarcations differently - and thatâs where enable/disable options (which are available for many such UI elements in EVE, such as the LowSec warning, the mission cargo warning, the route danger level preference settings, etc.) are very useful - a player can customise the experience to match his/her expectations - if someone WANTS to manually find their way from one solar system to another, thatâs ok, they can do so, but this shouldnât force the player for whom the travel is merely an incidental chore and not the goal itself, to have to do the same - that player is thus allowed by the UI to focus on what is important to him/her.
Playersâ expectations and values are not homogeneous, and (at the risk of sounding pompous) to try to dictate/impose oneâs own perspective on others would be misguided at best, and possibly downright narcissistic or egocentric or despotic.
3 Likes
You are right with this one. Even if we could assume that each change that was done was a rightful one and just removed or changed something that wasnât adding value to the game by itself, the total number of changes may have changed how the game feels in total.
Another example were a change eliminated a âmeaningful decisionâ is the plex vault. The old Plex could be activated remotely (ignore the bugs related with player structures for a moment) and, if bought with real money, redeemed anywhere. The only reason to transport it was for trading purposes. This was actually a good mechanic.
Now we have the Plex Vault, making Plex absolutely safe to transport, removing the meaningful decision if the risk of transporting Plex is worth the potential profit.
However, my three examples form above - learning skills, medical clone upgrades and unlimited training queue - didnât really remove such meaningful decisions. There was no choice if you want to upgrade your clone, you just did. Learning skills were also mandatory and your only choice was how early you went for 5/4 or even 5/5 (which can be more or less mathematically solved, so no real choice there) and the unlimited training queue didnât change what skills you want to learn, it just changed what skills you actually learn because you donât have to adjust your in-game learning schedule to your RL schedule.
2 Likes
1 Like
Good timezone! 
Now weâre on the same page! Too many details removed, which changed the feeling of the game! 
Now we have the Plex Vault, making Plex absolutely safe to transport, removing the meaningful decision if the risk of transporting Plex
is worth the potential profit.
This. What the actual ⌠i had no idea! i missed this partâŚ
Thid makes me really, really angry, but iâm not going to express that. 
Where was the outrage??
Let me guess! There was no outrage?? because people are so 
, they just eat every single 
CCP uses as explanation? Do you need any more proof that the playerbase absolutely shifted awa from what it was, towards what we have now?
they managed to prevent the usual collapse that happens from shifting the playerbase too fast towards f2p, and now they even got away with this.
just⌠
ing wow.
1 Like
There was an outrage . well, sort of. But not about this, but rather about the fact they discontinued the option to pay for a character transfer by Plex - without telling anybody up front.
Regarding the playerbase: no, I stay with my opinion. Hasnât changed too much. People only are too tired to complain. I mean, this year alone, we had the (too long ignored) Ghost Training, the Plex vault, the âdaily missionsâ aka Agency, the distribution of Concord ships that heavily favored Ghost Training exploiters, the recent âfree slots, free tankâ advert, another screw over of former NES customer by giving away skins in greater numbers that people had to buy for much bigger sums before and propably some moreâŚ
Let alone those topics, we should be none stop raging about, like the screwed up SOV system âŚ
It probably looked like that for Hilmar, when he was shown player reactions.