Pretty much that…
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I think it goes deeper than that - when I played from 2009 to 2015 I noticed many of the innovators and content drivers of that era quit around the same time - the killboards of a lot of long standing notable players went dead in the late 2014 through to early 2016 timeframe and I doubt it was from boredom - many of them when I last spoke to them or last saw video content they created, etc. prior to them quitting were still heavily invested in the game.
On another note making capitals almost a next logical step up from Battleships like the progression from cruisers to battleships, etc. seems to have done more harm than good to the game and a complete misunderstanding of why players back in the day used to fly capitals when they did and what those players for the large part wanted from them.
As far as I can see this means either the playerbase is very stable and not attracting new players or old players leaving and being replaced at a roughly 1:1 ratio by new players.
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Not sure if any useful information is available on number of players rather than number of accounts, but I’d be interested to see some data.
This forum gives the impression that two things are happening (with a “grey area” in between):
- The average number of accounts per player is going up for non-botting players
- The amount of botting is steadily increasing
Both would hide a fall in the number of players.
Of course neither is easy to measure, especially (2), where the players actively hide such data. And it might not be data CCP are eager to share. But if it’s available, it would definitely be interesting and relevant.
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I was around in that period, CCP made a balance pass on destroyers that massively increased the DPS of the Catalyst, but at the same time left all the mining barges and Exhumers as was. This enabled very cheap ganks to be carried out on expensive poorly tanked mining ships and was left that way for two and a half years.
Hisec industrial and mining corps found themselves under easy cheap attack and the players found their net worth and progress destroyed without any real consequences to the gankers. So at that point a very large population of prey and content gave up on Eve, made more important in terms of revenue based on the fact that their preferred approach was to actually pay for their subs with RL money.
At the same time blanket war decs started to develop as well as multiple copycat awoxers. It created a perfect storm in removing a large segment of prey players and no one noticed. Due to the awoxing many hisec CEO’s gave up recruiting and mentoring new players.
CCP did not notice because they were focussed on overall numbers and did manage to attract new players by headline large battles.
I saw it happen because all of the players I initially started playing with in 2009 were hisec indy players and not a single one is left in the game and everyone of them left during that period.
I was active on the forums telling CCP to sort out the tank of mining ships because having them all have the tank of a wet paper bag was unacceptable in terms of player retention. After two and a half years of this CCP finally noticed and made the right changes to mining ships, but they lost so many hisec players who never came back.
And by the way that DPS buff to Catalysts was the biggest buff to ganking you could possibly imagine.
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Personally i think the game itself is in the best condition it’s ever been. CCP get a lot of stick but i honestly think they’ve done a lot of good work recently.
There are two massive problems with eve though at the moment IMO. The price of plex, which is negatively affecting the casual player count. We need those guys in the universe just so we can have more interactions with one another. As it makes the game more alive.
Note: i don’t plex.
That and people multiboxing entire fleets solo. whether that be some guy multiboxing dozens of alt rorquals in null. Or one guy running a 40 man rattlesnake fleet in highsec and running HQ incursions solo. I’ve nothing against multiboxing itself but when it’s taken to the extreme. That one person can lock down an entire area of content and doesn’t need to interact with anyone, that needs stopping.
I’m also of the opinion as well that it’s these people that are also having a direct negative affect on plex prices. They may pay for so many of their accounts but i highly doubt they pay for all their accounts. Also me personally i’d rather have 40 people playing for free. Rather than one person running an entire fleet solo for themselves and barely interacting with anyone.
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I’d completely overlooked that possibility.
I didn’t have much sympathy in that respect TBH - too many insisted on flying poorly fit Retrievers over and over that would melt to a **** fit catalyst and then complain when a decently fit Procurer (especially with links) could prove too hard a challenge for cheap and easy ganking and with a decent setup have minimal impact on productivity.
EDIT: 1x Porpoise, 2x Procurer made for a fairly decent little mining setup.
Fitting made no difference at all, you are talking about as it is now not as it was then.
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Can’t agree with that - and I was aware of the reshipping Catalyst gank swarms, etc. - unless someone was absolutely hell bent on killing you a decent Procurer setup was resistant to the average gank attempts and especially wouldn’t die to 1-2 Catalysts as the **** fit mining ships too many flew were.
I haven’t even played the game in 3 years aside from burning up some PLEX for a month when Alphas came out. I have no idea how it is now.
You kinda lost me here, since they are talking about a time period years before Porpoise was invented, and you are talking about a time long after mining vessels had their tanks increased.
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Talking about 2 different eras - I came back for a month when Alphas were release to burn up my remaining PLEX and tried that setup out.
The other stuff I’m talking about way back before the Porpoise was released. Even back in the day (I’m not sure how far back but I have fits from like 2011-2012) the Procurer was around 30K EHP base and could be tanked upto well over 100K with a good setup and links while still capable of decent mining output.
While people kept insisting on flying like Retrievers with fits that meant they weren’t even 10K EHP and in many cases including skills probably more like 5-6K EHP making them easy targets and they still kept mining in systems next door to mission hubs and pipes where gankers frequented… sorry I have no sympathy in that respect.
With regards to AWOXing, it was a very misguided change.
If you looked at corp adverts, the vast majority were new player friendly. And the ones that weren’t new player friendly said that it was the low chance of commitment from new players that turned them off putting ‘new player friendly’ in their corp advert.
AWOXing made corps pay attention to who they invited, but AWOXing wasn’t a big barrier to recruitment and retention. Taking AWOXing away increased the corps for new players to choose from, but it dramatically lowered the quality of corps and made it harder for new players to find good corps.
I wish social corps were used for AWOXing free corps instead.
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The era being talked about was when the proc had 1 mining strip and no role bonuses to amount mined. This was the era when it was hulk or nothing because all the other barges had pathetic yield, pre tiericide.
Your claims of decent yield show you are talking post tiericide and therefore after the era being discussed.
Note this was also the pre ore hold era which forced cargo extenders etc to be able to hold anything as well.
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I don’t give a rats ass if you agree or not, every mining ship had the tank of a wet paper bag. The mining ship that had the best tank was the Hulk at that point in time. You are so wrong it is laughable.
And you just proved it with that as this so rightly points out:
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Not that I did much mining but TBH when I did I AFK multiboxed it on alts so things like cargo hold amount was a non-factor also using links so Procurer was reasonable for yield.
Looks like I hit a sore spot - can’t say mining was particularly something I did a lot of (relative to other activities I did) or paid that close attention to in the game but I had some alts doing it in Simela without ever losing a mining ship while Retrievers and Hulks were popping next to me almost hourly.
No, it really wasn’t. You are clearly talking about post tiericide barges if you claim that. Because pre tiericide Procurer yield was about 1/5 of what a Covetor pulled in if I remember all the maths right. Might have been as high as 1/4.
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And you proved that.
I am pointing out that you are wrong when you tried to make out that using a Procurer made a difference. It is pretty evident that you are looking at the mining ships after they were rebalanced and you are unable to accept that you are wrong.
Nevyn and I are old players, we both remember this period very well, you don’t.
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OK fair enough looking back through my old copies of EFT I didn’t pay mining any attention before around the time they did tiericide. I still have no sympathy though as throughout the period after that people were still moaning like crazy about losing mining ships to Catalysts while refusing to take precautions.
I will concede that the period before that I don’t have a perspective on.
Fairly old player myself - just industry/mining wasn’t something that I was interested in much - spent a lot of my early days in wormhole space - started the game with the quaint intentions of flying a dread in wormholes thinking it was achievable in a few weeks LOL after watching my brother fly a Moros in a C5 or C6 just after they implemented w-space.
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There is a difference between the two periods of time, I have sympathy for hisec miners losing their ship when all ships had the tank of a wet paper bag and no tank to speak off as compared to now where they have a choice. Whether you are sympathetic or not is neither here or there, what is important is that it was poor game balance that cost them a lot of subscribing players and made hisec a less interesting place overall.
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Won’t disagree it lost them a lot of players.
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