Extremely false and skewed numbers. Until the end of 2014 the game was very lively because it had a ton of actually active players actively playing it and no where near as many accounts being PLEXed vs subbed. Sure there were bots, multiboxers and all that ■■■■, but back then they were literally a small fraction of the population.
That was 4 years ago. Nowadays you have a ton of bots, multiboxers have increased maybe 5-10 times of what they used to be, so have bots of all sorts, hell you even have freagin mini fleets of explo bots nowadays running in asteros and clearing out sites right after servers come up.
The number of logged in accounts has not dropped that much, but the percentage of actually playing active players has taken a gigantic fkn dive and is on a continuous decline.
In addition, even the active players nowadays are split between subbed, PLEXed and alpha, non paying accounts. Biggest chunk of money comes from subbed accounts and those are the ones that need to go up. Not just that, but they need to be active players actually playing, not just some bullsht logged in to market spam and make automatic order adjustments or a dude letting his 20 ratting VNIs rat for 3-4 hours a day while hes doing laundry or people just logged in and almost perma docked up with their 10 alt accounts 23/24 and only undocking to mine a belt spawn etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised that if you substract all the bots, AFKers, multiboxers etc. you’ll end up with about half that number. And that is being generous.
Alphas are a double edged sword, very nasty one, because when the ystay long time without subscription they use server / infrastructure resources but do not pay for any and diminishing rest of us have to foot the bill.
My old alt (Morgan Agrivar) has ganked freighters with CODE before and she have ganked miners herself. Afterwards, I would give them isk and that list above in order to protect themselves after that. It is how I helped the Eve community.
You’re being disingenuous at best and willfully ignorant (or trolling) at worst.
Wardecs have been changed several times over the years. Wardecs being a problem is not a surprise to anyone, certainly not CCP, as barely a week has gone by in the past 5 years without it being an issue on the forums somewhere.
The only thing that has ‘recently changed’ is that CCP finally feels the problem is so extensive, or has become so focussed as to it’s cost/benefit (5 corps yadda yadda), that they need to do something about it despite all the screaming from the “I need EZ-Mode PvP in Hi Sec becuz I can’t PvP for reals!” crowd.
The population numbers change you have shown could easily be due to any number of other factors, but most likely due to Alpha state. ‘Playing’ pop is not ‘paying’ pop. It could also be that the process of selling to PA made them sit down and do some “What really impacts our bottom line?” number crunching and set their egos and “HTFU” mantras aside for a bit.
Most games have to change to stay relevant after even 5 years on the market… EVE’s been out for 15.
‘Carebear’ isn’t the way to go (although the EZ-mode PvPers will of course label anything except ‘EZ targets everywhere!’ as ‘carebearing’). On the other hand, the broader audience needs some transitioning mechanisms to take them from the kind of gaming they normally encounter to a more rough-and-tumble play style.
Varying degrees of security and ability to operate and enjoy the game while they transition is almost certainly necessary for EVE to survive long-term.
And honestly, if all the PVP/wardeccers are so hardcore and bada5s, why do they keep screaming that they absolutely need to be able to wardec 3-man noob corps in high sec in order to enjoy the game? Sounds like a carebear crutch for lame PvPers who can’t cut it in real PvP to me…
I’ve played EVE off and on for over 10 years now, on a wide variety of pilots. While I do stand on the “make changes to hi-sec mechanics” side of things, it isn’t really because of any broad-spectrum lack of ‘safety’ in high sec.
I do planetary interaction, some freighting, some mining, lots of missions, many events; and I almost never run into problems with ganking, ambushes, gate camps etc. Granted, I don’t play a lot (it would average out to 3-4 hours a week, if that, over the long term), and I take some basic (not extensive) precautions.
I think having an element of risk in high sec is what gives EVE some of its’ uniqueness and flavor. It is the ‘wild wild west’ (in spaaaaaace!) and shouldn’t be toned down to ‘just another MMO’.
On the other hand, certain hi-sec mechanics, in the hands of certain players, boil down to a repeatable situation that is exploitable, abusable, and can be easily perceived as bullying - and that’s not good for long term player base retention.
The trick is to craft a solution that minimizes abuse while still leaving opportunities for player conflict. For too long, CCP has been afraid of (or incapable of) trying any substantial changes for fear of the EZ-PVP screamer crowd. Much like they have left horrible UIs and crappy Overviews and bad ship design mechanics in place for years.
Just because crap has been around for years doesn’t make it good crap. CCP needs to stop coasting on 10 year old systems and start thinking like they were releasing a new game in today’s environment.
Hisec is as safe as you make it. If you are talking about the carpet wardec abusers, that’s CCP’s fault. They weren’t a thing before CCP removed watchlist. Nobody complains about redesigning wardecs, but some have a legitimate fear that CCP might broke things more than they already are.
Well yes, and given CCPs past performance, “they might break it worse” is a completely valid problem to worry about.
I’m definitely worried that the cure may be worse than the problem. But I don’t see that as an excuse for not even trying to cure at all.
CCP has thousands of talented players that have presented hundreds of good (and thousands of really, really bad) ideas for the various issues over the years. If they aren’t competent enough (or brave enough) to pick out some decent, workable approaches from that morass, then we’re pretty much all doomed anyway.
First of all I have not missed it, I am in fact very aware of it and I am very happy about it.
The only way this could be the case for nullsec alliances is if it requires structures in hisec and I have not seen that detailed anywhere, it just says structures. So please show me where this is detailed. That being said, I hope it is the case.
As for hisec corps, anyone with a brain will have a structure holding corp, however it does seem that a number of people are very busy blowing up structures in hisec at the moment and doing a fairly decent job of it.
People always have been complaining especially when they’re on the receiving side of the losses. And yes, I am purposely ignoring the complainers, as we always have including CCP. Nothing new here.
But you ask a good question, why does a 500-man corp need to be able to declare war on a 1-man corp? Because they want to and they can. It’s the freedom we have in EVE, to do to one another as we please, without any outside supervision by adults, teachers, bosses or just nerdy control freaks.
If anything should people ask themselves why they are so dependent on these limitations, why they need to feel safe even in a virtual world where they’re meant to feel free and unbound, yet some seem to want to work, mine and just make virtual money all day as in real-life.
October 2018’s numbers are roughly 25% down from october 2017’s. There’s a general trend in that direction right in the season of the year where activity rises from the summer bottoms.
You’re ignoring that for the number of total players to climb the number of new players doesn’t need to climb. It only needs to exceed the number of players leaving. You’re also only looking at the peaks but not the bottom line. The bottom line is relatively stable.
Well, since the reason to change wardecs is about players leaving, don’t you think it’s related to how many players are coming in vs how many are leaving out in a context where less players are coming in?
Also, for a stable botom line (and isn’t that stable, anyway), diminishing peaks mean diminishing totals. With less players coming to play the game, retention is on its way to become a more pressing matter.
I don’t think we’ll see another change liek this with wardecs (CCP might be actign abit for PA’s eyes, by adressign an obvious eyesore topic) but retention has never been CCP’s strong point. They kinda prided themselves on how difficult was to be retained by EVE Online…
Do you have a graph on the numbers of players leaving?
I don’t. So all I can do at this point is to use the number of active players for each day, which shows an increase in the bottom line over the past 3 years, and conclude from there that with the increase we’re seeing we must have slightly more players coming than going.
By the way, I’m not saying we couldn’t have more players or CCP shouldn’t try to get more players in. I’m all for more players. All I’m saying here with the chart is that we aren’t losing players or that EVE would be doomed.
This is a fear which many have and it drives their comments on the topic and it makes discussing it very difficult when they keep falling back to their fear of how EVE would be dying. It just isn’t dying.
Not according to you you haven’t, you’ve already stated that CCP won’t see your money until the game is changed to suit your needs.
I also paid a subscription to play the game as I wish, so did an awful lot of other people. Our wishes may conflict with yours, and conflict is what Eve used to be all about.
