100% agree… I’ve been raisng these issues about this stuff for 6 years, but falls on deaf ears and gets rejected by players who don’t want to loose their “shooting ducks in a bathtub” thing in high sec…
They should stop ignoring that 50% of players live and stay in high sec for a reason…to enjoy the game in the safest possible place… They want to hold onto giving the edge to gankers in high sec because that’s been the mantra of the game all along, but it has been at the significant expense of player retention…
I think that just taking away red protection in high sec would do the trick… It would change the dynamics of the hunters becoming the hunted in high sec and force them to move in packs so they don’t get picked off flying alone… Of course the high sec gankers aren’t going to like this because it would screw up their livelihood, but from a business perspective, player retention should take precedence over it…
I just returned after five years away and 50% of the players have left the game… It was peaking at about 65k players when I left and now it peaks at about 34k five years later… Alot of this bloodletting of players also has alot to do with the agenda to monetize the game… They first started slow-walking the monetization of skins about 5 years ago to hide their intent…and now they have completely taken over monetizing the “premium” skins away from being put into the game as incentives to play… And now they have started the monetization of ships which is going to destroy player ship manufacturing and sales… After they hijack ships away from players, they will will move on to monetizing the modules… So pure greed in hijacking sales away from players has alot to do with the demise of this game which goes to player retention as well…
I totally disagree. I don’t think you’ve really thought through the matter. A 100% safe highsec would be a 100% boring highsec.
The idea that hordes of new players would stay on is wrong…because I have seen more than enough evidence that most noobs do NOT leave because they are ganked but because they are bored. CCP themselves presented graphs a few years back showing that only 1% of noobs who leave are ganked in the first 2 weeks anyway. So why do the OTHER 99% leave ? They are bored…and you are not going to get more of them to stay by making things even more boring !
Well…that’s just damned sad…if people are logging into the best space combat multiplayer game in existence so they can scurry into some little rabbit hole and be ‘safe’.
Both myself and a friend of mine returned after about 4 years away from the game. When we saw just how bad high sec ganking had become, my buddy brought up the idea that maybe CCP wants to encourage frustration for newer players to try and encourage buying PLEX.
Only thing I can say for certain is full loot PvP games are just not that popular, and coupled with the complexity and gameplay of EVE, it is no surprise at all the player numbers are so low. Casual players are the backbone of most MMOs, and CCP has done everything they can to keep such players away.
The removal of ganking is one of the contributing factors to EVE Echos dying.
EVE is a niche game, that is why it has survived so long.
Stop being delusional, its never going to grow to have millions of players.
It ain’t for everyone but it does a good job at retaining the right kind of player.
CCP should not listen to people who want them to please all the people all the time. EVE is, and has always been, a niche game. ‘Growing’ the game by some bogus popular appeal may increase numbers in a very short term…but in the longer term it is a recipe for disaster.
I suspect CCP are wise enough to know that.
The very sad fact is that the decline of most games starts the minute the marketing department rather than the development team takes over. The attempt to ‘attract more players’ has destroyed many a game in the past.
EVE existing without the current iteration and popularity of high sec ganking for a very long time. And it had a significantly larger concurrent playerbase during that time as well.
Yeah, if you totally ignore that half the players in the game want to play that way… I love the game and just want to find a way to save it… If it keeps going like this, there won’t be anyone in the game left to gank…
Is that why whenever there’s a new MMO released on Steam, they get extremely high concurrent player counts? MMOs are still very popular, the problem is every attempt at a modern MMO has been poorly implemented, but the interest is there. Does that mean EVE is going to manage the same kind of numbers as New World with 913,634, or Throne and Liberty with 336,300? No, but it could sure as hell do better than 29k (many of whom are now multibox alts).
Call it what you want, most players in online games are casuals. If I had to wager a guess for why EVE Echoes died, it was probably more to do with the very clunky controls and monetization. Never once saw anyone in local complaining about not being able to gank, though. Low and Null exist for a reason.
