You came back. Why you left isn’t really important there. What matters is what keeps you here.
If the game had been easy and simple enough so you didn’t have to make this experience would you probably have left anyway, and because you’ve gotten bored. You then more likely wouldn’t have returned, because you’ve already overcome all challenges and so have no real reason to get back to it.
But the fact that you are still here speaks against you and not for you. The game tried to keep you out, as it was designed to do, and you fought back, because you always knew you had some fight in you.
You only hate the game and its mechanic for bringing it out when really you should love it for that.
Where we draw the line is where the mechanic’s best and most reliable counter is to quit playing. Ganking, scamming, etc - those are all things that can be avoided. For war decs, the meta - the most effective tactic available - to counter the war dec for a defender is to dock up for a week and let the war expire.
And we know, from the data, that when people do that, they often never come back.
That’s where the line is for me.
A lot of this comes down to definitions. What do you consider a new player? I’ve been playing since 2006. Anybody who’s only got a year or two in the game could easily be called a new player by somebody like me.
New player has a broader definition than “just logged in today” or “just finished the NPE.”
As I’ve said before, I don’t particularly care what the war dec groups do to have fun, so long as they’re not actively driving people out of the game. That’s what is happening, and that’s why it needs to be fixed.
No, why I left is important, especially in a discussion about game mechanics that drive people out of the game. It’s kind of the central issue. Why I came back is just as important… but it was for the wrong reasons. A game can’t rely on players coming back ‘for other players’. What happens if those other players leave, too?
The game has to be able to draw people back in on its own.
Are you crazy? Do you know when I’m not bored in EVE? It’s when there’s 2000 people trying to kill me, the tidi meter is pegged at 10%, and the server calls take 20 minutes to tell me they’ve dropped. That’s it. That’s the only time in this game when I’m not bored. Small fights that are over before you know it? Dull. Mining? Yawn. Missions? Sleepwalk. I still do 'em all, but I’m not doing them because ‘OMG, teh awesomesauce’.
There are no challenges in this game. There have never been challenges in this game. If you think putting up with self-important dilweeds who want to break my stuff and laugh at me because they can is a ‘challenge’, you were never a nerdy kid in high school. It’s not a challenge, it’s just more of the same bullshite you learn to ignore every damned day of your life in this piece of shite world you’re playing a video game to get away from.
I’m not here for the game. I’m here for the people I play the game with. And that’s bad for the game. It means that thousands of other people like me might have been here, but they’re not. Thousands of other people might be in space, taking risks, but they’re not, because the game drove them off.
And every time people complain that there’s no content, that they can’t find someone else to fight, one of those thousands might have been that person.
No, it isn’t. For you personally, yes, it is of course and I don’t mean to diminish your personal experience here, but not for CCP and the big words such as “money”, “business” and “player retention”. You are still here and you will be playing as Omega.
The game then drew you back in. Not on it’s own as you put it, but since it’s an MMO was it the players. You cannot blame EVE for being what it is.
Yes. Understanding why people leave is paramount to big words like ‘player retention’ and the money you want to get from those players. If you don’t understand why they leave, you can’t stop them from leaving. You can’t take steps to get them back.
There is literally no scenario where the long-term state and health of the game is better with a smaller playerbase. None. Driving people away from the game when you don’t have to is a self-inflicted wound, and if you do it long enough, it’s fiscal suicide.
No, it didn’t. Those same players I came back for? They’re not here anymore. If they’d left a few months faster than they did, I’d be back in WoW, with them. But I hooked up with other people during the overlap, and now I’m here for them. All 33,959 of them.
People don’t leave for the wrong reasons. There are no wrong reasons to leave. This is a voluntary activity that asks you to spend on it the one thing you can never get more of: time. There is never a wrong reason for saying ‘I’m going to do something else where I feel my time is better spent’.
This is the primary challenge (since you like that word) for game designers: you have to offer a product that is worth asking people to burn an irreplaceable asset on it.
It was only ever the people. There was a period of overlap, when the original group I was with decided to try something new, and moved out into a nullsec alliance. And I’m that dumbass: I’m the idiot who forms a social bond with a group, and them I’m loyal to that group. The original folks trickled out, one by one, but the group I joined became part of a larger group, and that larger group was part of an even bigger group.
And when that larger group has moved to other games, I’ve gone with them. H1Z1. Warships. War Thunder. Hell, I even tried PUBG despite hating FPS games. Why do I come back to EVE? Because we never left EVE. My people are still here. And I bet you if you were to poll them, most of them would say they’re here… because we’re here. The players, not the game. And inertia and sunk-cost fallacies are amazingly common among human beings.
There sure are. People who make demands at CCP for example and when they don’t get what they feel they deserve and then quit have definitely the wrong reasons.
Again are we back at the idea that the game had to include anyone and everyone. I don’t know how I can convince you of how wrong this is. I already gave an example of a Wheel of Fortune for dyslexic people. I could now go on to Olympic Games and handicapped people. Say, at what point are you willing to accept that a game isn’t for everyone? So before you begin to understand this can we not talk about what a game needs to actively keep unwanted players out. I will only remain on my point, that what keeps some out is what keeps others in and I will ignore how affected this makes you feel. I know it’s upsetting for some.
People don’t come back for L4s and Retrievers, that’s for damn sure. Highsec’s retention problem, as I’ve said again and again and again in this thread, is not primarily a wardec issue but that people really don’t miss the game enough to come back when the wardec is over. They’ve had their skinner box addiction disrupted, they realize the game just isn’t that good (in highsec) and can do better things with their time.
The primary focus in terms of player retention needs to be acknowledging this issue and sorting it either through creating better gameplay and/or being much much better at crumbtrailin’ people deeper into the Eve Sandbox. If they never go further than a toe in the kiddie pool, they’ll never be invested enough to bother sticking it in again if they pull it out.
No, they haven’t. They have their reasons. Those reasons are right, for them. And for the game designers, those reasons are definitely not ‘wrong’. They’re ‘why am I not getting this money?’ There’s no moral judgment to be made there. It’s like asking why you get wet when it rains. Because water is falling from the sky, and you’re out in it.
The devs want that money. The company wants that money. Understanding what’s preventing them from getting that money is necessary. Then they have to decide which they want more: a particular style of gameplay, or that money. And that’s CCP’s decision to make. That, too, isn’t ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Left sock or right sock, which one is the ‘wrong’ one to start with?
There isn’t one. It’s just a matter of priorities and what decision they make.
The game doesn’t have to include anyone and everyone. Nobody except you has tried to claim that it should. But if people want to play in a persistent, single-shard universe where their actions matter, where their gains are significant because they can lose everything… then yeah, this is the right game for them, even if they don’t want to be out there PvPing.
The fact that you’re smart enough to dock up and let the wardec’ers waste their time and money while you play World of Tanks for a week or two is actually pretty well in keeping with EVE culture. ‘Hah, look at those guys being stupid while I’m still having my fun’. It doesn’t cost the game anything… as long as those people come back. And while I agree with Miz’s point that gameplay in highsec (and elsewhere) could be a lot more engaging and deeper… addressing the issues that cause the disruption in the first place isn’t a bad short-term step.
I agree about the crumbtrailing, but don’t agree with the ‘kiddie pool’ assessment. It’s more the case that different people like different aspects of the game. This includes relatively quiet mining and missionrunning in hisec. The problem comes when this is disrupted too much by wardecs. At this point people assess whether they care enough to log back in after a week. Typically they think ‘What is the point? They’ll just dec us again in a few weeks and I won’t be able to play again’
There needs to be some option for casual players who are not interested in losec/nullsec/WH lunacy, otherwise how will they ever have the time to decide to follow the white rabbit down that hole?
If it can be done without disrupting frankly more valuable gameplay or playerbases. Something to consider when taking my point into account is that we can’t even tell just how much of the disruption is the wardec and how much is just bad retention in the first place. We don’t have CCP’s dataset in front of us to analyze. All we have are two sentences remarking upon data we don’t have.
This is by far insufficient to base significant changes in gameplay on, especially since it might just be “fixing” a tiny part of a much bigger problem, without really preventing losses in player retention among the bears while potentially disrupting the known to be loyal and steadfast playerbase in highsec.
The more I think about this, the more iffy this entire thread and the whole premise of wardec changes become. We need more data, we need more thoughtful analysis. Knee-jerk changes with this kind of potential overreach can be catastrophic.
Which is why none of the suggestions I’ve noticed in this thread include ‘remove wardecs’. Brisc stated at the summit (with the data in front of everyone) that the degree of disruption resulting from the wardecs might justify it, but even there, it was clear they wanted to avoid that if possible.
I still think your proposal on goals and objectives makes a lot of sense, really. I’d just toss in the ‘here, they couldn’t kill you’ incentive to come back (and sweeten the pot if the targets stay active/do fight back) that I suggested upthread.
I didn’t say it wasn’t their reasons. I said they have wrong reasons and I mean not simply wrong by them, but wrong for most others, and I include you, too.
If you want to make this some noble cause, to allow all and any reasoning to be right, so be it. I will only disagree and I’m sure you’ll understand why.
And I say that there are no wrong reasons to decide to do something else with your time. You’re the one introducing judgment calls to why they’re leaving, don’t try blaming me for it. You haven’t even provided why you think those reasons are ‘wrong’.
Yeah, because this would be the first time they completely misjudge their own datasets, or have public opinion sway their design choices. Like I’ve already pointed out, the data mentioned has implied causation when at best all we have is some correlation.
To put it simply, I trust you and CCP about as far as I can throw you when it comes to interpreting this kind of data correctly. You because I quite simply don’t know anything about you, and CCP because it’s become irrevocably clear that they neither play nor understand their own game anymore.
Oh pour the sand out of your ■■■■■ hole, will you? I’m just saying, no one’s provided the actual data and no one involved have proven themselves when it comes to interpreting and analyzing this kind of data. This means we should probably look a bit closer before we knee-jerk any game design choices which could have irrevocable negative effects on the game we all play and love.
You know, like several other things CCP has done without enough forethought and analysis.
