The most important issues in EvE

Communications Center General Discussion
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What do you think is wrong with EvE? What do you feel is the most important thing that should change with the mechanics of the game? Why do you believe it has declined in the last few years?
If you were given the power, what would you change about EvE for the health of the community to insure its longevity and see that it continues and prospers in the following years?

What do you think would bring people back to the community? Inquiring minds want to know and our idle hands want to change it for you.

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Nothing is wrong with EVE, except for new players expecting it to be something it isn’t and never has been.

It has declined because there are many other games to choose from out there now. 10 years ago that wasn’t the case.

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Not enough sand in the box.

Stop the leaking sand.

Not fully meeting the Capsuleer’s expectations on playing Eve Online.

There is no feedback from any data on the Did you enjoy player Eve Online Today (big Thumbs up or Down (where do we see such data?)

CCP to Interact with the Capsuleers on a monthly basis via video recap.

A bounty system that rewards the new InterBus credits

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I’d remove alpha clones and go strictly back to a subscription based model. I’d remove skill injectors/extractors. I’d remove the hyper-net.

I’d make a hard cap on the total number of titans allowed on the shard to 16.

I’d also remove orcas from highsec, along with structures. Move all PI to low and null sec. Remove level 4s from highsec and move them to low.

I’d reinstate the old war-dec mechanics. FW needs a complete overhaul. Not sure how to fix that, but what it is now. Not good.

Now, I know that these are terrible ideas. The OP never said they had to be good. And I know that a sudden change in many of these mechanics would/could result in catastrophic failure of the game. But I expressed what I would like. But what is, or should be is vastly different. And I’m cool with that.

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Definitely remove Alpha clones and go back to subscription only. That is the very first thing to do.

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The primary issue is less “what is wrong with EVE” (although there’s plenty there to deal with) and more one of “what’s the missing element”?

It’s not a question of balancing mechanics or tweaking the numbers. The primary difference between a young new game and an old developed one is the sense of possibility and potential.

When a game isn’t completely mature, gamers have this sense of optimism and exploration that leads them to gloss over the problems and strike out in some direction, hoping to find the mother lode of gaming satisfaction.

At that stage of the game, you have a bunch of innovators, explorers, exploiters, adventurers, empire builders and dreamwreckers all seeking their potential future and learning how to master these “strange new worlds”. People of this nature tend to be a bit more creative, a bit more daring, a bit more interesting, a bit more flamboyant.

So new games enjoy a honeymoon period where the best and the brightest they’re ever likely to attract are all in the game doing new things in new ways. It leads to that nostalgic era everyone refers to as “back in the day” when they’re talking about how can-flipping, or PKing, or awoxing or wardecs or fleet battles in cruisers “made EVE what it was”.

It wasn’t really any of those things… it was just the “new car smell” of a game that hadn’t been solved to several decimals of accuracy.

What would bring people back? Take a look at what has stirred interest the past 5 or 6 years (either positive or negative). Alpha clones, Citadels, Triglavian Invasion, Blackout, Era of Chaos, Scarcity etc. Yes, those things mostly didn’t achieve much in the long run (various reasons), but they sparked a lot of interest because they held of hint of “something new, something different”.

The primary thing that’s missing in EVE, that would bring people back or make them stay, is this sense that EVE still has new directions to explore and that CCP has a vision for opening new vistas on the horizon.

People are inherently driven to conquer new territory (metaphorically). Once it’s all been mapped, the drive turns elsewhere.

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Alpha clones worked when they were explicitly stated to be trial accounts.

CCP has been misleading the general population when they now call them “free” accounts and leave off the “trial” disclaimer. It sets up a false expectation. And a lot of misguided people now claim the game is P2W because of it. They lost sight of the original purpose of the alpha. It’s a trial account.

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It has also declined because the newer generation of gamers have exactly zero patience and are used to instant gratification mobile phone games that they can win in 5 minutes…

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They came out of the oven too quick there must be someway to put them back until they are complete…

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This, right here.

And you know it’s a problem when CCP tried to pander to them with a mobile version of EvE…

:roll_eyes:

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This game needs only one thing to be a great success story... (click to reveal)

NFTs

:smirk: :popcorn: :dealwithitparrot:

Unfortunately CCP turned it into a litter box. :stuck_out_tongue: :psyccp: :snowflake:

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:poop: My Lizzo emoji agrees!

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And now there are many Highsec Cats that don’t want to do their business in New Eden’s sandbox.

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Not sure if a bad thing overall (depending on your view) as what you wrote both means that gankers are quitting EVE (which am not even sure if the case) and also means that the gankers are no longer putting their stinky mess in the game so it only depends on what someone thinks of ganking if they consider this bad or good. :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

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That’s really sad.

I guess what the world needs is another angry birds.

RIP desktop.

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The world needs an EVE: Immortal. :smiling_imp: :popcorn: :innocent:

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EvE: Princess Aiko Edition.

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  1. The actual gameplay is :poop:. Everything takes ages and requires dozen of alts to do properly. UI is terrible including new UI elements such as Agency or AIR Career Program (I didn’t try Photon UI yet, but from what I saw it is not changing anything and many will prefer even this horrible UI we have over that).

  2. Bugs and support related to bugs. Ever since I started to play in 2016 I observed more than dozen of bugs. They are still present to this day and I already was victim of new bugs. Yet support is closing all my tickets because “we cannot reproduce” despite I attached screenshot where you can clearly see the issue has happened. Granted, I also turn down crappy reports on my own multiplayer server with same words, but when someone actualy includes a screenshot proving it really happened, I will investigate the issue and at very worst case refund the player (if there is anything to refund) and add some debugging for when it happens next time. But I am sole developer doing it part time compared to CCP who are ignoring even reports with screenshots. When the issue is random and happens 1 of 80 cases of course they won’t be able to reproduce it. Or when the issue happens only with my specific toon, can’t they just login as my toon and test it themselves? On my multiplayer server I have this possibility.

  3. Stupid and illogical mechanics that you need to overcome. Things like pulling CONCORD, but pretty much every content has something like that. Auction contracts are another horrible example where both seller and buyer needs to click they accept to finish the contract which then allows one party who made bad deal to deny the ISK or goods to the other for quite a long time (not sure what happens after timeout, goods going back to seller? I always accepted even when the auction didn’t end to my expectation). In PVE pockets it will be celestials whose “hitbox” doesn’t match reality and which bumps you when they shouldn’t. Some security missions have an initial gates which does this and you need to get farther before activating them. In mining, this residue is really unfun mechanic as well especially in conjuction with mining missions which you will fail if you lose some ore to that mechanic. LP stores themselves are quite shitty mechanic too. And I could probably come up with some annoying parts of exploration as well, specifically probing and bookmarks…

  4. Official support and incentive to multiboxing that I really hate. CCP seems to design or rebalance everything lately to need dozen of multibox accounts (or real players OK, but since PCU is only going down, it needs to be done in opposite way and all these activities should require less players/accounts). In pretty much every other MMO this is against rules, or at the very least grey zone where they don’t penalize it, but don’t endorse it either. But in EVE, CCP are happy to force you to pay more by forcing you to multibox. Do you want to be safer while hauling or doing PVE? Get one more acc to scout for yourself (no other player will do that for you if he only has single account, not for free anyway and even when paid, I have yet to see player who wants to sit at gate for 5 hours of mining ops to warn others whenever bad guys jump in). Then you see these 50 mackinaws + Orca multiboxing fleets mining Ice or maybe even worse, multitbox you don’t see - industry, they often have just as much as well. And gankers obviously too. But even PVE players run multiple accounts to grind ISK with maximum efficiency.

  5. Lastly, and this is related to 4, the game is bland and plays itself. There are activities which requires a bit more player input than others, but even during those activities there are gaps where the game plays itself and all you can do is watch. Which is main reason that multiboxing is so popular and so common unlike other games. Other games needs much more player input than EVE so the multiboxing is rare there and limited to very few actions which can be done without much player input.

Stop focusing on NPE, graphic, new cosmetic and new fireworks effects and actually start making the game feel less annoying to play. I would give all ships +2AU warp speed bonus flat, that is what I would start with. Fixed all the annoying bugs that are developers keeping in game intentionally (I suspect it might help fighting or detecting bots probably or at least it increases destruction, which is shitty way to do that but w/e). And removed or improved all these shitty mechanics that I mentioned and more.

And I would obviously started making changes for content to not need dozen of alts, made mining more active to the point you can’t really multibox more than orca + hulk efficiently but largely increased the reward, ie yield. Likewise with PVE, PI or industry. Not really sure how would I change the latter as I don’t do that activity myself, but I am sure that everyone would welcome not needing dozen alts to do high-end industry themselves.

I already wrote that elsewhere, but no harm in repeating it.

Sadly I think there are only two things that will increase player count for sure:

  1. Decrease of monthly sub price (not PLEX that will only lead to more multiboxing)
  2. Making alpha clones less limited / more powerful. (For example allowing them to fly some of the t2 ships or new faction ships like edencom or triglavian)

Pretty much nothing else will bring more players into this game as much we would all believe that our proposals to actual content or gameplay itself would have.

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Friends who left said:
-This became a second job

The times I took a break also had this impression on me

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The grass was greener
The lights were brighter
The taste was sweeter

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