The real reasons player population is declining

[SoulLess_Zealot]

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything on the fourms… lol let alone played the game. I pretty much stopped playing in 2016 sometime after the amarr championship. There are various reasons real life availability, changes to the game , stagnation, my group slowly stopped logging in. None of these reasons are due to salt like yourself… If anything it’s the loss of salt opportunities. At the end of my eve life I was flying with beyond thunderdome which was a corporate made up of percussive diplomacy ( they had one good AT run years back) and random knows from blackrise… in case your unfamiliar ( which I’m sure you are) blackrise is a region in low sec probably still the most active part of all low sec. Lots of pvp happens there… the cynisism,s hit talk and dirty game play would probably explode your head. Our blight was the blob we regularly tried to fight large number with a handful of guys. That was fun and cool to us. One of our key tools was ogbs. Now we can talk until we’re all blue in the face about that but I still support them because of the opportunity they present. When those went away so did our greatest asset. It’s not easy to make 5 v 20+ work without them. As it was our fits we’re blinged out. And kitey fits that just grab what they can get there hands on are just not enough… we likes to call out to people and say here we are come get it… Right here is a great example of what makes eve great. Even in a small example of the game there are numerous opinions and play styles. And risk vs reward drives everything in the game…lol high sec being the least example of this( which is probably why most in this game think your opinion is hilarious).

Any way. I am rambling… The short and sweet in my opinion is that stagnation and love of good kill boards is part of that… the love of a good kb drives fear of venturing out on your own… fear of trying new things or taking risky fights… it’s the love of safety that has created stagnation… It’s the want to be part of the winning group. I mean look at null look at low… that’s the true game. Why aren’t there more people trying to take null space from themselves… why just join an existing block… why care if you loose everything… It’s a game trying is part of the fun. You can always build up and start again.

I think the new pve content, the new ships ideas and mechanics and new mod goo are a great way to shake things up… Also maybe create buz about pvp and tournaments…which btw ccp look at any major comp game today… there arena based…just food for thought.

[Salvos_Rhoska]

I don’t say the study is flawless. But it’s infinitely better information than simple gut feelings, and pure guessing, which is what you do since you can’t present any other data.

Its far from perfect.
So far so, that it means nothing.

Fact is, people are leaving EVE.
You may find their reasons reprehensible to your views, but that changes nothing.

Im quite concerned that CCP either hasnt run better studies, or if they have, have not made them public.

The attrition is real and needs to be addressed.

[Ima_Wreckyou]

Its far from perfect.
So far so, that it means nothing.

You failed so far to present any data at all that contradicts this findings. I’m sorry, but to simply state some vague doubts about some unknown parameters is not a compelling reason to doubt the study given that we have other data sources which agree with the presented data like this one:

Where are new characters getting killed?

The only thing you do demonstrate repeatedly is your inability to separate a gut feeling from an informed opinion.

[Black_Pedro]

The attrition is real and needs to be addressed.

Is it?

If you look at Eve-Offline for the period from the ISBoxer ban until today, it seems like we aren’t really declining. Stagnant perhaps, and there is the issue that not all the accounts are paying ones now, but it’s kinda hard to argue we are seeing much decline. And if you look at activity metrics, like say jumps over the last two years from adam4eve.eu:

it’s hard to claim there is a trend towards attrition. I’ll grant the bump due to alpha clones makes it more difficult to interpret, and I am sure CCP would like to see growth rather than a flat-ish line, but the game activity seems pretty stable.

Now, I will say anecdotally that highsec feels more empty now than say 2014 and really is by metrics like jumps or NPC kills, but highsec isn’t the whole game and some of that apparent loss in activity is just people moving to nullsec or wherever. But regardless, I don’t know why you think CCP isn’t concerned about this or isn’t trying to address it. In fact, the last expansion and the next one seem specifically geared to getting players, especially new players undocking and playing the game. We can quibble about their efficacy and who they are targeting, but I don’t think you need to worry that CCP doesn’t care about this or isn’t doing anything.

[Sebat_Hadah]

Long enough for you?

[SketS47]

The real reason (paying)people are leaving the game are numerous, and none of them have been adressed in the correct way by CCP over the past years.

Just to name a few (and this list is easily a hundred fold longer)
Social policing by ccp
Carebear space everywhere
Everyone is blue
You lose a 1 bil isk ship? Not to worry, play for about 2 hours to make it back
You cant lose learning points anymore
You cant attack concord/faction ships anymore
Making isk in high sec has become to easy with incursions (for example)

If I was in charge of CCP I would implement many changes over the course of a year or two to completely overhaul the game into 2020. Below a few,

1. A collapse of most of high sec space. Turning most of it into low sec/null sec.
2. Removal of high isk ventures in high sec. This includes anything which can turn over a profit larger than 20mil isk per hour. Meaning lvl4 agents, incursions, POS’s, citadels and all other crap be in low, wh or null.
3. Removal of many NPC stations
4. Increasing the cost to produce player made stations/citadels by tenfold.
5. NPC factions (any of em really) actively seek expansion into NULL with sizeable fleets and force matching the playerbase in that area. This to make sure you need to be on your a-game at all times instead of blue-ing everything. When you get weakened, you become prey.
6. Players MUST leave NPC corporations within 6 months, alpha accounts cannot play after this time without becoming omega.
7. A dedicated team looking for bots and script runners, penalize directly with lifelong bans and all items go to the latest enemy. This should not be hard (!)
8. Productions costs must go up an X percentage, and isk from npc ventures must go down. Life should become harder.
9. Bring back the learning skill loss mechanic in a broader scale. But also make injecting/accelerating skill points faster, cheaper and easier.
10. Remove a number of WH’s to make the available space lower to trigger more warfare and less carebearing.

And the list goes on really,
Eve in its core, has Always been a game about survival and teamwork. In recent years the survival element has been diminished, its basicly fps respawning now. Teamwork in order to make isk is no longer needed.
Bring back eve, make it tougher. We want tears of pain.

And dont get me wrong, there have been a lot of cool new features. But in the long run this game seems to be turning into hello Kitty online very slowly. While the playerbase keeps requesting new ways for creating tears on a scale that we should be able to read about suicides everyday in the newspaper.

So CCP, make sure your subscribers kill themself. That is the fastest way to moar moneyz

[Knowledgeminer]

The game has become a joke. People put real money, real effort and real time into the game and to see that go up in a suicide gank is rather frustrating. No thanks I’ll go play other games.

What do you mean when you say “has become”? Has become when? The game has always been that way, it hasn’t become any “worse” in that regard at any point in time that I can see…

Yes, irreversible permanent asset losses that hurt you badly are part of the game… by design… Big surprise!

You should know this the moment you finished the tutorial… Your killboard shows you’ve been in low and null… How on earth may you have been there all this time and not know this?

Now, maybe what you’re trying to say is you did know, but assumed it couldn’t happen in high sec and are upset now you’ve come to realise the hard way your assumptions were wrong? And this is something that’s wrong about the game exactly why?

Having an irreversible permanent asset loss is an unpleasant experience. It’s perfectly understandable that you may not want to have to experience that in a game, not even if you could avoid it by doing things differently. But that by itself doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the game. Or does it?

[Solstice_Projekt]

*sniffsniff*

I smell forum alt of a forum alt.

Weird.

[Herzog_Wolfhammer]

Sorry OP. I’ve been away for a bit, and won’t be back for a while. But been at this since 2006, and watching since I stopped playing to try my hand at IRL. I even moved across the USA last year in an unarmored truck with “all my stuff” in it and did’t get ganked. But I did run into Georgia customs and this didn’t care that I had enough guns an ammo to take an island nation.

But I digress.
I have been seeing posts like yours since 2006. Can it. It’s done.

The real reason why things are declining has nothing to do with the game, or nerdowells, or whatever.
It’s about changes in the market. The “Big MMO” thing came and went with WoW. Eve Online was in the same wave. Never got to WoW level, it was always niche game for die-hards. So it didn’t have 12 million subs. Big deal.
The new market does not even require it. These days, there are so many options out there, there won’t be “another WoW”. Ever. Unless technological changes garnering some megatrend take hold. It can happen. But nobody knows.

The bottom line is this: one of Eve’s great selling points was skill and gear customization. But the game had cost: time. You had to grind for it. That was the main issue. Not like everybody was crying blood or anything. Die hards didn’t care. Proles did. So what.
But other game designers paid attention.
So now in fast and cheap FPS games you can customize your skills and gear, amongst other things. They took the best of both worlds: get into PvP action sooner with lower cost in time but still find avenues for skill and gear customization that people love. Easy.
So Eve is not “that game” anymore. It’s evolution. Not anything else so dramatic and full of hyperbole.
Your wall of text was not necessary.

[Rin_Vocaloid2]

You summed it up perfectly and even better than I could ever explain it.

It’s impossible to deny changes in the market for video games of any genre and how those changes impact game development.

All of us already know that Eve Online is not truly going to last forever in the market. It will last forever in our hearts and memories but the servers will still get shutdown either today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade or next century if it’s really that lucky. Either way, its end will be inevitable and that is not because the game is bad. It’s because consumers change their taste over time. World of Warcraft will never be as popular as it once was and neither will Guild Wars or Eve Online for that matter. It would be at least nice to see Eve Online reach that famous 60,000 concurrent daily login it once had before it finally shuts down but I won’t hold my breath over it.

No game lasts forever. Especially MMOs. They can last longer with various changes that fall in line with the demands in the market like Eve Online did with Alpha clones and Abyssal Deadspace but they won’t make Eve Online last forever.

[Jenn_aSide]

Eve isn’t going anywhere and ive always found the fear and anxiety surrounding its “imminent demise” to be both funny and sad. Same goes for all the predictions and some game killing eve. Yet eve survives and most of the games people swore would kill it are around only in history books.

Its proof that even eve players themselves can’t really grasp what eve is and why its unique. Some of those player leave eve for other games then slink right back, confused and disgusted with themselves over not being able to let go of this “terrible game”.

I’m not confused. I know I likw playing eve. I know eve is still profitable and that it could remain so with a fraction of its current population. I’d rather spend my time having fun than worrying about when its going to end.

[Drago_Shouna]

I just sent 3 characters to Doomheim from my last 2 accounts, this was after unfollowing EVE on FB.

You see it’s like this, I can no longer bring myself to log on. It’s not the game I started playing 6 years ago, it’s being slowly destroyed by useless Devs who really have no idea what the players want or how they want to play.

They release update after update even though the player base is dead against it, I’ve just reached the point where I’m sick of CCP trying to herd me into a style of play I don’t want.

Anyway, this isn’t a leaving post as such, I have 45 days left for some BPO’s to finish cooking and I’ll decide then whether this character is sent to Doomheim. If it is, my main will follow.

[Dom_Arkaral]

Don’t biomass
Just invest whatever you have and if you come back in whatever amount of time

(Or you can send me the stuff for safekeeping if you decide to biomass)

[Rin_Vocaloid2]

Do you mind contracting me some of those BPOs when you’re finished?

[Mocam]

I just find the alts-R-Us mode of play to be a bit much. It’s not really playable - just read any discussion when PLEX prices climb on how many will quit if the prices don’t come in line.

No alts? Stick to highsec. The game wasn’t designed for that but now it is for PLEX buyers and sellers. Single account use is almost unheard and how most things have gone outside of highsec. That makes the game very hard to play for newer players. Use alts to earn, use alts to gank, use alts to spy and steal, use alts for point, etc. Not into multiple alt accounts? Try another game.

That wasn’t how it always was but it is how it now works.

[Teckos_Pech]

I just find the alts-R-Us mode of play to be a bit much. It’s not really playable - just read any discussion when PLEX prices climb on how many will quit if the prices don’t come in line.

Yes, I too think that everything I buy should have a lower price and I demand that the powers that be artificially lower those prices and screw over those who supply those goods. That is a totally reasonable response.

No alts? Stick to highsec. The game wasn’t designed for that but now it is for PLEX buyers and sellers. Single account use is almost unheard and how most things have gone outside of highsec. That makes the game very hard to play for newer players. Use alts to earn, use alts to gank, use alts to spy and steal, use alts for point, etc. Not into multiple alt accounts? Try another game.

Yes and no. Alts can make various activities easier. At the same time when you look at NS fleet combat it is often without alts. The problem with alts is that your attention is divided and thus each alt is less effective than if each character had a dedicated human player behind it. Using alts for manufacturing is relatively easy in that you can give each alt 100% of your attention without hampering the manufacturing process. To a similar extent this is true of mining, or PI and other activities. So yes, alts can enhance your ability to earn, especially if you are funneling all the ISK to your main account. But those earnings tend to scale linearly–i.e. to the extent there are economies of scale they are either slight or zero.

[Magnus_Witchspace]

Lol.

[Salvos_Rhoska]

At the same time when you look at NS fleet combat it is often without alts. The problem with alts is that your attention is divided and thus each alt is less effective than if each character had a dedicated human player behind it.

This is generalization.

For smaller operations where you have enough just from 1 account per player, and want more responsive control, perhaps, but there are cases where you want as many ships in space as possible and where things like TiDi make it a trivial matter to effectively run multiple accounts at once.

[Galaxy_Chicken]

You guys 'member when Salvos didn’t understand the basics of the CONCORD mechanic but still though his ideas on the subject should be taken seriously for some reason? 'member that?

[Salvos_Rhoska]

Lol GC trying that one, again.
Trolls gonna troll.