I suspect rising PLEX prices made people resign from some alts that were less enjoyable, less effective. Also not needed as there is not much fights in null, goons basically won, so why even play? PL ended, other entities poor, people resigned…
War decs were found to be an issue from CCP’s changed commercial model perspective on NPE & retention (later on conversion, alpha/omega).
The “correction” just came too late to have an impact on pathways / player development, it also came too late to be able to correct an cumulative perception problem (eve hard, mean, antisocial, don’t try it).
In other words, the change was a temporary bandage to bleed less. It is not suitable in its form to deal with cumulative historic effects. That’ll require consistant iteration with vision and a very different type of outbound marketing + strong support for reinforcing a rebirth of old word of mouth mechanisms which is what pushes sustainable acquisition.
On top of this, while the wardec stuff had measurable impact, it is still a seriously big question to what degree it was responsible for what impact and what point during eve’s evolution. It is very easy to fall for selective statistics, while other trends have their own impact.
Also, you can no longer look at “players online” as humans. Not even CCP still counts that way. They count accounts. Should tell you something.
PvP always self destroys, because nobody plays to be somebody else’s punching ball. Go nullsec and either you join the Goons or are TARFU. Goons won and the one time Goons were in a bad place, CCP helped them to survive by banning their enemies. So forget about null PvP. What’s left then?
Why should a player join EVE Online now?
1 Like
I suppose for this reason people always joined. 
But there are a lot more shiny looking alternatives on the market now. Space games are a lot more than they were few years ago.
Even that “No Mans Sky” got few serious expansions and is now a lot better game.
1 Like
Nine years of EVE ONLINE disagree. Your perspective is too skewed towards your side of things. The usual comparison of EVE being a jungle was valid, because you had to fight for your survival. In any and all communities people do care about their “new born” though, raise them and teach them accordingly.
That’s why EVE, which you believe would have self destroyed back then, kept staying alive.
The EVE you are talking about, which self destroys itself, is far from the PvP sandbox which it once was, which is also why it’s in such a horrid state nowadays.
2 Likes
That’s what I’m saying. Notice we are losing players FASTER since the change. We didn’t plug the hole, we made it bigger.
Corp activity. Not player activity.
So players quit/swapped corp and didn’t come back to the corp. It does not show us whether they stopped playing the game or not.
If that’s the reason then why didn’t the other wardec nerfs create a positive trend in activity?
Why did we go from gaining players in 2012/13 to losing players after the wardec nerf, and then losing them faster after the watchlist nerf?
We weren’t just ‘too late’. Nerfing pvp in a pvp game fundamentally changed eves future. And double downing upon it turned away many of eve’s core playerbase.
1 Like
Pretty much.
You have to understand most of the people posting here have been involved in lengthy war mechanic discussions, discussions that consisted of ‘war mechanics effecting player retention & recruit in stark numbers’, ‘players are leaving due to wars’ ‘new players won’t join because of wars’ and so forth (3000+ posts in the thread if you get bored).
From this people were lead to believe that the changes to the war mechanic should have massive results, loads of returning players, loads of new players.
My post he is quoting more of an ‘inside joke’ where I’m taking a shot at the people that believed Eve Online would suddenly fill up with players once the war mechanic changes were introduced, as you can see he took this more literal and will probably feel pretty stupid once he reads this.
1 Like
It’s a segment. Not the entire userbase. One already in flux with less humans yet more accounts yet that still not compensating enough to offset the less humans bit.
Anyhow, keep in mind that all of this is part of quite simply a bigger proces, bit of a reverse Peter Principle in terms of policy. CCP is changing the functional model of the game. Ergo, observation through either a historic or contemporary viewpoint internal to the dynamic is not the required viewpoint.
Look, at the end of the day all of CCP’s efforts in reacting to retention/acquisition challenges, both directly and derivative of CCP swapping out the functional model comes down to CCP still not having found an alternative to the word of mouth / community emergent behaviour which was what really grew EVE, and what even now (internalised, segregated, isolationist / internal group perspectives) pushes its continuity.
Which is exactly what enables CCP to boil frogs and swap out the model.
In case you had not noticed, EVE’s future changed several years ago.
Now you’re looking at one instance of consequence of one thing, while there’s an array of effects of a great many things already ongoing.
Consequence = push button → observation / result.
Effect = trends, cumulative, interacting, consequences playing out over time and each other’s interaction.
1 Like
Well, IMHO, survivorship bias has a lot to do with the opinions of many veteran players. Since they survived the ordeal, then it msut be the ordeal what keeps the game alive… it’s like saying that, since all combatants who survived WW2 went to war, it was the fighting what kept them alive.
Yet survivors are only half the story. Because each one of you has come to the cost of 33 other players who left the game for absolutely no good reason.
I remember you veterans screaming and kicking because CCP changed the name of weapons and modules so they made a little more sense and were coherent between sizes and damage type… how many players did that cost to EVE? Huh? Oh my! The outrage! Thermal damage missiles would all be called “Inferno”! The End Of EVE As We Know It! 
1 Like
When logic fails, fabricate stories about the people you’re arguing against and make up statistics that suit your narrative.
Carebear 101.
4 Likes
Aka, the scrublord’s prayer…
2 Likes
Also the ganklords prayer and the edgelords prayer and…
Aka Name calling is part of that same narrative.
You all know that Eve is complex and why people play or leave is also complex.
And that limiting wardecs to structures is not a direct nerf since it also buffs insome ways as defenders can’t get random allies, the allies have to have skin that can be hit also.
Anyway, why were we expecting a 40k average concurrent login again?
Scrublords prayer is a thing… google it.
It’s as based in human nature as the study of videogame design.
I don’t think necessarily an expectation.
Activity normally peaks in Jan-Feb and I could be wrong, but I think this is the first year since 2007 that we haven’t hit a point of around 40K online at some point in January.
We reached around the 37K mark a couple of times in January, but this is the lowest, peak users online in January in 11-12 years.
Not a major thing in my view, but I guess that’s where the OP is coming from.
1 Like
40k credit card users vs 37k of now alphas and bots in the mix is major downgrade in my book.
CCP stated reason for alphas was more ppl online seems to me that backfired.
Or that statement wasn’t true at all but was a stopgap to ease in decline due to glaring years long neglect and cash cow attitude toward their only working product.
2 Likes
I think that resigning from 2 big updates per year do not help with players numbers.
Sad thing is that CCP knows all of this but they choose to go the path of other companies which is “as much profit as possible from as low effort as possible”… 
But it will backfire on them as it is now with EA and bethesda
2 Likes
You might want to check that 11 to 12 years thing. Prior to the 2012/2013 peak it was quite a bit lower also.
2011: 63,170 on 23 Jan
2010: 60,453 on 6 Jan
2009: 51,675 on 8 Feb
2008: 41,071 on 6 Jan
I did check.
3 Likes
EVE Online peaked as it:
- moved towards WiS (until 2011)
- was in a undetermined state looking for a roadmap to the future (2011 to 2013)
Then once the Rubicon roadmap was established and began its implementaiton, things went down the drain.
With Rubicon, CCP aimed at improving the playerbase who enjoyed the game most, and since they were aware that this would cost them players who weren’t favored by the roadmap, they began a process of cutting losses caused in the early stages of the game, before players even had a chance to become the kind of player who enjoys most the game. They also started developing content to ease up the tansition from “players we lose” to “players who enjoy our game” by making PvE closer to PvP, but this was horribly flawed logic since the reasons why a player plays in a certain way are inmutable.
So the problem, and it’s a big one, is that they underestimated how many players would they be losing in the process of pandering the favorites. Those not-so-expendable players were silent and back in 2013 CCP didn’t had the tools to measure them by behavorial analysis. Essentially CCP betted that the loss of highsec PvErs would be tough but bearable and it’s turned to be fatal.
3 Likes
Yiole
Nice post overall, but one minor comment:
I don’t think it’s entirely true that “not-so-expendable players were silent”. IMO “shouted down” is more accurate.
The net result if the same of course: new players who would enjoy EVE, but aren’t prepared to be treated as a consumable by experienced players along the way, leave forever. And unfortunately they explain their decision process to other gamers if asked about EVE.
IMO it’s not too late to change this, but the wardec change alone isn’t enough.
2 Likes