Looking over at eve offline concurrent user numbers have been steadily falling for most of 2019. There was bump around the time of the expansion but since May numbers appear to have fallen significantly. Apparently a seizable number of people are voting with their money to say that ccp’s focus on pve and making high sec safer is not for them. So is it to early to call invasions a failure?
The problem, is that even the PvE content is not exciting or fun to play.
Sure, I can accept if CCP wants to make eve a PvE thempark MMO. It’s not the game for me, but if they see business value there, then I can accept their decision.
However, PvE themeparks are a much more competitive market, compared to PvP sandboxes. There are so many better games there. So you cannot just add some small additions to your game, that still runs on the same old, simplistic mechanics and think this is going to attract new players. If they want to make a PvE game, they need to commit to actually overhaul the PvE content and fundamentally change many old systems.
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Totally agree. It’s been a core issue for a long time, that CCP are not good at developing engaging PVE (or being less harsh at the company, the game engine doesn’t support the development of engaging PVE, which I think is more the reality. It’s not a story driven, cut scenes filled PVE engine that can draw us in by putting our characters at the centre of a cinematic experience. It’s a read text, go do stuff game engine that struggles to be interesting).
Unfortunately, the edges of the PVP have been shaved off in recent years, so the thing that EVE is really good at doing has been watered down in favour of content that CCP just aren’t good at producing.
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Thought you were gone already?
Bye bye troll
My thoughts exactly. Basically no matter how you slice it, pve is all the same - circle “this” and press f1. There is only so much variation possible when you’re stuck inside a ship. The fun (for me at least) in pve came from the other players - knowing that they were out to get me and having to deal with that. Whenever I didn’t have to deal with other players the game just got grindy and no fun. Ccp has cut away all of the stuff that made eve unique and as a result there is not enough destruction too much isk and the game is just boring.
What I don’t understand is how ccp can look at these numbers and say to themselves they are on the right path. It seems to me that they would be better off going back to their roots and trying to entice their old players back.
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I’m not sure how I feel about invasions. I haven’t tried them yet, and I’m not sure if I’m going to. As far as CCP’s direction, it seems like as soon as they fix one problem, something else breaks. Not just in a programming direction, but in a design and content sense. There are still problems with the game that are being discussed over and over again on the forums.
The last two expansions, when I look back at them, seem pretty light in content over all. At least we got some new ships?
As far as PvP content, what would you like to see? Would you reverse the war dec changes?
I wonder about that. Rather than safer, I think it becomes more dangerous because all the null sec people go there to gank as they have nothing else to do in their super cap umbrella lands. And people who hunted them in the past leave EVE because they can’t hunt prey any longer because a simple cyno negates all the work you put into the hunt. Not to mention that you need to bring ridiculous numbers just to destroy one super capital ratter (thanks to CCP you have to invest double or more the value of the target to maybe destroy it). I don’t really think that high sec is the issue here. User numbers there have been steady as far as I can see. Null and low sec on the other hand…
It’s very peculiar that I hear more and more people say that PVE destroys more ships and things that users in a given area. So many people feed ships to Invasions. for instance.
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It’s too early to call it a dog.
But we can give it some commentary, almost three weeks in, and it has been a pretty underwhelming show so far. The gimmick of having the invasion roll out over the course of weeks maybe have been a clever one on paper, but it still hasn’t hid the fact that this event/expansion/reskinned PvE isn’t ready for prime time and marred with bugs and possible dropped features. At the minimum, the density of content and the pace of the roll out is too slow: whether this is due to all the planned content not being there or not working correctly, or just a very limited initial scope, there is very little meat on the bones - some roaming NPCs not very different from FOB rats and a few one-dimensional sites that so far seem to consist of a few waves of FOB-rat-equivalent NPCs against a reskinned asteroid field backdrop.
There is literally no new game play yet. A nerfing of wars, a few new ships, Trig-skinned very basic sites, and a slight addition to the industry menu of things to build, but the gameplay is nothing new. Further, and more disappointing to me, there is no apparent effect on the game universe, at least no more than the pretend effect of Incursions - the sites pop up, they are farmed, and they pop up somewhere else. In fact, even Incursions have more of a ‘feel’ of something happening with the progress bar and the whole UI to provide feedback on how well the players are doing against the pseudo-war with the NPCs.
But, that all said, we haven’t seen the Full Monty yet. Perhaps we are still in the teaser phase and with World Ark or whatever and the final phase, we will get new gameplay or persistent effects on the universe. Something more than reskinned Incursions. If not, well, Incursions needed an update, but really CCP, you can’t spend all your effort just re-implementing things. Yes, Invasions will likely in the end be better than Incursions, and yes Upwell structures are better than POSes, but you are just replacing existing things. This has a marginal effect on the player experience, and while necessary from time-to-time, you still need visionary new content that really expands and refreshes the game universe if you want to stop the slide into stagnation and reinvigorate the game.
Maybe you don’t have the resources, or are handcuffed by management, but you need to be bolder, and perhaps look to the things that differentiate Eve instead, to reverse the activity trend. So far, this isn’t an expansion - or at least we haven’t seen any meaningful new game play yet. Perhaps expectations should be managed better if you are just going to release a content patch that revamps wars, and reskins and updated Incursions some?
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OK so here is the story why the invasion was always gonna be trash.
The idea of the invasion was that in invaded systems the sec status was going to go to null allowing player PVP because concord were gonna be overwhelmed. If the highsecers did not band together and the invasion in that system halted then that system was going to be shattered and turned perma into null with op rats & cutting of high sec safe routes ect. The space would be bad for grinding almost like graveyard space.
Null’rs and low secer’s would laugh but then CCP was gonna dump the same content on their true null space & give them content. This could have been used to shrink eve down inline with falling player numbers.
Seniors at CCP got jittery & pulled it at the last second, plan Hilmar drain Eve as long as it can be pumped was jeopardised. Giving players real game changing content was deemed double negative thought.
SO the invasion devs had the spine ripped out of their content and will really to continue producing it making the invasions a massive waste of time other than for ■■■■ grinding.
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Don’t forget that it is June, which means it is around that time of the year some are having vacations / holiday season.
I think that the numbers will look different in late August or fall season.
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There is also a war going on in null, some people might take a break until it’s over?
Are they voting with their wallet? I guess if you are privy to that information you are the CFO of CCP. Alpha players exist too.
Another nullsec alliance is disbanding with extreme drama and even some biomassing ( Reddit - Dive into anything ) probably after a ban wave.
That and the usual RL interfering, the weather is getting better outside so soem people crawl out of their caves and go enjoy the sun.
I’m sure none of this has anything to do with Triglavians. If you do not like it, post what exactly you don’t like about it, not just say “I checked numbers and the only reason someone will quit recently is exclusively ‘Triglavians’.”. Put more effort in posts.
Interestingly enough is reddit seeing an increase in threads posted by new players.
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We’re at a point where this has become a figure of speech and holding it against him is silly. Technically speaking plexing players don’t pay money either, yet claiming they “vote with their wallets” still makes perfect sense.
Figure of speech. Just imagine quotation marks,
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Also, my alt Solecist would scream…
SPECIESISM!!!1111QQONEONEONE Y’ALL RACIST AGAINST DOGS!!!
… all over this thread. : D
Agree with both these points. As a PVE MMO, EVE has relatively boring combat mechanics, way too much travel for too little PVE-engagement time, the graphics aren’t engaging (virtually everyone plays at zone and map levels that the graphics are irrelevant, except the ‘space backdrop’ scenes), the player interaction is minimal. It simply cannot compete as a PVE game against better designed games (for that market).
EVE’s driving force has always been the potential for the PvP in the game and the feeling of competition that it produces. I say potential and feeling because, as long term players know, there is a lot more promise of PVP, combat and competition in EVE than happens in actuality.
PVE needs to be used carefully as a tool to get new players engaged in the game mechanics, to funnel existing players into areas where competition/emergent gameplay is more likely to occur, to give players a reason to log back into EVE on a more frequent basis and do things that might lead them towards more direct PvP or competition.
It can’t be the end-goal of new content, because as stated, the engine and the developers/CCP have shown they simply are not capable of producing quality PVE content. They need to get better at developing engageable PvE, and they need to get better at designing that PvE so that it leads players towards more PvP and not less.
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When a company has for years headed down the wrong path of development, and the quality of development has gone steadily down, it typically means that decision-making levels of management are in denial about what is happening with the company/product. If no one in the company decision structure has the ability (or the balls) to say “the emperor has no clothes”, then the bad decisions keep being made until the company fails or the evidence becomes incontrovertible and management is changed.
The problem is that EVE’s addicted population of subscribers just keep paying through all the crap releases, and management can pretend that the steady flow of player and sub losses is due to ‘the wrong kinds of players’ and not to bad game management.
Exactly! Over the past 10 years I feel that again and again I see CCP developing “something new, that nobody asked for and few people like, that we try to hype in a big way, do a bad job of it, then remove it 4 years later with the excuse ‘well players weren’t using it’”. Seriously guys… players usage isn’t the issue. Poorly researched, poorly designed and poorly implemented additions to the game is.
Then, the other half of development is as Black Pedro says… re-working what has gone before and pretending it’s something new.
You cant keep throwing out crap and re-working old designs forever. It will kill the game, and has been killing the game for years now. Something is rotten in the state of Iceland. Fix your decision making process and the game will get better.
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Nothing wrong with invasions it brings people together, not always in a good way but this creates conflict between players on a small scale - something that eve has been moving away from but nothing that will fix its current issues.
Timers
Timers and
YAWN
more timers anyone?
HANG ON!!
FORMING NOW
dont undock til we outnumber them…
no content.
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When both Panfam and Fraternity come under assault a lot of bots are going to stay logged out until the war is over. In addition activity in Delve is down, so people no longer need to log on their rorqual swarms.
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not sure id call it a war, are they even fighting?
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