And I just realized something. Ganking is one thing that many are often saying get nerfed too much.
It’s one of the few things that people still do with much enthusiasm. CCP could have ended ganking by making it easier, not harder.
Years ago some CODE guy detailed to me the procedure for hyperdunking. I thought it tedious though, but could not escape the notion that while lots of work, is probably quite satisfying once performed. I also recall a Herr Wilkus who perfected the “Tornado Trifecta”. It was actually based on a similar method being done with a gang of cats, but the Tornado Trifecta was a work of art, all doable by one player.
And that got nerfed in a week after he posted about it.
So the one thing that gankers complain about is probably why they still do it. And CCP, trying to placate players, farmers, and noobs, worked hard to make the game easier and only ruined it.
All the world is a lie now. I see the entire “thing” clearly, and what the real problem has been all along.
My take on the whole argument is slightly different on that point.
It isn’t so much that many say its nerfed too much, but there are endless calls to nerf it more.
CCP have been clear that they like to match ganking nerfs with ganking buffs and that’s ok. It’s just not the approach that suggestions in the forum take.
One of the many entertaining things about this forum is that there are actually relatively few calls to nerf things, and probably fifty times as many claims like your “there are endless calls to nerf XXX”.
There are natural tensions in MMO games between:
Competition vs possibilities for less efficient players to become more competitive
Balanced vs “free-fire” PvP combat
Neither can be rationally discussed in an EVE forum, but they can’t be talked away either.
The real world offers some guidance of course, but one of the things EVE players are definitely good at compared to other gamers is denial, so it’s ignored:
Players don’t mind starting out weak, but there’s a limit to how much boredom they’ll put up with on the way to “competitive parity”
Most games prefer balanced PvP. Almost every player also enjoys ganking opponents too, but given the choice of “plenty of ganking, but very little balanced PvP combat” vs the reverse, the majority prioritize balanced PvP combat.
EVE could continue as it always has, in which case continued denial won’t matter.
But if CCP wants more players, they’ll need to learn from the rest of the gaming industry. Including things that don’t work, like over-simplifying a game, or making new-player startup boring.
Assuming CCP wants to improve new player retention, removing something that is known to have a “last straw” effect on new players (e.g. the old Wardec system) is a tiny step forward, but it’s definitely a step forward.
But even EVE “denial specialists” must be able to see that the “last straw” isn’t the whole problem.
Or not. It hardly matters: if CCP listens to its experienced players they’ll never figure out how to retain more beginners.
You are in denial - but I knew that already. You never check your facts either, so don’t bother reading on.
There are some repeating patterns (which reinforce the confirmation bias of deniers), but the proportion of suggestions and criticisms that actually ask for nerfs is quite low.
There’s no way for a rational person to understand a denier, but I’ve always thought that the way EVE jargon tries to hide the nature of EVE PvP combat is significant.
As of 23:00 0 social corps have been driven out of the game.
(I won’t do this once a day because people can read my opinion once and either agree or disagree. A discussion is always good, but just posting clear intention to repeat post the same over and over on a daily basis with no moderator trying to keep the IQ over 69 shows how bad these forums are moderated.)
The thing about being relative is there’s no single reference point. Relative is a personal judgement and while I can respect that you have a different view, that doesn’t make my view of it wrong, just different to yours.
This isn’t about who believes what - rational people don’t try to directly persuade deniers of anything . It’s about numbers: how many suggestions to nerf something in EVE vs how many claims that requests to nerf things are going to destroy the game.
Which, BTW, always come from people who over-react when someone else suggests that EVE may not be immortal. Denial is handy that way - it relieves the fanatic of any need for consistency /lol.
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Requests in the forums for changes to EVE can be counted. There aren’t many (I doubt the average is over 2 per day).
Claims in posts along the lines of “evil players looking to destroy the purity of EVE” are far more common, but harder to count. They’re more common because they almost never come in isolation: typically the same thing is echoed between two to four “PoPEs” and one normal player for a few days, with the intensity peaking at about two days. It kills a lot of potentially interesting threads.
But you also have to add in longer sequences like this one, when a group of deniers decide they need to confirm each others’ view on something.
It all adds up: to a casual reader this forum is full of reactionary Straw Men, and very short on rational discussions aimed at improving EVE.
Discussing actual numbers puts us more on topic than
The latest flurry of denier posts
The potentially interesting sub-topic that more chaos and combat PvP would be good for EVE
There is no data to support the claim that the WarDec change has been bad for EVE. But asking, as you did, “where is your supporting data?” somehow isn’t “allowed” in this thread …
… remove the anecdotes though, and there’s almost nothing left in this Topic
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If anything should be in a new thread, it’s a discussion along the lines of “How can ‘we’ increase the amount of combat PvP in EVE without consuming even more new players in the process”.
BTW this shouldn’t be a thread for new players, or people with “truthiness disease”. If experienced combat-PvP players are getting less from EVE than before, they need to figure out how to fight each other more, or how to make it fun for everyone else…
“Figure out” because if the fictive “sandbox” encouraged more combat PvP, it would be happening already - in lowSec and nullSec.
If they need PvE players for their fun, they need to find a compromise that doesn’t lead to the old EVE mantra “I’m not having fun unless you’re not having fun”. If that means persuading pure PvE players to choose to do more combat PvP, figure out what it takes, instead of baling them for avoiding unwanted combat.
Asking for supporting data is fine, as long as it’s about the wardec changes, not about some doubts on a completely different issue.
So I’m happy to play along with your game, just take it to a different thread.
@ISD_Buldath: when you get a chance, can you please clean this up. It’s a mess of off topic posts (including by me) and the discussion would be better without them. TIA.
This is not ignored at all, because it can not be ignored by any reasonable person as it is perfectly natural for every game, or rather anything in life.
No matter what you do in your life, when you just start out you will always need time to learn things to become competitive. Even all the talent for any activity, will not put you at the same level as somebody who has been doing the same thing for years.
EvE however does not make it that hard for new players to learn IF THEY WOULD JUST WANT TO.
The main problem fro new EvE players when they struggle, is that they are overreaching and do not manage their finances properly. They see people flying around in shiny faction toys, put all their money into them and get blown up, without even the basic knowledge of how to properly fit ships.
Now I can not fault the new players for that alone, there are way too many older people, who also “push” them into that direction. Countless times when people ask for advice in rookie help in which ships to use, you can see people coming up with “Gila” , “Rattlesnake” and what not.
Now to stick with that example:
They are decent ships and effective at PvE, even with not so great skills, but without properly understanding the game mechanics, they are unable to make use of their strength, as they are always fitted in the most ineffective ways, not in regards to the meta Level of equipment, but the overall slot layout.
While flying these ships they also paint a huge target on their backs for PvPers, who will gladly go after anyone flying around in faction ships, because alongside with certain T2 or T3 ships those are the most interesting ships to kill, and are a lot more likely to drop something of value for the older players.
If new players would just stick to cheap, but effective and learn to play the game properly before they jump into “end game” ships, EvE is stupid easy to progress and to build up money reserves, to never have to struggle, if the money is not wasted in stuff they don´t need at all.
The cheap variants will maybe make you a few % less ISK, but with low skill levels and the mentioned lack of game knowledge the benefit, from flying that kind of ships is almost non existant, but comes with huge drawbacks in price and they catch attention of other players.
Becoming competitive to a certain degree is not that much of a problem here either. In a 1 v 1 Scenario it is going to be tough for a new player. There is absolutly no question about it. But that again counts for everything in life. You can not expect to compete with a professional, with years of experience in anything in life, and with as much time invested and the dedication of a lot of old players (and especially the PvPers) it´s silly to expect that to ever change. No matter how much you dumb down the game and no matter how easy you make it for new players, this will never get easier for them.
Actually quite the opposite is the case, making eve easier and more convenient makes it harder for them to become competitive, because they get along way to easyly and can progress very fast in regards to ship classes and the fincancial possibilitys to buy them, without having to properly learn how the game works.
If something is difficult, we have to push ourselfs to become better, if I can do something pretty much in my sleep, there is no need for improvement. → If I can just breeze through an activity in a game and never had to push myself to get better, I will get my butt kicked left and right in any game, when I come up against players who are more experienced and have grown up in an environment, where they had to push themselves to properly learn how to do things.
On top of the PvP component, things that are just an easy grind (especially) solo are not very intersing on the long run. You might enjoy it at first, but over time it becomes just tedious. Which brings us to the next big trap for new players.
Grinding just to grind more money:
Over and over again, new players ask in rookie help, how to make more money to grind plex. People need to understand that plex is an absolute luxery item and while it might be crappy to play as alpha, compared to being Omega, as long as you don´t try to plex your account at an early stage you have all the time in the world to build up more than enough money, to learn and to become competitive.
However if you spend your time grinding 24/7, just to get that next month of Omega time, of course the game becomes tedious and every single ship loss will make it much more difficult. The problem for those people however is their mindset.
Last but not least: The problem with player retention
The biggest problem for player retention (old and new) is that the everything in the game has become way to convenient and other than big PvP battles you can do pretty much everything solo. There is hardly any need to reach out to other players for most “not directly ship to ship PvP combat” activities in EvE.
A lot of new players naturally start out by mining, which is totally fine, even if it is by far one of the worst, if not the worst way to make money in the game. The Problem with mining these days is: It does not require any actual interaction with the game itself or any other players. You can do it totally fine solo these days, without losing much efficiency. And you only ever click one button every couple minutes, to see your little venture just shooting a few mining lasers for 20 minutes until you dock up, unload and repeat the process.
Of course this is not interesting gameplay. It´s boring as ■■■■ and if the game would have been this shitty boring in 2003 I would not have stayed in the game for more than a decade. And I started as a miner too, like everybody I know from back then.
Now compare the process described above with how my experience as a new player was. A few friends from good old counter strike told me about EvE and I decided to give it a try. So on my very first day I fire up the game, get a greeting from aura, get handed my rookie ship and she sends me on my way, pretty much without any instructions. I clicked around a bit, look at the different menus, to see what is what and contact one of my friends.
He told me where he and the others where hanging out and I grabbed my trusty little rookie ship and made the trip towards their home system. As I reach them, one of them was toying around in his very first battleship, showing off his big flying ship with his “armada” of drones orbitting while sitting in a belt mining with the others. I really liked how a bunch of ships of different sizes, all in the same corp were sitting there mining together. (Little sidenote: Curious as I am, I could not resist to fire on that big potatoe with my little rookie ship, just to see what happens evil grin, well it did not end well for my little ship, but I instantly had the chance to learn a few things - Yeah for no safety button back then).
So with a fresh rookie ship and a 2nd mining laser handed to me I join the fleet and start mining. My cargo fills up every few minutes and get introduced to jetcan mining. I sit there mining, spit out my cans like the others, mark them with the time that I have jettisoned it and as I keep mining into it, one of the gang shuttles back and forth in his industrial ship to collect the ore.
I just started out, but I was already part of the team, which was neccessary to progress. I was interacting with people and because of how mining worked in those “crappy” standard ships I was constantly interacting with the game itself as well. While I was mining people explained the mechanics of can flipping to me, as back then it was just important to know about things like that. Being part of a team and to be effective in that team I also had to learn how to properly fit ships for their intended task right from the start.
I was not progressing fast money wise, but I made the most of what little money I could make and learned very quickly, how to become better. And while I am not going to list more examples of other areas I started branching out into, this is how it was for everything I dived into back then.
Now go and compare that to how a miner starts these days. They fire up the game. Go through the tutorial, have their ventures, warp to a belt. Sit there for 20 minutes, make 5 clicks, warp off, come back and repeat. No player interaction required and on top only a minimum client input required either.
People who start playing games want to interact with the software and don´t just want to look at the screen every few minutes for 5 seconds, while watching Netflix. This is a terrible way to experience a game you just started, and it all comes down to convenience and turning a team activity into a shitty afk solo grind.
THIS IS THE ■■■■■■■ PROBLEM WITH PLAYER RETENTION IN EVERY PART OF THE GAME THESE DAYS.
This kind of development goes through every aspect of the game. From mining, over missions, over industry operations to running your own spacestation(s), to alliance logistics.
Everything has been turned into solo, semi afk snoozefests that do not require any interaction between players. Of course this is boring the ■■■■ out of people. And on top of that CCP nerfed the options for PvP interaction into the ground as well.
AND AGAIN: OF COURSE PLAYER RETENTION IS ■■■■ IN A GAME LIKE THAT. NOT JUST NEW PLAYER RETENTION, BUT KEEPING ANYONE ENGAGED INTO THE GAME IS NOT GOING TO WORK LIKE THAT.
WITH THE GAME IN EXACTLY THAT STATE IT´S HARDLY SUPRISING THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE PERCEPTION THAT THE GAME HAS ALMOST TURNED INTO A BOTTING ONLY GAME. BECAUSE EVERY PART OF THE GAME HAS BECOME SO ■■■■■■■ DULL THAT YOU MIGHT AS WELL JUST FIRE UP A BOT AND ONLY EVER ACTUALLY PLAY WHEN THERE IS A BIGGER FIGHT HAPPENING. (AND NO I DO NOT WANT TO CONDONE BOTTING, I ■■■■■■■ HATE BOTTERS AND CHEATERS WITH A PASSION, BUT WITH HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED THESE DAYS I FIND IT HARD TO BLAME THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY DOING).
Player retention on all levels is not bad because the game is too hard for new players. It´s not because they could get wardecced, ganked, scams or anything PvP related. This has never been the issue. The problem with retention started when CCP introduced ■■■■ like mining barges, made almost all PvE so easy (thanks to power creep) that you can solo it. And even doing stuff like supplying mega alliances with Ships and equipment en masse is done by a hand full of people.
In short: EvE, which was an engaging game has essentially been turned into a screen saver.
I don’t have time to respond to your post, but I’ll come back and expand this.
One quick comment: I’ve believed for a long time that:
Many more new players would stay if they connected up with experienced players sooner
The natural path into EVE (including the NPE) leads most new players away from group play and combat PvP towards solo PvE
Both of these interact indirectly with the WarDec change.
In most MMO games neither of those things is a startup problem. Yet in EVE, where it matters a lot, the natural solutions are blocked due to the design of EVE (or “the sandbox” if you prefer).
Why? Because new players get bored long before they get a chance to figure out how to get started in EVE.
Alpha clones solve a non-problem, which used to look like “the trial is too short”. They’re good anyway, but they don’t help the majority of new players onto a good path into the game.
And I 100% agree with that. Interaction with the client itself and other players is the key to keep people engaged in the game. But CCP and the game developement after only a few years was pushed into a direction where everything, became more convenient, required less interaction with the game, to the point of everything being more or less afkable.
All the things people percieve as problems have their root cause exactly there. Of course new players become easy prey and develope no situational awareness, if they do not interact with the client, but just stream movies while afk grinding. Of course they will adapt that game style right from the start and become easy marks for gankers.
Of course they become easy targets in wars, when they are not pushed into working together as a team right from the start.
Of course they get bored as hell grinding for ISK solo just to get shiny toys and then get pissed when they get ganked or killed in war, because out of nowhere they learn they don´t stand a chance solo, while up to that point it was just easy mode solo afking.
Of course they don´t learn how to properly fly and fit their ships, when they can just solo everything in easy purchasable overpowered ships these days.
All the things people percieve as issues with the game, especially on the PvP site and ability to compete with older players have their root cause in the game being dumbed down to a level that people don´t even need to get good at anything in the game and then struggle as soon as they go up against other players.
But in the end this all is rather pointless to discuss, because CCP these days would never have the balls to turn the ship around. The things that would have to be done to make eve great again, would piss off way too many of the few remaining players, who got used to playing the game as it is now. So EvE is probably going to be around for a couple more years, but will slowly fade away. (Which is a shame, because it could have been a game outlasting generations)
Getting new players in and keeping them engaged for years, for another spurt of a steady long time growth however is not going to happen, with the direction the game was and is heading. The older guys one by one will just get bored and will slowly fade away, to the point where most older charactes you see around are just botters.
With more and more people fading who actually play the game and who are interested in player interaction, it will get harder for new players to actually get into interaction with players and it will get harder and harder for people to find reasons to stay in the game with every little part that breaks away.
The thing that I am wondering about is, why did CCP stray away from what eve was originally?
I can only Imagine that it´s, because there are no actual gamers in position of note. Everything they do stinks of optimasation in ways pure programmers work, but not actual players. They seem to lack the vision of an engaging game and sacrificed fun and engagement with the game on all levels for convenience and making things more effective. Which is a great mindset if you develope office software, but terrible for game design.
Maybe.
I just think it’s a sad state of affairs if high sec gankers are crying to be able to wardec weaker starter players again. Yes, they word it differently and the “free ISK from station”-people are whining they are now no longer hidden behind the meatshields of starters than before.
If anyone can give a good example beside “I can’t afford PVP but I like to PVP camp nebs at player stations” maybe we can see where it goes.
Strange, lots of people I draw back into the game leave.
One example : https://evewho.com/pilot/Rat+Malkovich
Joined a long time ago and was always in a starter corp. Rejoined when I asked him and joined a highsec corp I used to be with. He left and played Alienswarm and Hearts Of Iron a bit then tried Fallen Earth (where we met) again but realized it’s been almost empty for years. Hasn’t been on in about a week now. Not sure if it’s his “main” or he just activated and alt. In general when I ask about EVE most dispise it not because of the game mechanics but because of the elite not giving new players time to evolve. New players need to create their VISION of what they want to do here, then they can enjoy the game. And also have an alt in low or nullsec to experience the different game there.
In general MMO’s have it hard as most games are INSTANT REWARD. and EXTREMELY INTENSE. Both are the ultimate opposites of EVE Online. EVE is a game that is very hostile and very slow thus not very interesting to the masses. Yes, it’s great in some corporations but in general it’s a second job where appreciation is extremely low in general. It’s up to players to make great corporations and content.
