What do players want?

Communications Center General Discussion
70

I 100% agree that FW is one of the things most lacking and one of the easiest wins.

Why do we go to FW? For me it was the promise of a fight in a semi-controlled environment, where I could anticipate a more or less fair fight that wouldn’t cost the earth if I lost, and that has at least some sort of meaningful world impact when we are winning or losing.

Instead I found the farming system and to be honest, also ended up playing it because I saw there were very few fights to be had, and the LP/ISK conversion rate was pretty solid. All of a sudden, I find myself fitting less for combat, and more for farming.

Then one day I realise that this is absolutely awful, so I quit.

I tried all of the various things, engineering, mining, trading etc. In the end exploration was the only thing I could do that had the right balance of excitement, danger and reward. Still no fighting though. Now I have a Citadel in a wormhole. It’s super boring at times but feels like a corner of space I can call home.

I guess my conclusion is that if FW had more throwaway easy combat, felt more like my side benefited from cooperation, that there was a larger aim, and that the combat gave proper rewards rather then plexing, I would have at least one char doing that full time, and frankly, that game sounds very good.

Oh, and to echo something else, the difference between hi-low-null-wh needs to be more distinct. Gate camping needs pretty much removing from the game to promote any other sort of ‘proper’ space combat that I think we all envisage before we start Eve. Do we honestly think the best fun in space is hovering around a warp gate trying to game the system? Of course not, but this is the main way combat starts and ends in the game today, mindless one-sided ganking.

More people would engage in combat if they felt the terms of combat could be slightly more predictable in certain areas, and unfortunately they are not. Low is now Null, high is barely safe, and Null is… well it’s still Null. If you’re new, you start off wanting to fight, but you learn within hours that it is impossible to have a meaningful contest until you’ve allowed months to pass in a grind for skills. Even then, your losses cripple you, so you don’t take expensive ships out. Older players talk about billions a week, and you are happy to make tens of millions.

There’s no incentive to lose the better ships you can then fly fighting until you’re too secure to fight in 1v1 anyway. It’s catch 22 and why nobody fights in a fair way.

So fix FW and it is literally game on. Without it… some of us will find a way to eek out some enjoyment, hoping one day it will get better, while a hard core campaign for the game to remain the same because they simply enjoy exploiting new players more than the version of space combat that eve sells in it’s marketing.

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72

Except it would have to be sellable to NPC’s just like the trig survey data is the “payment” for killing trigs, otherwise it really doesn’t have any value and players aren’t going to buy it

So where are you proposing ISK actually comes from, players can’t create it, it would need to come from somewhere to begin with, like i said you haven’t really thought this idea through

Where are they catering to solo PvP’ers any more than they always have exactly?

Please do explain what you think seems to have changed that indicates an MMO is catering to solo PvP players

Why exactly would they want to fight with a suspect timer, and they can easily fight 1v1 if they want, there is that little duel system they added many many moons ago that you might have forgotten exists, no suspect timers required, RvB have been having high sec PvP battles for years due to wardec mechanics, if going suspect is your only way to try and bait a fight then you might want to try going to a different part of space lol

Not seeing this as an issue in the least, there are numerous other ways you can engage in PvP without resorting to suspect baiting, you just have to use it, one of them is within a simple right click menu

What exactly is the issue with going from a venture to a barge, my alt with 56k SP would take a whopping 11 days to sit in a barge, doesn’t seem that long to me, a hulk is only 60 days, which seems perfectly acceptable to me, prospect is 36 days training to fly the ship

What sort of timeframe are you expecting exactly?

Wait until you start training some real skills, 70 days for capital ship construction 5 from level 4 lol, you’re training the easy skills

The CEO of a corp can manually create those if they want, CCP has never tracked those stats publicly

73

We need Dust 514 back is what we need. xD. I’ve sunk so much money into this game and back when it existed Dust 514. If it wasn’t for CCP letting someone come in and try to make a name for himself we would still have it in some way shape or form. Internet spaceships are awesome, but it’s a slugfest. There is no downtime for people who get burned out and burnout happens fast in this game where the learning curve is so high.

Like it was mentioned in an earlier reply to this post, They get new players, the problem is keeping them. While we might get lost in the many things that can be done in this game, we are missing one simple fact, it’s a spaceship game. Its a game where there are no instant rewards and while it appeals to some of us, the majority of the people the game loses is because after a couple of mod cycles you feel like you’ve done it all. Its an endless cycle of undock, warp, turn on mods, rinse, repeat.

Yes I know there are many other aspects to the game, but they are all a variation of the same formula which works well for the hardcore players but is horrible for keeping people engaged. There is a reason why the term “station spinning” exists. It was a nice joke and the devs even put a spin counter as a jest for the community, but the reality is, the game grows stale fast. I’ve been playing on and off for 11 years. I’ve invested thousands of dollars on this game and when DUST514 came out, I sunk hundreds of dollars into that.

Eve is missing a fast pace alternative that is rooted in its lore. EvE Nova never made it out. EvE valkyrie was a niche that hasn’t seen an update in 3 years if I’m correct. I’m going to put it out there. EvE needs to revive these two projects and it needs to incorporate them in a meaningful way into the EvE client. EvE online is falling way behind trying to make separate games “TIED” to the EvE universe. Anyone here remember captains quarters? I get chills of what could have been and then I get sad for what wasnt. They let these new IP that were just a copy of EvE surpase them (we all know the names of these space sims and we dont have to mention them here) CCP lost out in innovation when they gave up. They lost in potential market share when they brought in an outsider that knew nothing of EvE and tried to make DUST514 into another cookie cutter shooter that put the final nail in the coffin when they were convinced to shut down the servers. I see all these other games doing what EvE sought out to do first and it truly does hurt. I’m a salty pilot reminiscing of what should have been “End of rant”.

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75

This was likely the plan, the issue was the game didn’t really survive, it was released on an end of life console with skill training that console users weren’t used to, the planetary bombardment mechanic was a super convoluted mess

Had they released it on PC it might have had a chance, but it being a PS3 exclusive really hurt it

And after that point there were other more compelling free shooters to play like planetside2 etc so an EVE themed one would only really have resonated with the EVE playerbase which doesn’t draw in new blood much

76

I think there are some entirely valid points here.

For the purposes of brevity¹ the mission of the CSM boils down to three key purposes:

  • Giving feedback on EVE development priorities and on the long term roadmap
  • Discussing ideas, theory and design approaches for potential EVE Online features
  • Giving feedback on features in active development

All straight forward, but the issue is not the mission, but who gets to sit on the CSM.

For several years now, the majority of the seats on the CSM have gone to people representing the interests of the null sec blocs - Goonswarm Federation, et al - who, because of their autocratic cult politics, are able to marshal large amounts of votes to lever, in effect, whoever their their chosen representatives are, onto the CSM.

On some levels this is fair enough, they do represent a lot of players and therefore there definitely ought to be some level of representation of their interests on the CSM. This is a given.

What’s also true however is, that (as @hellokittyonline correctly points out) because of this dominance, some voices (miners, high-sec players, et al) are literally never heard, never taken account of and do not influence CSM debates because this is not the agenda that the null sec blocs wish to pursue.

If CCP really do want the CSM to give them, “… focused and structured feedback from the community …”, if they really do want people who, “… represent the players …”, if they really do want to, “… facilitate meaningful discussions to better understand current community sentiment …”, all of which is stated explicitly on the CSM information page, then ensuring that the CSM represents ALL of the EVE Online communities and not just part of the player base must be prioritised.

Fundamentally, it needs to be elected in such a way that these voices are heard, in a proportionate way. Simply saying it’s democracy, is not good enough because that will only continue to allow certain people within autocratic null sec blocs to completely dominate the agenda. Not only that, but because of the domination the whole thing becomes an echo chamber and this is not good for the future of the game, ironically, the null sec blocs or indeed for CCP.

:mouse:

1 - If you want to read the information page on the CSM, which includes the full mission statement and so on, then it’s here. The CSM was also governed, in the past by a White Paper. Technically speaking, it’s no longer officially in use, but if you do want to read it, it’s here.

4 Likes
78

Right… So do like they used to do (back when the game was thriving) and make them module drops and buyable modules with LP that you trade with players. Lets not forget the change that started all of this carebear codling; The good ole’ salvage nerf. It was the start of a laundry list of CCP created problems.

There’s too much isk in the market as is so that wouldn’t be a problem for quite a long time. Actually it wouldn’t be a problem ever as I already addressed it in my previous post. You reintroduce bounties only to the point that they balance out the sinks and NO MORE.

I Said they’re catering to SOLO PVEers.

It’s not about timers and nobody is looking for a ■■■■■■■ duel lol. It’s exactly the reason the proving grounds are dying. Nobody joins eve looking for scripted PvP content. They join Eve looking for player driven, emergent gameplay. NOT ARENAS.

79

I’ll be the Wildcard :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

80

Less RNG in mission and escalation rewards in High Sec.

Increasingly its possible to spend hours and hours trying to get an escalation, doing mind numbingly trivial content, only to get a DED site that gives less reward than you would get for an hour spent mining.

People don’t find this fun.

Even EVE partner program YouTubers are making videos about how awful the High Sec grind is:

EVE Online - Grind worth the DED sites?

This guy got 9 million for around 5 hours work.

I know CCP hates High Sec but come on …

81

Was removed to prevent people never having to touch belts in order to gain massive amounts of minerals, i know i used to build lots of ships in null back when you could just farm for loot, never had to mine

Which nerf in particular are you referring too?

Except it doesn’t work that way, we both know it, and players having loads of ISK doesn’t suddenly make it so they need to spend that ISK on things being sold by newer players, your “solution” makes it basically impossible for an actual new player to start off, you’ve not actually considered all the knock on effects, there is a reason most players aren’t consulted when it comes to massive changes like that

And they get that, just not in high sec, if you want player driven content go to low sec or null and fight there

If you want to make ISK in high sec go run incursions, those are the high income content, most other things aren’t going to seem great, and high sec exploration wouldn’t pay out that great, not sure why anyone would expect it to, its aimed at newer players, if we could all make billions in a heron without ever leaving high sec we would :stuck_out_tongue:

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82

I started doing anomalies, then I realised that the escalations you get from them are the same ones you can scan for yourself. Since then I stopped bothering with anomalies altogether and only focus on those scanable sites and make REALLY good isk. I did so when I was still using a basic Arbitrator and now I make more with a more advanced ship.

If I can do it two months into the game then others can do too, although I do have more free time than most people it’s really just a result of active effort and actual learning.

83

Now that I know more and have a better ship, which did require “an investment”, I get grumpy if I make less than 50 mil/h. All in high sec.

84

For me there are two main things, maybe three.
Yah, three.

First is that the rules of engagement are out of control. Like to the point of complete absurdity.
Second the UI has far to many things that could be done with one window and a single click but instead have a bunch of windows and require a lot of unintuitive clicking.
And third, the most important one, is CCP making outrageous changes that permanently damage people’s trust in them, game play it self, and cause serious degradation of morale across huge numbers of players.

The other day two friends and I were running the event in highsec, we were attacked by someone in a rattlesnake who not only killed all three of us, but also tanked Concord and killed one of Concords battleships. One of the people I was with tried to help us and she got Concorded for it.
This sucks, it’s also stupid, three people in a fleet and in the same corp should be able to defend each other. It’s that simple.
This is just one example, there are so many others trying to learn PvP isn’t worth most people’s time. You not only need to learn how to fight, you have to learn all the loopholes that groups such as CODE use to do as they please where ever they like. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with rules like that, nor do I expect CCP to stick to them if I do, they are constantly trashing existing systems and changing them to something more indeciferable than they were in the first place.

The UI bit speaks for it self, I’m sure everyone has at least one thing where they have to do a bunch of stuff that should require a single click but instead have to jump through a bunch of hoops and in many cases do so as fast as possible or die. For me this includes things like there being too many sub menus in the context menu, the corp window is flat out absurd, editing ones overview can be a total nightmare, and the list goes on.

As far as trust goes, CCP in the last year at the very least, has done things that have, for good reason, enraged their user base. Massive nerfs to tank combined with huge buffs to damage output, all of the changedls to player stations, all the mining crap, and then most recently adding a jump animation no one wanted while simultaneously breaking jumping it self. This sort of thing gets really really old very quickly, and those are just a few.
Another good example of this is likely on the way, because some very large groups don’t like when people “afk cloak” in what they think of as their systems they have become extremely vocal about changing cloaking on a fundamental level. CCP needs to provide a place where someone who knows how to counter this sort of thing can tell them so without giving away the methods involved to the players at large. Instead they will listen to these very aggressively loud people and screw others who aren’t doing afk cloaking. Personally I think this is a tactic, not a problem, but that’s something for another series of already far to large threads.

New people pick up on this stuff from the mood around them pretty quickly, add to that having months of skill training wasted because CCP removed all or most of their tank, and toss on a UI full of bloat and a list of rules that are preposterous at best, and you have new players getting killed before they even know they are in a fight and morel drops even further. The next thing you know, CCP has another account sitting and rotting for decades as the new person has gone off to some other game that makes more sense.

It takes a special kind of masochism to play Eve online, not many people are willing to subject themselves to this and it shows.

2 Likes
85

You think that’s a positive? That if you spend an inordinate amount of time on this game grinding away at a certain type of PVE combat for months, you might make some space money? You’re an exception, not a rule, and I think from experience of joining with 20 new players and being the only one who still plays 5 years later, it’s exactly this acceptance of months of frankly boring PVE rubbish that makes people leave.

ISK is good because it allows you to make mistakes, but the average person in that scenario will likely take longer than you to figure it out, longer than you to get to the point where they’re ‘happy’ with their returns, and will still be months away from being able to have meaningful PVP fights.

If the aim of EVE is ultimately that as many people as possible engage in some sort of PVP, then we can’t just say that people have to grind away for half a year of PVE making ISK for ISK’s sake before they can even contemplate a fight on their own terms, with a chance of victory.

86

AFAIK this is impossible. Pics? KM?

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87

That will take me a bit, I’m not at my computer. (Meaning the kill mail).
I do have a guess though, I suspect I may have shot someone else’s wreck by accident while frantically selecting targets. I don’t know this however, and have no way to find out. I was the first to die, so I’m assuming it was something I did but I’m not sure. The only reason I think this is possible is I had safety set to yellow.

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No I mean, tanking CONCORD is a breach of the rules, and I was under the impression it was impossible to destroy a CONCORD ship at all.

89

Oh, I see, I don’t know, I escaped in my frigate and came back to try to salvage our stuff and saw a dead concord battleship. I had to run off almost instantly because the guy who killed us came back to salvage us too so I couldn’t really stick around to see what had happened.
I tried to talk to him because I was seriously impressed by the whole event, but he didn’t respond.

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90

No, it’s really just a result of choice. If people choose to put in effort to try different things, be inquisitive, eager to learn and figure stuff out then they can do just fine.

If people choose to NOT do that then they themselves are responsible for that.

91

300,000 hitpoints, 80% resists across the board on shield and armour, a shield repair of 48,000 hp/s, a 200,000 gj/s neut and a guaranteed jam with infinite strength says nope.

And that’s just the cruiser…

Besides which I would guess that killing a Concord vessel outside of a mission would be considered an exploit, along with tanking one; both of these possibilities were patched out long ago.

92

I don’t know what to tell you on that, there was a blue wreck and it clearly said concord battleship. I don’t know how he did it, or in fact it was actually him, but it died in that fight. I would have noticed it when we had arrived at the site in the first place and would have tried to see what was in it.
The idea of looting a concord battleship, especially a blue one, would have been more than I could have resisted.