Dude, your question was: If it is that dire, how did any of us make it this far?
That’s basically asking how did we make it this long in the game.
What is it with you constantly changing things? Your question was: How did subs keep growing up until 2013-14?
So you disagree with the answer I gave, that’s your right to do so.
Anyway, I’m damn sure not gonna get sidetracked again by you moving goalposts around, muddling up the waters and bypassing the main point by asking a bunch of questions trying to imply something different. Either stick to the point or just don’t even reply.
Yeah i can get that. They also play the victim a lot or blame others for failing.
But pandering to these types has never improved retention. As mentioned, the game is safer, wardecs were nerfed, things were made easier, ‘have it now’ people were given injectors. ‘play for free’ people were given alphas. It’s never lead to more actual players. Even alphas were thought to be largely alts.
The whole ‘noobs have it hard’ thing…I don’t think people are really thinking it through. The only things that have become harder for noobs are earning isk compared to vets and taking/destroying stuff belonging to vets. Edit- oh and finding a half decent corp.
Right. So when we were noobs, why did we stick around? For us to last this far, we needed to be noobs too. We were just noobs longer than today’s average.
But the answer clearly cannot be player numbers. Otherwise it would have kept growing.
Well, sonny, it all started with a twinkle in your mother’s eye . . .
Seriously, you were 1 of 500,000,000 sperm cells. The short answer to any such question is: You got lucky.
When EVE began, nobody knew how to play it. You played the game in a paradigm in which people didn’t know how to play, not everyone knew how to play, solutions had not been formulated or refined to absurd levels of efficiency, etc. Now, we kill noobs by muscle memory, by reflex. We run level 4’s almost AFK. I don’t even use the Save Fittings feature because I have fitted so many ships that I barely have to think about it . . . unless I’m just theory-crafting. If we jumped into today’s game for the first time, we might not make it. (Well, YOU might not.)
We are not special. The circumstances under which we succeeded were special. We were priveleged, and now that we are at risk of losing that privelege, we are beginning to see it.
So why are new players today not as lucky as new players 10 years ago?
Something has changed for new players, that’s what all of you are trying to say. Retention is worse than it was.
So it wasn’t just luck. It wasn’t player numbers. It wasn’t safety from pvp. It wasn’t the UI. It wasn’t the NPE. It wasn’t slow progression. It wasn’t that it cost money to play. All these barriers have been lowered and retention is worse.
I can tell you one barrier for new players that has gone consistently up over time since 2012/13…
Wow I am not even going to read any of the replies and just put it out here - you got it all wrong. I mean noob PVP will always be about who fires the first shot - but specialization in things like shield and armor makes the difference.
If you quit after a few weeks then this game is not for you. I have been here 13 maybe more years and always understood from the get-go how things work so eventually I never had to lose a ship unless I wanted to.
This game isn’t fore millennials, I can claim that much,
Are you even reading before you respond? Isn’t that what I just said?
It’s simple. The good players keep playing. And the quality of their competition bottoms out, because that competition increasingly consists of . . . wait for it . . . noobs.
Why are new players supposed to give a [expletive deleted] about older players? They just want to do their thing. It’s the older players who have found more and more effective ways of suppressing their competition . . . like war decs, ninja-salvaging, ganking, and AWOXing.
I have played off and on for years, mostly off, and almost entirely hisec n00b PVE content.
Whatever barriers to entry people think exist now are the same as they were back in the day. The “whole” game was never friendly to new players, and it still isn’t. The game isn’t friendly period. It’s a true sandbox MMO.
The devs have added a ton of QoL improvements, PVE content, etc. OK, and the longtime players have adapted and found new ways for PVP fun within that shifted paradigm. Net result, still hard for new players. Same EVE, every day, all day.
Always been a game that is whatever you choose to make it. That clearly is not everyone’s jam, given the declining sub numbers, but it’s cool for enough people to keep the lights on and the server running. Meh, I don’t know…fun is where you choose to find it I guess.
Noobs are competing with vets. In pvp and economically.
We’ve been taking away the ways noobs can make money off of vets or stop vets making money (and preventing them having fun in the process).
Wardecs weren’t being made against new players.
Ninja-salvaging wasn’t done against new players.
Ganking isn’t done against new players.
AWOXing wasn’t done against new players.
All of these were instead used against older players because it was older players that have stuff to loot.
This is a prime example of an older player, yourself, using noobs as a shield to argue for more safety.
Edit- and all the listed activities were nerfed. But not once did the nerfs help retention…
^ THIS is why your leaders tell you to STFU in local. What they reall mean is just STFU.
Okay, so, in your theory of how new players work, you abuse them and they care and keep playing. Am I understanding this properly?
Look, get on point or [expletive deleted] off. I don’t have time for your stupid arguments. Venture | Ship | zKillboard ← does that look like veteran players getting ganked? P I R A T | Alliance | zKillboard ← does that look like veteran players getting war dec’ed?
Do veterans run missions in high sec, generally speaking?
And, I don’t know about AWOXing. NOBODY knows about AWOXing. That’s the nature of deception.
And, I’m in Ney right now running missions. But you probably already knew that. I don’t need to hide behind any noobs. I can hide behind CONCORD.
He has a point in my view. I came into the game as a pvp’er from the start. The ability to hurt/annoy/wd the large alliances is what kept me in the game even after the ability to do so cheaply ended.
Edit; that was also EVE’s peak player numbers years.
In my theory, new players come in, they blow stuff up, steal from vets and have fun doing so.
But we stopped that.
Look at the players not the ship.
Or better still, look at actual ganks.
The corps and alliances with structures? Yes. They aren’t new players. And CCP said, it’s not new players that are being decced.
Yes. Lots and lots.
70% of players are in hisec. It’s not just industry and it certainly isn’t exploration.
We did.
Ccp argued that new players weren’t being accepted into corps for fear that they were awoxers.
However, if you actual asked the corps themselves that did not want to take on new players, the reasons were overwhelmingly because they didn’t want to teach new players from scratch or they had high sp doctrines. In fact several of the corps that didn’t consider themselves new player friendly were actually willing to accept new players if they demonstrated the right attitude/ability.
Buts that’s only corps that didn’t consider themselves new players friendly. In fact the vast majority of corps with recruitment adds considered themselves new playr friendly.
There was in fact no evidence to suggest that new players were being rejected or blocked from applying to corps for fear of awoxing.
In other words it was b-lox. And didn’t accomplish what it was meant to.
Same as the wardec nerfs didn’t do what they supposed to.
What it seemed to do instead was take eve’s most engaging feature (being in a corp) and turned it into something unengaging.
Why would you ask me who YOUR leaders are? Are you that daft or are you trying to make a point?
All abuse is PVP. Not all PVP is abuse.
Again? Really?
Okay, now support that theory, with facts and dynamic explanations.
We stopped new players coming in, blowing stuff up, stealing from vets and having fun doing so . . . ? Who, what, when, where, why and HOW did “we” stop that? And was that ever actually the dynamic or are you just being sentimental? I seem to remember Brave Newbies getting war dec’ed to hell and back. I seem to recall people using EVE University for target practice. Signal Cartel? Which new players came in and blew stuff up, stole from vets, and had fun doing so? I think you are hallucinating.
No [expletive deleted]! And I’ll do you one better; look at the PLAYER and not the CORPORATION or ALLIANCE. You seem to think that because a new player is in a corporation that can be war dec’ed that they are not a new player. Go figure.
Don’t tell me what CCP said. Show me what they said.
If you actually asked the corps that did not want to take on new players you . . . A) had to find and discern which corps would not take on new players, B) had to ask those corps, or at least the leadership of those corps why they would not take on new players, C) had to aggregate and analyze that information into a coherent data set.
Did you or some one do all that? If so, please point me to where the results of that process are published so I can look at them for myself. And, then, could you tell me what that all has to do with this thread?
Why would an AWOXer reject new players?
I feel like you’re trying to do some sort of argumentative Jiu-jitsu here, but I’m maybe not standing in the right place or facing the right direction or maybe I should lean to the left a little and maybe extend my right arm slightly with my elbow tucked into my body . . . NEW PLAYERS GET AWOXED. Are we on the same page yet? New players don’t pretend to be new players so they can AWOX corps.
Yeah, okay, but . . . what is “it” referencing?
You seem to have gone off the rails. You seem to be suggesting that I think of the children noobs.
This is my response to that argument: [expletive deleted] the noobs.
You seem to think you know who they are. But i don’t know who you think my leaders are. So can you tell me?
I never said anything about abuse, but you said:
Emphasis mine.
So what abuse in my theory are you talking about?
Wardecs were a way for new players to cut their teeth in pvp. They could learn to hunt other players by wardeccing other noobs or miners.
Yeah it happened. Until 2012 when wardecs were nerfed and made more expensive. Then they were nerfed again in 2015 with watch list nerfs. Then again in late 2018 with changes you surely remember.
All these nerfs were made in the name of ‘new player retention’. Never did they actually increase player retention though. And now new players wanting to test pvp in a more controlled environment have no hopes of affording it.
Same again for ninja-salvaging and ganking. Crimewatch in 2013 made gankers potential global targets for a month. To attempt to gank on your main, not even successfully, results in a month where anyone can make you suspect at anytime. And if they don’t kill you, it doesn’t count. Kill right stays. So ganking is something you do on a dedicated character now, not something people do for fun, bringing the noobs along, on the weekends.
AWOXing I’ve just gone through above.
Exactly.
What have ccp done to stop brave newbies or eve uni from getting decced? Nothing.
And did wardecs stop eve uni or brave newbies from doing what they do? NO!
If you asked brave newbies or eve uni if they wanted to be wardec immune what do you think they would say? Because they can be dec immune whenever they want and use alt corps for structures.
You’ve just made my point. Thankyou!
So wardeccers are supposed to check every member before putting in a dec? Or check a characters age before ganking?
You said new players were being oppressed by vets. But no where are they actually targeting noobs. Noobs being in the line of fire is not the same as vets hunting noobs.
It’s in the last csm minutes.
I did. When ccp announced the awox nerfs in 2015 i asked corps that had made public adverts in the game but did not check the ‘new player friendly box’ why they didn’t consider themselves new player friendly (words to that effect) and posted the response on the eve forums in a thread. If i get the time to find the thread I’ll link it.
No. Ccp thought corps weren’t accepting noobs because the corps thought the new players might be awoxers.
The ‘it’ is the awox nerf.
I know you don’t think of the noobs. Just use them to push an agenda.
You have to realize. A new player asked for advice in corp channel and got the idotic “here’s a 200 mil ship that you can’t pay for, have no idea on how to use and really isn’t that great but it’s COOL!” nonsense from some clown whom Morgan tends to agree with.
When that newbie said “yeah but that’s not really useful to a newbie now is it” and I went “use that newbie’s perspective: his wallet, his skill points and his experience level. Not your own” and that is was shitty advice. Morgans reply was that it’s up to newbies to figure out which advice that is given to them is useful or shitty.
He doesn’t give one fck about newbies, he’s clueless at the game (easily fact checked) and he uses the logic of a 12 year old.
Another good feature of the wardec was that corps that had no business being corps and were actually detrimental to the npe would be decced and burned to the ground. Then better corps, or the wardeccers themselves would take refugees away from toxic leadership.
Kinda like this:
Player taking advantage of new players gets decced.
No, all I said was that from “my” point of view from the old days when there were apx 50k on, the ability to attack the large null blocs was a big draw for us.
I used to do that quite often back when solo deccing was still viable: Wardec ■■■■ corps with ■■■■ CEO’s so that their newbies would leave and hopefully find a better corp. Helping, explaing and teaching those newbs, while having them decced, that they should find themselves a better corp and teach them how to deal with a dec in the process.
Was actually quite funny because they had no reason to trust that evil boogieman that wardecced them, till they learned that you’re not necessarily that evil.
