When formulating a response, a number of things went through my head. Should I be sarcastic? How much snark to use? How much of an asshole can I be without getting banned?
Then I realized I don’t care, I just like playing the game, so I’m gonna go back to playing the game.
@Agent_Ashantris I liked how you took your sweet time to create that psycho face of your avatar.
Maybe you peeps have too much time in your hands. I just pressed some random ■■■■ and create.
Anyway, I liked.
rattati happend. enjoi a dead game quit while u are ahead
Done and done. I do sometimes debate whether or not I should reinstall and blow though my remaining PLEX but honestly… the game is dead, PA is just animating it’s corpse to shake the last drops of $$$ out of a dying player base. At this point I think it is proven that in 2022 true sandbox games are no longer feasable. PA’s gotta chase that whale cash tho :-p
You can suppose various theoretical situations where PCU dropping doesn’t mean “fewer players”, but that’s never been the case with EVE. We also don’t need theoretical posings when we have a perfectly good map of player logins.
Here’s a comparison of summer of 2018 (so it’s post-Alpha, pre-PA, pre-Covid, and already has the ‘summer lows’ baked in) vs. current logins. 2018 top, 2022 bottom:
I couldn’t get the hours to line up exactly but it’s pretty close. You can see the overall daily pattern remains the same (and is the same as it was 10 years ago and 15 years ago), but with 5-6k fewer players in every time slot. And the 30k’s are just not there anymore.
Other numbers: in 2021 we had an event that gave a solid estimate of total active subs, around 130,000 - vs. over 500,000 less than a decade ago. We also had over 38k votes for CSM in 2021. This year we had under 31k, a 20% drop. Other indications show we’ve lost about 20% of players (and subs) as well, beyond the PCU.
You can also check the MER and see that activity is down significantly across the board in every area. Mining, production, destruction, trade, travel - everything down.
It’s common for old games to lose players, that’s not unusual. What is unusual, is the way EVE limps along for a while as players “give it another chance”, then CCP fails the player base (again!) and activity starts dropping hard. Usually at that point CCP tries some desperation move to get players back and that props things up for a while longer.
It remains to be seen whether the current promised “biggest update ever” will have what it takes to hold on to an ever-shrinking playerbase.
In the meantime, players should probably stop making excuses for CCP’s incompetence, and start demanding loud and clear that EVE needs serious attention before they blow their last chance.
I’d rather go by feel than numbers.
And it feels kinda lonely… Space one cannot do much with for the mechanics demand a built up ground in order to actly do something worthy.
Yes yours is the correct analysis of what has gone wrong with EVE. For a while the game kept getting better while at the same time the players kept getting worse.
So CCP catered to the lower grade players and starting a nerf campaign that went on for years until any new player could gank anybody, anywhere.
The original game is long gone. EVE has been dead for years.
What we have left is the rotting corpse covered with gadflies.
But I only participated in the game for 13 years, so I guess I must have missed something. These days I just come around every few months and sit in a station and do nothing for maybe a half hour.
Dead corps, dead alliances, dead game.
Unlikely, Sam. I think the Gadfly attacks live animals. It is the Bluebottle which is attracted to corpses, etc.
You might be right, though. If it were gadflies, there must be some life left in the old game!
I think Eve Online needs to add a new sector of alien solar systems, around 2,500, that you have to use a special gate to access. Once in the alien system, you would several points you would have to warp to, then scan from to get more of the pieces of the puzzle to the solar system. When all of the puzzle has been gathered, new structures might appear that you could warp to, scan down for artifacts and then loot. You could also come across large abandoned alien structures that could be scanned down for loot and items. Basically, the Capsuleer would be responsible for gathering data on the alien solar system. Maps could also be created by explorers and then sold as Contracts.
But be careful, the ancient civilizations being reported on might not all be gone because in the end, when enough alien space had been explored, the aliens would invade New Eden, much like the Triglavian did, but in this case the, Capsuleers would have to come together to build structures in alien Sov to keep the aliens at bay while searching for vital weapons and modules that can defeat the aliens.
It would basically be a year long expedition of creating maps, fighting off scout groups of aliens, gathering clues to lore and data that leads New Eden to a central source of power that can defeat the aliens or just like the Triglavian’s did, certain solar systems would be effectively shut down.
The event would be timed of course. Just don’t forget about the Pirates hunting you and your booty and could care less about New Eden.
Ratting pays 1/8 of what it did a few years ago and people do abyssals all day long in safety of high sec for good ISK.
Easy to anser: Not much
I was just talking to some people on mumble about this late last night.
This is a war game, right? So if you want more conflict, wouldn’t it go to reason that you want cheaper and easier ships to blow up? Even the big ones.
If resource gathering is easy, isk gathering is plentiful, ships are cheap, then it doesn’t hurt as much to go get blown up.
If resources are more of an issue, isk gathering has been nerfed, and ships cost a lot more then people are less willing to go blow them up.
If anything, all these changes that i’ve been reading and hearing about have put a dampener on major conflicts. People say there was a broken economy in-game, but how was it broken? Was it broken because you could move product through markets rapidly? Was it broken because you think ships should cost more, or was it broken because people could make more isk and afford whatever they wanted?
None of that screams broken to me. If anything, that is a healthy market. Plentiful flow of product and currency is healthy in any economy in real life.
This is a pretty key area in what’s wrong with the base design of EVE - with regards to PvP and conflict. EVE is supposed to be a PvP-centric game, but in fact much of the game design actively discourages meaningful PvP and encourages wealth-building.
Back when CCP started this Scarcity/“the economy is broken, loss is meaningless” nonsense, I posted that it was a crock:
CCP’s stance at the time was if they created ‘fake’ destruction (Forsaken Fortress, Triglavian invasion etc.) then the destruction of assets plus re-structured economy (Scarcity, industry changes to ship building etc.) would trigger players to play more and pay more in order to, presumably, recover their losses and “stake new territory” or some such to deal with scarcity.
All that happened was the extremely predictable: activity down in every sector of EVE, players losing faith in CCP, players leaving, subs going Alpha, etc.
The underlying problem is that CCP continually fails to understand what drives players, how the playerbase engages with EVE, and even how their own game actually works. They keep pulling levers, twisting knobs and tweaking numbers hoping they will someday hit the combination that makes people play more and pay more.
CCP doesn’t understand that if PvP is a consistently losing proposition for most of the player base, players will in general avoid it. They say they have a PvP sandbox, but they gave up on actually finishing the game before they got there.
There are ways to make PvP more attractive, there are ways to engage players with the storyline, there are ways to guide players along a path from starting the game to trying PvP to experimenting with small fleet action to ending up in larger battles. But CCP gave up on trying to do those things over a decade ago, because they believe EVE is essentially finished and the way forward for CCP is to use the EVE money to invent “their next big success”.
Yes, the economy was healthier, as was the player base, before CCP started ‘fixing’ things. It’s pretty hard to fix something if you haven’t any clue what the core problem is.
This should be the answer to the thread, you guys talk too much.
Why the eyeroll? CCP made EVE one of the most expensive MMOs and gave us jack in return. For many it’s not a matter of affordability, it’s a matter of value. There’s also the general feeling that the company is taking the piss, and that doesn’t usually make people want to part with their money.
No one forces you to pvp in BS or caps. The end.
you whitigga, return to your cryons, save some muny for mort, and rise the voice when u will be cap. BUm gen ■■■■ u warm.
The price increased across all payment options, not only for month to month.
screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/c/HateLesSGaming
This. And subbing for 24 months with current lack of content and dwindeling playerbase? No.
OK I can see all that. Here’s something else to think about.
Gas prices went up in the RL. Stop meeting family and friends? Did I rage quit baseball? Rage quit fishing? Golf?
I don’t play Eve with CCP. I play Eve with friends. The price went up a latte a week, boo hoo.