Full loot PvP games will always only occupy a niche market, because people naturally dislike the feeling of loss and only a niche audience will tolerate this fundamental mechanic.
EvE is a niche product, would be great if people (and CCP) would stop expecting it to have the playerbase of mainstream products like wow.
nobody wants to play the spaceship mmo.
they want to fly nice ship, takes 10, maybe 50, or 100 days⌠of doing nothing! just login and make sure the que is running! Meanwhile other games: do the thing, here ur dopomine hit. do the thing, nice you get exp. Grind the thing, ok ur one step closer!!!
So you tell them join a corp join a corp join a corp, they join a corp and have a rotten experience â
go mine this, ok we pay u, go do mission, ok thank u for tax. Lets welp ships, we gib u ship. U have fun hit F1? ok you need make isk now we not buy u ship.
they go explore and get popped, go mine but its boring, they want to play the spaceship game but its a chore. these players have 10-20mil isk cant lose too many ships, but thats the game. thats a core reason why we who play it love the game. Some hit their mark and find something they enjoy, others get overwhelmed by the complexity of it all. They were never meant to playâŚ
I have brought people in the game to do faction warfare, we find frigate gang to fight but it took an hour because everyone wants to blob you with 10-15 players just to kill an atron gang.
we have fun fight against enemy frigate gang, great stuff.
next day? nah we play csgo, wow, valorant, rust, we que and we play. we leave base and we play. we dont need spend 1-2 hour to play⌠and maybe 1 hour to farm isk to lose ship. Even if that 1 hour was 200mil profit cause of a lucky pith-c type drop⌠which can fund 100 kestrels and many many caracals.
mining? the rewards are abysmal, and the gameplay monotonous. bless all of you who enjoy it, someone has to get the rocks to make the ships.
exploration? great, but it can be discouraging to only get half a mil from the cans every site.
this include doing countless combat anomalies to get an escalation that never happens.
or dieing to wormhole camps, or cloaked asteros who want the easy kill on the 2mil heron that only has half a mill of loot from the cans.
nullspace is more boring then lowsec roams. nobody around, and too many around. Bubbles are cancer.
ganking miners? great fun for like the first 2-3 ganks. no new player wants to sit around station for 15 minutes each time. Or be waiting for the scout to say ok mens undock, ok warp to the scout, ok target the miner, ok make sure u hit f1 !!!
so you tell them to be the scout instead so they can see the other end, and its just scan Retriever, Ok we gank, Scan Retriever, Ok we gankâŚ
dont even get me started on gatecamping to scan industrials⌠amazing isk potential but cmon nowâŚ
incursions? i grabbed 12 skill injectors to get two friends into incursions day 3 of them playing. we practiced some core mechanics in some level4 missions i took them on. i bought one of them a vindi, and the other a nightmare. We ran with GroupHere and the fc helped them find their way. Great stuff. they enjoyed it for a time. but then the next day, and the next day⌠nah they done, fc say go there hit them go there hit that. ok nice job big moneys, ok we warp here now mens. Nice game⌠back to wow they went lmao. i let them keep the ships, maybe they come back one day LMAO.
who knows maybe they were the industry types, i wouldnât know, not my cup of tea.
the most recent 2 friends i got to play the game, went threw that new NPE from AIR(?) and they streamed it and i was like WTF?? they actually made the best NPE that actually tells you how to use ur ship!! but then it ends so abruptly⌠they are just thrown in a station at the end⌠and like heres the game have fun! They both stopped playing. Dedent even give it a chance. Dint even fleet up to explore the game, they just closed it and went to slept lmao, in their defense it was late.
all of these humans have a csgo, valorant, rust, and WoW background.
maybe the pve content, which is the very first type of content introduced to the player can be longer? More expansive? Just make more interesting pve missions or questlines for these new players, have it fall into part of the NPE. Get them to explore the game, get them to think. It all naturally gravitates to joining a group of players if its EVEN just in a fleet to get something done. But i fear once its run its course and the real game is laid bare, they will leave no matter how much fun they can have in that day.
For this game you have to really want to play eve. You cant butter up or pamper the new players showing them flashy ships or awe inspiring F1 gameplay, but you cant give them a shitty experience either they will leave.
They have to really want to play the spaceship mmo. Without a constant stream of new players who stick around, our numbers just swell up with more alt accounts⌠How do we keep our new players?
Not fully agreeing whith all what you say. But yeah. Eve is a gem that needs time to be tasted. How does this fits with todayâs standards? I donât know.
Does it have to fit and maybe loose its uniqueness? Thatâs the questionâŚ
Well, many people I know that arenât averse to PVP / full loot, when they see EVE they ask âhow do I get out of my ship?â. So for some people, they get a better connection to a character they can walk around with instead of just a ship in space.
I imagine if they hadnât fâd up incarna then there would have been a lot more players whom would come to eve for the avatar based content.
LOL I got no problems with AG. Its a legit playstyle 
You can sit down now
It is. Its just a stealth troll thread.
If only there was something we could type our queries into and it would find us answers. Almost, almost like an engine? A search engine? Imagine! We could call it Goggle! Because it helps us see!
The LOL this sentence produced. You still fail at EVE so hard.
Oof. Do better.
EVE is the only MMO I could sit and play.
Purely because I do not feel like I am playing a game that I could have played offline as a single player game. PVE driven games like Wow and many others I feel like I could have just enjoyed by myself.
Griefing is holding the game back. If there were no gunkings and no forced peeveepees, the game would have many more players. Adding a PvP toggle (everywhere, not just in high-sec) would probably double this gameâs population within a month. I mean, if thatâs the goal, and weâre going to be objective about it.
We agree to disagree, the way PvP occurs hold the game back, sure.
Ganking is the problem? NO. Criminal status being a joke, totally.
Stupid nerfs to make people die easier, making ship roles questionable, sure.
Same old 10y mechanics of scram / web with standard range (here I address the big ships complain, but with the right angle), sure.
Farm alts that make game pointless, guess?
Now, saying the game is spectacular is too much. Dude the game does not have minimal quality in software standards, I understand we all hungry for scyfy simulation, but EVE needs a total overhaul in UX and craftsmanship quality.
While WoW is total HOT garbage, it is because Activision greed, not because the software is bad.
Iâm not sure this thread is for real, but I bite.
Lack of Walking in Stations is holding back this game. Since they didnt really introduce it despite promises that they will, and abandoned further development of it, the game suffered. The growth of playerbase stopped and then numbers started dropping, people leaving to play games with walking in it.
Nobody used it when it was in the game. Iâm totally fine with it not being in. Just wait for the fps coming soonâ˘
Nope. Itâs straight-up the existence of PvP gameplay you canât opt out of, and the inability to go places and do things without restriction. Without these limitations, the game would capture a bigger share of the audience. Most people these days just want to complete space quests and get new upgraded armor for their ship.
When WoW was released, this in fact wasnât the primary motivation behind gameplay, and players in the early aughts still genuinely flocked to difficulty and hardcore gameplay. WoW was riding off of the high of the still-fresh Warcraft 3 and its amazing hardcore battle.net community (just like with StarCraft and Diablo). Raids were extremely difficult and the PvP content (on PvP servers) was pretty brutal, despite there being no item loss.
Todayâs WoW wouldnât have done well in 2004, just like todayâs EVE wouldnât have done well in 2004. Likewise, 2004âs WoW wouldnât do well today, and 2004âs EVE would probably do even less well today than the current (nerfed) EVE is doing (although it might still be more profitable just by catering to a niche really wellâjust look at how successful WoW Classic has been recently).
Keep in mind that I was both an early EVE and an early WoW player, so Iâm not exactly pulling these views out of my ass.
Last time i made this argument i got torn a new one and it wasnât gentle. Basically I was told in no uncertain terms that new players do not need to be âcatch upâ in skills in order to compete. But then this came from the same players that donât agree with skill injectors or expert systems. Both of which are CCPâs way of trying to open up content for players.
I really like the skill over time model. But if players are used to the experience point grinding we see in other popular MMOâs its going to be jarring. Take the elder scrolls online. You could make a new account and be max level in well under a month if you were so inclined.
I donât think it would be fair to devalue the time vets have spent in getting skill points. But there has to be an appreciation that after 10 years of training that player has a significant advantage over a new player that theoritacally can never really be closed.
So yes i think this is a factor.
Hells yes
Eve doesnât have a narrative. Itâs an issue. For new players at least. Anyone thats played any other rpg expects that you finish the tutorial and get told âgo speak to this guyâ. And a quest marker pops up. But on the way to that guy other quest markers and things pop up âŚâŚâŚand if you are like me you never get to that guy coz âŚâŚsidequests. But always in the background we know there is a main quest and ultimately at some point we will get to it. Eve just dumps us in a station and gives very little direction on what should be done. There is no primary antagonist. There is no world ending evil that must be stopped. We have to create our own antagonists in other players or deciding to fight against an empire. But even then we arnt really told that. Added to this race doesnât matter. Other than a few hours training in a frigate skills we find our choice of Amarr, Calgari etc is meaningless.
Now Iâm not denying that the lore is rich. And of course eves stories are our own stories which makes it unique. But to a casual player approaching Eve for the first time the expectation is that they are going to be inserted into a story, have an antagonist and have a quest to persue.
Which then leads into missions. And dear lord. Lets not go there.
This. But its another devisive one. Itâs no so long ago the character screen was changed to show more of our characters. Probably for this reason. People want to identify with their avatar in a way that the game didnât really allow. But boy did people lose their sh*t because of it.
Which comes back to the first point I responded to in this post. Improving the NPE and increasing player retention is difficult because whether its touchy feely things like doing more with avatars, dumbing down UIâs to suit the mobile generation, making skills more accessible and whatever else we can think ofâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚIt is always going to devalue the work existing players have put in or annoy them in some way.
And CCP in trying to walk the tight rope is screwing the pooch on both fronts because if you try and please everybody you end up pleasing nobody.
I have to disagree with those who think that the lack of walking in stations/avatars in general is holding eve back. The biggest difference between wow and eve lies in the fundamental mechanic difference: permalos. It is nearly impossible to lose something you gained in wow while in eve you could lose everything you have on the next gate. Most people donât like permalos.
There is also the difference between themepark and sandbox. Its always easier to follow a predetermined path of quests, dungeons and raids versus finding your path to whatever your destination is.
I think preserving permaloss is important to EVEâS core identity, talking to other players. But finding a way to maintain that while using the forum to update the game is a difficult one when the same 4 forum reply guys trash post and sea lion every single thread suggesting a change.
Everyone I showed EVE in real life had no interest in playing once they realized how the gameplay was the opposite of immersive.
What do my PI colonies look like?
Whatâs it like getting food in Amarr?
Can I teleport aboard an opponentâs ship and fist fight them on their bridge?
EVE claims to be a sandbox, but it was made 20 years ago. So the ship -based gameplay makes it feel like you can only play in the sand wearing mittens.
Itâs not WOW. WOW is not the benchmark to use here.
Itâs not any other MMO either. Every game is competition for players and the entire MMO genre is becoming more marginal.
Reason: mixing massive multiplayer with roll-playing game mechanics was never a great combination anyway and later on real alternatives arrived, the closest competitors being MOBAs.
Most PVP-orientated gamers nowadays play MOBAs, Hero shooters or just stick to plain old multiplayer RTS and FPS games.
EVE in particular, doesnât get advertised to or plays to itâs own strengths and the weak parts are often put in the spotlight.
Strengths: the player market and the living ecosystem, but
Hamstringed by: Industry, which heavily relies on
Weaker parts: the player versus environment game, of which
Worst of all: mining and PI are also the most critical to the entire game economy.
This ridiculous situation where no gamer should be mining, but everyone needs miner output, sums up EVE nicely.
The top job of FC relying on the dull existence of many F1-monkeys is another one.
EVE does give the players enough tools to turn N+1 into a cat-and-mouse game, so N+1 doesnât have to be a big problem (though it does turn away the PvP gamers who desire symmetrical contests) as long as new players came in expecting this.
Best thing for EVE would be if the devs could include less boring PvE activities in the open world, that also feed the industry, as both the player market and the cat-and-mouse game rely on players doing PvE.
Magic 14 is like a rash that just wonât go away. Itâs mostly spewed by people who donât have an actual understanding of how skills and fits work.
The type of player who uses random workbench fits, the same fits for all uses, needs memes to have anything explained and wouldnât know how to create their own viable fits in the first place. Itâs those people who keep telling newbies to train magic 14 because itâs the only thing they âknowâ.
This is interesting, M14 is all you hear about in the New Player help chat. I gave up ever being good, because it was 200 days away regardless of the practice I put in.
Sadly there is a lot of the blind leading the blind going on.
Character name changes.
Old names that have never logged in for 16 years or more years that cannot be reused.
Skill injectors are ludicrously expensiveâŚlike 600m ISK for 11 days.
Yes, Iâve heard the same ânew players do not need to catch upââŚand it is nonsense. The range of DPS between a noob equipped and skilled ship and a fully trained and equipped one can be a factor of 4 or 5. Thatâs especially true with all the Tech II weapons and skills. My first Algos had a DPS of just 70âŚI can now get an Algos to over 300 DPS. Four months of skillsâŚthat still are nowhere near complete.