I dont envy them.
They basically cant offer me much except vanity items and interesting content, stuff theyve been reticent about including in larger numbers for some time.
Dont get me wrong, I may not play like you, but I do understand the frustration.
I was even dangerously close to being able to PLEX but fortunately for me (in the long run as I was ragin till I realised what I was doin) they introduced Quantum Cores.
It’s difficult to know at which point sensible @Solstice_Projekt ends and trolling begins, but assuming you mean what you say:
Would you expect people to run abyssals if the cans were empty?
Would you expect people to run relic/data sites if the cans were empty?
Would you expect people to run missions if they didn’t reward isk/LP?
You may disagree that people enjoy the above content, but CCP is delivering it for a reason which suggests the metrics point to rewarding gameplay being “fun” and retaining players.
We have a problem here and I should have noticed it earlier.
Are you sure you want to be talking about a carrot?
Because it rather looks like you want to be talking about reward.
I’m wondering, because the carrot is actually always unreachable.
It’s just meant to keep the donkey going, not to make him happy.
To actually address your questions, which kind of underline that you wish to be talking about rewards:
People play Dark Souls, because the reward is the feeling of satisfaction once you’ve managed to play it through, but to be fair, EVE’s PvE isn’t really any good. I’d be totally happy to just try beating challenging NPCs without any additional reward. I’ve ran the very first Serpentis Event many years ago in a svipul in jspace, because the sites were fun to run and jspace made it actually interesting. The rewards per so were meaningless.
The carrot for Dark Souls would be the idea that beating it means that the player has “skills” …
… and the reward is the feeling of pride and satisfaction he feels when he’s actually beaten the game.
There is ground to talk about how people got so used to these feelings of being rewarded by games …
… that they’ve forgotten that many things should be done just for the sake of doing them.
Imagine a world where games are only being played because they manage to manipulate people into playing them …
… and not because the games themselves are actually worth playing. Sounds familiar…
PS: I don’t actually want to be trolling. 
To be fair I do not dispute your intentions, but the OP and subsequent posts by you and others are awfully vague with ill-defined objectives and parameters that do not appear to be going anywhere. Pretty sure once BL wakes up it will be locked.
This is probably the most insightful thing I’ve read all thread. Making the distinction and talking about the two separately helps provide scope to justify the existence of problems and solutions for those problems more meaningfully. Right now several different aspects of the game, each of which merits their own thread, are being discussed and bickered over oh-so-lightly and that doesn’t bode well for any amount of progress in THIS thread.
Threads that are likely to yield more meaningful results (not exact titles):
You have not earned a carrot. Calm down, miner.
Block the known trolls, don’t reply to them please.
and when you run out of easy prey, and actually have to look to competent armed opponents?
I’ll never run out of easy prey. You carebears love it.
It’s like the old political joke
It’s Republican thing, give me a dollar, and I’ll explain it to you.
It’s a Democrat thing, give me a dollar.
What I wonder is whether all these changes are actually for the Asian market. Bringing down the establishment a few pegs to give the upstarts a more level playing field. If I think of that as their motivation, their actions make more sense to me. The acquisition by Pearl Abyss probably gives CCP access to the talent necessary to attempt to tap that market in earnest, and if there’s any carrot here that CCP might be chasing after, that’d be it. The crusty PvPers and Bears are already shorn of their money.
For want to be devil’s advocate, Id have to say that the biggest obstacle you may be presented with on that theory is that the idea that the in-game established may not actually be affected that much by the changes.
Im just not sure the new market you mean for this type of game, modified or not, would be big enough to gamble on changes like we’ve seen, but neither do I find enough objections to entirely disagree.
I suppose I waiting to see if the biggest doomsayers have a point; will CCP follow this up with an expanded money store? I hope not, but Im too pessimistic to discount the possibility.
For what it is worth, I don’t think I know what’s really going on, either. I just wonder.
How much effect the changes have on null is not a thing I know. Black Pedro rightly points out, though, that it’s a bit silly CCP didn’t anticipate the ripple effect that has them already reversing the drone changes. That CCPs changes aren’t effective doesn’t seem like a reason to dismiss the idea that taking the establishment down a peg or two isn’t a goal.
To a large degree in matters like this, I rely on my intiution. My intuition has been telling me something is amiss, but it isn’t telling me what or why it thinks so, so I’m left to wonder.
I can’t say I suspect they’re going to open some kind of cash shop with features dissimilar to what we already have. Finding means to make real money for themselves off in game transactions via the Quantum Cores is about as bad as I would expect to get.
I could be wrong, of course, and it would not be the first time I was accused of being too optimistic. CCP has to survive, though, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so to speak. I think they’d be very cautious of starting another monocle-gate with a drastically revised cash shop. I don’t think they’d trade a player they’ve already captured to try and gain another if they felt they could plausibly make changes people are likely to stomach.
I just doubt the idea that the changes are really for the reasons people believe they are. They could be, but confirmation bias would lead people to believe CCP agrees with their position if any change supports that position, even if the real reasons are completely independent in their true objective.
Well… Just on this point, the drone change anyway was reversed because they somehow didnt see the Assist error. Somehow.
I dunno. Ive said before that they need to communicate better, though many people took this to mean tell us about new content. But what I mean is they dont explain;
And 4) how successful or unsuccessful it was after.
CCP have a rep for half finished content, like an imaginative artist who gets bored easily. They need to address the morale issue their customer base has as well as ingame issues and in a clear manner.
Me too, most definately.
And yes, I too have your impression of the motives.
I pray for peace, but expect war, if youll allow the analogy.
I think that, if they were explaining things as you describe, I would still be playing.
Id not have unsubbed lol.
But I intensely dislike defending their actions even though I tend to because they should be doing that, not their customers.
I mourn the passing of what was, and look at what is and what may come with some measure of trepidation.
Still, I’m having fun with EvE and may stay around until the server-Hamsters are re-homed.
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me,
A day may come when the courage of EvE players fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship,
An hour of greed run amok and shattered dreams when the Age of EvE comes crashing down,
When I came back last year my impression was “Holy crap, it’s raining ISK”, you could suddenly do L4 missions in a destroyer, literally any ship blows through content much, much faster and what was once a feat has become completely trivial.
Over the last years, reading up, there has been a boatload of income buffs, “you get a buff, you get a buff, everyone gets a buff!”. Events like the current Yuiol one allow essentially everyone to make bank on a level back then reserved for incursion runners in 4b vindicators or people farming solo-dread sites in c5-space. Now even pushing two Leshaks through c4 anoms makes you 600mil an hour, a bil+ with three killing drifters a class up, and your everyday t2-fit marauder has 1.5k dps chewing through missions like there’s no tomorrow, you get 50mil an hour and up flying around in a T1 exploration frigate plundering pirate/relic sites. The income levels are still plain silly. People haul in 50mil and more am hour for an orca-linked hulk nibbling on stupid veldspar. Running burners drowns you in LP.
I can’t recall the game being especially dead back then, when it was the age of drakes and hurricanes, when HACs suddenly meant all HACs and not just vagas and zealots, and they were still rare. These days, I see more pirate cruisers than regular cruisers, getting tackled by a 100mil “disposable” ship is normal, when once people wetted their pants to undock in a 50mil one, when I throw scanners out, they’re usually asteros with sisters launchers piloted by a person that is clearly not aware what this ship is meant for. But they got the money to fly a shitty covops with four times the price tag.
By all means, bring back the scarcity and let us be miserable again.
I’m just speculating on the motivations of CCPs actions. I’m not making an assertion of whether I think they’re good or bad.
My opinion is that scarcity is good. I do not object to it in the slightest. I doubt that the motive behind the scarcity is that CCP has awoken to the virtues of a more interactive game. It could be that is the case, but CCP not explaining things leaves a lot of room for doubt.
I think it’s blatantly obvious that scarcity is good, and I truly doubt that CCP is unaware of this.
What? Citation needed, please.
You’re not making this up, are you?