Eve has changed.
Pre-2010 eve was space survival MMORPG.
It was the struggle for survival and sense of accomplishment that drew in players.
Dreads were something you had to work together with other ppl to build, and then a single trusted person who had forgone training subcap skills in favor of dread skills had to be found to pilot them and keep them safe.
Eve used to be a game where you were forced to rely on others in order to get anything done, communities were the basis of the playerbase.
Since these days, skill injectors have been introduced; removing the pride older players felt over having survived so long and having something to show for all those years of waiting.
Alt use has increased; allowing 1 person to achieve what it took a corp of people to achieve previously, this dilutes the sense of accomplishment and allows players to interact less with others.
There has been a period of at least a decade where the devs (I’ll call them FC when they are at the head of a fleet) saw the income increase from making multibox activities more accessible and got tunnel vision over it.
This game has become a place where ppl dont want to work together because they can’t trust anyone.
How do you know the person you text to in corp chat isn’t blue eyes for a ganking group waiting to blops onto you?
The new players see the cost of having to sub 3-4 accounts and get turned off the game.
The established players are not communicating while watching youtube or twitch, while they mine in their own fleet, controlled entirely by themselves.
The vets have seen their sources of pride over their accomplishments, be made available to new players with daddies credit card.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of new accounts that resub after their free trial, are actually just established players spinning up an alt.
Eve isn’t obviously dying on the outside, it’s being consumed from within by unseen cancers.
One day to become a sea of alts and bots, run by a few people desperately holding on because they have nothing else in life to feel pride over.
Check out my post on this issue