Why did New Dawn make everyone so angry?

[Marvyn_Nightshade]

I feel like I kind of get it, but I don’t get it.

They claimed they were ending scarcity, but “waste” puts it back where it started for a lot of builds. Up to that point I think I understand.

The rest I don’t understand quite so much.

Does it make the game feel tedious? I think I will feel very disappointed if I’m sitting there watching a mining cycle finally end, and trigger the 34% waste probability and get nothing.

Much of the satisfaction of mining is the more or less guaranteed nature of the return. Mission running is better when I’m looking for adventure.

I can also understand people wanting compression to be convenient, instead of a huge chore of bringing a ship out to space, loading it up with material and then unloading it. (Not a bad option to have, but wouldn’t want to always have to use it.)

But I don’t feel myself wanting to rage quit over either of those things. What is the deeper problem?

[Terminal_Insanity]

its not just the one change. Its so many other things all piling up

Its promises they never keep

its broke UI’s they intoduce

its the “content” they add that nobody wants

and then in the midst of all this they go and start ■■■■■■■ with the fundamental way we all produce ships to have fun with.
Nobody wanted this change. This is a pencil pusher’s solution to a problem, and nobody enjoys it.

This is a videogame. We want to play spaceships online.

We don’t want austerity in a videogame. We don’t want to be lashing ourselves and paying higher taxes and sacrificing for the greater good, in a god damn videogame.

We’re here to escape that, not to re-create it here too.

[Aesir_Valtari]

@Marvyn_Nightshade

What is the deeper problem?

In my opinion, three aspects contributed to the widespread anger:

1. 2 years ago, CCP decided that the existing ecosystem in the game needed to be healed. The players were put to a long and hard test, as much of what was familiar and functioning was no longer working, and they were constantly having to adapt to changes that, let’s face it, CCP pulled out of a hat, with questionable results. How long can you patiently wait for things to get better when they don’t get better in the game at all, despite the self-congratulatory statements from CCP?
2. CCP expressed understanding that it must be hard for players, but made assurances that it would get better after a hard time and that they were counting on players to trust them. I think that for many players, the limit of trust in the developers has been exhausted and what remains is frustration and uncertainty about what other brilliant ideas CCP will push through at the expense of quality gameplay for casual players.
3. The changes made may have fixed some aspects of the game (for example, although it was a controversial decision - Orca and Rorqual are no longer super effective units for solo mineral extraction and it’s a sensible decision), but at the same time they screwed up a lot of other things: costs of ships, especially for pirate factions; problems with the presence of ice belts and consequently with fuel production for citadels, complex problem with moon goo extraction, etc. It’s like putting together a house of cards, where if you manage to put one wall in place, the other two fall apart. Somehow you can’t see that CCP has any idea how to put this house together head on.

The players are just tired and frustrated. I think that after 2 years most would just like a chance to catch their breath, have some stability in the game, a few months of gameplay without experiencing another panacea from CCP for the accumulated problems with the ecosystem.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

It’s important to keep in mind the difference between what looks like a mass protest, and the actual player base.

Current login numbers would indicate that the EVE player base is somewhere around 300 to 400 thousand players. If even 2% of those players don’t like something enough to protest, that’s over 6,000 protesters: some of whom will fly to Jita to protest, some will cancel subs, some will post on forums and Reddit. It will look like a mass protest - but it’s still only 2% of players.

The first iteration of Extraction to Production contained some true brainfarts on CCP’s part, both in the design and the reveal of the changes. So that’s the source of a lot of the original protest, which was subsequently modified to a more reasonable set of changes. So likely half the reasons for the original protests are “fixed” to some degree but the anger still lingers. Some players are still unhappy even after the fixes (many Orca pilots for instance), but it’s an overall small number.

Then as Aesir Valtari says, the rest is due to CCP simply exhausting again the goodwill and patience of an even larger group of players - the ones who got hopeful when CCP said (as they always do) “we’ve analyzed the situation and determined what needs fixing and we’ve got a plan”.

And then the “plan” turns out to be, as usual, CCP being clueless about game design and not even understanding what needs fixing and what doesn’t. From Chaos Era on CCP has demonstrated they simply don’t know how to reconcile what makes a good game for players against their own internal “plan” to push the game in the direction of “players buying the maximum amount of subs and Plex and injectors in order to ‘succeed’ at EVE”.

That stream where they showed a bunch of unspecific charts on things like Rorquals hadn’t been an issue for 2 years, and saying “we’re taking action because of they data we have that you don’t”, and “we’re not giving out numbers because you players are too creative with them”, but basically just flailing around trying to pretend they had a handle on things when it’s clear they still don’t know their ass from their elbow.

(As an aside, who else has noticed CCP has started taking all the older MER’s offline and making them downloads you need to sort through in order to see anything? Because, you know, “us players are too creative with access to actual data”, I guess.)

At any rate, the mining changes are overall a good thing for miners and most likely a bad thing for gankers. How increasing mining throughput in the game and reducing “destruction” is supposed to “fix” anything is beyond me, but that’s the sort of bassackwards update CCP is well known for.

That, to me, is the real source of frustration among the wider player base - that players started to feel CCP was finally getting their act together for a change, only to be shown the same standard level of cluelessness CCP’s done for the past decade.

[Ramona_McCandless]

People not reading how it works and making assumptions mostly.

[Pirokobo]

What is the deeper problem?

CCP believes there are too many supercaps.

Basically EVERYTHING revolves around them wanting to attack that but in a way that won’t cause every supercap pilot to ragequit and unsub all their alt accounts.

[Ramona_McCandless]

If they could just get over that then everyone would be happier.

[Nalana_Vos]

~YES~

we choose violence
honorable forum pvp

[Kaivarian_Coste]

@Kezrai_Charzai

It’s important to keep in mind the difference between what looks like a mass protest, and the actual player base.

Current login numbers would indicate that the EVE player base is somewhere around 300 to 400 thousand players. If even 2% of those players don’t like something enough to protest, that’s over 6,000 protesters: some of whom will fly to Jita to protest, some will cancel subs, some will post on forums and Reddit. It will look like a mass protest - but it’s still only 2% of players.

I am (or was) a high sec ganker. I temporarily came back to the game a few months ago and did some pod ganks, and most of my kills turned out to be unskilled alts. I then compared my pod ganks to those from 5 years ago, and there was a greater abundance of ganks killing mains instead of alts back then (you can identify main characters by the implants they install and the player corps they join).

So there are some funny shenanigans going on. It seems like more and more of the player base are being replaced with F2P alts or bots.

[AzothPrime]

I think they strategically plan to make players quit the game right after having an event that makes them buy more game time. This way they leave the game…“waste” all the game time they paid for. Then when they forget why they quit…will need to buy more game time again.

[Marvyn_Nightshade]

@Kezrai_Charzai

That, to me, is the real source of frustration among the wider player base - that players started to feel CCP was finally getting their act together for a change, only to be shown the same standard level of cluelessness CCP’s done for the past decade.

We’ll know the cluelessness is starting to end when they finally get rid of “jump fatigue”. The one change in their whole history that literally cost them half the player base, and they have ever since, stubbornly refused to cave on.

Complicating shipping might maybe increase the opportunity for players to PVP with each other in theory, In practice, shippers stay out of the same fights they always did. They just use methods that are more tedious and frustrating, and then get bored and frustrated.

I understand why there was such a reaction against the idea of adding compression losses.

Limiting to one warp stab is kind of silly too. People seem more chill about it, at least, but its got the same problem : it’s not going to change anyone’s behavior, or make gate camping exciting.