The only reason to have a Captain’s Quarters would be to obtain new jobs and assignments - but since you can pretty much do that already…
Walking in Stations could offer caged Fedo matches (betting), casinos (gambling), bars (drinking, strippers and fighting) and player interactions (beatings, robbery and murder). Think Grand Theft EVE but with a space theme.
This basically entails a separate game, and at the end of the day one has to ask: does this add or detract from the core EVE experience?
I started in Dominion, just weeks before the release of Apocrypha. I honestly don’t recall what originally got me interested in the game, but I don’t think it was the expansion trailers. I just went back and looked at them. The Dominion trailer was decent, the Apocrypha trailer was rather boring, and neither conveyed what the game was really like. The Butterfly Effect trailer came out in July of 2009, so I would guess that one might have been what got me to join in September of that year.
IMO, these are the four best trailers for EVE, and none of them are for a specific expansion:
CCP should really do more like those if they want to attract new players.
Attracting players isn’t the issue: it’s the 9500 players a week churn rate - resulting in far fewer than +20k new players a year (probably less than half that if we’re talking long-term player retention).
Find a way to double the conversion rate to 10% (from 5%) and you’re laughing.
I guess my point is, if you have a game about spaceships and you show trailers with people walking around and doing stuff, it creates false expectations for new players. They join the game, find out the gameplay isn’t anything like what was depicted, become dissatisfied, and they leave. If CCP accurately represented the game in advertising, they would attract players looking for the kind of experience EVE offers. Those new players might be less likely to become dissatisfied, because the experience meets their expectations.
So I think you can attack the churn problem in two ways that are non-exclusive:
EDIT to add: #1 would help the conversion rate, but I suppose #2 is more about increasing the top line than the bottom line. Perhaps a number #3 would be to smooth the on-boarding, but it seems CCP has already put a lot of focus on that in recent years (it’s far better than it ever was, anyway).
Both conversion rate and attraction rate can increase the number of players.
Doubled conversion rate from 5% to 10% may double the number of players, but so does reaching double as many people with advertisements of which 5% stick around.
We all know that EVE is a niche game even more so than many other games, and many people just won’t stick around so it may be better to try to reach more people with good looking trailers so that the people who would stick around are more likely to see a trailer and get tempted to try the game.
While I have enjoyed CQ in the past, I don’t think it should be brought back. The development time to even bring it back to the point it was at is 6-8 months, and even more for ANY thing else. And that will take away from any new content for that duration. It’s a HUGE ask.
I don’t think it matters. Whether the trailers are accurate or inaccurate, people are gonna come and try the game, and they only stick around if they like to play the game. It doesn’t matter all that much how it was represented. If you come to EVE and come to love to play it, you’re not gonna go ‘‘oh I really like this game, but now looking back on it, the trailers were inaccurate, so I’m just gonna leave’’.
While they do over indulge in the trailers, CCP are not the only ones. Early on Warcraft had fans believe famous celebrities played it from William Shatner to Ozzy Osbourne and even Verne Troyer.
In truth most of us sane rational people know they are paid to say this for a commercial. They probably played the game for ten minutes for legal reasons. Well except for Ozzy who played for 30 minutes because he kept getting stuck on the weather channel.
This game’s confusion stems from the novice players being fed the cookie cutter MMO and only a small amount believe commercials. They don’t help making it appear epic battles happen at every turn. I agree that first video is more accurate than most. At least they are not showing us an online space battle between Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
Fly safe o7
It matters in that players are more likely to enjoy the game if it meets with their expectations. If CCP advertised EVE as a space western MMO with laser pistol gunfights in old-timey saloons, that would probably make for pretty cool trailers. But people who are interested in space westerns might join EVE and be very likely disappointed. Whereas if CCP advertises EVE as a space fantasy simulator with an emphasis on mining, industry, exploration, spaceship combat, and empire building—i.e., what it is—then the people who try EVE because that marketing appeals to them are more likely to enjoy the game, because it would have met with their expectations.
In other words, don’t advertise Hello Kitty Island Adventure as a gritty postmodern cyberpunk MMO.
As a newish player. The ads only reminded me the game existed. What really made me want to download and fire the game up. Was a combination of things. Seeing some youtube videos and a real curiosity of wondering what the game was really like.
But the among the ads I like best is the one that says.. “This game.. You are not ready for it.” That is not a challenge, but a warning.
How accurate the ads are or are not I think is really beside the point. Once someone has downloaded and played Eve. Any game has a small window of opportunity to convince a new player that this worth the time sink. That the player will enjoy playing. That will eventually sub to that game.
But that is where CCP is struggling to retain these new players. It is not the ads. Accurate or not. It is the same problem with any online game. How to attract, keep, and retain players. This problem is not unique to CCP.
I think it’s safe to assume that what you learned about EVE prior to playing spurred your interest and prompted you to try the game. What I’m getting at, and what I’d be very interested to hear from you (as a newish player) is this:
Based on everything you learned about EVE before you started playing—from all the various sources, official or otherwise—did the game in actuality align with your preconceived notions of what the game is and what it offers?
In other words, did you try EVE and say: “This experience is more or less what I expected. I enjoy it, and I want to continue playing.”
Or did you say: “This game is nothing like what I expected, but I enjoy it anyway, and I want to continue playing.”
One additional point I’d make about this. When you sell a product, you’re not selling it to everyone. You have a customer in mind for your product, someone for whom the product is designed to appeal. Because your ad spend is limited, you want to market to those people most likely to become customers (by appealing to their specific interests) and maximize conversion rates for your investment.
If you poorly represent your product, or target your messaging at those for whom the product is not well-designed, you’ll either end up with dissatisfied customers, or (more likely) you’ll simply waste the ad spend on people who were never going to buy your product anyway.
In the case of EVE, you’ve also the problem that every new player has an associated cost: the overhead required to deliver the game. So if you attract 10,000 new players per month, but 9,500 of them are the kind of players who won’t be satisfied with what EVE has to offer… it’s only costing CCP money to attract those people. It would be better to attract fewer new players, but align better with those players’ interests, and achieve a higher conversion rate (i.e., more paying customers).
Any business owner would rather attract 2,000 leads from an ad spend and get a 50% conversion, than pay five times more to attract 10,000 leads and only get a 5% conversion.
But that’s not what they’re doing. (But I kind of expected someone to come and take that argument to the absurd).
Nobody in their right mind would think advertising EVE as a western would be a good idea, and nobody would go so far (maybe only as a parody for those with insider knowledge). That’s like advertising a car and showing you a couch on the back porch. It’s not done – anywhere – so pointless to even pose it as an argument.
Inaccuracies brought out on this thread (people in stations, etc) those are the minor inaccuracies and they are thematic with EVE. Completely valid in the storyline of the game and thus legitimate. These inaccuracies don’t matter. People will get the general idea right on what this game is. Then they come here and they will either stick around or not, but it has nothing to do with trailers.
This ^
I might point out an old adage.. You do not sell beer. You sell the foam. You do not sell the steak.. You sell the sizzle..
In any advertising campaign. For every thousand people that view your ad. You might get maybe 50 or at best 100 people that might do more than click on your ad. That number, depending on how good your advertising campaign is, can drop to none to maybe 5.
In the bad old days of printing/TV/cable. That number of attracting people to your product is virtually the same. It is always a numbers game. Always has been always will be.
As for what I knew about Eve. Was I could do things that I could not do in other games. With no real knowledge of how far I could push it. That there was real depth to this game and it was more than just an empire building, resource management, or simple PVP game.
And it was a combination of the two. It was what I was expecting and nothing like I was expecting either. The freedom of actually making my own decisions, good or bad, is better than some games that I have played or tried. That I am not locked into being simply a tank or healer, ect.
Can today be a pirate. Then tomorrow decide that I really want to be an explorer. Maybe doing both the next day or trying something else. There a lot of careers in this game. A lot more than most people realize. And that was something that I had not known before loading the game up.
Are they though? The trailers CCP has been producing in recent years feature humans walking around a lot. Don’t you think that might create a false impression for users unfamiliar with EVE? Look at the Equinox trailer. I’d guess roughly one-third of it is people walking around in stations and on planets. The Revanent trailer is less egregious, but the Havoc, Veridian, and Uprising trailers all feature a lot of ambulation that isn’t part of the EVE experience.
Now, I get “storytelling” in an ad, but I think it’s a bit much to devote a third of the video to presenting something that’s not in the game. Compare recent trailers with older trailers, even from less than 10 years ago. There was some storytelling but much less compared to in-game (or game-like) footage (a few seconds here and there, like in the Citadel trailer). The “walking in stations” storytelling has clearly become a bigger and bigger part of CCP’s marketing. I think that at least borders on “deceptive.” I liken it to some of those ads you see for mobile games, where little to nothing of what is shown looks like the actual game.
Yes, but importantly, you don’t sell sizzle your product doesn’t have. E.g., you sell Subaru Outbacks by showing a family camping trip and the car navigating rough roads with ease. You don’t sell Honda Civics the same way, and you don’t market Honda Civics to outdoorsy people in the hope that if they try a Civic, maybe they’ll like it, even though it doesn’t handle dirt roads very well.
I think you’re speaking about the depth of the game, where I was asking more about the empirical experience of playing the game: how it looks, how you interface with it, etc. Apologies if I was less than clear on that.
Indeed. I enjoyed the concept of it, but it was woefully incomplete. CCP barely implemented it, called it a failure because it was only added as a proof of concept and nothing more, and then deleted it. Hardly a fair test of that concept.
As for crashing, I never did have any issues with this feature. I was even playing on a crappy laptop at the time. Windows 7. That was a long time ago!
I have spoken about how online game companies could save themselves time and waste, by making the tutorial portion of the game off line and account free. For example;
The new player isn’t asked to make an account. They download the installer and agree to the EULA. They can create a character and play the entire tutorial in a limited version of the game. This eliminates all those people tie up database resources and bandwidth with tire kicking.
At some point, where the player has either played long enough, or reached the end of the tutorial, they are prompted to sign up and make an account. In my opinion, Eve Online has too short of a tutorial for this method, and it would be best to incorporate it from the birth of any new MMO.
Eve Online needs a sandbox tutorial much larger than they would like to create. They have the 12 career centers. These could work as the tutorial. Most new players don’t seem to be aware of their existence in the game. If the new player was kept within the confines of finishing a given number of the career missions, prior to roaming off to null sec to get blasted, it might help. Vets making new accounts would always have the opt out. Some people need a lot of hand holding. Others just want the free bacon key on their keyboard.
Fly safe o7
The ads are portraying the game as fun and adventurous. That is the sizzle. In one ad they have actually players on coms talking and organizing for a battle with great enthusiasm. Which is the very sizzle you need in an ad.
Before getting into the game for the first time. I knew of only industry {mining), fighting in battles, and exploring. That I could select any career and change it if I did not like it. That was from watching a few Youtube videos. That was really all I understood of the game.
After getting into the game. Learning that WASD keys was not how I was going to get around. That the interface was more of point and click. I quickly learned to adapt to how things were to work. Working out that I needed to highlight and then click on the bad guy to target the ship was not difficult to understand. Though waiting for it to come in to range before firing. That was not something that I understood. LOL
The graphics of seeing that 3D space for the first time. Was one of, ‘I hope that this was not just the comeon. Hoping the rest of the game looked this way’. I have seen games where the starting area was great eye candy, But once leaving that area. The rest of the game fell down with subpar graphics.
I hope that answers your question
If you’re talking about This is EVE, that is the best trailer CCP has ever produced, and perhaps, the best video game trailer ever made.
There were four trailers I mentioned earlier in the thread that really stand out as some of the best marketing for EVE (links added):
CCP should really focus on doing more like those, rather than cinematic “story” trailers.