Will Paid Expansions Save EvE?

Communications Center General Discussion
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In a video, once or twice over the last months, a CCP dev briefly mentioned that they also want to have major releases again. the reason simply is that people are easier baited with big, fancy looking stuff or stories. (i’m paraphrasing. they use marketeese and i call it what it is. it still means the same things). it can make people consider, reconsider, or get triggered into trying out the new features simply by properly selling them and a fancy trailer.

CCP is really, really good with making trailers and the feelings they create absolutely do make some people consider playing again, therefore the trailers can also trigger some people into trying it out. They’re that good. in case you’re not aware:

  • butterfly effect
  • dominion
  • this is eve
  • citadels

These are burnt into my memory. you can find them all on youtube.

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They need actual story quests and arcs with good voice acting and cut scenes. Not the stiff robotic tutorial voices in the little popup screen.

Minus the voice acting runescsoe nailed this.
Discover a quest, get a cutscene with a story, figure out to solve it. The current missions should remain as infinite grindable repeatable tasks. But there should be actual stories and stuff with unique missions involved. Like storyline missions or epic arcs should have been.

Story’s like the old Eve chronicles if anyone still writes or reads those.

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The trailers were always great. The dust ones too.

Hopefully one day before Eve actually gets shut down it halfway resembles those trailers in content and gameplay.

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Awesome trailers and big expansions, yea, why not.
But they still need to make “small expansions” (aka fixing bugs and balance issues) for months after the big one, and big expo= bigger bugs. Smaller and spread over time is probably better for the workflow.

Also you can’t have subscription, microtransactions AND paid expansions.
Or maybe I’m wrong (EA would probably charge for everything and add mandatory paid internet connection to their servers on top of that).

You say those expansions would not be mandatory… but they would. Usually new content means better (or unique) and all of your friends would hop in. How would it feel to be left out?

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PvE has never been the strong suite of Eve. And it will never be. The combat system is not that complex, like WoW, to allow having fun during PvE. All PvE activities will become grinds after some point. It does for even WoW, but much faster for Eve. People don’t do PvE because they have fun during the activity. They do it because they either want to fund their PvP, or (in the case of “PvE players”) for meta reasons such as “acquiring wealth”.

A WoW expansion keeps people content-wise occupied until the next one (1-1.5 years). CCP will never be able to create such content with even Blizzard-like manpower, let alone their own limited manpower, due to this game’s mechanics.

Imho, it is high time CCP should stop focusing resources on frequently creating half assed new PvE content. Nobody does special drifter wormhole raids. Nobody does Blood Raider Sotiyos. Wormhole anomaly drifters are still uninteresting grind. There was so much work put in this. It doesn’t pay off.

And people still hype about stuff like wormhole roaming drifters, procedurally generated missions, Faction Citadel AI responding to ship composition, etc. Even CCP hypes about some of these. Filling the emptiness of space with NPC’s will not save this game. AI will not save this game. They will always be just means of ISKmaking, and nobody will even bother with them if there is no ISK to be made (like drifter wormholes).

So what should CCP do? They should focus on balancing Eve ecosystem so we have a more sustainable, fun and interesting Eve. This includes PvE, PvP and sov mechanics. For months so many people kept saying citadel/sov mechanics are broken. Why don’t CCP allocate teams working on AI and NPCs and new faction sites to actually fix citadels? They are the prime reason why there are no major wars atm. There is no conflict driving factor in Eve anymore. And whenever war and conflict happens, the log in counts double and subscriptions soar.

CCP should also fix PvE so it is more risky. Risk-free PvE done by major nullsec superpowers is introducing huge inflation to this game. We notice it in PLEX prices and other things becoming expensive. Meanwhile, multiboxed Rorqual mining devalues hard work of beginner miners. These things will never fixed by smarter NPCs. They will be fixed only if CCP finds out a way to balance PvP risk of PvE’rs in these superpowers. So why don’t CCP work on this instead of AI?

There are lots of other areas that needs to be checked. FW is one, high-end wormhole PvE is another.

So I think there are lots of people who would prefer CCP focusing on existing problems of Eve, rather than publishing half assed PvE that nobody even plays every 6 months. It’s fine if we get a new PvE site every 2 years if CCP focuses on the actual problems of the sandbox.

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Good idea. Let’s make the most successful sandbox MMO like all the long dead theme-park MMOs.

Or perhaps let’s make some new innovative game mechanics that enable players to have even more fun while shooting at each other? There is a game beyond entosis!

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  • more balance
  • riskier (more fun) 0.0
  • boxing afk rorq’s gotta go (botting rattlesnakes and many more)
  • focus on player 2 player interaction instead of AI and filling the void with npc’s
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The amount of “Don’t know what the ■■■■ I’m talking about, but i’m gonna spew it anyway!” in your post is amusing.

Runescape is a sandbox and has more players and more money pouring in every year than EvE has ever accomplished in its entire existence. Why is that? Because Jagex realized that graphics and fancy trailers don’t mean ■■■■, gameplay does. And they realized a pure sandbox can quickly become a litterbox, with very few participants. Thus they have meaningful PvE play in addition to meaningful PvP play. In fact, they managed to make a whole new genre, the sandpark. You can follow quests that aren’t the same 4 or 5 scenarios with different words in the mission box, do crafting, spend all day ganking/killing people, or whatever the hell you want to. There’s plenty of content for everyone. And you have to actually do stuff to grow your skills there, not just put a skill in a queue and come back in a week/month/year.

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CCP and the “lone wolves” don’t go together well. When you want them to improve 2-player-interactions you also have to improve 1-player-gameplay. CCP spreads the idea that joining a corp early on is beneficial, for good reasons, which all boil down to the fact that being in a group of people increases your chance of sticking with the game dramatically. Many people onl stick around because of friends they have here.

With my hand covering my mouth: this underlines, that there’s apparently no reason for people to play the game for the game itself. (see also: 10k daily SP, former events, The Agency)

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Are there pvp/pve zones?
how many servers are there and whats the population cap?
or is it an MMO true to the meaning, like EVE, where all of them play in one big world?

can i gank people everywhere i want and not get “CONCORD” kicking my ass?

Curious. Thanks!

edit: i keep seeing you add text, and modify your post. you seem angry and i’d appreciate if you left the anger with him, instead of in your reply to me. :slight_smile:

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you can find out more here RuneScape Wiki | Fandom

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So it’s a half-assed open world sandbox where you’re being restricted into complying with rules that prevent you from doing anything you want anywhere you want. If you want to behave a certain way, you have to go to a certain area. EVE doesn’t do that at this fundamental level. EVE punishes you and does not prevent (except for new players, i guess).

Runescape apparently isn’t even close to EVE when it comes to open world, sandbox and player freedom.

thanks!

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33

Which are exactly the aspects that make Eve stand out and which must be kept if not emphasized even more.

However, we have lots of already existing PvE content that is mostly done by single players and it probably wouldn’t hurt to bring it a little closer to a 2017 gaming experience and to close some gaps, for example between the SOE and the faction epic arcs.
More intelligent or dynamic missions would also be nice, maybe cooperative missions, conflicting missions, multi-goal missions, timer based missions, reactive NPC behavior, subcontracting of salvage rights and secondary mission goals…
It just needs to keep fitting into Eve, meaning: no instances, player help and disruptions are always possible, no stupid hero stories, rewards aretied to the Eve market and so on…

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When CCP figures out how to create a procedural mission generator, together with a procedural “agent-text” generator explaining the mission, then they could bring out new expansions with more npc content every week. whoever designed the current system for creating missions never had extendability in mind. i’m not sure extendability is a word, but you understand it anyway.

Not emptyquoting myself.

Problem is that, when you cater to the mainstream, they will inevitably cry for nerfs against thiefs and suicide gankers, causing a lot of hate and toxidity.

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Eve can never cater to mainstream as long as free for all PvP w/ full loot exists.

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Runescape is nearly dead and not a Sandbox. It shows 17 Users on its forum. Clearly the way to go.

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Yeah, they got it right and I know nothing. It’a sandbox because you can gather beach sand in Lumbridge. OK, joking aside: Runescape is kind of a middle ground and has features of both genres. But it is more an open world themepark than a sandbox. That I can roam freely, that skills are not locked into classes and that I can choose in what part of PVE I contribute is nice, but that’s just open world, not sandbox. Key to a sandbox game is that the players have a meaningful impact on the game world. Player housings, a bit of a player/crafting driven economy and some DEV-led events don’t cut it.

And then there is/was the PVP. OldSchool PVP is dead from what I heard and the occasional warband or PKing a bot in the wildy on RS3 can’t hold a candle to EVE.

And Jagex is milking the almost dead game like most other generic MMOs do. Darn Treasure Hunter Keys, XP Lamps and Auras. RuneMetrics-Pro (like an ingame EFT/EVEmon/Zkill) for 50 bucks a year? That’ why were are here with EVE, right? RS had a long run, but it’s far from being a good blueprint for EVE. Go find a penguin.

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Paid expansions, even if feasible or sensible, would just bring extra revenue. I don’t think EVE haves a problem with revenue and expense in development, rather with what is developed and why.

CCP has been looking to make players very satisfied rather than make many players satisfied. This is why we get extremely costly content aimed at tiny minorities who enjoy the game a lot while large amounts of players are ignored since, all in all, they aren’t having a blast…

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The only true sandbox I know that’s close to Eve is Ultima Online. I spent 7 years in that game from 1999.

Of course, that was before Trammel came and ruined PvP.

I was a carpenter for 7 years in UO and sold furniture for a living in the game.

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Can you be exotic dancer in Ultima online?