Won't someone please think of the Krabs!

Communications Center General Discussion
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I’m just gonna copy & paste this here.

We’ve had 3 nerfs to Krabbing Hulls. The Rorq, the Carrier, and the VNI is coming too.

It means more Plexing to keep up.

So we are chasing people with money to spend at this stage. Those with wealth are our target audience. But the market doesn’t work that way. Not any more.

We have a 4% retention rate for new players. 4%. And CCP knows that training time is an issue, which is why they have done this newbie pack.

A player needs a subscription, and spare ISK for ships and Skill Injectors. And… Here is the state of the market for young gamers in my neck of the woods.

Here is the copy & paste:

" Erm…

So, about that market eh?

Millennials are kinda poor. You know, Gamers.

And…

Also…

https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/

So is EVE a game for bored Rich people, or a game for the next generation of math nerds?

EVE needs a lot of time if you want to build big too. Null etc.

So you have 2 camps. Bored Rich Kids, or Math Nerds with limited cash ( millennials ).

Which one do you target?

So far the Krabbing Nerfs have been chasing Bored Rich Kids ( by making ticks smaller ). Rorqs, Carriers, & VNI’s.

4% new player retention rate.

2001 was a long time ago. The world has changed.

I think we need to target the next gen of nerds, and that means NOT nerfing krabbing.

Just my 2p, but there you go. "

In chasing bored Rich Kids ( by nerfing Krabbing stuff to increase PLEX’ing ) are we doing it right? EVE is like C&C for how Nerdy it gets. It’s a D&D thing for how much math is involved.

I, for one, think we should be chasing nerds.

Over to you to discuss :slight_smile:

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Ore additional. If it really is unsustainable in the amounts we churn out then cap the amount of ore per day in a system. Just my 2p on that one.

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I shall now retreat to my bunker as flames fly.

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door

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Sadly my generation has pointed at Millennials and not in a favorable way always, but quite often we are locked into the dogma/doctrine of our experiences at the time we came through.

We had it very good, Millennials although enjoying much of the good are experiencing predatory practices that come from the chasing of profits/money, there is less wealth to be had because wealth is concentrated at the top (super wealthy), so that means less for them to look towards the future as secure/brighter.

So before I get completely off track it’s not just that Millennials won’t spend money it’s just that much of everything looks like it’s predatory even when it’s not, yes they have an alpha program but Millennials are also reminded that the predatory practices IRL are also here in EVE, that they can’t even hope to afford to one day plex their account because look at the price of it, I’ve been here long enough to remember when it was $125 million.

Cobble that with the fact of all the other predatory practices in EVE and that they cannot go out and grab a few shinies to bling out a ship and the constant blow back from aggressive older more established players/corps and then the steep curve of the learning process, the requirements of mega Corps to “divulge” all before they are allowed into the pearly gates at what point does it seem attractive, so CCP throws them a bone by way of a “starter pack” and look at the response from players who have it all, the well established, the wealthy.

Would you want to stick around, I wouldn’t because if you are fighting IRL a losing battle against the “establishment” IRL why come to a place where you are told you are not valued or wanted because “you are changing my game” and everything you have so far is under threat like “nerf alphas” take away heavy drones, etc, look at the latest events and the “establishment” players are throwing fits about it, add to that the attacks on “pay to win” packs that really, really don’t effect the fat cats in EVE in the grand scheme, any way that’s my take away.

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Oddly relevant:

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:thinking:

These are actually very interesting points. Whole essays could probably be written on the topic of older gen vs. new gen. But trying not to resort to that, I think the more vocal “back in my day” crowd will always be on the losing side, because nothing ever stays the same in the long run. Change is the only real certainty. Even the most hardcore of the “back in my day” crowd is a joke compared to our flint knapping ancestors dodging predators with absolutely no safety net. If anyone has a say about how hard life is, only our ancient ancestors really do. With that said, the human condition is about wanting to make life better for the next gen, better than we had it. That’s how we progress. We shouldn’t be complaining about it when life is better for them, and be outraged when for some reason it isn’t.

So to keep it brief, we don’t really know what the future is in store for the new generations. There will only be more and more automation. Likely even robots collecting resources, robots refining resources, robots producing from resources, basically the entire labor chain of the economy. Top that off with asteroid mining perhaps within the next 50-100 years, where there is an estimate that one asteroid may have $700 quintillion in gold, basically that is near unlimited resources. The future economy will likely be unrecognizable to today’s generation. Change is only accelerating these days, making the “back in my day” crowd only more and more irrelevant, truth be told. So what we really need now are solutions for the future, not complaints from the past.

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In the U.S., millennials are either mired in school loan debt and can’t afford anything or are working for minimum wage and can’t afford anything.

Doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure this out.

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Hey, Minmatar still flint-knapp :stuck_out_tongue:

But yes, things have changed. And bashing the Krabs, with your credit-card ready to go, is… Not sustainable if I have read the market correctly ( the lack of spending power new younger players have ).

The Krux is the wealth divide. We have some rich kids, but not that many. And we have hordes of young space-dreaming poorer kids. You could have a game for rich kids, with a major shortage of people to sell to as player numbers drop off ( dying of old age? ); or… You could have busy systems if Krabbing was used as a mechanism more ( generating in-game ISK because they can’t afford to PLEX as much. I’m in favour of subscriptions, but after that I have my doubts as to how much said newbs will spend ).

I think financially both are viable; but you can’t have both, & one is kinda dull.

Personally I don’t want half-empty systems because of a player shortage.

Interestingly, if we go The Way Of The Krab then there may be plenty of nerds to dunk for the credit-card warriors as well as other poor nerds. Busy systems best systems IMHO.

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No. Training time is not a issue for a player that understand EVE. Bugs in NPE are issue. But it’s better to grab money and say its for rookies than fix game.

Stay for a one day in rookie help and you find bunch of things that make rookies rage quit.

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You shouldn’t mess with wookies. They’ll pull your arm off, and then hit you with the soggy end.

And CCP likes wookies.

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" unsustainable amounts of ore ".

If we are not blowing up enough stuff then this will be a problem. Bring back the daily cap on Ore per system and you have a control lever to manage that.
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" High Sec loot surplus ". I heard this recently.

Tech 2 comes from Null. Meta 8 often comes from Null. No-one uses Meta 6. Well, not much anyway. If there is too much Meta 8 then, again, dial it back a bit.
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" Too much VNI Krabbing afk Alphas etc. "

Make sure the Ishtar can do the job too. That would fix that. You fly the more hands-on VNI, then pair up ( or fleet up ) with Ishtars across multiple sites.
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" Losing Local in Null. "

People who fly in Null chose not to fly in Wormholes. This could cost you A LOT of players if it is more than just an experiment for a short period of time. Make more WH systems. Don’t break Null.
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Carrier Nerfs so far.

The NSA is the NSA. As you do. How can it be that a Fighter that is faster & smaller than a frigate can’t hit it? It makes zero sense. If carriers get too flimsy then no-one will fly them.
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All of this is simple logic. But if people can’t afford to buy ships then Null falls apart. You can only squeeze so much out of Null.

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Hello I am a millennial with a low paying job. You make some good points but honestly $15 is not a lot of money even for cash strapped youngsters. In my opinion the problem is that new players are presented with the idea of plexing their account and foregoing a monthly payment, realize it’s highly difficult especially in the first year in eve, and then get burnt out trying to grind ISK when really all you wanted was a fun escape from Hellworld 2019. I think the question is how do we convince people that eve is a fun game and not a 3rd or 4th part time job?

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Me: “Hey, Krab, why do you PLEX?”
Krab:“To pay for all my alts”.
Me: “Why do you have so many alts?”
Krab:“To farm in nullsec”.
Me: “Why do you farm in nullsec?”
Krab:“To pay for PLEX”.

All this Krabism is what’s killing the game. Who wants to play with people like this? Are they saving for a carrier? And what are they going to do when they got it?
Farm.
All of incursion content, exploration, new sites… all for…
Farming.

The low retention rate is because the game is boring and they made everything non-PVP too easy.

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Can someone define Krabbing for me?

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Think Mr. Krabs

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I didn’t watch much Spongebob. What’s the parallel between the owner of the Crabby Patty (sp) and toons in EVE?

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Mr. Krabs only cares about making money. I dunno if that’s where it came from but that’s what it makes me think of

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As the original post says the young are running out of cash to spend.

So Krabbing becomes important to generate ISK for PvP ships, as PLEX’ing gets harder. Normal market stuff.

Without ISK for ships no PvP happens. That’s it, it’s over.

And who builds those ships?

Krabbing is part harvesting part construction. It’s required, and a major part of the game for a reason. Or you’ll have no ships to PvP in.

PvP obsession is a major problem IMHO. Out in Null it’s a team that survives.

So making Krabs primary targets can cause some real problems. If too many Krabs go down then the PvP supply lines die too.

Which is why I suggested the following ‘levers’ CCP can pull to control Null’s wealth: