First off, there was a huge change in the way that Capital Ships, the largest and most power class of ship in the game, move around the universe. Rather than being able to "fast travel" from one side of the universe to the other in a matter of 7 minutes (this was timed and recorded on a blog that I can't be arsed to find now) they will now spend several days going the same distance.
Ok, so what, why would they quit? It's not the only class of ship in the game, right? Well actually, most high level EVE players have multiple accounts. A whole lot of veteran accounts consist of multiple alts that have trained directly for Capital Ships. In other words, those alts were designed to do one thing and one thing only. So you make that one thing much more difficult and the end result is that a lot of veteran players allowed their alt Capital Ship accounts to lapse.
It wasn't so much that actual EVE players were leaving, although many veterans did in fact leave over these changes, but that those players reduced how many accounts they were running.
Secondly, CCP decided to partially ban a program called isbox. They decided that the part of isbox which allowed one player to issue the same command to multple EVE clients simultaneously was giving many players an unfair advantage. There were hundreds of EVE players that owned dozens of accounts and they would use isbox run entire mining fleets, or mission runner fleets at the same time.
When isbox was partially banned, most of the people using this tool dropped most or all of their extra accounts and let them lapse. So yet again, we saw a big artificial decline in account numbers, but it wasn't necessarily thousands of EVE players quitting, just a couple hundred EVE players deciding not to renew their 10+ isboxing accounts.
Third, and most recent, are the changes to the way that null space works. This is being called FozzieSov after the Developer CCP Fozzie and how it is radically changing the way that players can own and control space, which in EVE we call Sovereignty. These changes are completely disrupting the power blocs that the EVE elite have spent the last 5-8 years solidifying, and it has many of those power brokers and their henchmen very angry. People who are upset with the change in power are quitting in droves.
The FozzieSov related drop in population, unlike the other more recent drops in population, has actually been real EVE players quitting and leaving the game and not just EVE players letting multiple accounts lapse.
Fourth, and probably not last, is the fact that new players these days have to contend with things that I never had to contend with when I was coming up. For instance, CODE didn't exist in 2005. This is an alliance whose sole existence is to grief high sec players. More often than not their easiest prey are new players. Imagine being a new player in a full loss game and losing 2-3 ships on your first day? CCP's pro-griefing policy is losing them new blood, while other changes are losing them their old blood.
They can't burn the candle at both ends.
Either the new player experience needs to be greatly improved and griefing greatly clamped down on, or they won't get much new blood. On the other hand, they aren't handling vets very well either, but discussing what I think should be done there would double the length of this TL;DR post.
First off, there was a huge change in the way that Capital Ships, the largest and most power class of ship in the game, move around the universe. Rather than being able to "fast travel" from one side of the universe to the other in a matter of 7 minutes (this was timed and recorded on a blog that I can't be arsed to find now) they will now spend several days going the same distance.
Ok, so what, why would they quit? It's not the only class of ship in the game, right? Well actually, most high level EVE players have multiple accounts. A whole lot of veteran accounts consist of multiple alts that have trained directly for Capital Ships. In other words, those alts were designed to do one thing and one thing only. So you make that one thing much more difficult and the end result is that a lot of veteran players allowed their alt Capital Ship accounts to lapse.
It wasn't so much that actual EVE players were leaving, although many veterans did in fact leave over these changes, but that those players reduced how many accounts they were running.
Secondly, CCP decided to partially ban a program called isbox. They decided that the part of isbox which allowed one player to issue the same command to multple EVE clients simultaneously was giving many players an unfair advantage. There were hundreds of EVE players that owned dozens of accounts and they would use isbox run entire mining fleets, or mission runner fleets at the same time.
When isbox was partially banned, most of the people using this tool dropped most or all of their extra accounts and let them lapse. So yet again, we saw a big artificial decline in account numbers, but it wasn't necessarily thousands of EVE players quitting, just a couple hundred EVE players deciding not to renew their 10+ isboxing accounts.
Third, and most recent, are the changes to the way that null space works. This is being called FozzieSov after the Developer CCP Fozzie and how it is radically changing the way that players can own and control space, which in EVE we call Sovereignty. These changes are completely disrupting the power blocs that the EVE elite have spent the last 5-8 years solidifying, and it has many of those power brokers and their henchmen very angry. People who are upset with the change in power are quitting in droves.
The FozzieSov related drop in population, unlike the other more recent drops in population, has actually been real EVE players quitting and leaving the game and not just EVE players letting multiple accounts lapse.
Fourth, and probably not last, is the fact that new players these days have to contend with things that I never had to contend with when I was coming up. For instance, CODE didn't exist in 2005. This is an alliance whose sole existence is to grief high sec players. More often than not their easiest prey are new players. Imagine being a new player in a full loss game and losing 2-3 ships on your first day? CCP's pro-griefing policy is losing them new blood, while other changes are losing them their old blood.
They can't burn the candle at both ends.
Either the new player experience needs to be greatly improved and griefing greatly clamped down on, or they won't get much new blood. On the other hand, they aren't handling vets very well either, but discussing what I think should be done there would double the length of this TL;DR post.
Good post. Makes a whole lot of sense why the numbers are dropping so fast.
I really think CCP needs to fire their current game designers and hire some professionals. Around 2008/2009 I really thought EVE would become the definitive scifi mmo. They were talking about adding in actual Avatar Pve, players owning shops in stations and even had gameplay videos of the engine they were using for this before scrapping it to make the super high detailed closets they replaced that system with to sell microtransactions. They took what would have been the evolution of their game and turned it into a gimmick to sell people cosmetic items.
I really thought by 2015 we'd be docking up and having a gun fight in eve. Even if it was limited to 100 players in a station at a time or something it could have worked. Instead Eve is basically the same game I left in 2010 and it's a dated spreadsheet only game.
Old players get bored, and the game isn't attractive to new players. 7 years of isk and skill training is too much to catch up on. and in pvp every % matters, that 30% less shield or cpu grid will mean alot versus a vet that can insta buy their ship 10000x.
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
Right now CCP are doing nothing fresh. Besides add the new T3 destroyers all they have done is mostly make changes justbfir the sake of making a change and saying they did something. The new stupid overview icons come to mind.
They'll be having another mass exodus if they dint wake up and see how their changes are pissing off the player base.
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
This is why the majority of gamers detest open world pvp where there's loss involved. CCP has long been supportive of trolls and they never really caught flak for it. EVE has it's niche, but it seems even their players have grown weary of the status quo.
What's more interesting is that CCP is clearly a one-hit wonder with EVE. Considering DUST 514 wasn't regarded well at all, and WoD turned out to be vaporware.
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
This is why the majority of gamers detest open world pvp where there's loss involved. CCP has long been supportive of trolls and they never really caught flak for it. EVE has it's niche, but it seems even their players have grown weary of the status quo.
What's more interesting is that CCP is clearly a one-hit wonder with EVE. Considering DUST 514 wasn't regarded well at all, and WoD turned out to be vaporware.
I'm one of them. Still, I played Eve from about 2009-2011 and had fun hanging out with the corp and doing hi-sec stuff.
The game is what it is and always has been that. I'd agree with anyone that says it's a troll enabling gankfest. But what I don't get is why people create threads to complain about it being a troll enabling gankfest. That's what it was built for, and they are never going to change it to be anything else.
They say, "never say never". Well, I'm saying never. The minute they pull out of that niche, subs will plummet and they know it. And too few other player types have any interest in the kind of gameplay Eve provides to take their place.
Originally posted by h0urg1ass First off, there was a huge change in the way that Capital Ships, the largest and most power class of ship in the game, move around the universe. Rather than being able to "fast travel" from one side of the universe to the other in a matter of 7 minutes (this was timed and recorded on a blog that I can't be arsed to find now) they will now spend several days going the same distance.Ok, so what, why would they quit? It's not the only class of ship in the game, right? Well actually, most high level EVE players have multiple accounts. A whole lot of veteran accounts consist of multiple alts that have trained directly for Capital Ships. In other words, those alts were designed to do one thing and one thing only. So you make that one thing much more difficult and the end result is that a lot of veteran players allowed their alt Capital Ship accounts to lapse.It wasn't so much that actual EVE players were leaving, although many veterans did in fact leave over these changes, but that those players reduced how many accounts they were running.Secondly, CCP decided to partially ban a program called isbox. They decided that the part of isbox which allowed one player to issue the same command to multple EVE clients simultaneously was giving many players an unfair advantage. There were hundreds of EVE players that owned dozens of accounts and they would use isbox run entire mining fleets, or mission runner fleets at the same time.When isbox was partially banned, most of the people using this tool dropped most or all of their extra accounts and let them lapse. So yet again, we saw a big artificial decline in account numbers, but it wasn't necessarily thousands of EVE players quitting, just a couple hundred EVE players deciding not to renew their 10+ isboxing accounts.Third, and most recent, are the changes to the way that null space works. This is being called FozzieSov after the Developer CCP Fozzie and how it is radically changing the way that players can own and control space, which in EVE we call Sovereignty. These changes are completely disrupting the power blocs that the EVE elite have spent the last 5-8 years solidifying, and it has many of those power brokers and their henchmen very angry. People who are upset with the change in power are quitting in droves.The FozzieSov related drop in population, unlike the other more recent drops in population, has actually been real EVE players quitting and leaving the game and not just EVE players letting multiple accounts lapse.Fourth, and probably not last, is the fact that new players these days have to contend with things that I never had to contend with when I was coming up. For instance, CODE didn't exist in 2005. This is an alliance whose sole existence is to grief high sec players. More often than not their easiest prey are new players. Imagine being a new player in a full loss game and losing 2-3 ships on your first day? CCP's pro-griefing policy is losing them new blood, while other changes are losing them their old blood.They can't burn the candle at both ends. Either the new player experience needs to be greatly improved and griefing greatly clamped down on, or they won't get much new blood. On the other hand, they aren't handling vets very well either, but discussing what I think should be done there would double the length of this TL;DR post.
Your points are just projected bias, having very little back up.
Proof is in the pudding - stagnation.
Only thing that keeps business around is continuous growth but EVE didn't move anywhere since 2010/2011.
I sold my 60mSP accounts (one combat, one indy) back in 2013.
I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake, but after keeping tabs on what has happened in nulsec over the last couple years, it would appear that EVE has gotten rather dull. Couple that with the steep decline of player activity (in terms of logins) and I have a solid case on why I should pass playing this game again.
Is there anything information/data available that may counter this point-of-view?
I sold my 60mSP accounts (one combat, one indy) back in 2013.
I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake, but after keeping tabs on what has happened in nulsec over the last couple years, it would appear that EVE has gotten rather dull. Couple that with the steep decline of player activity (in terms of logins) and I have a solid case on why I should pass playing this game again.
Is there anything information/data available that may counter this point-of-view?
What you got in EVE:
-many old veterans quit the game, natural evolution.
-players from the WoW generation find the game too hard and difficult a.k.a. 'boring' as they are cannon fodder.
-huge coalitions who decide the nullsec landscape, even having no-attack pacts made in backroom deals
-handful of alliance leaders who sit on the thrones deciding a stale nullsec is good because open war can result in loss of sovereignty and moons (= less money), resulting in arranged nullsec fights without real open war to please some of their pvp players.
-there are leaders who RMT this money so they profit by having a stale nullsec.
-Some of those leaders have a direct line to CCP as some new CCP developers were directly recruited from their ranks when they were normal players.
-if new CCP game decisions are not favored by the huge coalitions, their leaders threats CCP with a exodus of their members, thus loss of subscription money unless they nerf the decisions or even cancel it.
-CSM player representatives are elected, most votes count. Ofc those huge coalition members are 'encouraged' to vote on their own guys, they get elected and try to stear future game decisions the way it benefits their allinace+ leaders, so changes the game needs get canceled or nerfed.
-new entities are forced to become a renter of those alliance coalitions and pay rent or get blobbed.
^ Those are pretty good reasons summed up why EVE is in the worst state since 2008.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I thought Eve was worth giving a shot, but I found out different. The problem is that the difficulty of the learning curve is amplified by the toxicity of the playerbase. Being hard to learn, integrate and play is fine. That is something that modern games need more of, but the players themselves just make it worse. They try to feed of your frustration, and they actively try to ruin your playtime. So yeah, why would anyone bother to take up the game when they find out that they are typically playing with the worst type of people. If Eve is failing, it's because the playerbase is laying in the grave they dug.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Originally posted by eye_m I thought Eve was worth giving a shot, but I found out different. The problem is that the difficulty of the learning curve is amplified by the toxicity of the playerbase. Being hard to learn, integrate and play is fine. That is something that modern games need more of, but the players themselves just make it worse. They try to feed of your frustration, and they actively try to ruin your playtime. So yeah, why would anyone bother to take up the game when they find out that they are typically playing with the worst type of people. If Eve is failing, it's because the playerbase is laying in the grave they dug.
Yes and no.
The worst mistake any new player can make in EVE is not being in a player run corporation. If you're not in a corporation, then you are no one and everyone will be looking to ruin your fun. At the very least apply to join EVE University where you will be surrounded by players who want to help you have a good time in EVE.
It really depends on who you join up with to be honest.
I've been in corporations with great people like Black Watch Legionnaires. I've been in corporations with mostly decent people like Stimulus. I've been in corporations where I didn't feel like I fit in at all like Sanctuary of Shadows. I've been in alliances with sacks of utter scum like when Adversity was flying with Rote Kapelle or like pretty much everyone in Overly Emotional... ahem, I mean Overload Everything.
I sold my 60mSP accounts (one combat, one indy) back in 2013.
I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake, but after keeping tabs on what has happened in nulsec over the last couple years, it would appear that EVE has gotten rather dull. Couple that with the steep decline of player activity (in terms of logins) and I have a solid case on why I should pass playing this game again.
Is there anything information/data available that may counter this point-of-view?
What you got in EVE:
-many old veterans quit the game, natural evolution.
-players from the WoW generation find the game too hard and difficult a.k.a. 'boring' as they are cannon fodder.
-huge coalitions who decide the nullsec landscape, even having no-attack pacts made in backroom deals
-handful of alliance leaders who sit on the thrones deciding a stale nullsec is good because open war can result in loss of sovereignty and moons (= less money), resulting in arranged nullsec fights without real open war to please some of their pvp players.
-there are leaders who RMT this money so they profit by having a stale nullsec.
-Some of those leaders have a direct line to CCP as some new CCP developers were directly recruited from their ranks when they were normal players.
-if new CCP game decisions are not favored by the huge coalitions, their leaders threats CCP with a exodus of their members, thus loss of subscription money unless they nerf the decisions or even cancel it.
-CSM player representatives are elected, most votes count. Ofc those huge coalition members are 'encouraged' to vote on their own guys, they get elected and try to stear future game decisions the way it benefits their allinace+ leaders, so changes the game needs get canceled or nerfed.
-new entities are forced to become a renter of those alliance coalitions and pay rent or get blobbed.
^ Those are pretty good reasons summed up why EVE is in the worst state since 2008.
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply.
I shall remain a lurker and hope CCP does something to breathe new life into this game.
I sold my 60mSP accounts (one combat, one indy) back in 2013.
I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake, but after keeping tabs on what has happened in nulsec over the last couple years, it would appear that EVE has gotten rather dull. Couple that with the steep decline of player activity (in terms of logins) and I have a solid case on why I should pass playing this game again.
Is there anything information/data available that may counter this point-of-view?
What you got in EVE:
-many old veterans quit the game, natural evolution.
-players from the WoW generation find the game too hard and difficult a.k.a. 'boring' as they are cannon fodder.
-huge coalitions who decide the nullsec landscape, even having no-attack pacts made in backroom deals
-handful of alliance leaders who sit on the thrones deciding a stale nullsec is good because open war can result in loss of sovereignty and moons (= less money), resulting in arranged nullsec fights without real open war to please some of their pvp players.
-there are leaders who RMT this money so they profit by having a stale nullsec.
-Some of those leaders have a direct line to CCP as some new CCP developers were directly recruited from their ranks when they were normal players.
-if new CCP game decisions are not favored by the huge coalitions, their leaders threats CCP with a exodus of their members, thus loss of subscription money unless they nerf the decisions or even cancel it.
-CSM player representatives are elected, most votes count. Ofc those huge coalition members are 'encouraged' to vote on their own guys, they get elected and try to stear future game decisions the way it benefits their allinace+ leaders, so changes the game needs get canceled or nerfed.
-new entities are forced to become a renter of those alliance coalitions and pay rent or get blobbed.
^ Those are pretty good reasons summed up why EVE is in the worst state since 2008.
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply.
I shall remain a lurker and hope CCP does something to breathe new life into this game.
Originally posted by Talonsin There are many reasons for this and one of them is the developers embracing of the marketing slogan "Be the Bad Guy". Over the years empire space has gotten more and more dangerous which makes mining, trading, mission running and other non-pvp activities less appealing to players.
Actually, HiSec has gotten safer and safer over the years.
CCP continues to try and build PR by releasing stories of people losing vast amounts of real money in scams.
I've not seen much activity by CCP on that front. The big publicly known scams tend to be advertised by the player base and various gaming media outlets rather than CCP themselves.
Who wants to play a game where everyone is looking to scam you?
Those looking to beat the scammers?
Bottom line, PVP focused games do not attract players like other games do.
I hear Call of Duty, Battlefield, Team Fortress, Counterstrike, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Mortal Combat, Civilisation to name a few are pretty popular.
If you look at DarkFall, Mortal Online, Archeage and any other MMO that focuses on PVP you find way less players than games that have PVP but only on request, such as WoW and TOR.
I remember Darkfall being a game touted as having very little grind. The reality: one of the grindiest MMOs you'll find outside of the Asian market.
All CCP has to do is make empire space a little safer
LOL. They've been doing that for years. Yet, people still manage to get themselves killed.
but they have this chip on their shoulder that their game has to be ruthless everywhere.
It's not, HiSec is pretty safe and you've got to work pretty hard to make yourself a victim.
CCP Falcon said this: "Some of the people complaining in this thread have valid points about the fact that they don't feel safe. Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not suppose to feel safe in New Eden. Eve is not a game for the faint hearted. It's a game that will chew you up and spit you out in the blink of an eye if you even think about letting your guard down or becoming complacent."
Everyone loves CCP Falcon.
Eve wont die but as they continue to make the game more ruthless and encourage scamming, and other empire-based aggression, it will continue to lose population and become more of a niche game.
Not really. Their business model has worked well for 12 years now. It's not the biggest MMO on the market, but it's the best at what it does.
Sad really when you think this game was up to over 400k subscribers at one time. As I said, this in not the only reason for the decline. Vets moving on to other games like Elite
Fans of EVE aren't moving to ED. I'm not saying ED is a bad game, I'm sure it's great, but it simply doesn't attempt to offer the same thing as EVE, hence EVE fans are unlikely to drop EVE specifically for ED.
high barrier to entry with the drastic learning curve
True. That's one hell of a learning cliff they have there. They're trying to make it more bearable for the newbros but that's definitely a tough one to fix.
Originally posted by Elijarh I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
EVE's not about getting what you want, when you want. It's about getting on top or even just surviving while the rest of the player base tries to do the same at your expense.
Sure, someone CAN kill you and take all your stuff, but then, why were you carrying all your stuff in the first place? You'll find there's never a good reason to fill your ship with all your worldly (spacely?) goods and the safe carrying limit of any ship is defined by its ability to avoid those nasty space pirates.
Given that you said you don't like risk, it would seem EVE would never really appeal to you anyway.
Originally posted by F0URTWENTY I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
[mod edit]
Simply being at your keyboard isn't enough. Just like the gankers, you need to apply a little bit of intellect. Scout ahead, check killboards for recent freighter kills (hint, it's as easy as visiting https://zkillboard.com/kills/freighters/) and change your plan when you spot trouble.
Originally posted by F0URTWENTY I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
[mod edit]
Simply being at your keyboard isn't enough. Just like the gankers, you need to apply a little bit of intellect. Scout ahead, check killboards for recent freighter kills (hint, it's as easy as visiting https://zkillboard.com/kills/freighters/) and change your plan when you spot trouble.
Apparently this is far too much trouble.
1) Subbing a second account to "scout ahead" like you suggest probably isn't practical for the majority of gamers.
2) Checking third party sites to be able to do anything is poor game design.
The mentality of most Eve players is just get another account to scout! or Buy a second account to train for a different kind of ship! That logic is unrealistic for players that aren't playing the game like its a second job. Some people just want to log in and have fun not have to log in a bunch of alts or do a bunch of research on third party sites to know where they can fly safely.
This is why eve has problems retaining players and why it's in steady decline right now. It caters to only the most nerdy and serious players that want to play eve as a second job.
[Quote]2) Checking third party sites to be able to do anything is poor game design.[/quote] Excessive dependence on third party tools is bad design, I agree. However, the method I mentioned is one option for HiSec logistics without any other player support.
[Quote]1) Subbing a second account to "scout ahead" like you suggest probably isn't practical for the majority of gamers.
The mentality of most Eve players is just get another account to scout! or Buy a second account to train for a different kind of ship! That logic is unrealistic for players that aren't playing the game like its a second job. Some people just want to log in and have fun not have to log in a bunch of alts or do a bunch of research on third party sites to know where they can fly safely.
This is why eve has problems retaining players and why it's in steady decline right now. It caters to only the most nerdy and serious players that want to play eve as a second job.[/quote] It's cute that you infer the use of additional accounts and go into a mini rant about their necessity when a much simpler option was available: friends. Have you considered that you could just ask a friend for help? "Hey corpies, anyone been through Uedama recently? Much CODE activity there atm?" Not that hard, is it?
Many of the negativity here are either based on complete ignorance or those with outdated information.
I'm not going to bother with those.
Eve is, what, 10 years? More IIRC, even a casual--focused WoW is having trouble retaining (much less growing) their peak population numbers, its only predictable that those graphs are not going to go up most of the time. Especially with newer titles being announced left right centre on a yearly basis. That it still has a very sizable playerbase compared to much newer and PVE focused titles should mean something to you but obviously idiots will only see what they want to see.
Bottom line : People move on. Thats what people do. I was an Eve fanatic for a good number of years but I too moved on(way back in 2010)...well just because. Not for any damning reasons, I just wanted to play a new game and genre.
There are many reasons for this and one of them is the developers embracing of the marketing slogan "Be the Bad Guy". Over the years empire space has gotten more and more dangerous which makes mining, trading, mission running and other non-pvp activities less appealing to players. CCP continues to try and build PR by releasing stories of people losing vast amounts of real money in scams. Who wants to play a game where everyone is looking to scam you?
Bottom line, PVP focused games do not attract players like other games do. If you look at DarkFall, Mortal Online, Archeage and any other MMO that focuses on PVP you find way less players than games that have PVP but only on request, such as WoW and TOR. All CCP has to do is make empire space a little safer but they have this chip on their shoulder that their game has to be ruthless everywhere. CCP Falcon said this:
"Some of the people complaining in this thread have valid points about the fact that they don't feel safe. Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not suppose to feel safe in New Eden.
Eve is not a game for the faint hearted. It's a game that will chew you up and spit you out in the blink of an eye if you even think about letting your guard down or becoming complacent."
Eve wont die but as they continue to make the game more ruthless and encourage scamming, and other empire-based aggression, it will continue to lose population and become more of a niche game. Sad really when you think this game was up to over 400k subscribers at one time.
As I said, this in not the only reason for the decline. Vets moving on to other games like Elite, high barrier to entry with the drastic learning curve, the normal summer slowdown and other factors are also a part of this issue.
Pretty much this. A griefers game of about 10k-15k subs. Very niche and a place where the elite can play with themselves....haha!
Comments
First off, there was a huge change in the way that Capital Ships, the largest and most power class of ship in the game, move around the universe. Rather than being able to "fast travel" from one side of the universe to the other in a matter of 7 minutes (this was timed and recorded on a blog that I can't be arsed to find now) they will now spend several days going the same distance.
Ok, so what, why would they quit? It's not the only class of ship in the game, right? Well actually, most high level EVE players have multiple accounts. A whole lot of veteran accounts consist of multiple alts that have trained directly for Capital Ships. In other words, those alts were designed to do one thing and one thing only. So you make that one thing much more difficult and the end result is that a lot of veteran players allowed their alt Capital Ship accounts to lapse.
It wasn't so much that actual EVE players were leaving, although many veterans did in fact leave over these changes, but that those players reduced how many accounts they were running.
Secondly, CCP decided to partially ban a program called isbox. They decided that the part of isbox which allowed one player to issue the same command to multple EVE clients simultaneously was giving many players an unfair advantage. There were hundreds of EVE players that owned dozens of accounts and they would use isbox run entire mining fleets, or mission runner fleets at the same time.
When isbox was partially banned, most of the people using this tool dropped most or all of their extra accounts and let them lapse. So yet again, we saw a big artificial decline in account numbers, but it wasn't necessarily thousands of EVE players quitting, just a couple hundred EVE players deciding not to renew their 10+ isboxing accounts.
Third, and most recent, are the changes to the way that null space works. This is being called FozzieSov after the Developer CCP Fozzie and how it is radically changing the way that players can own and control space, which in EVE we call Sovereignty. These changes are completely disrupting the power blocs that the EVE elite have spent the last 5-8 years solidifying, and it has many of those power brokers and their henchmen very angry. People who are upset with the change in power are quitting in droves.
The FozzieSov related drop in population, unlike the other more recent drops in population, has actually been real EVE players quitting and leaving the game and not just EVE players letting multiple accounts lapse.
Fourth, and probably not last, is the fact that new players these days have to contend with things that I never had to contend with when I was coming up. For instance, CODE didn't exist in 2005. This is an alliance whose sole existence is to grief high sec players. More often than not their easiest prey are new players. Imagine being a new player in a full loss game and losing 2-3 ships on your first day? CCP's pro-griefing policy is losing them new blood, while other changes are losing them their old blood.
They can't burn the candle at both ends.
Either the new player experience needs to be greatly improved and griefing greatly clamped down on, or they won't get much new blood. On the other hand, they aren't handling vets very well either, but discussing what I think should be done there would double the length of this TL;DR post.
Good post. Makes a whole lot of sense why the numbers are dropping so fast.
I really think CCP needs to fire their current game designers and hire some professionals. Around 2008/2009 I really thought EVE would become the definitive scifi mmo. They were talking about adding in actual Avatar Pve, players owning shops in stations and even had gameplay videos of the engine they were using for this before scrapping it to make the super high detailed closets they replaced that system with to sell microtransactions. They took what would have been the evolution of their game and turned it into a gimmick to sell people cosmetic items.
I really thought by 2015 we'd be docking up and having a gun fight in eve. Even if it was limited to 100 players in a station at a time or something it could have worked. Instead Eve is basically the same game I left in 2010 and it's a dated spreadsheet only game.
Archeage EU - Nui
I played EvE off and on over 12 years, Never more than 2 months on a roll, I feel that is because I am a peaceful player that prefered to trade etc with no risk, From what I gather and I could be wrong?, EvE was too much risk for me to put effort and time in to potentially loose all at the hands of a PvP player stalking gates, Just because they could.
I must stress I was no where near a hardcore player and people may correct and educate me now with a method to counter my statement above. But really that is it for me.. Wanting to be in a huge world with others but have some protection to trade and feed a economy.
Eli
I've always been curious how people feel trading, industry, and market manipulation is peaceful. I might go and lose a 30 million ISK faction frigate while the traders risk losing several orders of magnitude more even if they're docked up in a station. If you're talking about moving stuff between hubs for profit, you can hire Red Frog to do it for you if you don't want to lose your stuff. It costs a million ISK per jump which will obviously cut into your profit margin, but your margins shouldn't be so paper thin that it causes a loss. You could also find people to help with protection if you insist on moving billions of ISK yourself.
Flying an anti-tanked freighter with over a billion ISK in cargo solo and AFK is how people lose their stuff.
I know someone who played recently and had a tanked freighter killed by code while at the keyboard. As soon as he decloaked a bunch of them repeatedly bumped him for over half an hour till he had to log out (some people cant play games all day long like the gankers) As soon as he logged out he was attacked by a noob ship and flagged for pvp so his freighter warped into empty space where they probed it out and killed it in safety.
CCP think its fair that a free ship can flag a ship worth billions and prevent it from logging out with no risk or loss for the gankers. It's that kind of logic from the developers that's hurting eve. But they aren't allowed to play the game so how would they know?
They'll be having another mass exodus if they dint wake up and see how their changes are pissing off the player base.
How much ISK was his cargo worth?
This is why the majority of gamers detest open world pvp where there's loss involved. CCP has long been supportive of trolls and they never really caught flak for it. EVE has it's niche, but it seems even their players have grown weary of the status quo.
What's more interesting is that CCP is clearly a one-hit wonder with EVE. Considering DUST 514 wasn't regarded well at all, and WoD turned out to be vaporware.
I'm one of them. Still, I played Eve from about 2009-2011 and had fun hanging out with the corp and doing hi-sec stuff.
The game is what it is and always has been that. I'd agree with anyone that says it's a troll enabling gankfest. But what I don't get is why people create threads to complain about it being a troll enabling gankfest. That's what it was built for, and they are never going to change it to be anything else.
They say, "never say never". Well, I'm saying never. The minute they pull out of that niche, subs will plummet and they know it. And too few other player types have any interest in the kind of gameplay Eve provides to take their place.
Your points are just projected bias, having very little back up.
Proof is in the pudding - stagnation.
Only thing that keeps business around is continuous growth but EVE didn't move anywhere since 2010/2011.
I sold my 60mSP accounts (one combat, one indy) back in 2013.
I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake, but after keeping tabs on what has happened in nulsec over the last couple years, it would appear that EVE has gotten rather dull. Couple that with the steep decline of player activity (in terms of logins) and I have a solid case on why I should pass playing this game again.
Is there anything information/data available that may counter this point-of-view?
seriously. mr OP....
i don't think eve is your game. it's a sandbox, you can do whatever you can do.
[mod edit]
CCP won't run around and punish people for griefing, because THAT is what lowsec is about.
suggestion: next time: don't leave highsec.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
What you got in EVE:
-many old veterans quit the game, natural evolution.
-players from the WoW generation find the game too hard and difficult a.k.a. 'boring' as they are cannon fodder.
-huge coalitions who decide the nullsec landscape, even having no-attack pacts made in backroom deals
-handful of alliance leaders who sit on the thrones deciding a stale nullsec is good because open war can result in loss of sovereignty and moons (= less money), resulting in arranged nullsec fights without real open war to please some of their pvp players.
-there are leaders who RMT this money so they profit by having a stale nullsec.
-Some of those leaders have a direct line to CCP as some new CCP developers were directly recruited from their ranks when they were normal players.
-if new CCP game decisions are not favored by the huge coalitions, their leaders threats CCP with a exodus of their members, thus loss of subscription money unless they nerf the decisions or even cancel it.
-CSM player representatives are elected, most votes count. Ofc those huge coalition members are 'encouraged' to vote on their own guys, they get elected and try to stear future game decisions the way it benefits their allinace+ leaders, so changes the game needs get canceled or nerfed.
-new entities are forced to become a renter of those alliance coalitions and pay rent or get blobbed.
^ Those are pretty good reasons summed up why EVE is in the worst state since 2008.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Yes and no.
The worst mistake any new player can make in EVE is not being in a player run corporation. If you're not in a corporation, then you are no one and everyone will be looking to ruin your fun. At the very least apply to join EVE University where you will be surrounded by players who want to help you have a good time in EVE.
It really depends on who you join up with to be honest.
I've been in corporations with great people like Black Watch Legionnaires. I've been in corporations with mostly decent people like Stimulus. I've been in corporations where I didn't feel like I fit in at all like Sanctuary of Shadows. I've been in alliances with sacks of utter scum like when Adversity was flying with Rote Kapelle or like pretty much everyone in Overly Emotional... ahem, I mean Overload Everything.
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply.
I shall remain a lurker and hope CCP does something to breathe new life into this game.
All that's needed is some Visigoths.
Is there a nice library to be sacked?
EVE's not about getting what you want, when you want. It's about getting on top or even just surviving while the rest of the player base tries to do the same at your expense.Sure, someone CAN kill you and take all your stuff, but then, why were you carrying all your stuff in the first place? You'll find there's never a good reason to fill your ship with all your worldly (spacely?) goods and the safe carrying limit of any ship is defined by its ability to avoid those nasty space pirates.
Given that you said you don't like risk, it would seem EVE would never really appeal to you anyway.
[mod edit]Simply being at your keyboard isn't enough. Just like the gankers, you need to apply a little bit of intellect. Scout ahead, check killboards for recent freighter kills (hint, it's as easy as visiting https://zkillboard.com/kills/freighters/) and change your plan when you spot trouble.
Apparently this is far too much trouble.
1) Subbing a second account to "scout ahead" like you suggest probably isn't practical for the majority of gamers.
2) Checking third party sites to be able to do anything is poor game design.
The mentality of most Eve players is just get another account to scout! or Buy a second account to train for a different kind of ship! That logic is unrealistic for players that aren't playing the game like its a second job. Some people just want to log in and have fun not have to log in a bunch of alts or do a bunch of research on third party sites to know where they can fly safely.
This is why eve has problems retaining players and why it's in steady decline right now. It caters to only the most nerdy and serious players that want to play eve as a second job.
Excessive dependence on third party tools is bad design, I agree. However, the method I mentioned is one option for HiSec logistics without any other player support.
[Quote]1) Subbing a second account to "scout ahead" like you suggest probably isn't practical for the majority of gamers.
The mentality of most Eve players is just get another account to scout! or Buy a second account to train for a different kind of ship! That logic is unrealistic for players that aren't playing the game like its a second job. Some people just want to log in and have fun not have to log in a bunch of alts or do a bunch of research on third party sites to know where they can fly safely.
This is why eve has problems retaining players and why it's in steady decline right now. It caters to only the most nerdy and serious players that want to play eve as a second job.[/quote]
It's cute that you infer the use of additional accounts and go into a mini rant about their necessity when a much simpler option was available: friends. Have you considered that you could just ask a friend for help? "Hey corpies, anyone been through Uedama recently? Much CODE activity there atm?" Not that hard, is it?
Many of the negativity here are either based on complete ignorance or those with outdated information.
I'm not going to bother with those.
Eve is, what, 10 years? More IIRC, even a casual--focused WoW is having trouble retaining (much less growing) their peak population numbers, its only predictable that those graphs are not going to go up most of the time. Especially with newer titles being announced left right centre on a yearly basis. That it still has a very sizable playerbase compared to much newer and PVE focused titles should mean something to you but obviously idiots will only see what they want to see.
Bottom line : People move on. Thats what people do. I was an Eve fanatic for a good number of years but I too moved on(way back in 2010)...well just because. Not for any damning reasons, I just wanted to play a new game and genre.
Pretty much this. A griefers game of about 10k-15k subs. Very niche and a place where the elite can play with themselves....haha!
Current Games: WOW, EVE Online