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What would encourage you to start playing EVE?
Malcanis
Member UncommonPosts: 3,297
I'm looking for ideas to take to CCP. I'm not interested in stupid stuff like "Change EVE into being a PvE grind4epix" or ideas that would take 50 devs 2.5 years to implement, but small, developmentally affordable things that would help people who are attracted to EVE but ran into this roadblock or that dead end. Basically, stuff to smooth the path into the game.
To give an example of the kind of stuff I'm after: I had an idea to reform the NPC corps. At the moment, if you're not in a player corp, you default into an NPC corp which you don't even get to choose. I'd like to see NPC corps offer some small bonuses/penalties, advantages/drawbacks, restrictions/opportunities that basically make this NPC corp a natural choice for miners, that NPC corp a good choice for haulers, and so on. This would mean that people who don't want to be in a player corp, or just haven't managed to get into one that they like yet will still be in a community of people with similar interests. As well as having like-minded players to talk to, this would make for a good basis for new corps to be formed from.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Comments
NPC corps already offer immunity to war decs and have the draw back of 10% tax.
The only idea I got to get people interested in EVE and maybe into it is to have a series of objective videos showing the good and bad of EVE to a prospective new player, share some epic stories, share some stats, share some real gameplay footage and most importantly state that the game is what you make it to be. The videos would go well if some the GMs/Devs pitched in too with their classic icelandic humour but aside from this you can't really tweak anything with the new player experience as it as already a far cry from the Hell I went through on my first bouts with the game :P.
Hmmm some "day in the life of" media... that could work, with the right kind of new player. It would be a great way to showcase what you can do within, say, the first 21 days of your EVE career.
It might be interesting to show it alongside some highly skilled veteran players doing the same thing with a noob character to show how much things that aren't skillpoints matter - and reinforce the "this is how much potential you have" message.
Good contribution, I'll be using that one.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Translation: His wife isn't a gamer and she pulls the PC plug (I am not being mean btw, I do have a EVE-Online comrade that has that happen though his wife isn't that mean to pull it out during a fleet OP).
Lemme know if you want my main toon's name for the credits at the end of the videos
.
Scooby-Snacks for returning players?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
PVE server or on / off pvp switch, No sucide ganking in high section or concidered high section areas.
MAGA
Go play the game then talk
until then your suggestions aren't useful (anyone who's played the game knows its single-shard and PVE only has never ever been EVE and I hope to god anyone who even gets a whiff of that idea throws said idea into a flaming pit of demon love juice).
I've palyed the game off and on from Jan. 2004 and if i have to put up with CCP letting Sony Co-Op the game as well as the chinese and there server then my suggestion should be heard also. Another area that is not discussed is Haulkageddon or Goonswarm and CIA becoming cosy or at least Mr. Smiths attempts to contact his cohearts in Langly before he was killed.
MAGA
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
That's THE way for EVE to go out of business.
But off the record; go join the TEST/GOON block, if you haven't already, that way you are guaranteed of 99.999999999% carebearing without risk of getting ganked.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
... people like you... nevermind, don't want to be banned.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
That's OK, throw in an idea or two anyway. Maybe you know someone who tried to play and didn't get into it? Maybe it took you a couple of tries?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
It shows your chronic lack of knowledge then that a guy with a year less than you of experience can tell you the following:
-Dust 514 is developed wholly by CCP, Sony merely offered the best support possible for it and got the rights to publish it;
-the Chinese server exists because of some legislature preventing chinese players from going onto the real/CCP server, the legislature in question is likely linked to the heavy censorship prevalent in China;
-Goonswarm and Hulkageddon are discussed, I am suprised you don't know about the the counter-Hulkaggeddon events held a few times in years past at the same time as Hulkageddon and as for Goonswarm the only reason they are who they are is because they have brilliant leadership, say what you want about Mittani and his lieutenants but they get the job done bloody well in terms of tactics but there are people who actively oppose both Goonswarm and Hulkageddon, Hell since the barge rebalancing it's become safer to be a miner in general even during Hulk season.
"High Section"... High sec means high security...
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
well and even playing field in Eve would really be nice. Thus removing moon goo from the big alliances who are spoon fed enormous passive income to run there operations. its been talked about and even promised but ccp always gives in to those long time subcribers and big alliances who stack the so called player run stellar councill.
So if you want people to come back then or play the game then stop the trillions of iskies from moon goo into the hands of big alliances.
been a lot of talk about pay to win by companies who by taking real life money and give players and in game edge. Well ccp has set up and now keeps a system which is alot like that. And the big alliances use there influence via the player elected representatives to make sure that 1 thing never changes. Moo goo and enormous passive income to certain alliances and players to run there operation.
So no thanks i dont want to play eve on such and unfair playing ground and that ccp will not change it seems. its reminds me of how governments bail out banks by poring my tax money into them to keep there fat butts out of trouble at the expense of all other poor slobs.
Myself and two friends all played together a few years ago. We all considered going back, but the one thing that kept us from it was the Skillpoint system. If they added a skillpoint cap that you could reach in 1 month (but then reset as often as you like, you just only ever have 1 month of SP at any given time), or started a fresh server with everyone at 0 SP, we'd all go back.
I'm not saying they *should* do either of these things mind you, just answering the OP's topic. Many new players are turned off by the inability to ever "catch up" in EVE, although I'm sure many vets like that.
You can level the playing field in under 6 months if you pick a training regiment and stick to it. By level it I mean being able to do one thing as good as a vet in terms of SP invested in said area. EVE is a game more of diagonal progression ergo if you fix a goal and go at it in a verticle fashion you can catch up and experience in using those SPs is far more important.
That said I am a 7 year vet of EVE with under 40 (around 35 now I think, can't remember as I tend to train long training time skills nowadays and I am currently on a break) mil SP and I really don't care because I can do most of the things I want really well (for reference sake those who started around the same time I did have around 80-100 mil SP by now).
Just to specifically reply to the part of your post that I highlighted - the CSM has been banging the drum of tech moon rebalancing almost since the day they were introduced. And the goon reps were banging it loudest of all. I realise that it makes for a good populist "The Man is keeping me down" narrative to believe the opposite, but the truth is sometimes inconvenient like that. Oh and CSM 7 has a wormhole player as chairman and another as secretary this year. Hardly dominated by nullsec blocs!
I am running for election myself this year, and I have made a tech moon and sov space industry rebalance a core part of my platform - not because I think that they have an effect on new players, but because 0.0 will be more fun for more people.
However your post does highlight one important recurring issue: new players are given incorrect information which leads to the false perception that they can only ever be oppressed untermensch. The skillpoint cap issue is another excellent example of this - skills are capped; you can only get them to level 5, and after you've maxed your skills for a ship, all you can do is diversify the range of ships you can fly.
CCP could do more to make it clearer that character advancement in EVE is fundamentally different from the level-based PvE grinders, and that "80 million skillpoints" doesn't mean "Can take on 10x 8 million skillpoint players and easily win even if drunk and naked" as it does in WoW type games.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
This is typical of the Eve playerbase attitude. It is also why I play the trial every three years and then quit. This way everyone is happy. I get to play a REALLY cool game for 14 days without paying and the Eve hardcore can get their jollies putting down a carebear for 14 days.
Eve deserves the half million subs it has. It is a great game. However, without having at least one totally safe zone the game will never be as popular as it could be. That is the decision of the players and that is the decision of CCP. No carebears wanted. Ok. My loss. See you in three years.
yep, EVE simply doesn't offer that kind of experience, and it would have to be pretty much re-written from the ground up as a different game in order to do so.
Dust 514 is CCP's first answer to this issue, but of course it's limited to PS3 owners (This isn't as big a limitation as people make out; second hand PS3s don't cost all that much more than a full price game, or even less if you're willing to get one with a broken bluray player).
CCP Unifex has dropped plenty of hints that CCP would like to attach more games to the EVE universe. If Dust is a success, I'd expect them to start on another similar project. I'd be more than happy to suggest a flight shooter-sim set in the many, many gas-giant environments that the EVE cluster contains. For the PC.
But this does run into the "No ideas that would take 150 dev-years to implement, please" limitation...
Give me liberty or give me lasers
I think the biggest thing is "fixing" 0.0, though I don't know how they'd do it. What I mean by that is that the huge alliances in null make it very difficult and intimidating for new players to break into it. If you are not a Goon or in TEST, you can't take part in the meta-game really. And it's that meta-game that most players want, I think. * *THIS IS AN EXAGGERATION TO MAKE A POINT**
Maybe there needs to be some kind of cost-effective means for small alliances to deal with large ones? Or, and while I hate to admit it, maybe they need to make high-sec less appealing so that people start moving in larger numbers to low or null, which by itself should create more conflict in null.
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQoK5VZlwBBzpsksmXtjMQ
It's pretty similar to the WoW playerbases's attitude towards people who want to turn WoW into a single-server PvP sandbox.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Null does need reforming, but there are existing options for smaller alliances. For instance W-space is explicitly designed to stop large groups dominating the whole zone. And then there is NPC space for larger groups who want to be involved in 'The Great Game' without being in a bloc.
One of my long time hobby-horses is that in EVE geography dictates politics - the open, contiguous, low travel cost nature of sov 0.0 means that large groups are inevitable (Just as in the real world, as communcations and transport tech improved, powerblocs got larger and larger). I fully intend to ask CCP to consider adding new types of space to allow new modes of play that aren't really supported.
But on the other hand, lots of people like being part of a mighty space empire. There's no reason CCP shouldn't continue to enable EVE to support that kind of gameplay too.
But does this issue really matter all that much to someone who's never played EVE for more than a few days?
Give me liberty or give me lasers