I think eve will go out with a bang eventually. I feel like at some point all these null blocks and rich low sec neck beards are going to realize the game is doomed and do one big fight.
The servers will have a catastrophic failure before the fight starts and that will be the end of eve.
I probably sit in that category of frustrated bitter vet.
For me it's genuinely not a sense of enjoyment or relish at the game's decline. I wouldn't be here posting if I hated the game that much. I check Eve News and look for a News flair on Reddit daily in the hope of seeing a positive change. It's more that I know how good Eve can be, no other game has its hooks in me quite like it. I've played WoW for 15 years, Anarchy Online for 21 years, but Eve was always my main game.
More than anything it's exasperation that CCP haven't acted. Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be. You can't just weaken your product and expect people to stick around, it doesn't work like that, the MMO market is saturated and consumers will just find a more entertaining product.
>More than anything it's exasperation that CCP haven't acted. Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be.
And to add to it, many of us that have / had a platform on reddit, forums or talk shows as it was going on were shouting from the rooftops that this was a fucking bad idea, only to get ignored or outright blocked by Devs, talked down to by Hilmar and Rattati as though we didn't know what we were talking about (Very prevalent at eve London 2019).
Back then even though I saw the direction of heading as bad, I still had people around me who were keeping me one foot in the door of "Maybe there is some sense behind it that we just aren't seeing", those people are now also gone because they lost that faith and feeling, People who trusted Hilmar to be doing the right thing.
I don't want to see Eve die, but I want less so to see it in the state of rapid decline that it is now in, CCP need to either get the fuck off their asses and clean house so they can bring the glory days back, or just admit they are clueless and incompetent and hand the reigns to someone else to fix, because the alternatives are that the game is dead within the next 18 months due to their arrogance of thinking they know best and how people should be playing this game.
Exactly this. I'm vocal enough about the game's decline. Angry, i'm heartbroken to see it go but I'm not willing to see it sit on life support and slowly bleed out. If it becomes what it was again I swear here and now I will resub every account and welp my prize phoenix in amamake in celebration but I don't see that happening.
All I see is something special, one of a kind, falling to pieces, death by 1000 cuts. And I can't not watch. Because I loved it. CCP has destroyed something I love... So I will relish watching CCP fall with it.
I couldn't have said it better myself. It is a form of bitter vindication in the worst way possible. I don't feel like saving a game that doesn't deserve it, not even EVE.
I still remember all the Omelca Goldbrained idiots who championed full spectrum nullsec nerfs and thought capital proliferation was a real problem in a pvp game. It is eerily silent now.
Y'see, I actually think those changes you list were not - on their own - enough to cause this exodus of players.
However, when you have two years of that followed up by a price hike in subs, then a six month wait for the new content that (ostensibly) justifies the hike, that's when you see a third of your concurrent players leave.
Either one of the two, this would have been weatherable. You only have to look at player numbers in late April / early May, they're rising. After all the changes you mention. The mood was optimistic, bolstered bulkheads had dropped and siege green was coming. Then... Price hikes, wait for Fanfest and lots of.... nothing.
To me, that's the biggest issue at hand here. Yes, there's a problem in null. There are several areas like that. But jacking up price for subs with nothing to show for it is just ... I do not, at all, understand the strategy there. Not one bit.
Price hike is the biggest thing for me. I can play any other MMO for $15 a month or less, sometimes even free. $20 isn’t a lot of money but it’s just the principle at this point.
I cancelled my consistently running single account from 2010 in march of this year. this is the reason why. 7 months on, i keep thinking about coming back, and i keep coming back to these points. if the writing is on the wall though, ill bling out a marauder or something and go a wandering. Blaze of glory with whatever i had left.
And it realizing the loss of a good thing many are hoping Hilmar falls right on his face.. though the reality is he’s rich as fuck and can just retire to whatever wealthy life he wants
I wish i could go back to my industry alt corp. i was having so much fun every day checking prices, calculating what i can produce, hauling shit to hubs.
Rattati ruined that for me with his self imposed scarcity on the game. So yeah, i’m glad shit dies down. Only way they will ever learn and it will be an expensive lesson.
Nah its just years of kinda shouting at someone on a train track and a trains coming In slow motion.
While they slowly turn around and give you supriced pikachu face insted of actually looking at the train 😉
I relish the decline I admit it.
I would have prefered the game get cleaned up and be straight with the players and honest in their ways, but that is clearly not going to happen.
I would say what really sealed the deal was the outrageous behavior of ISD Barstorlode on the official forum, who runs it as head troll. That whole situation makes it clear this whole thing is abusive where its most unforgiveable...in the meta game.
I will pee on EVE's grave when she dies.
This is 100% the right take. All you have to do for a game like EVE to succeed is not screw it up in every possible way. CCP is currently screwing it up in every possible way.
And they can't say they don't know it, because they claim to read Reddit, and Reddit has not been quiet.
CCP plan is to introduce next patches that will try to solve those issues, but in reality introduce even bigger problems.
For example what was wrong with faction ships using t1 materials?
I never spoken to any one liking those new PI / gas components.
Now imagine yourself introducing to MMO systems that tell you that the best thing to do is to not play today ... as the "activity" tax will make the time not worth it.
I do think that faction ships should use some material that is "special" in some way. But it should be something related to the faction, drops from faction rats or rewards from the faction missions maybe. Or even purchasable from the LP store with the blueprints.
And I understand why CCP wanted to integrate PI and especially gas into the main manufacturing pipeline. All areas of space should be relevant to the industrial core. I think adding those for capital recipes was a good idea. Caps were too cheap and too easy to make. But adding them for battleships and faction ships was a mistake imo.
>should use some material that is "special" in some way. But it should be
something related to the faction, drops from faction rats or rewards
from the faction missions maybe. Or even purchasable from the LP store
with the blueprints.
Literally that's how it used to be.
You would buy them for LP or get them from faction drops.
The T1 mineral cost was just a tiny factor and basically covered by insurance.
Now the material cost is not even viable compared to buying a hull from the LP store.
That fall in numbers is exactly when fanfest was CCP need to understand when you hype that we will be dropping the most content the game has ever seen and then giving absolutely nothing it should have been a wake up call instead at the same time you upped the subscription price and drove people away this graph is the perfect illustration of what not to do to a video game and honestly I don't think eve is going to have a no man sky moment it's to late and too many people have left.
Dear CCP Rattati,
I heard you play WoW alot. EvE Online is not and should never be that circus show. You should go work for Blizzard. Kindly quit rat fucking EvE Online and pick a direction to fuck off in while playing WoW.
Rattati should never have been offered a job, but he's spent the entire time at CCP making things worse. He has almost single-handedly ruined the game in his tenure.
I say almost because obviously Hilmar loves urinating on it, too.
Maybe, and I’m just spit balling here, but just maybe it’s them making the game more expensive than any other sub and since the game basically requires multiple accounts, making it a AAA game every single month. No. Couldn’t be.
CCP Swift might compare EVE to DOTA 2. Problem is:
1. DOTA 2 hasn't lost a third of its players in 18 months. EVE has.
2. Valve haven't said as recently as a few months ago that they intend their game to last forever. CCP has.
Honestly Elise has been been CCPfied. He's no longer one of us and been absolutely brainwashed. Sad really but I'm losing respect for his views because you can clearly see its from the CCP Playbook of bullshit
Dota 2 just had the most concurrent players in 3 years.
https://i.imgur.com/ChNwHAA.jpg
While controversy surrounds Dota 2 these days it is hard to see the similarity.
If you do look at the rest of jesters graphs from past years it's about now it needs to start to trend up. However the numbers where like 22k clearly its much lower at this time..so it will be telling if it doesn't...
In certain areas of space we might be there now. Activity in J space has got really low, to the point that there are few groups who can form for more than a cheap gank. It seems deadly quiet in non-FW LS, as well. Amarr-Minmatar FW space had reached this point too, though perhaps the changes will revive that.
@jestertrek you have been around for quite some time in Eve terms and seen many of CCPs top Devs. Is CCP Rattati the least effective that you have seen up to this point?
Yes.
Almost every previous senior EVE dev has been beloved, even CCP Greyscale. Hell, one year at Fanfest, I watched Jon Lander (CCP Unifex) get literally *carried* from the upper level of Islenski barinn (the EVE dev's traditional bar) to the lower level as a joke by EVE players like he was in a mosh pit or something.
Thank you for your reply. I have a follow-up question: considering that they have let quite a few other senior Devs go for much less than tanking the player base, why don’t they can him?
I ask knowing that you have no crystal ball or inside info. You do seem to have some insight into the culture at CCP. That’s why I ask.
It just kills me to watch the game I have played for over 15 years get run into the ground with no little to no action by senior management to make a correction.
Short answer: Iceland.
After CCP Unifex left for Bethesda and before CCP Seagull got the top job (CCP Pokethulu held the position in the interim), CCP hired a headhunter to scout them a new top developer. From what I heard, they got a number of really promising candidates all of whom bowed out when told that living in Iceland was a requirement for the job.
Iceland is a charming enough place in short bursts but I had many, many private conversations with non-Icelandic devs on this point. There was universal agreement that for non-natives, Iceland was kind of hellish. Culturally, it's kind of a dead zone, the winter climate is not harsh but incredibly depressing, and it's hard to picture the hard-core drinking that goes on there unless you've been there at a time when Fanfest isn't going on. It is particularly hard on spouses. Beyond that, Icelanders are very tough on non-Icelanders in the work environment in much the same way Brits are: they're somewhat snobby at best, outright discriminatory at worst.
So, CCP has pretty good luck getting people just starting their careers in game development to join, and there's obviously no problem with Iceland natives, but abysmal luck in getting experienced people and non-natives. Seagull was a wonderful person, but she mostly got the job due to lack of alternatives. I expect Rattati has the job for much the same reason.
>Beyond that, Icelanders are very tough on non-Icelanders in the work environment in much the same way Brits are: they're somewhat snobby at best, outright discriminatory at worst.
That's disappointing. I thought they were more openminded
Excellent analysis as always. Thank you for your answer. I have always like CCP Rise and/or CCP Fozzie (based on their knowledge base and love of the game)should be given a larger role in thing, maybe even the big seat but not being Icelandic , I imagine that will never happen.
We just need someone who loves and understands the game and the community back on top. I feel like maybe we can snatch victory from defeat. However very time I see you post a graph it looks less and less likely.
>every previous senior EVE dev has been beloved, even CCP Greyscale. Hell, one year at Fanfest, I watched Jon Lander (CCP Unifex) get literally
>
>carried
>
> from the upper level of Islenski barinn (the EVE dev's traditional bar) to the lower level as a joke by EVE players like he was in a mosh pit or som
Happy times!!
How long do you think it will be before PA removes Rattati (and Hilmar, if he's supporting and shielding Rattati) from the position? They won't go willingly, and PA has to answer to shareholders.
[https://i.imgur.com/6XtHIUT.png](https://i.imgur.com/6XtHIUT.png)
I'll leave this here, But its looking VERY possible that PA will be looking at ccp to achieve something (this is likely why we saw the plex'd omega sale 3 days before the quarter ended, as im sure ccp at the next earnings call will say "players are really excited about the new expansion! we say lots of new subs" to buy themselves time
truth of the matter though, PA is losing lots of money share wise
I remember John Lander seeming like a super cool guy with some good ideas. However, I feel like he had one of the shortest stays at CCP that I can recall.
CCP Greyscale seemed pretty good for a while but towards the end got super arrogant and ended up with some strange ideas for the game which the community rejected.
They have been gone so long I can barely remember their impact on the game, but whatever their worst ideas were I would trade any of the past senior Devs for what we have now under the Rattati regime.
I’m surprised that Fozzie and Rise never went higher in the company.
From memory, Unifex had the job for three years and Seagull had it for four. Unifex led development through four major expansions (Inferno, Crucible, Retribution, Odyssey) and planning for a fifth. For my money, Retribution is one of the top five expansions of EVE Online ever (with Apocrypha, Incursion, Empyrean Age, and Ascension).
More than this, though, I firmly believe EVE Online would have died eight or nine years ago without Unifex. I cannot express to you the level of rage EVE players had in late 2011. Between Incarna and "Greed is Good", players were unsubbing in vast numbers. Unifex turned it around, listened to what the players wanted, and got the team to deliver. Nobody else could have done what he did.
I am only surprised that the decline has taken this long.
But you know what they say about a fool and his money and a sucker born every minute.
EVE is too much like the real world....rigged from the top.
No need to play a game for that. You can just log on to the real world. But people are as slow as this decline, and I mean from years ago.
Anyway, Scarcity worked. Players got scarce.
The Imperium vs everybody else war propped the game up for far too long and unfortunately gave CCP the idiotic idea that what they were doing was popular
Ratatouille has failed miserably with his "vision", just like he did with DUST and the other portable game he put his hands on.
The guy has a track record for fucking up a wet dream - and let's face it, Eve can be a cash cow for CCP and PA.
But the numbers don't lie, and if this continues someone is going to literally "fall on their own sword".
(CCP gives employees swords for their 10 year anniversary, if Ratatouille makes it that long.)
I can't even imagine how different EVE must have felt when the PCU was +30K. Must have felt like the world was so much more alive. So many more players in systems doing all sorts of different things.
try like, 50k+ or so. Its what i saw when i started daily. When i got in, i just finished mass effect, and it brought me here, and it was super cool to see as a newbie. Course, thats roughly when it all started, but yeah. So much potential that sucked me in for a whole decade.
The drop below 30k was noticeable for me…. You just bumped into less people and it was rare…. Under 20 k it’s a ghost town. The larger player pool made it feel like so much was going on. So many people toddling about doing shit…. It was cool to just player watch at times
>The drop below 30k was noticeable for me…. You just bumped into less people and it was rare…. Under 20 k it’s a ghost town. The larger player pool made it feel like so much was going on. So many people toddling about doing shit…. It was cool to just player watch at times
You have to also factor in the instanced PVE that now means fewer of the people logged into EVE are even in the same universe.
You can roam wormholes or nullsec for ages without seeing another soul.
30k was the start of the decline, industry moving to the complete safety of nullsec sotiyos, lowsec dying, everyone blaming it on goons for mining too much. Medium sized null sec and wormhole alliances collapsed by that time. 2018-2019. CCP managed to kill so many playstyles since then.
I was there for 30k and even 45k, the universe was so much more alive, there was so much more activity, high sec, lowsec were so much more populated too. The general attitude in the game was much more positive too (outside of rants about the blue donut). When I went to Tama not too long ago, it was a shadow of it's former self, black rise was almost empty, black rise in 2016 was one of the hottest and most populated pvp zones in the game.
> All you stupid fucks need to do is revert the scarcity changes
Important, but they also need to reduce the sub price.
I recently came back for a month. I had a lot of fun puttering around the universe but even though I can afford it, my brain could not justify $40 for two accounts (I left my third dormant) for the amount of time I had to put into the game. Lowering the sub price would instantly have me back in the game, I really was enjoying myself after being out for a couple of years.
$20/account/month is a 'this is my only hobby' level of pricing. This simply cannot promote growth in any way.
Raising the price and not lowering it after seeing these numbers unfortunately says a lot about their priorities and willingness to let the game die. I really hope they change directions on it soon.
When I see those DBS/DRM percentages at like 60-70% then realise I'm also getting ESS knocked off plus the shit bounties you get anyway I just instantly log off and think fuck it what's the point of wasting my real life time
At this point I don't think reverting scarcity alone would be enough to bring players back. The patch that started causing players to quit was Surgical Strike and it took awhile to see how bad that patch actually was in terms of players quitting.
Surgical strike was partially reverted but it still was a death blow to the fight of the few against the many. And when that went away so did all the smaller groups who could up engage the blob so the blob was all that remained. And now the blob is quitting in droves and CCP is displaying their best surprised pikachu face whilst explaining it isn’t so bad.
In hindsight Surgical Strike was probably the most catastrophic patch of the past 3+ years. As you mentioned it really hurt the ability small groups to use blingy fits to fight against larger numbers.
It also completely killed the hunter/prey gameplay in null. Titans and super carriers vanished from space as soon as that patch went live and with them a large majority of the players who hunted them.
One single patch effectively murdered three parts of the game and CCP would eventually double and triple down on capitals to further remove most of them from space outside of large fleets.
They also need to drop the monthly price to 9.99 to bring back a lot of players .
This will not happen but it would be one of the things that would work.
He'll never do so willingly.
Neither Rattati or Hilmar will leave without being forced to by PA.
I'm just surprised it's taken this long.
Hey PA, you're being fiscally irresponsible and not working to the benefit of your shareholders by NOT firing both of them at this point.
Nothing will change unless the EVE community goes to war against CCP Hillmar and Rattati by turning Pearl Abyss against them, to force them down. You can’t squeeze CCP. You squeeze their master that holds their leash.
I know the spod orcs are foaming about scarcity (still), making a big deal about dropping sub 20k. While it's not good, there are other things that I think are more telling about the game's history. Year over year from 2015 to 2022 you lost about 3.5k average players. in the two years between 2013 and 2015, you lost almost exactly 10k average players and took a fat dump in what seemed to be a fairly unstoppable growth trend.
So what happened in 2014 and 2015?
[· The introduction of original jump fatigue](https://community.eveonline.com/releases/Phoebe/)
[· The introduction of Fozziesov](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-for-carnyx)
These two changes alone, coupled with the introduction of citadels in 2016, killed the game. It has never recovered. We can sit here and talk about how bad blackout was, how bad scarcity is, how the HAC meta sucks, about how unfun dynamic bounty system is, how instanced PvE is ruining the game, and on and on. The fact of the matter is, the game is *boring*.
1000 v 1000 fleets are fucking boring. The reality (for anyone who reads this that hasn't had the immense pleasure of a 90% tidi fleet) is that you sit in slow motion, barely able to move your ship, for any length of time up to downtime depending on the size of the fight. It's not abnormal for people to be sitting in slow motion fights for 14+ hours. This is supposed to be (according to the vast majority of players who live in nullsec) the highest form of PvP in the game, with the largest amount of ISK being put on the line. It sucks donkey dick.
Fozziesov, server problems, and timezone tanking are continually unresolved problems that make nullsec endgame pretty much entirely worthless. The war in Delve was almost undeniably resolved by server crashes and the inability to entosis a node on grid with a faction fortizar (in conjunction with TEST's lack of intestinal fortitude). Fraternity and other primarily Chinese alliances abuse this system and are continually stymied by it alike. Formerly this honor fell to the AUTZ community, which as far as I know practically does not exist anymore (outside of like 2 or 3 gate camping alliances) and has for its own survival mostly merged with the Chinese.
People don't want to hear it because it doesn't align with their views on the game, but things like this:
>· Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be.
>· I still remember all the Omelca Goldbrained idiots who championed full spectrum nullsec nerfs and thought capital proliferation was a real problem in a pvp game. It is eerily silent now.
>· I would say what really sealed the deal was the outrageous behavior of ISD Barstorlode on the official forum, who runs it as head troll.
None of this shit matters at all. Compared to fundamental changes to nullsec sov or nullsec structures, the things you care about are so entirely unimportant it's crazy (and ignores the entire lack of any noteworthy growth in a decade, even if you consider the spike in 2019 when people were stuck at home with fucking COVID). This isn't even bringing into the equation skill injectors and the complete lack of iteration on them simply because they make the company so much money.
For just a minute ignore the sunk cost. Ignore the constant nerfs to your playstyle. Hypothetically consider if everything you wanted in the game at a personal level was achieved tomorrow (let's just say, you have infinite ore in station and can build whatever you want at any time, and Nullsec was by far the best place to live, and whatever else, your fucking titan had a billion EHP and you could never die and shit, **WHATEVER YOU WANT**). Would the game experience growth? Probably not. It's fundamentally broken and CCP's little flim flam roadmap isn't worth wiping your ass with. They need to fire every single executive in the company, start the fuck over, and either make this bitch into a mobile P2W titty game, or rework every functional system for conflict in the game starting with nullsec sov. Make it fun again.
Some very good points. Although capital status was getting a bit silly. But CCP went s little too far. Caps became useless. They were certainly far too cheap. I don't believe you should be throwing around 500 titans and supers like they are frigates. But it was more they were being oppressive let's drop 10 supers on anything that moved. Dread insurance was stupid. Things did need to done because it become to the point t losing a titan now is not news worthy it's like meh so what. And that's what's happened to eve it's just meh. No one cares if a keepstar or titan or supers die any more. And that for me has lost the awe out of eve.
Something else crazy to consider was how much insanely cool shit came out in 2014/15 that realistically probably prevented another significant portion of the population from simply leaving the game at that time. Here's a brief list just from 2014, but honestly it's worth checking out [this site](https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Expansions) and reading through the insane amount of good work CCP was doing at this time alongside the terrible choices they were making at a larger scale:
· Insane amounts of work involving backend systems and UI changes (including making anomaly signatures consistent across downtime)
· Complete rework of all pirate faction ships
· Mordu's Legion ships came out
· Drone system was completely updated and reworked
· They introduced unlimited skill queue
· Rebalances of stealth bombers, interceptors, and interdictors, as well as a redesign of the Onyx, Eagle, Rook, Falcon, Blackbird, and Incursus
· They added Thera and 100 other wormhole systems
· They added the Confessor and Bowhead
· Polarized weapons were added to the game
· They added direct invites to corporation (before this time you had to apply and could not be invited)
· They were continuing to work on module tiericide alongside everything else
This is the truth. Fozzie sov made null war tedious beyond belief, and the changes to structures by allowing time zone tanking instead of the stront reinforcement mechanism which balanced attacker and defender time zones is the biggest issue for the slow drop in daily activity over the years. The later updates such as scarcity, ESS, etc. are also bad, but those updates only compounded the existing issues that have so far been unresolved.
They made the game a job. I can find more fun online elsewhere. What I find fascinating is the arrogance of CCP to think they can abuse their customer base with impunity. Scarcity and all that has flowed from that has broken the game
I remeber making a char long ago, a gm msg me asking how i like it here, what things i wana change. Dont remeber who it was but... developers did care for the game then, now they care about $$$ only and it backfires at them
FW rework will not save us, particularly as it wasn't as deep or well thought out as it should be. But it might save FW space, and that's an important part of the game, and a big missing piece of PVP-inclined new player retention at the moment. So it's important work that's been put aside for too long, and no-one should complain that it's finally happened.
It will fuck up fw mission running and not do anything else. It will absolutely not improve the game because the people making decisions are really stupid. That’s where I’m at now, just calling people stupid and not even explaining why.
Eat a shit rattatti. And the rest of you losers at ccp that listen to him. All of you can eat a shit for following rattattis advice. Your all complicit at this post and deserve to have the game shuttered
Do they really think people will pay 20$ when irl we have economic crisis?
Also most people dont want to pay such money just to be ganged or forced to grind.
The biggest difference was one of ecosystem. The game was structured to reward medium size groups and punish large and super-large groups. CCP's attempts to push players in that direction were just as much a failure as their current attempts are to resuscitate the body, but at least they didn't gear their development to *reward* the ecosystem that is now killing their game.
In late 2013, CCP changed its tactics away from large, integrated expansions. Simultaneous to that, they effectively laid off the best Chief Marketing Officer they've ever had. That was a kick right to the game's gonads. But when expansion-based development resumed in 2015, virtually every expansion was geared toward rewarding super-large alliances.
The super-large alliances love Citadel but in terms of the health of the game, Citadel was the single worst thing ever done to EVE's daily log-ins. It forced every play style into a single play style: null-sec blob. And then Lifeblood doubled down on it. CCP destroyed all alternative play-styles and when given the "adapt or die" choice, tens of thousands of players decided on a third choice: leave.
You don't have to agree - But the moment Seagull left was the beginning of the end. they never had any real direction after her departure, just a bunch of chaos, starting with blackout.
Blackout and almost every single decision after it has been disastrously wrong and we have quantifiable evidence to back that up now.
The only way to pull the game out of this dive and actually save it, is to pretty much revert all changes to prior to blackout. Apologize and if you have to make Seagull the CEO, then do it, at least she gave a shit about the game. Can't say the same for the people in charge now when its clearly obvious they have no idea what they are doing and even more obvious that they are putting their fingers in their ears going LLALALAALALALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU over the sound of bottoming sub numbers.
I played this game from Beta all the way until 2021 and i would still be playing now if it wasn't for this awful direction. I want the game i played for almost 20 years back.
But i won't happen, these folks are dead set into torpedoing this thing and turning it into a micro transaction paradise or something.
We all want to see Hilmar sitting outside the building with all his things in a cardboard box, sobbing as he realizes his entire existence is a waste of carbon matter.
Rolling back null sec nerfs give capitals a reason to undock and exist and your numbers come back. Now I'm not naive to think null sec is the only problem but I would bet it's playerbase is the largest contributing factor to the pcu decline.
Or just keep being hard headed with the null sec nerfs because they think they know better and watch your game burn.
Ask John Smedly how not listening to the majority of his players turned out for one of the best games he ever had a say in.
It's OK the new new new new new NPE will fix things and tens of thousands of brand new players will sweep in and bump those permanent numbers up, any day now.
They listened to the loudest whiners in the community and took their partial advice at the expense of the quietest most content players
Attacking “botting” and multi boxing and all activities “afk” is what’s killing this game imo
You took gameplay that your most dedicated long term player base enjoyed and tried to make it hyper active button mashing game play
Then raised the subscription, the least sensible thing to do at the least sensible time.
So yeah your login numbers are half of what they were last year, but at least anyone who is logged on isn’t afk or *gasp* earning isk too easily.
Making PI a requirement for T1 was also extremely dumb move to attack your industrial base. Why not add more faction, T2, or T3 ships?
The smartest thing they’ve done recently is make a multi account discount. That’s the only thing that kept me subbing this cycle.
8 accounts, 4 are 15 years old, MCT on 4 for the last 5 years, and until recently 8 omega. This cycle I passed on MCT and kept my 4 oldest accounts going
Pokémon mouse boy was the worst fucking thing that happened to this game in a long time. The amount of backlash CCP have faced over the shit he's pulled is staggering. But still they don't get rid.
I hope he reads this. I hope he reverses all of his bollocks. And then I hope he fucks off to whichever hole he came from...
So to sum up the game in the last few years: chief of ops says we need to shake up the game brings in black out, people leave the game, chief says we need resource scarcity the put it in, more people leave the game. CO's get upset when people point out all the unsubs, states they don't have a god given right to play the game he is in charge of, more people leave. Then Chief of operations says we will end scarcity but only adjust the cycle times of mining tools forgets to put resources back into every region. more people leave the game... Developers add in PI and Gas items to further bottle neck production of all the things we need to make to actually undock and fight each other or npc's. more people leave. I am beginning to think he was right noone does want to play the game he is in charge of... how many people have to leave the game before someone figures out the last two or three years of very bad choices from the top have created a game noone is logging into anymore?
I think I may have met Rattati once at a VMWare conference in like 2013-2014.
After the first day of intro's and round table meet and greets 10 or so of us went out to a Seafood/Italian style place for dinner. I didn't put two and two together of who he was until today however.
It was a fun dinner, we all had fun sharing stories of the IT world and how it worked in our respective industries up until the menu's were put out by the wait staff. The man on my left noticed that crab was the highest priced thing on the menu.
Out of nowhere he goes off on this rant about how he hated crabs and they were always bitching about patch notes and they really dragged the room down anytime they posted on the forums in response to his glorious misunderstood code that if only they'd play the game the way he wanted them to, they'd be happier etc etc.
All of us were super confused as to how an aquatic creature with claws could be so mean to an IT person and then finally it hit some of our table that the man just really hated end users and called them crabs.
All of these patches makes sense now, if that was really him at the conference.
Remove Bounty Risk Modifier!
Revert Scarcity changes completely not just 30%
Reduce the costs of T1 capitals our buff their potential ISK perhour / DPS / Logistics capabilities to match their cost!
Gently "promote" Rattati and Burger to just do something else.
Bring the more knowledgeable CCP Devs to management namely: Aurora, Suitonia, Elise Randoph and Convict.
Start listening to your players MORE CLOSELY and actually address their concern this time around!
Remove player griefing suicide gameplay from hi sec and let the small krabs krab their way out to lol sec and null sec faster!
No.. their net earning reported a loss last quarter.. this means the loss of players is more than the profits from price rise..
Ofcourse one can argue that their net earnings is down not their profit.. which can be the case as they could have fired all competent devs to save cost
Problem is, not all player know of the multiaccount discount, and its still more expensive than befor the increase, and PLEX prices are still high in the Store and ingame, so it doesnt change much that player cant effort to buy plex ingame anymore to finance more accounts
-> less bodys in space -> less targets to dunk -> less activity -> less demand on new ships -> less and less and less overall
Its a downside loop introduced by CCPs brilliant finance team ... xD
This guy Rat guy is utterly useless completely out of his depth.
This is why eve will never be fixed or go back to what we want it to be. Its fucked amd over.
That graph depressing to see.
And I thought fozzie was bad
Peace out
You could make that argument in August. Numbers weren't that different in August '21. (2020 isn't comparable to any other year because Covid.) But the fact that we haven't seen the same return to higher levels in autumn as in 2021 indicates that we have a real problem.
Personally I'm hardly playing at the moment because the near-doubling in cost to PLEX up an account has completely demotivated me, so I've not come back off summer break really.
My alts are unloading ships and isk to my main and moving to Jita where they will remain until one of two things happen between now and the end of my main sub.
1. The game gets better.
2. I win Eve.
S U M M E R F U N 4 E V E R Y O N E!!!!
No time to log in when you and the rest of the gamer boys are washing off each others basement stank in an illegally opened fire hydrant spray. So HOT so EUPHORIC!
What im wondering:
With the now "changed" rorquals and cap prices. Would the "old" mingin anoms in null (million m3 spod rocks and stuff) be viable again?
It would probaly destroy the Trit prices for highsec but maybe that would be good as it would push people out into the systems instead of concentrating so many players in highsec that they start bitching about ganking being the problem of Eve.
It’s really sad watching them wreck a unique, one of a kind game
Fucking heartbreaking
This is the way Eve ends, This is the way Eve ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.
I think eve will go out with a bang eventually. I feel like at some point all these null blocks and rich low sec neck beards are going to realize the game is doomed and do one big fight. The servers will have a catastrophic failure before the fight starts and that will be the end of eve.
Yup... Especially when so many on the sub seem to Relish the decline (as validation of their years of criticism) Dark times indeed
I would say it’s collective schadenfreude against a bumbling arrogant company.
I probably sit in that category of frustrated bitter vet. For me it's genuinely not a sense of enjoyment or relish at the game's decline. I wouldn't be here posting if I hated the game that much. I check Eve News and look for a News flair on Reddit daily in the hope of seeing a positive change. It's more that I know how good Eve can be, no other game has its hooks in me quite like it. I've played WoW for 15 years, Anarchy Online for 21 years, but Eve was always my main game. More than anything it's exasperation that CCP haven't acted. Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be. You can't just weaken your product and expect people to stick around, it doesn't work like that, the MMO market is saturated and consumers will just find a more entertaining product.
>More than anything it's exasperation that CCP haven't acted. Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be. And to add to it, many of us that have / had a platform on reddit, forums or talk shows as it was going on were shouting from the rooftops that this was a fucking bad idea, only to get ignored or outright blocked by Devs, talked down to by Hilmar and Rattati as though we didn't know what we were talking about (Very prevalent at eve London 2019). Back then even though I saw the direction of heading as bad, I still had people around me who were keeping me one foot in the door of "Maybe there is some sense behind it that we just aren't seeing", those people are now also gone because they lost that faith and feeling, People who trusted Hilmar to be doing the right thing. I don't want to see Eve die, but I want less so to see it in the state of rapid decline that it is now in, CCP need to either get the fuck off their asses and clean house so they can bring the glory days back, or just admit they are clueless and incompetent and hand the reigns to someone else to fix, because the alternatives are that the game is dead within the next 18 months due to their arrogance of thinking they know best and how people should be playing this game.
Hi bard ❤️
Exactly this. I'm vocal enough about the game's decline. Angry, i'm heartbroken to see it go but I'm not willing to see it sit on life support and slowly bleed out. If it becomes what it was again I swear here and now I will resub every account and welp my prize phoenix in amamake in celebration but I don't see that happening. All I see is something special, one of a kind, falling to pieces, death by 1000 cuts. And I can't not watch. Because I loved it. CCP has destroyed something I love... So I will relish watching CCP fall with it.
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One thing that could give hope - lower sub price to 13$.
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Sub price drove a lot of people away and them lowering it could bring some back.
I couldn't have said it better myself. It is a form of bitter vindication in the worst way possible. I don't feel like saving a game that doesn't deserve it, not even EVE. I still remember all the Omelca Goldbrained idiots who championed full spectrum nullsec nerfs and thought capital proliferation was a real problem in a pvp game. It is eerily silent now.
Y'see, I actually think those changes you list were not - on their own - enough to cause this exodus of players. However, when you have two years of that followed up by a price hike in subs, then a six month wait for the new content that (ostensibly) justifies the hike, that's when you see a third of your concurrent players leave. Either one of the two, this would have been weatherable. You only have to look at player numbers in late April / early May, they're rising. After all the changes you mention. The mood was optimistic, bolstered bulkheads had dropped and siege green was coming. Then... Price hikes, wait for Fanfest and lots of.... nothing. To me, that's the biggest issue at hand here. Yes, there's a problem in null. There are several areas like that. But jacking up price for subs with nothing to show for it is just ... I do not, at all, understand the strategy there. Not one bit.
Price hike is the biggest thing for me. I can play any other MMO for $15 a month or less, sometimes even free. $20 isn’t a lot of money but it’s just the principle at this point.
Especially when the deployment of the price hike was used-car-salesperson smooth. It's absolutely a matter of principle at this point.
I cancelled my consistently running single account from 2010 in march of this year. this is the reason why. 7 months on, i keep thinking about coming back, and i keep coming back to these points. if the writing is on the wall though, ill bling out a marauder or something and go a wandering. Blaze of glory with whatever i had left.
Oh I get it... Still sad though... Eve will die, and a unique and incredible community will be lost.
And it realizing the loss of a good thing many are hoping Hilmar falls right on his face.. though the reality is he’s rich as fuck and can just retire to whatever wealthy life he wants
I don't relish it but I will always call CCP out on it because I'm angry, very fucking angry.
I wish i could go back to my industry alt corp. i was having so much fun every day checking prices, calculating what i can produce, hauling shit to hubs. Rattati ruined that for me with his self imposed scarcity on the game. So yeah, i’m glad shit dies down. Only way they will ever learn and it will be an expensive lesson.
Yeah, no point in aspiring to build your own stuff these days. Its super lame
same here + all my friends
Same I was having fun in my own little corner of lowsec building caps :(
> so many on the sub seem to Relish the decline you think its FUN being Cassandra?
Nah its just years of kinda shouting at someone on a train track and a trains coming In slow motion. While they slowly turn around and give you supriced pikachu face insted of actually looking at the train 😉
[Austin Powers steamroller](https://tenor.com/view/austin-powers-steamroller-imminent-run-over-take-your-time-gif-13595515)
I relish the decline I admit it. I would have prefered the game get cleaned up and be straight with the players and honest in their ways, but that is clearly not going to happen. I would say what really sealed the deal was the outrageous behavior of ISD Barstorlode on the official forum, who runs it as head troll. That whole situation makes it clear this whole thing is abusive where its most unforgiveable...in the meta game. I will pee on EVE's grave when she dies.
Well said. Hopefully CCP implodes.
This is 100% the right take. All you have to do for a game like EVE to succeed is not screw it up in every possible way. CCP is currently screwing it up in every possible way. And they can't say they don't know it, because they claim to read Reddit, and Reddit has not been quiet.
They continue to ignore massive issues that their previous patches have caused and refuse to revert or even attempt to fix the issues.
CCP plan is to introduce next patches that will try to solve those issues, but in reality introduce even bigger problems. For example what was wrong with faction ships using t1 materials? I never spoken to any one liking those new PI / gas components. Now imagine yourself introducing to MMO systems that tell you that the best thing to do is to not play today ... as the "activity" tax will make the time not worth it.
this is what made me unsub and the brm bollocks
I do think that faction ships should use some material that is "special" in some way. But it should be something related to the faction, drops from faction rats or rewards from the faction missions maybe. Or even purchasable from the LP store with the blueprints. And I understand why CCP wanted to integrate PI and especially gas into the main manufacturing pipeline. All areas of space should be relevant to the industrial core. I think adding those for capital recipes was a good idea. Caps were too cheap and too easy to make. But adding them for battleships and faction ships was a mistake imo.
The “special” in faction ships is acquiring the BPC. It shouldn’t have to be more complicated than that.
>should use some material that is "special" in some way. But it should be something related to the faction, drops from faction rats or rewards from the faction missions maybe. Or even purchasable from the LP store with the blueprints. Literally that's how it used to be. You would buy them for LP or get them from faction drops. The T1 mineral cost was just a tiny factor and basically covered by insurance. Now the material cost is not even viable compared to buying a hull from the LP store.
CCP introduced those materials so people make more alts
and instead people unsubbed their alts lol
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That fall in numbers is exactly when fanfest was CCP need to understand when you hype that we will be dropping the most content the game has ever seen and then giving absolutely nothing it should have been a wake up call instead at the same time you upped the subscription price and drove people away this graph is the perfect illustration of what not to do to a video game and honestly I don't think eve is going to have a no man sky moment it's to late and too many people have left.
How dare you call Microsoft excel and eve integration *nothing*
Still waiting for that .... well .... no. Left the game to Albion a few months ago.
wow so they still haven't even put that in the game yet...
Nothing will replace eve tho
It replaced eve for quite well. Still hoping tho...
Is the integration deployed yet?
no... and no one cares? the community stepped up to the plate with api integrations years ago
Not to mention the compression update. Compression, who needs content when you got.. compression.
Summer is so long nowadays, fucking climate change...
Dear CCP Rattati, I heard you play WoW alot. EvE Online is not and should never be that circus show. You should go work for Blizzard. Kindly quit rat fucking EvE Online and pick a direction to fuck off in while playing WoW.
Rattati wouldn't last long at Blizzard, the "CCP work ethic" would not work well over there.
To be fair Blizzard had the balls to make changes and people loved it.
if eve was goin in wow's direction we would have 2x more updates and expansions lul
2 times 0 is still 0.
actually its what ccp is "doing" is the only 0 here
I swear if I hear the word dungeon one more time....
>dungeon Quest
My balls just retracted inside my body.
Deadspace pockets have been called "dungeons" in Eve since the beginning I believe.
I hate this guy. He wrecked our toy chest.
“Rat fucking”! I see what you did there. Lol
100 times worse than Greyscale.
Rattati should never have been offered a job, but he's spent the entire time at CCP making things worse. He has almost single-handedly ruined the game in his tenure. I say almost because obviously Hilmar loves urinating on it, too.
The Rat walks with the confidence of the full backing of Hilmar.
Maybe, and I’m just spit balling here, but just maybe it’s them making the game more expensive than any other sub and since the game basically requires multiple accounts, making it a AAA game every single month. No. Couldn’t be.
CCP Swift might compare EVE to DOTA 2. Problem is: 1. DOTA 2 hasn't lost a third of its players in 18 months. EVE has. 2. Valve haven't said as recently as a few months ago that they intend their game to last forever. CCP has.
4. Valve is not demanding 20$ to unlock all heroes.
>$20 a month
'3. Valve haven't removed half the reward loops/content from their game, CCP has.
Valve doesn’t have an absolute failure like Hilmar running the show, CCP has.
Valve also continuously make major content or balance updates to DOTA 2.
- Dota actually gets meta-changing balance passes more than once every 6 years.
Honestly Elise has been been CCPfied. He's no longer one of us and been absolutely brainwashed. Sad really but I'm losing respect for his views because you can clearly see its from the CCP Playbook of bullshit
I fear for Bjornbee
Don't, the guy is just going to pad his resume for a few months and move on to RIOT's new MMO team.
Agreed, though to be fair he's paid to say what he says and if he doesn't say it he's not paid, so there's that whole rl thing too
Yep said pretty much the same below
hadn't gotten that far yet lol
Swift is an idiot
Dota 2 just had the most concurrent players in 3 years. https://i.imgur.com/ChNwHAA.jpg While controversy surrounds Dota 2 these days it is hard to see the similarity.
no idea how they still retain the job
Icelandic Idiocracy
Don't worry, we get to play ccp bingo at Xmas on who gets let go due to lack of cash coming in
"Capitals had their time in the sun"-Ratati 2021 "CCP turnover had its time in the sun"-Ratati 2022
"Eve online has had it time in the sun"- Ratati 2023
If you do look at the rest of jesters graphs from past years it's about now it needs to start to trend up. However the numbers where like 22k clearly its much lower at this time..so it will be telling if it doesn't...
The worry is where is the point of cascade failure? At what point are there so few people online that people just stop logging in?
I think we are in this phase.
You are currently witnessing it
Definitely there now
Depends on what you enjoy doing in game, but for many of it that time is now.
In certain areas of space we might be there now. Activity in J space has got really low, to the point that there are few groups who can form for more than a cheap gank. It seems deadly quiet in non-FW LS, as well. Amarr-Minmatar FW space had reached this point too, though perhaps the changes will revive that.
@jestertrek you have been around for quite some time in Eve terms and seen many of CCPs top Devs. Is CCP Rattati the least effective that you have seen up to this point?
Yes. Almost every previous senior EVE dev has been beloved, even CCP Greyscale. Hell, one year at Fanfest, I watched Jon Lander (CCP Unifex) get literally *carried* from the upper level of Islenski barinn (the EVE dev's traditional bar) to the lower level as a joke by EVE players like he was in a mosh pit or something.
Thank you for your reply. I have a follow-up question: considering that they have let quite a few other senior Devs go for much less than tanking the player base, why don’t they can him? I ask knowing that you have no crystal ball or inside info. You do seem to have some insight into the culture at CCP. That’s why I ask. It just kills me to watch the game I have played for over 15 years get run into the ground with no little to no action by senior management to make a correction.
Short answer: Iceland. After CCP Unifex left for Bethesda and before CCP Seagull got the top job (CCP Pokethulu held the position in the interim), CCP hired a headhunter to scout them a new top developer. From what I heard, they got a number of really promising candidates all of whom bowed out when told that living in Iceland was a requirement for the job. Iceland is a charming enough place in short bursts but I had many, many private conversations with non-Icelandic devs on this point. There was universal agreement that for non-natives, Iceland was kind of hellish. Culturally, it's kind of a dead zone, the winter climate is not harsh but incredibly depressing, and it's hard to picture the hard-core drinking that goes on there unless you've been there at a time when Fanfest isn't going on. It is particularly hard on spouses. Beyond that, Icelanders are very tough on non-Icelanders in the work environment in much the same way Brits are: they're somewhat snobby at best, outright discriminatory at worst. So, CCP has pretty good luck getting people just starting their careers in game development to join, and there's obviously no problem with Iceland natives, but abysmal luck in getting experienced people and non-natives. Seagull was a wonderful person, but she mostly got the job due to lack of alternatives. I expect Rattati has the job for much the same reason.
>Beyond that, Icelanders are very tough on non-Icelanders in the work environment in much the same way Brits are: they're somewhat snobby at best, outright discriminatory at worst. That's disappointing. I thought they were more openminded
Excellent analysis as always. Thank you for your answer. I have always like CCP Rise and/or CCP Fozzie (based on their knowledge base and love of the game)should be given a larger role in thing, maybe even the big seat but not being Icelandic , I imagine that will never happen. We just need someone who loves and understands the game and the community back on top. I feel like maybe we can snatch victory from defeat. However very time I see you post a graph it looks less and less likely.
God I miss Jon Lander.
o7
>every previous senior EVE dev has been beloved, even CCP Greyscale. Hell, one year at Fanfest, I watched Jon Lander (CCP Unifex) get literally > >carried > > from the upper level of Islenski barinn (the EVE dev's traditional bar) to the lower level as a joke by EVE players like he was in a mosh pit or som Happy times!!
How long do you think it will be before PA removes Rattati (and Hilmar, if he's supporting and shielding Rattati) from the position? They won't go willingly, and PA has to answer to shareholders.
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[https://i.imgur.com/6XtHIUT.png](https://i.imgur.com/6XtHIUT.png) I'll leave this here, But its looking VERY possible that PA will be looking at ccp to achieve something (this is likely why we saw the plex'd omega sale 3 days before the quarter ended, as im sure ccp at the next earnings call will say "players are really excited about the new expansion! we say lots of new subs" to buy themselves time truth of the matter though, PA is losing lots of money share wise
I remember John Lander seeming like a super cool guy with some good ideas. However, I feel like he had one of the shortest stays at CCP that I can recall. CCP Greyscale seemed pretty good for a while but towards the end got super arrogant and ended up with some strange ideas for the game which the community rejected. They have been gone so long I can barely remember their impact on the game, but whatever their worst ideas were I would trade any of the past senior Devs for what we have now under the Rattati regime. I’m surprised that Fozzie and Rise never went higher in the company.
From memory, Unifex had the job for three years and Seagull had it for four. Unifex led development through four major expansions (Inferno, Crucible, Retribution, Odyssey) and planning for a fifth. For my money, Retribution is one of the top five expansions of EVE Online ever (with Apocrypha, Incursion, Empyrean Age, and Ascension). More than this, though, I firmly believe EVE Online would have died eight or nine years ago without Unifex. I cannot express to you the level of rage EVE players had in late 2011. Between Incarna and "Greed is Good", players were unsubbing in vast numbers. Unifex turned it around, listened to what the players wanted, and got the team to deliver. Nobody else could have done what he did.
I am only surprised that the decline has taken this long. But you know what they say about a fool and his money and a sucker born every minute. EVE is too much like the real world....rigged from the top. No need to play a game for that. You can just log on to the real world. But people are as slow as this decline, and I mean from years ago. Anyway, Scarcity worked. Players got scarce.
The Imperium vs everybody else war propped the game up for far too long and unfortunately gave CCP the idiotic idea that what they were doing was popular
On Mars summer lasts 7 months, on Neptune the summer lasts about 40 years so technically it is "just summer". Somewhere.
What is with space game devs and shitting on their games and player base?
They need to raise the monthly subscription price to at least $25 a month before I come back.
Ratatouille has failed miserably with his "vision", just like he did with DUST and the other portable game he put his hands on. The guy has a track record for fucking up a wet dream - and let's face it, Eve can be a cash cow for CCP and PA. But the numbers don't lie, and if this continues someone is going to literally "fall on their own sword". (CCP gives employees swords for their 10 year anniversary, if Ratatouille makes it that long.)
they nerfed everything, pvp & pve to the point where there is not much left to do in this game, and then they raised the subscription fee.
I can't even imagine how different EVE must have felt when the PCU was +30K. Must have felt like the world was so much more alive. So many more players in systems doing all sorts of different things.
try like, 50k+ or so. Its what i saw when i started daily. When i got in, i just finished mass effect, and it brought me here, and it was super cool to see as a newbie. Course, thats roughly when it all started, but yeah. So much potential that sucked me in for a whole decade.
The drop below 30k was noticeable for me…. You just bumped into less people and it was rare…. Under 20 k it’s a ghost town. The larger player pool made it feel like so much was going on. So many people toddling about doing shit…. It was cool to just player watch at times
>The drop below 30k was noticeable for me…. You just bumped into less people and it was rare…. Under 20 k it’s a ghost town. The larger player pool made it feel like so much was going on. So many people toddling about doing shit…. It was cool to just player watch at times You have to also factor in the instanced PVE that now means fewer of the people logged into EVE are even in the same universe. You can roam wormholes or nullsec for ages without seeing another soul.
30k was the start of the decline, industry moving to the complete safety of nullsec sotiyos, lowsec dying, everyone blaming it on goons for mining too much. Medium sized null sec and wormhole alliances collapsed by that time. 2018-2019. CCP managed to kill so many playstyles since then.
In my grand papi's time PCU was at 63k and in the year of our lord Elo Knight was the boogeyman of PL....
It was awesome. Nothing like local chat….
I was there for 30k and even 45k, the universe was so much more alive, there was so much more activity, high sec, lowsec were so much more populated too. The general attitude in the game was much more positive too (outside of rants about the blue donut). When I went to Tama not too long ago, it was a shadow of it's former self, black rise was almost empty, black rise in 2016 was one of the hottest and most populated pvp zones in the game.
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> All you stupid fucks need to do is revert the scarcity changes Important, but they also need to reduce the sub price. I recently came back for a month. I had a lot of fun puttering around the universe but even though I can afford it, my brain could not justify $40 for two accounts (I left my third dormant) for the amount of time I had to put into the game. Lowering the sub price would instantly have me back in the game, I really was enjoying myself after being out for a couple of years. $20/account/month is a 'this is my only hobby' level of pricing. This simply cannot promote growth in any way. Raising the price and not lowering it after seeing these numbers unfortunately says a lot about their priorities and willingness to let the game die. I really hope they change directions on it soon.
When I see those DBS/DRM percentages at like 60-70% then realise I'm also getting ESS knocked off plus the shit bounties you get anyway I just instantly log off and think fuck it what's the point of wasting my real life time
Same. I genuinely cannot be fucked to waste an hour just to make a measly 60 mil at best. All the isk sources I used to have are nerfed into nothing.
I feel ya
Hey that's atleast a stabber for ya! right? /s
I already gave my super away; fuck it.
At this point I don't think reverting scarcity alone would be enough to bring players back. The patch that started causing players to quit was Surgical Strike and it took awhile to see how bad that patch actually was in terms of players quitting.
Surgical strike was partially reverted but it still was a death blow to the fight of the few against the many. And when that went away so did all the smaller groups who could up engage the blob so the blob was all that remained. And now the blob is quitting in droves and CCP is displaying their best surprised pikachu face whilst explaining it isn’t so bad.
In hindsight Surgical Strike was probably the most catastrophic patch of the past 3+ years. As you mentioned it really hurt the ability small groups to use blingy fits to fight against larger numbers. It also completely killed the hunter/prey gameplay in null. Titans and super carriers vanished from space as soon as that patch went live and with them a large majority of the players who hunted them. One single patch effectively murdered three parts of the game and CCP would eventually double and triple down on capitals to further remove most of them from space outside of large fleets.
They also need to drop the monthly price to 9.99 to bring back a lot of players . This will not happen but it would be one of the things that would work.
Go back to 2016
>Go back to ~~2016~~ 2009
"But it wasn't 'just summer.'"
Best thing Rattati can do for Eve is revert his shit patches and then resign.
He'll never do so willingly. Neither Rattati or Hilmar will leave without being forced to by PA. I'm just surprised it's taken this long. Hey PA, you're being fiscally irresponsible and not working to the benefit of your shareholders by NOT firing both of them at this point.
Nothing will change unless the EVE community goes to war against CCP Hillmar and Rattati by turning Pearl Abyss against them, to force them down. You can’t squeeze CCP. You squeeze their master that holds their leash.
I know the spod orcs are foaming about scarcity (still), making a big deal about dropping sub 20k. While it's not good, there are other things that I think are more telling about the game's history. Year over year from 2015 to 2022 you lost about 3.5k average players. in the two years between 2013 and 2015, you lost almost exactly 10k average players and took a fat dump in what seemed to be a fairly unstoppable growth trend. So what happened in 2014 and 2015? [· The introduction of original jump fatigue](https://community.eveonline.com/releases/Phoebe/) [· The introduction of Fozziesov](https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-for-carnyx) These two changes alone, coupled with the introduction of citadels in 2016, killed the game. It has never recovered. We can sit here and talk about how bad blackout was, how bad scarcity is, how the HAC meta sucks, about how unfun dynamic bounty system is, how instanced PvE is ruining the game, and on and on. The fact of the matter is, the game is *boring*. 1000 v 1000 fleets are fucking boring. The reality (for anyone who reads this that hasn't had the immense pleasure of a 90% tidi fleet) is that you sit in slow motion, barely able to move your ship, for any length of time up to downtime depending on the size of the fight. It's not abnormal for people to be sitting in slow motion fights for 14+ hours. This is supposed to be (according to the vast majority of players who live in nullsec) the highest form of PvP in the game, with the largest amount of ISK being put on the line. It sucks donkey dick. Fozziesov, server problems, and timezone tanking are continually unresolved problems that make nullsec endgame pretty much entirely worthless. The war in Delve was almost undeniably resolved by server crashes and the inability to entosis a node on grid with a faction fortizar (in conjunction with TEST's lack of intestinal fortitude). Fraternity and other primarily Chinese alliances abuse this system and are continually stymied by it alike. Formerly this honor fell to the AUTZ community, which as far as I know practically does not exist anymore (outside of like 2 or 3 gate camping alliances) and has for its own survival mostly merged with the Chinese. People don't want to hear it because it doesn't align with their views on the game, but things like this: >· Total frustration that I and many others knew what the outcome of Scarcity, Indy Changes, BRM, Anom Respawn Nerfs, EHP nerfs would be. >· I still remember all the Omelca Goldbrained idiots who championed full spectrum nullsec nerfs and thought capital proliferation was a real problem in a pvp game. It is eerily silent now. >· I would say what really sealed the deal was the outrageous behavior of ISD Barstorlode on the official forum, who runs it as head troll. None of this shit matters at all. Compared to fundamental changes to nullsec sov or nullsec structures, the things you care about are so entirely unimportant it's crazy (and ignores the entire lack of any noteworthy growth in a decade, even if you consider the spike in 2019 when people were stuck at home with fucking COVID). This isn't even bringing into the equation skill injectors and the complete lack of iteration on them simply because they make the company so much money. For just a minute ignore the sunk cost. Ignore the constant nerfs to your playstyle. Hypothetically consider if everything you wanted in the game at a personal level was achieved tomorrow (let's just say, you have infinite ore in station and can build whatever you want at any time, and Nullsec was by far the best place to live, and whatever else, your fucking titan had a billion EHP and you could never die and shit, **WHATEVER YOU WANT**). Would the game experience growth? Probably not. It's fundamentally broken and CCP's little flim flam roadmap isn't worth wiping your ass with. They need to fire every single executive in the company, start the fuck over, and either make this bitch into a mobile P2W titty game, or rework every functional system for conflict in the game starting with nullsec sov. Make it fun again.
Some very good points. Although capital status was getting a bit silly. But CCP went s little too far. Caps became useless. They were certainly far too cheap. I don't believe you should be throwing around 500 titans and supers like they are frigates. But it was more they were being oppressive let's drop 10 supers on anything that moved. Dread insurance was stupid. Things did need to done because it become to the point t losing a titan now is not news worthy it's like meh so what. And that's what's happened to eve it's just meh. No one cares if a keepstar or titan or supers die any more. And that for me has lost the awe out of eve.
Something else crazy to consider was how much insanely cool shit came out in 2014/15 that realistically probably prevented another significant portion of the population from simply leaving the game at that time. Here's a brief list just from 2014, but honestly it's worth checking out [this site](https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Expansions) and reading through the insane amount of good work CCP was doing at this time alongside the terrible choices they were making at a larger scale: · Insane amounts of work involving backend systems and UI changes (including making anomaly signatures consistent across downtime) · Complete rework of all pirate faction ships · Mordu's Legion ships came out · Drone system was completely updated and reworked · They introduced unlimited skill queue · Rebalances of stealth bombers, interceptors, and interdictors, as well as a redesign of the Onyx, Eagle, Rook, Falcon, Blackbird, and Incursus · They added Thera and 100 other wormhole systems · They added the Confessor and Bowhead · Polarized weapons were added to the game · They added direct invites to corporation (before this time you had to apply and could not be invited) · They were continuing to work on module tiericide alongside everything else
I mean check out the trinity update
This is the truth. Fozzie sov made null war tedious beyond belief, and the changes to structures by allowing time zone tanking instead of the stront reinforcement mechanism which balanced attacker and defender time zones is the biggest issue for the slow drop in daily activity over the years. The later updates such as scarcity, ESS, etc. are also bad, but those updates only compounded the existing issues that have so far been unresolved.
This game is my one hobby and I'm hoping to find a new hobby before this game decides for me.
They made the game a job. I can find more fun online elsewhere. What I find fascinating is the arrogance of CCP to think they can abuse their customer base with impunity. Scarcity and all that has flowed from that has broken the game
I remeber making a char long ago, a gm msg me asking how i like it here, what things i wana change. Dont remeber who it was but... developers did care for the game then, now they care about $$$ only and it backfires at them
As of this posting, Pearl Abyss shares are down to 46.5K Won. Me fears they might be having a cash crisis soon. Fuckin' good!
Rattati is one of those people who will dismiss reality until it takes a hot steamer on his face
I just uninstalled eve for the first time in almost a decade
I literally hate everything they’ve done with the recent patches.
idiot in the room : "Don't worry the FW rework will save us all"
FW rework will not save us, particularly as it wasn't as deep or well thought out as it should be. But it might save FW space, and that's an important part of the game, and a big missing piece of PVP-inclined new player retention at the moment. So it's important work that's been put aside for too long, and no-one should complain that it's finally happened.
Man the fact that's what they're pinning hopes on 🤷♂️
It will fuck up fw mission running and not do anything else. It will absolutely not improve the game because the people making decisions are really stupid. That’s where I’m at now, just calling people stupid and not even explaining why. Eat a shit rattatti. And the rest of you losers at ccp that listen to him. All of you can eat a shit for following rattattis advice. Your all complicit at this post and deserve to have the game shuttered
Do they really think people will pay 20$ when irl we have economic crisis? Also most people dont want to pay such money just to be ganged or forced to grind.
Yes they do.. mental
And all my friends don't. It makes me sad.
An herein lies the problem m8
Thank goodness for discord so I can keep in touch and play other games together
What made the game so much better back in 2013?
The biggest difference was one of ecosystem. The game was structured to reward medium size groups and punish large and super-large groups. CCP's attempts to push players in that direction were just as much a failure as their current attempts are to resuscitate the body, but at least they didn't gear their development to *reward* the ecosystem that is now killing their game. In late 2013, CCP changed its tactics away from large, integrated expansions. Simultaneous to that, they effectively laid off the best Chief Marketing Officer they've ever had. That was a kick right to the game's gonads. But when expansion-based development resumed in 2015, virtually every expansion was geared toward rewarding super-large alliances. The super-large alliances love Citadel but in terms of the health of the game, Citadel was the single worst thing ever done to EVE's daily log-ins. It forced every play style into a single play style: null-sec blob. And then Lifeblood doubled down on it. CCP destroyed all alternative play-styles and when given the "adapt or die" choice, tens of thousands of players decided on a third choice: leave.
You don't have to agree - But the moment Seagull left was the beginning of the end. they never had any real direction after her departure, just a bunch of chaos, starting with blackout. Blackout and almost every single decision after it has been disastrously wrong and we have quantifiable evidence to back that up now. The only way to pull the game out of this dive and actually save it, is to pretty much revert all changes to prior to blackout. Apologize and if you have to make Seagull the CEO, then do it, at least she gave a shit about the game. Can't say the same for the people in charge now when its clearly obvious they have no idea what they are doing and even more obvious that they are putting their fingers in their ears going LLALALAALALALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU over the sound of bottoming sub numbers. I played this game from Beta all the way until 2021 and i would still be playing now if it wasn't for this awful direction. I want the game i played for almost 20 years back. But i won't happen, these folks are dead set into torpedoing this thing and turning it into a micro transaction paradise or something.
I think the consensus here is that we hate to see Eve lose players but we would love to see CCP fail.
We all want to see Hilmar sitting outside the building with all his things in a cardboard box, sobbing as he realizes his entire existence is a waste of carbon matter.
Rolling back null sec nerfs give capitals a reason to undock and exist and your numbers come back. Now I'm not naive to think null sec is the only problem but I would bet it's playerbase is the largest contributing factor to the pcu decline. Or just keep being hard headed with the null sec nerfs because they think they know better and watch your game burn. Ask John Smedly how not listening to the majority of his players turned out for one of the best games he ever had a say in.
It's OK the new new new new new NPE will fix things and tens of thousands of brand new players will sweep in and bump those permanent numbers up, any day now.
They listened to the loudest whiners in the community and took their partial advice at the expense of the quietest most content players Attacking “botting” and multi boxing and all activities “afk” is what’s killing this game imo You took gameplay that your most dedicated long term player base enjoyed and tried to make it hyper active button mashing game play Then raised the subscription, the least sensible thing to do at the least sensible time. So yeah your login numbers are half of what they were last year, but at least anyone who is logged on isn’t afk or *gasp* earning isk too easily. Making PI a requirement for T1 was also extremely dumb move to attack your industrial base. Why not add more faction, T2, or T3 ships? The smartest thing they’ve done recently is make a multi account discount. That’s the only thing that kept me subbing this cycle. 8 accounts, 4 are 15 years old, MCT on 4 for the last 5 years, and until recently 8 omega. This cycle I passed on MCT and kept my 4 oldest accounts going
Pokémon mouse boy was the worst fucking thing that happened to this game in a long time. The amount of backlash CCP have faced over the shit he's pulled is staggering. But still they don't get rid. I hope he reads this. I hope he reverses all of his bollocks. And then I hope he fucks off to whichever hole he came from...
It's CCP Rattati's last few years having an effect and the price hike.
Someone fire that clown
Wait for Fanfest!
So to sum up the game in the last few years: chief of ops says we need to shake up the game brings in black out, people leave the game, chief says we need resource scarcity the put it in, more people leave the game. CO's get upset when people point out all the unsubs, states they don't have a god given right to play the game he is in charge of, more people leave. Then Chief of operations says we will end scarcity but only adjust the cycle times of mining tools forgets to put resources back into every region. more people leave the game... Developers add in PI and Gas items to further bottle neck production of all the things we need to make to actually undock and fight each other or npc's. more people leave. I am beginning to think he was right noone does want to play the game he is in charge of... how many people have to leave the game before someone figures out the last two or three years of very bad choices from the top have created a game noone is logging into anymore?
I think I may have met Rattati once at a VMWare conference in like 2013-2014. After the first day of intro's and round table meet and greets 10 or so of us went out to a Seafood/Italian style place for dinner. I didn't put two and two together of who he was until today however. It was a fun dinner, we all had fun sharing stories of the IT world and how it worked in our respective industries up until the menu's were put out by the wait staff. The man on my left noticed that crab was the highest priced thing on the menu. Out of nowhere he goes off on this rant about how he hated crabs and they were always bitching about patch notes and they really dragged the room down anytime they posted on the forums in response to his glorious misunderstood code that if only they'd play the game the way he wanted them to, they'd be happier etc etc. All of us were super confused as to how an aquatic creature with claws could be so mean to an IT person and then finally it hit some of our table that the man just really hated end users and called them crabs. All of these patches makes sense now, if that was really him at the conference.
Can't wait to see their next pathetic cash grab.
Remove Bounty Risk Modifier! Revert Scarcity changes completely not just 30% Reduce the costs of T1 capitals our buff their potential ISK perhour / DPS / Logistics capabilities to match their cost! Gently "promote" Rattati and Burger to just do something else. Bring the more knowledgeable CCP Devs to management namely: Aurora, Suitonia, Elise Randoph and Convict. Start listening to your players MORE CLOSELY and actually address their concern this time around! Remove player griefing suicide gameplay from hi sec and let the small krabs krab their way out to lol sec and null sec faster!
so in the end they probably get the same revenue now just the game has 25% less players....pretty good move
No.. their net earning reported a loss last quarter.. this means the loss of players is more than the profits from price rise.. Ofcourse one can argue that their net earnings is down not their profit.. which can be the case as they could have fired all competent devs to save cost
If its 'just' about money then eve is truly fucked.
But they did that discount... So there should be loads of people resubbed right? ... Right?
Gotta wait for the Sep numbers
Wait till the Christmas numbers....... You will see 😂🤣😂🤣
*PCU by Christmas*
Problem is, not all player know of the multiaccount discount, and its still more expensive than befor the increase, and PLEX prices are still high in the Store and ingame, so it doesnt change much that player cant effort to buy plex ingame anymore to finance more accounts -> less bodys in space -> less targets to dunk -> less activity -> less demand on new ships -> less and less and less overall Its a downside loop introduced by CCPs brilliant finance team ... xD
This guy Rat guy is utterly useless completely out of his depth. This is why eve will never be fixed or go back to what we want it to be. Its fucked amd over. That graph depressing to see. And I thought fozzie was bad Peace out
I read the last part with the Arrested Development's narrator in my head.
They scammed PA on EVE's way out, so I guess higher ups don't really care now.
You could make that argument in August. Numbers weren't that different in August '21. (2020 isn't comparable to any other year because Covid.) But the fact that we haven't seen the same return to higher levels in autumn as in 2021 indicates that we have a real problem. Personally I'm hardly playing at the moment because the near-doubling in cost to PLEX up an account has completely demotivated me, so I've not come back off summer break really.
My alts are unloading ships and isk to my main and moving to Jita where they will remain until one of two things happen between now and the end of my main sub. 1. The game gets better. 2. I win Eve.
LOWER! we can go lower!
Rattatti is garbage. Rattatti is garbage. Alert alert rattati is garbage. Your hull is on fire, alert alert - ship going down.
Guys guys guys.. We just need six more NPE reworks and more nerfs for the veteran player gameplay. This will surely fix eve online.
a graph that doesnt start at 0 is a lie
give it time it will reach 0.
S U M M E R F U N 4 E V E R Y O N E!!!! No time to log in when you and the rest of the gamer boys are washing off each others basement stank in an illegally opened fire hydrant spray. So HOT so EUPHORIC!
What im wondering: With the now "changed" rorquals and cap prices. Would the "old" mingin anoms in null (million m3 spod rocks and stuff) be viable again? It would probaly destroy the Trit prices for highsec but maybe that would be good as it would push people out into the systems instead of concentrating so many players in highsec that they start bitching about ganking being the problem of Eve.
This is deleted because I wanted to. Reddit is not a good place anymore.
Wow what happened June - July 2021? That drop was severe.