As for me, well there is the whole “no prisoners, no mercy” schtick. In some few cases it’s simply a matter of rightous indignation.

Julie

@Michael: Wow…what can I say but I think you, my friend, have it sussed.

p.s. By the end of a long day I’m lucky to find the keyboard let alone find all the typos. Thanks for setting my cumpas strait…

Not sure what the deal is — but the discussion here seems to be pretty on-point (re: what causes people to leave games, what’s ‘boring’, etc.)

BTW, it’s spelled “compass”. ;p

The counter-example to that is EVE itself. At any time a substantial proportion of its players are engaged in “pve” pursuits – mining, or mission running. And 300,000+ accounts say that, right now at least, it works for enough of the people that they enjoy it enough to keep paying. It’s not “harmony” certainly, more a grumpy, crotchey, state of dynamic equilibrium, managed risk.

“Read back a year ago about all they say they were going to do about suicide ganking and how massively said it was a thing of the past. It was, to be blunt, so much hogwash.”

IIRC the main thing CCP suggested they were going to implement, but never did, was the Concordokken insurance change. That never it to the test server, I think, though I recall the sec penalty changes and Concord response time changes were thoroughly tested by the gankers and pirates – some of their complaints in the forums were very amusing. The intent was never to prevent all ganking – if Massively reported that they were inaccurate.

“Where pve is concerned it just seems to me that CCP doesn’t give a shit – but that’s just me.”

There are many good reasons to say that – the mission system is obsolete, cranky, inflexible, and difficult for the content team to work worth, has suffered a variety of false-starts makeovers (COSMOS, etc). It might be argued that there’s been along-term under-investment in that area because it was “just about good enough to work”. Mining mechanics haven’t changed in years, with the Rorqual and Orca being the last substantial content added to the system.

But, really, the in-flow of effort, and out-flow of materials from mining and missioning activities are very close to CCP’s heart. I think they care PvE, and the players participating in it, a great deal. And what they care about is delivering what we signed up for – what they promised us. A dark universe, with danger lurking behind every stargate. Where every ship undocked should be regarded as potentially lost. Where concern for personal safety over greed can reward the cautious.

In short, Aura warned us wouldn’t be safe. It would be counter to the game’s core design to make it _perfectly_ safe. I, personally, don’t want it to the safe. I enjoy knowing that, at any moment, a buzzing swarm of Goons might descend on my mining barges and reduce them to space dust. That, if someone comes and steals from a can in my mission, and I idiotically decide to shoot back, I’m pretty likely to die in an oxygen fire.

Because, despite my preference for “carebear” activities, it’s a rush, it’s pixels, it’s the game I signed up for.

Now for me, there’s also definitely room in there for shades of grey, of sensible compromise between the adrenalin junkies and calmer heads. But, ultimately, EVE has always been the wrong game for someone who wants to play in total safety.

Balsakian McGiggles says:
January 24, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I’m just going to throw this out here. I don’t think CCP ever really had a ‘master plan’ for player experience. They built a game world that has elements of PvE and PvP throughout (highsec, lowsec, nulsec dictates the level of PvP expected, enemy spawns in asteroid belts that increase both your wallet through bounties and security status)…

First, this thread has strayed so far off the original topic that it couldn’t find it’s way back with a map and a compus.

Still, I think that the above seems closer to the truth, based on what I have read and seen, than anything else. The question becomes can pve and pvp co-exist in harmony? The answer in my opinion is a loud resounding no. Over the weekend I went back and took a look at Tobolds last year April fools post. It put me in mind of when Ultima Online and then Origins really did divide the world between pve and pvp. The pvp side of the world rapidly became deserted.

As for me, there are two things I don’t engage in and both are related: high stakes poker and high stakes pvp.

It also seems to me that the developers at CCP have their game where they want it. Read back a year ago about all they say they were going to do about suicide ganking and how massively said it was a thing of the past. It was, to be blunt, so much hogwash. Where pvp is concerned Eve Online is no doubt a great game. Where pve is concerned it just seems to me that CCP doesn’t give a shit – but that’s just me.

There were certainly plenty of threads in C&P and General Discussion about Hulkageddon II. I just flipped through the formal CSM Assembly Hall forum, there are a modest number of threads on the issues around it, but not as many as I thought there would be. It’s all quite muted.

The CSM debated insurance issues around suicide ganking at the Jan 3rd meeting, according to Teadaze’s minutes – http://teadaze.net/GalNet/. I’m not sure if a coherent “Buff mining ships against hisec ganking” thread has been brought up with strong enough support to make it onto their agenda. There seems to be a separate “insurance rebalance” issue too crossing into this issue.

The Quarter Economic Newsletters usually begin with a “demographics” section that includes a subscriber graph and some commentary. The most recent version, Q3 2009 can be found via http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=707. 300,000 was the figure being discussed at Fanfest which looks to match the graph data, which only covers to the end of September.

It’s a shame live data isn’t available, unlike the player concurrency numbers (tracked by Chribba’s http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility), but I expect marketing wouldn’t like that.

@Ben: ‘CCP just implemented a RADICAL change to the way that sovereignty is captured in 0.0 space to do EXACTLY this — change the way their product is used. And by most measures — it’s been successful. More people are logging into EVE than ever before (re: concurrent peak user record) to play out the 0.0 game.’

It’s hard to judge what’s influencing the current PCU figures. There are lots of _bad_ things happening at the moment. The nullsec changes (which I’m not involved in) were very buggy initially, there are all manner of scaling issues (terrible lag in large fleet battles again, lots of node-deaths), and global server stability is poor at the moment (an MSSQL db glitch issue, we think). Hulkageddon 2 was there to scare the risk-averse.

On the other hand, there’s good post-expansion publicity, and those £3 first month deals on Steam. EVE players are weird.

Not so big a fan of #1-#3 though Again, I agree with you guys on many points… just not the use of EVE-O as the lynchpin of your argument, as it doesn’t hold up.

I *was* a big fan of WAR… but just couldn’t stand the monotonous, grindy, pointless RvR. If they had just used the DAOC formula. What was they thinkin’!

4.) I will have another beer.

1.) Warhammer Online is the best game I have ever played
2.) Eve Online sucks much it could suck a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose and most importantly…
3.) Helcity Boson is my hero and I think CCP should name a planet somewhere after him.