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[The Rook]

I am a bit confused because on my screen it clearly states that players play less during war dec times and lose interest in the game afterwards. Highsec PvP is the most retarded of all PvPs and the only things you can do there are fighting someone who wants to fight back without outside influence, remove someone's space castle or club the most unskilled and harmless seals this game has to offer. You can still do two out of three things so I guess nothing of value was lost.

[Mizhara]

I'm sure you're quite confused. What you're reading says that the data shows that people don't return after the wardec is over. You are inferring that this means it's the wardec's fault. This is an assumption with very little backing it up, especially when we take into account that if wardecs were the real problem people would be returning after they are over. Don't get blinded by the symptom, find the actual fuckin' disease.

And you're on an RP board saying that people fighting their enemies when they try to hide in highsec is 'retarded'.
Maybe I should head off the inevitable "y u no losec/nullsec" nonsense, I've killed my wartargets everywhere but w-space and at least one war-target can confirm I could have had alts in their whs if I hadn't deliberately avoided crossing certain lines in these RP wars.

[kalaratiri]

There's nothing in there that shows the wardec itself is the primary problem with player retention

I'm sorry, but "considerable activity drops in all activities during the war" does seem to imply that activity is present before the war is declared.

Players are playing.
War is declared.
Players stop playing.

The war is the cause in this scenario.

[Mizhara]

Of lower activity during the war, yes. No one is contesting this. No one is even arguing against this being something that needs changing. This however does not mean that the wardec is the cause of the lack of player retention once the war is over. I would argue the wardec at best acts as a catalyst. It provides that one week of reduced activity and... then what? Why aren't they logging back in?

... answer that question. In some cases, sure it might be "I might get wardecced again" but it's highly unlikely that'll be the only or even the main answer. The data we need, the data we don't have, is the answers to that exact question. My money is, as I've said many a time already, that the week off is just the catalyst. The week passes, it's over and... people just don't feel like logging in because the spell is broken. The addiction to virtual progress and numbers growing higher has been broken. The nicotine is out of the system. The gameplay isn't actually fun or rewarding enough that they want to come back. As I've said - yet again - no one ever came back to Eve after a hiatus going "Gosh, I really missed those L4s and mining in a Retriever u guise.". The social aspect? People keep in touch through a million different social venues without ever logging in. Most Eve people I know I barely ever talk to in-game, but constantly talk to out of game. No, the thing that can draw people to logging into a game is the gameplay and progression of it.

If a slight disruption of the sunk cost fallacy, the skinner box addictions etc is enough to make people go "meh, don't want to log in", then the wardec was never the problem in the first place. It just revealed the real problem.

Unfuck highsec gameplay. Dulling it down even further by even removing risk from it isn't going to provide any long-term benefits to the game. If anything, it'll harm it long-term.

[Ukeko Ahrzi]

When I started playing years ago I got wardecced when I was in a highsec mining and missioning corp on my main. Several friends of mine did as well. For them, and for me, it wasn't the pvp specifically that was the problem. It was partially in game income.

As missioner/miners we didn't know how to pvp well or cheaply. As almost all of us had a 'bigger is better' mentality, fit up as much of the biggest stuff we could, and lost it. Lost a lot of our net worth in those mistakes. Many of us unsubbed and quit because it took us months to amass what we lost in days due to high sec wardecs.

I came back when someone told me about the money one could make running Incursions. Many of my friends did not and still to this day refuse to get back in to EVE. They don't want to PvP, that's why they stayed in High Sec. But for some cheap lols some high sec war deccers convinced most of my early EVE friends that EVE was not for them despite the fact that I know that if they were better educated in how to deal with wars that they could survive and thrive as PvEers even under threat of PvP.

Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. I don't know. But there is a line between keeping EVE dangerous and losing subs.

[Mizhara]

Sound like the problem there was that the game and its community didn't set the expectations right, nor taught you what you needed to know.

[Ukeko Ahrzi]

Sound like the problem there was that the game and its community didn't set the expectations right, nor taught you what you needed to know.

EVE is a very hard game to get in to for some, maybe most. So I can't disagree with you there at all.

[The Rook]

You can't force someone to fight you in space. If one side is significantly weaker they will opt out 99% of the time. PvPers complain about blobbing or upshipping at that point while the other side complains about the lack of balls.
Furthermore: I've heard there are entire areas of space where free PvP is enabled. Even there people leave when a bigger threat comes.

[Silas Vitalia]

You can barely force people who 'want' to fight to actually fight in space when they don't know they are going to win ahead of time 

[Silas Vitalia]

This whole issue does butt up against core EVE game design and marketing;

They want to market a game that's sexy and dangerous where you can do a lot of nasty things without the game stopping you, and 'isn't like other games' but that means it's then a very tough forge for players to go through and then come out tougher on the other side, and it's simply not for most people not used to that sort of thing.  CCP would do well to figure this shit out and learn to gradually dip people into these waters. They would reap so many more players with a tiny bit less throwing into the deep shark waters.

I'm not saying they should change gameplay in any core way, but sometimes we people forget how 'unique' this idea is in mmo game design, how much what we call normal war dec pew pew is sort of by definition unconsentual griefing in almost any other game.  We feel proud of this, like we earned our way through the new player crucible, and that we aren't wimps like those people playing 'x' carebear game.   

Consequently ccp uses this sort of thing for marketing but it also drives away the unwashed casual masses in droves. Niche rules, niche game.

I ran into this dichotomy quite hard in the Star Citizen forums where I was sort of discussing sort of eve 101 level pirating and hunting sorts of gameplay and how I would be murderizing people and taking their shit who absolutely didn't want me to murderize them and take their shit, and the carebears lost their minds and I got reported a few times, it was hilarious. Like eve basic level forum chat was looked upon as very aggressive and evil there, it was amazing.

[Louella Dougans]

maybe you're thinking of the wrong examples.

something like 70% of all wars are declared by three alliances

trade-hub campers, right ?

that's why it's a problem.

people find that during war, they get shot at, and because of how the eve economy is structured, with Jita and Amarr being fairly well stocked trade hubs, and other places much less so, then even if you want to fight back, you find the process of replacing stuff much more tedious.

activity depressed during the war, because of the impacts on making money. and then activity continues to be suppressed because people have learned that going to Jita or Amarr draws the wrong kinds of attention. So you either sell your stuff to buy orders for less than its worth, or have to faff around with alts and stuff (who are also at risk of being shot by trade hub suicide campers). which reduces your ability to do the stuff you actually want to do.

people talk a lot about "don't fly what you can't afford to replace" and all that. but have forgotten how much of a grind it is in eve to get to a point where you can comfortably afford to replace stuff.

[MakotoPriano]

As for tantrums, go fuck yourself. The fact that I'm angry about this shit does not in any shape, way or form devalue my view on this, especially given that unlike you I actually paid some fucking attention to what CCP and CSM has actually said.

So, here's the thing. This may not be your intent, but when you roundly dismiss others' views as wrong, insult them, berate them, and likewise toward the developers, etc, it feels very much like you're devaluing everyone else's view on things. Your anger does not make other people's views any more or less valid.

I remember trying out the beta winter of my freshman year in college, in the dorms, poking around with other folks on the floor. I remember forumwarrioring State RP back in the dark ages, when Jera was posting tongue-in-cheek soft drink stuff and Caldari RP consisted, occasionally, of blowing up those terrible hauler spawns off stations.

Though I've taken breaks, EVE's been a consistent part of my entire adult life.

Almost every single person on this particular forum has given EVE years of their life. All of us are invested, deeply, in this game and in this fictional universe.

Not a single one of us is the guardian of The Real EVE.

EVE has changed, evolved, slid back, climbed onward constantly over the course of its lifespan. Whatever changes are made, or whatever changes aren't made, EVE as a game will never be the same as the past. It might be better. It might be worse. There will be things that are broken. There will be things that are sublimely wonderful. It will be EVE, whatever that means.

All of us are stakeholders.

And, as before, there will always be people who talk shit but don't want to get hit. The roleplay community will, as before, do what it's done with the people who talk a big game from inside their invulnerable bouncy castle of choice.

[Mizhara]

People can have whatever views they want. When they're factually wrong though, and on top of that throw personal insults into the mix, they can go fuck themselves. I have absolutely no obligation whatsoever to be polite to people who have shown none themselves. As for the developers, they can doubly go fuck themselves because not a single fucking one of them have shown even the slightest fucking hint of having invested even the most insignificant amount of effort or thought into something that is pretty fuckin' significant. CCP gets the respect they earn, and when they betray everything Eve ever was about in order to suck Korean bonus dick, they have earned nothing but scorn and loathing, every last one of them.

[Silas Vitalia]

I don't necessarily disagree with a lot of that, but simmer downnnn cmonnnn

We are getting into fanboi territory where we feel ownership of the IP and then personally affronted for whatever terrible decisions the owners of the IP make with their toys.  Every cool thing we nerds like ends up being terrible after a while, and the things we loved about it aren't the things it does anymore. 

It happens with almost everything and it's only gotten easier to give up the ghost on caring too much about awful corporate bastardizing of a thing you used to love as I get older.

I remember -really- being into Star Wars, in the years before the prequels (early 90s) and the novel conveyor belt hadn't started.  At first it was super cool that there was NEW Star Wars, and then every year it got worse and worse and worse and I was personally affronted with each new, terrible thing and decision by Lucasfilm until I had to give it up that this thing doesn't belong to me, if Lucas wants to make a bunch of dumb shit and sell toys it's his stuff.  At a certain point you realize the thing you liked isn't for you anymore, its weird and different and clearly meant for other people.

Eve was(is) like that for me.  I loved the shit out of it, played it religiously for like ten years, and then when after the 500th time ccp shat the bed I decided it wasn't for me anymore. It just got to be too much to be that emotionally invested in being abused all the time     I used to feel total rage about every -stupid- decision ccp was making until I could get some distance. 

 

[Samira Kernher]

All of us are stakeholders.

Well, this stakeholder is seriously considering just cutting her losses.

You know, I heard about things like MonocleGate and Tony G and figured that stuff was in the past. But nope, seems CCP still has plenty of utterly-fucking-stupid decisions left in its reservoir.