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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Happy EVE Is Dying! Day

One of the recurring themes in EVE Online is that "EVE is dying."  We see it today with the declining ACU number.  We saw it a few years ago during the Summer of Rage.  Actually, we hear someone bring up the idea all the time.  But how long has EVE been dying?

The answer may surprise people.  Chribba did a search of the forums and discovered the first mention of "EVE is dying" was posted by Madox on 30 July 2003:

Posted - 2003.07.30 19:45:00 - [8]

i think people forget that we are paying for a service here.

if you were at a restaurant and they told you your food would be ready in an hour then 15 minutes after the hour they told you it would instead take an additional hour AND THEN they don't bring your meal out for another two hours without telling you, something would be seriously wrong.

now image that restaurant has 5000 people in it.

we are the customers here. we are paying for a service. we have every right to question what is going on. now granted, isk refunds for missed productivity and asking for some sort of public appology that all the devs signed is just plain silly. however, a dev CAN take 35 seconds out of their busy schedule and make a small post on the devblog letting the paying customers know what is going on.

i think that is all anybody is really asking for.

*eve is dying*
That's right.  The players began proclaiming that EVE is dying 11 years ago today.  Apparently EVE is afflicted with a long, lingering, illness.


18 comments:

  1. EVE isn't "dying", but that's not the same thing as saying that EVE isn't seeing a decline in subs or APC while CCP's "austerity policy" of 95% fixing and updating and only 5% new stuff continues.

    4 years ago we were yelling with our wallets at CCP to fix their damb game. And they've substantially fixed it. When they started fixing it like they meant it, numbers went up and people were happy.

    Now 4 years later, it's great that a whole load of things in EVE work that didn't used to, and we're yelling at CCP to expand and reform their damb game.

    In theory and if what they've been telling us about the code refactoring is true, then about a year from now, they'll be able to fix/rebalance AND expand/reform at the same time. That will be peachy keen.

    Meanwhile, we're stuck playing pretty much the same game we were the day Incarna went live, only most of it actually works now.

    I hope CCP will be able to produce something new and exciting before Elite:Dangerous goes live or there will be real trouble.

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  2. "Fix this" we said.

    And they did.

    EVE rocks atm. PVP has never been better. PVE has never been better. I haven't mucked about enough with the recent industry changes, but what I'm hearing from folks has been good.

    Eve the game has never been better.

    The "meta game" with respect to null appears to be in trouble. Hmm, and which part of EVE is controlled by the oldest and bitterest of bitter vets? And who is doing the screaming?

    Yeah, I'm sure you noticed as well.

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  3. The neglect and decay of null is the surest sign that there is no secret 0.0 cabal controlling CCP. If there was, there would have been another 0.0 expansion right after Dominion, instead of half a decade of fuck awfulness hated by everyone.

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  4. "X is dying" is about as boilerplate as you can get in an MMO community, and has been for the past...20 years or so? And yet...these games keep chugging along!
    Sometimes the public should not be allowed out in public...

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  5. Coincidentally, Madox has been in the same NPC corp for 10 years... with no portrait.

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  6. I don't do indy stuff much, but I have industry 1 to turn ships into skinned ships. I first did this a few months back with the navy comets, which took somewhere in the neighborhood of forever and way too many clicks with an unintuitive interface that was trying to harm me. Shortly after the patch, I made a bunch of pirate skinned ships, and was pleasantly surprised with an interface that was nice and intuitive, and you didn't have to change windows to deliver a job.

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  7. "Dying" implies that death is imminent. That's clearly not the case with Eve. "Declining" implies that some kind of gradual loss is observable. That clearly is the case with Eve's ACU.


    If we'd just use the correct term, we might actually have a useful discussion.

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  8. In case it wasn't clear: I was agreeing with Malcanis.

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  9. What was acceptable while EVE had no competition, now is a serious liability to CCP.

    Everything that EVE doesn't gets right (it's not fun, it's not casual friendly, it's not noob friendly, haves beyond awful PvE) is achievable by other projects. And if they succeed, there will be only a little niche left for EVE, maybe a niche too small to sustain the game.

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  10. The neglect and decay of null is wrought by those player inhabiting the space. Some have argued (quite well, I think) that it is simply the maturation of null sec occupied by human beings as set by the mechanics that exist. Human beings operate in groups, with the goal of creating the greatest security for themselves. This has been achieved in null, as there is little or no "betterment" to strive for. The current arrangement appears stable. Why risk loss when you have all that you need to be secure?

    The only way to invigorate null sec is to remove the current level of security felt by the organizational structure currently imposed. This, of course, will only result in a temporary shake up. A new order will descend upon null sec. Just like an ant hill, when stirred up with a stick becomes a chaotic and active area, returns to a new normal.

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  11. lol and i thought i was being sarcastic when i said its been dying for 10 years. Turns out i was only slightly off.

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  12. you mean the niche that supported every mmo b4 wow?

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  13. Nullsec's predicament haves deeper roots than just Oblivion Sov. Nullsec stagnation is a consequence of EVE's holiest holy cow: "the more players the better".



    As long as that applies, there wil be a best (=largest) group of players and 2nd best (= too large to be smashed comfortably) group of players, and an endless row of squishable targets of opportunity with no real chance to become 1st nor 2nd on their own.


    Whatever Sov is implemented, the largest ones will use ir fuller and better than the smaller ones, because in EVE more = better, always.

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  14. I more or less agree. There are 2 things that need to be understood about null and you've touched on both of them. I'd like to make them explicit


    1) Groups in null WILL follow the optimal course of action as dictated by the mechanics of the game. There are a lot of very smart people in null alliances who spend a lot of time on this, and even the alliances which lack such talents will very quickly copy those who do.


    2) But it's a mistake to say that this is any kind of moral failing on the part of the players. Null is a hypercompetitive environment, and groups which don't act efficiently will be ousted in favour of those who do.


    When 0.0 players - the thoughtful ones, anyway - say they want CCP to "fix null", they're not talking about making more ISK or making it safer. They're talking about making it more dynamic and less "comfortable".

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  15. "Whatever Sov is implemented, the largest ones will use ir fuller and
    better than the smaller ones, because in EVE more = better, always."

    To an extent. It's a reasnable comment to make because at the moment, per Marlona's blog, the EVE map is only 7 minutes wide to a well organised capital fleet. There's literally nowhere to hide if you antagonise (or simply present a tempting target to) a group like PL or Goons or N3.

    We need a gigantic power projection nerf to allow a more diverse and shattered map, as well as a reform of the resource/income mechanics to allow greater player density.

    (That reform not being "more anomalies" but to allow player groups to invest in and develop their space to make it more productive. ihub upgrades are an example here)

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  16. Without a brutal power projection nerf there will continue to not BE any "smaller guys". There is no change that can possibly make things any harder for "smaller guys" to hold sov because it's impossible for them now.

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  17. It's stagnating :)

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    ReplyDelete