EVE would get so many more subs if you didnt post anymore.

Fleshed out PvE combined with safer-esque high-sec would definitely bring in the numbers. (i.e. full on Carebear.)

PvP would benefit if PvP losses were easier to replace. (i.e. "free" ships.)

However, both would "ruin" the game (i.e. annoy a lot of the core playerbase.) But if the dumbed down income versus the HTFU player income was large enough to overcome the risk in dumbing down the game, then it would happen. I imagine that even the UO school devs have their price.

So the real question is, how do you dumb down the game enough to make the business case to justify such an overhaul of the game? Or how do you dumb down the game with PvE without sacrificing PvP in order to have your cake and eat it too?

Easiest solution is to have customized shards per market, e.g. create a new PvE focused shard. Get rid of caps, supercaps, and sovereignty in order to rework them with a PvE focus later. Create ye olde wow style battleground instances with a minimal death penalty. Downside is that new shards would cost money and there's the risk that a lot of folks would flee Tranquility for the PvE shard.

Zero-sum games aren't for everyone.

Nerf highsec mining, buff mining in low/null, and watch the PvP'ers chase after the newly vulnerable miners!

So with that said, what do you think CCP could do to get more long-term subscribers? Be as specific as possible!

GǪit appealed even more to the niche and stopped worrying so much about the general public or, worse, tried to compete with the mainstream games for the mainstream audience using mainstream gameplay.

No, I don't think I will. Anyone else want to offer a constructive idea?

I don't think there is much of a solution. The basic idea of mmorpg's that's in peoples heads is building. Build wealth, build character gear, stats etc..

In this game you do build stats but everything else can go up in smoke in seconds, so they say F this, I'm not grinding this all over again and leave. Then you have game mechanics that favor griefers, war deck's on noob corps, pvp ships in their missions baiting them, can flipping, it frustrates them to be that helpless and say F this.
Yea it's not a game for them, but that's how most people look at it. So it is a niche game by design.

...if the game would give players the tools to be truly creative - meaning if we were able to design ships, design all kinds of player stations, design station environments, design everything within the preset rules. It would mean that the whole current blueprint / industry / market system would have to be redesigned to allow more room for creativity. If you can imagine something, you should be able to build it (or at least something very close to it) in a vast expanding galaxy where you can live amongst huge alliances or as a lonely hermit in some distant forsaken system...

Why creativity you might ask? Look at the current hot games, f.ex. Minecraft has sold over 7 million copies and it has 38+ million registered users and all this in couple years and just because the game allows you to use your own imagination and creativity. There's plenty of other similar successes.

It's pretty darn addictive to create stuff from scratch, spent weeks/months to build something you imagined and then enjoy it with your friends once it's finished - Eve has these things too, but new players are pretty clueless about this stuff and I don't think there's any tutorials early in-game about how to set up POSes and stuff. Well, obviously you're not that wealthy after playing few days, but there should be something that a new player could build into space or into station or for your character.

Nerf highsec mining, buff mining in low/null, and watch the PvP'ers chase after the newly vulnerable miners!