More exciting games that give them more gratification right off the bat. That or the learning curve. But I find the learning curve tends more to keep players out than "draw them away". First time I played the game I gave up in 1 day because the 2007 UI overwhelmed me and I had no idea what the frak was going on. In 2008 I tried again, got picked up by a corp who showed me the ropes, and while I haven't been able to keep a steady sub I loved it ever since.

Now now, some of you don't give yourself enough credit for why people leave.

Who needs instant gratification? Hard work matters.

This is why my dander gets up when people say "It's just Space Pixels 'sploding, moron"

That you spent REAL time on. And besides, they're real if you count electrons as real.

WHICH THEY ARE.

So not a lot of depth ...

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Because it's a sandbox but it's so canned and grindy and content is stale and mechanics unfun and outdated.

And the developers spend many months to fix what works and don't look at the mountains of unfun, repetitive and desperately in need of refresh content.

Make EVE more about PVP everywhere and stop making it a carebear heaven.

FYI this would not apply to someone so spanking new they have not even subbed yet. Takes awhile to observe this.

I agree with the rest of your post, but are you seriously saying this ? Maybe you mean not a lot of immersion ?

It's deep as all get-out !

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

1. Complexity

2. Failure to complete the tutorials (I suspect)...it is VERY easy to miss some details and not be able to progress in the tutorials (this happens to virtually EVERYONE I invite to the game and I have to help them repeatedly just to complete the tutorials).

3. It takes too long to have the initial skills to do much.

If people can get past the 1-3 then THIS next point is the most significant IMO...

4. Failure to find a good corp/community in the game...and then stagnation and boredom. Unless someone is just obsessive compulsive about this genre, Eve gets dull very quickly as a solo game and/or early losses to griefers seem unrecoverable.

Bottom line, players need to get plugged into a part of the community somewhere/somehow. Existing players could promote this hobby better by helping promote players into the game. I don't have the numbers for his but it seems like once someone has had an account active for 4+ months they tend to be here indefinitely.

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

And old players do their absolute best to exploit, harass and otherwise abuse the new players instead of getting them hooked. Kind of like slaughtering your chickens as soon as they hatch instead of waiting a few months.

tedium.

its not the learning curve ,

its not the complexity,

its not even how harsh the game is,

it is the tedious nature of having to work to gain your toys in this game that causes people to leave.

not saying this is wrong or bad, its part of the core eve game play experience.

to keep people hooked into this game non stop requires something that keeps them engaged and prevents them from becoming fatigued by what ever system they have placed them selves in .. i.e. mining grind , pve grind, pvp grind, industry grind etc etc etc .

players with less skill points have far fewer options available to them and if they burn out in their targeted career they have lil else left to do.


thus why really excellent corps and corp mates are a key point of this game they keep the player engaged and aid in retarding fatigue.

Eve is by far the most diverse mmo in existence unfortunately players devour/ignore content at such a rate that it is near impossible to provide players with a system that constantly keeps them engaged in new and exciting content .

couple that with the additional overhead that nothing is free in this game, players who do not put forth effort will soon grow tired of doing the same ol thing over and over .

Again not really a problem of eve but more a problem of players not wanting to invest into the game.

It really depends on what you consider to be "depth". For example, combat in EVE is fairly cut and dry. Your setup is locked in the moment you undock. If you show up with scissors, and the other guy shows up with two machineguns, you die. Yes, there's a lot of numbers and equations that explain just how horrible your death will be in the grand scheme of horrible deaths, but the end is still the same.

EVE is "deep", but consider other games. Like a game with line of sight and collision detection. Suddenly, breaking line of sight (LoS) allows you to mitigate all but DoT (damage-over-time) damage. I remember being in a match that ended up in a 2v1 because my buddy disconnected. They had me dead to rights, but they got overconfident, overextended, and one of them broke line of sight to his own healer for a few seconds, which I exploited with a well-timed burst and dropped him. Suddenly a hopeless 2v1 became 1v1, with me nearly dead, and the other guy being a (very) survivable healer. What ensued was lots of kiting, and some cannibalism, until I recovered and took him on and won.

Now, let me ask you, can you do that in "deep" EVE? That is, you are fighting alone against a gank + logi. Can you get the gank ship to LoS his own logi? Well, no, you can't. At best you can perhaps lure the gank ship away, but if logi simply has a "keep at X km" set, he will automatically keep proper distance. How is that "deep"? Similarly, can you hide your ship behind an asteroid when you see a volley of missiles coming? Nope. In most other games, you can. Heck, in one recently released MMO many attacks have a parabolic trajectory, which grows with distance, and that sometimes means the attack can't be completed because the projectile will get blocked along the way. That is, you have clear line of sight to target, but because of the path the projectile must take, the target is protected.

That same game had an active roll mechanic, where your character would execute an evasive roll on command, avoiding all damage and control attacks. ALL of them. You could only do it twice in a short period, and if you got juked into it, you'd waste them on relatively harmless attacks and then the wrecking ball would come down and you'd lose. And it would all be about player skill - if you don't react fast enough and do just the right thing (roll in the right direction), you'd likely lose. Imagine in EVE being able to boost your ship's shields to absorb all in coming damage, but you'd have to do it the second you saw the attack coming, and you could only realistically do this twice per fight, maybe 3 times at most. But imagine what it would do to EVE combat, especially if turret fire wasn't instantaneous. Suddenly, alpha wouldn't be king any more. It would still kill distracted people, but someone paying attention would do an evasive roll or two and live with no damage taken! Suddenly, it's not clear-cut black-and-white.

Then, that same game had other interesting combat mechanic - various effects changed based on surroundings. An arrow, by itself, did damage but no burning. But an arrow passing through a wall of fire left by another class would become a fire arrow, and do more damage AND apply a burning DoT to the victim. Now, imagine in EVE a special ship type projecting a cone in front of itself, within which normal physics would be suspended. That is, if you get shot at, but you move, the projectiles and missiles would miss you, because they would continue flying to where you used to be (lose guidance/self-targeting/etc.) Suddenly, ship formations become very important.

Next, consider another MMO, such as Pirates of the Burning Sea. In many ways, it was similar to EVE. The difference was, different ammo types attacked different parts of the ship with different effects. Bar and chain against sails, grapeshot against crew, ball shot against hull, etc. You did not need to sink the enemy ship to win, if you killed all of the crew, it would be enough. The game also had melee combat. As in, you could board the enemy ship if it was slowed enough (either by forcing it to sail in the wrong direction depending on wind, by destroying its sails, by physically stopping it with another ship (collision detection, etc.), you could board it and duke it out with the enemy captain using swords and fighting techniques (three schools - dirty fighting, Florentine fencing and classical fencing, each with distinct abilities). And if you won that, you didn't even need to do anything else, you could even capture a ship without sinking it. Imagine losing a titan, but not actually having it destroyed, but taken by the enemy and used against you! In PotBS, that happened, a 1st class Ship-of-Line was captured by a pirate and sailed away. Also, the game had numerous other mechanics - weapons had specific arcs of fire, you could hide behind enemy and friendly ships to avoid taking damage from that ship (I once survived by hiding behind an 18 gun ship from a 43 gun ship, something you can't do in EVE). Depending on where you were shot, damage would be different - shots from the rear were most damaging, shots from the front mostly glancing. Again, doesn't exist in EVE.

Bottom line? Depth is in the eye of the beholder. In some ways, EVE is very deep. In other ways, it is childishly simplistic.

Lack of WiS.

When I've tried EVE for the first time and understood I have to roleplay a ship (which can be blown up) I closed game and didn't return for 5 years. Now it's a jail cell.

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Topic title. in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

The majority of gamers simply aren't cut out for EVE.

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

The hate people receive for playing differently to others.

1st fight someone sucked my cap dry, I just sat there, guns wouldn't fire, couldn't move, ship I spent a month saving for exploded and then back in station in a pod, WTF RAGE QUIT! Unfortunately sub for a year so couple months came back. I'm so cheap.

Sometimes I think EVE would be suited to have a "suspend account" option that allows you to freeze your account for a few weeks.

That way, when this happens to someone in the first few months, they can rage, click suspend, and then take a few weeks to cool down and come to the realization that getting blown up isn't a bad thing, and be able to come right back to the game.

gate bubbles

95%/5% male/female

everyone is old

everyone is foreign

gate bubbles

lost a navy mega

found a girlfriend

tired of waiting on skills

gate bubbles

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

This is a example why by far the most players will quit EVE long before they found out what it's all about. Noob is using failfit and unsurprisingly fails to accomplish a fairly easy task. The OP in question does not know what he is doing wrong (failfit in his case). In contrast to most human beings he is capable to admit defeat in public and get's the help he needs.

In pretty much any other MMO any person with halve a brain can not possibly fail to accomplish most tasks because any player is given the tools to do so and can't use those tools in any wrong way. In EVE it's fairly easy to bring the wrong tools and use them in the worst possible fashion. As a result most players will quit the game.

EVE Online is the whiskey to World of Warcraft's Budweiser.

nope Eve-Online = Marmite
other games = Jam

For one thing the pve is mind numbingly boring to most people and obviously not worth a monthly subscription let alone a free to play title. Secondly, when trying to get a 3 day old noob to tackle in pvp they are clueless and have no idea what is going on. You could be waiting around 20 minutes to kill one dude or just instantly be vaporized for some arcane reason. Then in a fleet you are not allowed to talk while you listen to orders that make little sense to someone who is new to the game.

The sci fi aspect is what got my through the first few weeks.

Not one for asking questions then?

A noob that's thrown into a tackle frigate and has no idea what's going on is a failing of the corp for not explaining and a failing on the noob for not asking.

Same goes for in fleet, a good FC will let the fleet know everything they need to know and a really good one will have someone in fleet (not the FC) have a convo open for the noobs to ask questions and explain what's going on.

Extremely long skill training times and the disparity between new and veteran players in regards to wealth. Just like in RL, a few control the majority of the wealth in eve while the rest struggle. Such is life lol.

And the misconseption that is spread by bad community members that you need to play for 6 months to a year to be "competetive".

The Op doesn't ask the underlying question of "why should anyone care?". Eve is a unique, hard core niche spaceship game that (at least until recently )skewed away from the common themes and ways of other games , even other MMOs.

Other MMOs hold your hand, tell you you are special, you deserve the best and you're just like everyone else, entitled to the same rights and freedoms regardless of when you started, or what you like.

EVE tells you you are a scrub and everything you own can go poof just like that, throws you in the deep end and says "sink or swim", gives you a half assed new player/tutorial experience which is akin to giving anew soldier 1 week of boot camp then shipping him off the Afghanistan and expecting him to not only live, but come back with 2 Medals of Honor, and laughs at you when your ships explode over and over and over and over again.

I prefer EVE, even if that makes me crazy compared to must human beings. Screw em if they leave before subbing so long as eEVe has enough population to keep going/being profitable for CCP, more Serpentis Rats for me.

Because if nobody else plays they the ONLY thing you can do is just keep on ratting.

Screw em if they leave before subbing so long as EVE has enough population to keep going/being profitable for CCP, more Serpentis Rats for me

Who needs instant gratification? Hard work matters.

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Well frankly to be honest i think if most people cold just click on a ship they like hit train alot more people would stick around. My account is over 6 years old i played a week the fist time, then came back played another about 3 years ago and eh came back with a friend a few days ago.

The big thing that puts me of is buying some thing you spent ages training for only to find that wow hay i cant use the ammo for this weapon ! i have to spend a week skill training up for that to. /cancel account. The friend im playing with is a bit lost in regards to all these skills needed we just wanted to out do some stuff but in reality we cant because it would take weeks to be able to any of that and all for the pleasure of paying a monthly sub to do nothing till we can do something.

The beauty of EVE is finding ways around those kinds of road blocks (ie, i can't use what I want to, what can I do as a substitute). EVE is about problem solving, not just flying space ships and shooting.

If you don't like that kind of problem solving activity and "just want to have fun", EVE is the wrong game. you're playing Chess against a super computer when all your really want is a quick game of Checkers.

folowed by a quote of being a proud high sec player.

Are all high sec players crazy?

Kind of proving my point by bringing it up, but that is there because I am a Proud High Sec player and do not care what others think of me. Just by having it there most of you will disregard anything I say and try to troll/flame me at any given chance, but I don't mind since I am proud of what I bring to the community and will continue to do my best in what I do whether or not I am hated for it.

And on que, Mr. High Sec misses the point lol.

No one cares how you play. Just like no one cares that most nights I end up shooting red Xs in anomalies/plex, LvL 5s and incursions rather than shooting Xs piloted by people. The whole "they hate use because we live in high sec and mine (or whatever you do) is just a dodge people use to salve their egos. I'm pretty sick of hearing it.

In other words, we don't hate you because of how you play a video game, we hate you because of how you think lol.

Hating us for how we think? That is just the same as hating us for how we play since we do have to think a bit while playing. Also I know I should not be responding to you since I know you for being a troll but I took the bait anyway. This will be my last response to you in this thread.

o7

ps. ISD, can you consolidate all the other whine-threads into this one?

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?

EVE Online is the whiskey to World of Warcraft's Budweiser.

And on que, Mr. High Sec misses the point lol.

No one cares how you play. Just like no one cares that most nights I end up shooting red Xs in anomalies/plex, LvL 5s and incursions rather than shooting Xs piloted by people. The whole "they hate use because we live in high sec and mine (or whatever you do) is just a dodge people use to salve their egos. I'm pretty sick of hearing it.

In other words, we don't hate you because of how you play a video game, we hate you because of how you think lol.

Math, math and more math. The main reason why Eve has always been called a spreadsheet game, (also why so many spreadsheets are made for it).

Who needs instant gratification? Hard work matters.

The same complexity that makes other people stay subscribed.

can baiting in noob systems and blowing them up 5 min after playing eve is never any good

This has been bannable for several years now. People only get away with it because you let them. Report them.

Topic title.
in your opinion what do you think draws players that first start out away from subbing their accounts ?