Groll McCabe
Squaddies
4
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Posted - 2013.02.06 12:50:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm a solo player, and have been for the 5 years I have played EVE with my 2 accounts. That's not going to change, principally due to RL responsibilities. I'm never going to joing a major corp in nulsec. As an experienced but casual player I have plenty of isk but little time. The effort and time required to get into nulsec & replace ships if lost generally makes it too much hassle. I'm not adverse to risk having dabbled in lowsec exploration, FW, and nulsec pirate faction epic arcs.
When I started EVE I had a great sense of wonder. Exploring the universe and trying new things was enthralling. And exciting new opportunities came out with each update. However all that stopped a couple of years ago. With updates being focused on an aspect of the game irrelevant to me (Dominion/nulsec), wasted opportunity (Incarna), or fixing bugs and systems (the past year or so).
I do think CCPs new strategy of ensuring each update offers something for everything is the way to go, and I hope CCP succeed. However I don't think CCP have anything like a decade to play with to work out what they want to do with the game. Probably only a year or so. I the past EVE has really been the only sci-fi MMO on the market. However in the next couple of years that's going to change. There's been a couple of well publicised and successful scifi MMO kickstarter launches, including one with over 100 000 people pre-ordering the game. They might not offer the major fleet battle content that EVE does, but they are much more solo-player focused flying in space games. So I see a risk that CCP may loose a lot of it's most valuable customers (the ones that quietly pay the bills) in the coming year or so so if it isn't careful.
Really hoping that CCP come up with a decent inclusive plan, communicate it, and deliver it. In the past I have looked forward to several major anticipated releases (Incarna/POS redevelopment), and been let down. Looking forward, knowing that there are other new games coming out soon that may better suit my gameplay style, I'm less inclined to continue to pay my subscription in the hope that the next release offers me something.
NB I think CCP are missing something by not urgently working on POS redevelopment, including mini POSes. In terms of customer loyalty I believe offering people the opportunity to have a customisable home in space will do more than a NEX T-shirt only available to veterans or whatever. And as far as I'm aware CCPs competition isn't going to be offering POS-type opportunities for players, being more forcused on exploration/trading/PVE/small scale PVP. |