Rob Kashuken
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
42
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Posted - 2014.06.11 03:40:00 -
[1] - Quote
I started playing the game in Feb this year, and now have 4 alts (4 accounts), 3 are in started corps still, 1 (main) in a large player based corp, living in null. Amusingly enough, this character (my oldest, but not my main) not only is a missioner, but also currently 'leveling his raven', as expressed elsewhere in the forums. I figure that this character is the one that I can play around with and make more mistakes on without blundering into anything.
My moving from another MMO to EVE wasn't a result of news about new features, the revamp of older systems or anything like that, it was more a combination of the downward spiral of the MMO that I was playing, and seeing the news and media of the epic large-scale fights (B-R5RB 1 & Asakai), coupled with what was advised as the challenging learning curve of the game.
Sadly, these sorts of epic battles would appear to be a thing of the past, given what I understand to be some sort of agreement between the major nullsec alliances, or at least, until someone either screws up a mechanic, or decides to fall out of their tree.
I read up on the game for about 2-3 months before I downloaded the trial - both here, community threads on other forums I participate in, and places like Reddit - perhaps that makes me slightly unusual, as I came in expecting a free-for-all pvp, and a challenging learning cliff.
I view the discussion about game mechanic revamps being tied to new players as a bit of a misdirection - they're new, so it is irrelevant to them whether industry, combat, marketing or whatever has changed, because it is all new to them (and will be so for some time, as they progress further into the game. Personally, from those I've interacted with, many more are attracted by either the challenging nature of the game, and/or the open nature of the player-created content, in particular the previously mentioned epic battles.
Yes, changes in mechanics do help - whilst I've not got an indy alt, the Crius changes I am finding interesting, as another facet of the game that I may wish to explore later on.
If we're talking about new player retention, then that is a much more difficult thing to quantify, as the reasons behind people leaving are many and varied. Some will leave by ragequitting when their new shiny gets blown up on undock - chances are that this game just wasn't for them. Some will leave owing to game mechanism irritations - I would hope that these would be addressed by developers in due course, whilst also providing new and updated systems to also retain the longer term players. Others owing to RL commitments, or an inability to fund/plex their accounts. Some will leave owing to boredom, because they've not developed a particular focus in the sandbox, and they're used to other MMO's chained missions / raids that are present - there's so many possible reasons for people to leave (both old and new) that the only real way that CCP could quantify this would be to undertake an exit survey to people's email addresses after a period of account inactivity.
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