CCP Navigator has penned the latest article on the EVE Online blog. In it, Navigator talks about the recently announced staff reductions and how the Community Team will be impacted.

According to Navigator, players are worried that communication between the dev team and the community will not be as prolific as it's been in the past. In response, Navigator said, "The Community team has merged with Customer Support to create the Customer Relations wing of CCP. Hilmar, the CEO of CCP, recently stated in an interview with Eurogamer, ‘ By centralizing customer support and community we have more people doing community work than we did before. Being co-located with the developers allows the information within the community groups to have a much more direct effect on the development process.’"

Read the full blog post on the EVE Online site.

Who cares! Like SWG this game is done!

Originally posted by Tivian

Who cares! Like SWG this game is done!

 

Its far from SWG's level of "doneness".

SWG lost like 60% of its player base when things went bad...eve's doing quite well.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by Tivian

Who cares! Like SWG this game is done!

 

Its far from SWG's level of "doneness".

SWG lost like 60% of its player base when things went bad...eve's doing quite well.

 

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

YOUR FACE IS ASERIOUS JERSEY SUPPLIER

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by Tivian

Who cares! Like SWG this game is done!

 

Its far from SWG's level of "doneness".

SWG lost like 60% of its player base when things went bad...eve's doing quite well.

 

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

 

It's enough to make CCP take notice and reconsider their course of action, but not enough to shut down the game (like, y'know, SWG, which is actually going to shut down. That fact alone makes any claim that EVE is like SWG pretty stupid).

If EVE should ever try to become WoW in Space via the "Nice Game Expansion" (NGE), then we can talk.

Originally posted by Xondar123

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

Source?

As one of the players that decided to leave untill they actually update the corp game and stop with the frivolous side crap. I can say that even those of us that left only believe that we are between 5-10% of the total population. 

20-40% is just making crap up.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Xondar123

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

Source?

He did a #2 and looked for familiar shapes in the bowl.

Originally posted by Quesa

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Xondar123

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

Source?

He did a #2 and looked for familiar shapes in the bowl.

There's no way Hilmar worked that hard on incarna!

In all seriousness EvE has lost a significant amount of players over the last year but it has made up for that in accounts, EvE has gone from a 1.2 accounts per player game to a 3+ accounts per player game. People are sick of paying a sub to fund development of a cash shop whilst CCP is also a psuedo gold seller the people that stay are taking advantage of the system by using scripts to macro mine to pay for their subs which CCP allows.

CCP is now dependent on the gold selling economy created by plex and without it they would not be pulling a profit, they can't afford to punish macro miners so they decide to go full cash shop and plan to sell gear that gives players advantages in combat. If he wants to pull his game back from the brink he needs to remove the cash shop ASAP since every time a player docks it's sitting there looking back at them reminding them that Hilmar is shafting them. With plex and the Dev corruption it was easy to live in denial and say "It doesn't affect me" but this is rammed down the players throats every day. Incarna is CCP's NGE and he needs a rollback but he's too stubborn, proud and greedy to admit his own mistakes.

Eve is a double edged sword.

The majority of MMO'ers these days don't care for games which take the investment of time and risk of loss that Eve represents.  (Don't even get me started on the people who plead and moan for such a game then scoff at EO because of other things.)  

On the flip side.  EO has a massivly loyal core group of players that live and breath the game with it's fluctuating and player driven political wars and espionage.  That aspect of the game, along with a playground of null-sec possibilities, gives the game something that the majority of the games don't have.

I was part of the game for a LONG time.  I have a 2004 character which I stopped logging on about 6 months ago and my sub is up in a couple of months.  I've seen the game go through some good and bad changes, Incarna may have been one of the emptiest additions to the game but it was far from the worst.  I still mark Dominion as the worst set of changes and effects to ever hit the game and I believe it's still attempting to recover from it.

With the change of direction from CCP, ie. dumping resources back into EO and putting WoD on hold, it's good to see (as a long time player) them realize that they made mistakes and plan on making some changes.  You can don Hilm all you want but he's also the only developer of a multi-hundred thousand sub game to publicly and humbly appologize for a failure in an expansion and retain his job.  

It's good to see them taking heed and looking to improve the core of the game instead of continuously adding shinies in hopes of attracting new subs - which is exactly what alot of the Dominion refugees were upset about when the comment "our numbers show that player like new shinies over polish".   THAT is what I believe they are still trying to recover from and Incarna is just another iteration in that development path.

Bla bla bla, Eve lost players??? Yea right:) That is reason why server have alwways same number of players for years. Some people should try to play game before  they write something stupid. When you log in in to Eve server you can see number of players (thATS FOR DUDE WITH 20-40%) He knows the fact but hey! 20% 40% ???? not 23% or maybe 41% .'' Wait, i think wow lost 10% to 90% subscribers :) My source is in my head and i  am sure that there is something btw this numbers. And there is another pearl--'Gear that  gives advantage in combat'' ???? Aha! you think about that space suit with 28 agility and 40 stamina and epic 40 man raid Drake with red wings. Pleaseeee!  Where is that shop? I wanna be uber geared to, i can see only some stupid clothes for AUR. Ah nwm, i will find that

It was a good read.

Nice to see a CEO like Hillmar saying - we fcked up. It was a mistake and error in judgement.

However we will do everythingand everything to make it right again.

Although Im going SWTOR way, Im still actively subed to EVE via PLEX. Looking forward to new changes.

I mean - T3 BC ? Come on. It doesnt get much cooler then that !

The press-release by CCP actually states they lost subs from this year's summer, when the JITA riot/monocle-gate was happening.

Whether this is a due to 'normal after-summer slump' or a bit more than that is up to interpretation. I'd say it is a bit more cause CCP did say 'we get it' and CSM also says the drop in subs was 'enough for CCP to take notice'. No specific number were given though since it is commercially sensitive info.

Something that no one has been able to answer with this move is this.

The cuts are mostly on the community team and content team.

How is that going to help CCP listen to the community? This whole 'merging' sounds like marketing spin. 

You can't do 'more' stuff with 'less' people unless you increase their work-load or become more efficient.

And lets be honest, CCP isn't going to magically become 50% more efficent (50% of the community team was cut) overnight.

If one looks at the actual jobs cut (EVE related), something doesn't add up.

EVE is going down. It's far from SWG but number of people loging in is some 30% less then during peak glory times. 50k used to be normal. 30-35k is what "normal" is these days. You don't need sources to notice this, game launcher is your most valuable source of infomation.

I'm glad CCP got their head out of their arse and is trying to get back some of the old glory but I'm afraid it is too late. EVE is in decline and will be going down slowly but surely over the next 2-3 years. Imho.

I played EO for many years loved it then hated it. I quit playing a while back and would return if ccp wasn't one-sided. I also think penalties for faliure i.e being at the wrong place at the right time is a bit extreme besides who likes to work for peanuts when ships/equipment are astronomical.

I don't believe EO will ever lose enough player base to fully shut down.

TIme to get real here guys...CCP went a bit greedy and crazy and their EvE numbers are really down, probably as players realize they were being treated as the type of person who might spend several thousands of bucks on an expensive pair of antique jeans in a fashion boutique, and just the general game-play probelms of an aging game coded in python.

-We know the facts that World oF Darkness is likely to be shelved finally by the end of the financial year.

-CCP are still a long way from PS3 release of Dust, likely there are significant quality control issues.

-CCP itself are now downsizing as a company.

MMO folks, CCP are selling poor product, time to stop paying them for their golden goose and making their CEO a millionaire and get into a better game.

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by Tivian

Who cares! Like SWG this game is done!

 

Its far from SWG's level of "doneness".

SWG lost like 60% of its player base when things went bad...eve's doing quite well.

 

EVE's lost 20-40% of their players since shit went down. That's not a snmall number.

That figure is complete nonsense, I have not noticed any drop in number of players online at all.

Originally posted by jpnz

 

Something that no one has been able to answer with this move is this.

The cuts are mostly on the community team and content team.

That you write this in a post where you accuse others of spin is amusing. :)

It's possible that no one has been able to answer is probably because it's a 'fact' that you just crafted. Now, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, so if there is some math or logic that has brought you to the conclusion that the cuts are mostly on the community team and content team, I'd be very interested in reading it. I'll get you started:

• CCP had over 600 employees.
• The staff was reduced by approximately 20%

Your turn.