Originally posted by Kyleran

Er, most people who understand how it works quote that there are 300K subscribers to EVE, not 300K actual players. (though a quick Google search shows many people fail to comprehend this).

You are correct, I have 3 accounts  myself, and the leader of our wormhole seems to have at least 5.  But, that said, 4 people in the hole also have a single account, and while I can't find it right now, CCP published a breakdown at one time that proved multiple accounts is a far less phenomenon than you might suppose. (I want to say less than 30% of the players do it?)

But what does that really matter?  We have anywhere from 25-50K people in a single universe at any given moment and there's never a shortage of foiks to interact with (either postiviely or negatively).

I don't care if EVE doesn't have 2M Subs, players or whatever, I just want a well populated universe that I can have fun in, and we certainly have that today.

 

Actually I believe it was closer to 15-20% of players run multi-accounts which is on par with industry standard and nowhere near the rediculous 75% of the OP. Hell I remember reading a thread about a couple who played wow and controlled a total of 40 accounts between the two of them. Now that's messed up IMO.

Gdemami seems to be under the mistaken impression that all regions get lots of high-value moons to fund their cap-ship programs when the reality is that most of them fund them through ratting/mining/complexing or a combination of those plus empire trading/manufacturing alts.

The main problem that I ran into last time I tried to live out in 0.0 is that when ratting for instance, if more than 1 or 2 people tried to rat in a system then there was never enough spawns to go around. The same thing happened with complexes. If more than 1 or 2 people in a region happen to be scanning them down at any time they will be used up within hours and no more will be available till after downtime, meaning you have to travel further and further out in order to get some space to yourself to rat/xplore. So unless you happen to play right after downtime you're SOL. With the new system the more people who perform those activities the more frequently they will spawn, making it easier for more people to do it in any one area.

Essentially what CCP is doing is removing the huge isk faucets that were moon mining and moving them into a bunch more smaller ones spread out between more people. This sucks for the players who were lucky enough to be in control of the rediculously profitable moons but it is a benefit to EVERYONE else. With this change it will be possible for those who npc or explore to fund their pvp to have a more steady income stream which will hopefully mean that there is less need for re-imbursement programs in the first place. At least that's the way that I see it.

They've already said dust is not releasing till 2010 at least. I've also heard some info stating that WIS or "Incarna" as they are now calling it will be released in 2010 as well. So I'm thinking that both Incarna expansion and dust console game will be released during the summer expansion timeframe and sovereignty changes (this is apparently going to include planet graphics upgrades FINALLY) come out in winter expansion and that gives them lots of time to tweak the system and make sure it's solid.

Originally posted by Wizardry

This is really interesting ,because it looks good.However,there is no question that this is what Eve should have been,instead of a bunch of spreadsheets.

Here is the sticky though.There is no question that you cannot generate money by updating Eve ,they knew this all along.This way they can sell a whole new game and not alienate the Eve fans,but instead get them to spend money and join the new game.

In reality ,the connection between the two games will be nothing more than a cheap link between missions.I can see no reason why anyone would want to give up playing in Dust environments to go play in the boring Eve sectors,with spreadsheets and ancient graphics.

This was a smart move though,on it's own it would have probably struggled badly,if they marketed it as the NEW  great Eve,it would have alienated the old Eve faithful and created another SWG,hate war.

What will be interesting in October when they release all the goodness,is what,game engine they are using and apparently they have hired some actual skilled game developing people,i would like to know where they came from.From what i am looking at ,it looks like a MODDED game from something similar to a HL or COD engine.

Anyhoot,not enough info on this puppy yet,to create any real feedback,other than Dust looks good,but will do nothing to improve Eve.They can link Dust all they want,till they turn blue in the face,this is NOT Eve and will be played by most as an independent game.The ONLY link to Eve is PURE marketing.

Did you just seriously state that a monthly subsciption MMO can't generate more money by being updated, do you even understand how MMO's work? Do you not realise the fact that all of the graphics engines updates that CCP did to EVE is an EXTREMELY significant contributing factor to their continued and steady subscriber growth?

Also, ancient graphics....seriously? Which games are you using to compare the graphics quality of EVE too? Hell I've been beta testing both champions online and fallen earth and their graphics at max settings (on my gtx285) look like utter crap compared to EVE on max settings.

One more thing. The engine being used is likely the same one used in EVE itself, if you check out the vids from last fanfest of walking in stations you can see that CCP has for a long time had some really talented graphics programmers on staff.

Originally posted by Elsabolts

I doubt CCP will publicly make fun of there player base. Having said this CCP i have the solution for you to make more for your company. Others who know what im talking about will go balistic but know what i say, it will make more money for CCP.

No, it won't and we've tried on many occasions to point it out to you but you refuse to listen. If CCP opened a second server it would make no difference after a few months and power blocks would form on the new server just like the old. Those who can't hack it on TQ still wouldn't be able to keep space on the new server either. Also they would lose the majority of their very loyal playerbase almost overnight. net profit to CCP negative most of their cash flow.

Since beta phase 5 here. Took a 6 month break after the first few months of launch and then after coming back have had an active account since. What really attracted me to the game is the openness of the game and the ability to do what I want instead when I want.

I also like the open PVP nature of the game even though I'm not a hard-core pvp'er.

Originally posted by Staatsschutz

Originally posted by Azirophos

 

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Originally posted by Staatsschutz
the devs have explicitely said that they have never announced or even guestimated a release date for WiS

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Source? I got one.

wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Ambulation

"First announced in 2006, this expansion is expected some time in the 2009 time frame"

 

correct me if im wrong, but i doubt that the eve wiki can be counted as an official source, since everybody can contribute to it

you are incorrect. even though anyone can contribute to the wiki all entries are verified by a ccp employee before they are accepted.

Originally posted by Suraknar

While a nice writte up...

EvE is getting old too fast...ISK based gameplay had its course in my opinion.

And what I mean is...want to explore? gotta have ISK, Want to PVP gotta Have ISK, want to Factional Warfare PvP gotta have ISK, want to Build Bases Gotta have ISk, want to Conquer 0.0 Wild West...you better have ISK (otherwise no chance), heck even being a Pirate in Low sec you need to have ISK...it is so...play to work gameplay...you can mine for ISK...gotta handle the monotony, Mission running might be fun for a while, but missions push you to Low sec at one point so you going to lose ships trying to make a mission...then again it is how the Pirates get victims...cause they gotta have fun too otherwise there would not be any of em.

Um...exploration is by far one of the cheapest and most profitable careers to get into, anyone with decent levels in the exploration skill + the basic mods can find sites in under 20 minutes and those sites have a chance to be very profitable.

Settling in 0.0 forget about it if your not in an alliance of at least 500+...and be able to actually survive the day when the other 5000 alliance decides to pay a visit because they are bored or because they want your turf to expand their ISK based operation which they can turn in to real cash as well.

Trying to glorify this type of gameplay by saying EVE has no set classes, portraying it as a skill based system...is starting to become redundant as well.

It is not, you will lose your ship you will wait to get a beter one and you will lose that one too, you will find yourself leveling constantly trying to make enough ISK to support what you are really wanting to do...having fun.

None of that in any way makes it a class-based game. Class-based means that you are stuck to a certain type of gameplay that you can never switch from without creating a different character. In eve all you have to do to change roles is switch ships or fitting. There are no restrictions except for those you place on yourself based on the skills you decided to train.

Your capacity to have fun is directly proportional to your capacity to generate in game income, the problem is, it takes weeks to finance your next ship and moments to lose it....

If you're putting all of the isk you make in a few weeks into a single ship then you're doing it wrong, there is absolutely nothing that requires you to fly the biggest baddest ships or fit the most expensive mods. In fact, for everything other than PVE almost no one fits the rare mods on their ships as it's just not worth the risk. Personally I find it quite stupid to pay 200 million+ isk for a single mod. Sure they do give some nice bonuses over the t2 ones but it is rarely if ever enough to justify the huge cost. In the end though in EVE you have to live within your means. If you only have a few hours to play a week then no you're not likely to be able to afford some of the more expensive ships, at least until you find a steady income stream.

Same old, same old.

I am really looking forward to the competition, and hope they will not have same flaws in the gameplay.

Originally posted by Enkindu

Case in point:

I just logged in and did my daily routine in the WH sytem with my tower.

Scanned all 19 signatures in the system down. 2 WH leading to other W-space, 3 ladars, and the rest grav sites (which by the way are very nice.. too bad I'll never be able to get my gear in to enjoy them apparently).

It was not hard.  I scanned them all down with an alt that had no training for exploration pre-apocrypha.. including the 4 sigs that started out under 1%.

But I swear to god I would have had more fun organinzing my sock drawer.  How in gods name to people find this system fun?  Anyone could do this... there's no art to it whatsoever.

couple more days of this and I'm gonna pod my guy and offline the tower and mods- I'll post the system and moons where I'm leaving the stuff in case somoeone else wants to play "brain dead online" aka "romper room exploration" aka "something that will make you want to clean your house to relieve boredom" aka "the new probing system in eve"

bleh.

who said the scanning part was the fun part, the fun part is actually running the sites once you find them. To me the new system just makes it far quicker and less mind-numbingly tedious. It's functional and it's far more interactive and if they ever put in a way to filter out certain signatures once you identify them it will be just about perfect. There was no more art to the old system than there is the new one, it's just a difference in functionality. The only moderately difficult part of the old system was making full coverage bookmarks and that really wasn't that difficult at all. Beyond that it was a question of 'how much do I want to spend' on implants/sisters gear, rigs in order minimize the tedium.

Oh, and as an added comment I'm almost positive that they boosted exploration content in lowsec, either that or providence just REALLY sucks for sites, lucky to find 1 sig in 10 systems and no anomalies to be found anywhere....or maybe I'm just not getting up early enough to run them right after downtime.

Originally posted by grimboj

CCP developers seem adept at providing things we never asked for or providing things that we asked for but so laden with catches that we wished we never asked for them. A skill queue that only works for skills shorter than 24 hours? And laser beam revamps was top of my want-list (!)

What happened to walking in stations?

The skill queue is to get rid of the 4am alarm clock skill switching and it works beautifully for that, it does all that it needs to as for the effects revamp that was only part of the graphical upgrades. If you had spent any time keeping up on it you'd know that in order to support walking in stations they had to do a lot of further upgrades to the graphics engine over trinity, since they were getting rid of classic and were introducing the rest of the renovated models anyways, it made sense to update the effects at the same.

If you had half a brain you would realize that all of the graphics engine upgrades that have been introduced since trinity are required to lay the groundwork for WIS. Instead you chose to be ignorant...go you.

Originally posted by eric_w66

The big "con" is definitely the group-only-ness of the wormhole systems.  Aside from the fact you can get ganked by players, the sleepers themselves can do the job just as well, so what does that mean? You have to bring in overwhelming firepower. Like usual. It isn't that the AI is vastly improved. Its just harder to kill and  uses a few tricks that the old AI didn't. There isn't any "skill" involved in fighting them, you just have to have enough people to tank the damage and dish the damage. Like before, except it requires a lot more people.

EVE has always been and always will be a social/group game, you can survive playing solo but you can't expect to have the same amount of success as a well organized group. Also the wormholes encourage smaller groups not blobs as you're limited logistically by the mass limits of wormholes. A fleet of 20 roaming around w-space is about the maximum practical fleet you would want operating in wormhole space and that only in the most difficult of them, otherwise a 10-man fleet, enough to operate a full squad is ideal, hardly overwhelming firepower. Oh, and as for getting ganked by players, since the sleepers require something closer to pvp fits rather than the standard npc fits, prepared groups in wh space are a lot less vulnerable to random gankers than they would be ratting in low-sec, especially in systems with tactical enviromental effects.

Just what Eve didn't need. More empty group oriented zones.

Aside from all that, the question has to be asked: "Why go there at all?" 

Because it's fun? Not everything needs to be about the biggest payouts or the highest isk/hour return. Many older players are coming back and enjoying the new content because it revitalizes the game for them or restores the feeling of exploration they got back when the universe was much less crowded than it is now.

1) Tech 3 cruisers? Heh. Not worth it, even if they were cheap. Sure you can min/max them more than a normal one, but they're still cruisers. And who's gonna use them for pvp when they cost billions and aren't that much better than a ship that cost a few million?

Yes cause nobody ever PVP's in Hac's or Recon's or Command ships or anything smaller than a battleship.....ever. New stuff is always expensive, the expansion's only been out just under a month so of course the prices are high. How much did the first HAC's or Command ships go for?

2) Mining? Nope. The dangers involved in moving a mining operation into WH space are too great to justify the effort. Why mine veldspar in WH space when you can mine it in safety in High-Sec?

It might not be worth it to mine minerals there....and I doubt many will anyways but the gas clouds are certainly worthwhile.

3) Exploration sites? Well, again, they're surrounded by sleepers who'll roast your exploration ship in seconds, so what's the point here?

Only if you stick around long enough for them to target you, cov-ops are meant to scan the site down, get the bookmark and gtf out and the only reason you wouldn't make it out is due to lag or being a terrilbe pilot.

That's about all there is to do, unless you're just looking to gank someone.

Originally posted by Enkindu

Yeah Minsc, fountain should have been fantastic for exploration- maybe you were really unlcuky or someone else was working the same space regularly.

Just a few things I remember- the stolen formulas decryptors were selling for 80-100 mil, the symbiotic figures decryptors for 24-26 mil.  The others I never sold because I use tem in my own invention runs.  Also most of the core B-type gear I got came from running those radar plexes ("digital fortress") in pegasus in fountain.

When I would jump the carrier back every 5-6 days I'd typically have 5 of the stolen formulas, 15 symbiotic figures, usually a ship interface BPC or two and enough parts to build them out.. so call that an additional 250 mil.  Every so often you'd get a decent T2 rig BPC or faction POS module BPC that could be built out for additional cash from the mag sites.

I know lots of people like the new system and that's cool.  I'm just pissing and moaning because my favorite thing to do in eve doesn't exist anymore.. at least not in any recognizable form.

I found a ton of the stolen formulas decryptors but they never sold for even close to 80-100 mill...I'll see if I can dig through my history to find the sell price but I think it was closer to 20-30 mill a piece.

I found that I sold 18 of them for 22.5 million a piece. That was back in october of 2008 when I sold them. I still have 7 or 8 t2 rig bpc's sitting in a hangar somewhere because I can't sell them for as much as the components cost to make, the 2 that I did get worth selling I ended up making about 160 mill profit on them which was pretty good but that's it, so maybe I just had terrible luck, but of all the exploration I did out there I'd say I was lucky to make over 1-1.5 billion.

Keep in mind though that I only had a few hours to play a week.

I have cov-ops level 4, astrometrics to 5 and all extended scanning skills to 4. Also running a rigged cov-ops. I did the majority of my exploration out in fountain and scanned down approximately 40 radar/mag sites in the month or two I was there. Out of all of those sites I never got a ship interface bpc so maybe I was just unlucky, but even the decryptors I found only ended up netting about just under 1 billion isk at jita prices. Maybe fountain sucked for exploration but my experience was certainly not based on empire exploration, since the new system has been put in I've been doing low-sec exploraton and I agree the payout is almost non-existant compared to lowsec, but i've still been able to make some decent money at it with my limited playtime. It's much better when I only have an hour or two to play that I can spend 15-20 minutes scanning down a couple of sites and then the next 45-60 minutes running them rather than spending 40+ minutes scanning down 1 site under the old system and 15-20 running it.

Also because of the sites are much easier to scan down now the churn is going to be higher meaning sigs will respawn faster. One thing I've noticed since the changes is that I can scan a different times during the day and find new sigs in systems I've scanned down earlier.

Originally posted by Enkindu

Hehe... yup, I did go all hardcore on it.  Main reason though was that I put up a tower in W-space (was planning on putting up a second, larger tower in the same system to run polymer reactions) and as a result ended up having to pin down all of the sigs in the system every 12-24 hours to keep access to the system.

I was looking for a nice fat WH in  NPC or non-cyno jammed, accessible 0.0 to bring in a rorqual full of fuel and equipment... but out of maybe 25 WH that I scanned only one led to a non-jammed 0.0 system, and that was 7 jumps from my base in the CARRIER (forget the rorqual) with jump drive calibration V.

Even though I got to the point where I could tag all the signatures relatively quickly, I just hit a point unknown in my experience  where all of a sudden I just didn't care.  If doing all of that scanning were somehow interesting I wouldn't have an issue.

I never got bored of exploration the way it used to be.  Those of you talking about "pushing a button every 5 minutes" must have had a different approach.  I did most of my explo in hostile 0.0, frequently "racing" another explorer to the sites, being chased by hostile fleets all the while... often on the giving and receiving end of smartbomb vs probe warfare.

The blackops- covert ops team was great for sneaking into hostile space, running sites, and escaping with loot... I lost a lot of ships doing this, but made enough isk to pay for losses 10 times over.

::sigh::

I sound like an old fart talkin about the good old days already.  Maybe after a break I won't hate the new scanning mechanic with every fiber of my soul : )

See now running from hostile forces would certainly add a little fun, but for 99% of the explorers out there exploration consisted of:
 

1. Jump into system

2. Drop probes at pre-bookmarked full coverage locations

3. press start scan button every few minutes x 20-30 until signal shows up

4. move down to next smaller probe and repeat step 3

5. finally track down that radar/mag/ladar site you've been scanning down for the last 45 minutes.

6. switch to combat ship after bookmarking site

7. spend 10-15 minutes running the site and collect pitiful amount of crap loot with the occasional decent find

8. Start all over again on a new signature or in a new system.

The old system was immensely tedious compared to the new one when you consider how long it took to run most of the sites after you found them, the only exception was the rare multi-stage plex you would find that could net some big returns.

With the new system in the same time it used to take to scan down 1 site in the old system, I can scan down and bookmark 6-7 sites in the new system, which leaves me with enough sites to last me hours of fun running them.

Originally posted by Enkindu

Originally posted by Xennith

you saying that you would prefer the old system of "push butan in 5 minutes"?

 

i disagree.

 

If it took you 5 minutes to scan you had the wrong skills and equipment for exploration.

My scan time was something like 88 seconds.  The fact that scan times were so long for untrained players actually made it worth it to train the relevant skills.

I see this response a lot on forums, and it's pretty obvious that most of them are made by people  who either didn't do exploration before the patch or who have never been good at it.

There was actually much more of an art to placing probes (midwarp bookmarks etc) before the patch.  The current system is basically a grind.  You know how many signals there are, and you know where they are.. you just have to track down each one by using signal strengths on a standard scan. I'n a system with 20 sigs this is so simple, and yet so TEDIOUS that it broke eve for me.

By the way, thanks for the shift-resize and shift-move tips- my good friend and I figured that out on day one.. without these features I wouldn't have bothered with the new system for more than a day or two.

Actually while writing this I've realized part of why I'm so unhappy is that this is the first time I've ever felt like I was grinding for anything in eve.. and grinding in a game is moronic in my book.  Paying someone to do busywork? No thanks.

I have always loved  eve because the devs waren't afraid to let the game be complex and intimidating. The new probing system is the worst (perhaps only?) "dumbing down" event I've ever seen in the game.

Are you using the deep space probes along with the core probes, they are useful for far more than just finding out how many signatures are in a system but if that's all you're using them for I can see how it will be an exercise in frustration. I really should start writing that guide I was planning on doing.

Originally posted by D3lit3

Hm alright thanks might give it a go.

 

Just wondering, what are the planets and moons for if you can't land on them? Can you just click on them and find a  resource or something? Or are they there for decoration?

For now, just decoration, but CCP's plans are that players will be able to interact with and most likely land on planets after ambulation has been released. In fact ambulation is essentially the groundwork for planetary interaction.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Loved to play AH in LOTRO ... made some good gold too

Basically its all about putting item to maximum time, and than putting buyout slightly higher than bidding price.

Also when you sell crafting mats , sell them in smaller bunches.

Instead selling 50 hides, sell 5 sets of 10.

I'm sorry but that's a terrible way to sell. Crafters don't want to buyout 5 stacks of 10 they want them 50 at a time, not to mention it's a pain in the ass going through 10 pages of overpriced small stacks to look for decent 50 stacks. I NEVER buy anything less than a full stack of crafting material.

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

Originally posted by Crenait

going on nothing but money sounds like a quick way to be ruined by gold sellers to me :(

Umm, you do know that EVE supports and fosters RMT by selling game cards and allowing players to trade them in-game for in-game currency.

There's a big difference between fostering RMT and controlling it, the latter of which CCP does. RMT happens in every mmo without exception. The RMT companies could care less about game balance or it's economy, they just want to make money.

Eve's economy is about the only MMO economy I've ever seen that hasn't experienced rampant inflation, in fact it's actually seen some deflation and that is in part due to CCP taking an active role in controlling RMT through their GTC and PLEX sales.

Originally posted by sanders01

Originally posted by Xennith

Originally posted by sanders01

Originally posted by X-Porter

Originally posted by sanders01

It's kinda hard to suck in a game where its right click orbit, click to fire etc :/

 No, that's exactly how to suck at EVE. Good job.

Then please master, explain to me how I should play EVE besides right clicking and clicking on icons on the screen and then watching the fight happen?

 

Well, right clicking icons on the screen will do very little. Left clicking on icons in the selected items window and on your modules will achieve something. I suppose right clicking on a ship bracket will let you orbit things and target them. Protip: Shoot things to make them die.

 

Frankly i could type up a massive post about battle strategy in various ships and eg the differences between fighting in a vagabond and fighting in a hurricane but you wouldnt understand it, its like teaching a pig to sing, you both end up covered in mud and all you've achieved is to annoy the pig.

Let me green up a word for you, and see if you can get my meaning by it, since I was never one for explaining things. By "clicking" (Stated after saying right clicking" I ment left clicking also, nice try though.

Zomg a computer program on the computer that requires clicking....quick call the MSNBC. Congratulations you just thought up the most idiotic argument about a computer game EVER. Nice job genius.

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by Minsc
No your answer was simply your opinion and it was one that was not shared by the majority of the player base nor the devs.

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The fact, that vast majority of playerbase never leaves high sec area is not my oppinion. It is a real numer published in periodical Economic newsletter and CCP's statements.

Firstly that is a snapshot of the location of the player population at one moment in time, second of all it also includes the immense number of market alts that people create so taking that single slice of information as gospel to how the population distribution always looks is a weak argument. Also just because someone is in empire doesn't mean they are completely clueless of game mechanics. I've spent 2/3 of my 6 years of eve in 0.0 space but now base out of empire, suddenly I'm clueless as to how 0.0 works? Sorry but you are not the unique and special snowflake that you think you are.

 

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Originally posted by Minsc 
Subscription numbers mean revenue, revenue pays for employees and equipment. Both are integral to improving the game.

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The best revenue offers low quality(costs) products with brilliant advertisement/business plan very often... What are you reffering to?

But the things that CCP are adding to the game ARE good, just not for your gamestyle. You're under the mistaken impression that since EVE is designed around PVP that having a good PVE system runs counter to having a good PVP system when in fact they can easily run in parallel.

 

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Originally posted by Minsc
Everyone starts with pve in every MMO out ever. Players have to learn simple controls and gamesystems somehow and PVE tutuorials are the way to do it. I'm shocked that I even had to answer that statement.

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So you want to attract PvP players by releasing PvE content?
Business is not your strong side, I tell you.

How so? Do you honestly think that any MMO can survive on PVP alone, especially one with such a harsh death penalty compared to most other MMO's. Do you also believe that someone who enjoys PVP content cannot also enjoy PVE content. By your estimation anyone who likes PVE should be forced out of the game, and business is not MY strong side?

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Originally posted by Minsc
And I'll correct your statement by saying that EVE is the best MMO designed AROUND PVP on the market. That doesn't mean that everyone needs to be all PVP PVP Rrrah Rrah all the time.

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I would say we both say the same - PvP Game = MMO designed around PvP. Why repeat it? Your point is?

We're not saying the same thing at all. In your opinion the game should be all about logging in jumping in a ship and going out and killing/getting killed by anyone you see, any activity that cannot be directly considered PVP is inferior and beneath consideration. My opinion is that the game is about choosing to do what you find fun, whether it's PVP or PVE content as long as there is the possibility that PVP may happen at any time.

Think back to old-school pre-trammel UO days, most people would venture out around the world searching for mob camps to kill or resources to harvest, most going about their business and much of the time nothing happened but every once in awhile you would see someone else wander by and you were never able to tell if they were friend or foe. Sometimes they would pass buy and leave you to your mobs, sometimes they join you and you would team up and kill the mobs together and sometimes they would try and gank you, with or without success.

The point is that PVP shouldn't be forced, it should come down to the choice of the player and not the game itself.