Eve Online dying?

Old Man

Old Man

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OK, just wanted to see what you all think of it but was seeing a bit on the net about how Eve Online is no longer what it used to be and is winding down/dying, so for those that are playing, what are your thoughts on this?

TY
 
People have been saying that for ever yet Eve is still here. Most of that talk now comes from the elite dangerous/star citizen fan base but those two games will never touch Eve and they know it. Eve has 6 times more active players than Elite Dangerous ;)

x-st said:
http://steamcharts.com/app/8500

Those numbers don't look terrible...relatively consistent if anything. Compare that with Lawbreakers (which is dying) -
http://steamcharts.com/app/350280
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32000 online on a Saturday evening. Only a tiny amount play it through steam.
 
NZXT30 said:
People have been saying that for ever yet Eve is still here. Most of that talk now comes from the elite dangerous/star citizen fan base but those two games will never touch Eve and they know it. Eve has 6 times more active players than Elite Dangerous ;)



32000 online on a Saturday evening. Only a tiny amount play it through steam.
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Back when I played it (2 years or so ago) the peak numbers were around 22000, so the game seems to be doing better.
 
It is definitely in decline - alpha thing slowed it for awhile but back in decline now - check eve-offline.net at current rate it has about 2.5 years until decline in activity goes into snowball effect and it dies like other mmos.

The new character turn over rate many developers would kill for even taking into account existing players making alts so CCP are really screwing up somewhere to have a decline like that.
 
Rroff said:
it has about 2.5 years until decline in activity goes into snowball effect and it dies like other mmos.
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But as we all know, EVE has consistently broken the trend of a typical MMO lifecycle. Freaks of nature (WoW) aside, it should have been dead and buried towards the end of the naughties in comparison to other MMO's.

I do think it has had its day now tho. Gaming is more and more being consumed in bitesize-nuggets, and longevity seems to be determined more by how many times you bite the same nugget, rather than develop a persistent character.

Time will tell. They may be in a very different place if Dust 541 was not a console-only release. Valk/Gunjack seems to have done little for them seeing how niche VR still is (not to mention their atrocious pricing decisions on it).
 
D3K said:
But as we all know, EVE has consistently broken the trend of a typical MMO lifecycle. Freaks of nature (WoW) aside, it should have been dead and buried towards the end of the naughties in comparison to other MMO's.

I do think it has had its day now tho. Gaming is more and more being consumed in bitesize-nuggets, and longevity seems to be determined more by how many times you bite the same nugget, rather than develop a persistent character.

Time will tell though. They may be in a very different place if Dust 541 was not a console-only release. Valk/Gunjack seems to have done little for them seeing how niche VR still is (not to mention their atrocious pricing decisions on it).
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People said that though when activity metrics said otherwise - now they don't.
 
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D3K said:
Time will tell. They may be in a very different place if Dust 541 was not a console-only release. Valk/Gunjack seems to have done little for them seeing how niche VR still is (not to mention their atrocious pricing decisions on it).
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I agree with you. Dust 541 should have been released on PC.
More people could have been involved with it.

But I admit, the game now is bit "too much". When I was playing between 2002-2010 (2003-2009 with my ex-wife also) was more "alive" and felt much better than it is today.
 
NZXT30 said:
People have been saying that for ever yet Eve is still here. Most of that talk now comes from the elite dangerous/star citizen fan base but those two games will never touch Eve and they know it. Eve has 6 times more active players than Elite Dangerous ;)



32000 online on a Saturday evening. Only a tiny amount play it through steam.
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Genuinely never heard of an SC player slagging Eve Online and say it's dying, heck many of us are ex-Eve or ex-Elite Dangerous players.. ;)
 
Mart2912 said:
Back when I played it (2 years or so ago) the peak numbers were around 22000, so the game seems to be doing better.
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Not sure what numbers you are going off but using eve-offline.net from 2010 to 2014 Eve held pretty steady just under 50K for weekly peak player count - dropped off a pretty steep cliff early in 2014 but was still mostly above 40K until 2015 when it took another big drop but was mostly still above 30K. Its been on a gradual decline ever since that was stalled for a bit by the alpha thing but it didn't reverse the trend which just started again. Still hits some peaks above 30K but they are getting fewer and further between.

The problem with MMOs though is that declining activity levels tends to precipitate more declining activity levels - you get a gentle curve for awhile then it hits a point where it pretty much drops off a cliff overnight - based on what I've seen of around 20 years of playing these kind of games unless something changes it will hit that point by 2.5 years at the most.

Thing is though there isn't that much reason for even the decline there is even today - sure they are going against the current trends but there is still significant interest in the game and significant activity in respect to people going through the starter stuff, etc. but the decline isn't just a new player retention problem or just older players becoming bored. One thing CCP devs never seem to learn is that its a good practise to touch long established mechanics and features with as light a hand as possible unless its absolutely game breaking - that "few" players that leave every time that happens (often with rhetoric about how the game is better without them/won't be missed) going by the actual numbers is upper hundred to a couple of thousand and that happens every time something like that happens - so it mounts up in the end - which in many cases is people quitting who absolutely could have been retained as long term active or semi-active players with a better approach - take marauders for instance - nothing particularly wrong with the old form of them and while most people are generally positive about the new form there were a not insignificant number of people quite attached to their old style marauders - it would have been perfectly possible to retain much of what people liked about the old marauders while introducing the new ones along side. As an example (I don't personally understand the mentality of it) but I know someone who played the game for years purely just to ever more pimp out (and save to replace if it got ganked) a Golem and were very attached to it coming back time and time again to basically do the same gameplay with their Golem - when the marauder changes came in that all died for them and they quit and I know they weren't alone in that even though in isolation that was probably a few dozens of players.
 
Rroff said:
It is definitely in decline - alpha thing slowed it for awhile but back in decline now - check eve-offline.net at current rate it has about 2.5 years until decline in activity goes into snowball effect and it dies like other mmos.

The new character turn over rate many developers would kill for even taking into account existing players making alts so CCP are really screwing up somewhere to have a decline like that.
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You cannot compare Eve to other MMOs, you just can't. I wouldn't bet on those 2.5 years. All it could take for another boom is a good expansion from CCP. The game is still alive and kicking even with all those poor decisions from CCP in the past few years. Imagine what would happen if they actually started making successful expansions. Plus the game looks gorgeous, the art team has really kept up with modern graphics. We could also see a swift towards MMOs again which Eve would greatly benefit from. At worse case Eve online goes fully f2p and it gets another 5 years easily.

You would be surprised how many people are seriously attached to the game and the friendships they made over the years and CCP removing a really broken feature they loved wont change that ;). Eve online in maintenance mode with around 10k people could easily last another decade.
 
NZXT30 said:
You cannot compare Eve to other MMOs, you just can't. I wouldn't bet on those 2.5 years. All it could take for another boom is a good expansion from CCP. The game is still alive and kicking even with all those poor decisions from CCP in the past few years. Imagine what would happen if they actually started making successful expansions. Plus the game looks gorgeous, the art team has really kept up with modern graphics. We could also see a swift towards MMOs again which Eve would greatly benefit from. At worse case Eve online goes fully f2p and it gets another 5 years easily.

You would be surprised how many people are seriously attached to the game and the friendships they made over the years and CCP removing a really broken feature they loved wont change that ;). Eve online in maintenance mode with around 10k people could easily last another decade.
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There are many ways you absolutely can compare it to other MMOs people often just aren't comparing like for like - many others would have lasted longer as well if the devs had made a really successful expansion. There needs to be a big change in approach from CCP not just a great content update to stem the downwards change.

I fully understand how attached people are to the game - it wasn't an easy decision to walk away from it. F2P won't fund the kind of hardware and support a game like Eve needs to run. Friendships are a good part of why people have stayed so long but those would break down in the face of declining activity levels as people have less and less reason to login. Many of the communities I was part of have long been gutted - I still login now and again as an alpha to keep up with old acquaintances as I used to hang around in ~20 channels with 15+ people in each now half of them are empty and most of the others have only 2-3 people at peak times.

There have been few really broken features in Eve most "really broken" things are people complaining because those things mean they have to put some effort in - its quite telling when CCP has addressed those things there has been no really reinvigoration of the game as those people would claim. On the forums you see the same names moving straight on to moaning about the next thing while their claims about how much better the game would be don't seem to materialise.
 
Yes it's dying.

I started playing back in 2005.
I quit a few months ago.

The economy is messed up, hyperinflation.
Skills points can be purchased.
Everything I worked for over the years is worth nothing.

Truth is, I've been bored of it for a while, but once you've invested a lot you feel the need to keep going.
So when CCP devalues all that investment, you're no longer attached.

RIP EVE.

It really was one of the greatest games ever made.
 
billysielu said:
Yes it's dying.

I started playing back in 2005.
I quit a few months ago.

The economy is messed up, hyperinflation.
Skills points can be purchased.
Everything I worked for over the years is worth nothing.

Truth is, I've been bored of it for a while, but once you've invested a lot you feel the need to keep going.
So when CCP devalues all that investment, you're no longer attached.

RIP EVE.

It really was one of the greatest games ever made.
Click to expand...

Can I have your stuff?
 
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