High above the world, I fly, in a tin can, a capsuleer in CCP's Eve-Online Multiplayer Game. A game where you can fly in real time with your buddies, in small ships, mining barges, speedy little frigates, or great big Battlecruisers.
For a lot of the time, the game is good. So many things the average player can do, and all of them are limited by just two things. One the ability to afford the toys you want and two, having spent the time learning the skills to be able to get into the boat you want.
Mining asteroids affords most players a good income. The mining barges are slow, heavy and carry awesome lasers that split the asteroids into a dust that is fed into your hopper. The ore can be refined to minerals, and used to manufacture ships or weapons, or simpy sold to willing buyers.
Right now, a bunch of cowardly custards are blowing up peoples ships for an event called Hulkageddon 4. You see, the mining barges and transporters are boats that carry no weapons, are slow to move around and are easy to kill. They cannot fight back.
I don't know about you, but when I see people blowing up ships that people have worked hard for for months, it upsets me a bit. I find eve-online to be less attractive.
But hey, one of the CCP developers was on record for stating that anything he could engineer to piss off players was a good thing and he will do it all he can. CCP, the owners of Eve-Online sanction this stupidity, they know it is bad for business, but its all good for a laugh. Let the player base decide whats right. Those who enjoy blowing up defensless ships will stay. Those who have lost everything might leave. So what. Who Cares,. Survival of the strongest?
CCP's front pages lead you to a form to fill in on line if you feel that you have a greivance. But it is no use, CCP permit Suicide Ganking, they postivly enable it and do nothing to deter it.
The problem for the miner, is that until the criminal has blown you up, no crime has been committed, so even if you know it is going to happen, there is nothing you can do. Moments later, after the fact, the criminal has lost a 500,000 Isk vessel, You have lost 180 Millions isks worth. The poor ganker lost 500,000, aw poor wee thingy. But now you are in a pod heading for base while the bombers assistant sweeps up the debris and rakes in all the goodies your wreck dropped. It is ten times the value of the lost pirate ship and a fraction of the bombed out Mining Barge.
The website, Hulkageddon 4, shows some 900 boats have been senselessly destroyed so far this week, the carnage goes on, players who have supported CCP with monthly contributions are being reamed good and proper. CCP must be laughing all the way to the bank.
1 comment:
You say "They know it's bad for business", but that's not a good reflection on the reality of the situation.
EVE is a niche game, with a long term, ever growing player base. There are very few MMOs that have managed to sustain the amount of long term players that EVE has, and there are very few that have continued to trend toward ever growing population for as long as EVE has.
Yet, for all of that, EVE has a very high churn rate. It losses a lot of new players and semi new players.
Yet without fail, the players it loses are players that are not drawn to the niche that EVE occupies.
CCP could create an environment where PVP was purely consensual, where taking hostile actions against other players was not allowed, where scamming was ruled out by the EULA. And I have no doubt doing that would increase their player base dramatically. But it would increase it short term.
The new players would come onboard, play for a year or so, then get board and move on to another game, as is the trend in nearly every MMO on the market that isn't WoW.
Of course, they'd bring in new players in the mean time, whilst those players were getting bored, but again, the trend is that this isn't sustainable. If you're not WoW, you eventually losw players faster than you gain them.
Of course there are a few exceptions to this, but giving up a unique distinction that differentiates EVE, is risking the loss of a small but long term loyal player base, in favour of a larger but less loyal short term player base.
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