“I hate the direction Eve is going, I miss the good old days when capitals and supercaps didn’t blob everything and counter subcaps completely.” This is a complaint I keep seeing on Reddit.
My response is: “What game were you playing?” Were you playing the game with remote AoE doomsdays? Or the game with tracking titans that could doomsday any subcap ship and win any engagement through attrition? Perhaps you were playing the game before jump fatigue, where you could move fleets across the galaxy with cynos. Maybe it was during the time of spider-tanking carriers with sentries? Or perhaps it was during assisted fighters from inside POS shields.
The argument for YEARS from the people with supers and titans: my ship cost billions of isk; it should not lose to a fleet worth less than it cost. The same people are now crying about how Goons have too many titans and supers and are unassailable by subcap ships. Hunters constantly whine about how Rorquals (10b isk) are unkillable with their 30 man bomber gang (1.5b isk). They constantly talk about how it used to be better for hunters.
Hunting what? No one mined; barely anyone ratted, let alone with a carrier or a supercarrier; hunters were few and far between. The amount of targets to hunt in the current Eve META has never been more abundant. Carriers and Rorquals die on a daily basis; there is always some kind of content to be found for roaming gangs. Yet, everyone seems to pine over the past. The moongoo empires, OTEC—passive isk generation through moons.
What Is So Different Now?
The game has changed on a massive scale. Everything listed above is a symptom of the changes, not the cause. The core philosophy of the game has changed. I once described the training system as a great thing. You could queue up your skills and play something else. You didn’t have to login every day and grind anything. You could play for 1 hour, or for 16, and your character would not be any better. You would have more isk if you were ratting, but that would not change the prices on a super, nor would it change the speed you train into it. Eve was basically plug-and-play.
Eve, today, is not. The game rewards active, frequent playing like never before. The more you play, the better off you are. Skill injectors, Rorquals, ratting, even the sov system. They all lead to one common conclusion: time spent = progression gained.
Moons themselves are not something you fight over anymore. R64s still exist in spirit, but they are far more spread out and they still require people to mine them. That change is one of the biggest shifts in Eve. You no longer fight over a moon, then secure it, and finally let the alliance rake in the goo. The alliance sets it up and the player has to come back 30-50 days later to mine it before it’s worth anything. Most people view this process as not worth the time and risk, and thus no one bothers fighting over it in the first place because no one wants to start the frack process. We especially see this in lowsec, or in regions of space that may be considered too dangerous.
Remove injectors; remove Rorquals; remove the changes!!!
Unlikely to happen. The previous, passive version of the game was fine for a few years. However, we just passed the 15 year mark. Any player starting the game now would be so far behind, they’d likely not play. We saw CCP acknowledge this with an increase in starting SP, alpha accounts, etc.
The game isn’t going to change, so you need to. Understand the way the game is going with regards to wanting new blood, wanting players to actively play the game, or don’t, and just quit. Provide feedback that is more than just “REEE SKILL INJECTORS KILLING GAME REEEE.” Understand that the game you played 10-15 years ago isn’t the same, and neither are you, or the players, or the devs.
Harden the fuck up.
