EVE Online's Dark Age

 The EVE of Old is Gone - And That's (Probably) Okay

EVE is a dark and harsh world, you're supposed to feel a bit worried and slightly angry when you log in, you're not supposed to feel like you're logging in to a happy, happy, fluffy, fluffy lala land filled with fun and adventures, that's what hello kitty online is for. - CCP Wrangler, 2007

I started my first character in EVE in 2009. In 2011, I created Xuixien and got serious about the game. It has now been over a decade, and I am still here. I've been active every year since 2009, even if only for a few months. I've done it all - except cap ships and SOV. EVE Online is a game that I'm passionate about. There's no other game like it, or at least no game like it that has been so successful, and I have many fond memories of my time flying around New Eden. But the EVE Online of today is not the EVE Online I fell in love with so long ago. It's changed. It's currently in the middle of a Dark Age.

Since I've lived in New Eden CCP has been making the game "more accessible" easier. Some of these quality of life changes were good and necessary, such as making important game information available through the client (I didn't even know about career agents until 2011). Others were not. Players starting their EVE Online careers today or who have only been playing for a couple of years will never know the struggle that life in New Eden used to be - and  consequently how engaging and meaningful it all felt.

Back then you couldn't use your credit card to get SP from CCP or get SP simply for logging in. You didn't get free SP during a tutorial and there were no referral links that offered 1 million SP. None of that existed. Everyone started on the same level playing field and everyone had to go through the same trial of fire. EVE Online required patience. Characters started with 50k~ SP and very low training speed. While I believe the formulation for SP is unchanged from Ye Days of Olde (Primary + (Secondy/2) * 60), characters used to have single digit attributes and had to train "learning skills" to improve them. This all had real consequences as far as player retention was concerned.

I mentioned that I started EVE in 2009, but didn't get serious until I created Xuixien in 2011. That's because "learning skills" were removed right about that time, and everyone was just given the maximum attribute points. This was one of the good and necessary changes. Then a few years later, during the Vanguard expansion, CCP decided to start all characters with about 400k SP. This was a questionable, but probably good change. New characters created today start with max training speed with proper remap and don't have to wait a month before they can start flying ships effectively. Some changes like this become necessary after an MMO has been around for a long enough period of time; there simply needs to be some kind of catch up mechanism or easing of the New Player Experience.

There were other pain points as well. While mining barges have been out for so long that nobody can remember EVE Online without them, for at least 2 years after EVE Online was released people mined in cruisers using those little frigate sized Miner I's and Miner II's. On unbonused hulls, with unbonused cargo bays. And even though mining barges were released around 2005/2006, they weren't as good as they are now and were still a rarity due to the BPOs being insanely expensive (for the time). This made the hulls inordinately expensive and so, even as late as 2012/2013, I remember most of the miners I encountered were in Scythes or Tempests. Or in Hoarders with a single Miner II.

And I haven't even gotten into upgrading your clone.

So that's what it was like to start in EVE back in the day. 50k SP. 810 SP/hour *if* you knew how to minmax. 10k ISK. Here's a Rookie ship. Fuck you. If we think of EVE Online, the game itself and the experience of the game, as a civilization going through the life cycle that all civilizations do, then the years between 2003-2009 were the "Heroic Age" of EVE Online. It's a time remembered through mythology and stories; an age of pioneers breaking new ground and experimenting with gaming during a period where nobody really understood how the game worked and life was very, very difficult. EVE Online went through a Golden Age shortly after, and has now been in a Dark Age for the past 5 or so years. EVE Online is due for a Renaissance.

 New Eden Faded as CCP Appealed to New Players Younger Gamers

Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of 'new players', that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players. - Malcanis

MMOs either experience growth or they experience stagnation and hemorrhage. Players are constantly leaving for various reasons, and need to be replaced. One of the reasons players leave is simply aging out of the demographic. As people start new periods of their lives, their priorities shift, and gaming takes a back seat. EVE Online is no different. The the average age of EVE players is increasing and dwindling after the early 30's. In CCP Quant's video you can see the distribution take a downward slope through the 30's as people are starting families and getting more serious with their careers, or just moving onto other things. In short: EVE's playerbase is getting older and leaving. 

We see that during EVE's 'Golden Age', a period of about 5 years, the bulk of the playerbase was in their late 20's/early 30's: right in that sweet spot post-graduation but before getting married or taking on heavier work responsibilities. This was the most populated and active time during EVE Online. Of course, a univariate analysis never has the explanatory strength of a multivariate analysis. Several very good changes coincided with player age; the removal of "learning skills", the Faction Warfare revamp, removal of clone grades, and CCP Rise joining the team to rebalance ships (starting with the smaller ships that newbies would fly first!), resulting in unprecedented player retention and activity levels.

But something went wrong during this Golden Age: CCP didn't seem to realize there was a Golden Age happening. They failed to notice the changing ecology and opportunity map, and remained worried about newbie retention. They also got greedy, implementing changes in the game that promoted micro-transactions and the purchase of PLEX: multiple pilot training (for cash), cosmetics (for cash), skill extractors (for cash). CCP also started to implement changes meant to appeal to a younger generation of gamers, who not only have different gaming tastes, but different gaming expectations. CCP had to decide on maintaining the integrity of what EVE Online is to retain their dwindling veteran population, while also modernizing EVE Online to appeal to young, fresh players.

And thus CCP added catch-up mechanisms (for cash), implemented some game mechanics to replace trust and diligence (friendly fire turned off, certain scams banned or restricted, revamping of corp roles and access) and other game mechanics to improve safety (making mining barges tankier, 'Crimewatch', etc). The playerbase generally did not like the changes which, because of Malcanis' Law, didn't actually help new players that much but instead just increased the overall wealth and power of veterans, making it even harder for newbies to catch up unless they used real life money. It also made the game easier (read: less engaging, more boring) for newbies and veterans, which caused veterans to leave and didn't solve the problem of new player retention.

When we take into account the fine line CCP had to walk - maintaining EVE as EVE, appealing to veterans and new players alike - the changes that CCP has made over the past years, many of which were at cross-purposes, make sense. But every time CCP nerfed EVE, long-term players quit, and CCP still had a newbie retention problem. Whenever CCP tried to appeal to the mass market, New Eden became a little less New Eden, and newbie retention was still a problem. CCP would nerf the game a bit in the name of the "New Player Experience", lose older players, and then nerf the game again to keep appealing to newbies who would only stick around for a week. It created a vicious cycle because EVE, as a niche game, will necessarily always have player retention problems.

The result of all the changes and nerfs was an EVE Online that is completely different from what it was a decade ago. While players are richer than they've ever been due to changes meant to help newbies, as far as EVE as the game and the experience of the game - the past few years have been a Dark Age, a period of stagnation and poverty. Some have said that these changes are necessary to keep EVE competitive in a modern market. But EVE Online was never competitive, and never will be: EVE Online is unique, and offers a niche gaming experience. The appeal of EVE Online has always been that it wasn't easy and wealth was hard to come by. It's basic psychology; players had things to strive for. Now they don't.

Some more psychology: Most people seek safety, ease, and comfort. Human beings will expend inordinate amounts of energy in order to create the conditions of safety, ease, and comfort. And then they will disengage and languish in ennui once challenge and suffering have been eliminated. Dostoevsky wrote about this in Notes from Underground. Humans desire ease and comfort, but it's not good for us psychologically or spiritually. Humans require adversity to overcome and suffering to provide meaning to life. CCP needs to change it's philosophy. CCP needs to make EVE Online hard again, and introduce forces of nature that are constantly threatening to poison, starve, and maim the player base.

The Rebirth of EVE Online?

CCP seems to be finally getting it's act together and making sense of the decades of statistical data available to them. I believe we are seeing the early stages of an EVE Online Renaissance that will revitalize the game and perhaps even increase the playerbase (in the long run), and that this will involve giving the playerbase what they need (challenge, adversity, loss) rather than what they want (ease and prosperity). The earliest inklings of this new age were the economic changes meant to siphon wealth out of the game and balance ISK faucets with ISK sinks. 'Scarcity' and resource distribution is another telltale sign. EVE Online is on it's way to becoming harder, more engaging, and less bloated. Players will be poorer - but they will be having more meaningful play experiences. Before CCP gets to where it's going, it needs to bleed the game dry; deplete material stockpiles, deplete wallets, deplete capital fleets.

CEO Hellmar, probably the oldest oldbro in the game, has decided to start taking a more active role in game development. Some of the philosophy he has put forth has been interesting. He has elucidated many ideas over Twitch that think will be beneficial to the game. One idea was increasing the risk and difficulty of "high end", lucrative gameplay available to older pilots with more skillpoints, and making it increasingly difficulty to run "high end" gameplay solo (ie, multiboxed). There's no reason that EVE Online can't offer the gaming experiences and playstyle that new generations of gamers have come to expect, with a sliding scale of risk/effort vs reward that has been broken for a number of years now. In a future article I will outline some ideas that come to my mind.

In the meantime, what do you think? Do you agree that EVE Online had a 'Heroic Age', a 'Golden Age', and is now currently in a 'Dark Age'? Do you think CCP is going to take the game in the right direction and revitalize New Eden?