What Everyone's Missing About the Indy Changes
There has been a lot of negative discussion about the coming industrial changes that were recently announced. People feel an understandable sense of unease and anxiety whenever there's a major change, especially a change that impacts them personally. As with all discussions re: EVE Online, a lot of the discourse gets lost in the weeds and focused on increasingly nuanced minutiae. But let's take a different view of what these changes actually mean for the future of the game: A Big Picture view.
The Big Picture view is this: as time goes on, players quit the game for various reasons. That's just a fact of MMOs: nothing lasts forever. As older players leave, newer players join the game. There is now a balance; players leaving vs players joining. The population goes up and down. It trends in one direction or another. CCP has the unenviable task of trying to retain veterans - those players who appreciate the complexity, challenge, and loss of the EVE of Ye Olde Times - while also trying to retain a younger generation of gamers who are looking for a more casual experience.
This has been a seemingly intractable problem for years. Tune the complexity and risk up - newbies can't "get into it" and leave. Tune it down - veterans get mad that the game is being "dumbed down for kids", and leave. Remember the kerfluffle over Alpha clones? And then injectors (which I still think was CCPs biggest mistake).
How can this dichotomy be resolved? CCP tried to circumvent the problem by focusing on what they call the "New Player Experience", or NPE. A lot of manhours have been spent on acquiring and analyzing data, trying to figure out the reasons newbies leave the game, and what in-game experiences correlate with retention in the first few hours, days, and weeks of play. Much of the development work has been geared towards the tutorial, trying to make it as engaging and streamlined as possible, hoping that players will "get hooked" and stick around after they have completed the "NPE".
A lot of good work was done, but this approach has had one major conceptual flaw: the "New Player Experience" isn't the first few weeks in the game - it's the entire game itself, across a wide set of activities and across an indeterminate period of time. It doesn't matter how interesting and fun the tutorial period is if players are still facing the same exact problem that the tutorial was meant to alleviate in the first place. Namely: EVE Online's complexity and learning curve. An updated NPE isn't going to help retention if players are still hitting the brick wall of EVE Online's depth and complexity when it's over. All the tutorial has done in that case is postpone the inevitable.
The Solution: Creating Gentler Curves and More Niches
CCP Hilmar has stated numerous times over the past couple of years that he wants to completely rearrange the relationship between the players and EVE Online's complexity, risk, and reward. He has stated, and I'm paraphrasing, that newer players shouldn't have to be, by necessity, subjected to the same sorts of complexity and losses that senior players are. I interpret this in terms of "level" of gameplay: gameplay that's available to those with low SP, flying frigates and cruisers, vs gameplay available to those with high SP, flying battleships and above. And also - gameplay available to solo players vs what's available to those who are part of alliances or fleets.
Another statement made on by CSM Kenneth on an episode of Talking in Stations, again paraphrased, is that "CCP wants T1 ships smaller than battleships to be cheap and easily replaceable. So if a newbie loses a destroyer in a level 2 mission, we want them to be able to easily buy and fit up a new one without breaking their bank and placing a huge level of stress on them." To this end, the overall material requirements of T1 ships are being homogenized, reduced, and the rare minerals (Zydrine, Megacyte, etc) removed from the input profiles for these ships. Not only will this make those ships cheaper and more easily replaced, but it will also make it easier for new players to manufacture; all the materials they need will be available where they are: in HiSec, with perhaps quick forays into LowSec.
Complexity is increasing near the top end: battleships and above will require new components which will need inputs from PI, gas, and moongoo reactions. These ships will become complex to build and expensive to purchase; they will once again start become aspirational. They will also require a wider variety of materials from diverse areas of space; R4 reactions (available in HiSec, even though you still have to do the reactions themselves in LowSec). PI materials. WormHole gas. This creates more opportunities for even low SP players to get involved; Gas Harvesting V is only a 5 to 6 day train.
It would seem to me that these industry changes are in line with what CCP Hilmar envisions, that is to say a more sensible and gentle distribution of complexity and risk until you get to a certain point, and then it curves up sharply. Something that maybe follows a J curve. I think this is a great idea; it's gentle on the newbros, allowing them to engage in the game without the huge overhead of having to spend hours reading about stuff and losing their whole net worth because their T1 destroyer got blapped by Triglavians. It also maintains, and even adds, complexity for higher end gameplay: as soon as you start playing with battleships, and especially capital sized hulls, things start getting much more complicated and sourcing materials becomes much more risky and laborious.
There Hasn't Been a Better Time To Start EVE In 10 Years
(Plus Obligatory Recruitment Plug)
In light of several changes and actions taken by CCP in the past few years - changes to ISK sinks and faucets to arrest EVE's inflation problem, changes to mineral distributions and scarcity to reduce the amount of asset bloat - this is the best time to get started in EVE Online, or just come back to the game and check out what's new if you've been away. More changes along this vein are coming.
The game is going to become much easier for players to get started in. Players are getting the option to rise to their level of incompetence; that is, the ability to select the amount of gameplay complexity they are comfortable with. Do you really like the idea of working in a large team, sourcing many different materials from difference sources, and engaging in complex production chain relationships? Join a group that builds capital ships. Just wanna dabble in production? Stick to T1. A healthy "intermediate" might be battleship production.
I predict that once the dust settles from these changes, EVE will be revitalized and we'll come out the other side with a larger and stronger community.
The corporation I'm part of - Solar Winds Trade Conglomerate - plans to take advantage of these changes and leverage it for the recruitment and growth of new players and those returning. We are currently building a library of researched T1 BPOs. Our plan is to be able to give all joining members:
- A generous allotment of T1 fit ships for PvP and ratting.
- T1 fit mining barges and Ventures (with ore, ice, and gas harvesting modules).
- A set of exploration frigates.
- An assortment of BPCs so they can do their own production right away.
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