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Population: EVE's double-edged sword
Maldach
Member Posts: 399
I've been an on and off EVE player since beta. I'd play, quit for one reason or another and come back, rinse/repeat.
The population of EVE today is very strong. 19k players just about every night during Euro prime time and 13k US prime time. Those numbers may be small to the likes of WoW, but that's a good population for EVE. Lots of folks playing is good for any game.
The downside is the lag. The servers just can't handle the traffic nowadays. Euro prime time lag is bad, really bad at times. 5-10 second lag means PvP is a no-no and mission running/ npc'ing can be risky if you take on challenging foes. Losing a muti-million ISK ship to lag is frustrating to say the least.
Hopefully, CCP will be able to deliver us from the lag with the new serers. New servers should solve most of it, but CCP needs to make 0.0 more enticing to the average/casual player. Spreading the player base out more will take the stress off of individual servers.
Comments
The new servers due in the next 3 weeks will fix a lot of things.
0.0 is far better populated now than ever before, and getting more so.
0.0 doesnt need to be more enticing, people just need to be better educated on how to live out there. Only team-based people proliferate, and the majority of "carebears" prefer solo play.
I agree. I too am hoping that the new cluster helps out in the lag department. Nothing like trying to get through Jita during prime time, and forget moving through that area on the weekends.
I was wondering also if they are looking into the memory leak that game seems to have.
Yes I hope the next patch (expected shortly before/after the upgrade...ie next 3 weeks), fixes the leak, it got me killed last night.
Actually, it's quite possible for casual players to live in 0.0. You just have to live in the right region and be part of the right corp/alliance. With college playing hell with my game-time, some days I'm on for hours, others I'm not on at all, and I do just fine.
Two nights ago, I went down into Delve solo in a battleship to shoot at BoB, and managed to take out a BoB cerberus before getting blobbed and having to log off (which was right before downtime, anyway, and after I'd already been in Delve for a few hours). Last night, I logged back on, eluded BoB, Exuro Mortis, and Tribal Souls, and made it back out of Delve in time to get my next batch of Siege II's out of the factory and put a new one in. Following that, I went back to my home system and logged off so I could get some sleep and be rested for school today.
It's really quite possible to play on a casual level in 0.0, though you have to find the right corp and alliance to game with. You'll also have to show a willingness to help defend on those occasions you are online - if you won't fight for your home when you're around, most corps won't take you.
-Wrayeth
"Look, pa! I just contributed absolutely nothing to this thread!"
I agree 100% that 0.0 living is doable for casuals. CCP still needs to work on 0.0 as a more attractive area for more of the player base. They've done quite a bit already, opened more routes in 0.0 and made the npc's more attractive.
The game is at times, unplayable. A couple days ago, my corp went 0.0 pirate hunting. We had a group of 7, we warped to a gate that we had scouted and knew was camped, not a big camp mind you, it would have been an even fight. As we warped in, 3 of us, including myself crashed, leaving the other 4 to die miserably in an outnumbered fight. Needless to say, we were all pretty much disgusted at this. Not at ourselves, not at our opponents, but at the damn servers.
I agree (who wouldn't) that the new hardware and rebuilding of Tranquility in the next few weeks will help a lot with lag. However, no matter what new hardware is employed, there will still be lag in the main systems, until a point is reached where the incetive to move out of "safe" space is made more realistic. This means looking at the way 01-0.4 is currently run, and the incentives of going to the lower sec space in Empire. For me, this would mean increasing the 'roid values (getting better roids available in lower sec, more often) and also the bountys and loot tables on the 'rats in the belts, while looking at the way the gate guns and Concord respond (or not) for systems 0.1-0.4
I think CCP have done quite a bit to open up 0.0, it is possible to live there solo, but really, 0.0 remains the province of Alliances/Corps/War ~ and this is fine by me. 0.0 holds the best rats with the best bountys, and the best minerals/ice, and so it should remain. The investment and manpower employed in securing the regions that Alliances/Corps hold is huge, and therefore the rewards also need to be the best in order to support them.
The issue really, is how to get more people from "safe" space (0.5-1.0) and spread them out more among the 0.1-0.4 systems. As things are, this won't really happen for a lot of players. Anything 0.4-0.1 is dangerous in equal measure, and very often, more dangerous than actually being in 0.0. The riskvrewards for being in these systems, at present, simply are not enough of an incentive for your average player and smaller corps.
IMO, CCP need to scale 0.1-0.4 better, so that your average player will be more tempted to venture out there. Really this refers to the fact that the Concord presence simply stops in 0.4, and it is pretty easy to tank the sentry guns at the gates. Until the scale of retribution for 0.1-0.4 is adjusted better to reflect the lowering security I doubt many will venture far from "safe" space.
For example, while Concord presence is removed at 0.4, I don't think it unreasonable to make it close to impossible to tank sentry guns at gates, if not out right impossible, but scaling that down so by the time you get to 0.1 the guns can be tanked easier (not easy). Concord could also show up in 0.4, with a greater delay, but remove the illegality of escaping them for example. Greater delay again in 0.3, scaling down so they don't show up at all in 0.1, and the delay on them showing up in 0.2 is long. Things like this will help imo combined with an increase in rewards(again scaled). As things are 0.1-0.4 is pirate territory, and enough to make people avoid it whenever possible, unless ganged or on a Corp activity.
I also understand they are thinking of moving agents out more ~ this will help for sure. All these things combined will help, until something along these lines is adapted, even with better hardware, the truth is people will stay exactly as they are, and eventually, with an ever increasing player base, the lag issues will return in the exact same manner as they are currently.