After a tumultuous year of war and game mechanics disruption, 2022 begins with EVE Online players looking for change and inspiration. The forums, Discords, and subreddits are full of disgruntled players.
The landscape of players is complex and the concerns are not uniform. There are definite groupings of players that have different and sometimes opposing points of view on the game.
This is a brief look at those groups:
The Mechanists – These players are focused on the subtleties of modules, ship fittings, and much of the complex interaction that leads to PvP combat metas appearing and disappearing. These are the folks angry about the Surgical Strike changes to resistances. They are upset at the HAC meta. They argue about the viability of battleships. They discuss sig tanking, feathering, and the best way to slingshot.
What will make them happy: Relentless ship balancing and tweaking. Even then, they will still have personal pet peeves that they will rant about for hours on end.
The Relaxed – These players don’t read /r/eve or the EVE forums regularly. They just log in, mainly in high sec space, and simply play the game in whatever way makes them feel good. They first hear of changes via the launcher and say “Oh, that looks interesting”. Special events, mission running, and mining are what these achievement oriented players enjoy.
What will make them happy: No more ganking in high sec. Gankers make them consider filing a suit under Texas Law. Besides that, there may be individuals with pet peeves, in general they are already happy.
The Admirals – These players are always looking at the horizon. Typical leaders of corps and alliances, they tend to be concerned about the long term direction of the game, motivations for their members to log into the game, and the continued introduction of new content into the game. A key focus on the overall flow of industry, wars, and new objectives to keep giving their community goals to strive for in the future. They engage in a lot of kremlinology regarding CCP’s motivations and moves.
What will make them happy: A longer term vision or roadmap for EVE and regular changes that keep players, especially long term core players, enthusiastic about the game. This allows them to create elaborate plans and designs that don’t survive long once the changes actually hit Tranquility.
The Chatterboxes – These players spend most of their time in comms, talking about pretty much anything. Social butterflies, they have found ways to monopolize the conversation and go on for hours about various topics until you want to simply throw your headset across the room.
The high achieving Chatterboxes include drinks and drugs into their repertoire, making listening to them even more soul crushing.
What will make them happy: A new topic to talk about. They have rehashed every old story and need fresh things to spend hours smothering comms with their ‘wit’. They don’t actually undock, so changes in EVE matter little to them.
Templars – These players tend to loudly support all of CCPs plans and decisions. You will find them on the EVE forums and Discords, continually defending the Dev Team’s decisions and coming up with elaborate rationales. They will spend hours going over a Dev Blog syllable by syllable as if they had unearthed secret treasure map.
Their belief system is unshakeable, drawing elaborate conclusions and grandiose hypothesis from casual comments as if they were handed them on stone tablets from a burning bush.
What will make them happy: When a CCP senpai notices them.
The Reversers – These players want the EVE of the imaginary past. They long for old sovereignty mechanics, passive POS moon mining, and other relics of the years gone by, suggesting that those were part of some sort of Golden Age when players had no complaints and gameplay was perfect.
When confronted with the actual challenges of past gameplay, like pre-TiDi fights, POS repair, and clone upgrades, they plug their ears and chant “Bring back tracking titans!”.
What will make them happy: A time machine. But they are also upset about the Doctor Who event, so time machines are pretty much out as well.
The Trolls – These players revel in being negative, contrary, and insulting to any new idea, change, opinion, or comment. They hate everything about the game, complain constantly, and haven’t logged in in several years.
They take pleasure in dragging the unsuspecting into prolonged interweb arguments using every logical fallacy available.
What will make them happy: Nothing. Their sad miserable lives are broken. A couple years of therapy might help.
Hopefully this helps you understand a little more about what might take to make EVE players happy and why that is a Sisyphean task.