The developers of EVE are now rebalancing. That can stop losing subscribers and can even cause a limited increase. But rebalancing is eventually bugfix: you change the ship to be like it supposed to be at the first time it was introduced. Also, rebalancing isn't giving to everyone: nerfing an overpowered ship or feature will make its (ab)users sad. EVE haven't seen a genuine new feature for years. And looking at the long term stagnation of subscribers, it needs one.
When I realized that the New Order stopped at the level of "watch miners explode and have fun", I started to plan my own corporation. It had an ambitious plan: be #1 on EVE-kill with less than 100 members. 100 pilots beating Pandemic Legion and the 10K+ GSF and TEST would make impact on the community. It was also something I was proficient in: I did gank 52B in a month myself, ready to provide 2-3% of the goal on my own. Also had enough income to fill the war chest myself. Where is this corp?
Nowhere because my "list of things to do" became too long, full of elements I'm neither proficient in, nor really would like to do:
Then it hit me. This is the Jesus feature CCP needs. CCP should re-create all the IT services of TEST, integrate them into the game and make them available for every corporation and alliance. This way an aspirant corp leader would need "only" players, and not a bunch of IT experts to create the tools needed to run his corp. A bunch of streamlined IT services would also decrease management cost, which would decrease leadership burnout and the very source of their terrible manners: "if you don't like how I run it, try doing it yourself". On this front I myself failed. While I think James 315 doesn't run the New Order well, I am not skilled/dedicated enough on the IT/management front to do better, so I have to keep suffering the "let's see some miners explode and chill" slackers or quit (picked the second).
The pure existence of TEST IT shows how much EVE needs such services (otherwise TEST wouldn't spend enormous human resources building them). Let the game developer provide it so everyone can enjoy it. The major barrier stopping new leaders appearing (and leader defines the corp) is the extreme management overhead. I'm sure that a "TEST IT expansion", which decreases this overhead would make corps and alliances flourish like never before.
Also, you might say that there is already EVE Voice and chat channels and people don't use them. The problem with these is being bound to the pilot and not the player. These communications break if I log off or relog to alt. What we need are services that are player-bound and not pilot bound. It need a standalone application which is linked to the client but does not need it. So an alliance leader can configure the chat to accept every players who have pilots blue to his alliance without a single click. Also, the standalone nature of these software is needed to allow players do other things and stay alert to things happening. Just like the TEST Jabber informed me about fleet forming while I was doing something else with no EVE client on.
When I realized that the New Order stopped at the level of "watch miners explode and have fun", I started to plan my own corporation. It had an ambitious plan: be #1 on EVE-kill with less than 100 members. 100 pilots beating Pandemic Legion and the 10K+ GSF and TEST would make impact on the community. It was also something I was proficient in: I did gank 52B in a month myself, ready to provide 2-3% of the goal on my own. Also had enough income to fill the war chest myself. Where is this corp?
Nowhere because my "list of things to do" became too long, full of elements I'm neither proficient in, nor really would like to do:
- A forum with proper rights management, moderators, linked to EVE pilots
- Skillpoint checking to weed out those who can't even fly a T2 Cata or have no Orca alt. Outperforming PL won't happen with random lollers flying T1.
- Killboard with tools to remove low/null kills that would make our results debatable
- Some voice chat because let's face it, social people love to chat and stopping them decrease available recruitment pool.
- Jabber. If someone finds a deadspace Mack in 0.7, a fleet should be assembled fast, grabbing people not logged in.
- Reimbursement tool. Like it or not, many veterans are dirt poor. They need that pathetic 10M for the lost cata. Hell, the time of processing a reimbursement request would cost me more than 10M in opportunity cost.
Then it hit me. This is the Jesus feature CCP needs. CCP should re-create all the IT services of TEST, integrate them into the game and make them available for every corporation and alliance. This way an aspirant corp leader would need "only" players, and not a bunch of IT experts to create the tools needed to run his corp. A bunch of streamlined IT services would also decrease management cost, which would decrease leadership burnout and the very source of their terrible manners: "if you don't like how I run it, try doing it yourself". On this front I myself failed. While I think James 315 doesn't run the New Order well, I am not skilled/dedicated enough on the IT/management front to do better, so I have to keep suffering the "let's see some miners explode and chill" slackers or quit (picked the second).
The pure existence of TEST IT shows how much EVE needs such services (otherwise TEST wouldn't spend enormous human resources building them). Let the game developer provide it so everyone can enjoy it. The major barrier stopping new leaders appearing (and leader defines the corp) is the extreme management overhead. I'm sure that a "TEST IT expansion", which decreases this overhead would make corps and alliances flourish like never before.
Also, you might say that there is already EVE Voice and chat channels and people don't use them. The problem with these is being bound to the pilot and not the player. These communications break if I log off or relog to alt. What we need are services that are player-bound and not pilot bound. It need a standalone application which is linked to the client but does not need it. So an alliance leader can configure the chat to accept every players who have pilots blue to his alliance without a single click. Also, the standalone nature of these software is needed to allow players do other things and stay alert to things happening. Just like the TEST Jabber informed me about fleet forming while I was doing something else with no EVE client on.
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