This isn't about game A vs game b, or how people shuffle in to different brackets. Here we’re looking at people who do fit in to the “I like PO” bracket. Obviously no one is being forced to play PO and that's not really a point to expand upon and it would be a poor choice for a dev to ever say like it or lump it. The point to expand upon is how to keep players that like this game, interested, and you can't really pin the solution on saying that the players need to find their own way to keep themselves amused. The expansion and appeal of a sandbox game is by how much you can do in it, which inherently caters to a very diverse selection of players if done right. Sandbox games are called such because of their preset style of being able to loosely do as you please. But that's directly related to what systems you have to work with in the first place.

When you develop a platform, here being a 'sandbox' game, you need to provide tools/systems ( content ) to keep people on your platform. The success of your platform is pivotal on the content you provide for people to interact with and how they can interact with it. There can be many off shoots and player driven events based off these tools, but we can’t look past the point that these tools initially have to come from the developers. From people I know that have quit and the general postings on the forums here, people aren't leaving because PO is fatally flawed, unstable, buggy, horribly developed, stupid in nature; it's because people are getting bored and not seeing much to do in this game with the current content. Look at the topic count in the feature discussion forum, it's the largest sub-forum in these forums for a reason. People are starved for content, so much, that they're literally throwing piles of ideas at the dev's to try and get them to add something interesting in one respect or another. When people are talking more about what should be in a game as opposed to what is in a game, that just may be a hint that there's a shortfall with the onus being on the developers. Which is exactly the reason why we post all this stuff, we want the developers to know what’s up and what we’d like to see more or less of.

He said two pvpers online will make content for one another. I said they'll whine about blobbing.

Video games and real life have nothing in common, trying to draw parallels between them is hilariously fail.

The only thing worse for a game then lack of content, is bad content.

Repeatedly asking [complaining about the lack of] new content isn't going to make it magically appear any faster. It just sounds like "Are we there yet" from the back seat. The suggestion forum is at least players making up stuff to productively entertain themselves.

At some point it passes the 'Highlighted for attention' and just becomes white noise.

Your bored my friend, more content will arrive, until it does we can always Ann Frank the crossword puzzle, or come back in a few months to see what's new.

I agree, but I'd like more people to stick around and figure that one out for themself.

No disputing that. Problem is, when you lose your PvE base, there goes the majority of your players and the project will follow suit.

I think that content can be easely given by goals to any MMO.
So also for PO.
Those goals have to be nearly unreachable but desirable that will give the drive, the spring
to the community. See EvE peeps want to own Titans Super carriers Faction BS Territories etc. to have a long long E-Peen and of coarse a good killboard statistic. This is the endgame also in eve.Or in WoW to get your Tier12 Heroic gear before the noobs.
Conclusion: So I think all the tools are already available in PO but only some of this spring Items etc are missing  this time to fullfill those needs.
For the killboard statistics of coarse are also some tools missing like the love to E-War killmails and the API verification of the Mails.On the Item side  everything is in quite a short time reachable (exept the skills) wich takes out the driver off the game ones its reached.
So i want to encourage the devs to think about this and add one by one more really hard reachable goals to the community. Actually it is substantionally that both player bases the PvE and PvP are feeded with that.
Regards Checksum

So why don't you just play Dragon Age or Mount and Blade Warband or SPAZ or something?

Serious question. There are a ton of games that do pve really well. Why would you play perp over them, or eve for that matter, if all you want is pve content?

Minecraft is all pve with way more crafting than perp. Why this over that?

This is a pvp game. Every one of the design choices is based around the idea that pvp is ongoing and that players want to get into it. And the pvp is really good! No ***, it's a Robo fps with persistence.

If you aren't into pvp and you want nothing to do with it, I simply don't get what you get out of the game.

My experience with our grindbears is that they won't get on ts, socialize, participate, build, mine, fight or do anything other than grind cash off rats. They might as well be AI automatons that we purchased to do stuff for our corp. Which sucks! I'm fairly abrasive on the forums but I spend all my time in game looking for ways to generate content for our members and generally taking care to find ways to keep them from getting bored. I don't get why there is this subset that wants nothing to do with it! I respect them as a fellow player (so no whining about participation) and they have every right to play the game, but I don't get it. Isn't the whole point of an mmo to hang out and do stuff with your fellow nerd?

Bah. Anyway feel free to enlighten me so that I can keep looking for ways to shake up our lotus eaters.

I don't mind having people in corp who focus mostly on PVE, grinding, and alpha content. As long as they are able to contribute in some way, I feel like they are 'worthy' members.

Piglet, what you said is really true. It is very much up to corp leaders to generate content for their members. It's practically a full time job trying to produce things to do and goals to reach. Right now perp simply doesn't have -enough to do- in game, and I'm not really sure what will fix that.

I've always considered a MMO's official forums to be a good indicator of the game's health. Honestly, if I were to judge perpetuum by its forums, I would assume that it was an old game suffering its last dying breaths. It seems like we are losing more players than we are gaining at this point, and significant content is not coming quickly enough to warrant new droves of players. I love this game, but too much falls on players to make pretend like there is enough variety in-game to actually keep people from being bored and logging in less and less.

And where in your quoted part is the PvE ?? You know you can get all that in a 100% PvP game ?

Wow, thanks! I had a hard time taking the plunge myself, but it's been worth it. Not just in EVE, but every game I've played since that has any multiplayer component.

And you get at the other end of the issue. PvP is not necessarily combat. A frequent point raised in the "other game" is that industry both supports PvP combat and is PvP itself. It's a little anemic in PO atm, but the markets will fill out and the traders will be at each other's throats as aggressively as the fighters are. They just can't measure their wins and losses in wrecked bots. Currently, they "fight" each other as the backbones of every competent combat force in PO.

As for this:

None of this promises that every option is an equally viable path to Great Success(tm). Just like being the best damn Laird pilot ever won't make you super-rich or win you many admirers, though it's still a "viable option". There was also no promise that other players can't or won't interfere, or that you can do just fine without interfering with them Peeveepee baby! It's everywhere!

Let me shed some light for you Aeon..
For starters let me first say that i come from 7 years in stEVE running almost exclusively in 0.0 and Wormholes participating and running everything from large fleet to small 5 man gang PvP.

Now in Perp i have been a grindbear as you put it, why?? because I'm skilling up my characters and providing a base to support myself in PvP and something to fall back on.
No PvP game like this can work without the PVE as it provides the backbone of the game.
I would like know how the PvP wing operates without the support from the PvE guys, further more in stEVE we would run PVE Ops to fund our PvP as a group.

PvE also caters for those with families who cant spend there life on the game and need to leave the computer often, but might get a spare few hours at night or on a weekend to PvP.

Most of our pvpers are working adults who get a couple hours free at night. I don't have a family at home, but three hours is a bit over what I have time for in perp on the average weeknight, especially as I usually have social stuff to do. We're drop in/drop out on roams for exactly that reason.

How does pvp fund itself? We do the occasional pve op but most of us form up and grab epi and use that to pay the bills.

A fit pvp assault can go live for less than a mil. You can take out a light to meet the speed req and be out even less. So it doesn't take much farming or mining to maintain regular pvp. If you were there for the meeting (or listened to the recording) you'd hear that pvp eats almost none of the budget and has cut out what little it does eat entirely.

Most of the grinders, because of the way the game works, don't pay any tax whatsoever. So it's not at all helpful to the wallet or anything else because they don't usually donate either. Some do, and those guys are awesome, but that about sums it up.

I'm glad you're having fun and all in game doing what you enjoy, but if all you do is grind away silently you might as well be playing dragon age for all the relevance it has to the rest of the corp.