[DEVBLOG] incarna and multiple client users

[Virtuozzo]

incarna and multiple client users
reported by CCP Zulu (http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=922) | 2011.06.14 11:43:02 | NEW | Comments (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1528021)
In response to my devblog two weeks ago, Incarna, welcome to your future, there were some concerns raised on what kind of performance was to be expected, especially since the minimum hardware requirements for EVE are still pretty accomodating when it comes to old hardware.

Well, we always aimed at getting acceptable performance at what we consider acceptable visual standards in our supported hardware range. That goal has never changed. As we progressed in development we started hitting all of our targets for both high-end and medium spec machines while still making the entire thing look absolutely amazing.

But we have a bit of a unique situation to deal with that not all game developers have to take into account. People love EVE so much that they don‘t just want to play one EVE, they want to play two EVEs at once...and sometimes even more!

So the only place we really ran into trouble was with low-end machines and then only when running multiple clients in an Incarna environment. We still marched on and tried to squeeze all we could out of the graphics engine without making everything look like an 8-bit brick.

However we‘ve unfortunately hit a bit of a wall when it comes to running multiple clients on low-end machines while docked. For the sake of a smooth transition we therefore decided to temporarily add the option to not load the Incarna interiors while stilll retaining full access to all options and menus. This allows us to accomodate users with old and gnarly hardware, a group we‘ve been proud to be able to serve in the past, while for some limited time also develop for those with top-of-the-line gaming computers.

This simple option will primarily benefit players with Nvidia 6000 series, or low-end 7000 series cards or compatible hardware, trying to run multiple clients while docked.

To highlight this and to future proof ourselves a bit we‘re in the process of revising and updating the EVE minimum and reccommended hardware specification.

Again, to be really clear; running a single client works fine on all hardware supported by us. This is a temporary solution for your convenience that we intend to solve more gracefully in future deployments. We are still determined to make Incarna a seamless part of the EVE experience so that one day there will be no Incarna, there will only be EVE.

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason

Senior Producer of EVE Online

[Evelgrivion]

Repeating what I said on the EVE-O thread, we wouldn't have this problem at all if Incarna was optional, rather than mandatory and enforced.

[hinch]

well as long as the option to turn incarna off remains perm and no be removed it caters for those of us that just simply do not want incarna

[Joshua Foiritain]

Fuck yeah a turn off option :razor:

[CDLoon]

I approve of this new addition to the Incarna portfolio.

[Sandy]

So in short, after June 21st, having all my 3 accounts logged in for station spinning equals all my fans running full speed, high temperatures etc since the opt-out feature is only temporary? The only way to stop the inevitable death of the GPU is to log off?

[Al Simmons]

Yay. If only there was a button to have spent these 18 months developing something related to space ships.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Repeating what I said on the EVE-O thread, we wouldn't have this problem at all if Incarna was optional, rather than mandatory and enforced.
:monocledowns:

[Joe Appleby]

So in short, after June 21st, having all my 3 accounts logged in for station spinning equals all my fans running full speed, high temperatures etc since the opt-out feature is only temporary? The only way to stop the inevitable death of the GPU is to log off?
Take yourself out of your vagina and re-read the fucking blog post. Jeeez.

[Krugerrand]

CCP doesn't also seem to grasp that a lot of people play eve on laptops. The GPU power isn't there on the lower-end machines (my machine cost about £400 and is just over a year old, can currently 1 client well, 2 clients reasonably as long as not pvp and 3 if im feeling crazy).

It also doesn't deal with the crazy increase in memory use.

[Tarminic]

So in short, after June 21st, having all my 3 accounts logged in for station spinning equals all my fans running full speed, high temperatures etc since the opt-out feature is only temporary? The only way to stop the inevitable death of the GPU is to log off?
If only CCP had added some kind of option where you could turn the whole CQ thing off. Man, that would be swell.

[Cerbus]

they should allow us to customise our ships

[Sandy]

So in short, after June 21st, having all my 3 accounts logged in for station spinning equals all my fans running full speed, high temperatures etc since the opt-out feature is only temporary? The only way to stop the inevitable death of the GPU is to log off?
Take yourself out of your vagina and re-read the fucking blog post. Jeeez.

You seem upset.


However I did re-read the blog post - there still is only a mention about a temporary opt-out for the CQ environment. May I suggest some humble (fucking) re-reading for yourself?

[Joe Appleby]

So in short, after June 21st, having all my 3 accounts logged in for station spinning equals all my fans running full speed, high temperatures etc since the opt-out feature is only temporary? The only way to stop the inevitable death of the GPU is to log off?
Take yourself out of your vagina and re-read the fucking blog post. Jeeez.

You seem upset.


However I did re-read the blog post - there still is only a mention about a temporary opt-out of the CQ environment. May I suggest some humble re-reading for yourself?
No, as I got that myself and would like it to become a permanent option. However you didn't even read that.

Knowing CCP, they will break the option in some hilarious way, like if you turn it off, undocking will be impossible or when you undock your character will float in space. And they will forget to take the option out (ie, comment the code out) and everyone will be happy about that.

[fng]

For once, poorfags with shit hardware have been useful :razor:

[killfalcon]

CCP doesn't also seem to grasp that a lot of people play eve on laptops. The GPU power isn't there on the lower-end machines (my machine cost about £400 and is just over a year old, can currently 1 client well, 2 clients reasonably as long as not pvp and 3 if im feeling crazy).

That, honestly, sounds like 'supported hardware'. If you're plaing with a terrible GPU, you might already be missing the minimum specs. You can't really blame CCP for that.

That said, a £400 lappy is probably going to be fine. Worst case, go live in a POS.


It also doesn't deal with the crazy increase in memory use.

It's not impossible that they've got a separate solution to the memory usage issue, mind. :nostradamus:

At least, I *hope* they do, because I like having three clients.

[Sandy]

No, as I got that myself and would like it to become a permanent option. However you didn't even read that.


Well if I'm so illiterate could you point out the important things I missed from the devblog, since to me it says the opt-out is temporary and as far as I know there is no going back to the old station environment after June 21st....

[Joe Appleby]

No, as I got that myself and would like it to become a permanent option. However you didn't even read that.


Well if I'm so illiterate could you point out the important things I missed from the devblog, since to me it says the opt-out is temporary and as far as I know there is no going back to the old station environment after June 21st....
Oh you shit head. Incarna will be released on the 21st, and then you get a temporary option to turn off the station environment.

[Sandy]

Incarna will be released on the 21st, and then you get a temporary option to turn off the station environment.

and once that option will be gone....

[Aurora148]

Incarna will be released on the 21st, and then you get a temporary option to turn off the station environment.

and once that option will be gone....

you can set the incarna interiors files to write only and then they won't load ever

[RoemySchneider]

didn't we identify opening the map while docked as an excellent work-around in some earlier fred?

[cillisia]

why can't we have a text based interface darn it

[Virtuozzo]

So, basically

business notebook user markets
family pc user markets
oem pc user markets
IGP user markets
developing country and/or emerging markets

"HTFU, style > substance so just quit"

Remarkable. That's a lot to discard simply on a basis of "we're partners with Nvidia and we want to do awesome without having to provide argumentation". At minimum do your cost projections and research on timelines of adoptions of all those user markets and their individual groups.

[Tarminic]

So, basically

business notebook user markets
family pc user markets
oem pc user markets
IGP user markets
developing country and/or emerging markets

"HTFU, style > substance so just quit"
I like the fact that CCP letting you disable incarna so people running multiple clients on low-end computers won't be affected negatively actually means the exact opposite of that. Perhaps George Soros is the secret mastermind here.

[Arele]

And you seem to read past the fact it's a temporary ' fix' so users get time to upgrade hardware.




you can set the incarna interiors files to write only and then they won't load ever Do tell?

[Evil Synns]

Are you all missing the IMPORTANT BIT?

You can still fucking play eve and NOT walk in station. CCP have taken it upon themselves to say "NO! You must walk in stations! We DO have the ability to switch this on and off, BUT NO! We want you to walk in stations. YES! To do this we will up our minimum spec because we DEEM it REALLY important". They have the ability to switch this on and off, but they have chosen we won't!

Now I've kept out the bitter vet shit (as I'm still a player)... but SOMETHING is very fucking wrong here. WHY? Why would a company say "Walking in Stations" is compulsory. What is going to be in there that is soooo important? So important we CAN'T have the ability to turn it off and on, AS we see fit?

[Tarminic]

Now I've kept out the bitter vet shit (as I'm still a player)... but SOMETHING is very fucking wrong here. WHY? Why would a company say "Walking in Stations" is compulsory. What is going to be in there that is soooo important? So important we CAN'T have the ability to turn it off and on, AS we see fit?
Have you not been paying attention for the past several months? It's obvious.

1. The NPE - Make more stuff easier to find, less overwhelming with the entire Neocom and interface
2. Vanity Items - More people will buy them if more people notice that they have a physical character to trot around
3. Future Incarna Shit - CCP going on about how this is only the first of many steps, lots of future promises, etc

I really did not think it was that difficult to figure out.

[cheeba]

i for one love this option and hope they leave it in for a long long long time.

Fuck seeing my ugly ass.

I just wanna dock, manipulate markets and chill...



Also will pay isk for someone to export eve models into some dinky program where they can float on a variety of backgrounds and where up clicking upon the ship and dragging with my mouse, they fuckin SPIN round and round. The program window would be big enough to fit onto of the bit of my eve client where the incarna crap will load.

Seriously.

[Joshua Foiritain]

Now I've kept out the bitter vet shit (as I'm still a player)... but SOMETHING is very fucking wrong here. WHY? Why would a company say "Walking in Stations" is compulsory. What is going to be in there that is soooo important? So important we CAN'T have the ability to turn it off and on, AS we see fit?
Have you not been paying attention for the past several months? It's obvious.

1. The NPE - Make more stuff easier to find, less overwhelming with the entire Neocom and interface
2. Vanity Items - More people will buy them if more people notice that they have a physical character to trot around
3. Future Incarna Shit - CCP going on about how this is only the first of many steps, lots of future promises, etc

I really did not think it was that difficult to figure out.
This, though only 2 and 3 really.

CCP's plan: (When incarna goes multiplayer that is)
CCP wants to make a lot of money through MT by selling clothes and hats.
In order to sell many of those players need to be able to see each other wearing them.
To see people wearing them we have to be forced out of our pods.

Also i order to attract people that don't like spaceships but do like dressup games and chatting incarna will need to be populated to keep these people interested which means they'll buy more clothes and hats because they want to look as cool as the guy that just walked by.

From here on out incarna is only going to become less optional either by slowing moving functionality away from the station panel or by simply not adding new functionality to it.

and yes i know; "Youre a bitter vet, its a doom scenario, wha wha whine, etc, etc.", we'll see whats what in 12 months :)

[weazy z]

I fully support disabling walking in stations.

Why?

IM A STUPID CHINK ACHURA CAUSE I MIN MAX AND NOW HAVE 14 ASIAN CHARACTERS (and im racist, so this is not a good thing)

[Liptonez]

I hope my fucking AMD Fusion C-50 will run this.

[Tarminic]

From here on out incarna is only going to become less optional either by slowing moving functionality away from the station panel or by simply not adding new functionality to it.
Will CCP ever remove functionality that is currently on the Neocom panel? Doubtful.

Will they be creating new features that could be accessed from the station panel, but will instead force you to walk around? Absolutely. For example, black market agents - they could just put that on the station panel as a button, but instead you'll have to travel to the seedy underbelly of whatever station you're in and meet them in person. Extended corporate offices with NPC dialog trees? Technically possible to do with a window similar to an agent mission screen, but you'll be walking around to do it. Future crew recruitment? Could be done through market or contracts or something, but you'll be going around and hiring specialists by meeting them personally.

Is this all a bad thing? Not all of it, but it's not all good either. Some of these things will doubtless increase the time necessary to perform our in-space activities so that fitting a newly-purchased ship takes more time than dragging modules onto the screen and undocking. But on the other hand, it will make the game more immersive and expand the scope and scale of EVE.

[Pattern]

lol.

I told you so.

[filingo]

i will be wanked off in stations by delicious gallete hookers whilst snorted crushed zydrine

fuck

i cant even remeber who it was who was the hookers and crushed zydrine guy

monolithos was it i think

so many old bros been leaving the eveing :(

[Samp]

I for one am looking forward to not udocking anymore. If I'm going to rolplay anyhting, rolplaying a washed up nobody beggin for the ISK to play one more hand of eve-holdem while mumbling about how I used to be a PVPer when my PC was good enough is a good fit.

[Virtuozzo]

From here on out incarna is only going to become less optional either by slowing moving functionality away from the station panel or by simply not adding new functionality to it.
Will CCP ever remove functionality that is currently on the Neocom panel? Doubtful.

not really. It's a question of CCP's quest in carbon & refactoring. If the time comes for them to either rework all that, or replace by something shiny and perhaps even lighter, there's a fair chance the neocom in its current form will go. It may be replaced as is, but that is by no means guaranteed. CCP do have a habit of preferring shiny over substance, often even in spite of even the most basic lessons of usability or UI design (EVE has UI?). At that time, there's a fair chance the active core usergroups will be vastly different than current, fair chance they will phase out elements or replace them with other UI elements. Maintaining redundancy has never been CCP's forte either.


Will they be creating new features that could be accessed from the station panel, but will instead force you to walk around? Absolutely. For example, black market agents - they could just put that on the station panel as a button, but instead you'll have to travel to the seedy underbelly of whatever station you're in and meet them in person. Extended corporate offices with NPC dialog trees? Technically possible to do with a window similar to an agent mission screen, but you'll be walking around to do it. Future crew recruitment? Could be done through market or contracts or something, but you'll be going around and hiring specialists by meeting them personally.

Is this all a bad thing? Not all of it, but it's not all good either. Some of these things will doubtless increase the time necessary to perform our in-space activities so that fitting a newly-purchased ship takes more time than dragging modules onto the screen and undocking. But on the other hand, it will make the game more immersive and expand the scope and scale of EVE.

You know, the immersive aspect yes that is a definite case of potential. It's just, CCP is not good at these things. I'm not even saying great. They can be, but they just have that tendency of "oh shiny". There is so much room for brilliant game design, which builds on top of, strengthens and expands the EVE experience without compromising either the experience for group types or having to kneejerk around. But again, so much potential means nothing if they themselves cannot sit down to realise that they have crossed the point where the game design is about them. It no longer is. The userbase is too large for that. When you go down to the basics, the PI drama was nothing other than "I say this is awesome, so this is how it is gonna happen". All that development and design time, for so few adoptions that the actual numbers are even now still under NDA so emberassing was it.

That the potential exists, is clear. That this is also an enormous commercial potential, that does not require CCP to FOLLOW trends and be like any other small to medium sized game studio. It is a commercial potential that - if they choose so - enables them to OWN their market, to CREATE trends and to LEAD several markets.

But each time, it just comes down to too much time wasted on cleaning up shit coming from stone tablets and "awesome" as sacrosanct validation. And each time, it diminishes the brand value a little bit, and pollutes the brand perception a little more. At some point, CCP's industry peers will stop telling them they are awesome while laughing behind their backs (no joke that, had too many disgusting experiences with that). At that point, the reality check will hit. But not for those who have caused it. CCP has a history of the people causing shit to never have to clean it up or face up to it, there is no reason why that would change as it has always paid off for those to get away with it.

That's really what is in the way of CCP being truly great, truly different, and truly succesfull. Not just looking good, but being great. A minority mindset, which somehow always flares up to get in the way of CCP itself.

So, excuse me for seeing the potential but having severe structural doubts on CCP's ability to achieve more than looking big. As long as they do not strive top down and bottom up to not just have shit look good but be great all they will accomplish is on the presentation angle. And that, is a shame, but it IS their choice to make. Seriously, going on EVE TV to tell the reception of Dust was "phenomenal" when most streams switched to views of press desks elsewhere and the main streams showed a moderately polite but neutral reaction at best (with CCP getting engaged only the day after face to face with media people to correct the initial impressions)? Sorry.

CCP has developed an ingrained habit of presenting awesome shiny, on a basis of following rather than leading (or even striving to lead), delivering at best a village well after in the industry the trend has peaked and then getting in its own way of delivering quality with that due to the ratrace of catching up after the fact each and every time. There was hope when the new model of staggered release was gearing up to deliver one quality village at a time consistantly and relatively successively. But considering the state of this upcoming patch, the drama of opt out switch at last minute and even then just temporary (think of what that really means for how their development track looked like when you check the timeline and compare it to a little bit of affinity with software & business development planning) .... sigh.

[Irion]

If I can't leave an account or two logged in tabbed out without my pc turning into a cooker or running like shit there really is no good reason to keep subbed.

[Aurora148]

If I can't leave an account or two logged in tabbed out without my pc turning into a cooker or running like shit there really is no good reason to keep subbed.

minimize it

[Ash2k7]

Best way to not have to deal with incarna (besides being unsubbed) is to join a WH crew. Outside of clone updates and gettign podded you never have to dock again. If you're nice enough to your corpmates you can even get them to do shopping trips for you.

Just don't drift out of your POS and you'll be fine!

But yeah this whole thing is :ccp: and exactly what Virt, Barth and the rest of the hardcore bittervet business commentators have been saying for a long, long time.

[Brimborium]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?

You brought out a game. With a physical cd,and a cover with minimum specs written on it.Those specs do not represent the current truth, so, everybody, who still finds one of those in store and buys it,could sue You and Atari for "Misleading facts".(and i am not even going into the "Multiboxing"-thing, as this requires a lot beefier hardware, than you will find in most Notebooks with more than 3-4 years under their Belt.

That would be like Microsoft doing XP-servicepack 4-7, instead of Vista and Windows 7. But requesting new hardware with every service pack.There is no "rollback"option, so basically,you cut those out,who relied on your info!

Just wanted to point that out.


Wanted to post this on EVE-O, but the server is probably too busy, or cannot handle my amount of Bitter.

[Mike deVoid]

i for one love this option and hope they leave it in for a long long long time.

Fuck seeing my ugly ass.

I just wanna dock, manipulate markets and chill...



Also will pay isk for someone to export eve models into some dinky program where they can float on a variety of backgrounds and where up clicking upon the ship and dragging with my mouse, they fuckin SPIN round and round. The program window would be big enough to fit onto of the bit of my eve client where the incarna crap will load.

Seriously.
Right click > show info > ship preview. Send isk to mike devoid. :obama:

[Tarminic]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?

You brought out a game. With a physical cd,and a cover with minimum specs written on it.Those specs do not represent the current truth, so, everybody, who still finds one of those in store and buys it,could sue You and Atari for "Misleading facts".(and i am not even going into the "Multiboxing"-thing, as this requires a lot beefier hardware, than you will find in most Notebooks with more than 3-4 years under their Belt.

That would be like Microsoft doing XP-servicepack 4-7, instead of Vista and Windows 7. But requesting new hardware with every service pack.There is no "rollback"option, so basically,you cut those out,who relied on your info!

Just wanted to point that out.
LOL. Yeah, sure buddy.

[Amantus]

i will be wanked off in stations by delicious gallete hookers whilst snorted crushed zydrine

fuck

i cant even remeber who it was who was the hookers and crushed zydrine guy

monolithos was it i think

so many old bros been leaving the eveing :(

[Bombcrater]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?
You can sue anyone for anything you like. Even if they're in another country that's not necessarily a problem provided they have some kind of significant presence in the court's jurisdiction (which means no problem suing CCP in the UK or US).

But that doesn't mean you've got any chance of actually, you know, wining.

The EULA, which anyone who installs Eve has to agree to, gives CCP the right to update their software. If somebody actually managed to buy a boxed copy of the game and isn't prepared to deal with that then the proper course is to reject the EULA and return the game to the retailer immediately for a refund. (this is much the same as those handful of people who've managed to get refunds on pre-installed copies of Windows because they didn't want to accept Microsoft's EULA).

[Joshua Foiritain]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?

You brought out a game. With a physical cd,and a cover with minimum specs written on it.Those specs do not represent the current truth, so, everybody, who still finds one of those in store and buys it,could sue You and Atari for "Misleading facts".(and i am not even going into the "Multiboxing"-thing, as this requires a lot beefier hardware, than you will find in most Notebooks with more than 3-4 years under their Belt.

That would be like Microsoft doing XP-servicepack 4-7, instead of Vista and Windows 7. But requesting new hardware with every service pack.There is no "rollback"option, so basically,you cut those out,who relied on your info!

Just wanted to point that out.
LOL. Yeah, sure buddy.
lol, 0 chance of winning even in the US.

[Six Strangelove]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?

You brought out a game. With a physical cd,and a cover with minimum specs written on it.Those specs do not represent the current truth, so, everybody, who still finds one of those in store and buys it,could sue You and Atari for "Misleading facts".(and i am not even going into the "Multiboxing"-thing, as this requires a lot beefier hardware, than you will find in most Notebooks with more than 3-4 years under their Belt.

Pretending for a moment this argument has any basis in reality, replacing your computer with one that could run EVE would cost far less than litigation.

[Brimborium]

LOL. Yeah, sure buddy.

care to explain? Or was this just a: "I derped while trolling"?

Printing specs, such as minimum requirements onto a physical product is (at least in my country), part of the contract.(its gotta run on that specs)
If it will not run on a machine with those minimum specs,they are misleading the customar.

Specs then "minimum" (2008)
AMD CPU (1 GHz or faster) RAM XP: 1 Gig, Vista: 1.5Gig. Harddisk space: 6 GB.
Graphics card :64MB, Shader Model 2.0 (GFX 5 class, or higher, or ATI 9500 0r X300)

apart from the (anywhere but Iceland) part, which was ment ironically. I speaketh the truth.

And as far as EULA(and the proverbial: "CCP is allowed to change everything the fuck they want") goes, they are visible to me, AFTER i PURCHASED that bit of software which i cannot return. "Because of supersecret 25-digit account code", and 60 days of gametime.

I agree, i was buying GTC's(still got all 40 of them lying around) until they stopped distribution here.So i was forced to finance the game through grind. Now my grind is worth shit. And performance suck. What is your excuse for bitter: Tarminic?

being :CCPeed: upon in game, is one thing. Pixelrage, yeah. But this goes beyond Pixels.

And no. i already know someone, who gets my stuff.

[Tarminic]

Okay, I'll bite.



LOL. Yeah, sure buddy.

care to explain? Or was this just a: "I derped while trolling"?

Printing specs, such as minimum requirements onto a physical product is (at least in my country), part of the contract.(its gotta run on that specs)
If it will not run on a machine with those minimum specs,they are misleading the customar.

Specs then "minimum" (2008)
AMD CPU (1 GHz or faster) RAM XP: 1 Gig, Vista: 1.5Gig. Harddisk space: 6 GB.
Graphics card :64MB, Shader Model 2.0 (GFX 5 class, or higher, or ATI 9500 0r X300)
And you'll notice that the game will still boot up and allow you to connect to the server with said specs. That is the only thing you are paying for. Furthermore, if this kind of frivolous lawsuit had even a shadow of the chance, you should be able to cite precedent with a previous lawsuit. It would have to be one where a company was successfully sued due to a user of their product being unable to use said product on a system that matched or exceeded the minimum specs.


And as far as EULA(and the proverbial: "CCP is allowed to change everything the fuck they want") goes, they are visible to me, AFTER i PURCHASED that bit of software which i cannot return. "Because of supersecret 25-digit account code", and 60 days of gametime.

I agree, i was buying GTC's(still got all 40 of them lying around) until they stopped distribution here.So i was forced to finance the game through grind. Now my grind is worth shit. And performance suck. What is your excuse for bitter: Tarminic?

being :CCPeed: upon in game, is one thing. Pixelrage, yeah. But this goes beyond Pixels.

And no. i already know someone, who gets my stuff.
Uh...okay.

[Lallante]

I hope you guys at ccp do realize that if your company were located in (select other country than Iceland), i could sue you. right?

You brought out a game. With a physical cd,and a cover with minimum specs written on it.Those specs do not represent the current truth, so, everybody, who still finds one of those in store and buys it,could sue You and Atari for "Misleading facts".(and i am not even going into the "Multiboxing"-thing, as this requires a lot beefier hardware, than you will find in most Notebooks with more than 3-4 years under their Belt.

That would be like Microsoft doing XP-servicepack 4-7, instead of Vista and Windows 7. But requesting new hardware with every service pack.There is no "rollback"option, so basically,you cut those out,who relied on your info!

Just wanted to point that out.


Wanted to post this on EVE-O, but the server is probably too busy, or cannot handle my amount of Bitter.

You are so fucking dumb

[Mashie Saldana]

I'm REALLY glad CCP doesn't follow Blizzard with regard to minimum spec. Fuck that horribly ugly shit called WOW designed to run on Commodore C=64's and abacuses.

[Joshua Foiritain]

LOL. Yeah, sure buddy.

care to explain? Or was this just a: "I derped while trolling"?
When you buy the game the cd will contain a version of eve that matches said requirements. (which are only advisory btw, they guarantee you nothing and only serve as a general comparison).

Eve has had quite a few expansions (Just like we used to buy on seperate CD's for singleplayer games) since then and hardware requirements have been updated accordingly. You can choose to install these expansions (and accept new hardware requirements that comes with some of them) or you can choose not to update eve.

Apart from this no lawyer or judge would take this seriously to begin with.

Edit: As for misrepresenting a product; :facepalm: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL :facepalm: . Is there anyone that doesnt do that? Try watching some TV commercials and then come back here.

[Aurora148]

fuck wrong fred

[Leboe]

This is a good development

[Brimborium]

You can choose to install these expansions (and accept new hardware requirements that comes with some of them) or you can choose not to update eve.[/b]
And am therefore not able to play the game! Because there is no server that plays that version. Or having constant crashes after updating because my hardware cannot handle it anymore?

Have you ever bought an expansion CD that required higher Hardware specs for the game? I don't think, there ever was one. But if you find one, I'll shut up, right here.


Apart from this no lawyer or judge would take this seriously to begin with.

I have seen sillier complaints pass in court, to tbfh.

Edit: As for misrepresenting a product; :facepalm: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL :facepalm: . Is there anyone that doesnt do that? Try watching some TV commercials and then come back here.

i try NOT to.

Because these are hardware specs,which are compulsory.(in some countries) And not some cosmetics or clothes that turn you instantly into a supermodel. :facepalm: Try to differentiate.

[Mike deVoid]

You are literally retarded.

[Bombcrater]

Printing specs, such as minimum requirements onto a physical product is (at least in my country), part of the contract.(its gotta run on that specs)
I don't know of any country where the law fails to take into account time in these matters, and the boxed CD copies of Eve were manufactured eight years ago. CCP would simply argue that the minimum requirements were correct at the time of printing and updated reqs are posted on their web site, the address of which is printed on the box in big letters - you don't even have to remove the shrink-wrap to see it. And that would be the end of it.

[Virtuozzo]

I'm REALLY glad CCP doesn't follow Blizzard with regard to minimum spec. Fuck that horribly ugly shit called WOW designed to run on Commodore C=64's and abacuses.

It's really dumb though to not get ahead of the curves towards high performance / low footprint GPU and IGP computing though. Simple commercial application of common sense there. The sooner they build an experience base with what that entails, the better they are able to maintain low hardware footprint across market types. Which is not just good for more mainstream market focus, but also keeps safe middle grounds. Not to mention the influence on better practices for mobility computing projects and adaptations.

There is a solid necessity to evolve hardware requirements over time, that is clear, but that is not always by default solely to the upper spectrum. On the contrary. Here too there are several types of accumulative debt a company can all too easily build up.

[Lady Spank]

HEY GUISE MY INSTALLATION OF SECOND GENESIS WONT CONNECT WTF.

[Mashie Saldana]

There is a solid necessity to evolve hardware requirements over time, that is clear, but that is not always by default solely to the upper spectrum. On the contrary. Here too there are several types of accumulative debt a company can all too easily build up.
Like insisting on supporting 7 year old technology.

I was going to install EVE on a computer built in 2004 a couple of weeks ago but it didn't go as planned as the PSU had died from old age. :(

[Reed Tiburon]

CCP doesn't also seem to grasp that a lot of people play eve on laptops. The GPU power isn't there on the lower-end machines (my machine cost about £400 and is just over a year old, can currently 1 client well, 2 clients reasonably as long as not pvp and 3 if im feeling crazy).

It also doesn't deal with the crazy increase in memory use.
Fucking this. Apparently my laptop isn't supported anymore (~3 years old) - apparently I should get better at breaking my computer so that I have to buy a new one. I'm not consuming enough :cut:


Are you all missing the IMPORTANT BIT?

You can still fucking play eve and NOT walk in station. CCP have taken it upon themselves to say "NO! You must walk in stations! We DO have the ability to switch this on and off, BUT NO! We want you to walk in stations. YES! To do this we will up our minimum spec because we DEEM it REALLY important". They have the ability to switch this on and off, but they have chosen we won't!

Now I've kept out the bitter vet shit (as I'm still a player)... but SOMETHING is very fucking wrong here. WHY? Why would a company say "Walking in Stations" is compulsory. What is going to be in there that is soooo important? So important we CAN'T have the ability to turn it off and on, AS we see fit?
:brofist:

[teds]

hands up who's tried incarna yet?

ok so anyway on a really average 4yr old box (anything you bought from store (this is bad stop buying from stores)in the past two years beats this) i can happily run two docked clients. no 'techy' stuff like overclocking OR ANYTHING COMPLICATED. so maybe it won't blow as hard as you think

otoh i have no sympathy for people being mad CCP won't support their totally awesome win95 box

[Zoidberg]

I have a two year old computer. I'd say it's noticeably slower with Incarna, but it's not gamebreaking. It's just annoying, and it seems like a functional step backwards all for the sake of fucking MTs. That part is actually more insulting than annoying.

[teds]

except its not all for the sake of MT? i mean sure you can latch onto that but

a) its always been a goal for CCP to be able to walk
b) there is currently no interaction between your avatar and the game - unlike basically every successful MMO

incarna (aims to) fixes this.

[Shade Millith]

hands up who's tried incarna yet?

ok so anyway on a really average 4yr old box (anything you bought from store (this is bad stop buying from stores)in the past two years beats this) i can happily run two docked clients. no 'techy' stuff like overclocking OR ANYTHING COMPLICATED. so maybe it won't blow as hard as you think

otoh i have no sympathy for people being mad CCP won't support their totally awesome win95 box

I've tried CQ on the test server. Most of my issue isn't even hardware/performance related, though I haven't run 2 clients yet (And for some reason, it's having enough trouble with 1 client having the fittings window open in station).

My issue is that it's an eyesore. It's a distraction. A completely useless bit of fluff that from my experience detracts from my gameplay.

I just want the bloody option (A permanent option) to never look at it. Would rather a blank, black screen.

[Zoidberg]

except its not all for the sake of MT?

Incarna is nothing but one room, and an e-shop. There are very nebulous promises of actual content in six to eighteen months. I'll believe them when I see them.



a) its always been a goal for CCP to be able to walk
b) there is currently no interaction between your avatar and the game - unlike basically every successful MMO

A) Yes, but years back it was the goal to also have content when we walked around. That was abandoned. (Times like this make me wish I had the patience to find one of the old CCP posts from 2003-2005 that said walking in stations would only be implemented when it added something to the game.)
B) EVE has been extremely successful doing its own thing for eight years.

Incarna, as it is, is a flimsy excuse for MTs that harms (even if only a little bit) core gameplay. As I said, it's not gamebreaking, but being docked is slower now for many people.

[Lana Torrin]

'Tried 2 clients with incarna and had the 2nd client crash on me when trying to dock so am really happy about this choice' crew checking in.

The best I'm hoping for is that it is in place until the engine in optimized enough to run about about the same speed the spaceship engine runs at (ie, it remains in place for ever).

Edit: Oh, and FYI, I wasn't out of ram. I 'only' have 4 Gigs but that's more than enough for 2 clients. GPU was flat lining at 100% for a good 30 seconds before the crash (CPU was around 60-70%)

[Space Panda]

it's funny that the writer of this blog claims that the issue regards only lowend computers. i have a fairly decent rig, far from "lowend", and i cannot run multiple clients effectively. two would be the max, maybe three if i drastically diminished the graphics and resolution.

a well known person in my corp who multiboxes was at risk of rage quitting for a period of time due to this increase of resource demand, but it seems that a solution has been brought into the light. how they will regret it.

[Mike deVoid]

It gives them more time to do the optimising necessary to reduce memory and GPU footprint. Glad they chose to do it.

[lt]

Make this permanent and not temporarily. How hard can it be to show some goodwill to your customers?

[Lana Torrin]

Make this permanent and not temporarily. How hard can it be to show some goodwill to your customers?

If they actually put some content in to it and not just a huge money grab we might actually WANT to run it..

I mean what happened to the presentation from 2 years ago where they were showing off all the dark and mysterious things they almost had planned, like getting 'off the grid' and doing illegal deals.. Making eve an even darker place than it once was..

But instead of that I get a mirror and a chance to change cloths, but I have to pay real money for it*.

(* Yes I know you can pay with PLEX, but someone had to pay real money for it at one point)

[Mashie Saldana]

I mean what happened to the presentation from 2 years ago where they were showing off all the dark and mysterious things they almost had planned, like getting 'off the grid' and doing illegal deals.. Making eve an even darker place than it once was..

Still in progress and will most likely be available once we can exit the captains quarters.

I have not seen any rage about it yet but in Incarna 1.0 we will inly get the Minmatar CQ, the three other racial ones will follow shortly after.

[spiralJunkie]

. This allows us to accomodate users with old and gnarly hardware, a group we‘ve been proud to continually take subs from

Senior Producer of EVE Online

well yes

[spiralJunkie]

except its not all for the sake of MT? i mean sure you can latch onto that but

a) its always been a goal for CCP to be able to walk

incarna (aims to) fixes this.
it's always been a goal to have atmospheric flight too

[Mookuh]

But we have a bit of a unique situation to deal with that not all game developers have to take into account. People love EVE so much that they don‘t just want to play one EVE, they want to play two EVEs at once...and sometimes even more!


Anyone else getting pissed of by this particular bit?
The game is designed to almost require multiple accounts to be a 'serious' player, and multi-boxing is not even close to being unique to EVE. It just happens way more often because it is encouraged in so many ways (from capital and supercapital mechanics to power of 2 to the simple fact that it takes a significantly longer time to get from a to b than in most other games)

But going out and claiming "OMG dey wub us big time, dey buy moar den 1 subz!" is trolling at best and delusion at the worst, with good old hypocrisy somewhere in the middle.
F*** them.

Edit: spell fail

[killfalcon]

But we have a bit of a unique situation to deal with that not all game developers have to take into account. People love EVE so much that they don‘t just want to play one EVE, they want to play two EVEs at once...and sometimes even more!


Anyone else getting pissed of by this particular bit?
The game is designed to almost require multiple accounts to be a 'serious' player, and multi-boxing is not even close to being unique to EVE. It just happens way more often because it is encouraged in so many ways (from capital and supercapital mechanics to power of 2 to the simple fact that it takes a significantly longer time to get from a to b than in most other games)

But going out and claiming "OMG dey wub us big time, dey buy moar den 1 subz!" is trolling at best and delusion at the worst, with good old hypocrisy somewhere in the middle.
F*** them.

Edit: spell fail

Basic economics. If we pay twice as much, it has twice as much value to us!

(advanced economics: the optimal utility/cost ratio is reached at two acounts for some people)

[Helicity]

Let me put this all into perspective for everyone:

FOUR YEARS.

ONE GUY IN A ROOM WITH CRAP FRAMERATE.

comprende?

[Joshua Foiritain]

[quote="Lana Torrin":5iaac4oq]I mean what happened to the presentation from 2 years ago where they were showing off all the dark and mysterious things they almost had planned, like getting 'off the grid' and doing illegal deals.. Making eve an even darker place than it once was..

Still in progress and will most likely be available once we can exit the captains quarters.

I have not seen any rage about it yet but in Incarna 1.0 we will inly get the Minmatar CQ, the three other racial ones will follow shortly after.[/quote:5iaac4oq]
Iteration :lol:

[Virtuozzo]

except its not all for the sake of MT? i mean sure you can latch onto that but

a) its always been a goal for CCP to be able to walk
b) there is currently no interaction between your avatar and the game - unlike basically every successful MMO

incarna (aims to) fixes this.

Blyet. Ok, not in a good mood after funeral this morning, so briefly venting with a wall of text. Ignore if that point a or b has little significance to you or if you are allergic to effort. Oh hell, don't read at all.

"Incarna aims to fix this".

Which comes down to the unfortunate yet by now classic case of CCP not being willing to accept or even consider that they and their product(s) have grown too large, diverse and complex for them to continue taking it all on just on the basis of their own wants, wishes, hopes and general perspective.

Some years ago, on the eve forums, there was a massive discussion among players with devs chipping in on a topic where the focus was a conflict about what players wanted and what ccp was proposing. It's from there that the classic quote of "players do not do game design" comes from. It was however not the first, nor the last example, but it was the one where Torfi dumped that statement.

And he was right, but also wrong. CCP does indeed do the game design. But there are natural limits to that. No company, no matter how great, can capture every trend among user markets (ahead or even after time) nor can it ever capture the full scale of perspectives that go round and are present among user markets. CCP did engage in what is known as persona research, for marketing purposes, which essentially aims to capture that enormous variety of perspectives into a more limited general number of profiles. Think along the lines of say the casual gamer, the casual professional, etc. That helps, but persona research is not suitable (a decade and a half of research has provided ample demonstration of that) to fully capture diversity of trends. It is very much a snapshot instrument (yeah I know, seems fitting).

Suffice to say it is a good instrument to clarify on a case by case basis to people doing design or development what the starting points of behaviour are of a certain broad ranged general type of customer. But that is the limit of it, as it is not suitable to utilise for mapping out behaviour over time nor behavioral responses to changes in trends, and so forth. For example, if you want to achieve macro scale patterns than persona research is way out of its depth when the diversity in your dynamic is larger than the number of profiles in your persona database. But I digress.

CCP does do the game design, but it caters to not one, but a multitude of markets. Some small, some large, some persistant, many temporary. Suffice to say that due to the enormously increased speed of market interaction (and capitalisation) required by CCP and the enormously increased diversity of user types and user group types the days where CCP could say "this is our game, we do what we want" requires a very careful inspection.

Yes, it is their game, and yes they do what they want. But there is a fine limit there. If CCP engages on that just on the historic basis of what is known as stone tablets (big plans being made, good work done in preparation, even research done, but suddenly an old timer from the inner circle shows up and says "bullocks, this is how it is gonna be done, you will see, is gonna be awesome, scrap all that, this is gonna be awesome cause it is awesome or guyz fan hit shit we're out of time we're gonna roll with untested again and don't worry about the aftermath it is gonna be awesome". One of the more recent examples of that was PI, but over the years we've seen an increase of that spreading to even smaller and larger elements of EVE. Keep in mind the inverse of that syndrome is also present and correct, preventing from revisiting many elements present in EVE (on surface and structurally) because it does not fit either personal or general perspective (again, in part for good commercial considerations, but unfortunately for the most part out of application of very singular perspectives - bypassing the diversity and its consequences).

Simply put, CCP created EVE, they own it, but the days where one or two of them can just do with that whatever they want on a basis of whatever they want, or swoop down at the last minute for this or that change or :awesome: or :lolcompromise:, those days are over. Period. Regardless of CCP's vision, it is that mindset which has all too often resulted in an override of translation from vision to execution and proofing of correctness of both vision and execution.

[spoiler:3jgzk3gh]You could ask whether that even matters to a company. Good question. Yes, it does. For a multitude of reasons, all carrying commercial elements, but two stand out.
First of all, the more often you let be a divide between presentation and delivery (where the messaging on that divide spreads faster and deeper than either the message of presentation or delivery) the quicker you reach a point where brand integrity becomes compromised and you find yourself unable to compensate for that with mere presentation. That is a point where capital, becomes expensive, either monetary or in terms of external insight or even external participation in ownership (tangible and intangible).
Second, allowing segregation within an organisation to persist is something that is the same for consequences as allowing syndromes like stone tablets, little kingdoms, confusion of person & position to persist. The paths are different, circumstances as well, but the consequences are the same. All of these things create debt. Creative debt, technical debt, basically all types of debt. Most of which are not readily visible in a balance sheet, but all of which have to be paid. Carrying debts always gets in the way of plans, execution and vision alike. And yes, that brings commercial costs which remain hidden until processes break down.[/spoiler:3jgzk3gh]

Thought on the side here. [spoiler:3jgzk3gh]CCP is a big fish in its own lake. But instead of making sure they own their lake before they go to the ocean, they choose to go to the ocean and suddenly be a little fish again. CCP claims to have to grow because they have to grow. They also claim that they have to follow or they are left behind in an industry where nobody fundamentally cares about you and just about the money and even then barely at all until you are a giant shark.
CCP's biggest enemy, is itself. It's divided culture where few are more than many, where top down bypasses best practices, where any sensible buffers for the excess of required creative potential is considered evil. They should worry less about whining and dining from Catalyst with EA, and more about how they function as an organisation. Honestly, CCP's biggest challenge in its vision is itself. If they can conquer that and create a working synergy, they can conquer the world. If they dont do that, a few of them will make some good money, the rest will be recycled.

It's ironic. CCP and EVE work and grow because "you" in the dynamic are not "just a number", yet the path CCP is on without addressing itself reinforces every trend of making people less than numbers. That this is being blatantly missed at a level where people should connect the dots, is another dead simple indicator of selective communication processes as it is called.

If that read a little wierd, keep in mind that the wordfilter here changes f-i-s-h into fish. :facepalm:[/spoiler:3jgzk3gh]

Players don't do game design. Players are however your market. There is a lot of room for personal input definately, but if you as a company allow or miss the presence of an incorrect prioritisation in decision processes on design, development, maintenance, sales of what and how something is required to cater to markets .... you create a divide between company and customer. Yes, there is always a divide needed, customers aren't perfect either and sometimes you have to guide a product and its use in spite of customers. But the creative focus requires very careful consideration because if you let one or a few tailor a feature or feature set to just their own needs (or bypass needed developments or best practices because it does not match to what is wanted out of it on a personal level) you have a big problem. In the short term you create a commercial disconnect where quality as well as delivery is compromised, in the long term you create structural debts resulting from that and you create what is known as hero syndrome in an organisation. Which is bloody hard to deal with, as usually by the time you figure it out you depend on a continuity of grooming and presentation as there is nobody else to provide balance in perspectives.

I'm not even mentioning the enormous costs down the line here of finding yourself in an increasing ratrace of cleaning up more and more mess at increasing speed and volume as this always compromises internal processes - both in cultures and companies alike. Just keep in mind that the bill always has to be paid, and the best case scenario there is for it to be paid by those who did not cause the debt - which is what is commonly called a cultural cohesion disruptor

Incarna is something CCP always wanted, well, at the top and at its origins. Many players also want an avatar perspective, that is obvious. But it is a careful line to walk here. The original premises which provided room for the origins and want / wish at the time are no longer the same, and are in fact for the most part not present anymore in market trending due to the enormous increase of diversity, complexity and dependancies of markets catered to (which is not some optional choice, since that is what pays for the dream, the wants and wishes and people's livelihoods).

EVE as an environment works because people create a connection with the pixels (semi identification), in full awareness that the pixels do not equal the people behind them while constantly operating in an environment where they face a certainty of costs of actions (and inactions). The key to EVE there is that EVE is a socio dynamic environment where people make an emotional connection with their actions and the potential of costs of these, largely as a result of something very typical and very human. We overcompensate directly related to the strength of identification we have or develop with ourselves and other people.

In EVE, pixels are instruments yet they also seperate us from each other. It creates behavioral patterns where we overcompensate in behaviour in order to be affected on a human level (behind the pixel) or affect the other human (again, behind the pixels). It's something called creation of deep interaction patterns.

In a nutshell, EVE works and grows because we do not identify with our pixels and overcompensate to affect the human behind the pixels and that creates a set of emotional connections which creates individual and group behaviour which in return causes people to create deep and persistant events and trends. And in our overcompensation, we have a human need to express experiences, so stories are created from events and trends and they are told. Other people pick those up, get interested, and also buy in to the dream. Voila.

By now you can probably see what I am getting at, it's one of those simple yet fundamental aspects you find in base sociology and on an individual level in psychology. The bigger the divide between instrumentation and identification the bigger our need to overcompensate in behaviour - which is what fuels EVE.

Avatars, are a fun concept. And in many ways a must, due to identification patterns that many people have - typically when approaching EVE from an experience in another game environment. Less rarely, from identification patterns on a psychological level.

But Incarna, is not and should never be seen as a "fix" to something missing in a focus of providing customers with identification with avatars.

If CCP simply engages the Incarna concept to further and nurture a pattern for people to identify with their avatars, there are definite short to medium term opportunities for that in game design (many of which are really interesting) but it also creates a trend where through identification they remove the behavioral overcompensation among user types and user group types. Now we could say that CCP would definately be careful with that and over time adjust that as needed, unfortunately CCP has too much precedent of choosing (through both actions and inactions) to not look at the future of feature sets, behavioral patterns or even market niches. Unfortunately, CCP is in its own way there constantly as almost every time a stone tablet comes down a mountain with something new. And to an extent that is common and even good, after all a company needs to move on and provide new things in order to make money.

But heck, infamous quote now, EVE is not a can of soup. It's not a retail product. New things sell, and that makes money. Taking care of things keeps, consistancy in progression keeps, quality in experience keeps. And *shocker* that is what sells a service even harder than new things - because we are human beings, stories provide connectors of sales through all aspects of puzzle / challenge / casual / affinity / etc (the typical enablers of human connectivity in commerce). And that is another conflict (part of which we saw last year with the October events). At the heart of it however, there is a huge part that again comes down to the question of "who's shit is this, who decides that, for who, and does it cater to a personal or internal quest or does it cater or provide to (create) market trends.

This entire topic of microtransactions, don't take it the wrong way, but it just bleeds in every aspect that all of this constantly suffers from that confusion of why decisions are made on what basis. It has taken - for example - 4 years of denials and refusals of Torfi and others to even consider the concept of building on one of the operational principles of EVE (let people build stuff and create / cater to internal virtual market trends and thus push more behavioral trends and make money of that with less effort) in application for Incarna with the comments at E3 and a few other places of "ultimately we are considering to allow people to also make their own stuff for avatar shit".

It is still remarkable, that CCP chooses to not engage on the most simple, cost effective and most rewarding potential elements for microtransactions. It is remarkable that in their pursuit of following on this road they simply choose to replicate what others have done in other games without much consideration of diversity in perspectives other than what they on many personal levels want - with mere surface level adaptation of what has been done in other games. The ship for AUR is a fun example in that regard, where the potential of paintjobs (not even mentioning "by users" here) is far more rewarding for creating adoption patterns. There's literally tons of examples there, but it serves no purpose to go into that as long as CCP does not focus on being an innovator, a leader, as opposed to a follower. Yes, I know, that is hard to accept or even consider from inside the trenches, but it remains the truth. At minimum because it is literally what CCP by voice of its CEO says, but in a more practical sense by the visibility of its actions and inactions. Yes, I realise that goes against CCP's presentation (no doubt internal as well), but it does not take much effort to put presentation and communication and delivery next to each other and compare them.

From a strict commercial perspective, that (from "user driven" to "user created") should have been the first focus of this entire venture. How do we enable customers to create and continue to create events and trends that tell and share stories without us having to do all the work for it. Instead, it came down to "we want to do XYZ, we decide that, oh and customers suck so if we let them make anything that breaks immersion bla bla bla". You get the point here. This is not commercial rocket science, here we have a classic case of "what I want out of this" versus "what I want, what customer wants, what makes money via what market". The consequences of that case, well we've seen those develop over the past 4 years, and we will see them continue for another 4 to 5 years (regardless of CCP changing or not changing its ways). The "cost of incarna" as it is often called, has not even begun to show itself.

Incarna is a very important aspect of the environment. It is a perspective that indeed has been missing and is required for a more complete range of perspectives on interaction in what is essentially a virtual social dynamic. The thing is, if CCP continues on the current road of focusing unilaterally on identification, they create a set of trends where that identification through normal human behaviour developed during the last 50.000 years (by now reasonably well documented and researched) creates a decrease in depth, speed and creative potential of behaviour. Yes, that is not a linear interaction, there are fluctations there of reception, adoption, spikes of exception events, etc. But overall the more identification is created the less deep we go.

The less deep we go, the less deep events and the less persistant trends we create. EVE, depending on stories created and shared, yeah that is not exactly a good future proof situation.

Think about what that means for variables like marketing, publishing budgets, topics like cost of sales and so forth. Push that pattern, and there comes a point where you create your own dependancy on external - commercial - aid for spreading the word yourself. I am not going to be surprised if CCP suddenly hooks up with one or more (costly, yet distributed and thus hidden costs in the balancing sheet .. but still cost that has to be paid and thus come out of existing budgets) publishing annex advertising agencies. The recent venture of cinema advertising is a minute lead towards that, really minute. I place a serious question mark should that happen whether CCP is capable of figuring out why they would at that point require such external aid in the first place (honestly, given the potentials CCP has at its disposal there is zero business need for that, that only pops up as a cure for a symptom and not the disease).

Yes, now think of what that means for creative / design / development / backbone process budgets that are relevant to us as customers because that is what delivers us our environment and tools for our experiences (and thus fun). Again, the idea that with Incarna "out of the way" EVE can and will get structural focus again is a delusion for many, many reasons.

This as opposed to a focus on Incarna within an instrumentation enablement doctrine. Incarna is needed, makes sense, but is dangerous in a path of focus on identification. Commercially, it simply is far easier and more rewarding short and long term to focus Incarna on another aspect of instrument for engaging the environment and affecting people behind the pixels. I've said it before, but it more or less comes down to the difference between "this is you, now go follow fixed paths which we provide and only those" and "with vessels of steel we rule the heavens, with instruments of flesh and blood we take this new domain".

What you get with that, is that you create something very similar to a self fulfilling prophecy. Parts of CCP are very clear about all this being just about them on a personal level. It is ironic, that in such an identification focus they create the very pattern that will force CCP to adapt commercially to a format where CCP provides to compensate for customers creating less stories and sharing them less and less.

In more simple terms, with that path CCP creates the very situations which diminish the continuity and growth potential of EVE. It also creates the very situations where a complete revisiting of EVE's operational principles will be required in order to address both continuity and growth. When customers no longer go deep enough to create events and trends to create and share stories, CCP has to change their deliverables to compensate for that. In many ways it is one of the most typical catch22 situations where good companies kill their own creative drives through self validation and ultimately diminish their own market penetration in a rat race of content delivery. Oh the irony.

Ofcourse, it is not our decision. It is the right of CCP the company to decide on such matters. I just hope that it is indeed a decision from the company, and not just from a few. That - in light of say a few hundred years of business practices by human beings - is demonstratably only rewarding for the few and very costly for the many. But hey, the term "human resources" says it all, doesn't it.

Then again, when CCP began, they did set out to be different. And they still claim to be and claim to strive to that. For good reasons, unfortunately we increasingly see a growing set of divides there. Divides which are only addressed on the surface and thus create perceptions of things getting better. Yet, at the same time if we just stop for a moment to look a little deeper (or even just a little more careful from outside a trench) it is clear that nothing sofar addresses the challenges structurally.

It's the big irony of it all. Due to CCP being so segregated and focused on trenches, it again is its own worst enemy. Short term, and long term. It is a shame, as they are still one of the few in this industry with an enormous potential and the luxury of being able without much effort to own their markets in complete security. One of the few companies that can indeed conquer the world, if only it finds balance with and in itself. And that, constantly gets upset by individual choices rather than even just corporate interests.

It is said that human behaviour evolves in circular patterns, but ever expanding even in its repetition. The spiral of the social dynamic, so to speak. Remember that regardless of that spiral moving or growing, we can progress in both ways along it.

I know, it is easy for us to say these things as looking from the outside in is definately easier (for analysis of both the gears and the machine) than looking over the edge of the trenches that people work in. That's not rocket science either. In that regard, the last fanfest was refreshingly good as both customers and CCP employees engaged in exchanging those perspectives. Which is really what is needed in order to validate perspectives and the information brought forward from those. Something wich is much, much harder (and truth be told, one of the most simple best practices in enterprise development teaches to guard for that trap) to do so from within the trenches and/or on a basis of information from just the trenches without validating both origins and body of information for what happens in the trenches AND on the field.

But heck, when CCP created EVE they created a dynamic which is more than just a game, more than just a social dynamic. More than a business model. They created - in more ways than one - something so real that it is effectively something like life itself. And at the same time, they created that as a dream. It came from a dream, it grows through dreams, and so forth. It should not come as a surprise that dreams are shared. And even more so, the dynamic includes CCP and Customers alike.

It's a remarkable thing really, in the last decades there's sofar only been one other company with that potential. And they too were in their own way several times, but unlike CCP they first addressed themselves as culture and company and people, and then got on with it. CCP, is replicating commercial and personal behaviour which delivers financial gain, but is at a point where it conflicts with its own origins and intentions (it would be worth CCP's while to find out where this broad trend of replication comes from, it may sound funny, but if everyone in a company plays World of Tanks, it should not come as a surprise that people internalise copy reflexes - basic human behaviour, but not necessarily good or productive behaviour regardless of validity of fun). But that, is something which will be more clear 4 to 5 years from now. For us, and for them. But as I said before, by that time the multitude of tangible and intangible debts will be a bill to pay. Who will pay those debts, well, that depends on whether or not CCP addresses itself. Sharing and getting over debts is easier with many if carried and engaged overall. CCP the people, the company, the customers. But when a debt has to be faced and paid by just parts of that, well, that is how dynamics break.

EVE is not dying. But it will change. CCP is not dying either, but it will have to change in order to even just accomodate a changing EVE - regardless of whether that change is good or fun for current userbases. But heck, given enough content, time and money, every userbase can be replaced and will be replaced. The only question is the cost of the consequences of that for stability of owning (a) market(s). But that really is not our concern. As I said before, the only concern for us as customers is an individual concern. To what extent we go along, and whether or not we have or face impact in gameplay, is an individual decision. Look on the bright side, EVE is diverse, and there is a tremendous amount of change and screwups needed to affect every niche of fun which people currently value.

[Joshua Foiritain]

wtftext. http://hosted.corelicorp.net/retard.png

[Virtuozzo]

wtftext. http://hosted.corelicorp.net/Retard.png

Yeah well, dreadful day. Hence pouring it into wall of text.

Look on the bright side, it has been ages since I did one 8-)

[Orimei]

Virt, I think you should quit Eve and put all your energy into something productive. Like writing a novel.

I shudder to think about the amount of words you have typed over the years because of this terrible game.

[Virtuozzo]

Virt, I think you should quit Eve and put all your energy into something productive. Like writing a novel.

I shudder to think about the amount of words you have typed over the years because of this terrible game.

Actually, would be quite hilarious if a few of us got together and documented the whole CEVE thing as a storyline. And then sold it. To CCP. For a set of special edition Tornado's.

:facepalm:

[Dwergi]

Was there a TL;DR? Because I'm pretty sure my thesis was shorter.

[joe space]

one day there will be no Incarna, there will only be EVE.

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason



i'm just going to ignore the rest of that there post

[Mike deVoid]

Took me at least 20 minutes to read that, virt.

[Hurricane]

Funny what they classify as "old hardware" >.>

I was on test server last time and I have the following specs:

Intel I7 950 (stock)
12 GB of Kingston ValueRAM
2x MSI GTX460 Talon Hawk in SLI Setup
Gigabyte x58-UD3R Rev 2 board

some other assorted tidbits but this is my setup (granted with 3 screens for a max res of 5760x1080 :obama: )

and where it used to run 3x maxed out EVE clients (on tranquility) just fine around 40-50 FPS constant,

I had trouble running 1 EVE client (TQ) and 1 Incarna Client (SiSi)....

So they don't need to give us this "oh old systems" bullshit to be fair ... Fix your shit so it isn't a gargantuan resource hog, and make it optional ...

the increase in load times alone just to load the dam station environment (something I don't need, want or ever will use) is a pain in the balls already.

Let alone when running 2 or 3 accounts...

[Mashie Saldana]

Funny what they classify as "old hardware" >.>

I was on test server last time and I have the following specs:

Intel I7 950 (stock)
12 GB of Kingston ValueRAM
2x MSI GTX460 Talon Hawk in SLI Setup
Gigabyte x58-UD3R Rev 2 board

some other assorted tidbits but this is my setup (granted with 3 screens for a max res of 5760x1080 :obama: )

and where it used to run 3x maxed out EVE clients (on tranquility) just fine around 40-50 FPS constant,

I had trouble running 1 EVE client (TQ) and 1 Incarna Client (SiSi)....

So they don't need to give us this "oh old systems" bullshit to be fair ... Fix your shit so it isn't a gargantuan resource hog, and make it optional ...

the increase in load times alone just to load the dam station environment (something I don't need, want or ever will use) is a pain in the balls already.

Let alone when running 2 or 3 accounts...
I'm sorry, with only 1GB of effective VRAM that is what will happen. Step one, if you have forced Anistrophic Filtering in the driver disable that as it is an enormous memory hog. After that set Anti Alias to medium or even low in game and give it a new try.

I run 3GB GTX 580's for a very good reason.

[Bombcrater]

I'm a bit bothered by how much of a CPU hog the Incarna client is. Messing about trying to see if 1GB VRam really is a limit for running two clients now, I found that going from both clients on one 1Gb HD6870 to each client having it's own 6870 (ie; seperate cards, no crossfire) gave very little in the way of extra fps because the CPU (a dual-core Athlon II 3.3GHz) hits 80% load just running one client and is completely maxed out with two.

[Lancehot]

I wouldn't say I run 2 accounts out of love.

[Reed Tiburon]

CCP and EVE work and grow because "you" in the dynamic are not "just a number", yet the path CCP is on without addressing itself reinforces every trend of making people less than numbers.

...

In a nutshell, EVE works and grows because we do not identify with our pixels and overcompensate to affect the human behind the pixels and that creates a set of emotional connections which creates individual and group behaviour which in return causes people to create deep and persistant events and trends. And in our overcompensation, we have a human need to express experiences, so stories are created from events and trends and they are told. Other people pick those up, get interested, and also buy in to the dream. Voila.

...

In more simple terms, with that path CCP creates the very situations which diminish the continuity and growth potential of EVE. It also creates the very situations where a complete revisiting of EVE's operational principles will be required in order to address both continuity and growth. When customers no longer go deep enough to create events and trends to create and share stories, CCP has to change their deliverables to compensate for that. In many ways it is one of the most typical catch22 situations where good companies kill their own creative drives through self validation and ultimately diminish their own market penetration in a rat race of content delivery. Oh the irony.

QFT. People get into this game because of the stories they hear. Chribba gets to keep a dreadnaught in hi-sec based on the strength of his reputation alone. But lately CCP has been all about treating users like statistics and walking wallets.

[Hurricane]

I'm sorry, with only 1GB of effective VRAM that is what will happen. Step one, if you have forced Anistrophic Filtering in the driver disable that as it is an enormous memory hog. After that set Anti Alias to medium or even low in game and give it a new try.

I run 3GB GTX 580's for a very good reason.


The problem with that though is that in space I have no problem what so ever, the only problem occurs with their Incarna environment.

What this tells me is that either:
a) their Incarna CQ thing is bad in terms of performance tuning and a resource hog
b) they use such "cutting edge" technologie that my GTX 460's just can't cope with it

point B I highly doubt, point A seems a bit more likely.

I'm not here to go Q_Q my system can't play eve ... What I'm saying is, I don't care about CQ, I can play right now just fine in space, why not give me the current station environment if I so chose ? Fuck Incarna, I don't want it ... why am I forced into this ?


I don't see how giving me the option NOT to endure:
- increase in station environment load times
- increased graphical load
- increase in "handling" time to do simple stuff such as: change ammo, refit, swap ship

is a bad thing.

I honestly can't phantom a single reason why they couldn't spare the time to implement a proper "on/off" button for incarna that lets me keep my current stuff as it is if I so chode.

There's not a single reason I can think off to be fair ..

[Tarminic]

You do realize you can just untick the button and it won't load, right? It says that right in the devblog.

[Hellkyte]

Its an interesting point (personal v statistics). There is a balance that must be found between the basement dwelling dungeon master and the a Disney land ride. The first allows incredibly deep interaction with the player, and an ability to adapt to to the needs of the individual, sometimes on a whim, but suffers from a lack of equity, a level of inconsistency, and an inability to scale. The other gives perfect equity in the experience, strong consistent forward vision, and an ability to accomodate more players, but suffers from inflexibility and often a total inability to percieve the desires of the players.

Incarna was and still is a giant gaping wound in the credibility of CCP's ability to understand their player base and their ability to have a cohesive vision of any sort. The former is a weakness brought on by the statistics view, while the latter is a weakness brought on by the personal view. Say what you will of a cold calculating company, they understand vision and planning, CCP doesn't.

This combination of the worst attributes of the two styles is why incarna is why it will fail, and sheds some doubt in my mind about the future of the firm. But only philosophical doubt. I have no investment in this game beyond seeing it as a game. If it fails I will walk away with only a slight frown, which will go away as soon as I masturbate.

They still should look at Incarna as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, but CCP has never been good at doing this and this magnitude of a mistake would be hard for any company to acknowledge.

Also Jesus Christ Virt you can shit out a wall of text that would humble Jericho. I still haven't finished reading that PM you sent me.

[Jack bubu]

You do realize you can just untick the button and it won't load, right? It says that right in the devblog.
DOESNT MATTER, MUST RANT :cut:

:psyduck:

[Malcanis]

Virt, I think you should quit Eve and put all your energy into something productive. Like writing a novel.

I shudder to think about the amount of words you have typed over the years because of this terrible game.

Your avatar...

[Malcanis]

a set of special edition Tornado's.



Speaking of which.... where is?

[Al Simmons]

a set of special edition Tornado's.



Speaking of which.... where is?

I would probably pay aurum for a Tornado tbh. (Oh god, what if CCP make it a store-only item :ohnoes: :ohnoes: )

[KKassandra]

a set of special edition Tornado's.



Speaking of which.... where is?

I would probably pay aurum for a Tornado tbh. (Oh god, what if CCP make it a store-only item :ohnoes: :ohnoes: )

I predict a riot.


Followed by bumper sales of Tornadoes in the giftshop. Damnit.

[Zoidberg]

Selling the user-designed ships as "paint jobs" of existing ships in the MT store would save CCP the hassle of having to introduce equivalents for the other races, as well as actually assigning them unique, interesting, and balanced stats. Considering those two things are actual content, I doubt CCP has any desire to do them.

[Leboe]

CCP has spend the last 6 months trying to balance 4 new battleships, thats why they havent touched anything else yet!

[Shaikar]

You do realize you can just untick the button and it won't load, right? It says that right in the devblog.You mean where it says it's a temporary option available for a limited time only?

Yes, I imagine he does.

[Hellkyte]

The temporary aspect of it bothers me as well. It reminds me of an argument I had once with an English professor who had attendance grades in class. My argument to him was that it was a sign of weakness on his part, a belief that what he had to offer in the class had so little value that he had to arbitrarily assign value to it, or an inability on his part to understand enough of what he taught to be able to adequately test it.

Making it mandatory makes me think that they are like him, forcing compliance with something because they know it doesn't have enough value on it's own to attract users. It could be for a technical reason that they want it mandatory, perhaps, but I find it hard to believe that there is a significant argument there.

[Zoidberg]

The temporary aspect of it bothers me as well. It reminds me of an argument I had once with an English professor who had attendance grades in class. My argument to him was that it was a sign of weakness on his part, a belief that what he had to offer in the class had so little value that he had to arbitrarily assign value to it, or an inability on his part to understand enough of what he taught to be able to adequately test it.

Not to get off topic, but you must be a real joy to have in class.

[Tarminic]

Making it mandatory makes me think that they are like him, forcing compliance with something because they know it doesn't have enough value on it's own to attract users. It could be for a technical reason that they want it mandatory, perhaps, but I find it hard to believe that there is a significant argument there.
No way it's a technical reason. It's obvious (and I think that CSM5 can confirm this) that it's mandatory because they want people to use it. Even if there's nothing to do they want players to be used to it for when its expanded to include more features that they also want players to use. If they make it opt-in rather than mandatory or opt-out there's a good chance that half of EVE's playerbase won't even see the "leave ship" button.


You do realize you can just untick the button and it won't load, right? It says that right in the devblog.You mean where it says it's a temporary option available for a limited time only?
Yes, I imagine he does.
Maybe I read this differently, but the impression I got was that it would be removed once they optimize it further so that running multiple clients isn't an issue. It's something they'll have to do anyway if they want single clients to be able to be all sociable in stations anyway.

[Xiang Jiao]

I'm no developer but getting multiple clients running smoothly on one PC is one thing, and getting character interactions functioning without game-breaking lag (see null sec fleet warfare) is another.

[Hurricane]

Again,

my point is not that Q_Q My eve is slow, its the fact that as people said before me it reeks of it being temporary (the opt-out) before they pidgeon hole us all into using it anyways. My stance is that I don't want incarna. I do not give a shit about walking in stations (unless I can adorn all those corpses I've been collecting on my wall, then I might care) so why the :psyccp: do I need to endure it and use it ? Unneccesairy loadding times when docking / undocking, encreased graphical need and strain, ...


its just stupid and wrong and it reeks of CCP pidgeonholing us all into their unfinished product. People sometimes complain about google putting the "beta" label on everything (see gmail) but look at CCP.

Aurum store --> not finished yet AT ALL but releasing
Factional ware --> stillborne which needed more work but released
Captains Quarters / Walking in station --> Not finished / nothing usefull in it for us but getting released.


we can all probably name 10 more of these examples but the bottomline is, CCP, get your head on straight although that history has proved me they never will.



Right .. I think I've reached the level of :bittervet: now dammit ... :monocledowns: