Reality Check

[Mynxee]

As a sort of follow-up to the EVE Radio interview by DJ FunkyBacon with Seleene, Trebor, and Mittens, Seleene just posted an excellent blog about CCP's neglect of the FiS aspect of EVE, the impact that has had on the game, and what CCP needs to do to turn things around. It is a fairly long post but very much worth the read...check it out here. He makes some strong points that really resonated with me, including:

"EVE Online is still the sole product that CCP produces that supports any other endeavors they pursue. It is their bread and butter. Without an EVE that keeps players excited, CCP are never going to see DUST come to fruition much less see World of Darkness completed." This logic is so profound, I can't see how CCP justifies its ongoing starvation of the golden goose.

Seleene says "Instead of proper iteration on the features players really care about, we got new ones completely out of the blue." and suggests that lack of iteration or missing game mechanics are not the biggest problem with EVE today but instead that it is suffering more "because the thought processes that are driving the creative direction of the game are broken." With this, I must agree 100%.

And I think the reaction to Incarna pretty much proves this assertion: "Newsworthy drama resulting from players doing crazy stuff with spaceships sells subscriptions. Drama caused by dumb clothing prices in your (badly presented) micro-transaction store and reported with a sneer by the gaming media and elsewhere does not."

Thanks for speaking so plainly and pointedly, Seleene. I think you hit a lot of nails on the head with that post. Definitely worth some discussion here.

[Evelgrivion]

The EVE Online I want to play is the one that CCP works to guide the evolution of; we need tools, methods, and means for telling stories. The best content that EVE Online has had to offer are the events where players took what CCP gave them and ran with it. For years now, we've been told what to do by CCP (Planetary Interaction, the Dominion sovereignty system, Incursions, and the worst offender of all, Incarna's Captain's Quarters). None of these improve the sandbox and have, in many ways, diminished the potential of the game in favor of a marketing headline. The EVE Online I want to play is more open ended than the game CCP has been trying to create, and I don't think they've realized that in adding new content, they have been restricting the range of possibilities the game has.

The fact of the matter is that EVE Online and CCP will never be successful again until they stop trying to tell us what we're going to do when we play the game. EVE Online is a sandbox; what we do needs to be up to the player.

[Mynxee]

I think there is a balance to strike between development of infrastructure and content (even guided content can be okay if it encourages and rewards cooperation in the right ways). But the problem with lack of iteration on half-baked features is that until CCP bites the bullet and does that, players can never maximize the story-telling capacity of those features. Without stories, EVE is not that interesting. With them, it's amazing. I suspect that if FiS EVE had been polished up nicely and key features iterated on over the past couple of years, there'd not be nearly as much backlash against Incarna even in its current state. Sure, it would still be ignored and yeah, it probably wouldn't attract new subscribers any more than it is doing now, but people wouldn't resent it so goddam much.

[Sponk]

Ship balancing: incredibly high reward for effort. Just saiyan.

[Evelgrivion]

Even in spite of the neglect Flying in Space has received since Apocrypha, Incarna could very well have expanded the numbers and possibilities for story telling in EVE Online. In fact, that potential is still there; unfortunately, with regards to the end of improving the story telling in EVE Online through Incarna, CCP has done basically everything wrong that they could.

[Seleene]

Even in spite of the neglect Flying in Space has received since Apocrypha, Incarna could very well have expanded the numbers and possibilities for story telling in EVE Online. In fact, that potential is still there; unfortunately, with regards to the end of improving the story telling in EVE Online through Incarna, CCP has done basically everything wrong that they could.

We talked a bit about that in the EVE Radio thing last night. I think it's pretty much agreed upon that CCP screwed the pooch when it came time to roll everything out and all they had to show for it was one dank shithole of a room and barely a dozen overpriced micro-transaction items. I mean, how do you not at least have a pirate eye patch on launch day? Cripes.

[Marlona Sky]

Subscribing to the game = You like how the game is.
Unsubscribing = You don't like how the game is.

Those who hold the keys to how the game is developed, is all they understand. They ignore the forums, player feedback, riots, you name it. The only time they take notice is if there is thousands of players quitting. Then they throw a bone to get you to resubscribe, like posting about how they are committed to ship balancing by assigning one guy who will add 0.75 warp speed to logistics. Then he vanishes for months.

You have to hit them in the wallet for them to bless you with their attention.

[noobcake]

Subscribing to the game = You like how the game is.
Unsubscribing = You don't like how the game is.

uhhhh not really? theres those of us who have ISK to blow on plex to keep skill training alive so theyre not losing SP when/if the game turns it around.

[Sponk]

uhhhh not really? theres those of us who have ISK to blow on plex to keep skill training alive so theyre not losing SP when/if the game turns it around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling

[noobcake]

not sure who the enabler is? and im not sure if enabling is the word...log in once a month to change a skill isnt a huge commitment to the "addiction"

[Lana Torrin]

"because the thought processes that are driving the creative direction of the game are broken."

This is without a doubt the reason I quit the game.. Eve is indeed still fun and 'nothing has changed' as far as the game I was enjoying playing 2 weeks prior to the Incarna release, but the whole attitude of CCP toward eve over these last few years has been that of neglect. Eve as a sandbox MMO needs change or everything will stagnate and every time you log in will be the same as last time. As this gos on year after year people will get bored and quit the game leading to player drain, and eventually game death (playing perpetuum has taught me that you need quite a few people for the sandbox MMO to actually work). Seeing as there appears to be no bright future for eve, I decided to cut my losses and stop giving CCP my money (or at least someone elses money thanks to PLEX and corp theft).

Seleene 'gets it' and there are quite a few people in CCP that 'get it' but I think CCP management have lost sight of what 'it' is..

[Evelgrivion]

There's something kind of funny in all of this; I can't enjoy myself in EVE Online, even though it's largely the same game it has been since 2009, because CCP refuses to acknowledge that changing the game to alleviate our frustrations is the right course of action. At the same time, CCP's management refuses to listen to us out of their own frustration in players not believing their chosen path is the right course of action. Players and CCP alike seem to have identical feelings on these matters, but we have diametrically opposite viewpoints.

[TheManFromDelmonte]

not sure who the enabler is? and im not sure if enabling is the word...log in once a month to change a skill isnt a huge commitment to the "addiction"

CCP are addicted to being idiots and you are enabling it. You and others like you "hanging on" just in case it gets better are helping ensure it never does. Just quit like the rest of us and help break CCP's addiction to poor business management.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

not sure who the enabler is? and im not sure if enabling is the word...log in once a month to change a skill isnt a huge commitment to the "addiction"

I was going to say something about only retards would look solely at subscriber numbers when PCU numbers are available, but then I realized we're talking CCP MBA guys here.

[RoemySchneider]

cool beans.... 1+ year ago, one got called a sandy vagina for stating these facts

glad the csm caught on to something

"if you don't like it, leave" was what we got back then *hint*

[Marlona Sky]

CCP are addicted to being idiots and you are enabling it. You and others like you "hanging on" just in case it gets better are helping ensure it never does. Just quit like the rest of us and help break CCP's addiction to poor business management.

He is correct. They don't give two shits if it is you paying for your subscription with your money, or you creating demand for PLEX and someone else paying for your subscription. As long as the subscription is being paid one way or another, they will not change.

That subscription being paid equates in their eyes that you like the game the way it is. I could have lived off PLEX for a very, very long time, but I knew that I had to take the money out of their hands to try and wake them up. If you have a ton of SP and bored, then unsubscribe for a while. In the grand scheme of things the lost SP will be nothing compared to the wake-up call message it will send and hopefully, CCP will get back to making the game good.

The way I see it, there is two options:

1. Continue to have your account paid for by you or someone else, doesn't matter. You get to keep playing Skill-Change-Online and be miserable with the state of the game.

-or-

2. Unsubscribe and eat the SP loss for a few months sending a message that you care more about the state of the game than some fucking SP your losing out on. When enough unsubscribe, CCP will have no choice but to put a ton of resources back into EVE. If they don't then more and more stop playing and eventually this terrible game just vanishes off the face of the planet. If that does happen then who cares, they were being paid to be terrible and it is a lesson learned for both them and you.

Trust me I know it is hard to stop playing, even stop monitoring skills and logging in just to log in and do nothing. Trust me, that is not playing the game. "FUN" is supposed to be part of the experience, not misery.

Just let go of it for a while. Who knows, you might meet a girl and get a piece of ass while your gone, maybe a job and move out of your grandma's basement?

[Malcanis]

This logic is so profound, I can't see how CCP justifies its ongoing starvation of the golden goose.

Can you not? It's really easy and simple:

CCP are entitled to ever-increasing EVE subscriber numbers (because they're :awesome: and :fearless whether or not they put any effort into providing what their customers want. So why bother?

[Virtuozzo]

Seleene 'gets it' and there are quite a few people in CCP that 'get it' but I think CCP management have lost sight of what 'it' is..

No. They just don't care about what "it" is for "you".

They do get "it" for "you", it's just that they are done with it, have been for a long time, and they have completely different priorities these days.

It is only under the guise of doing "it" to get more / new customers.

EVE is their ticket to doing new things, different things, their things.

Not unilaterally, but most upstairs suffer greatly from what & how friends tell and pass on information. Chokepoints, tainted information streams, all under the guise of "we're friends" and "we know best". Don't write them all off, a lot of them mean very well and are honest in their intentions and commitment. But that is something which is subject to a "lobby" of personal relations and positivity that is stifling CCP the people and company alike. And which has visibly compromised the operational aspects of their flagship product as well as the development and growth of that product and CCP as a whole.


Dig back on for example the drama of Planetary Interaction, and how that got pushed through and by who. How the party was bubbly in the sun upstairs while folks on the workfloor were scrambling trying to clean up the shit from months of refusal to consider customer feedback, and avoidable disarray from self sabotage by means of deluded planning interventions.

[Smuggo]

TBH I think the playerbase, and people on this forum, send contradictory messages. Here people are bemoaning a lack of iteration and fixes etc... (which I totally agree is one of the biggest problems right now) but those same people then go on to mock the last several expansions for a lack of content and start going "oh when are we getting new ship-types" etc...

The problem is, neither fixes or new features are being done right because people are complaining about both and so CCP is trying to do both while also setting itself an impossibly tight schedule. I think CCP would benefit from switching their expansion cycle to an annual thing with staggered iteration and fixes throughout the year. Then you don't need to have some half-arsed "content" just so you can meet some arbitrary 6-month release schedule and you also get a decent amount of time to see how your new content has settled in and work to make it better, rather than having to instantly jump onto the next project cause it's gotta be ready to roll out in a few months.

[Rhaegor Stormborn]

TBH I think the playerbase, and people on this forum, send contradictory messages. Here people are bemoaning a lack of iteration and fixes etc... (which I totally agree is one of the biggest problems right now) but those same people then go on to mock the last several expansions for a lack of content and start going "oh when are we getting new ship-types" etc...

The problem is, neither fixes or new features are being done right because people are complaining about both and so CCP is trying to do both while also setting itself an impossibly tight schedule. I think CCP would benefit from switching their expansion cycle to an annual thing with staggered iteration and fixes throughout the year. Then you don't need to have some half-arsed "content" just so you can meet some arbitrary 6-month release schedule and you also get a decent amount of time to see how your new content has settled in and work to make it better, rather than having to instantly jump onto the next project cause it's gotta be ready to roll out in a few months.

Spacebook, Barbie Dolls, API bullshit, etc is not content.