TeaDaze.net

This started as a reply to Trebor’s blog post but I expanded it a little (for some reason I can’t post a comment there ). Please read his post for context, though I’ve gone a bit off topic in places Consider it a stream of conciousness piece.

Also while checking out other blogs, see I Was There by Kirith Kodachi and Reality Check by Seleene.

Also please note that one of the main issues I had with incarna was a feature that still hasn’t (as far as I know) been mentioned by CCP in public and thus might no longer be planned and yes I am aware that after telling CSM5 a number of times that it wouldn’t be an option that CCP talked about letting people opt out of CQ. Hold them to it

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Trebor, CCP were at this crossroads at least 18 months ago. At that time they decided to ignore any negative assessment of Incarna, 18 months and the general focus of Eve (Don’t worry guys it will be AWESOME! Trust Us”.

This isn’t a slight at those hard working people at CCP who have no control over the big decisions, however there are clear signs that even some of the staff are not happy with this current direction. Yes it is wise for CCP to branch out and get a second revenue stream, this is expected and required. However the point I kept on making and was probably laughed at for was this:

CCP have 600 staff many supporting families that are being supported mostly by the income from a single product and any venture capital they raised for additional projects. This is not the time to dick around with the cash cow, this is the time to take care of it whilst the other projects are prepared for release.

But CCP are fearless (some might say clueless ) and instead decided that they could continue the stagnation of the core game (other than some quick fixes), add enforced bolt ons such as Incarna (sit alone or get shown the door) and remove the face from every character in the game without providing enough flexibility in the system to allow people to create something similar. There is no evidence that they considered the jarring effect this would have (an aside here, look at the thought Blizzard have been putting into protecting the way people’s characters look while they discuss updating the models, they have spoken about the issue a few times recently – did you notice that CCP? I know many of your staff are wow players).

Yes enforced avatar removal might seem like a petty complaint to some people (especially given my stance on incarna), but it was utterly unnecessary and as the infrastructure in place is just serving out static images it could have been preloaded had CCP actually cared about existing player immersion. The fact is it was done for two reasons. 1) somebody in art direction hated the old faces so didn’t want to see them anymore and 2) CCP wanted to claim they had the best character creator in the industry when clearly APB was far more advanced ) It was a case of CCP know best and players can deal with it or quit.

Speaking of ABP, we come to another problem. CCP are now actively discouraging or scared of letting players use the sandbox. The “time to penis” excuses are just CCP derping. They have the ability to set the rules on the creation of content (even restricting the publication of new items to accounts over a certain age to stop alt account spamming), but it would put the players at odds with CCP’s double dipping if players were able to create and sell clothes etc to each other.

Look at second life for the concept of player driven content done well and making money from it. Players create the items, they pay a small fee to upload them (A service which CCP could have handled as a one off charge with microplex) and can then sell copies to other players – wow, player driven market, how scary. CCP could have taken this concept further and made the upload into a type of clothing BPC which needed PI materials to create (for example). A BPC means that you can charge for another upload in future which would be worthwhile to the creator if the item is popular etc. See CCP, it is possible to think up content for players in stations that builds on the old flying in space features (though describing PI as part of FIS is a stretch ) without enforcing use of one or the other. A player market would develop for these clothing items and expanding the amount of things that can be provided from PI whilst keeping the number of structures a single person can manage adds more choice to the production. I wouldn’t care if such a system was developed because I had no interest in playing avatar dress up – but I know some people do. It is possible to cater to both sets of people without pissing them off if you provide choice not enforcement. You might think it is a terrible idea, that’s cool I’m not a game designer and never claimed to be. Point is there was never any discussion with the CSM about how player produced content could be handled. We just get “time to penis” as the reason behind it.

Anyway, Virt level WOT aside the take home point here is that both Wow and Eve have recently been focusing more on attracting newer players (wow by redoing all the low level content (plus making level 1-20 free) and Eve by trying to cater to the sitting in stations market) and both have seen a significant drop of paid subscriptions (if Eve PCU is an indication though apparently wow is picking up a good number of trial accounts). Both companies assumed the limited high end content would keep their long term players happy but it is clearly not the case and long term players are burning out at a faster rate than newer players are signing up.

As people wondered a while ago – 18 months started when?

Tea

Firstly I would like to point out that just because I’ve decided Eve is no longer the game for me it doesn’t automatically mean your choice to continue to play it is wrong. Nor am I going to try to make a case why you should quit, I believe in the “play what you enjoy” mantra and it would be a very dull world if everyone had the same opinion about everything.


So, why did I cancel two of my six accounts last year and the final four yesterday?


Simply put, CCP promised that Incarna would be optional and it is now clear that it is not going to be. The Captain’s Quarters (CQ) being the first part and having seen the plans for the other bits due this year the rest won’t be optional in any real sense (I hope they change their mind but in any case the discussion was buried under the NDA banner so I can’t go into detail). For me this is a deal breaker.


I can handle the existence of Incarna to cater for the people who are looking forward to it. I can even handle the reduced development of the flying in space part of the game (after all, due to CSM pressure we have a team working on quick fixes). But forcing me to use the avatar environment – sorry no, this is not the game I enjoyed. To some people this isn’t enough of a reason and they claim I’m being an idiot – well I point you to the first paragraph.


It would have been an easy thing and a big win for CCP to retain the docking into hanger as an option for those of us who have zero interest in the avatar engine stuff, but CCP have decided not to. I can only assume they don’t want metrics showing any significant number of people not using the avatar stuff and also I sense the hand of marketing. It should not be the job of the CSM or the players to make a case for why a disruptive change shouldn’t be put in game, it is the job of CCP to make a case for why they want to put it in!
In this case the best answer I got was “Because it will be awesome” which I don’t find an acceptable reason (Awesome has lost its meaning now, it is no better than using nice )


Am I bitter? Not especially. I’m more disappointed with the current trend at CCP for enforced participation in new features. The loss of the existing character portraits broke any significant investment in my eve chars and the broken promise of Incarna being optional made the decision to leave fairly simple.


Some will claim that I should wait and see, but the CQ blog confirmed what I already knew from the summit. I’ve already waited to find out if they would take the optional comments on board. For the Incarna fans there is more to come but unless CCP pull a 180 on some plans I will like it even less than the enforced docking into CQ. Rather than continue to raise red flags and call bullshit on various things (as CCP’s CEO wanted us to) I will focus my energy into other projects.


The thing I’ve found the most amusing is the amount of vitriol directed towards me by players (some with known CCP connections) for daring to suggest the CQ be optional. I didn’t want to take the shinies away from you, so what difference does it make to your gameplay if I would rather see only my ship in the hanger than a room? Again, justify a disruptive change instead of asking me to make the case for retaining existing systems. It could have been an optional change and everybody would have been happy.


Then come the comparisons between opting out of an interface and opting out of PvP. No that analogy is flawed because there is a simple difference between player driven behaviour and a chat UI.


As I said at the top, if you still enjoy Eve then I don’t think you foolish for playing it. This is not an either or, them and us, for or against type of situation. I respect your choice, why is it so hard for people to respect mine?


No you can’t have my stuff and I’m not going to biomass my character. Never say never. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll come back to see what Eve has become, but for the first time in about 5 years I can actually walk away from it…

The minutes are in the usual places – CSMdb or Eve Wiki

We’ve been working on the Incarna letter discussed at the end of the meeting but it isn’t likely to be released to the public any time soon (many people on the CSM feel we should give CCP even more time to sort their shit out). As mentioned in the Minutes, the Incarna team have yet to engage in discussions with the CSM since the summit (it would appear the person in charge is bored already and is making videos of the new char creator instead )

I’ve been keeping track of the issue about concord killing Incursion remote repair fleets (due to global criminal flagging if a person being repaired commits a criminal act) and it was mentioned as a potential issue ages ago. Hopefully whatever quick fix they put in place doesn’t make matters worse.

A heads up for all you Eve purists, I will probably start covering non-eve stuff soon. The simple reason is that I’m playing less Eve and more everything else right now.

There are many reasons why this is the case but primarily it is my utter disappointment with the way that CCP have handled the recent CSM summit and the future direction of Eve.

Happy new year!

Hopefully I’ll find more time to post here this year, we’ll see how that pans out

Currently the main news is that the CSM December summit minutes are being passed around within CCP for participants to contribute their notes too. Whilst this should stop the “Huh?” moments within CCP when the minutes come out, be assured that if we feel CCP are trying to play the NDA card too much we’ll push back before publication. This process might take a week, please be patient, stuff is happening.

I am however rather burned out again what with the shear amount of idiocy with a specific feature and the inability of CCP to make a case for its existence. I’m willing to be proved wrong, but so far on “Excellence” and “Microtransactions” we’ve been right on the money…

I was sent this link and I think it describes an interesting problem brewing.

Hopefully with the delay to the Incursion feature CCP will take some of this on board before it is released next year.

Two blog posts in one day? I must be unemployed or something

I have to be slightly careful about what I say about Incarna in case it is taken as information received under NDA. However everything in this post is only my opinion and CCP haven’t really given the CSM any solid information yet anyway

It is my opinion that Incarna is CCP’s White Elephant.

The first paragraph of that Wikipedia link explains it perfectly

A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth.

CCP have announced Walking in Stations under many different names over the years, but have never gone any further with the “vision” than a fanfest demo and a video, neither of which show any gameplay elements.

But CCP have publicly committed to WiS (now called Incarna) and they are unable (or unwilling) to back down. Worse still they’ve committed to releasing it in 2011 without providing a clear vision of what it will actually contain. Ask people if Incarna is really part of Eve or a bolt on and you’ll get a fairly even split.

All we’ve seen so far is the character designer and whilst Kotaku liked it compelling gameplay it is not.

Will CCP be able to prise the majority of pod pilots out of their ships and into stations? I don’t believe so and I worry that CCP will take drastic measures to “encourage” players into Station by moving existing Eve client functionality or similar ideas (considering the Incursion penalties).

Am I being overly negative? Perhaps – but the reactions so far from the people I have asked have not been positive.

Have your say below.

There was a new dev blog giving more information about the feature that the Incursion expansion is named for. The Eve wide Incursion of Sansha ships.

Suffice to say there are mixed feelings from the players depending on backgrounds but ignoring the NPC alt flames the opinion seems to be that the system as presented has issues.

I think so too and now the information is public I can talk about it

I was always uneasy about CCP adding a third type of PVE content rather than (if they really wanted to do a PvE expansion) iterating on either mission agents or (my preference) Factional Warfare, but I did think that some of the technology such at the updated AI was pretty interesting.

After the CSM5 summit when the minutes were badly received by the public various Devs contacted the CSM to complain that the Incursion feature was being misrepresented (due to the CSM stating a preference for CCP to focus on other things and most of the session being hit by the NDA stick in the minutes). Their concern was that Incursion would be looked at negatively by the players without getting a fair chance.

We can now see that CCP want players to use this new functionality so badly that they are willing to enforce participation via system wide penalties instead of making the rewards compelling enough on their own. I dislike this direction and said so at the time.

The only good news is that they also announced a delay to the Incursion feature so there is hope that whatever they do release does work properly.

My motivation to play Eve keeps taking knocks

A quick update, but probably overdue

Firstly I’m supporting a change to Hybrid weapons (because now roflkits have been looked at I guess it is time ). Please add your support and/or comments so we can attempt to get CCP to look into it.

Secondly there has been a flurry of activity between CCP and CSM about a number of issues. One is pretty big and hopefully CCP will make an announcement about that soon. Suffice to say these discussions, the regular CSM meetings and in RL working out my notice period from voluntary redundancy have eaten most of my free time.

Thirdly I have dropped from 6 accounts to 4 partly because of the lack of time to play but mostly in protest of CCP announcing they were looking into microtransactions. This subject deserves its own blog post and I will try to throw something together but the TL:DR version is that I dislike the idea of CCP withholding content from expansions (even purely vanity items) to bulk up a microtransaction store. I dislike even more the potential of game balance changing items.

Lastly, unless I get thrown off the CSM for causing trouble , I will be at Fanfest 2011. Hopefully I’ll get to take part in the tweetfleetmeet (for those who follow twitter check out the #tweetfleet tag) and I suspect that CSM5 will be on stage for a presentation + Q&A session too. No idea what will happen about the PVP tournie, I’d love to play commentator again but that is out of my hands

Until next time
Tea

I’ve been away for a few days so am still catching up on emails and eve mails. Also I know there are a few gaps in the summary minute list, I’m still plugging away at them when I have the chance.

Hopefully work will settle down soon so I can spend a bit more time on CSM issues