TeaDaze.net

On the one hand, I have been a fan of the ambulation/WiS/Incarna concept for years.

On the other hand, the minutes recently released from the CSM Summit in October 2010 concerned me greatly, as they seemed to indicate that CCP doesn’t actually have any gameplay designed yet. This directly contradicts what we were told at the last Fanfest, so I’m hoping the more recent info is just a result of poor wording or miscommunication and doesn’t reflect a serious mismanagement.

I have already held forth on Incarna (http://fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/2010/08/fashionista.html). Based on the popularity of this entry, the responses to it, and how much folks have enjoyed fashionizing their Avatars on the test system, I expect Incarna will be a popular add to New Eden.

Compelling game-play is in the eye of the player. If Incarna brings in more players it’s all cha-ching for CCP. Business is business. Dedicated “ships in space” players may pass on it, but that’s no never-mind to CCP if it broadens Eve’s customer base.

Recall your original post argues that Incarna is a white elephant; an argument based exclusively on its utility to you.

While it may not be your cup of tea, Incarna does have utility to other members of the player base and to the future audience it’s designed to attract. And if Incarna makes the cash register ring, it certainly has utility to CCP.

If Incarna has utility to others, even if it has none to you, it is not a white elephant – QED.

Besides, Second Life doesn’t have spaceships with LAZORS

Your “Firstly and Secondly” are little more than a restatement of “I don’t like Incarna” and an assumption, based on no facts in evidence, that no one else will like it either. In fact the reviews of the first release of Incarna function by those who’ve tried it on the test server have been largely positive.

Your “Thirdly” suggests that adding the feature is going to drive away ships in space players. Adding a feature that doesn’t impact ships in space play shouldn’t drive away ships in space players. Unless they’re just being pissy.

I’ve not heard that all avatars will have to be re-designed (if you have something from CCP on that, please provide linkage). If a re-design turns out to be needed, I would expect there to be a default option that does the conversion automatically, or with a single button-click option. That way a player has the option of trying out the avatar re-design functions, but isn’t required to do so. Again, if you know otherwise, please provide linkage.

I don’t expect Incarna’s meant to stand on its own – certainly not in its first release. It’s meant to enhance the Eve experience, not be an alternative Eve experience. If you don’t want to use it, don’t use it, and no harm done. Frankly, I’m puzzled as to why you’ve got your knickers in such a beastly knot over this.

Finally. If Incarna so offends you that you’re compelled to rage-quit on principle, I totally understand. However, remember to give me all your stuff before you make for the exits 😉

@Mord: From Torfi’s blog Introducing Our New Character Creator:

“Do I have to change my avatar?
Yes, all existing characters will need to have their portraits redone. ”

@casiella: The minutes from the October meeting were accurate and in fact, somewhat buffered to remove any vestiges of the “WTF!” response that many of us had to CCP’s answer to the CSM’s direct question about what game play was planned for Incarna. “That’s a question we ask ourselves every day.” is almost a direct quote of the response from CCP Hammer, the Lead Game Designer. Either CCP is going to work a miracle in 8 months or the halls of stations are going to echo with a distinct lack of meaningful game play–or worse, be draped in forced interaction that is labeled “game play”.

@Mord
I read your blog post, and I can honestly say that I recognise the potential. Incarna as a concept has tremendous potential, but within the IP, and is much harder to market and cater for within the product EVE. An understandable course, but in commercial projections a likely strategic mistake. At least from my background.

But there is something to keep in mind. Where it comes to creative direction and vision CCP is facing a big challenge, as they simply do not subscribe to the idea of “Compelling game-play is in the eye of the player”. I agree with you, but CCP does not, if they did then by now particularly for Incarna this would be visible in marketing efforts in high potential communities like machinima or social networking beyond facebook or content creation derivatives – and not just the MT topics and minigames. It is the school of thought that also showed opinionated convictions of those involved, as visible already years ago in Torfi’s infamous exclamation of “players do not do game design”, forgetting conveniently that while true, it is also false, as he has a market to cater to. Several ones, really.

And we have seen the rising conflict over the past few years where the growth of CCP has resulted into stretching speed, weight and density of internal interactions (business and personal) just like this happens in any company which grows hard. Standard result being the choking of creative processes (which is more then “design”) and communication as well as validation efforts. It is very encouraging to see CCP engage on this, particularly through the CSM and now becoming much more open and communicative. But those are external processes, for CCP itself, all there is to watch for are results in deliverables and visibility of vision.

It is what leads me to expect nothing grand or awesome or any real gameplay, similarly it is what leads me to expect CCP to fall for the trap of enforcing Incarna for EVE gameplay elements, because otherwise there are no results to show in terms of adoption. I will not be surprised if they once again make decisions based on strange definitions, for example they might just think the character creator is not a feature of enablement, but actual gameplay. Hilarious and sad at the same time, but we will see. There is hope.

I expect lots of minigames similar to the list of minigames of years ago, I expect bars, and I expect zero recognition in gameplay of elements which made EVE the sandbox that made events and word of mouth advertising happen. I have hope for an angle of machinima, but I fear that as CCP has a strong habit of falling prey to opinionated convictions instead of formulating vision and a very strong problem in confusing definitions that the angle of machinima will be lost entirely as they don’t do the market research to capitalise on it. Similarly I expect Incarna to be completely excempt from the old principle of “EVE is a cold and dark place”, which is a threshold yes .. but which also has delivered a cash cow of which so many people in this industry are jealous of, that combined with CCP having no publisher and being utterly independant makes them give CCP peer industry awards for that, and that alone.

I’d love to have a bar in Amarr Emperor Family, and I’d love to have a war that could be settled or culminating into a duel between alliance leaders face to face as the ultimate spaghetti western showdown in some station arena. I’d love to have people create content for Incarna, as a concept it is just begging for it. But I can see the patterns unfold, and they will be restrictive, enforced, extremely dependant on iteration, and rooted in confusions of definitions and traps of awesome. Incarna will not make EVE cool again. It is simply the wrong angle there. EVE is not cool. It is what we do in EVE that is cool or cruel and what makes it epic. Not static or fixed ideas of brief awesome based on lapses in vision and a growing track record of being in trenches throwing stone tablets around.

In simple terms, CCP’s CEO once said that EVE is not a game. It is a life, a dynamic, an emerging nation. And it is. This is why people identify with it, and make things happen. And even regardless of Tuchman’s Law in regards to visibility and perception of events, this IS what grew EVE to being so succesful. But, there is a growing visibility of detachment and segregation, which sees EVE (product and IP) just not as that, but as a mere game. And thus growing it is as such a case of adding more game, without regard for perception or reality, or even market or behaviour.

As someone who has voted for you in the past 2 CSM elections I have to say that I am disappointed with all of this negative speculation. I very much appreciate the work you and the other current CSM delegates have done to date. Your hard work and diligence has been obvious and valued. However, I fail to see the purpose of this campaign of negative speculation when there is still much to be decided and developed.

I’ll add that while I don’t play EVE to walk around in stations, I look forward to seeing what CCP comes up with. Perhaps some time in the future there will be compelling reasons (and gameplay) for participation in Incarna. After all, as game designers they’ve done pretty well so far.

That’s what I wanted to see – some meat on the bone.

You put your finger on my next question, which is what sort of market research did CCP put into this? They haven’t shown you any, which could mean a number of things: a)Fear of valuable market research data being leaked to the competition b)Fear of ugly, awful market research data that recommends against the enhancements being leaked to the competition and the market or c) Fear of everyone finding out there is no market research data and Incarna was done on a whim.

Viz the 20,000 lost accounts – is that a net loss? I.e., Eve had 50K accounts in February when the 18 month hiatus was announced and now it’s down to 30K? Or are they gross loses, some of which have been recouped via normal marketing. Do you differentiate between a closed account and an inactive account – especially in the case of players who pay with Plex?

Assuming the numbers stand up and there’s correlation, you haven’t shown causation.

For example, how do those lost accounts stand up against the historic ebb and flow of Eve accounts over time? How many were associated with nullsec adjustment to the Dominion sov changes – which would still be in place even without the Incarna effort and is unassociated with “flying in space” fixes? How many lost accounts were associated with folks from Atlas, -A- and their renters emo-quitting after their nullsec space collapsed? How many are associated with the 16% to 20% rise in the cost of Plex since since early Summer?

There are a number of factors external to Incarna that should be eliminated before you can legitimately blame Incarna for the loss of 20K accounts.

Finally, I think you need to make a statement here. And the best way to do that would be to throw CCP’s free CSM game-time back in their face. Refuse to play their dirty little game and show them you can’t be bought – sort of a “rage-quit of the spirit” protest to show them you really mean business. I’ll hold all your stuffs while you’re on the picket line 😉

Solidarity, Sister

@Virt

I’d like to see the day when a hybrid of Dust 514 and Incarna allows for on-station combat as a component of Sov wars. And imagine Mynxee and TeaDaze leading a boarding party of jolly tars (cutlasses – they have to allow cutlasses) aboard your station and making off with your loots.

Guess we have to wait for Walking in Ships for that to be a possibility 😉 I’ll be dead by then.

I wonder if all the speculation regarding CCP “forcing” us to participate in Incarna is really necessary. After all, individual players are not forced to use Planetary Interaction or Wormholes. Yes CCP has devoted a very large amount of resources and time to Incarna, and they will certainly have more invested in its success than most other recent features. However, the rallying cry of “they are going to force us to do something we don’t want to do” at this early stage seems premature. However, if CCP are directly telling the CSM that players will have to do A, B and C in order to function in-game, then that is a different story.

I personally was not happy (like everyone else) to learn there wasn’t a brilliant grand master plan for Incarna. But on the other hand, with such a relative blank canvas (and the technology in place) it also opens up a multitude of very cool possibilities for future development. It may not all be about spaceships, but if CCP’s intended goal is to make New Eden your one stop shopping destination for all your sci fi gaming needs, than surely full body avatars are necessary at some point?

In the long haul CCP will continue to be successful if they are able to balance the desires of the current player base while also attracting new players with new innovative gameplay. Recent evidence seems to be that CCP is listening to you guys (the CSM) more and more. Ideally this active representation of the current player base will complement CCPs efforts to develop gameplay that attracts more subscribers.

While I agree with the need to guard against the encroachment of the monetization of New Eden, if the game doesn’t continue to evolve and grow, in gameplay, technology, and player base, it will die. Just adding vanity or theme park items, or conversely maintaining a rigid status quo of current gameplay (mechanic fixes notwithstanding), are equally likely to kill the game. It doesn’t need to be as black & white as Sandbox vs. Theme Park. Hopefully CCP will realise this.

It is disquieting to hear that CCP apparently have no use for their own technology. My only concern for the new content is: what is it for? How is it going to help me make isk? The new character creator looks very nice and the models are fabulous. There is no need to scorn that effort. It’s a great effort.

Walking in stations, to me, would be useful when it comes to having an address in space. You exist in the universe, everybody has a place they call home. So, as a pilot, you would want to have a home somewhere in space. The lore is that the pod pilot is the elite of society. Their dwelling should reflect that. It should not be a sterile, merely functional space, it should be a place where you actually live. Having a house in space is not a big idea to sell. It’s something that everybody can relate to, it’s not a hard sell. Owning the home would also come with an upkeep cost, any system could be created to make it a believable idea that you’d have to get out into space and find a way to keep the house. It would be a great ISK sink.

You would want furniture. So, you have the ability to design your own. You have the ability to make your own. Planetary interaction would provide building materials. Ships would be required to transport that production. They would be subject to the same perils as other ships. A market could bloom where new products could be bought and sold. As in the fiction called ‘the real world’, the means should be available to create emerging markets, with its own products and services and to use that as a factor in the game. All based on the sandbox. It could be successful, it could be a tragedy.

I’m disheartened to learn that CCP do not appear to have any useful idea about how to leverage a concept as ‘walking in stations’ to deliver a compelling experience. _Why_ do I want to walk in stations? Because CCP has had an idea for the longest time but they could never give an answer to the question of why the customer would want that product? Are they smart enough to think of something like that and then not deploy it when it turns out that there’s really not much to do? Some people will want to run a bar, some people will want to hang out there. Some people will want to run a shop and some people will want to buy there. Some people will play the mini games, but it seems contrived, it’s not something that will draw the large crowd. It does not matter that they still have 4 months. Features like that in an environment like that can’t be banged out in 4 months. There has to be a production cycle, a means to look at the feasibility of ideas and their implementation. 4 months is nothing.

If it is true that CCP lost 20k accounts due to the infamous ’18 months’ remark, that’s a tragedy. Why would anyone risk losing existing customers on the off-chance that new customers will be found with the new content? When did that start to make sense? That idea should have been communicated a great deal better.

It seems as if CCP has lost the way of EVE. It became bigger than they could conceive a use for it. The irony is that in an entire universe they can’t seem to find enough to do to keep people wanting to come back.

CCP needs to give me a job. I’ll show them the way.

And just like that, I found the solution.

“My main issue is with the idea of adding stuff that happens only within Incarna that will directly impact on Eve proper (Flying in Space) which seems to be the way CCP are going instead.”

If the content was part of the new experience it would require that it impacts the flying-in-space part. It should tie into that experience. Sitting in a bar/shop all the time is not going to be a compelling experience. How many bars would you have? You’ll have a bunch of them in Jita, where 2000 people are going to horse around, but not much of anything else. You might do something like that in places like Dodixie and Amarr Prime… And then what?

I can see that CCP wants to attract new customers but they can’t have it both ways. EVE is a dark place. I absolutely adore that part of it but with that comes a cost: it’s not world of warcraft namby pamby land where there’s no real consequence to losing the battle [other than paying for repairs]. That is severely going to restrict the kind of person who wants to be in that universe. It’s not for everyone. No change to the game will make it more appealing to the masses of players that WoW has unless it radically alters the nature of the game. And when you do that you kill EVE.

I don’t want EVE’s character to change. She’s a cold, callous mistress and she’ll break your heart without blinking [I have actually witnessed that happening]. So, for me any new content has to be a new building block to further solidify the total awesome that is EVE [warts and all]. That means it will never, it -can never- appeal to the casual gamer who’s just logging on for some spare time lolligagging. The kind of person who is outraged at the loss of a ship worth 50 million isk. I’ve seen them rage in local (and it’s not going to help when they then get sneered at for yammering over losing a run-of-the-mill battlecruiser). That’s not a customer who sticks around. You have to want it bad enough.

I want to be a part of it because it’s a great experience. I’ve been pleased with every expansion [minus the lag adding ones…] and I want to be pleased with Incarna. I don’t want CCP to fail. If they fail my life in EVE takes a turn for the worse. I don’t want that. For that reason alone I’m disheartened to learn that CCP seems to have no use for its own content.

“Guys, I know what we’re going to do: we’re going to walk in stations! Everybody gets a full-body avatar, which will look GREAT, and you’ll be able to meet people at the space bar!”

“Dude, radical! We’re so doing that! So, tell me, what are people going to do when they’re walking in stations?”

“I’m working on some things. I don’t have a really good idea about that right now, but we should make that happen.”

“Yeah, dude, totally!”

It turns out: they really don’t have any compelling reason to do it. This is not a good sign.

Say that CCP introduces inside-station missions, using Incarna as a type of third-person shooter arrangement (even without combat, courier, evasion and wheres-wally missions are still possible).

Your standings directly impact Eve proper, but I doubt anyone would lolragequit over it. In fact, people bottled up in stations due to wardecs would likely jump at the chance to do something instead of spinning in stations.

As far as I understand it, the Incarna engine (separate technology from the existing Flying In Space) has been developed for the World of Darkness MMO, also due out in 2011. Though I can’t find a direct quote, it has been mentioned that Incarna itself is more or less a technology demonstrator and testbed for the graphics engine.

I’m more worried about the parlous state of EVE Voice than whether Incarna is worthwhile, in short.

Incarna shouldn’t take away anything (or at least not anything major) from space-mechanics. But it should entwine vitally with in-space mechanics, there should be things that you, as an EVE player want to do in station to benefit you in space – be it infrastructure, tactical advantages, access to a resource that will become key over time in battles and/or industry.
If Incarna-EVE and space-EVE are two mostly seperate environments, one will die slowly in irrelevance. As a space pilot, dancing in bars sounds terribly boring, so I need to have a reason to want to come into stations to do things I cannot do anywhere else.
I agree they can’t and shouldn’t nerf space (much) to do this, it should be something new, but it should be significant, and it should not be possible to pretend the whole expansion doesn’t exist, any more than someone can now pretend mining doesn’t exist (you don’t have to mine, but you know that someone else does, and you depend on that), any more than an industrial character can pretend PvP doesn’t exist (If people weren’t getting blown up, they’d be mostly out of work)
EVE is a weave of interconnected dependancies, and any new part of the game has to fit into that framework, not be a thing akwardly glued onto the side.

Urgh…typo: “Incarna ‘shouldn’t’ take away anything, blah blah blah.
I wonder how much ISK it would cost to hire a proofreader for my brain.

(Tea edit, I changed that line in the original comment to match this comment)

Myxnee – perhaps someone should be setting up an ‘Ideas for Incarna’, so you have a list of good ideas before they screw it up. They’re clearly open to suggestion.

Agreed. I think that CCP only has one real shot at expanding their user base to the sort of players that desire incarna, and they stand a real chance of screwing it up if they release without a critical mass of things to do for your 15 euro.

I think WIS has the potential to be a great add-on to EVE *if* CCP will use it to expand the possibilities of the in-space game. The four immediate things that I think could be fun to put into Incarna that would expand the in-space game are:

* the “arena” that players have called for. Make it an “arcade game” kind of “console” in the WIS portion of the game. Two (or three, or four) players “sit down” at this console and are provided with identically skilled, identically fitted Rifters (or Ruptures, or Hurricanes) and can fight it out, with they and other players betting on the outcome.

* a mini-game that allows players to steal BPCs, BPOs, or items from the corp that owns the station, with the possibility for a) complete success (you get the goods, you’re not caught), b) partial success (you get the goods, but you have to flee: you get undocked from the station in your most recently active ship and lose standing with the corp in question), or c) total failure (you get nothing, you get undocked, you lose standing, and the station guns immediately start shooting at you). Chances of success based on a new thieving skill (or maybe even the existing Hacking skill) and the value of what you try to steal.

* embrace the EVE meta-game, and include a hacking mini-game that can give you access to member lists, mail, or possibly even the corp hangar of player corps that keep an office at that station.

* provide a doctor that can give you “safe” boosters, remove the adverse effects of existing boosters, and possibly even remove active implants intact (with a chance of failure), all for fees, of course. And expand the thieving/hacking mini-game to include this doctor’s goods.

I put all of these (and a few more) into a thread on SHC, but to say that there hasn’t been much serious discussion is over-stating the case.

The Arena/console idea is not about risk-free PvP. Every arcade has a coin slot. If you want to fly Rifters in the Arena/console, you pay for a Rifter before you sit at the console. If you lose, the other player gets your buy-in. The idea is about player skill-against-skill alone, without fittings, money, SPs, or other players getting in the way. TQ does not offer this. SiSi does not offer this.

Defending against hacking: then make it defensible. If you get a successful hack on a corp’s e-mail, there’s a 24 hour timer with a notification to the corp’s security officers, who then have to do a successful counter-hack to prevent the hack. If they don’t successfully defend, you get the goods.

Risk-free boosters: but we have this today, for repairs. You can either get a instant, risk-free repair at a station, or you carry paste. Paste offers the opportunity for you to be jumped while a key mod is being repaired or is already damaged from previous overheating. Are you also against risk-free repairs? 😉 The risk-free booster would be more expensive and would have the same duration as a normal booster, so wouldn’t be all that useful for roams, but would be quite useful for home defense. You’d still carry the current booster for roams.

I dislike the idea of Incarna being totally inwardly-driven with no connection to the in-space game. That’s what crafting, housing, and poker have in common. If that’s all you’re going to do, Incarna may as well be a completely separate game. I’m not against these ideas; some of them are in the SHC thread I created. I even suggested an in-game EVE CCG with player-buyable/-sellable cards. But these internally-directed games shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of Incarna. There should be a balance where using Incarna can also give you benefits outside station, but still is not required to be successful outside station.

@Shandir said “EVE is a weave of interconnected dependancies, and any new part of the game has to fit into that framework, not be a thing akwardly glued onto the side.” Truer words were never spoken. If CCP fails to make Incarna truly relevant to EVE, then it will fail. There is an Incarna ideas in our CSM internal forums that has been completely ignored by both Noah and Torfi, despite several posts of ideas and discussion there among CSM members AND a direct request that those two participate. Finally CCP Fear who is assigned to Incarna showed up and participated some but the conversation seems to have died out after he asked for ideas but didn’t really bounce around the balls we already tossed his way.

@Jester: I have advocated many of the same ideas you mention and I like the way you think.