EVE Ambulation: Now 1000% More Popular

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

For several excellent reasons, there will not be combat in EVE Online’s Ambulation, nor will it replace any functions currently available through the standard user interface. In fact, as a utility the value of Ambulation, or “walking in stations,” is practically nil. It is a social space, a feature that in EVE’s world, comprised mainly of people concerned only with utility and number manipulation, seems out of place.

How, then, is CCP to attract the hardcore players to the newly ambulable stations and ships? How else?

With exotic dancers.

Update:

CCP has formed an idea of how we want Ambulation to look and feel like, DoA type of women don’t meet that vision. Demoting me and promoting someone else won’t change anything with that vision because we all have to stick to it.

It’s also short sighted to think that because I’m a woman I have something against curvy women who are hot, but DoA stereotypes don’t belong in a hyper realistic and dark universe, just like the hello kitty kestrel looks awesome but doesn’t fit EVE.

I think personalities like Aria or Dita von Teese could make realistic characters in Ambulation with the Ambulation clothing styles being developed now.

Eye candy isn’t about tiny bikini’s and impossible unrealistic human figures, it can also be about class, restraint, sophistication, plenty of curves and no curves. A black and white picture that almost shows a bit of flesh is often more interesting than a real X rated picture.

That was CCP Eris’s serious reply to a rather tongue-in-cheek thread. It likely represents a clarification rather than a contradiction of the first statement, as both were offered by the same person.

[Reg]

In the good old days this would be Lietgardis' cue for an impassioned rant on sexism in games. But she's a red name now and no fun at all.

[mutantmagnet]

At this point I'm less concerned about the sexism displayed through the objectification of women and more focused on the sexism towards us that we have to have be peddled pixalated porn to gain our approval

Was that a serious response by a CCP rep? I'm too tired right now to make sense of it.

[Reg]

I wouldn't be surprised if it really was serious. CCP has some of the worst community managers around.

[Ratman_tf]

Adding more social aspects to Eve might open it's appeal to other types of gamers. (I'm talking about the kind with boobies.)
I was just looking up some stuff on Eve tonight, and according to that bastion of reliability, Wiki, Eve is a total sausage-fest at 95% dudes.

I don't think they'll ever be able to break down the huge barrier that Eve is a pretty cold, remote experience. Spaceships and spreadsheets, and all that.

[Predator Irl]

Adding more social aspects to Eve might open it's appeal to other types of gamers. (I'm talking about the kind with boobies.)
I was just looking up some stuff on Eve tonight, and according to that bastion of reliability, Wiki, Eve is a total sausage-fest at 95% dudes.

I don't think they'll ever be able to break down the huge barrier that Eve is a pretty cold, remote experience. Spaceships and spreadsheets, and all that.

But isn't the cold, remote atmosphere of Eve what makes it what it is, and to a large extent what draws us to the game? I whole heartedly agree to save the busty bikini pixels for DOA and the likes, I for one don't want this kinda of shit in Eve. I mean what next, a fly-thru McDonalds in Jita? I do like the idea of a walk around, social area of a station etc. but I do hope they keep the cold, tense and solitary feel of the game.

I don't think it matters if Eve is a sausage-fest and adding a walk-around social area isn't going to change anything, the fact is that we all like to fly around virtual space in our virtual spaceships. For some reason this appeals more to guys than girls and there isn't much they can do to change this.   

[Ratman_tf]

Yep. I imagine this is why ambulation is pretty low on CCP's "to do" list.

I was thinking on game appeal to female gamers last night, and that thought probably influenced my post there. I do find it striking that a lot of the female gamers I know are into PvP, but aren't necessarily into games like Eve.

[schild]

I can't think of any reasons at all a girl wouldn't be into eve.

[ajax34i]

Actually, I would imagine that Ambulation is pretty high on CCP's to do list.   They implement avatars, we bug-test them on the live server for free, and voila, a major component of the upcoming Vampire MMO is done and tested.

[Ratman_tf]

I can't think of any reasons at all a girl wouldn't be into eve.

No... seriously man... Like, chicks are all about socailization and shit. So, like, Eve is about spaceships and not people. So, y'know, avatars. Barbie dress up?

Shit, it makes sense in my head. 

[schild]

Oh I get what you're saying. But even with barbie dressup, I imagine most girls would rather drive a fork into their eye than play Eve.

[Predator Irl]

Oh I get what you're saying. But even with barbie dressup, I imagine most girls would rather drive a fork into their eye than play Eve.

Yeah Im with you 100% on this one.

[TripleDES]

Ambulation still requires money to be used. For clothes, housing (if there'll be that), their ingame casinos (that are supposedly coming), and so on. Girls would either have to beg for money (likely quite successfully) or go out and play the rest of the game.

[Phildo]

For the record, I am completely against ambulation.  It's just another thing that will be poorly integrated into the client and cause a boatload of lag whenever we dock.  It will also be a hotbed of RP sexual interactions and as we've already acknowledged... 95% dudes.  I bet WALL OF TEXT couldn't be happier.

[apocrypha]

For the record, I am completely against ambulation.  It's just another thing that will be poorly integrated into the client and cause a boatload of lag whenever we dock.  It will also be a hotbed of RP sexual interactions and as we've already acknowledged... 95% dudes.  I bet WALL OF TEXT couldn't be happier.

^^ This, 100%.

But ambulation isn't really about EVE is it? It's just dry-run/technology tester for CCP's next game, which I've forgotten the name of. World of Darkness or something? The one they bought White Wolf to do.

[eldaec]

For the record, I am completely against ambulation.  It's just another thing that will be poorly integrated into the client and cause a boatload of lag whenever we dock.  It will also be a hotbed of RP sexual interactions and as we've already acknowledged... 95% dudes.  I bet WALL OF TEXT couldn't be happier.

What he said.

Plus it is not as if there aren't 1001 more critical things for CCP to be concentrating on.

[kildorn]

Aside from the "beta testing shit for our next game" angle, whose bright idea was it to take a game where you try and spend as much time out of stations as possible actually playing Internet Spaceships and sink more time into the in station experience.

The station is a place to sort loot/make shit, and look at your pretty new bullet magnet.

[lac]

You are all wrong and it will be awesome.

[Mrbloodworth]

For the record, I am completely against ambulation.  It's just another thing that will be poorly integrated into the client and cause a boatload of lag whenever we dock.  It will also be a hotbed of RP sexual interactions and as we've already acknowledged... 95% dudes.  I bet WALL OF TEXT couldn't be happier.

I don't think it will do anything if you don't get out of your ship. Its not like the inside of the stations are really inside, or like when you dock, you are also not seeing a client side only shot of your ship and hanger.

[Ingmar]

Oh I get what you're saying. But even with barbie dressup, I imagine most girls people would rather drive a fork into their eye than play Eve.

My alteration in red. That would be my take on it, anyway. Eve, even with 200k subs or whatever it has, is still a niche product in terms of who it appeals to. Adding pointless Auto Assault style walkaround areas isn't really going to change that.

EDIT: Meh, I followed this link in from another spot and didn't realize it was on the Eve-specific forum, not really the place to start a discussion of where I was going with it probably.

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

For the record, I am completely against ambulation.  It's just another thing that will be poorly integrated into the client and cause a boatload of lag whenever we dock.

False. The Ambulation server architecture is totally separate from that of the main world (including the "docked" screen). Lag in an Ambulation environment will not cause lag in the system attached to it, and vice versa.

Eve, even with 200k subs or whatever it has...

236,510 subs at the end of Q1 2008 with constant, significant growth and 45k peak concurrency. But who's counting?

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

wut? double quote post? deleted.

[eldaec]

False. The Ambulation server architecture is totally separate from that of the main world (including the "docked" screen). Lag in an Ambulation environment will not cause lag in the system attached to it, and vice versa.

Missing the point.

Lag will be caused by redirecting management attention and coding time off of fixing the real game to implement fripperies.

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

False. The Ambulation server architecture is totally separate from that of the main world (including the "docked" screen). Lag in an Ambulation environment will not cause lag in the system attached to it, and vice versa.

Missing the point.

Lag will be caused by redirecting management attention and coding time off of fixing the real game to implement fripperies.

How does that have anything to do with increasing latency when you dock?

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

why am I double posting quoting myself?

Ah crap, hitting the wrong button.

[Goumindong]

False. The Ambulation server architecture is totally separate from that of the main world (including the "docked" screen). Lag in an Ambulation environment will not cause lag in the system attached to it, and vice versa.

Missing the point.

Lag will be caused by redirecting management attention and coding time off of fixing the real game to implement fripperies.

No it will not. Not only are there realistic limits to the resources that you can direct at a problem when coding(a good analogy would be to ask people to write a novel, it takes the longest with one person, but you get the most consistent results. As you start adding people the novel might be completed a bit faster, but its not as consistent. As you continue to add people you lose more time in making it consistent and than you gain by adding people.)

Furthermore, if ambulation was not being made for eve, it would have zero effect on whether or not they would be working on it, since they have a contract to develop a MMO for/with white wolf and since white wolf does not have any intellectual property even vaguely relating to the world of Eve they need to, at the very least, create a system for dealing with it. And since Eve is now a jumbled mess due to the fact its like a novel some 1000 people wrote, they are better off doing it from scratch.

That means that there is no loss in terms of resources allocated to ambluation

[Phildo]

But there WILL be a strain on system resources.  Eve voice is supposed to be on a different server, and that stacks more lag on you.  When you go to ambulate, does it kick you from the main server completely?  Probably not.

[TripleDES]

Voice is an additional system while ambulation is a replacing system (space vs. walk).

[eldaec]

there realistic limits to the resources that you can direct at a problem

Yeah, very nice. If you seriously think CCP are near that limit on any project given the limits of their income....    well, you'd be wrong.

[Phred]

there realistic limits to the resources that you can direct at a problem

Yeah, very nice. If you seriously think CCP are near that limit on any project given the limits of their income....    well, you'd be wrong.

Not to mention bug fixing works a bit different than development.

[Jayce]

If we're talking new dev, I'd prefer to see a decent UI for the existing functionality rather than new functionality, probably complete with a b0rked UI.

[Sparky]

Eve development has always been a bunch of pie in the sky shit that gets talked up, cut to hell then comes out years later more or less OK.  I think they were hyping gas clouds along with comet mining and system wide asteroid belts around release.  Ambulation is just strange however unless you see it a testbed for their crappy Vampire MMO.  Now planetary combat on the other hand would be awesome (there's a very pretty demo of that floating around somewhere on YouTube).

Still Space Casinos will be fun.

[dwindlehop]

I was initially in the "omg ambulation is complete crap camp." The more I thought about it, though, I decided that the marginal programming effort to get Ambulation into Eve is not much considering they're already making the engine for WoD. Plus, it gives a foundation for planetary combat. 

[schild]

Hey, cowboy, why are you claiming your own blog as the original source? Please, we aren't your personal reader list. Removed.

[Phildo]

I don't really want to see how shitty my avatar looks in 3d either.  Samson Savage is one ugly bastard.