CSM Elections Have Begun

[Simond]

No PvP in Incarna.

... in the short term.

In the longer term they're planning to make the complete sci fi experience where you can do anything.

Haha.
Ahahahahahahahahahaha!

Hah.


Yes, and Tyrannis was supposed to be the first step in an iterative improvement of 0.0, and faction warfare was just the core framework, and PI is the bare bones and and and.

It will go live, it will be buggy, it will have nothing to do in it, and no further development will take place of it because CCP will be chasing the next new shinee~

[calapine]

What the CCP devs are missing with Incarna is that the people who say they don’t like Eve because they don’t feel like a person aren’t asking for an add on to the game where they can walk around. They’re saying they don’t like the basic content of the game. It’s a way of summing up all of what Eve is about: Internet Spaceships.]What the CCP devs are missing with Incarna is that the people who say they don’t like Eve because they don’t feel like a person aren’t asking for an add on to the game where they can walk around. They’re saying they don’t like the basic content of the game. It’s a way of summing up all of what Eve is about: Internet Spaceships.

Okies, two things...

A) You forget people like me, who play EvE because they are burned out by WoW (and the Diku ding-grats epic carrot hamster wheel of Sisyphus). Eve is quite addicting, but if there was a well made UO 2 (or 3) I would be playing that right now. I am looking forward to Incarna and it's outlook is one the things that keep me interested.

B) You paint it as a black and white issue. It's true that eve will always be for a niche audience. It's growth potential is limited by it's geeky nature. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people out there who like spaceships, but are scared away by its 'Excel in space' nature. Anything that makes eve more accessible wont turn it into WoW, but WILL let grow beyond it current boundaries.

The last thing eve needs is to stagnate and turn into a pool of jaded 'play since beta, own 15 accounts, didn't have fun since Quantum Rise, but still hang around bitching' vets.

Cala

[Sir T]

The last thing eve needs is to stagnate and turn into a pool of jaded 'play since beta, own 15 accounts, didn't have fun since Quantum Rise, but still hang around bitching' vets.

Cala

That's largely what Eve is.

Good points otherwise.

[Phildo]

No it isn't, that's only in certain 0.0 alliances.

[Kageru]

Even if you think Incarna is a good idea the development priorities are still suspect. 70 developers on something that is either a cosmetic bag on the side or a new game bolted on doesn't justify letting their cash-cow game go into maintenance mode. I've still not seen anything to suggest Incarna contains substantial game play. And anyone attracted by avatars is still going to have to wander into the core gameplay which needs some help (especially on giving new players a progression).

But I think the real problem is perceived focus. If CCP had a small team looking at game mechanic issues, identifying problems and planning fixes it would improve the outlook a lot. It would make the people with a massive investment in Eve believe the company is committed to the game and at least aware there is more work to be done. The actual number of people to trickle out some fixes would not have to be all that large either to generate a lot of visibility.

This is especially important in Eve which is pretty much a bunch of game mechanics and a big sandbox.

(can't help but remember Fallen Earth social spaces. Really nicely programmed (you could look over the shoulder of people playing the mini-games) and absolutely pointless in terms of adding gameplay value)

[MahrinSkel]

The fact remains that a critical element of the game, the epic strategic and tactical gameplay that made up for the "excel simulator" boredom of the overall game, hit a high point two years ago, has since taken several major steps backwards, and CCP has made it clear that they're okay with that.  There's not going to be any more 1500+ ship battles, no more grand wars involving tens of thousands.  There's going to be something that really should have been a new game in itself, bolted on as a technology demonstrator for games that will be completely different.

In the long run, maybe it will prove to be a brilliant strategy.  But the history of one-game companies that let their revenue generator slip onto the back burner for years while they bet the farm on radically different games is...not good.

--Dave

[Endie]

Once battles got over the 1500-ship level, even before Dominion, it was always getting dodgy.  Which is probably pretty acceptable to be honest: 1500 people is an awful lot.

I don't know why the technically capable people in this thread are complaining so much about there being ten times as many people working on the Incarna sprint as what I think is largely the "fix lag" one.  More people need to read The Mythical Man Month.

I wouldn't be susprised if only 2 or 3 developers, with some testing resource, were actually working on fixing lag.  Quite right, too.  Throwing an extra 20 people at it would not help matters or make it get fixed faster.  They don't need a whole new engine, after all, for this: just to find what went wrong with a specific release.  I'm more interested in why it is proving so difficult given the limited problem space they are dealing with: how good are the profiling tools for python?

[tgr]

One of the reasons it's probably proving so difficult is that it's probably a timing/locking issue, which can be surprisingly hard to pin down, especially if you don't really know when it happens.

My impression is so far that they've only been testing while 200-400 (or whatever) people are in one system, and 200-400 in the other system jumping in, and not from one physical node to another. This would explain why we've been able to jump into some camps without much of an issue (like the one where IT had anchored 50 or so warp disruption bubbles in a donut shape around the gate), while others die while jumping in 20 into an empty system.

Properly technical people know that once you get past a certain point, adding more people just makes everything crawl to a halt, and I for one am not clamoring for them to increase the manpower on this problem. All I'm clamoring for is that this be fixed, or failing that, that they tell us what they're doing (apart from just saying "oh we're fixing memory leaks and object allocations and running sisi tests!" and "eve is currently in the best technical shape it's ever been"). I've no idea what their theories are, what they've tried, what they haven't tried etc, or even which theories I might have which they haven't thought of. It's just frustrating, and the way they keep avoiding the topic whenever people push them into talking about it makes it doubly frustrating.

So for me, it's a waiting game at the moment. I've mostly given up bitching about it.

[Kageru]

I think the lag is mostly complained about because it's a regression, but at least it is being worked on.

But things like treaties, bad UI placement and some of the balance issues being brought up look like relatively fixable elements. They're well known, in some cases even CCP acknowledged, and don't require huge teams or deep technical voodoo to fix... just the motivation and a game designer. But maybe that's the problem, the technical challenge of building an "AI fleet" motivates them whereas they need someone who is looking purely at the gameplay experience. But then, would a person like that be able to look at Eve without screaming?

Ultimately though that will be the failure of Incarna. Telling a new player "look at these sexy screenshots... and once you have go play the game which has *nothing* in common with them".

[Stabs]

Regarding lag fixes this was explained in some detail in the CSM Meeting Minutes.

[tgr]

And literally none of those fixes are server-side, and has nothing to do with the "lag monster". They were probably welcome fixes in the end, but about the only thing I think I ever saw of these were the client crashing when it hit the 2GB memory mark. The only thing I see which I can foresee having anything to do with fixing the problem is possibly:

• Dynamic and transparent moves of fleet fight solar systems between nodes
• More throttling client-side
• Proxy-authoritative state propagation
• Major work being planned on our networking and session management infrastructure

but then again they've also said that we were going to get a treaty system with dominion, so you'll have to excuse me for not holding my breath while waiting.

[Numtini]

I've been reading all sorts of stuff about the possibilities of Incarna. People who never leave station and command vast empires without actually engaging in ship to ship warfare. Barons of industry who turn the wheels of production.

And I realized I've read this all before: Incarna is Second Life for Eve.

[Comstar]

And I realized I've read this all before: Incarna is Second Life for Eve.

From what I've read, the parallels are with Star Wars Galaxies: The New Game Experience. Although instead of replacing the current system, then are spending 2 years not working on the current one.

[Sir T]

What it reminds me of is a FTP MMO called Space Cowboy ( now called Air Rivals / Ace online) Where you landed your ship in the city and your silly looking anime avatar ran around this big room trying to find the shops to upgrade your ship. It offered nothing to the gameplay really, and actually increased the time you were not in your ship shooting butterflies and space wasps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-VqH-yHg2g You start seeing ambulation around 1:20

Yeah looks real vital to gameplay.

Bonus hot chick advertising gimmick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcj7CaUEMds

[Kageru]

I've been reading all sorts of stuff about the possibilities of Incarna. People who never leave station and command vast empires without actually engaging in ship to ship warfare. Barons of industry who turn the wheels of production.

don't people already do this? Staring at a spreadsheet isn't going to become more exciting because your avatar has to walk up to the market terminal.

[tgr]

One of the things with incarna is that you do get a better idea of the looks (...ingame) of a person so you recognize them easier if you meet them while walking around as well, so I'm looking forward to this a bit. Not as much as I did 2-3 years ago, though.

As for the minigames, I'm kind of meh. Tons of goons apparently played WoT while we were chewing through probably umpteen billion EHP to take over DKUK. There's no real need for it for us 0.0 people, and I see it as merely fluff so far. The only exception would probably be if they did do a proper warroom where you could see (or update) where your forces and resources were etc, and which targets to hit next, I wouldn't mind that too much actually.

[Kageru]

It's nice... but 70 people could be adding a lot of fully fleshed new gameplay mechanics rather than something that is perceived as being "fluff".

Though I've no doubt the truth of the matter is that it's a good testbed for the code they'll be using in their avatar-centric games. That and the idea that they are developing this technology primarily for Eve might keep the subscribers, who are actually paying for it, happier.

[Numtini]

The only exception would probably be if they did do a proper warroom where you could see (or update) where your forces and resources were etc, and which targets to hit next, I wouldn't mind that too much actually.

I can think of a lot of stuff like this, but they shouldn't really be part of Incarna, they should be part of Evegate.

The potential there is huge, but I want to sit in my real office and have access to things on my real computer, not sit in a virtual office and type on a virtual computer.

[tgr]

Well true, but if it would keep track of your POSes, how much fuel/stront/modules they have, and you could have covops pilots also log in and add to the information of enemy sightings/POSes/etc in real time during ops, then we wouldn't need the POS pages, you could just refer to the war room or similar.

But mainly this would indeed be mostly fluff, until they start thinking of things like the treaties etc, which I'm sure most of the 0.0 population would rather have.

[Goumindong]

I can think of a lot of stuff like this, but they shouldn't really be part of Incarna, they should be part of Evegate.

The potential there is huge, but I want to sit in my real office and have access to things on my real computer, not sit in a virtual office and type on a virtual computer.

Also it should be a part of the in-game map so that the in game map has actual functionality as a fucking navigation mechanic.

[Simond]

It won't, though, because we're not getting any real new content or significant bug fixes for at least a couple of years. So there's not much point theorycrafting improvements or suggesting changes, because we're not getting any real new content or significant bug fixes for at least a couple of years. 0.0 is going to remain stagnant and faction warfare basically dead because we're not getting any real new content or significant bug fixes for at least a couple of years.

(There's a theme there. Did you spot it?  )

Seriously, has any other MMO developer ever done anything like this before for a game that wasn't obviously one of the undead? I'm pretty sure even UO & EQ still get patches and even expansions from time to time. Flat out stating "Nope, not doing a damned thing to our game for a couple of years" for a game which was, until very recently, gaining subscribers seems like an utterly insane thing for any developer/publisher to do. Even if said team is mostly made up of mad vikings that eat rotten shark.

[Numtini]

AFAIK it's still growing, didn't they just have a new all time concurrent high recently?

The big thing is whether or not you view Incarna as having anything to do with Eve. For the people who are weaving fantasies about it, there's a big new expansion on the way. For people who are a bit more jaded, it's nothing more than putting the game on maintenance and working on a new game.

[MahrinSkel]

Once battles got over the 1500-ship level, even before Dominion, it was always getting dodgy.  Which is probably pretty acceptable to be honest: 1500 people is an awful lot.

I don't know why the technically capable people in this thread are complaining so much about there being ten times as many people working on the Incarna sprint as what I think is largely the "fix lag" one.  More people need to read The Mythical Man Month.

I wouldn't be susprised if only 2 or 3 developers, with some testing resource, were actually working on fixing lag.  Quite right, too.  Throwing an extra 20 people at it would not help matters or make it get fixed faster.  They don't need a whole new engine, after all, for this: just to find what went wrong with a specific release.  I'm more interested in why it is proving so difficult given the limited problem space they are dealing with: how good are the profiling tools for python?

The problem is that they had lag pretty well whipped, but it looks like the Dominion code was built on a fork from before those fixes and they rolled them all back out rather than delay Dominion to incorporate them.  And Incarna will be the same things in spades, whatever those 4-5 people working lag come up with, most of it will get ripped back out rather than delay it.

CCP is focused on new projects, and is burying their tech platform development inside the budget for Eve.  It's not a new pattern, and it hasn't had many happy endings for the companies that have gone down the same road.  And *none* for the players of the games on the host side of the parasitic development relationship.  We've been here many times before, it's time to accept that Eve's design has peaked, and figure out how much fun it still has left for you on the assumption that all future development will be irrelevant or detrimental to your playing experience.

--Dave

[tgr]

AFAIK it's still growing, didn't they just have a new all time concurrent high recently?

That peak was in relation to the tourney I believe, which doesn't really count.

[Stabs]

Incarna it seems to me is the work of a very shrewd game management who would like to find 300 000 guinea pigs to test a new avatar-based gameplay engine. Once we've QAed all the bugs for them and agreed it looks good they'll stick on the fangs, dim the lights, and release what we thought of as Incarna as World of Darkness to a million cheering Twilight fans.

Hats off to them for business sense if that really is what they're doing.

[calapine]

Incarna it seems to me is the work of a very shrewd game management who would like to find 300 000 guinea pigs to test a new avatar-based gameplay engine. Once we've QAed all the bugs for them and agreed it looks good they'll stick on the fangs, dim the lights, and release what we thought of as Incarna as World of Darkness to a million cheering Twilight fans.

Hats off to them for business sense if that really is what they're doing.

Now you guys are over-thinking this. My take on this all is that to CCP first Incarna was a really cool idea, and DUST 514 too, and then suddenly those cool projects started sucking up more and more resources and still take longer than expected. And we should have started hiring a lot more people a lot earlier. And this Lag thing wasn't supposed to happen either. But now we are committed with everything and can't stop or the tide will catch us.

Cala

[ajax34i]

Incarna it seems to me is the work of a very shrewd game management who would like to find 300 000 guinea pigs to test a new avatar-based gameplay engine. Once we've QAed all the bugs for them and agreed it looks good they'll stick on the fangs, dim the lights, and release what we thought of as Incarna as World of Darkness to a million cheering Twilight fans.

Hats off to them for business sense if that really is what they're doing.

ROFL, the EVE Playerbase is exactly the wrong set of guinea pigs to do this with.  We don't sit and QA bugs; look at how Sisi is used.  Look at the Sphere thing and the sophistication of the bots/macros, and at the myriad ways in which we meta-game and exploit the game mechanics.  If CCP's relying on us for the polish for their next avatar game, they're screwed. 

[Sparky]

Incarna it seems to me is the work of a very shrewd game management who would like to find 300 000 guinea pigs to test a new avatar-based gameplay engine. Once we've QAed all the bugs for them and agreed it looks good they'll stick on the fangs, dim the lights, and release what we thought of as Incarna as World of Darkness to a million cheering Twilight fans.

Hats off to them for business sense if that really is what they're doing.

Now you guys are over-thinking this. My take on this all is that to CCP first Incarna was a really cool idea, and DUST 514 too, and then suddenly those cool projects started sucking up more and more resources and still take longer than expected. And we should have started hiring a lot more people a lot earlier. And this Lag thing wasn't supposed to happen either. But now we are committed with everything and can't stop or the tide will catch us.

Cala

When walking in stations was first demoed I vaguely recall CCP reassuring us that it was worthwhile because they were making the engine for WoD anyway and integrating it into Eve would be a relatively simple task.  I could well be mistaken though, it happens a lot.

[Kageru]

I'm sure CCP have been sucked into the tar pit in terms of their new projects taking more time, money and manpower than they planned for. While at the same time being too far advanced that they can easily consider slowing or stopping either of the projects. The only surprise is that they didn't realise saying Eve is effectively on the back-burner for 18 months was going to infuriate their player base.

Additionally when you have an alliance leader saying "Sov war has essentially stalled across EVE" that's something that should have the game designers taking a concerned look at what is going on and being able to get resources if fixes are needed. Even if Sov war doesn't directly account for a majority of the playerbase (the mission runners probably out-number them) it is what provides Eve with consumption of resources, drama and a sense of direction. The fact that another major alliance is simply handing over space because it is too much effort to maintain it should also be ringing alarm bells.

[Stabs]

Incarna it seems to me is the work of a very shrewd game management who would like to find 300 000 guinea pigs to test a new avatar-based gameplay engine. Once we've QAed all the bugs for them and agreed it looks good they'll stick on the fangs, dim the lights, and release what we thought of as Incarna as World of Darkness to a million cheering Twilight fans.

Hats off to them for business sense if that really is what they're doing.

ROFL, the EVE Playerbase is exactly the wrong set of guinea pigs to do this with.  We don't sit and QA bugs; look at how Sisi is used.  Look at the Sphere thing and the sophistication of the bots/macros, and at the myriad ways in which we meta-game and exploit the game mechanics.  If CCP's relying on us for the polish for their next avatar game, they're screwed. 

Is there a better way to QA than to give it to people who meta-game and exploit the game mechanics?

[patience]

I'm sure CCP have been sucked into the tar pit in terms of their new projects taking more time, money and manpower than they planned for. While at the same time being too far advanced that they can easily consider slowing or stopping either of the projects. The only surprise is that they didn't realise saying Eve is effectively on the back-burner for 18 months was going to infuriate their player base.

Additionally when you have an alliance leader saying "Sov war has essentially stalled across EVE" that's something that should have the game designers taking a concerned look at what is going on and being able to get resources if fixes are needed. Even if Sov war doesn't directly account for a majority of the playerbase (the mission runners probably out-number them) it is what provides Eve with consumption of resources, drama and a sense of direction. The fact that another major alliance is simply handing over space because it is too much effort to maintain it should also be ringing alarm bells.

How can they fix something when its working by design. This assessment is just as bad as the post at SHC about CCP turning assault ships into AB interceptors as if they didn't intentionally do this.

People shouldn't insinuate to CCP their game design might not be fun and is ruining appeal when such remarks will just go over their heads just like the reaction of the CSM and subsequently the vets after reading the minutes.

[lac]

When walking in stations was first demoed I vaguely recall CCP reassuring us that it was worthwhile because they were making the engine for WoD anyway and integrating it into Eve would be a relatively simple task.  I could well be mistaken though, it happens a lot.

They did say that, although I don't know about the 'simple task' part.

[ajax34i]

Is there a better way to QA than to give it to people who meta-game and exploit the game mechanics?

Yeah, give it to people who will report the bugs, rather than keep them hidden for profit when live.

[slog]

Am I late to the part with this link?

http://www.massively.com/2010/07/17/new-devblog-reveals-only-54-developers-working-on-eve-online/

The devblog confirms grim fate of issues raised by the CSM, with no teams assigned to cover player-raised game defects. 

So the CSM is little more the a PR stunt?

[Kageru]

The best post from a CSM member was this one from Mynxee (in the threadnaught).

"I asked straight out in the Summit during one particularly frustrating moment, "You can't commit to doing even one single small fix out of all of the issues we've submitted? As a show of goodwill, to demonstrate that CSM can make a difference and to aid in our credibility in that regard?"

The answer was no. Said with nods of sympathy and understanding at our frustration, but still no."

I don't think they had an actual plan to make the CSM an irrelevant stunt. But at the same time they're terribly over-committed and seem pretty insular.