Winter patch 2010

[eldaec]

Winter patch being announced at PAX.

http://www.massively.com/2010/09/04/pax-2010-ccp-unveils-eve-onlines-latest-expansion/

Key features:

- Update to PI - apparently to include rewarding people pushing buttons *even more*. I rather hope something has been lost in translation.

CCP became dissatisfied with the fact that players would set up their colonies and mining operations and then leave them be. So to encourage subscribers to keep tabs on their colonial investments, the game will now encourage players to check on their investments periodically and tweak them

 

- PQs for ratters - they are introducing a system where rats 'invade' space and groups of players have to eventually kill a 'mothership' at the core of the invasion. Expectation being that you need a small fleet to kill the incursion over the course of a week. Sounds a lot like a new type of a complex.

- Some pointless bullshit associated with the spacebook thing.

- A new portrait generator.

[Gets]

Raiding and faction supercarriers? Fuck CCP forever.

[IainC]

There's also a new trailer in which someone takes the loss of their Merlin very hard indeed.

[TripleDES]

Still no Incarna?

[IainC]

Thank fuck there's still no Incarna. Seeing how CCP implemented stuff like PI, the new sovereignty system and Faction Warfare, I can only imagine how painful the control schema would be for moving around outside your ship.

[tgr]

5 clicks for each step, 10 to turn.

[Amarr HM]

This expansion looks even more pointless and mundane than the factional warfare one. It's also highly indicative of the flawed CCP design philosophy, they feel that a feature is broken because there isn't enough for the player to do when in fact the problem is there is too much to do and a feature that could be a one or two step process is a twenty step process. For me the main law of GUI/interface design is that nothing should be more than 1-2 clicks away, CCP obviously don't think this implies to games.

[Phildo]

Are these Incursion things going to be mainly in lowsec, or will we have to deal with them in 0.0 as well?

[TripleDES]

Thank fuck there's still no Incarna. Seeing how CCP implemented stuff like PI, the new sovereignty system and Faction Warfare, I can only imagine how painful the control schema would be for moving around outside your ship.

I don't want to imagine. I want to see and laugh.

[Sparky]

With such an anaemic list of new shiney they'd have gotten infinitely more love just posting "No features this time, we're going to focus on bugs"

[eldaec]

Are these Incursion things going to be mainly in lowsec, or will we have to deal with them in 0.0 as well?

I haven't seen anything definite - but I'd be very surprised if they don't turn up everywhere, and very surprised if they do anything so dramatic that you can't ignore it.

They probably just take over the anomalies, or maybe some belts.

[Sir T]

Winter patch being announced at PAX.

http://www.massively.com/2010/09/04/pax-2010-ccp-unveils-eve-onlines-latest-expansion/

Key features:

- Update to PI - apparently to include rewarding people pushing buttons *even more*. I rather hope something has been lost in translation.

CCP became dissatisfied with the fact that players would set up their colonies and mining operations and then leave them be. So to encourage subscribers to keep tabs on their colonial investments, the game will now encourage players to check on their investments periodically and tweak them

 

Ahh, good old CCP, reverting to type. I remember when you have to fuel towers every 3 days. They seem to have this stupid notion that if you are not 'man enough' to jump though their stupid hoops, then you don't deserve to be in 0.0. Fuckers.

- PQs for ratters - they are introducing a system where rats 'invade' space and groups of players have to eventually kill a 'mothership' at the core of the invasion. Expectation being that you need a small fleet to kill the incursion over the course of a week. Sounds a lot like a new type of a complex."

Sounds like the events they used to run in earlier Eve which were actually secret giveaways too their favorite alliances. Typically there was a big ship to blow up with great loot inside.

[Fordel]

Ahh, good old CCP, reverting to type. I remember when you have to fuel towers every 3 days. They seem to have this stupid notion that if you are not 'man enough' to jump though their stupid hoops, then you don't deserve to be in 0.0. Fuckers.

That's been EVE since day 1 though.

[Phred]

Thank fuck there's still no Incarna. Seeing how CCP implemented stuff like PI, the new sovereignty system and Faction Warfare, I can only imagine how painful the control schema would be for moving around outside your ship.

I don't want to imagine. I want to see and laugh.

Didn't someone post a semi-joking picture of how walking would work in incarna where you had to select move left leg and move right leg from a right click menu? Someone with some history fu dig up that puppy and post it again please.

[Vinadil]

I know it might not do much for the long-term PvP crowd... but if they can pull off PQ like events on a random basis and get newer/empire players to get involved... then I would say that is a huge win.  Events like that fill a huge void in this game for some average players of "I want to log on for 30-60 minutes and DO something interesting".  Not saying they will get it right, but if they do then that alone is enough for the winter patch.

[Setanta]

Fixing just 20% of all the bugs and flaws would be enough for the expansion. Unfortunately none of this seems to be CCP's priority.

Sadly, whenever I hear PQs I think of WAR and how the PQs were a ghost town that were non-soloable after the novelty wore off. FW implementation is what I'm expecting.

[Stabs]

I was thinking about PQs just recently and came to the conclusion that what broke them in WAR was too many competing alternatives. You need to concentrate players into the PQs to make the system work. WAR buffed scenario exp just around the time of launch in response to player complaints, funneling players into scenarios and killing its Unique Selling Point.

Eve, being a sandbox game full of alternatives, would have been the last game I would have expected to adopt PQs. It seems totally the wrong tool for the job. Coop and drop-in in a game where other players are the enemy.

[Vinadil]

Well, I think for about 70% of their player base, other people aren't the enemy, at least not actively.  But, even when other people are not actually trying to kill you, you have very little reason to group with them for anything... which kills retention.  I could very easily see myself spending some time in high sec with random people doing PQ like missions, or in low-sec with mission runners in my alliance.  Currently we all just run them solo, it is more efficient.  We can still police a sector if any enemies come rolling through and the money is just better solo.  But, toss some interesting group stuff in there... who knows.

And, if this turns out like most other PvP games I have played, once a group is formed PvP is MUCH more likely to happen after people spend 30-60 minutes talking and blowing stuff up.  Groups have a way of talking themselves into doing stuff that solo players would never try.

[Pezzle]

I have the opposite experience with EVE.  The larger the group the less likely you get any meaningful pvp. 

[Vinadil]

Might be true... unless you average group is 1 and you never see PvP other than random pirates trying to hunt you in your missions.  I would have a hard time getting less, or worse PvP, and I could see the PvE side getting considerably better, even if it just means making it somewhat profitable to hang out with other people.

[Phildo]

Wormholes have been providing reasonable group PvE content for a while now.

[Gets]

Marcus Eikenberry (aka Markee Dragon) interviewed Scott Holden and Noah Ward.

~emergent gameplay~

Also Shattered Crystal is having a sweepstake this month to give out a Megathron model signed by the Iceland devs. Get the World of Tanks beta code with the free Valentine tank too while you're at it tia.

[Kageru]

Amusing they'd offer as a prize a model of a ship their PvP lack-of-design has driven into obsolescence.

Anyway, watched the lead designer video and most of the other guy and got nothing from it. I can't tell if it was the interviewer, the lack of anything interesting in Eve to talk about or these people being boring but /yawn. The game is full of opportunities for improvement, and certain negative outcomes from their current game balance, but it doesn't seem to engage them at all. Talking about Eve-gate, terrible patches and character customisation just support the view these guys are detached from the actual game they supposedly work on.

[Gets]

Wow, you've turned into a bitter vet mighty fast, haven't you?

[Sir T]

Still, you have to admire the balls of CCP for selling those things for $125 a pop.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Speaking of going from noob to bitter at warp speed, how the hell does a professional development team release a patch that borks their existing UI right and left?  Did the client coders even bother to load it up and play the game for a few minutes?  What happened to QA?  Who OKed letting this pile of shite go live?  Does anyone at CCP take any pride in their work?

The latest patch, and the patch to the patch, is absolute clownshoes, dipped in steaming turds. 

wtf???

Is this typical of the quality of work from CCP?  If so how the hell has this game survived this long?

[Phildo]

This is what local has looked like for me since the patch.  Before and after the optional one.


Edit: Fixed.  It worked yesterday for some reason.

[Simond]

Speaking of going from noob to bitter at warp speed, how the hell does a professional development team release a patch that borks their existing UI right and left?  Did the client coders even bother to load it up and play the game for a few minutes?  What happened to QA?  Who OKed letting this pile of shite go live?  Does anyone at CCP take any pride in their work?

The latest patch, and the patch to the patch, is absolute clownshoes, dipped in steaming turds.  

wtf???

Is this typical of the quality of work from CCP?

 
Yeah, pretty much. See also: boot.ini, anything from the last two major expansion patches, the recent CSM debacle, T20 (former dev for techII blueprint distribution) spawning copies of said blueprints for the player alliance he was in, widespread corruption in their guide/RP event program, etc, etc.

If so how the hell has this game survived this long?

How many other games like it are out there at the moment?

This is what local has looked like for me since the patch.  Before and after the optional one.

Psst. Waffleimages doesn't work here. Try imgur or something.

[ajax34i]

Speaking of going from noob to bitter at warp speed, how the hell does a professional development team release a patch that borks their existing UI right and left? 

They re-coded the UI core components (which is a significant change) and pushed the changes to the live servers after what they considered was enough bug testing (probably been working on it since the switch to Python 2.7 a month ago).

[Vinadil]

I did not personally see any ill affects... but I still downloaded the optional patches, not sure why but I cannot just let a patch sit out there uninstalled...

[Kageru]

In all honesty I was primed for bitter vet-hood by reading about Eve for years prior to playing. Actually playing the game just allowed me to confirm the client really is that clunky and sticky-taped (their in-ability to find bugs is a good sign the code-base is borderline unmaintainable) and they've got more confidence and arrogance than ability. Though I give them a pass on being focused on Dust and WoD over Eve because that is probably based on an accurate assessment that Eve has peaked.

[Gets]

eve is dieing

[tgr]

their in-ability to find bugs is a good sign the code-base is borderline unmaintainable

Or they just compile it, run it and fill out a checkbox poll on "does it start up". I mean, there's no way they can NOT find bugs such as "corp members show up as alliance members" through any other means than "welp, we didn't even look".

eve is dieing

Dying

[Sir T]

their in-ability to find bugs is a good sign the code-base is borderline unmaintainable

Or they just compile it, run it and fill out a checkbox poll on "does it start up". I mean, there's no way they can NOT find bugs such as "corp members show up as alliance members" through any other means than "welp, we didn't even look".

Way back then they added Standing tags in local it was discovered there was a minor bug with your own character. Your character never showed up with the correct tag. You could be marked as corp, alliance, negative, whatever, totally at random. Their 'solution' was to dodge and set it so your own character never displayed a tag. Which to be fair was a nice workaround, but didn't fix the underlying problem.

I was disappointed. I liked having a negative standing to myself.

[Amarr HM]

eve is dieing