Summer Expansion - Incarna

[Modern Angel]

This is all amazing. I can hear the corks popping from Funcom Montreal all the way down here.

[Comstar]

You need an additional monocle for each of your jump clones.

I can't believe that. That is a joke right?


Well, I guess the good news is, that someone else is going to come and make an Internet Spaceships game and eat CCP's lunch. 'Corse, I've been saying that about a MMOG WW2 FPS...for a decade now. Ugh.

[tmp]

How curious. That leaked pdf thing has this morsel in it:

we must sell our units of virtual currency at appropriate rates. No pair of pants, no matter how cool, should cost the same as a new Maserati; similarly, it would be silly to buy sunglasses for my avatar and pay the same price that I would for a faction battleship

apparently someone literally didn't get the memo.

[Kageru]

I think their original plan was that clothing would be destructible and lost with the pod. They went back on that a bit, though the jump clone thing makes it confusing, and thus probably felt they needed to boost the initial cost to compensate. I believe that concern is also somewhere in the document.

[Comstar]

This is all somehow a plan by CCP Soundwave, also know as Goonswarm member "Stoffer", to ban all supercaps. Or Destroy the game. Could be both.

[tgr]

[eldaec]

You need an additional monocle for each of your jump clones.

I can't believe that. That is a joke right?

And guess what happens if you need to remote destroy a clone to install a new one somewhere else...

[eldaec]

Also, turns out the monocle makes your character disappear entirely.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1533269

[tgr]

Some fucknut actually bought one?

[Comstar]

Also, turns out the monocle makes your character disappear entirely.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1533269

The Emperor's new clothes! Comes with a built in covert ops cloak! No testing has been performed on this device!

[Kageru]

The Plex speculators are annoyed that plex prices are dropping and they're losing money, which is hilarious.

Though they are also suspicious that large buy orders (50 plex) at high prices could be CCP buying up plex, which is a little dodgy.

The roasting on the forums and CCP in hiding is funny.

[tgr]

I'm mostly doing my best to ignore incarna and just keep playing the way I used to.

Once they start adding poker etc, then we'll talk.

[tmp]

Some fucknut actually bought one?

There was a guy on EVE-o forums who bragged about having two. His avatar was sporting one so he wasn't entirely full of shit.

[Modern Angel]

So, strictly as an outsider who keeps one eye on EVE development just because I find its niche fascinating, I've always thought that EVE succeeded despite CCP, not because of them. They're so fucking incompetent at times, whether it's the cheating scandal or this or any number of other things, it really is breathtaking. I posit that if things had gone ever so slightly differently, if Goon Squad hadn't made it Their Game for so long or if that guy who made off with thousands of real world money several years ago hadn't hit the NYT, then this game is barely a blip. I'm not making a qualitative argument in this instance, so if you enjoy the game I'm not begrudging your fun. I'm making a PR argument, that there was a word of mouth factor that had zilch to do with CCP.

I'm mostly interested in how it plays with the WOD MMO, like I said, because I have a lot of friends at Funcom (only the WoD or TSW survives, mark my words) and because I'm a way old school White Wolf fan who's dumbfounded at how poorly that company's been run since CCP took over. This tech they folded in had a demo four years ago. They've been working on the avatar tech, specifically, for FOUR YEARS. I can't believe (well, I can, I guess) that a company can shoot the moon hyping their tech, put all their eggs in a different basket and have it sound so awful.

[ajax34i]

As far as I know, White Wolf wasn't a software developer, so basically what you have is a software developer (CCP) absorbed them and is using their IP to make a game.  Not sure what the White Wolf people are actually doing (what their job duties are).

As far as the Vampire game, they are NOT developing it from scratch.  As far as I know, they are trying to use EVE technology (Python, Stackless Python, whatever the database and server farm backend software it is that they have), which is why it's taking so long.  Because the tech is old or something.  This Incarna expansion is actually us having to beta-test the avatar technology for CCP (and from what I'm reading on the forums, it's LAGGY and as bug-ridden as everything else CCP).

They ARE trying to push cutting-edge - I think the avatars are supposed to have realistic clothing movement, but it's typical CCP.

[Modern Angel]

Few things. One is that at least a few of the big WW RPG devs are on board with the MMO. Justin Achilli is the big name; he blogs about it. White Wolf now is... well they're not doing much. They were the number 2 (after D&D License Holder Du Jour) company for a decade and a half. Once CCP bought them, their output became less and less. Now they're strictly Print-on-Demand, with only a reboot of the Masquerade franchise coming out any time soon.

On this tech, I don't know any specifics on how it's coded or anything, but they had a tech demo leaked on youtube years ago of exactly this. Specifically, they were flaunting their clothing physics tech, which was impressive in this brief clip. But this all reveals a couple things. One, there's something demo worthy as long ago as four years. Two, holy shit it's had four years of development and it doesn't work? That's a damned boondoggle because nobody can wait forever.

The cutting edge thing, finally, is maybe the big takeaway. They've danced around saying it directly, but they're aiming for non-traditional gamers with WoD, at least based on last year's first big infodump: Twilight fans, LARPers, disaffected sandboxers, White Wolf nerds from 1998, etc. If the tech is trying to push cutting edge, and just looking at the bit available it sure as fuck doesn't look like it's going to run on an old machine, there's no way they're getting the type of people they may be banking on. Tack on what looks to be them pushing an obscenely expensive cash shop to play vampire dress-up and I think there's potential for a huge fuck-up here.

Don't mean to turn this into WoD prognosticating but I think Incarna has everything to do with WoD and not a lot to do with EVE.

[Morfiend]

[Abysmal Horror]

Without dark shadows, how are the vampires going to jump out at you? 

[tmp]

It's obv. Minmatar station. Be happy there's any lightbulbs at all.

[Simond]

So you're saying...join Starfleet Dental? 

[Amaron]

Though they are also suspicious that large buy orders (50 plex) at high prices could be CCP buying up plex, which is a little dodgy.

That's not a LITTLE dodgy.   That's the same as them flat out selling ISK for cash.   After seeing this shit I don't doubt it for a moment either.   It puts a sort of sinister edge on why they want some more ISK sinks actually.   It's really a shame nobody will steal this nice niche from CCP.   Space games are soooo CHEAP so it would be like taking candy from a baby.

[Kageru]

So, strictly as an outsider who keeps one eye on EVE development just because I find its niche fascinating, I've always thought that EVE succeeded despite CCP, not because of them. They're so fucking incompetent at times, whether it's the cheating scandal or this or any number of other things, it really is breathtaking. I posit that if things had gone ever so slightly differently, if Goon Squad hadn't made it Their Game for so long or if that guy who made off with thousands of real world money several years ago hadn't hit the NYT, then this game is barely a blip. I'm not making a qualitative argument in this instance, so if you enjoy the game I'm not begrudging your fun. I'm making a PR argument, that there was a word of mouth factor that had zilch to do with CCP.

I agree entirely. They were lucky there is no competition, that the older age of MMO's was more tolerant (especially if the Dev's seemed really earnest) and they got various player communities forming up to breathe life into it. Even then it is still a niche game and now they're "serious business" and want more. It's costing them a lot of good-will, which is required to overlook all their fuck-ups, but I tend to think they regard Eve as in inevitable decline anyway so no matter.

[ajax34i]

Heh, now CCP got Pann to post in General Discussion to try to manage the "feedback" they're getting from their players, and if my calculations are correct that thread went to 90 pages in 10 hours.

[Amaron]

It's costing them a lot of good-will, which is required to overlook all their fuck-ups, but I tend to think they regard Eve as in inevitable decline anyway so no matter.

EvE has always been the perfect example of a game you should Cash Cow.   There really is no reason it should of declined in such a clear niche.   There was no actual useful expertise inside the company either so they shouldn't of expanded.   If they actually let it decline now they are clearly fucked since they have no other product that's going to make any money.

[Kageru]

They already got hammered when they admitted they didn't plan doing anything substantial for "18 months". Which is dumb to do and suicidal to say.

Apparently the leaked document said WoD doesn't yet have a game design document so it sounds like it's going to be a long time before that's out. Which also explains why their new engine is so resource hungry, it's targeted at a future system.

[Modern Angel]

Jesus wept, if there's no design document then I don't even know what the hell they're smoking. Achilli's blogging like there's one, they sure tried to make it sound like there was one at last years White Wolf convention and (again) there's an already four years old and counting engine.

[tmp]

Heh, now CCP got Pann to post

Pann is back? When did that happen...

(170 pages and counting)

[Morfiend]

The amount of teeth gnashing and angst on the official forums is quite amazing.

[tgr]

To be honest, CCP has been stretching the line pretty thin the last few years, and this last expansion is ... well, let's say, "underwhelming".

[Soln]

I heard they revamped the newbie tutoria awhile ago.  To help newbs and PvE explorer types, did they ever add the equivalent of a quest finder, or something to foster some kind of progress path?  

I know it's a PvP Sandbox game, but it always seemed like they could nab more lazy people like me to sub monthly if I knew in-game what there was to do.  The only path of "join-corp-get-podded" isn't attractive probably for everyone who's new.   If Eve were DAoC, it seemed the equivalent of "join-and-horse-to-Frontiers-for-Zerg", which would feel odd for non-vets as they drove by all the PvE content in their home region.

All the Eve contacts and PvE mobs just seemed like auto-generated filler.   The Eve player races (factions?) looked like they had a backstory, and there was an advantage to levelling up contacts, but I never could figure out what it was.  Maybe if they tweaked that, they might get new subs?

[Sparky]

The amount of teeth gnashing and angst on the official forums is quite amazing.

This feels like another T20 except it includes the whole player base rather than being concentrated around the 0.0 set.  Will be interesting to see how they deal with it because batten down the hatches and wait for the nerdrage to die down clearly isn't working.  Ironically people who were actually looking forward to Space Barbie seem particularly distraught with the paucity of this long hyped expansion.

[tgr]

Quick dissertation of AUR etc:

http://eve.beyondreality.se/NeXCQResponse.html

[Morfiend]

Quick dissertation of AUR etc:

http://eve.beyondreality.se/NeXCQResponse.html

I was just coming to post this link. Its a pretty good read, although a bit overly long, on why people are upset.

[tgr]

http://www.justin.tv/deamosseraph#/w/1380742320/2

Demonstration in jita, they're shooting some sort of monument to burn eden or some shit.

[Morfiend]

They have now locked down Jita with numbers, and have fleeted up in Amarr (the system) and are podding anyone not fleeted with them.

I think this is the first instance of a successful in game riot I can think of.