More Meat on the Bones: the next "Big Direction" devblog

[tgr]

Actually, yes I can. Obviously it won't paint the whole picture, but try as you might, vampires isn't even remotely connected to eve, and dust isn't really eve in space. I think I've seen something like 100 people on vampires, 100 on dust, god knows how many in tech support and sales/marketing, and 10 or so completely dedicated to developing eve itself.

[MahrinSkel]

Here's the business case: Eve is not going to be a million-player game.  It may not have peaked yet, but it's not going to grow that much no matter what unless something seriously weird happens and changes our understanding of how this market works.  So, they have a cash cow, and the most important thing for them to do is *not kill it* (look at AC1, EQ1, and DAoC) while they work on other games, games that could be even bigger than Eve (and will certainly cost more up front than it did).

If they did *nothing*, just let the game coast with no real development but bug-fixes and chair-arranging, Eve would coast for a decade or more ala UO (unless another internet spaceships game came along and sucked up all their players overnight in a social network collapse).  That would take a game that had nearly all the core gameplay as Eve, plus at least the promise of much more and teh shiney of a new world on which to project their hopes.  Could happen, but it's unlikely, nobody is going gunning for the Internet Spaceships 300K or so when there's a few million WoW players to shoot for, or umpteen million Facebook players.  Even if CCP shut the servers down tomorrow, the odds are there would be no new Eve-like game developed (just as there's a shortage new Sci-Fi shooter MMO's ala AO, PS, or TR).  They would have to seriously screw up (SWG New Game Experience, Trials of Atlantis, making anything called [Insert Game Name Here] "2") to accelerate that process significantly.  So starving Eve of resources can be seen as a way to protect the game (both from the player's POV, and in a business sense), if they don't have enough resources to get too ambitious, they can't do any real damage.

Remember that innovation is risky under the best of circumstances, and innovating in an operating game is to be approached with all of the trepidation and care of trying to dismantle a bomb made mostly of detonator circuits in the middle of a kindergarten.  Dust is probably all the innovation Eve can afford, even carefully firewalled away so that hopefully the worst thing that happens is *nothing*.

What they've got for a roadmap looks good to me, as a long-time analyst of Eve on every level.  It could keep the game evolving enough to prevent apathetic collapse while not causing a major gameplay dislocation.  It's not the complete waste of time of Incarna, and it's not going to kill the game through too much brilliance and not enough resources.  It's a good plan, if not exciting enough to bring me back to a game I decided has no more to teach me, it's also not exciting enough to chase away players who like it as it is, unless they seriously over-reach (say, moving all of the level 4 missions to null-Sec and pissing off all the thousands of mission-runners who will *not* play in the PvP sandbox).

--Dave

[tazelbain]

It hard for me to play $15 month for a game that the developers have moved on from.  $15 is too much to just keep the lights on.  Same goes with WoW...

[tgr]

What they've got for a roadmap looks good to me, as a long-time analyst of Eve on every level.  It could keep the game evolving enough to prevent apathetic collapse while not causing a major gameplay dislocation.  It's not the complete waste of time of Incarna, and it's not going to kill the game through too much brilliance and not enough resources.  It's a good plan, if not exciting enough to bring me back to a game I decided has no more to teach me, it's also not exciting enough to chase away players who like it as it is, unless they seriously over-reach (say, moving all of the level 4 missions to null-Sec and pissing off all the thousands of mission-runners who will *not* play in the PvP sandbox).

Just for the record, I have to agree. I'm cautiously optimistic regarding the roadmap, I just wish they'd get this done before it's gone 5 years, or before they get their next "ooh shiny" moment.

[Stabs]

They've got 400+ employees. How many of those are working on EVE?

According to Kageru zero

(Source:

CCP are pretty much diverting 100% of their budget and focus into Dust

[Kageru]

They released an expansion with one small room, re-used WoD/Dust avatar tech and a cash-shop. If you think they're putting substantial resources into Eve they're not using them very well. Meanwhile their subscription numbers are trending downwards and null-sec is going to need a re-boot.

[Stabs]

So was this some new special butthurt definition of "100%" that doesn't mean what "100%" usually does?

[tgr]

They released an expansion with one small room, re-used WoD/Dust avatar tech and a cash-shop. If you think they're putting substantial resources into Eve they're not using them very well.

To be fair, that's the part of what's changed the last year that's visible. Team BFF has been doing a lot of refactoring, optimizing and modifying small niggly annoyances which is making the general game better than the farcical clusterfuck it was after the dominion expansion. But that's what, 4 people?

[Reg]

4 out of 400? Looks like Kageru should have said 99 percent rather than the (obviously completely wrong!!!11) 100 percent.

[Sir T]

What strikes me is hat they have been allegedly working on WOD for what 3 years (and DUST for an undefined amount of time as well) and they don't even have an Alpha o show off. And the room with a view that we have now is basically the same as what they showed off at fanfest 3 years ago. All they did was add some interactive type holograms which is basically slaving certain sprite objects to the existing interface.

Its speculation but I cant see the evidence of a smooth development here.

[tgr]

I've no idea about the non-BFF teams responsible for the incarna expansion, but I just know that BFF is just running around looking at small things that can be improved UI-wise without making a huge deal out of it, and optimization like making missiles, fighterbombers etc take less CPU, make the session change from one solar system to the next etc etc etc, and I believe they're just 4 guys.

I'm mostly satisfied with the work they've been doing, in particular fixing the session change pissup.

[Nevermore]

Can team BFF make that one stupid goddamn captain's quarter room not strain my computer like no other game has ever strained it?

[tgr]

No, but if you haven't discovered it yet, there's a setting specifically for CQ called interior effects. That's set to high by default, which may or may not be what you're looking for.

Or you can just unload the station environment. vOv

[Midge]

They released an expansion with one small room, re-used WoD/Dust avatar tech and a cash-shop. If you think they're putting substantial resources into Eve they're not using them very well.

To be fair, that's the part of what's changed the last year that's visible. Team BFF has been doing a lot of refactoring, optimizing and modifying small niggly annoyances which is making the general game better than the farcical clusterfuck it was after the dominion expansion. But that's what, 4 people?

gridlock have made things lag less, and time dilation 

[eldaec]

Can team BFF make that one stupid goddamn captain's quarter room not strain my computer like no other game has ever strained it?

They did, they gave you a button which switches it off forever and let's you use the old station interface.