CCP heading for hotter water

[tgr]

Mittens used a few less than flattering words about CCP in his last CEO update, telling us to be prepared for starting to play a bit more hardball with the CCP bigwigs regarding the game's state. It wasn't supposed to go off for another few weeks, but apparently it's started to get into the press already:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-05-eve-csm-chairman-breaks-the-peace
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ccp-accused-running-eve-online-ground

I'm going to need a popcorn BPO.

[DLRiley]

CCP ignoring the cows they have been milking for years, extra extra!

[Tale]

and of being "hell-bent on running Eve Online into the ground."

= "Verant/Mythic/SOE/NCSoft/Funcom/Blizzard hates us!"

Edit. Also:

- hi u shld rly follow my expert business advices
- Where are you from again?
- imaginary corporation in ur space game
- ...

[tazelbain]

Ya, the playerbase is pretty fucking stupid.  Crying over the corpse isn't going to bring it back.

[Kageru]

Every game has people who have invested way too much of their self identity and ego into the game. Eve has a lot more than most.

... but really Eve is about watching the drama. It's better than the gameplay.

[ajax34i]

CCP will now blame Mittani and the bad press he's creating as the reason why they lost subscriptions and the game has died.

EDIT:  They can also lie and he won't be able to correct them because of the NDA.

[Setanta]

Dear CCP - I have spent over 200 dollars on games, largely through Steam rather than subscribe my 3 accounts to Eve.

Did Mittens really think that CCP gave a shit about what the CSM or the playerbase thought?

[Gets]

The general audience can't differentiate between the developers working at CCP, of whom only a couple dozen currently get to twiddle on the spaceships related part of Eve Online, and the heads who are going full speed ahead with Dust 514 and Carbon and Vampire MMO and ~crowdsourcing~ and Excellence! and everything else neat they thought they should do before the Icelanding banking collapse smacked them in the face. Considering one of these bigwigs used to run a griefing corporation in his own game I'd be worried too. The developers actually do have enough dexterity to work on the game and listen to the players at the same time. However, knowing if and when the execs have decided if they want to keep Eve afloat or not can save a lot of people a lot of time. Incarna has proven to be a major failure, with subscription numbers flatlining. What decisions are made from this should become evident once winter arrives.

My forum account also came with a pitchfork for a reason.

[DLRiley]

Dear CCP - I have spent over 200 dollars on games, largely through Steam rather than subscribe my 3 accounts to Eve.

Did Mittens really think that CCP gave a shit about what the CSM or the playerbase thought?

EvE cows don't know there cows. They spend there time laughing at other cows

[eldaec]

Talking of spending 200 dollars

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4717&tid=1

From now until September 16th, players can take advantage of a first time ever discount on bulk orders of PLEX. Pick up a pack of 13 PLEX for only 199.99. Play the market, pad your wallet, build your empire.

[DayDream]

For those that need it.

[ajax34i]

$200 / 13 = $15.39.

[tgr]

I was struggling hard to not point out the there/they're and there/their heresy.

[tmp]

For those that need it.

Meh, hovered over the link and the 'view object' thing made me think it'd lead to the out-of-EVE docked ship spinning emulator.

Disappoint.

[Kitsune]

So you can pay $11/month for a year of gametime, or over $15/month for thirteen months worth of PLEXes.  I'm thinking that the illusion of gametime=PLEX is wearing a little thin at this point.

[Lantyssa]

$200 / 13 = $15.39.

Oh good, my math wasn't off.  I was thinking I had gone mental.

[palmer_eldritch]

CCP has a small number of feature teams, and before the WoD and DUST follies those teams would be allocated to FiS [flying in space]. Since Incarna ("Walking in Stations" or WiS) came under development, we have seen FiS merit only a skeleton crew, thankfully including some excellent people like Stoffer. This might be acceptable if Incarna had been produced properly - a temporary reallocation of resources for a serious project, then it's back to expansions we enjoy. But Incarna has been a disaster so far; in addition to flatlining PCU, it appears to be suffering significant delays - much like Tyrannis's manifold errors devoured two expansions, we are still waiting for the other three Captains Quarters (the ones that do not look like a ghetto shithole, and actually seem 'scifi') as well as Establishments. And something about contraband, I guess.

. . .

So the gloves come off. There's not much point for Goonswarm striving to 'fix EVE' by seizing control of the CSM and negotiating successfully with the FiS devs if the amount of resources allocated to FiS itself dwindles and the game continues to stagnate. In the coming weeks we are going to be making some extremely loud statements regarding the neglect of FiS, the failure of Incarna, and the need for CCP's management to pull the game out of this stall. We need something new to do, not something new to wear.

Mittens is a great man but he's a little insane. It's one thing to have views about which spaceship (class/whatever) is overpowered in your favourite MMO but quite another to have views on the long term business plan of the company behind it, which products they should be developing and what level of resources they should be investing in each product. Of course many of us like to sound off on forums, but we don't plan media campaigns designed to force the company to do what we want. We don't actually expect senior managers at some business of which we happen to be clients to change their entire long-term strategy because we tell them to.

It's quite possible, seriously, that Mittani knows how to run an Icelandic MMO business better than whoever is in charge at CCP, but CCP has to proceed on the basis that he doesn't. It's one thing for an MMO provider to accept that they really must nerf paladins because players say so, but if they ever reach the stage of downgrading funding for two new planned products because a player who leads a large guild demands it then they really will be screwed.

[tgr]

Let me ask one question: Why should I log in?

In 0.0 I could mine ABC ore, but I'd have to keep watch on intel and local, and it'd be mind-numbingly boring. I could rat, but that is also mindnumbingly boring. I could do incursions, and it's not too boring, but it's still just red crosses. I've tried a few roams and I completely suck at it, to the point where I think I might be endangering the whole gang. I'm not too shabby at the large blob warfare, but it's currently mostly POS shooting with no real drama or existential crisis behind it on either side, no real drama. So why should I log in?

It's getting old, and the 0.0 population is getting old. We need new and fresh blood, we need people who are enthusiastic and driven, we just plain need more people out in 0.0. And while what Stoffer has indicated of their 0.0 overhaul is sounding promising, 5 years is too long a time to spend on this. I don't give a flying fuck if they've got 2 other games in development, because I don't give a flying fuck about the upcoming games themselves. I'm not in the market for a vampires MMO, and I sure as fuck do not want to play an FPS on a fucking console. I want more internet spaceships.

It's at the point where I'm not sure if I should unsub everything and spend the money on other things, keep them all subbed and just skill them up until we're invaded or we invade someone, or keep them all subbed (in case of :frogsiren: invasion :frogsiren:) but make my empire char my main.

Yes, empire. Woo.

[Fordel]

Rest of you folks finally catching on that EVE isn't a game, but a socioeconomic simulator?   

[Lantyssa]

Mittens is a great man but he's a little insane. It's one thing to have views about which spaceship (class/whatever) is overpowered in your favourite MMO but quite another to have views on the long term business plan of the company behind it, which products they should be developing and what level of resources they should be investing in each product. Of course many of us like to sound off on forums, but we don't plan media campaigns designed to force the company to do what we want. We don't actually expect senior managers at some business of which we happen to be clients to change their entire long-term strategy because we tell them to.

He won the game.  Now he's playing the meta-game.

[Samprimary]

independent of whether ccp should (or is even competently staffed enough to) follow mittani's advice, I think he is ... probably right about the misappropriation of resources that (I guess) has been strangling the game.

Which is sad, because it means the drama fountain shall remain dry.

[Kageru]

Mittens is a great man but he's a little insane. It's one thing to have views about which spaceship (class/whatever) is overpowered in your favourite MMO but quite another to have views on the long term business plan of the company behind it, which products they should be developing and what level of resources they should be investing in each product.

No. You just need to remember that his primary goal is trying to convince goons the game is fun enough to keep logging in for. So seeing the game starved of resources is something he's concerned with. Starship balance not so much (CCP will remain bad at game design) but them being absent landlords is another thing and a new experience for the old veterans.

I suspect CCP doesn't really have a choice though. The development of Dust is probably consuming more time, talent and money than they expected (because they've proven their inability in estimation) and is starving Eve. But they don't really have a choice to keep going as they've now invested so many resources in getting the process ramped up.

[Endie]

It would be an unwise individual who bet against Mittens in this fight.  Watch and learn.

[eldaec]

In the sense that he might get a few more guys assigned to eve sure. Though it rather seems like eve development is already below the level it was during walking in closets development, so I can't imagine much more than a token effort.

[tgr]

I have a huge problem seeing how walking in closet was anything even close to a huge undertaking, especially as it's just reuse of vampire tech. And to be honest, I thought the two teams (team gridlock and team bff) were still working on eve just like while they were making walking in closets (or as it is in my case, stare at rusty door).

[Stabs]

It would be an unwise individual who bet against Mittens in this fight.  Watch and learn.

Nobody will bet against him because he will argue very convincingly that he was right.

Eve dies - Mittens was right!
Eve becomes awesome - huzzah for Mittens and his game-saving input!

[Endie]

In the sense that he might get a few more guys assigned to eve sure. Though it rather seems like eve development is already below the level it was during walking in closets development, so I can't imagine much more than a token effort.

Just judging from the determination with which he and VR are going about this I'm going to repeat that I suspect that it would be unwise to bet against this one going well vOv

NDAs mean that you know as well as I do, but I do spend a lot of time reading Mittens' moods, and I think that he is (a) very fucking serious about this fight and (b) convinced that it is winnable.

[amiable]

It's getting old, and the 0.0 population is getting old. We need new and fresh blood, we need people who are enthusiastic and driven, we just plain need more people out in 0.0. And while what Stoffer has indicated of their 0.0 overhaul is sounding promising, 5 years is too long a time to spend on this. I don't give a flying fuck if they've got 2 other games in development, because I don't give a flying fuck about the upcoming games themselves. I'm not in the market for a vampires MMO, and I sure as fuck do not want to play an FPS on a fucking console. I want more internet spaceships.

It's at the point where I'm not sure if I should unsub everything and spend the money on other things, keep them all subbed and just skill them up until we're invaded or we invade someone, or keep them all subbed (in case of :frogsiren: invasion :frogsiren:) but make my empire char my main.

Yes, empire. Woo.

This is very true.  One of the terrific things about Goonswarm is that it brings brand new players into 0.0.  I have mixed feelings about whether the proposed changes will really encourage new players to head out to 0.0.  I think the supercap nerf will probably help (at least psychologically).  I'm a little more skeptical about the removal of local as I forsee many newbie drakes lost to gank gangs unless they overhaul scanning an make it less painful.  Bots will continue as they always have, I give the botters 2 hours to figure out a way to jump out of trouble upon gate activation.

[Kageru]

Didn't they mention they needed to change how local worked so they could integrate it with some other system (Dust maybe?). I don't remember reading anything about them removing local. And CCP are being unusually dumb if they are seriously considering it, the attacker already has enough advantages.

That said I figure "sov war" is on a back-burner until super-caps get nerfed or Deklein/Fountain get invaded. And even if they do a sensibly firm nerf I don't think that will be enough to refresh null-sec. Once some faction has a clear superiority that becomes the basis for attracting more allies and resources. Eventually they'll probably split or collapse from boredom but who is going to wait around for that if it takes a couple of years?

[Phildo]

Are you saying that sov warfare isn't going on?  Because there's a pretty massive one happening in the south at the moment.

[MahrinSkel]

Do you think that the CSM will be disbanded now, or will they just not hold the next round of elections?

--Dave (what, you thought this might actually change something else?  You're so cute)

[Nevermore]

Dude, you're harshing on Endie's mancrush!

[ajax34i]

I'm gonna bet against Mittens, Endie, not out of hatred (the guy's ok, and so is Goonswarm), but rather because:

- I have a feeling that CCP is unable to reassign devs at this point in time because the suits want money via the new games rather than continuing to develop EVE.

- He's bound by an NDA that they're going to goad him into breaking, at which point they'll sue.

- They're going to blame EVE's failure solely on him and his actions (and hide the fact that CCP management has made the wrong decisions and that their devs are incompetent).

- All it takes is another 15k concurrent users one Sunday (see this past Sunday when they almost hit 50k, despite the fact that they were barely getting 30k for the whole week before that) to negate a large part of his argument, and CCP can fudge the numbers by creating and logging in their own "trial" users.

- It doesn't matter anymore.  I've already quit a month ago, and it'll take a lot more than some publicity to get me back.  It'll take real, sweeping changes and improvements to the game, followed by a month of good reviews on this forum, to get me back.  I really doubt that'll happen.

[Comstar]

Well I love The Mittani, and he knows his stuff, he's going up against a multi-billionaire who was/is the richest man in the country. CCP is committed to DUST and Vampires in Closets, and if either were to fail, so would CCP's Bank Loans. CCP is in debt, and can only get a new loan by claiming all the money sunk into the bottomless pits as "R&D". If they commit less money to "R&D" and more money to "maintenance of Internet Spaceships", it all collapses like an Icelandinc Bank owned by the richest man in Iceland.

Then again, he's a smart guy, and probably knows more about CCP's finances that you can find out from following links in Wikipedia, if those chats with dev's in Iceland's gay bar's ever lead anywhere. Perhaps he's putting pressure on now, because after October(?) when CCP's loan gets rolled over, it will be too late to change course before Eve hits the Iceberg mid-crossing.

Maybe Sony will pick it up cheap or something. Or Hasbro, and we can play My Little Pony: Internet Spaceships editon. See you at the Drama.

[Kageru]

Are you saying that sov warfare isn't going on?  Because there's a pretty massive one happening in the south at the moment.

I meant mainly from a goon perspective. But I'd also say you could classify the southern sov-war as a clean up operation. No one really expects -A- to win.