CCP heading for hotter water

[Kageru]

Playing CoX has been enlightening, all these little clues the dev/management team are still into the game and its community in a way that the Eve management so obviously isn't. Most likely because it is as Sparky said.

I suspect the free to play thing is another hand me down from WoD and Dust. Dust is entirely funded by item shop sales and designer clothes would possibly work in a WoD community if such a thing existed. Dressing up your vampire could easily be considered important. Unlike Eve where dressing up your character is an invisible change to a tiny little icon picture in one corner of the UI.

Nor am I convinced Eve would work as free to play because Eve gameplay isn't something you'd get the urge to play every so often. Eve managed to survive because it had a dedicated player-base who had heavily invested themselves in long term goals like watching the skill trainer tick over, buying expensive ships and player corporations. Make skill training free and you've destroyed a lot of peoples reason to stay subscribed, sell ships and the whole player driven economy becomes a joke.

[TripleDES]

Seems like they noticed that they've AGAIN pissed off about everyone, and do damage control with some fuzzy wuzzy rhethoric.

We will reveal more over the coming weeks. As certain details are prone to change, we want to make sure we have absolutely concrete information to give you. You’ve often told us that we promise too much and deliver too little, and this time we want to be certain that doesn’t happen.  We are listening to you, we have heard you, and plans are already in motion.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2421

Which is bullshit for HOLY FUCK WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING PLAN!

[Sir T]

Well come on guys, You gotta admit that promising too little and giving too little is at least a step up!

Winter expansion, photon torpedoes on shuttles! 

[Kitsune]

Yeah, I read that as, "Oh shit guys please don't unsub for at least another month so we can pull more things out of our ass real quick."

I'm burning through my ISK to keep my sub going through PLEXes, and have enough for about three more months, assuming no major income or loss rocks the financial boat too hard.  But CCP isn't getting another penny from me until I see actual concrete improvement, not some half-assed quick bandaids and vague promises of more, which is a fair sight from the $30 a month they'd been getting for my accounts before.  And the sad thing is that if they had just manned up after monoclegate and said, 'Hey, we fucked up by treating our customers like idiot money pinatas, we're sorry.' they'd still be getting my money today.  Instead they spewed corporate bullshit about 'unfortunate misunderstandings' and never apologized for anything, so now they get no money until they either pony up a proper apology or significant improvements to the game.

[Mrbloodworth]

FFS, its a game, not a way of life.

Only in Eve.

[Kitsune]

It is only a game.  I wouldn't accept shoddy treatment from any company that I purchase products from, and games are no different.

[tgr]

FFS, its a game, not a way of life.

Only in Eve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWb3cxA4g_U

[Sparky]

FFS, its a game, not a way of life.

Only in Eve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWb3cxA4g_U

firstworldproblems.flv

[Kitsune]

That's just... wow.  The part of me that wants to point and laugh is having its mood harshed on by the part of me that doesn't consider it unlikely that she'll be found hanging from her ceiling the day after they shut down the servers.

[tmp]

Well something seems to have scared them. There's been a literal torrent of dev posting on the forums and (..) possibly a new font incoming.

Ha ha.

Few years too late. But that's literally like apocalypse seal.

(i still wonder who'd designed that font that was so fucking in love with it)

[Fordel]

Making fonts is a pain in the ass, if I had to make one for a game I would totally be all "and you fuckers will use this till the end of time!" too. 

[Mrbloodworth]

It is only a game.  I wouldn't accept shoddy treatment from any company that I purchase products from, and games are no different.

This campaign is to Dictate development. I personally find it hilarious that adding avatars would cause such drama, one patch not adding a new ship and the mob goes wild? Eve must have one of the most resistant to change player bases I have ever seen, likely because CCP gave the players so much fake ownership/investment. Now, some bastard version of fucked up real world politics is shaping up, and the target, the makers of the game.

Whats the outcome? Replace all of CCP with forum users who will "Make it the right way"? 

[tgr]

Huh? I'm going to go wild here and assume you haven't paid close attention to what they've actually released the last 2 years.

[Kitsune]

The mob went wild because the avatars were stupid and useless while being hooked to a blatant money-grub and in some cases severely degrading a computer's performance.  Had the avatars been super-awesome and let people wander out into communal areas of a station to actually see the other pilots, people wouldn't have been rioting.

[TripleDES]

FFS, its a game, not a way of life.

How much usable sci-fi spaceship MMOs are there exactly? So yeah, if you want to keep playing one, you have to take things more seriously, until there's a decent contender.

[Sparky]

It is only a game.  I wouldn't accept shoddy treatment from any company that I purchase products from, and games are no different.

This campaign is to Dictate development. I personally find it hilarious that adding avatars would cause such drama, one patch not adding a new ship and the mob goes wild? Eve must have one of the most resistant to change player bases I have ever seen, likely because CCP gave the players so much fake ownership/investment. Now, some bastard version of fucked up real world politics is shaping up, and the target, the makers of the game.

Whats the outcome? Replace all of CCP with forum users who will "Make it the right way"? 

Have you followed all the drama?  CCP spent nearly 2 years barely developing the spaceships bit of EVE promising WiS would be so awesome it'd be worth the wait.  Couple of years of the game stagnating or getting worse(Dominion) while the players made their own fun and waited.  Well WiS eventually came out and it was crap - no interactivity, horrible system requirements and it removed functionality people enjoyed.  The players have been beyond patient precisely because they are so ridiculously invested but at some point CCP has to actually deliver and stop appearing like they take their cash cow completely for granted.

[Sir T]

Well to be fair, Dominion was a huge change to sovereignty mechanics and some ship mechanics. That it was a total clusterfuck and badly thought out doesn't change the fact that SOME work was done.

[Phildo]

in some cases severely degrading a computer's performance.

Lets not forget that it also melted some people's graphics processors.

[Thrawn]

Lets not forget that it also melted some people's graphics processors.

Thats an added feature, quit taking games so seriously and be grateful for the metagame experiance of buying a new video card.

[Sir T]

Well its a feature upgrade from when they destroyed the Boot.ini file of computers with a patch, giving some of their customers the thrills and excitement of reinstalling their operating systems.   

[ajax34i]

This campaign is to Dictate development. I personally find it hilarious that adding avatars would cause such drama, one patch not adding a new ship and the mob goes wild? Eve must have one of the most resistant to change player bases I have ever seen, likely because CCP gave the players so much fake ownership/investment.

You're right that the campaign is to dictate development, and that there's a lot of drama.  However, it's to dictate development away from "close down the EVE servers and develop two other games."  Personally, I've cancelled my two subscriptions a few months ago, no comments no drama, and judging by the subscription numbers so have ~50k other players.  In my personal opinion it's not worth the effort to resist CCP's suicidal changes.

[Reg]

Has any company ever had two successful MMOGs in a row? I can't think of any.

[Fordel]

Now that you mention it... I can't think of any either.

[Sir T]

It depends on how you term successful though. Lasting a year or more? X number of subscribers? Fun elements? Everquest is still running for example, as is Ultima online are those succesful? I still think Tabula Rasa was one of the most fun MMOs I've played but people would class that as a failure. How about Star Wars Galaxies?

So what makes a successful MMO?

[Reg]

Everquest 1 was a phenomenal success. Compared to it SWG and Everquest 2 had to be considered failures by SOE - although I'd never in a million years expect them to admit it.  NCSoft started with a bang with that hugely successful Korean MMO (whose title I currently forget).  Again, none of the games they've come out with since have equalled their first effort.  Asheron's Call 1 was a success. Asheron's Call 2 sank without a trace.

What I see is a whole group of companies who stumbled blindly into their first successful MMO and then were unable to do it  a second time.  I predict that CCP is going to fall into this same class of company.

[Lantyssa]

ArenaNet is shaping up to be the first company to do two in a row, and we won't know for sure until we see the response.  (And people argue over whether GW1 even qualifies as an MMO, so maybe not even then.)

SOE or Turbine come closest.  They haven't exactly had spotless records, ended up doing major revamps, and have the advantage of putting out several MMOs.  Without the revamps?  No, I can't think of anyone doing two in a row.

[Furiously]

Funcom? Anarchy Online and then Conan......

(Also every time I read this I think CCP is moving to somewhere in the Bahama's to save a lot of tax money)

[Ingmar]

Depends on what you mean by company. NCSoft had a pretty good run with:

1998: Lineage
2003: Lineage 2
2004: City of Heroes
2005: Guild Wars

None of those games were failures in an economic sense. Now, if you start adding qualifiers like 'in the western market' or 'all from the same development studio' it gets harder to find an example.

[ajax34i]

Ok so it's been 3 weeks since the media attack and stop, and since then CCP's promised many devblogs and delivered one, been excited about huge surprise features and revealed a new font, and the server numbers don't seem to be increasing much.  Mittens promised a full ongoing vicious attack, Endie a "watch and learn," and in general the situation seemed to be headed to a delicious conflict, but currently you can hear the crickets over the entire front line.

I love the silence on all sides, but I think I want my money back; this thread is no fun. What did we decide on page 2?  I don't think victory terms have been defined, so I guess we're waiting for the Winter Expansion contents to judge, then.

[tgr]

What's there to say? They've released a devblog which said fuck-all, it just said "we're doing things". We've raged on the official forums about how little tangible info there was, and now we're waiting to see what they actually do.

In the mean time, there are germans who are very angry, which we can shoot.

[Sir T]

So Eve fails at creating drama from drama. Drama fail.

Soon people will be desperate enough to ask me to rejoin Goonfleet to create drama. 

[Kageru]

How you enjoy this game without being in the CFC (or PL if you are a cat-ass) escapes me. You really do need an alliance that gives a sense of virtual purpose, even if it needs to invent one.

That said I suspect CCP are pretty stressed. They've got to be in crunch-time for Dust, they still need to hook it into the Eve sov system (without causing a shit-storm) and now they're under pressure to release some meaningful content for the winter expansion. In practice i'm just not sure they have the time, talent or resources to make that happen. And it certainly won't happen fast or early.

[tmp]

and now they're under pressure to release some meaningful content for the winter expansion.

A top hat to go with the monocle would be splendid choice, i reckon.

[Gets]

Dust won't affect the sov system, just planetary interaction.

[Pezzle]

It was a mistake to hook Dust to EVE live at launch.