EVE General Discussion

Boilerplate: This post is not made with the intention to provoke, incite or encourage flaming, generate rage or criticize the play-style of EVE pilots. This post is made with the intent to look at the reality of the future and discuss the options available considering past and present investments and mistakes.

What IS going to happen:

• The winter expansion is going to release the other 3 racial CQs
• The winter expansion is going to address a surprising number of previously ignored balance issues
• The winter expansion is going to add a few new ships, modules and so on.

Basically, come winter we'll get a proper FiS expansion with an historically average amount of improvements and changes to FiS. I can think of a few expansions we've had in the past with more new features/ships and I can think of one or two with less.

So we can be happy with that, it's business as usual really. But now we should think about the next summer and winter expansions after that. What will they be? What *should* they be?

Judging from the Incarna expansion (or lack of one) CCP resources had obviously been in other places (WoD/Dust/WiS, take your pick) than in EVE FiS. With Dust presumably somewhere along the road to completion and WoD on ice, that would ostensibly leave EVE proper with more attention focused on it. (Despite 20% staff reduction)

What's interesting is looking at the speed and progress CCP can make when they do decide to do something, at least from an external perspective. The information blackhole that was the entire Incarna pre and post release cycle is completely eclipsed by the information deluge coming at us in leading up to the winter expansion. This shows us that CCP CAN change gears effectively when it needs and wants to, it's just a matter of focusing on the right stuff. This leads us back to the question: What should CCP work on next?

Of course CCP often develops their own internal ideas (wormholes) and fully develops that feature without player input but CCP also can do some interesting things when we prod them effectively, even if they abandon or neglect those ideas later (Sov issues). So we should at least try to make a case for improvement.



I know a lot of people hate the idea of WiS fundamentally. I can't understand why exactly but I respect their right to an opinion. I myself was uninterested in WiS until I saw CCP's vision for how a corporate office would look within WiS. This was back in '07 or '08, and well before the notion of NEX was spoken about in the forums.

Regardless of how we individually may feel about WiS in general it remains true that CCP has invested an immense amount of time and effort into the idea and the development of the tech. We have have some clear and indisputable benefits from that investment (avatar pictures look good, reaaal good) but we have also had indisputable failures (NEX store, no you're wrong, it's a failure, don't even try to discuss it- no come on we're trying to have a serious discussion here.) but the tech is still there regardless.

Hilmar has stated that WoD and WiS have been put on hold (general consensus is because WoD development was 'spilling over' into EVE and what we got was WiS. So with no more WoD we don't get *any* WiS) So that leaves Dust and EVE. Dust will finish and then the dust resources will probably go back into WoD. I disagree with that approach and would like to suggest an alternative.

EVE is the money-maker for CCP. There's no disputing that. Dust is the less resource intensive project to complete and so should rightly be focused on before WoD and since Dust connects to the money-maker more directly it makes even more sense to finish it sooner. What I would like to see is after Dust is finished that the resources be spent on EVE with a majority of resources buffing up the FiS (conventional) aspect of EVE since that keeps the money rolling in while the remainder of employees be focused on creating a compelling WiS experience that doesn't blow goats like the current one-room-****-fest and real-cash-for-pants store we have now.

The development on WiS can be given love and affection, giving EVE what it needs because it's what EVE needs rather than giving EVE the scraps from WoD development, an MMO that isn't currently making any money and won't for some time.

When EVE WiS is capable of running station interiors, cantinas, private residences (with visitors...) corporate offices and meeting rooms capable of handling 200-man corporate meetings then WoD will benefit from more polished and robust engine tech while the (generally) more forgiving EVE players can work through the new-tech-pains of a developing WiS experience.

EVE players do not at all mind trying to stretch the limits of our sandbox, and we enjoy new toys. A WiS with a lot of semi-broken toys would have been much more fun than the... well, the forced isolation room we did get which seemed more a punishment than a new toy to play with.



Okay so that was a little more of an opinion piece than I originally intended, sorry about that. But I would like to hear what you guys think. I know that CCP could do a proper 'EVE-style' WiS if they actually tried instead of jury rigging a cash shop and one-room prison cell into a game that is fundamentally about player-driven economics, human interaction and choice.

The upcoming winter expansion has many glimmers of the good old CCP in it, if this new effort and direction can be nurtured, encouraged and guided in the right direction I think there can be much good coming from it.

Thanks for reading, sorry about the length.

p.s. CCP Devs reading this: Please for the love of everything input a polling system into the game client. Make it flash on the neocom or something because no one will trust an evemail. Oh and make it optional. CHOICE is good! <3 you ccp devs.

I'm pretty sure they will revisit WiS at some point, but they've really got to make the Winter expansion decent (as indeed it is shaping up to be), and the Summer expansion an absolute killer FiS expansion, before they do that.

If the Summer expansion is a beast that shakes things up in a good way, and finally gets round to sorting out all the leftover ricketiness in EVE, then I think people will be more receptive to a WiS expansion - which would definitely be a positive and necessary addition to EVE (as anybody with any sense, including The Mittani, has pointed out).

I agree that the problem wasn't WiS itself, it was more an unfortunate confluence of circumstances arising from CCP overstretching themselves. WiS was, basically, mismanaged, as a result of EVE being mismanaged, as a result of CCP as a whole being mismanaged, which has been admitted.

So let's move on.