EVE General Discussion

Re: Change.

Nothing happens instantaneously. From what I've observed, changes implemented by precious CSMs don't tend to materialize until half a year or more after their election. It's a slow process, and while we all wish it could be faster, I'd prefer things be changed correctly as opposed to being done half-assed.

However, resource allocation in CCP appears to be a problem, and we'd all like to see that improved.

I don't think there is a war or a crusade going on so much as an 'awakening'. That being said, Mittens usually runs his larger statements by the rest of us in order to ensure we all have common ground to stand on if for no other reason than to ensure our overall message is as loud and clear as possible. Time will tell just how effective we have been.

I personally believe this CSM has managed to open doors of communication with CCP that no other CSM has so far. Even amidst all of the DRAMA, there are still cordial exchanges taking place between the CSM and CCP. If nothing else, that alone will make things much easier for future CSM's.

I've said my bit about the whole mess here in my recent blog post: Reality Check. We're not really aiming to start riots and all that, but I think most players agree that something is wrong with EVE and a concerted effort by the CSM in pointing that out should be expected.

I really do think its a woeful mischaracterization of the situation to see this as "goon wardec" sure, one might say the goons were a bit late to the party on the jita-riots and earlier protest against NeX/MT in eve etc. But back then you had Mittani confidently telling his troops that flashy dresses in NeX stores wouldn't impact their Eve. What's changed is I think that Mittani has woken up to the fact that content delivery via Incarna/NeX is a horrendous corruption of the way Eve is supposed to work and it does directly threaten the development of the core game (as evidenced by the low dev numbers applied to core Eve development).

Whatever.

At the end of the day Eve Online needs to be saved by its players. It was a game that was made successful by its players, sustained by its players, promoted by its players and made famous in the gaming press by its players. CCP the company have been the beneficiaries of good PR from a loyal and impassioned gaming community for years and years now.

Now I think what we're seeing is the need for a palace coup inside CCP management so that the developers who are still impassioned and enthused by Eve online can get the resources they need to keep the game fresh and growing rather than consigned to the slow decline of static abandonment.

This does need to be a revolutionary change. If Eve currently has a handful of teams and couple of dozen devs applied to it out of the 600 employees of CCP then something has gone totally wrong and needs resolving in short order so the restorative influence can be felt in time to save the subscriber-base. CSM needs to see those numbers, and frankly they need to be communicated to the player base. We need to see change happening.

I'm sick and tired of hearing "We'd love to but we don't have the dev/art/production resources" in response to new feature and content requests from CCP.

This is a 600 man company and this is sole income source.
If you don't have the resources to keep this income source viable then get them.

Because if you don't solve this problem and keep Eve fresh and viable and get your community base back onside as enthusiastic supporters of CCP then I tell you something that your Marketing people should have already told the senior management.

There is a serious danger that WOD and DUST become poisoned brands contamined by the noteriety of your treatment of the Eve player base. For those products to have a chance of success you need to trade on the goodwill and passion of Eve players. Lose that positive influence (and see it turn negative) and making a commercial success of those projects will become much harder.

CSM-influenced Changes that occur within the first 6 months will tend to be the fruits of the previous CSM's labour.

An interesting implication of this effect is that CSMs will have an incentive to do push their best proposals early on and spend less effort on pushing CCP to implement changes from the previous CSM, and then spend the latter half of their terms in making fewer proposals and spending more effort in pushing CCP to implement their proposals.

The counter to that argument is to point out to CCP that their customer base has been strongly hostile to MTs, and that studies also abound that show even more definitely that no MMO has survived an attempt to gain a new playerbase at the expense of ditching the current one.

In addition, no one will play EVE purely for the MTs. There has to be a reason to play at all, and if they neglect FiS, they won't have anyone who cares about buying MTs. If CCP want to sell MTs to EVE players, then it's strongly to their advantage to increase the number of players who actively log in and play the game.

I'm not sure thats a fair assessment. Certainly there are limits to microtransactions and one of them is that players will only pay a limited amount for vanity. Fans of microtransactions in other games WANT game-impacting advantage so if you were to go by "what the reports say" surely that logic would lead to the pushing out of gold-missiles in Eve. Of course the indication there is that CCP would face a massive unsub-wave and outcry and don't want to risk that particularly because of the perilous stage in the development of their other games.



As I said, 1st problem with that these are not the extremely popular MT's of other games. They don't want to risk gold ammo + these are not traditional M(icro)T's either. MT's are downloadable civs for CIV5 or extra maps for MOW etc. Something I can buy for 1.99 and forget about. These NeX items are significant M(acro)T expenses for pure vanity and frankly whoever convinced CCP to try this is flying in a different reality to the rest of us.

Now yes, I could see the stubborn crazy icelandic ego pushing on just because they don't want to admit they are wrong though - so at some point you have to hope that somebody with some actual money invested and mortgage to pay goes and has a word with their lead producer and asks "why are you pissing off our golden geese with this craziness?"



Isn't that like a failing fast food join cranking up the price of its burgers to offset dropping sales? I can't see that strategy working for long.

Dude, I would totally agree except for the fact that the NeX roll out is a complete joke. As it is, you cannot even buy something as simple (and OBVIOUS) as a pirate eye patch. Also, I want a pet slaver hound for my CQ. Then again, CCP's current pricing model would probably try to charge you 4500 AUR for the eye patch because, as we all know, eye patches are worth much more than two or three fully fit battleships, amirite?

If they really wanted to make money off of that stuff then it would all be priced lower and there would be dozens of items to choose from. They tried to do it too soon, with too little. If CCP wants to go to a non-subscription model then they are going to have to find a new way of thinking about how MT actually works.

Cf. New Coke and the failure of the sip test model…

Every report told them this??
What about the reports of people unsubscribing?
What about the reports of people not logging in anymore?

These are the reports that should really matter to ccp. Not some yahoo who never ran a game for more than a year speculating what the gaming industry will look like in 10 years.

CCP has a successful business model with this game. For all the talk *very* few companies have managed to get that. CCP should put a huge value on not screwing it up. Therefore a huge burden of proof on those who would convince them they need to change this model. Nothing I have read or seen even remotely meets that burden.

If they continue to just try to make up for lost subscriptions by revenue from mt they will indeed run the game into the ground. It doesn't take a genius to see that.

I don't think we're 'attacking' CCP per-se, we're definitely out to send a clear message to the upper management: EVE Online is about flying in space and we feel that it's being neglected over things like walking in stations. We've made it clear to the guys on the ground at CCP that we absolutely still love them, and you should too. People like CCP Soundwave, CCP Xhagen and many more are all people who only care about making sure EVE Online is the best possible game it can be. But even then, we're not making an enemy out of the management and neither should anyone else. We're just trying to prod them publicly into doing what both we and the players feel is the right course of action: Making a game about space ships.