EVE General Discussion

What that post says is that if a developer is moved to Dust, he's replaced.

I'm suggesting that if there was no Dust, and all the developers who are working on Dust and WoD spent their time and effort on developing Eve.

It wouldn't happen. If there wouldn't be DUST or WoD, there would just be something else. That's simply how it is and it's a very sensible strategy to have for a company.

Ha, 15 bucks a month makes everybody a member of the board of directors.

Do you really expect CCP to make 1 game for the rest of the company future

Eve is a niche game. If CCP only has Eve, and they want to continue to grow, they will have to expand Eve to a more casual playerbase. If CCP never considered other projects, Eve would not be able to stay a niche product. Is that what you want?

An Eve with a million subscribers won't happen without compromising the Eve experience or introducing more modern payment structures (free to play). Luckily, CCP has Dust and WoD to use newer microtransaction based profit models on, and they can let Eve stay relatively outdated and niche compared to the new generation of online games.

Having a single project puts the entire 15 year old company at risk. If Eve, for some unforseen reason, massively loses subscribers, CCP would effectively be dealing with bankruptcy. Once they have a few profitable products out in the market the livelihood of the hundreds of employees will be much better protected.

As for WoD, CCP merged with White Wolf a long time ago, and the dev tools that we've seen at last fanfest look absolutely generations ahead of what other MMOs have in house. There is a huge untapped market for an adult and socially oriented virtual world. Second Life and Entropia make insane amounts of money, and they're generally poor games. Not everyone wants games centered around loot pinatas, CCP/White Wolf has a huge opportunity here, especially considering the large existing fan base for the IP.

The only problem with what you suggest is what happened in 2011 summer, when the CCP had to finally listen to their "customers".

Think it is always a good policy to pay heed to customers opinion, instead of the attitude you suggest.

I totally understand the need for a company to diversify. And I am delighted to hear that WoD, despite having a theme that I think will be outdated by the time it is released, has potential.

I would have loved to see CCP diversify in a direction that complemented Eve more than Dust.

I just think that CCP could have spent resources to take Eve out of its niche, and make it more appealing, instead of maintaining the niche.

Even as a fairly new player to the game it is abundantly clear that CCP is an incompetent game developer, this game 'feels old' because CCP hasnt been pulling in the money to make it any better.

When and ONLY IF ccp realizes that a large casual player base is not optional, that it is in fact mandatory for keeping an MMO viable and current will EVE become the game it should have become 8 or 9 years ago.

Hardcore players loath casuals and have valid reasons for doing so since we want the game changed to suit our playstyle; however, what hardcores almost universally overlook is that without us the game languishes in poverty and this hurts the game play experience for everyone, HARDCORES INCLUDED!, so intent on hating we casuals that you basically are shooting yourself in the foot.

I will bring up the 800lb gorilla that EVE players, Devs and Mgmt. so love to hate, World of Warcraft. Hate the game if you will but learn the valid lessons it has taught most (read: everyone except CCP) that taking care of casual gamers will bring you wealth beyond imagining AND more importantly allow you to properly develop exciting environments for both pve and pvp players alike.

CCP and a certain percentage of the EVE player base love to remark about how EVE is still growing after 10 years while other games of lost subs.

At least one of those other games monster stomped EVE in subs a long time ago, made more money than CCP's grandest dreams could even come close to and had more money to develop their game than EVE ever will, i cant for the life of me see where this brings about bragging rights for EVE.

How can someone look at a game 10 years old with 400,000 subs (reality check 300,000 because we all know that CCP practically forces alt accounts down your throat) and call this a success. What it is is damaging to game development and a slap in the face to anyone that has a financial stake in CCP, including its players.

I read hardcores crying out daily on the forums, CCP why is this broken? why is that broken?, why don't you fix them instead of tending to relatively minor game changes? its easy really, economics, they dont have the money because you have put the fear of God into them about attracting more casuals to the game and thus their financial constraints are bringing about the slow death of this game.

Make no mistake here i dont claim that money makes a game great, just as a steady and really slow growth rate doesnt make a game great but without a serious cash infusion game mechanics suffer and that is what led to EVE being an underdeveloped, broken, underplayed dinosaur of a video game.

I like EVE but had the game been properly developed rather than being in the incompetent hands of CCP it would be a much better game and i no doubt would love it rather than just like it.

Well Dust did integrate with eve but yea they need more than one person working petitions FFS it takes 23 days to answer a petition now vs 3 days before dust

Many on here are thinking in a dogmatic and small minded way. Himlar's vision for Eve is to be the biggest Sci Fi simulation in existence. So this isn't like EA or some other game company which churns out games every month. And also as an MMORPG the players who spend money on the product expect constant updates in return, and people become invested in the game.

Anyone who knows the first thing about business will know that a business which try to be good at everything usually ends up failing, wheras a business which specialises and focuses on what it is good at will find its niche and succeed. That is one of the first things you are taught in business school, and trust me when I say it as I have read so many case studies of business which fail to specialise and end up failing. so the OP makes a very good point in my opinion.

Also Dust is part of Himlar's vision for Eve, so it makes sense to develop it, but CCP will probably need outside help as fps development is not where they specialise.