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Could CCP be about to repeat Incarna?

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Arduemont
Rotten Legion
#181 - 2013-11-20 08:26:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Arduemont
Tippia wrote:
Stuff.


Your dodging the point now Tippia. The point is that you said there was an overall downward trend leading up to Incarna and that there isn't one now. And that was one of your arguments for why there was no similarity. If your relying on subs there was no clear downward trend and there is no data now, and if your relying on active players then there was one then, but there also is one now. That's the point. If you want to move on to a different argument that's fine, but I will take it as an admission that you were wrong on this one and probably won't argue further.

There's a lot of denial and squirming in that post. People have held you up as some kind of Bastion of logic and, having never really argued with you, I had presumed you to be exactly that. Turns out your just a troll like the rest of us. Go figure.

"In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." www.stateofwar.co.nf
Sura Sadiva
Entropic Tactical Crew
#182 - 2013-11-20 12:43:36 UTC
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:

Well, personal depots would be useful for solo gameplay if they weren't beacon-like loot piñatas, ready to spoil any safe spot they're deployed into.



Come on, if not scannable they were insanely overpowered :)

But the point here was if the CCP trend is to only fuel big alliances gameplay and not giving a **** to solo players or small groups.

A major barrier for solo/small group to develop their gameplay in WH and null is just logistic. The new deployable break this barrier. Now I can roam WH and deep null sec with my Loki in travel fit, and when I need refit accordingly to what I want to do. This is priceless and give more advantages and room to small groups in respect of big alliances.

And yes, these, as well as POCO, are also points to trigger small scale PVP. But this is not catering to big alliance (honestly, big alliances core business is generally ratting and afk mining).

I see more like a try for CCP to bring some action to HS (and this was requested a lot from HS players too). And they (CCP) try to do this in the way they think is accettable for HS players: prompting a consensual PVP flag. They started this approach with Retribution (new crimewatch and duels) and now adding POCO as PvP flag option.

We can discuss if this is what HS really needed or if this is the proper way, however I don't see how can be considerated a catering for big alliances.

Consider that in the past if someone in HS wanted some PVP the only viable option was "move your ass and go pirate or join some null sec corp".
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#183 - 2013-11-20 14:30:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Two-part wall of text incoming… and no, this is still not a rant, but a detailed account of the details people get wrong.
Arduemont wrote:
Your dodging the point now Tippia. The point is that you said there was an overall downward trend leading up to Incarna and that there isn't one now.
No. I said that there was a downward trend leading up to Incarna, starting with the release of Incursions. Period. I make no argument about the current situation other than to say that so few of the storm fronts that made up the summer of rage are on the horizon that a comparison is pretty flawed. I'm not dodging the point — the point doesn't actually exist.

Again, let's look at what the OP presents:

1.   CCP cosying up to a specific entities on the sly.
2.   CCP trying to cover its tracks on a what some consider a flubbed event.
3.   CCP being bad at communicating policy.
4.   CCP having a plan for the future.

This is supposed to be lead to a new Incarna débâcle. Now let's look at what the summer of rage was actually all about.

1.     CCP not delivering any real sandbox content for over a year.
2.     CCP promising not to change their business model a year earlier.
3.     CCP trying to change their business model anyway.
4.     CCP doing so by in part trying to license community creations, thereby pissing off every third party creator.
5.     CCP not communicating their change to the community because they knew it would be impopular.
6.     CCP not sanity checking their pricing with, well, anyone, thereby pissing off the CSM (and even unrelated parts of the game delevoping community).
7.     CCP trying to introduce gamebreaking MT that bypassed crucial game components, thereby pissing off industrialists.
8.     CCP having delivered a future vision half a decade ago, raising people's hopes of a fun future.
9.     CCP having delivered a demo of that vision three years ago, giving people hope that they'd deliver on their vision.
10.   CCP being very vague about what would be in the final release.
11.   …that was subject to very little actual testing.
12.   …that generated miles upon miles of feedback during that tests that was all ignored.
13.   …that showed pretty much nothing of what was in the old demo.
14.   …which in turn generated even more questions about what would be released and when.
15.   …and the tests exposed game-breaking (and computer-breaking) bugs that were ignored.
16.   CCP giving vague promises that more was to come later (but no mention of what or when).
17.   CCP finally admitting that the old demo and everything said about it was gone.
18.   CCP designing content that contradicts established lore, thereby pissing off the RP community.
18.   CCP releasing a featureless, game-breaking, and computer-breaking expansion in spite of being told it would do all those things, thereby pissing off those affected — an expansion people have been waiting eagerly for for many many years, thereby pissing off those who were left disappointed.
19.   CCP being smug about the flubbed release and brushing off all criticism, thereby pissing off anyone who's left.
20.   CCP trying to suppress evidence of their errors (for a while… until they drowned in it).
21.   CCP changing their minds to genuinely for feedback, but proving they don't actually understand it.
22.   …and also ignoring a lot of it because faulty organisational structures prevented the information flow.
23.   Oh, and did I mention still not delivering any real sandbox content — now for close to two years?

All in all, there is one common characteristic between now and then — points 2 and 19 — but point 2 in the current case affects such a small portion of people that it still doesn't really compare. There might be some parallels in some general pattern of over-moderation between points 3 and 20, but again, they don't really compare: one is about being bad at CYA language and explaining why it's even needed; the other is about trying to cover their asses and failing miserably.

(cont) →
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#184 - 2013-11-20 14:31:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
← (cont)

So when I say that people are (vastly) simplifying the mechanisms of the summer of rage, I mean exactly that. It's not just a matter of “promises + miscommunication = lost subs”. It's a matter of a long chain of events that unrelentingly and resolutely pissed off every part of the community in one way or another and with a non-release of much-awaited expansion as… well, not even the final drop, really (I'd put Fearless down as that trigger) but as a focusing event.

The parallels between the space-expansion future vision and Incarna are pretty much nil. Nothing has been promised, nothing has been demo:ed, nothing has been delivered, no-one even knows what it means(!) Incarna was the tail-end of such a vision, but so was Tyrannis and Retribution… so why aren't people comparing anything to those? We are now at the very beginning of a new such vision, and going straight for the landmark that was Incarna as a point of comparison doesn't really make sense since none of the other pieces are in place yet.

In fact, before we even get to the current future vision and the way it delivers, we still have the old nullsec revamp five-year vision from two years ago to get excited (and/or disappointed) by. Well, except that some of the points on that list have been nibbled away at, slowly but surely… Still, we have another three years to go on that one. P

As for the Incursions vs. Incarna part, it is there to highlight one thing that people get wrong about the simplified narrative: that “it is all Incarna's fault”. It isn't. As the numbers show, the much-publicised and spectacular player loss that Incarna caused was not actually unique to Incarna — it had already started with Incursions, and it feeds directly into point 1 on the summer-of-rage list: it didn't generate any relevant sandbox content. I also like to point to this as a counter to the common “patch vs. expansion” argument — that “patch”-style expansions are bad for the game and “real expansions” are good for it. Incursions disprove this bit of received knowledge. Incursions did as much damage to the population as Incarna did because it didn't actually deliver any sandbox content. It provided some themepark content, sure, but it also did what themepark content always does: it failed to keep people playing because it is so quickly consumed. Later “just-a-patch”-expansions such as Crucible and Retribution improved population numbers by leaps and bounds — probably precisely because they were “just patches”: they improved the toolbox; they provided the sandbox-style content that this game thrives on.

So, already, the first puzzle piece of the summer of rage is missing: they have been providing content in the last couple of expansions. Not the kind of grand additions people envision (but which is of dubious use based on past experiences), but the kind that the game thrives on. And as it happens, the numbers tend to agree: Crucible created a big bump; Inferno largely kept them stable; Retribution created another big bump.

Now, to answer your invented point, if you want to draw parallels between any downwards population trends currently happening — and especially any kind of see-saw trends around patches — Incarna is definitely the wrong thing to compare to. That was a downwards trend continuing downwards. The see-saw you're looking for is, again, in Incursions: an early upsurge that then turned downwards (and that's assuming that what you're seeing isn't just the regular seasonal drifts that happen every year).

So the answer to the thread topic would be “no, but they might be about to repeat Incursions”. In a sense, that could actually be worse… but there's enough doomsaying to go around so let's not add to it.
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#185 - 2013-11-20 14:35:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
Sura Sadiva wrote:
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai wrote:

Well, personal depots would be useful for solo gameplay if they weren't beacon-like loot piñatas, ready to spoil any safe spot they're deployed into.



Come on, if not scannable they were insanely overpowered :)

But the point here was if the CCP trend is to only fuel big alliances gameplay and not giving a **** to solo players or small groups.

A major barrier for solo/small group to develop their gameplay in WH and null is just logistic. The new deployable break this barrier. Now I can roam WH and deep null sec with my Loki in travel fit, and when I need refit accordingly to what I want to do. This is priceless and give more advantages and room to small groups in respect of big alliances.

And yes, these, as well as POCO, are also points to trigger small scale PVP. But this is not catering to big alliance (honestly, big alliances core business is generally ratting and afk mining).

I see more like a try for CCP to bring some action to HS (and this was requested a lot from HS players too). And they (CCP) try to do this in the way they think is accettable for HS players: prompting a consensual PVP flag. They started this approach with Retribution (new crimewatch and duels) and now adding POCO as PvP flag option.

We can discuss if this is what HS really needed or if this is the proper way, however I don't see how can be considerated a catering for big alliances.

Consider that in the past if someone in HS wanted some PVP the only viable option was "move your ass and go pirate or join some null sec corp".



I don't mean unscannable, just if you're not using it (or you're offline), the structure is not in space. Make it cloak or whatever. Not of use to you, not of use to the enemy, go figure.

Giving the big guys 24/7 full time advantange to find you is only favorable to them. Finding you in the 1 hour or 2 hours you're actually able to use the depot, that's a bit more difficult, but not impossible, not at all.

What's absurd is to pretend that someone will leave a beacon lit behind 24/7 so it's impossible to miss to any enemy who just looks for it. Specially in WH, where residents will just thank you for the piñata, so you better look for a very empty and very dead WH.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you
Dinsdale Pirannha
Pirannha Corp
#186 - 2013-11-20 14:45:17 UTC
I see that the great "conflict driver" of high sec PoCo's is going well.
RvB and goons clearly formed a consortium weeks ago, and have now carved up who gets what PoCo, and within 1 day, have gained control of the area surrounding Jita, and are moving outwards.

Looks like there will be 4 groups controlling all of them:

Red
Blue
goons
C.R.E.A.M. (goon alt corp)

Well done CCP...excellent design, well thought-out.
Looking forward to the next conflict driver when high sec stations are conquerable.

The only conflict is the first fight when the cartels take the target from Concord.
After that, these groups are too large to dec, and it's over.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#187 - 2013-11-20 14:48:18 UTC
Dinsdale Pirannha wrote:
I see that the great "conflict driver" of high sec PoCo's is going well.
RvB and goons clearly formed a consortium weeks ago, and have now carved up who gets what PoCo, and within 1 day, have gained control of the area surrounding Jita, and are moving outwards.
Do you have any evidence to support this? Or are you just seeing enterprising people with drive doing what enterprising people do?

Quote:
Well done CCP...excellent design, well thought-out.
It certainly is. Now everyone can make a lot more money in more ways from PI. With a bit of luck, people will dislike how much money everyone makes and start to interdict some of that earning potential.

Quote:
The only conflict is the first fight when the cartels take the target from Concord.
After that, these groups are too large to dec, and it's over.
…well, aside from the fact that they're decced pretty much 23.5/7.
Benny Ohu
Chaotic Tranquility
#188 - 2013-11-20 15:01:53 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Dinsdale Pirannha wrote:
I see that the great "conflict driver" of high sec PoCo's is going well.
RvB and goons clearly formed a consortium weeks ago, and have now carved up who gets what PoCo, and within 1 day, have gained control of the area surrounding Jita, and are moving outwards.
Do you have any evidence to support this? Or are you just seeing enterprising people with drive doing what enterprising people do?

RvB and Goonswarm were allies in the Mateship War of 2012 and have clearly been in close collaboration since then Shocked

Note that the first expansion an RvB CSM member oversaw results in highsec pocos being handed over to the insidious EvilEvilEvilRvBee cartelEvilEvilEvil

The conspiracy runs deep StraightStraightStraight although probably not
Trii Seo
Goonswarm Federation
#189 - 2013-11-20 15:04:14 UTC
I was actually pleasantly surprised to find out how small the depot is and how easily you can swap mods with it. Sixty seconds and you can refit from your cargo without onlining/offlining mods, and then immediately scoop it!

It also comes with a big honkin' RF timer for you to evacuate so there's plenty of time to leg it if you're discovered. And they're already so cheap it's not even funny. If I remember the words right from a certain game, "Future is disposable". Big bad people reinforced your space yurt? Pick it up and run away. Or just leave it empty and run away. I can see those being a major boon to nomadic lifestyle - an armor buffer ship can carry a spare repper in cargo with a depot, drop a depot and repair between fights.

Tippia is right, we're far from Incarna Situation. We're actually in a situation where CCP is looking out for things that matter in this game. They throw more fuel into the conflict fire - ironically, applying "greed is good" where it's needed. People's greed in game tends to result in ships blown up, space-eggs cracked and structures torched. And that's good.

Already the poco change had an indirect impact on reverse-safari, and it's hilarious.

Proud pilot of the Imperium

Arek'Jaalan: Heliograph
Captain Tardbar
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#190 - 2013-11-20 15:20:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Captain Tardbar
I don't know. I don't think we have enough data to prove anything at this point. Unless someone has the minutes from the CCP investors meetings about income.

Looking to talk on VOIP with other EVE players? Are you new and need help with EVE (welfare) or looking for advice? Looking for adversarial debate with angry people?

Captain Tardbar's Voice Discord Server
AskariRising
State Protectorate
Caldari State
#191 - 2013-11-20 15:40:59 UTC
JamDunc wrote:
I don't mean they are about to start making us all space barbies again, I mean the mistakes they made in the past could be about to repeat themselves.

After the summer of rage Hilmar was forced to come back to the community (with or without his $1000 Japanese jeans) and pretty much beg forgiveness. He had lost a fair chunk of his playerbase and was about to lay off about 20% of his workforce.

Quote:
Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated.
Hilmar

We were told that he would talk to the community more and try to keep us all on the same page. Things went well for awhile.


Over the last few months things seem to be repeating themselves.

1 - Trillions of isks worth of ships to Somer - CCP didn't feel the need to tell the community or even the CSM. CCP no longer feels the need to discuss things with the community

2 - The community event - more than the event it was their response to it. Trying to convince us it was a success. They are either losing the connection to the community or heading back into denial.

3 - GM changes - You can now be banned for "impersonating" your own alt. You can also be banned for scraping the APIs, but even though its against the EULA they won't ban you, well unless they do. They are returning to half thought out ideas that make no sense at all.


Then we have the BIG one. Seaguls vision. Does anyone else remember the build up to Incarna? It was going to be awesome, it was going to be amazing, it was going to change the universe forever......but we can't tell you anything about how it will work. No we also can't tell the CSM.....you know for 'reasons'.

They sunk HUGE amounts of resources into it only to discover the players didn't want it (even though they had been hyped by the non information) all that Dev time goes to waste.

Today we have this new vision that is going to be awesome, it is going to be amazing, it is going to change the universe forever......but we can't tell you anything about how it will work. No we also can't tell the CSM.....you know for 'reasons'.

I know its early in the process and its not all final so they can't be super specific, but does anyone else feel a little history repeating.


may this put your mind at ease...

http://www.vg247.com/2013/11/18/eve-rubicon-sets-up-ccps-greatest-mystery-yet-interview/
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#192 - 2013-11-20 17:05:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Vaerah Vahrokha
Tippia wrote:
Two-part wall of text incoming… and no, this is still not a rant, but a detailed account of the details people get wrong.
Arduemont wrote:
Your dodging the point now Tippia. The point is that you said there was an overall downward trend leading up to Incarna and that there isn't one now.
No. I said that there was a downward trend leading up to Incarna, starting with the release of Incursions. Period. I make no argument about the current situation other than to say that so few of the storm fronts that made up the summer of rage are on the horizon that a comparison is pretty flawed. I'm not dodging the point — the point doesn't actually exist.

Again, let's look at what the OP presents:

1. CCP cosying up to a specific entities on the sly.
2. CCP trying to cover its tracks on a what some consider a flubbed event.
3. CCP being bad at communicating policy.
4. CCP having a plan for the future.

This is supposed to be lead to a new Incarna débâcle. Now let's look at what the summer of rage was actually all about.

1. CCP not delivering any real sandbox content for over a year.


As usual you use your infinite time-to-spend-on-the-forums plus excellent rhetoric skills to bend truth to your direction, all the while dressing it with tons of realistic-looking logic.

Since that time you are one of those who try tossing mud on incursions putting them into the blame of everything.

Why? Because incursions went against the mainstream "politically correct EvE intellectual" vision that everything MUST be player dominated and controlled, expecially dominated by large entities who can devote zillions of lemmings into every activity.

Which is also why you support these POCOs so much and other similar positions you had through the years.

Too bad there's those who were there to see how it went for real, there are some of them who actually setup the big revolt and you can find me in the titanic thread setting it up along with the several others.

And how it went for real? That incursions were just a consequence of a larger problem: CCP going down in flames.

Here's a subs chart posted by Akita T at the time.

Back then, threads like this were the norm, not your "want to see what pushes my agenda" theories.

In fact I strongly suggest anybody with a real interest in EvE history to go back and look at Akita T's works, articles that TOWER UNCONTRASTED over the modern forked tongues who can't talk with any degree of objectivity.

This is the reason people quit, it's written in stone for posterity and not by me. And here is my take at the time.


Also, Akita T's legendary thread including my chart predicting that EvE subs would crash in the next months (which DID happen) was no way related to incursions, but to the atrocious level of quality dropped back then, coupled with the many "greed is good" based initiatives, including those who made a majority of long time software developers to quit EvE.

THIS is the real manifesto of that era.


One of the most linked and quoted posts of that time, how could it slip past you? Roll

It also came with my chart showing that in the next months the EvE subs would substantially drop.

The various horizontal-ish lines shown the slowing down of new subs momentum, till the last was horizontal: subs increase = 0. That drop in momentum preceedes incursions.

BTW I am not defending incursions (I actually pushed along with many till they got nerfed), but I am defending intellectual honesty: something you lost long ago when you became the mouthpiece of the large powers.

EvE Online portal | EvE markets tutorials
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#193 - 2013-11-20 17:20:29 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
Tippia wrote:
Two-part wall of text incoming… and no, this is still not a rant, but a detailed account of the details people get wrong.
Arduemont wrote:
Your dodging the point now Tippia. The point is that you said there was an overall downward trend leading up to Incarna and that there isn't one now.
No. I said that there was a downward trend leading up to Incarna, starting with the release of Incursions. Period. I make no argument about the current situation other than to say that so few of the storm fronts that made up the summer of rage are on the horizon that a comparison is pretty flawed. I'm not dodging the point — the point doesn't actually exist.

Again, let's look at what the OP presents:

1. CCP cosying up to a specific entities on the sly.
2. CCP trying to cover its tracks on a what some consider a flubbed event.
3. CCP being bad at communicating policy.
4. CCP having a plan for the future.

This is supposed to be lead to a new Incarna débâcle. Now let's look at what the summer of rage was actually all about.

1. CCP not delivering any real sandbox content for over a year.


As usual you use your infinite time-to-spend-on-the-forums plus excellent rhetoric skills to bend truth to your direction, all the while dressing it with tons of realistic-looking logic.

Since that time you are one of those who try tossing mud on incursions putting them into the blame of everything.

Why? Because incursions went against the mainstream "politically correct EvE intellectual" vision that everything MUST be player dominated and controlled, expecially dominated by large entities who can devote zillions of lemmings into every activity.

Which is also why you support these POCOs so much and other similar positions you had through the years.

Too bad there's those who were there to see how it went for real, there are some of them who actually setup the big revolt and you can find me in the titanic thread setting it up along with the several others.

And how it went for real? That incursions were just a consequence of a larger problem: CCP going down in flames.

Here's a subs chart posted by Akita T at the time.

Back then, threads like this were the norm, not your "want to see what pushes my agenda" theories.

In fact I strongly suggest anybody with a real interest in EvE history to go back and look at Akita T's works, articles that TOWER UNCONTRASTED over the modern forked tongues who can't talk with any degree of objectivity.

This is the reason people quit, it's written in stone for posterity and not by me. And here is my take at the time.


Also, Akita T's legendary thread including my chart predicting that EvE subs would crash in the next months (which DID happen) was no way related to incursions, but to the atrocious level of quality dropped back then, coupled with the many "greed is good" based initiatives, including those who made a majority of long time software developers to quit EvE.

THIS is the real manifesto of that era.


One of the most linked and quoted posts of that time, how could it slip past you? Roll

It also came with my chart showing that in the next months the EvE subs would substantially drop.

The various horizontal-ish lines shown the slowing down of new subs momentum, till the last was horizontal: subs increase = 0. That drop in momentum preceedes incursions.

BTW I am not defending incursions (I actually pushed along with many till they got nerfed), but I am defending intellectual honesty: something you lost long ago when you became the mouthpiece of the large powers.


How funny is it for someone to chide someone because of their " infinite time-to-spend-on-the-forums" right before they post a wall of text complete with 6 links that demonstrates that they have way to much time on their hands....

...Time well spent on coming to some rather suspect conclusions. Conclusions driven by a bias against the "large powers".
Sura Sadiva
Entropic Tactical Crew
#194 - 2013-11-20 17:34:00 UTC
Tippia wrote:
I said that there was a downward trend leading up to Incarna, starting with the release of Incursions.


After the stable growth determinated by Trinity-Apocrypha EVE players settle roughly around 30-35k/day average.

After this we have cyclic up and down (generally related to the hype or expansion release) but always numbers tend to normalize around a 35k treshold.

The descending curve you see after Incursion is simply this cyclic normalizzation process, it looks more dramatic and lasting longer simply because the Incursion peak was higher than ususal (the higher); is not a specific downward trend, it's simply Incursion unloading, since was unable to held and capitalize that peak (and I agree, it's mostly due to the non-sandbox approach of Incursion).

While, on the countrary, Apocrhypha was able to push and stabilize the growth over years (strategic inpact).

But from Dominion to now the trend never really changed, no expansion had any strategic inpact, are only ordinary fluctuation in a stagnant scenario. Willing to read too much in "here we have 29.500 players, there we have 30.000" is silly.

The tales about Cruccible starting a new trend and the New Dawn about CCP finally working properly on EVE and so on, is more a narrative for forum trolls. We all know.
Vaerah Vahrokha
Vahrokh Consulting
#195 - 2013-11-20 17:40:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Vaerah Vahrokha
Jenn aSide wrote:


How funny is it for someone to chide someone because of their " infinite time-to-spend-on-the-forums" right before they post a wall of text complete with 6 links that demonstrates that they have way to much time on their hands....

...Time well spent on coming to some rather suspect conclusions. Conclusions driven by a bias against the "large powers".


My posts are hardly as frequent and I have NEVER played the "Herr professor" of the forums nor I hide what I think behind a fake objectivity mask.

EvE Online portal | EvE markets tutorials
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#196 - 2013-11-20 19:31:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
Since that time you are one of those who try tossing mud on incursions putting them into the blame of everything.
No, I'm not.
I'm simply pointing out that the prevailing narrative of Incarna as the source of all that went wrong and of the outflow of players.

Quote:
Why?
Well, for none of the reasons you listed because your entire premise is incorrect and the strawman you're building here is of a size that would put Petronas Tower to shame.

Why am I trying to present the history of the summer of rage? Because people are trying to paint a picture of the same thing happening, with very little to show for it and with none (or very few) of the trends at the time taken into account. Also, because with time, the legend of Incarna has morphed into it being far more simplistic than it was at the time — ignoring the problematic developments before it being a major point.

So no, it has nothing to do with POCOs or “large entities” or whatever other irrelevancies you threw in there.

Quote:
Too bad there's those who were there to see how it went for real, there are some of them who actually setup the big revolt and you can find me in the titanic thread setting it up along with the several others.
…others like me, if you remember. But you don't, for some reason. I won't repeat your error of speculating about some supposed agenda behind this outpouring, but you really need to ask yourself what on earth you're on about…

Quote:
In fact I strongly suggest anybody with a real interest in EvE history to go back and look at Akita T's works, articles that TOWER UNCONTRASTED over the modern forked tongues who can't talk with any degree of objectivity.

This is the reason people quit, it's written in stone for posterity and not by me.
…but rather by Akita T, with me picking up the torch and trying to figure out the history and the details — noticing and disproving things such as the myth of the summer decline, and showing that Incursions were a breaking point; that something had happened that was driving the game in the wrong direction. This was the point at which I started to collect old population data, double-check the inferences made between activity and subs, and tried to figure out what the standard player behaviours were (weekly trends, seasonal trends, patch-time trends etc) to pick out what should be counted as an anomaly and what was just the natural order of activity variance.

Quote:
THIS is the real manifesto of that era.
…written at exactly the time I'm pointing to and taking up the problems I'm referring to. You are screaming at me about things I already know, pointing to problems I'm aware of, and providing further support to my point. Why are you so hostile in agreeing with me? I don't get it. You seem to have got it in your head that I'm arguing a point I'm not arguing for a reason that you've invented just so you can yell at me.

The fact remains — and your links show it — that Incarna was simply the continuation of a trend that started much earlier; that became noticeable somewhere around Incursions; that had started at least a year before, even though no-one really picked it up at that point.

So really, I can only ask one thing here: what's your agenda?
And what on earth are you imagining that I'm thinking behind my supposed “fake objectivity mask”? (What's actually fake about it is a question for later…)
Prince Kobol
#197 - 2013-11-20 19:41:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Prince Kobol
Out of curiosity is Akita T still playing Eve?

Also, my own personal opinion is that Eve has stagnated.

This expansion has not got me excited, neither has the press releases stating how were going to have new space and player built star gates.

I guess its because CCP's last vision of WIS was a disaster and there are a myriad of things which needs fixing but most likely never will.

Hell I am still waiting for destructible stations.

I would much prefer to have

Corp Management Interface Overhauled,
Sov Mechanics reworked
Risk V Reward in regards to earning Isk fixed
Alliance Tax
Destructible Space Stations
The fabled Ring Mining Introduced
PoS's fixed.

These are things which have needed to be fixed for years and yet we are still waiting.

To be honest when any game company start talking what might be in 5 years I lose interest as most of the time its just a PR exercise, I just see it as their way of trying to distract people from the problems that exist now.

I have 4 accounts and at the moment struggling to find reasons to continue them.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#198 - 2013-11-20 19:44:27 UTC
Sura Sadiva wrote:
After this we have cyclic up and down (generally related to the hype or expansion release) but always numbers tend to normalize around a 35k treshold.

The descending curve you see after Incursion is simply this cyclic normalizzation process, it looks more dramatic and lasting longer simply because the Incursion peak was higher than ususal (the higher); is not a specific downward trend, it's simply Incursion unloading, since was unable to held and capitalize that peak (and I agree, it's mostly due to the non-sandbox approach of Incursion).
I would buy that if it weren't for the upwards trend that was still going on until roughly around incursion. Even including the patch-based population cycle and seasonal cycles (the normal spring and autumn dips, for instance), averages were going up. Not as fast as before, sure, but they were going up. Somewhere around winter '10/'11, that changed. The downward surge happened in the middle of a patch, rather than some time after it as had previously been the case. That's why I put it as my breaking point: because the timing of that downturn is unlike anything we've seen before or since. Or, well… actually, Odyssey shows a similar pattern.

Quote:
The tales about Cruccible starting a new trend and the New Dawn about CCP finally working properly on EVE and so on, is more a narrative for forum trolls. We all know.
Do you? Riiight. The problem is that Crucible very much did create a new trend. Look at the new plateau it managed to create, above which it and the following expansion could have their regular bumps. Retribution managed to pump those numbers up a bit and create a similar plateau until Odyssey broke it all again.

Either way, Incursions and Odyssey are the odd ones out here: they both broke upwards (or stagnant) cycles and turned them into downwards trends… If I were generous, I'd say that Odyssey is still a bit too close in the past to really see where it's all going, but that's where the comparison lies: Icursion–Odyssey, not [some future patch]–Incarna.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#199 - 2013-11-20 19:46:24 UTC
Prince Kobol wrote:
Out of curiosity is Akita T still playing Eve?

Yes. Blink
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#200 - 2013-11-20 19:59:44 UTC
Prince Kobol wrote:
Out of curiosity is Akita T still playing Eve?.


Yes, but recently he's got baby aggro.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you