EVE General Discussion

I'm trying to understand your point of view Rhes.

Do you believe that if CCP spent time developing some avatar content that it will ruin your enjoyment of the spaceship side of the game?

But you enjoy the spaceship game right now, right?

That won't change, avatar content will simply be an added extra. Completely optional too no doubt.

So is it instead the concept alone that CCP might spend development time on something other than spaceships enough to ruin your game? Must CCP fully devote 100% of their development resources to spaceships, every single update, to keep your enjoyment in EVE satisfied?

I'm trying to find the angle where the introduction of avatar content will ruin your personal game, Rhes. I can't see how it would, unless you're already not having fun.

this discussion has been dead but I guess you guys need something official, well I bring news!

From CCP rise AMA reddit

Q: "Walking in Stations!
Eve has one of the best character creation systems in gaming, but we never use them for any form of interaction, what are the plans for avatars?"

A: " Basically, Incarna taught us two things as far as I can tell. 1. EVE is a game about spaceships and there's an enormous amount of work to do on the in-space gameplay before players (or developers) are ready to sacrifice it for a totally new type of gameplay, and 2. Working on Avatar gameplay is very costly in terms of resources and time.
As a result, for the time being we are extremely focused on the in-space gameplay. We have years worth of work we can do in space but who knows, maybe someday we will get a chance to go back to it."

so yea expect avatar content to come for WoD..
edit: oops looks like it was posted a few times.

sigh they have like what? 100 people just for WoD and Valkyrie? instead of expanding those things to EvE they bring it to other games

Agreed. But it has nothing to do with WiS.

the problem with this sort of thinking is that it assumes the problem with the game is that there is not enough spaceship content in the game, and that is what makes for stale gaming.

Its possible that if they add that new area of space or tweak that balance issue then suddenly the meta game will change and people will suddenly start having meaningful interactions with each other on epic scales. In fact i would imagine that a number of things MUST change in the space combat balance for this to happen.

However, I would suggest that another aspect is limiting the experience. That is a real avatar interaction system. As it currently stands the social aspect of eve takes place exclusivly in a chat based system. You don't need to be near each other. each player can simply solo in their own little place and chat with others.

The addition of walking in stations if coupled with a purpose for said action would provide a place for people to interact on a more personal level make friends and then go with those friends out into space and do things in groups. Ultimately this is what eve needs more of. group play.

Now the obvious caveat is that other games feature avatars and those avatars dont always lead to anything but spammed /dance emotes in groups around a local gathering spot. So yea avatars would be awesome for RP players and possibly for a way to boost group play and the ability of intimate friendships to form, but in practice people don't seem to use good social media capabilities for developing meaningful social contact as much as spamming useless stupidity.

/human race fail.

Still trying to figure out why "meaningful" gameplay is so important for WiS.

so, yeah, maybe bad example since it didnt REQUIRE Dev-time to do, but back in SWG, vast majority of the population at any given time could be found in one of the cantinas in the cities, 90% of the time, it wasnt even for the buffs that hung out around there, they would log in, sit down in a chair, and see who all passes by. they, and eventually i too, would sit around, strike up conversations, meet new friends, and then decide to go do things with them.

IMO sometimes, just being able to sit there and have a face to talk to can be an important part of a game's social feature, since even though in SWG you could talk to everyone in your area like in EVE, people still preferred being near their conversational partner at any given time (though i suppose with the inherent risk of being within bullet range of someone in EVE, thats perhaps not so preferable XD).

as for the existence of DUST, all the dev time on that should have been spent making it as an extension of EVE, rather than a separate game, feel kinda cheated that i have to go out and spend ~300 bucks if i dont want to be cut out from something that is/was supposed to be an "important" part of EVE capable of effecting the systems around me.

but whatevs, maybe 15 bucks a month for "half a game", or at least access to half the features, is what games are these days.

Go back and look at the things introduced to the game while Incarna was being developed. They were all "big ideas" that fell flat and were left to rot. The best example was Faction Warfare (which has since been fixed after the promise to refocus on real Eve content) but things like the Dominion sov system and the problem of super capital proliferation *still* haven't been addressed and when a solution to those problems finally does arrive it will be two years later than it should have been because of WiS.


This is actually a good point (probably the first one I've seen from a pro-WiS person in this thread). I have admitted that I wasn't against the idea of avatar based content before Incarna was released but after suffering through the game being neglected and then getting a single room maybe it's the sad truth that CCP doesn't have the resources to realize their "vision" for an all-encompassing sci-fi simulator. After DUST failed and WoD continues to linger it's become clear that any more time spent not focusing on what made Eve great in the first place is just wasted development time and money.


If CCP was somehow able to develop more WiS nonsense without having the spaceship game suffer I wouldn't care. I no longer believe CCP is capable of doing this, however.


This might have been true before Incarna was released but for the most part the people who just can't enjoy Eve without an avatar have left and quietly moved on to other games. The people who are left (the people mucking up this thread) are just trolls who are literally asking CCP to make the same mistake they made with Incarna. Why CCP allows them to continually troll in this thread is beyond me.

I too would like to thank Rise for sticking to his guns. His decision to not to allow SoE ships to light covert cynos is hereby forgiven ;)



And, to be honest, for the better. Barring high-level metagame, EVE's action happens when you press undock - for whatever reasons, and get into action. High-level metagame happens on comms anyway and people don't even log on for that stuff.

When it comes to space, EVE offers a huge variety of content. From being a hulking, kilometer-long behemoth worth of guns and steel in a fleet of hundreds, through crazy frigate and interceptor flying (as close as you can get to twitch gameplay in EVE, damn those things are fast), logistics (GSOL <3) all the way to clandestine operations. It all happens in the same universe, all affects the same people.

While "I was there" was a dumb trailer, like all the trailers are - the saying stuck. Those moments, as rare as they are, exist and are retold on comms on nights when nothing seems to be going on. But, no matter what story it is they have a common theme - they all happen in space, after someone pressed the undock button and left the station. The more reasons and ways CCP gives us to do so, the more chance this time around something amazing will happen.

Integrating station gameplay to generate content like this? Sure, yeah, it'd be a great idea if not for the fact space isn't done yet and it's unwise to start another, completely new piece of content while the previous ones aren't done.

All that said, ISD should unleash the lockhammer upon this thread and stick Rise's statement at the end of it, if just for the sake of making it clear where things stand. A lot of people get confused after reading the first post.

Lol, it,s a fun company

Where developer are so naive to go on random public forums to state "we're unable" exposing themself to considerations like "then fire the current devlopers and hire more skilled ones, good to develop and not only to edit the ship rebalance excell spreadsheet for years" :)

This thread has been alive for over a year.

Players want meaningful avatar content. It has been amply demonstrated.

If communities are built and based of something that is not directly related to the game i dont think that should be used as a reason for what content to add and not add to that game.
If voice comms are the main reason for a player to enjoy the game, i would say throwing more and more content at such player is largely wasted apart from gratifying that player. It also makes the game depend on the communities to grow, because new solo players find the game outdated/boring. An unstable and excluding way of doing things.