EVE General Discussion

Whatever:
Please keep in mind, that even if going down, the subscriptions are somewhat stable, even with sinking numbers.
Adding the other income for plex and aur sales.
All in all we do not have the hard numbers, to make educated guesses.

Pessimism does not help and might even harmful.

I see the problem for CCP (for all MMO corps) that the player bases does not like major changes. Even if the changes might lead to a even better gamen. So has Blizzard, where a major change in the battlesystem was discussed.

I just went back to BF4 to learn, that they upgraded the tickrates from 10(!) to 30-144 ticks per second. Compare that with 1s ticks...

Hmm thinking to much about it makes me pessimistic too...

I'm multitasking. I'm in here and in help chat in game while theorycrafting and fitting new pvp ships. Come see for yourself if you like.

This is exactly what I was trying to make the other guy understand.

If Valkyrie had been *inside* EvE (like a giant new case of "barbies in space" but made well), then we would see one game strenghtening the other. If they stay separated, they will compete for dev resources and generally both lose on their potential.

They didn't affect EVE, they affected their pet projects while, of course, shedding dead weight which is fine and actually good. People seem to have this mistaken idea that having more employees, and more customers, is somehow always a good thing and that the only good way is more. It isn't, all well running companies are what they are because they kept a constant keen eye on how they're performing and where they can cut cost/silliness, constantly checking if they need to refocus..

IF CCP decides that some part of what they're doing isn't working out then they should either solve it or get rid of it and while that's of course not fun it's what needs to be done.

To be honest, the best dishes are those with variety.

I joined EvE 8 years ago because it was sandbox, because it got PvP and later loved EvE even more when I found out its markets. Loved markets so much that now I live in RL also thanks to them!
So I really have deep respect for EvE, it literally "made my life".

However I joined EvE expecting an option to pew pew from inside of my Rifter (the ship that made me pick my race etc.), I am sure this is a well buried dream of many an EvE player.

Valkyrie could do that. To be VERY honest, EvE + Valkyrie >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ED and stuff. But it has to be a merge not two separated games. Otherwise we are actually going to see people moving off EvE to play Valkyrie or potential candidates for Valkirie not subbing to it because they don't want to lose their massive status they earned in EvE.

Being killed and having no chance but to be killed are two completely different things.

When I joined there was killing, there was mining, there was missions. But there was not killings with no chance of survival. Somewhere along the line CCP listened to a playerbase that told them as soon as you find a target that target should be dead for the killmail no matter what.

I think you need to recheck your history.

Mass laying off employees is generally a bad thing. As for more customers, fro ma business standpoint that's generally a good thing, and the better CCP does as a business the more resource they have available to spend of EVE.

OK, and what if they decide that the part of what they are doing that isn't working out is EVE itself?

The finacial loss that CCP suffered in 2014 was the result of the writeoff of 22M of assets relating to other (failed) projects. That doesn't mean they had a negative outflow of 22M in cash from their bank accounts in 2014. It means they simply stated that a project was worthless, which had previously been valued as a 22M asset.

The money had actually been spent in previous years, but such is the book keeping regulations in force to prevent tax evasion, that a company sinking money into the development of a new software project has to record the resulting code base as an asset. A Government simply isn't prepared to wait indefinately for a pie in the sky development to come to maturity in X number of years, before taking it's cut in taxes, which of course can be postponed again by the next development project.

In 2014 CCP decided that the project was going to be cancelled. But the code base still existed and in theory could have remained on their books as a 22M asset. However, by writting it off, CCP are able to claim back the tax on 22M worth of profits. I don't know what the corporate tax rate is in Iceland but in the UK it is around 20% thus we would be talking somewhere in the region of a 4.4M tax rebate.

In short CCP didn't lose 22M in 2014 and suddenly got into difficulty. They lost it in earlier years, but finally recognised that loss in 2014. Recognising such a loss is generally a good thing for a company, if a little embarrassing for the company executives.

Buying back stock/bonds in 2015 is also a good thing, it means that the company has a surplice of cash and faith in the future viability of the company. Why on earth would a company spend cash on stock that will be worthless if the company failed?

Yeah, I mostly agree. I think that EVE + Valkyrie as in two separate things isn't > ED, as that's what I love about ED, that everything is fully immersive. But if EVE + Valkyrie were built together so you could fly around in VR around the EVE universe with EVE players, then it would be better. That's not going to happen though. I imagine at best we can hope for dust-like interaction between the two, if that.

First of all their cash flow statement says a different story. They bled out cash in 2013 and 2014 and up until the middle of 2015 from records available.

Second, they wrote off intangible assets, which pushed their debt ratio through the roof. That is probably why they took a private loan in 2015 and paid off the public bonds.

Third, in order to partner with VR technology they sold two board seats on their private company's board of directors. Nothing good can come of outside influence in Eve right?