EVE General Discussion

The moments that define history.

Hello New Eden.

Over the last several weeks we've been listening. We've been listening to the CSM, we've been listening to the greater player base, and we have also been listening to ourselves. For the last 24 months, we have over leveraged the resources we used to use to make the Eve you love great; to produce an Eve we hoped others would love too.

And although we stand by our decision to do this, it has admittedly taken us longer to do, and has cost us more good will than had been planned.

We have learnt a lot from this process:

From now on we will have a reliable cycle of development featuring the Tick and the Tock

Excell/Photoshop Graphics Awesomeness number 1 (because PICS OR STFU/IT DIDN'T HAPPEN) (but no really, the best way to communicate is with a mixture of mediums)

That chart shows how we will develop from this point forward. We will have 2 major expansions every year, each with a different focus. The Winter expansion, AKA the "Tick", is when we will introduce new stuff into the game (like wormwholes and new game mechanics) that refresh and invigorate the experiences of players new and old. This doesn't mean that during these expansions we will completely halt development on iterating new features or WiS however:

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The above shows a rough split in terms of the impact the features we will deliver during Winter expansions. You may say "wait a minute.... why are you making new stuff when there's so many things to fix..." - Well the reality is that the expansions players all say were the best, were the ones where we introduced fundamental changes and additions to the way players play the game. Apocrypha with wormholes and Tech 3 was a prime example. However we also recognise upgrading and building upon many of things we've also introduced shouldn't be ignored...


And that will be precisely the focus of the "Tock", or the Summer Expansion. Here we will focus on upgrading and iterating on features we have already laid the foundations to and although balancing and bug fixes can and will happen throughout the year, the Summer expansions will receive an extra dose of them in the future.
Excell/Photoshop Graphics Awesomeness number 3

*Please note that relatively trivial, though important things can consume disproportionate amounts of developer resources and although we will be constantly looking at the potential impact to the game new features provide, we will not skirt from such things if they can provide meaningful improvements to players. (EG GALLENTE PLEASURE HUBS AND SHIP SPINNING.)


I'm really excited about our shift in focus, and I hope in the next few weeks, with all the cool stuff we're going to be talking about and showing you, you will be too...

More importantly, we want to show you that we have really learnt, and we have listened because Eve is coming back baby...

....Yeaaaah!

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason
Senior Producer of EVE Online

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Essentially, what we wanted to read was some plan, a vision, something that merged the very best of what everyone wanted. Because beyond :18months:, we really don't know where eve is going, or how it will get there, and we're demoralised and nearing the point outrage exhaustion, which is one step away from not caring at all.

Fire Zulu, hire this dude.

Though with their switch to gradual rollout rather than big-bang rollout, the Tick and Tock would actually be regions on the graph, not single events.

Thus the "Tick" would be a (short) series of small red arrows, the "Tock" would be a (longer) series of small blue arrows, and there would be no green arrows because all the releases include necessary bug fixes and balance changes.

Jeeze, give them time. It must take a lot of effort for such a massive company to have such a shift in direction... They're essentially giving you (or about to..) give you want you want, and your still complaining... FFS

:P

I'm sure we'll see something good, it's only been positive things coming out recently.

Iam honestly waiting to see what type of shift they plan on doing. It is nice to see that CCP does finally somewhat "get it" and are refocusing priorities. At least thats what it seems to be. When it comes to the staggered rollout, big bang, tick tock systems its really hard to say which one is better from all perspectives. Tick tock to me seems like a good middle ground between staggered and big bang releases. The bad thing about the current system is that a staggered rollout is suppose to reduce bugs, or time it takes to fix bugs. However there is still constant patching, and bugs that go unchecked which shows the system isn't that great.

Anyone who doesn't realize the devblog is a result of an internal struggle hasn't been paying attention.

this.


+1 like, which is one thing I don't give much tbh

Are you a dinosaur???

What makes you think they are capable of this? What in their recent history gives any indication they are capable of putting together game mechanics that don't screw over huge portions of their customer base? What part of the last few years makes you think CCP is capable of operating intelligently without babysitters (a la the CSM at least)?