EVE General Discussion

Where have I said that the current resources allocated to WIS are too much?

The small team working on WIS have hinted at some spectacular stuff in their forum posts that have me excited.

But your ignoring the 3 eve online expansions that had more work than Crucible put them into them before incarna, but were TERRIBLE expansions.

also it wasn't 19 months, it was 12, it was 2 expansions. and then back to work on eve, and thus in 18months you'd see the space expansion.

But after taking away so much time from Space stuff, and releasing 3 expansions before incarna of not so great expansions, and featire abandonment and jesus features, they released an unfinished money grab single minmatar room with bad lighting.

It was a lot of things guys. Normally you can't get that many players to agree, but this time we got enough to act on multiple points.

WiS cword was unhappy
FiS cword was unhappy

I mean at least if those "18 months" delieved what we were expecting. Full bars you can own, mulipler poker and slay, avatars, seeing your ship from the ground, new way to get players into the game, it would of been great. and people would of bitched, but it woulnd't have been what it was.


By the logic that it was the 19 months thing is stupid. If so the protests would of started 18 months ago. When they said 18 months.

And people tried but failed. But once people saw what they had spent 3 years on. Which was basiclly a rush job like they had nothing done. People got PISSED. and then the cash shop and the greed is good. It was a one two punch.

This, really, more than anything. Ambulation (sorry, Incarna) is great, and so is DUST, and hell, I'm even excited about the prospects of a WoD MMO. Microtransactions in a sci-fi simulator was the real problem.

I should also note that while I believe that the whole WiS vs FiS mentality is really stupid because it's all just EVE, I do also believe that there are too many broken systems in place right now (sov mechanics, way too many people in highsec for all the wrong reasons, faucet/sink system in a simulation, underwater physics, the list goes on and on) to really justify adding even more features. Especially when those features only compound the problem by moving EVE further away from being the ultimate sci-fi simulator (like microtransactions inarguably do.)

You make it sound like the game wasn't intended to have players follow a natural progression away from the newbie/theme park areas and towards the sandbox. Take the training wheels off already. I believe in you!

FIS = Flying in Space
WIS = Walking in Stations

I see quite a few people claiming in this thread that the outcry last year was by a bunch of babies / bitter vets who's only interest was in keeping Eve stagnant, which ultimately will lead to no new subscribers and the collapse of the game.

Allow me to explain what happened with WIS from a developers perspective. I don't and have never worked for CCP, but I have been involved in several large software development projects some of which have gone pear shaped and I recognise all too well the similarities with the WIS project.

1. A great idea was floated
2. Preliminary work started, but with no real idea of the amount of work involved or the suitibility of the underlying code base to support the new concept. Only vague estimates of the time to completion could be given.
3. Marketing and Sales got involved way, way, way too early and started pushing for prototype artwork and demonstrations which in turn were released to the public.
4. A mass expectation was generated within the player base. Functionality that had never existed or only thrown out as 'possible' was being repeated as fact, set in stone.
5. The true scale of the task began to be realised within the team. The original design was found to be flawed, the initial code foundations were incapable of scaling or coping with the full implementation needed, but the problems were so huge and difficult to both grasp or explain.
6. Team moral plummeted. People left jobs creating holes in crucial areas, new people were hired and added more crap on top of the crap foundation before fully understanding what they were doing. Then as they became more aware, realising just how impossible the job was, they too quit or applied for redeployment internally.
7. In fighting broke out between the development departments for key personnel.
8. An emergency meeting took place within CCP management. WIS had too much invested in it by then, in both time and money to just walk away from and of course the players were expecting it now. The decision was made that virtually ALL developers would work on WIS for the next 18 months. To finally push it through, to stop the in fighting, to create a broad knowledge base so future development of WIS would be able to draw on it. A cast iron delivery date was forced on the project team by CCP management without any idea whether it could be delivered or not. But insisting that it had to be finished by then.
9. Moral within CCP generally plummeted. People continued to leave. Replacements were continually hired to fill the holes, but it took too long to train them up so they could contribute meaningfully.
10. Another emergency meeting of CCP management took place. They were told WIS couldn't be delivered in the timescale. The management wouldn't budge on the time. Something, anything, had to be released they demanded.
11. CQ came into existance, a bodge made up of a screwed up development that isn't capable of being developed further. It came into existance for two reasons only. First because CCP couldn't admit that the project had failed and second because they needed something to showcase the purchases from the NEX store.
12. CQ was released, there was outrage from the players that understood how much their game had been damaged by this failed project.
13. CCP did a purge of all the dead wood hired in haste to fill the holes.
14. CCP created a new team to investigate WIS and START AGAIN with a more realistic set of goals and limited design expectations that were capable of being met. They did this because expectation is still there and CCP management can't admit that they made a mistake.

Will that door ever open? No! Why? Ask yourself this - if it did, how many people would you expect to find on the otherside? The answer to that question exposes the fundamental flaw in WIS, all the prototype images show a handful of people in a normal sized bar type area. But we know from null sec wars that entire corps, even alliances, are going to want to get together and party if that door opens. How big do they need to make the room, how many chairs do they put in it? How many bartenders?

So if the new implementation of WIS ever comes to light, it will be as some limited party instanced version. As for the expectations of one day old alts going on murder sprees and killing off players with billion isk implanted clones, that is just laughable. If people could kill in station, that is all that would happen. It would become a cheap first person shooter with the implants left behind in the pod.

I would like to see WIS implemented. But the simple fact is that WIS very nearly destroyed EVE the last time they attempted it. At least CCP know that now. Will they do better next time around? Frankly, there is too much hype and expectation around WIS. CCP will never be able to produce anything that could measure up. Shame, but it is a lost cause now.

WTB WiS. I'm just to sexy for the universe not to see...

1st off they shouldn't fail at WiS then. If they delievered a working product, like you've pointed out it would be great. All of the tech is done, they are still making the Vampire mmo. At some point they will have thier engine done but now, hopefully, the vampire game with be the beta for eve online WiS. Thus if that game works and if fun, has good combat, eve WiS will work too. And not be a risk to put in.

just something to think about long term.

Also as far as populating those stations, CCP already seem to be pretty straightforwards that dust players will share the same stations as us. We share the same CQ, and the ps3 and the PC version DO NOT need to look the same. Dust can look less awesome and they can still interact.

If they limited station walking to 1 station per system, and added in those awesome dust aerna where you can watch one on one, no respawn death matches, or fights where they release 3 gaint rouge drones verus 3 dust players in armored mech suits. And people cuold sit in a station bar watching those matches and betting money. It would work. Add in more games, gambling, arcade cabinets.

It could work.

Thats not exactly true, they released their tech to early bit it wasn't a flawed, just not finished properly, these days the part we can see and use is alot more stable, easier to use and more attractive.



CCP said they moved to fast on their overal idea and neglected key areas of the game (the one that is acutally working atm, FiS) in their hurry to get there. That doesn't mean they are not stil planning to work out their "future vision", just that they decided to walk before they run.






Smaller team means less progress, but allot of art assets and tech was developped in the preceding months. Even if they need alot more time because of their small team they do have one bottleneck that they have less time worrying about. Art must have made a ton of textures, buildings, etc. WiS architecture is made to be modular so they can attack buildings without to much hassle and art support. Since they where allr eady to launch WiS unto the world it should stand to reason they have a whole library of art regarding WiS. (as also demonstrated by the realease of 200+ items in the nex store, loot and LP stores)



It will move at a slow pace for now, but move it will. I might be 18 months but I doubt it since they do have dedicated team of at least 5 persons working on the WiS itself. That might be small in terms of who was working on it before but still its a dedicated team that works on WiS every day (barring emergencies, general changes).


Before Incarna 1 team only worked on spaceships and the rest on WiS, now one team only works on ambulation and the rest on spaceships. This is good, karma :).

That doesn't mean the Ambulation team is activly doing nothing. On the contrary, I believe those guys have something to prove. And the head of the project isn't exactly a non-entity regarding CCP or EVE!

CCP have already stated that they have already had multiple avatars in a room together without any noticeable performance drops. They have also shown prototype "gameplay" (board games, social interaction) so i don't think you can say the tech isn't there yet.