EVE General Discussion

TLDR

The Problem with Incarna content is NeX
Remove in-game items from NeX
Make Nex out of game items only
Make Incarna content (clothes and accessories etc) part of the game with production and stats to enable in game industry and enhance custom options.
Profit!

The Detail

The summer 2011 “expansion” for Eve Online named “Incarna” will likely go down in history as the game’s least successful, most unpopular and generally disliked addition since the game went live in 2003. The reasons for this are now generally known: confused development goals, lack of actual gameplay via walking in stations, single Captain’s Quarter, poor technology optimisation and the removal of existing functionality unwisely intended to push the Incarna hanger style to the foreground. This content-barren joke of an expansion after 18 months of drought in core game development, content iteration, or shiny things for us to do led to the perfect storm of protest and dropping subscriptions crisis that led us to where we are now.

We know all this, CCP know all this, and now we’ve hopefully begun to move past it to a brighter tomorrow of eve-focused development and renewal of proper expansion development in the future. More Apocrypha and Exodus scale expansions – less Tyranis and Incursion thrift store offerings.

But I want to make a serious pitch now for why CCP should take an additional step and significantly redesign/ditch the NeX store to completely avoid in-game items and focus it instead on out of game fan-friendly stuff.

From the outset this summer NeX was a disaster for CCP and Eve Online. It launched with a weak selection of overpriced and poorly-designed drab unimaginative clothing with a monocle that made Eve Online the proud recipients of this season’s horse armour award for gaming industry ridicule.

“What? You play the game where they charge you 72 dollars for a virtual monocle ... lol!”

The stuff was too expensive, it wasn’t very exciting, it looked (to be honest) just like the terrible Minmatar Captain’s quarter – grey, olive, brown, depressing and completely lacking in the verve and creativity of the original character generator costumes which owed more the Fifth Element than today’s depression-era warehouse stuff.

But the disaster goes deeper.

The argument about whether CCP would go further than vanity-only Microtransactions let them know that the player-base would not stand for overt pay-to-win in Eve (and that PLEX was just far enough on that score). That meant the perception we were somehow happy with “vanity” stuff being fodder for the NeX store going forwards and opened the can of worms for all future bits and pieces: corp logos on ships? (vanity!) paintjobs (vanity!) coloured engine trails (vanity!) new cyno effects (vanity!) – If CCP could draw a line between game-affecting and non-game affecting content and charge Aurum for one and deliver as traditional content for the other – that really did beckon the cheapening of future Eve where all kinds of content would be processed through the NeX store rather than properly integrated into the Eve sandbox through industry/exploration/agents etc. Second-rate content-lite for "vanity" and no game impact that nonetheless ate up the time and focus of artists!

Why would they EVER produce clothing bpcs and lp offers to award actual gameplay when they could simply use the crass mechanism of the NeX store to foist this stuff on the credulous?

And worse yet: in order to keep this divide sacrosanct it meant the “vanity” stuff could NEVER have in-game impact (and thus protect CCP from the pay-to-win allegation) which had the side-effect of marginalizing all this kind of content in the future. Clothing could never have skill modifiers and game effects, ship schemes and camo could never even slightly change the stats, no benefits from any furniture or room fittings you bought for aurum etc. Basically the NeX connection made all this new graphics content sterile from birth, representing nothing more than detritus that fills up the database but doesn’t enhance our gameplay!

Now, when I play other games (tm) I like to collect armour sets, spacesuits, hats, goggles etc that look cool AND have the right stats. In fallout 3 I loved the recon combat armour because it looked cool and didn’t mess up my stealth. In mass effect I’d often choose my suits and weapons on aesthetics, hell in dragon age I generally refused to wear the powerful archmage robes regardless of their stats because they just looked silly. But point is – they had an impact on the game because of looks AND stats.

And if the price of making these things available through the NeX store in Eve is no in-game effects then for me the whole experiment is a double-fail because I hate microtransactions in a subscription game as much as I hate stupid hats and clothing that do nothing at all.

Gaming is about playing around with modifiers and stats and equipment and tweaking your fit. Eve Online grabbed me like a coke addiction the first time I saw it because of the fitting screen and customization of ships. I want to min-max, I want to juggle stats, I want to chase that ideal fit and play around with weird and wonderful modifiers. Eve was just like Magic the Gathering deck-building but with ships in a lovely multiplayer Elite style universe – how can that fail?

So when the realization of Incarna hit with drab clothing that does nothing but bypass the eve player economy I just came to believe that the whole NeX concept is evil and needs to be thrown down a flight of stairs and shot three times in the head at the bottom, because it represents nothing so much as cheapening the dream and vision of Eve Online the player-driven economic and combat sandbox.

4. But Jade why do you hate NeX so much, can’t we just keep the NeX store for truly prestigious rare $-only showoff items and have other things produced by bpos and lp?

A. No, no, a thousand times no. The problem with NeX is human nature. If you have an easy and a hard way to do things you end up taking the easy way. Its easier for CCP to deliver their new clothing and accessory content without stats via NeX and just walk away. Its the easiest quickest, dirtiest option. But it isn’t the right option. As long as NeX exists for in-game items it means that there cannot be stats and game-effects for clothing and accessories AND there will always be competition between the cheap and dirty delivery method and the proper Eve sandbox delivery method. When crunch time comes tell me which option will mostly win? I want ALL Eve content properly integrated with the economic sandbox and evolving one-world paradigm of New Eden and frankly so should you.

Truly prestigious Eve Online content needs to come from playing the game. If you want to show off then flaunt a tournament victory cruiser in PVP, fly a Titan, build an outpost. By all means lets encourage CCP to give us bigger top range content to flash about (and work as an ISK sink at the same time) but lets kill off this corrosive concept of rl $ for special players nonsense. Eve is great because its different from WoW, not because its happy playing second fiddle in space.

So to summarise:

I would like all in-game items removed from the NeX store and the NeX store itself retasked for the sale of out of game items for direct sale to players. (If this is not feasible then just remove the NeX store entirely).

I would like all items of upgrade clothing/accessories/skins etc in the game to have in-game effects and be entirely player manufactured from sources discovered and utilized in-game.

I would like future iterations of Incarna to be a showcase for things that we as players find and build and buy (from the player market) and use in-game.

In this way I believe that Incarna can be saved and made into a full and healthy feature of Eve Online rather than being a red-headed stepchild of MT-greed and castrated pay-to-win folly.

And core Eve gameplay will be rewarded with another level of customization that means all of us can do a bit more juggling of stats and asthetics in our search for our virtual space identities in New Eden.

Thanks for reading!

I like this idea, and as the items will be possible to make in game they should also be destroyed just like implants if you wear them while podded.

Good suggestions. I'm not sure I would like to have clothes with stats at all, but think I could live with that, if kept to a minimum.

Back in the days when they first talked about Incarna tailor shops owned by players were on the table and the Nex Store blocks that vision. The whole economy should be player-controlled.

Wouldnt mind fashioning them as well. My only hiccup was the price for them, and maybe that would help smooth them out. Though suppose CCP doesnt like it, they were hoping to make some extra dough off the NEX or something akin to that. Imagine that would have to be worked out as well.


Also quick question.

With establishments not coming for awhile. Wondering if that will hurt people buying the clothes, or if more clothe designs will be released soon as well. Imagined walking in stations helped sell them, or more would buy them once that was out. Suppose still could release fish tank though. Or posters.

An excellent, well thought out proposal. For what it's worth you have my complete agreement with this idea!

But I still want my backless leather chaps.. (+2 modifier to swagger when runway walking..)

First Off Holy wall of text bat man!

But yes I agree with you on everything! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

NEXt you will be advocating introducing new races to New Eden.......Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs......and a new function to PI, fishing on the planets.........

You can certainly tailor the bonus given to be appropriate - fancy black dress and tiara would likely be social impacting on the grounds you might sometimes have clothes on while interacting with your agents. I do take your point partially though - but I don't think this is what almost caused the game to self-destruct as you put it. That would 18 months of no substantive development followed by a single CQ with all the content delivered by NeX and the door.

[quote[Make the NEX items part of the sandbox, with BPO's and sell them in stations......but let them remain clothes. NOT magic game-altering cloaks. What color shirt you wear should have no effect on your ship's stats. It should be in your cargo hold when you're in your pod. [/quote]

Again its detail, I was more talking the big picture but would you agree with ship skins effecting the performance of ships ? stealth coating reducing sig at the cost of shield points etc? Do you believe that kind of thing would be preferable than paying NeX aurum for skins that magically appear in the game and have no players involved in the production and reselling?

What do you think about the central argument that in-game items should be removed from the NeX store and made player constructable and as a result may have an in-game effect?