EVE General Discussion

A case of too far too soon.

My thoughts are with those who are being forced to 'move on' but after this appeared http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2672 i thought....hello....??...gonna down-size are they?..

EvE is the mother.
EvE is the beginning,
EvE is the core,
EvE is the heart.

Remember that FIRST and FOREMOST

This is a mistake, CCP.

Nobody in the blog blamed the customers for the lay-offs. That's solely from people reading the posts and commenting 'hey, maybe the mass wave of discontent that I was a part of contributed".

As for your business advice, well, it's flawed. When you don't have enough money, you can't just keep all your staff and immediately reassign them. CCP is cutting staff because it has little choice but to do so.

And 'instead of admitting their mistakes'? Really? You might want to re read the blog, because it's essentially doing just that, as is Hilmar's letter and the subtext of several recent devblogs. I spy someone determined revel in righteous indignation no matter the situation.

I'm astonished at some of the names that have come up that are being released from the Company.

It's a real shock, because most of these names have been people who've lived, breathed and slept Eve for over half a decade and have always had Eve's core values in their hearts and the best for Eve and CCP at the forefront of their minds.

While downsizing a little is good, whoever decided who was to go, needs a serious reality check.

This is an immense mistake, CCP. In the long run it's probably a bigger mistake than the early release of Incarna.

Two important facts about that blog post

1: CCP are doing "the right thing" (*) - Even when it hurts (**)

(*) Bettering EVE, their foundation for everything else
(**) Losing people, and stalling (not cancelling) development on "other stuff"

2: CCP is *communicating* again. Honestly and direct (very slight PR spin/buzzwordy, but that kind of post has to be)
It's very refreshing - It's nearly like CCP of old.

Fingers crossed they'll keep it up. (both 1 and 2)

This is a message I would like to direct to CCP and its employees.

First, we are grateful for the commitment you are showing to EVE. Yes, actions not words, believe it when I see it on TQ etc. etc., but you are showing real commitment to making EVE the best game it can be with this reorganization, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of this over the next several months if not years.

Of course, as has been expressed many times throughout the thread, we feel for the people losing their jobs, whether or not it's a result of the refocusing and whatever responsibility can be applied to the demands of the playerbase.

We recognize that, to those of you that are still working on EVE, these are friends and co-workers that you don't want to see gone, and that this will have an impact on you, not just on the people losing their jobs.

But we are grateful, and this gratitude seems to be manifesting in postings of relevant jobs from those few members of the community that have relevant jobs to post about. Posting it in a forum thread...well, it's the only way to respond at the moment.

This demonstrates that you have constructed a truly remarkable, well-educated (mostly), well-connected (some) community, and right now that community wants to soften the blow. Is there some mechanism by which people who have these opportunities that laid off employees could potentially apply to make them available to those employees more directly? Some sort of contact that people could advertise to, that could be put into an internal document and circulated, to help them on their way?

I know that within my corp, people have connected others to useful opportunities, even done business together. The EVE player base is a genuinely remarkable community. The community you as a corporation have created can be a resource for your employees, if you would like us to be.

TL;DR: Help us help you help us all.

FIrst, let me begin by expressing my sympathies for those who will soon find themselves out of a job. I know that this will be a hard time for them, considering the current global economic climate.

That said, I fail to understand how laying off 20% of thier staff will help CCP, "accelerate timeframes for new features and increase [thier] ability to respond to community needs." Unless CCP plans on eliminating one or more non-EVE projects, I do not see how this scenario will come to fruition. It sounds far more like PR spin for the sake of shareholders and customers than an honest evaluation of facts-on-the-ground.

The mistake here is thinking that Dust 514 will be "just another shooter". If it was, it would surely fail based on lack of widespread branding and familiarity. But Dust 514 is not giving you another short single player campaign and a dozen multiplayer maps to frag endlessly on, they are building something far different than shooter fans have played before. Its not even a simple shooter - on large maps its more vehicular combat combined with real-time strategy.

I think there are a lot of console gamers out there who are quite frankly bored to tears by the 14th Call of Duty release, or 6th Halo, and will be excited to be a part of something much bigger, where there is meaning to their actions, and an opportunity to participate in story campaigns that go way deeper and far longer than the typical 15 hour arc.

Market research tells you what people have done, and what people are interested in THAT MOMENT. Market research tells you what has been sold in the past. I'm sure when EvE was first released, you could have easily looked at the "space flight sim" market and said big deal, we have wing commander, and freespace, and freelancer, but who really plays those anymore. Eve will flop.

EvE is successful because CCP imagined gameplay and a world that didn't exist at the time, market research could never have "proved" to them EvE would succeed before they took the time to develop it. Dust 514 will be no different. There are plenty of console gamers thirsty for a more immersive experience than the casual games offer currently, they will come out of the woodwork just like all the EvE converts have over the years.

The downsizing, however unfortunate for those involved, seemed to be an unavoidable reality CCP had to deal with at some point.

What is sad to see however, is exactly which devs are getting the sack (and which ones don't). Instead of firing the ones that caused these problems to begin with (the ones that pushed for certain development directions), the company is - among others - firing people on the community team. The last few people who to my knowledge still had an ear to the ground and the ones who were aware of the issues the community was most concerned about.

It's too late to do anything about it now, but I'm far from certain this will turn CCP into a healthier company.

I personally don`t see CCP focusing on eve universe. U`re doing bullshit guys. Most of eve players are adult and instead of making game interesting ure adding grinding\stupid npc killing and other FAIL expansions to the game. In 21st century of automatic ure making players to do stupid&boring things that cant be scripted (haha). Im personally not interested in DUST at all and wont ever buy it or your another mmorpg. What in thinking to do is stop paying u 45$ per month which i have been doing for 4 years. The game is unbalanced and boring and u are so damn slow to admit it and seems like ure more interesting to make other games, not eve. Well do u need money? Ofc u do so cancelling subscription will be my answer to ur politics.