EVE General Discussion

EvE will die eventually ,its up to CCP to lengthen the lifespan of EvE.
And i don,t think that it is done with reacting at every new platform available

I dont want a touchscreen PC, it isnt the future, it isnt practical and I want to sit a metre back from a 26 inch screen not sat at arms reach farting about touching things.

Touchscreen is for tablets, laptops and phones. For PC gaming it simply isnt going to happen.

As long if CCP evolve into something that needs to run better than a overhauled calculator i am fine with cheap.

not being able to run DX11 is a bit too cheap, for me personally

So PC sales are down big deal, theres not a lot of spare money about, so ppl are buying tablets instead because they are cheaper.

Last time i bought a pc system was back in 1999, i,ve been on the upgrade road since then, my last purchase a new tower case and a nvidia 670 graphics card.

System builders look after their own systems and dont buy crap like Dell or Packard Bell (spits at that vile name).

Until tablets are powerful enough to run full blown games and support software updates. Gaming companies will not add Android to the list of formats just in case it turns out just to be a gimmick.

Well this is not about powerful hardware, but about Interface (keyboard, mouse, touch screen, gyroscope etc)

Games like eve NEEDS 1-pixel accurate mouse pointer and HW keyboard for fast shortcuts.

While angry birds or piano is much better for touch screen.

While games like FIFA or NHL are much better for gamepads.

There is simply no compromises.
Lets keep EVE for keyboard+mouse because it was designed for that. If you want EVE franchise for tablets or phones, maybe its time for CCP to develop some minigames for those devices which would be connected to real EVE world (Like dust). minigame like JITA 4-4, so you can interact with station dwellers or do trade.

The lack of Linux support is a major annoyance. I wish CCP would just put one guy on this and give us a properly packaged EVE client wrapped in Wine. Long term it would be in CCP's best interests to do a native port, that way they keep their options open in case people hate Windows 8, which they do.


About the OP's other points:

Tablets and phones lack the screen size and input to play a game as complex as EVE. Even typing on a tablet is effort. The PC market is not dying, but people who only use computers for browsing the web are switching to tablets causing a temporary huge drop in PC sales. PCs as a whole are not going anywhere as people still have a significant use for them (playing games, editing, writing software, etc).

The idea of having to keep touching a screen with my greasy gamer fingers, possibly obstructing my own view... I don't know on what kind of crack today's market analysts are on but I need to be able to replace my control method with some cheapskate 15 euro mouse or whatever. Touch screens are WAY to expensive and fragile for me to use as a method of controlling a VIDEO GAME.

I mean... have you ever raged and threw a controller? Slammed your mouse against the desktop in anger? Try that with your 100 bux Apple hardware trash. Seriously, todays hardware can't take abuse as well as it did in the 80's. I have some Atari and NES controllers over here that still bloody work despite years of abuse. Some of you might remember some rage-inducing NES games and know what these controllers have gone through in their lifetime.

Physical objects used to control a video game should be somewhat sturdy and precise. Touch screen is absolute trash in this regard. Then you have the issue that some games are simply better suited for a certain type of control. There hasn't been a release for tablets or mobile phones I have the slightest interest in, despite playing a lot of video games. I'm probably not alone in that sentiment so I don't think EvE is in any serious trouble from these new markets. In fact, I have an app on my phone that tells me my skillqueue is gonna run out, so I'd rather say the mobile / tablet market can in fact, be a driving force for me to log into EvE...

OP thinks PC will suddenly die, and that nobody will ever use it again.

OP is stupid.

Touchscreen input when sitting behind a desk, the place where EVE is played due to it's demands on the players' time, is impractical at best. It hurts like a mofo after a little while to give touch input to a vertical screen, putting it horizontal is bad for your posture. Try to imagine playing EVE with kinect for example - Not going to happen either.

That, and you vastly underestimate the remaining interest in desktop PC's. You look purely at sales figures, but not at who is actually buying what. Gamers buy gaming desktops and laptops. Casual users are switching over to tablets, since it suits their lifestyle more - They don't want to be bound by a desk. This is the market for touchscreens, tablets and all that jazz. While desktops sales are stagnating (important to notice the difference between stagnation and actual drop), they are not going away, since desktops and laptops still provide the best environment to play games like EVE aswell as other activities that are simply infeasible to do on a tablet or something similar (photoshop, writing documents/code, editing of any kind).

You have to remember, tablets are not designed to REPLACE PC's. They're designed to make certain activities more accessible.

Linux is still not a real option. There's still a long, long road to go untill NVidia and AMD actually support it properly, graphics wise, and Ubuntu, while being the most friendly Linux option at the moment, still can't compete with Windows for user-friendliness. That, and it recently implemented forced Amazon ads, not even Windows does this >_>

Linux is simply not as user friendly as Windows, this is a fact. Valve is not making a Steam client to replace Windows, but to cater to a growing amount of Linux users who would not be gaming otherwise. This is a very, very important difference! While they did get 'pissed off' by Windows 8, i don't remember them saying that Windows 7 is evil and should be killed off - They have issues with one version of Windows, not all of them.

That, and the facts remain:

The vast, vast majority of people who play EVE and who would like to play EVE will play it in a familiar environment, the desktop or laptop. I don't see how it's possible to make the game playable on a tablet without making radical changes to the entire game.

The vast majority of tablet applications are not designed for prolonged used! This is because tablets are not designed to be used continuously for hours on end, but 15-30 minutes, or less, when you got a little break or need to look something up in between. As i explained above, this does not fill the niche for gaming PC's and laptops which cater to the more 'intensive' time investments like MMO's. You'll also still see consoles be released in one form or the other for the forseeable future, as no other device fullfills it's niche.

I'm probably not explaining this very well, but seriously, desktops and laptops are not going anywhere. Even if the general public would switch entirely (and i wouldn't), professionally workstations would still remain - Developing software, making movie effects and whatever is never going to be done on a tablet and the OS being used is 100% completely irrelevant here since only the results matter, the OS is going to be chosen based on the tools that are necessary, not the other waya round.

There is a question that needs to be asked though. Are those people who abandon their pc's for smartphones or tablets truly the target market? I mean i have a PC exactly because i'm a gamer, not the other way around. It's not because i own a pc i'm a gamer. And that's what you're suggesting. Now don't get me wrong, adapting EVE to be functionable on those new platforms may help reach a broader audience but i don't think they will actually lose costumers by not doing so.