EVE General Discussion

Basically, consoles couldn't kill the PC since the 80's, why should tablets, OP? Your observations may be correct, but your conclusions are not.

I think you mislabeled the thread a little but there is something to it.

Over the past year I've been playing eve more and more on a laptop instead of a desktop. The reason being that I dont enjoy being locked away in my study for hours to pay eve. So I am in favour of a game that runs on older or less powerful hardware. On this front I think that CCP are doing things right.

That said I think that there is a fundamental difference between the type of game you can play on a touch device and one you play on a PC. Even console interfaces lend themselves a little to a different stile and level of gaming - look at the people who crowed about the lack of a keyboard and mouse version of Dust.

Touch and tablet devices have their purpose but this does not mean they cannot co-exist and that one will replace the other. I am a heavy tablet user, I have a bunch of touch screen devices that I love but I ask myself: Could I do my job on a touch screen? No. Could I play a complicated input game like eve on a tablet? No.

Sure, tablets and touch screen devices have massively impacted on the PC/desktop market but they are unlikely to destroy it until the speed and precision input of a keyboard and mouse can be seriously re-created and at present this is not the case.

See, the thing that bothers me about this kind of of stuff is that it's all relative.

WoW is struggling to keep its *10-12 million* player base. Where most players have one single account. That is, conservatively, there's 7-9 million individuals playing it. By comparison, EVE reached 450k subs, when average player has 2-3 alt accounts, and some as high as 6-8. That suggests, very conservatively, that the game has only 150k individual players. So any "growth" in EVE is probably due to alt account propagation. The fact that concurrent user record set a long while ago is yet to be beat, despite total subs going up to 450k, suggests that it is indeed alt accounts, and not actual players, that are growing.

And why is that bad? Simple. When 1 WoW player quits, Blizz loses 1 account. One in ten million. When 1 EVE player quits, CCP loses 2-8 accounts on average, of 450k. Which is why events like Incarnageddon happen so easily in EVE. A small number of players quits, but a large number of accounts closes. Snowball effect. So, in conclusion, it seems to me that "growth" of EVE is an illusion. And lest we forget, EVE recently "grew" to have roughly 1/22nd of WoW's average subscription numbers. In light of this, nobody should be seeing EVE as rosy. Especially considering CCP isn't exactly an indie company, they had 600 employees (and have 400-ish now?), that's not small by any means.



I agree with you on tablet sales and all that stuff, but people will never ever play games like FPS or RTS with the touch screen. It's just not fast enough, not accurate enough. Unless the games are severely dumbed down, with some serious aim-assist, even worse than in console games. It's a distinct possibility, but I doubt that will happen. Thus, at least as far as control peripherals go, I think mouse and keyboard are still safe. As for laptops outshadowing desktops, also consider than screen real estate is becoming cheaper and cheaper. A 42" HDTV that can double perfectly well as a PC monitor costs $100 less today than it did a year ago. So while some things are getting smaller and mobile, some larger stationary things are becoming even more affordable.

And Win8? That's a typical Microsoft move. Everyone with more than half a brain is boycotting that one. Neither I, nor anyone in my family, nor anyone I know, is planning to update to Win8. We're all skipping it, just like we skipped WinME and Vista.



Very, very unlikely. The "average" PC today will be able to run EVE on lowest settings probably even 8-10 years down the line quite easily. We still have tons of people running EVE on insanely old PCs under WinXP. These PCs won't disappear overnight. Also I feel your time frames, like "perhaps one to two years in the future" are WAY off. There's no way things will move so fast. Plus, realize that this year, and next year, we'll see the "next gen" games appear, based off the new XBox and PS consoles. This will finally result in outdated console hardware no longer holding back PC games (which lately for the most part are developed on consoles and quickly (and shoddily) ported to PC), as new console hardware will be more in line with modern high end PCs. This will push the mobile stuff out to the periphery once again, as typically such devices have significantly less oomph. It'll take a couple of years for developers to learn to squeeze every last ounce of performance from new consoles. And then the downward spin will begin again, by which time mobile devices will start to catch up.

Overall though, I don't think anything as drastic as you describe will happen in the next 6-8 years at least.



Three words for you, mate: NOT GONNA HAPPEN!

I'm sorry, but there's no way in holy hell CCP can rewrite this game's client. As patch after patch (err, excuse me, I meant expansion after expansion!) has shown, the game's client is a giant messy haystack. And re-doing it from scratch and getting it all to work smoothly is just out of the scope of their abilities. It's the same reason you won't see Blizzard re-write WoW. It's just easier to release a new game made right.

IF CCP wanted to they could port the game client to some other platform without too many problems. I'm not saying its trivial, but a company with the programming resources to deliver things like EVE would just plough through the work. Aside from the playerbase, the thing that makes EVE different is the single shard universe, the art assets and the IP. All those translate flawlessly to any platform CCP want to spend their effort supporting if they think the payerbase is shifting. The money is in the back-end and the brand. Everything else is just cheap front-end code by comparison

Given what they know about PS3 development, I reckon a few sprints by the Dust team would have a pretty well formed EVE client running on PS3 without issue. Hire a few decent 'droid programmers, grab some off the shelf 3D Library and they'd have a tablet based client up and running faster than you'd imagine. Of course the final polish and business processes that would need to be developed to support another platform would take time to build, but the code? Nah.

They've spent pretty much the last two years telling us that they have been systematically ripping out the old legacy (i.e. not under test) code and replacing it with something that is well formed, well behaved, properly architected, predictable, documented and re-usable. This code base is for the large part already primed for translation to some other platform - if they've done as good a job as they seem to think they have.

These things are not beyond CCP, when (if) they think that the market will support the development cost in any direction, they'll probably expend he effort to move the game there. Until then they won't (publicly) because a bunch of self-entitled whiners here would start moaning about their PC subs were being used to develop a non PC game etc...

tl:dr;
PCs are probably not dying, if they are CCP isn't so dumb as to let their flagship product disappear with them.

Actually, the reason CCP now claims 450k subs is that it include Serenity for the first time. TQ probably has 350k or so. And keep in mind that PCU has reached 55-56k now a couple of times since Retribution and EVEs strongest period of the year is usually later. It is not that unlikely that we can beat the old record of 63k+ online this year. Thus, the dip after the summer of rage seems to be mostly recovered.

EVE is going strong and the future is so bright that my alt has to wear shades.

Yeah, but it's good crap.

The PC may be walking wounded, but it's not dead yet, and CCP will surely move EvE to other platforms when they provide for a compelling experience.

Personally, I can't see trying to play EvE on anything less than a full PC interface, but that might change.

Tablets and smartphones are just replacing PCs of people who do nothing but search the web and check email. For photoshop, 3d modeling, and gaming, I will always want the more powerful hardware available in desktop form factor. I also enjoy being able to do everything on a single machine that I only have to rebuild every ~6 years. I could see buying a tablet to use as a portfolio when meeting with art directors. There is a real benefit, and it makes sense with that form factor and the nature of my work. It could possibly result in a more attractive portfolio earning me more money. So I could justify that. Though even if I had one I'd supplement it with printed materials. Having a smartphone would be nice for a GPS and easy access to email... if the fees weren't so friggen high. Replace my PC? They are inferior as gaming platforms as well as work stations, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Not only will PC remain important for getting work done, but for a tablet/phone to be viable as a serious gaming platform you need to hook it up to a tv/monitor and a keyboard&mouse/controller. Then you end up with an underpowered console/PC with a touch screen you aren't using.

I might consider using a tablet for EVE, but in that case I would have to hook it up to a bigger monitor, plug in external devices such as keyboard, headset and a mouse.

You can do a lot of things on a tablet or phone, but playing EVE is certainly not one that would bring much joy.
If anything they could develop a new EVE-Light version where you could play it more casual like angry birds.

If it goes as far that people stop playing because it's not working on their phone, so be it. The time for games like EVE is over.

AHHHHH, so simple

Once MS DirectX monopoly will be over...

New systems and platforms will emerge... Linux, apple, google (no matter what really). But new possibilities for open public developing will be available, interchangeable, modifiable.

Desktop computer can not die... It is far too advanced. OP is wrong, no Tetris handheld didn't conquer the world. No HP smart PDA didn't conquer the world. No, PSP Iphone, nothing conquered the world of Video Gaming, which belongs to PC.

Neither of those games has a chance of killing EVE. One is designed to pretty much be a mostly single person sim, and the other is going to end up instanced mostly. No meta gaming or big giant fleet combat. Especially on the first one.