EVE General Discussion

No interest in getting involved in the inevitable arguments and insults, so all I'll say is I was very excited about the Incarna/Walking in Stations content, and I was extremely disappointed about the recent change of direction by the developers. I was more than happy to wait until the basic Incarna content was working properly before 'FiS' was focussed on again.

Anyway I said as much when I disabled my recurring subscription yesterday. Sure, I did so primarily for financial reasons, but the change in priorities is still basically the reason I decided to pay for FF XIV when subscriptions start in a month or two rather than letting my subscription to EVE renew come December.

I've dropped a 'Like' on the OP. See you lot when Incarna development's resumed - or, at least when I've money enough to play a game I'm no longer so excited for, again.

Dear Arin,

What WiS content were you very excited about?

What did you want to do with your avatar in the station?

How many other avatars did you want to be able to share an instance with?

Did you want to be conected in real time to EVE while in the WiS instance?

PS are you sure you want to play FF XIV? (edit)

Hey... chill,

you don't have to be that agressive. He's just giving his opinion.

... and I'm just asking him what he was very excited about...
[/quote]

Yes but your doing it in the most "get lost" way. I am not saying that you are being rude, i am saying that you are cleary hammering people that don't share your point of you. Even you are still being very polite.

Beginning your reponse with "Dear Arin" is already annoying in it's self. This is a forum post, not a recruitment letter.

Astor, if I may interject a couple of things at this point.

There have been a large number of "highly" original and interesting features that would fit nicely into an Incarna style of play... features that either would not work or would not be nearly as interesting if done with standard EVE drop down boxes. The best of those idea's also complimented FIS content. This thread is probably not the place for discussing them as it would derail the thread. Most likely a new thread should be started devoted entirely to that topic, although it would be difficult as it would be trolled incessantly. Still, maybe tonight if someone doesn't beat me to it...

As far a real time interaction with large numbers of Avatar's present, that is a valid and interesting point. When Incarna was first starting to be fleshed out the strong possibility was mentioned that it would run on seperate nodes or servers, apart from the FIS content in a given system. The point was that it would substancially reduce lag in a heavy traffic system like Jita, and make things more manageable overall. I have no idea if this was dropped completely as Incarna was reworked, or if it is in place and just not talked about again. I suspect the former.

However with the tech in place to share real time information between EVE and DUST (still in development I'm sure, but apparently quite doable) I think that the seperate nodes/servers idea has a great deal of merit. Especially if work finally bears usable fruit on dynamically allocating node/server resources depending on demand. I could easily see heavily populated rooms/establishments being on separate nodes, while dozens or hundreds of little used rooms in other star systems could share a node... until demand shifted them up the node food chain.

Speculation admittedly, but specualation that has a basis in Developer conmmentary.

This is most likely one of the largest hurdles that will need to be overcome to properly bring about a multiplayer Incarna like environment, and you did well to bring it up.

I skipped reading the whole thread but here is my +1.

WiS, Incarna, would be a good addition to EVE and one I want to see realised. I have been waiting on CCP to deliver it since fanfest 2006.

I have found the past 18 months difficult as an EVE fan as I have felt aware that CCP have been building up towards their long term vision for a long time. While that was an exciting prospect I was painfully aware that core gameplay improvements to EVE were not getting short or even mid term attention because of it. I stuck it out and kept on waiting.

The summer expansion has been an unmitigated disaster and it was a disappointment to see so little delivered and seemingly nothing else coming (I even started to doubt that we were going to see the other racial CQ's at one point). It was not what I waited 5 years to see.

I truly believe that dedicating the winter release cycle to delivering core game play fixes is the right thing to do. I think that CCP was wrong to wait as long as it has for much of it but, that is in the past now. EVE needs attention now, and finally it seems to be getting some.

However.

I still want to see WiS delivered. I don't want it stuffed in some cupboard for another 2-5 years before anything is done. Fix the tech. Build the environments. Re-work the concepts you have been developing these past 5 years. You showed us the vision, the vision was good. It is execution that has been at fault to date, the concept I'm still very much in love with.

Thanks for speaking up Aston, but I'm still about so I will answer.

Lessee..

What WiS content were you very excited about?
Honestly, I'm not sure. I just liked the idea of being able to interact with people in avatar form, of the player run establishments and corporate offices and so forth. I'm sorry, I know that probably won't be an answer you think holds much water, but I was excited about the simple idea behind Incarna and that was that; it's what was keeping me interested enough in EVE Online to prioritise it over other games. Besides, it looks like a post above made a rather better reply than I did.. aand I also have a cold and it's fogging up my head something awful.

What did you want to do with your avatar in the station?
I'll leave that to the bit above.

How many other avatars did you want to be able to share an instance with?
Honestly, to begin with, I'd have settled for a maximum of four and was more expecting somewhere in the region of twenty. I'm not much one for debating the tech limitations of the concept, but wasn't fooling myself that there'd be massive events for a while. EVE's gone through big upgrades in what it can handle in the past, 'figured this would eventually expand and all.

Did you want to be connected in real time to EVE while in the WiS instance?
Yes, but I remember reading some time ago that was always a 'down the line' thing, and it would initially operate on separate hardware and merely chuck numbers back and forth and such. Integrating it more completely with the space-borne parts of EVE at a later date seemed the sane option, to me.

Are you sure you want to play FF XIV?
Very sure. I've a lot of friends there, I have a lot of fun with it, anything bothered me at launch is long since fixed and the recent v2.0 roadmap documents restored my faith in the game eventually becoming something special, even if they're not the same ideas I found exciting in the beginning.


Sorry, probably it isn't an answer anyone'll find awfully impressive. All I can say is it's my opinion and my reason for abandoning my EVE subscription for the time being.

Certainly I'm glad a lot of people are arguing that Incarna oughtn't be buried despite being glad of the work on Flying in Space, and formal assurance from CCP on that front would make me all the happier ('course CCP Phantom already said something to that effect in this thread, so, well, yay). Really I just hope my ceasing subscription for now and stating as much will add just a very little more weight to the 'don't just dump Walking in Stations' argument.

I suspect that most people would like WiS, but it would have to be something that was well developed. Not the ridiculous current incarnation that people were bored with after the first fifteen seconds.

I weep at the thought of the type of person that would choose further development in WiS over fixing the myriad problems with core gameplay though.

so.... youd rather they run CCP into the ground than try to fix things?

Yeah better if you do leave

I agree that most people want support for WiS, but unfortunately the vocal minority will have the last word here. If ccp does the right thing and ignores the naysayers, we could feasibly get both FiS and WiS. You just need to moderate the amount of ingenuity dedicated in to station like features. My solution is like this: