EVE General Discussion

The #1 reason new players don't get hooked on eve is they can't relate with a spaceship avatar. This is corroborated with my personal experience trying to get people into the game, although this is of course anecdotal.

Social features almost always end up paying for themselves with subscription increases. There are huge business incentives to develop the social side of MMOs.

WiS was something that the community at large wanted for years before Incarna. There were constant forum threads, and it was a question that was brought up at Fanfest year after year. In the end, releasing a single room and calling it an expansion was a total slap in the face. If they kept WiS skunkworks status for another year and released Incarna with some actual shared user spaces (corp meeting room), and maybe a mini-game/poker, Incarna would have been a success.

Obviously everyone is going to twist reality until it fits their view of what it should be done.

Being honest, CCP Unifex stated that he envisions EVE as a franchise that could develop in several games if CCP ever had the resources. He mentioned PI as a potential case for that, as EVE should not have every game into it.

So in a sense, it would make sense that CCP used their avatar technlogy in a new EVE franchise, specially after fully developing it for WoD.

Btu there are two problems with that, and so i can't support the idea.

First, it would take many years. And i already invested 4 years into this game.

Second, I don't want a different game and start anew. I want to carry on my existing characters, with their SP, their ISK, their assets, and their backstory. I would never have bothered with my avatars if CCP hadn't been claiming for years that avatars were coming to EVE; now the characters exist and i want to use them in EVE, not elsewhere.

HE'S ALIVE !!! HE'S ALIIIIIIIIIVEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c

while ill agree there isnt a huge business case for it, ill still argue that eventual it shold be necessary. ESPECIALLY if they add ANOTHER game that involves walking around.

i have a couple friends who play DUST, they originally got into it because it was free adn they thought they could at least "meet" my capsuleer, they were devastatingly dissappointed when they couldnt. they still play DUST alot, but they also hope one day both games are moved to the same engine so we can all hang out in the bar together for grop screenshots and other goofy things.


the mere fact that connections to EVE are used as DUST's selling point have for alot of its players made them think they could share the same room with us, and while many of them agree it was probably a silly expectation to have had, they still thought it would be cool.

now granted this is information only from my personal experience of talking with people i know/meet, but so far is getting close up to 60 people, some european, some american/canadian.

so yeah, im not saying by itself it would be a selling point, but if you could get DUST and the theoretical third game all onto ONE graphics engine, then social interaction COULD be a good selling point, since it would truly "unify" the worlds the games are currently bubbled inside of.

I had simply forgotten to change my signature. Sorry guys! :-)

I'd be sorry about that but overall it is better for the environment if that market does not grow.

I dont know, i hear all the secret societies back the wool industry these days. after all, more sheep means more sacrifices to contact the elder gods.

So, if you have moved on, who is the new Senior Programmer for Team Avatar?

Also, when is the prototype video comming?

Social avatar interaction IS content and gameplay and will add to the EVE experience. Why a few people can't understand this is beyond me.

Second life has about twice the subscriptions of Eve.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/979569-Most-MMO-subs-and-users-in-chart

But they do not have spaceships and explosions in space, so a big negative right there.

Many people say "do not work of X if it takes money away from Y". Like it is possible to develop one thing without reducing resources for something else. As the "resource" is at its most fundamental level is money, that will never be possible. Taking this view means that only areas supported by most everyone get work. The result is something that has a large, but not a majority, following never gets developed. There are several issues with this.

First, I have never seen any poll from CCP asking what needs to be developed. How do they know that tieriside is more important than Sov mechanics or a POS rework, or a moon minerals rework? How was that determined? Did Jesus come down and proclaim it to be true? I sure do not remember being asked my opinion.

Next, CCP has obviously done work that few asked for. Like the green lines in space for your autopilot route. In the current game there are many features used by a small segment of the player base. Should none of them have been developed? If none of them were developed than Eve would not be as rich and varied a game as it is. We need lots of different features, even if each has a low following.

So what should be done? I propose that CCP poll the subscriber base on what they want to see developed, and money is allocated in proportion to the results. That way anyone who does not want WiS can rest assured that as their vote went to something else, none of their subscription went to fund it.