EVE General Discussion

Ahahahahaha, spewed my cornflakes all over the laptop reading this +1 Madame, +1.

Reading all the links about this guy coming from EA is going to **** alot of chars off in the community.

One worrying thing was when it was first leaked about microtransactions. And the fact that now they have hired a guy that specializes in this play4free thing.

To quote

During our chat, Hilmar assured me that the plan for EVE is still the same plan that was discussed at Fanfest and that fans really latched onto. He promised that nobody will be "making any big kneejerk changes to EVE" and that CCP as a company won't forget the lessons it has learned over the past few years. CCP is currently looking at options that let players "customise the game experience" without upsetting game balance. Options like ship paintjobs are still on the table

So basically you will bring in tattos and custom ship paint jobs but you wont be able to pay for them in isk you will have to pay for them in cash.

Ship blows up then buy another paint job.

From there it will expand into other things including the rebuilding of aurum (think thats what its called) and purchasing other stuff. which you wont be able to buy in game.

I think the core of eve will still stay the same but now ccp want money and they hired a guy that gets money well.

On the whole I think this will be a srsly bad thing but then again the leaders of eve havent even commented on this thread which is even more worrying that there having to use there alts and hide behind walls.

if everyone first go to the CCP website the front page has a PR release.

and if you read it carefully the main pupose is DUST
and maybe World of Darkness.

and lets hope so ccp is not covering a wolf in sheep cloths prowling to retry a incarna focus were ccp lost its conenction with the playerbase.
wich shrunk pretty fast and the bits and pieces of the monument in jita still tell the story the day CCP got scarred by us!

for CCP i advice to release another post really soon about what this EA bobo is going to do on what games.

WOD, DUST 514 i am cool with if he is there for that purpose
making use of his past prestige in EVE be very carefull and be open to the players about it what you have in mind and see what we all feel after a clear explanation about this guy.

i personally dont like to see another escalation like Incarna, but i fear people will mass up in numbers again if he is going to fiddle with a F2P or P2W build in EVE.

first of all F2P and P2W will not help EVE it will kill it in months to maybe 2 years.
look at every other game that went F2P thats because they failed from day one.

if this man gets to much ground to play with if it involves eve it will be hara-kiri
so keep him away from eve and let him play his magic on DUST 514

But at the same time repeating history over and over and over.

Experience about games past in itself doesn't mean much, if it's not tempered with the knowledge what the same players did in previous games.

Classic example is EQII. It used to be the #1 MMO before 2004. SOE went to war with the players, the players revolted, and in the end the game was gutted. Those gamers are now here. They're using the same exact tactics, threatening CCP as they did SOE, in a game about the same size as EQII was in 2005.

Did those gamers get a game they wanted? Nope. Why? Because what they wanted went against the reason why companies exist -- to make a profit. The result is poisoning the well and the relationship between the devs and players.

A company has to make a profit. It needs that profit to not close down. It has bills to pay like anyone else does, but their bills are in the millions. Gamers asking for the pie in the sky, and getting mad at the companies because they don't deliver it, doesn't help to keep the company open. That's not gamers that good for the company, and especially the game. You can't separate them, they're tied together.

CCP will do what it has to do to profit. If they have to lure Ghostcrawler into EvE they would do it, if it offers success. Folks complaining about EA in itself shows an incredible lack of experience in making games and about why companies exist. Like children they whine the same whines going nowhere but to poison the well again. Look at these posts, half of them in this thread are but dripping in sarcasm offering nothing to help. All they want is the status quo (nothing is wrong, gimme more!). EvE has a lot of problems that needs to be fixed, it's not business as usual if the company doesn't want to lose money and going nowhere.

EvE is a 2004 game, never designed with consoles in mind. New generation of gamer is playing on consoles and his main computer is probably a laptop or even an iPad. As bitter vets leave there's fewer and fewer coming in the front door to replace them. What's left is buying more alt accounts, but the game has less humans overall. Without humans the game resembles NPCs everywhere, and those NPCs are more stupid (as NPCs are programmed to do anything but wait a master's command). So that IsBoxer at a gate can't even patrol it, his bots sit like it's controller waiting and wasting everybody's time. The IsBoxer feels powerful, but the game loses it's very soul, and looks just as abandoned on a one world server. His alts also are dumber than the automated BG bots in WoW, that can fight on their own now.

As I travel this game, flying from one station to another, the game is as empty in this one server concept, as my own realm in WoW (CRZ sure didn't fix that feel with greater appearance of players, as the players NEVER REMAIN in the zone. Like in EvE, a ship passing in the night). Jita is Stormwind, with all those players standing around waiting on queues, with the same trade chat spamming and AH bots. Rens, Amarr and Dox are Ironforge, Shattah and Dalaran (with as many players...almost empty. Don't tell me these games are any different). Corps here are like realms, got a couple at the top that sucks in most players, attracting the worst to claim they're so superior. And like WoW, the players don't see anything wrong, it's business as usual. For a "sandbox" game of players making things happen, it's awfully like WoW (and this time the devs aren't pushing players to do A or B). Same carrots, same results, different game. They're trained to play a certain way and will enforce playing the game in a certain way...dinosaurs living in a set environment cozy before an asteroid with their name on it.

Players make the game how they like, but without a clear direction it's all but ship spinning but in another game.

EvE needs help. I welcome bringing in fresh talent (god I wish WoW did!!!) from different companies and games. It may not be what the gamer all wants -- you're not getting the Warren Specters -- you're going to get a suit. CCP acquired a blue suit and luckily one from the top 2 game publishers. I say give him a chance (and I know this community would crucify him like they did the other games regardless) and let's see what he can direct. As our devs don't need to be policing forums, they need to be programming and designing new assets. Yeah, I want to see them working on content, working overtime, and crafting something they love doing, instead. Knowing players are getting a value for their money, too.

Oh, god, just checked another game site that I haven't been posting on for a month. As EvE pops something new up, Blizzard is too. Now in beta testing of a new launcher. This is what I mean, that Blizzard will incorporate anything new and update it in their own game. And why EvE has to compete or become yesterday's news.

Or...

http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/humanoid/miscellaneous/mini-tyrael/

EvE players just don't seem to understand that fluff even sells for RL money...$800 worth even.

And guess what? WoW is the only MMO subscription based game left. But there's other means to make money even if you're not a literal gold farmer. And it's all legit.

Just some wild ideas and thoughts...

After the Incarna fiasco, CCP was very pacifistic to the player base by releasing expansions that were deemed good and pushed the boundaries of the game. A goodwill feeling was forged between company and players. During this time, many promotions for extra accounts to multiple plex bundles were offered. Whereas I did not partake, I feel many others did spend their money and time into these packages. Thus players invested into a future they felt was going to continue down that goodwill path.

The person typing this has a few other accounts to his name. Reading the forums, it appears that having multiple accounts ranging from one to double digits is the norm. While I have spent seven plus years attached to this avatar and have not done much with him overall, I still have a personal attachment to his past and possible future. I would be hard pressed to just walk away without a fight. I could not picture seeing Guttripper with another controlling him. And I feel many have an attachment to their own accounts in a similar fashion.

This latest expansion curtailed aspects of the game people might have had a specific account set-up to perform. For example, ice mining - was there a mass exodus of accounts being cancelled? Only CCP themselves know the true answer. There might have been people posting they are leaving and whatnot, but in the end, only CCP knows what this change did to the account numbers. Thus CCP took a calculated risk with this change hoping that while a low account holder may drop his or her one ice mining account, the person with double digit accounts set-up to multibox may just linger a bit longer and continue.

CCP hired someone with a past that would not mesh well with the player base here in Eve. Based upon their past experiences and the goodwill they have forged in the present, CCP would be suicidal to make any drastic changes to Eve today. The players gladly allow him to do whatever with Dust since overall Eve players do not have a personal attachment to that game. And as long as the changes CCP makes to Eve are tolerable to the players without the players reaching a point beyond their attachment level, as much as there might be complaints, we players will accept it.

So if CCP does have plans to add microtransactions to Eve - and yes, I feel they do, it will be so subtle and so small that over time, we'll accept it without question. A Dust player can personalize his or her avatar through a transaction and there will be Eve players that want the same. So that small, non-game breaking offering will be available in Eve at a price most people - if not all - will not think twice about. Have an option for an Aurum or an ISK conversion and these minute purchases will be gobbled up fast. Not these thousand dollar pants, but a dollar or two at most for some token item.

Now multiple that with players with multiple accounts. Using the ice miner example, for a mere two dollars, the avatar can have an ice mining suit as part of the wardrobe. That one person running multiple accounts might consider appearing unified in a uniform and purchase that uniform for all the accounts. Again, as long as the cost in real life monies does not go beyond the personal attachment, players might grumble about transactions, but they will be purchased all the same.

It will take CCP a few years and a few more goodwill expansions, along with the slow removal of past offerings to hook into the player base of Eve. Add that if Dust and World of Darkness offer pretty trinkets at cheap prices, CCP will take that calculated risk that players have invested their money and time into their multiple accounts to accept microtransactions as an everyday occurrence in Eve. As long as CCP does not add anything to break the game - a pay to win model, Sean's hiring might just be CCP's goldmine jackpot.

Just my thoughts... Thanks for reading.

Which in the end maybe the medicine EvE needs.

When the very players in the game are threatening the devs they're into destroying the game itself because they can't get their way, maybe it's for the good of the game itself.

People get angry with Blizzard in their games. They'll rant causing a scene (oh, I had some fiery posts). But you're not hearing them threaten Blizzard with burning down the game. They'll inform them that the game will suffer and folks will leave, but not of staging riots and more.

The mob here is willing to poop on their own lawn and set it afire. That's how crazy they are. ALL games have players that have put time and dime into the games they love to play. They get angry at some changes. They will post in 50,000+ post threads, telling the publisher their concerns. But they love the game and don't **** on it.

That's not how to win and influence anyone. It's how the publisher and devs go into siege mode.

You want changes or improvements help, don't go threatening the game itself. It looks bad. It shows the game attracts the worst in gaming. That makes everything look bad, and don't think the industry doesn't read these forums, either.

Be a solution, not the problem.

I agree. Be a solution. And that is why I suggest that you put some effort into your posts like coherently structured, subject well researched instead of making factual errors and proofread them before you post.

Nah he just can't post without putting a reference to that game in ti

Players can go beserk, and they can face what Blizzard does to angry fans, like clear out their forums with massive permanent bans.

Even Swifty got a permanent ban for shutting down a server. Players staged support on servers causing other servers to go down. Eventually his ban was lifted.

But Swifty doesn't hurt the bottomline (the players supported Swifty, but they'll not quit WoW for him). If something hurts that with Blizzard, they'll ban folks in a huge wave to preserve their cash cow. Just like any company has to do to survive, even if it hurts them for a while. If they don't, they'll make it so uncomfortable players leave. What remains is what they want playing.

This is why protesting like that is finite, as legally the game is all the publisher's. If they want to close it all down tomorrow they can, and players agreed upon playing that is always a possibility. EQII still exists, after all the protests and all the firefights, a flagship stays alive seeding another generation of players.

There's better ways in getting the ear of a publisher and the devs. One is stating your views well and explaining why things don't work, because devs aren't mind readers. Ghostcrawler is out and about reading things off the WoW forums for fresh ideas, because he can't get them there (nope, it's where the fanbois hang out, as biased as can be and all the politics). He's prowling because it doesn't help banning all those who did bring in the ideas and suggestions, they just went to other game sites (which they've been posting even longer without being banned. lol).

One, players have to be willing to work WITH the publisher/devs. Two, the publisher/devs don't ask for the ideas and suggestions typed in double space, no longer than two sentences long, with a cover letter stating a player's eternal devotion to you -- we're not paid employees (that's no better than any other biased threat or emotional plea anyway. That sounds like a joke, but the Blizzard devs were going that route fishing for ideas before banning anyone who wasn't corporate enough -- especially when confronting them on their rigid rules).

Both have to work WITH each other. Longevity; time in the game; college degrees; achievements doesn't matter. What matters is building a game that's realistic to both sides of the coin. Realistic with what can work and can be afforded, realistic that most of the players (can't please them all) will enjoy the game.