EVE General Discussion

....is an expansion?

Forgive my ignorance, I am relatively new and I don't know anything about the complexities of programming. I've just read the Oceanus dev blog and apart from a few minor adjustments I can't really see anything that justifies the word "expansion". Imagine a fantasy writer releasing the next installment of a series of stories and it only being a page long. Or perhaps a popular tv show and the long-awaited new series being 1 episode, half-an-hour long - with adverts.

I understand that expansions have been broken up into six week releases and that in many ways this is a good thing. But, what can be achieved in 6 weeks if this is going to be a permanent thing?

So the question is - what is the general concensus about forthcoming "expan....cough....patches"? Will we ever get something BIG? Something that knocks you for six and gets you running around the block naked shouting "oh my god, eve is just so freakin awesome I just can't take anymore!"

Or the continuance of minor and forgettable tweaks?

Some of those “minor and forgettable tweaks” have provided more content than some of the biggest expansions the game has ever seen.

You mean like the hunt for the working overview after hyperion? :P

In B4 OP has absolutely no clue about software development.

Oh wait. Nope. Not before that happened.

I agree - would like to see a lot more new content, not just visual tweaks.

The peaks in the player online statistics correspond to the hype the game was getting. First it was before Incarna, then hype was gone after everyone have seen that CCP did not deliver a fraction what they showed earlier in tech demos. Then it was 10 year anniversary, again there was nothing really "big" after that.

Would this be anything like accidentally walking in space without a spacesuit?

Think how great it would be if there would be no WoD all those years in the background. As CCP Soundwave once said, we could have big features and small features together. Now the Big things are eve related like Legion and Valkyrie. But they are not Eve, they are separate games as they look now.

This emans you were here when CCP did 'real' expansions, introducing big new features that {A} screwed up the game in big new ways and {B} were iterated on for a couple weeks then never looked at again.

The push for what CCP came to call "Jesus Features" caused a whole lot of frustration and bad things, culminating in the almost game killing event known as Incarna (the only event in the history of EVE online to cause a major and steep reduction in subscriptions).

After Incarna, CCP pledged to be smart about expansions. They have been, and the things they've done since have had a major positive effect on the game without screwing everything up in ways that the jesus features can't claim. Teircide and mobile structures (as a cople of small examples) added more actually content to the game than any number of past things could have.

The people who complain about it are either the ones who weren't here to see the past, the ones who were and who have forgotten, or the angsty misfits who never liked EVE int he 1st place and see's CCP current direction as 'not delivering the game EVE could be' (ie the game they want that is nothing like EVE).

Is it possible that one or two unsuccessful expansions have created an atmosphere of "treading lightly" to not repeat said mistakes? Can this be used as an excuse to keep tweaking rather than inventing? This reminds me of artists/writers who continually tweak the same piece of work to "perfect it" rather than moving on to something new.

So they made a mistake with Incarna....now we have new nebulae, tooltips and adjustments to overview settings. It's as if ccp have gone to the other extreme and dare not introduce big things.

Why would, say for example, opening jovian space and introducing deep lore negatively affect the game?

I've been browsing the new features forum and some of the ideas are amazing - I also notice that many are a few years old and have never been implemented.

I understand your concerns, and I also understand that introducing "little things" has driven a small amount of content.

But perhaps a good idea to take the plunge, say "what the heck" and do something big? Shake things up?