Assembly Hall

I like words, and use a lot of them. Prepare for a long-winded post.

I'm sure there will be lots of fire and brimstone headed my way based on what research I've done about this topic and the way that players have felt about it before. I'm just going to go ahead and acknowledge that now and move on to the rest of my post.

Between purportedly leaked emails, monocles that cost more than two months subscription, and just overall player disappointment with Incarna content, it's been wholly and completely left in the dust (no 514 pun intended) with even Eve developers saying that they've failed with the Incarna project.

Everyone loves new players. A lot of new players love what limited portion of Incarna we can see, and want to do more of it. I find someone telling me that they wish Incarna had finished, quite regularly, though of course it's usually players that weren't around during the actual typhoon of drama and upset that occurred during the attempt to implement the content. Leaving the content unfinished as it is now takes away from the experience of a full, polished experience that a game as big as EVE tries to provide. I think that a finished Incarna will keep new players around for longer. Yes, the game is about space stuff, and I know people don't want to see walking in stations become the major attraction or take precedence. But when you're new, there's a /lot/ of time spent doing absolutely nothing, staring at your skills as they slowly tick up, and so forth while you try and figure out the game. Having a mindless social activity to fill in the empty space would really help, as would having a more fleshed out experience that players expect in MMO's: encountering other players and being social with them during downtime.

Incarna doesn't, to me, seem like it has much work left behind it. The character models are done, the devkit for building interiors is complete, including multiple types of walls and even a few decorations based on what I can see. I'm pretty sure that CCP probably has a folder somewhere with a bunch of Incarna content that was never implemented just laying around as well. Really, the hardest part, if it's not yet finished, would be drawing up the system for getting people to walk around and sit in the same room. I'd estimate 3-4 months for completion, with 2 months of occasionally mashing some random bug that pops up.

Hopefully, enough time has passed that Incarna doesn't make CCP afraid of it's playerbase anymore. After formal apologies, adding a ship-spin ticker (did you know if you hit 10,000 spins you get a PLEX?) and putting together the council that I'm appealing to right now, I can easily imagine why the thought of trying to tell the players at Fanfest that they are going to work on Incarna again would send shivers of fear down their spine and perhaps even incite some to run, apologizing, from the stage in lieu of the reaction. Honestly? Maybe that fear is valid. Maybe people do still spit venom at the thought of this subject being broached again. If that's the case, and the playerbase is still that irate about what occured before then the rest of this doesn't matter. In the replies to this topic, we'll find out if that fear is still well founded or not. Personally? I don't want them to fear the players. I love that they take their opinions into account, that they've formed this council, and that they really listen to their fans and if Incarna failing helped bring that relationship to the state that it's in today, that's awesome. But anger, yelling, and rabble-rousing is never a good foundation for any decision.

People aren't running potato-computers to run EVE anymore. I could run Incarna on a GeForce 580 easily, without any fear of having negative effects on my computer, card, or game performance, with the right video options checked off. There's no hardware limitation like there was before, so the former issues of loading it really shouldn't be getting on anyone's nerves.

On some level I feel like refusing to enter the captain's quarters is an elitist 'I'm an old-hat player and I don't need no gorram Captain's Quarters' thing to do, rather than a choice of some merit that actually shows a fondness or dislike. Yes, you may love your ship, but it's still floating there in plain view and there are holograms of it elsewhere. Further, graphically, it's the best looking place in the game, full stop, end argument. I love looking out into space as much as anyone else but the textures, details, and so on are simply better there than they are in space as of now. However, some people will refuse to touch it out of spite or, possibly, they really do prefer using the ship hanger. There is, after all, no accounting for taste. The answer to this is simple: Incarna always has been and should continue to be optional. There's no reason to make it non-optional or even to have it give some tactical advantage outside of the inherent social interaction: I like that I can do all of my business from a menu when I want to and I'm not asking for that to change, just for there to be more there when I want it.

The last reason that it should be done is time is on our side. The above estimate for Incarna being finished was assuming that they halted their current projects and focused on it instead. Honestly, I'd hate that, especially with the new structures coming out. If Incarna was to be slated for completion, I would at least put it after the new structure overhaul due to the effects that update would likely have on the walking in stations content. However, if three to four months is spread out over time, and we're just given another feature here or there on the side, I'd still be happy, and so would quite a few others lingering out there.

Please don't just tell me to give up. Tell me why this is a bad idea instead.