Assembly Hall

Yes.

I push the station door button often. Maybe it'll open some day.

just another broken mechanic and something extra to fix, nothing to see here

Hello and thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

In your posts I see fear. Fear of a changing game, fear that people would prefer to use WiS more than flying spaceships.
But on the other hand, if WiS could really achieve that, giving players the choice and they would go for WiS, it would mean that it is indeed better than the core game. An economical reason more for CCP to do that. Nevertheless it would be a long way, a decade maybe. So really no reason to be worried about yet.

Maybe it can be one day a game by itself. A sandbox within a sandbox. It still would attract more customers. I see no reason to reject the "few" roleplaying players and others who pay to keep our game running. If you don't want to leave your ship, then you will never have to notice their presence.

"This game is broken, we need fixing instead of new stuff?" For its complexity in my opinion this game has pleasingly few bugs. But I'll tell you that this game will always be broken and incomplete. There is always something that can be improved. There are always things which aren't good enough balanced and changing it at one end will unbalancing it on the other. There are always victims who blame the game mechanics and victors who know how to use them for their own advance.

WiS isn't about to keep people away from flying spaceships. If you want to fly then you'll fly anyway, with or without WiS.
What do you now if you get bored? You leave the game, in way too many cases forever. WiS can help to give new and old players more opportunities to enjoy their time in New Eden and additional reasons to stay.

If you don't like it then you don't have to use it. Neither am I using Titans nor their new skins, but do I complain about their implementation? No, because I know that out there are player who love them and play and pay to use them and that's good. That's what all this is about.

We all here know, that if this would be realized, then it would come in small steps. Piece for piece, one little thing after another. Time enough to see how it will be accepted, how it would be used and how it can be improved. It definitly wouldn't be a second Incarna.

For the beginning I like the idea to use some of the fun items and place them in my quartier. That function doesn't hurt anyone and is giving some items more demand and value. And this would in turn increase ingame trade, maybe even a new type of freighter for luxury goods. In the end it will be good for the game and a microtransaction opportunity for CCP.
A way for CCP to earn more money or even funding the further development of WiS without using your money (don't forget that I pay too) and keep the monthly fees down without making the game pay to win.

It's an opportunity which can't be ignored if you want that game strong and thriving.

Thanks I like the expression.



I just took the time to read all the links you added in your blog to this theme. A good collections of pros, cons and neuts regarding WiS. Thank you for the work you put in it!

At most into my head went the posts of evehermit and his example of an alternative history and the quotes of CCP Seagull in Turamarths blog.

I am a "child of Eve" that was born after the Incarna release. I wasn't there. I didn't heared the promisses that were made and didn't got the disappointments at its release. But I can try to understand the feelings this had caused and still does.
Many wasted years of development with the delay and hold of other features. Therefore I think, I wouldn't be very optimistical too, if I would be one of the old players. On the other hand, yes there were thousands who protested but also tenthousands who didn't. What about them? It wasn't the time to stay up and to thank CCP for Incarna so they stayed quiet and maybe left.

But after four years and a still ongoing process of catching up and fixing the game mechanics, I think it's time to start looking further into the future.
Why do still so many old players of Eve raise the finger and point to Incarna? Is it WiS or is it the apprehension to be put back again? I think it's the latter and that this fear has no rational reason.

As I first read the quotes from CCP Seagull in Turamarths blog I felt disappointed and rejected. But that changed after the second and third time. She' is quite aware of the erros made by CCP back then and obviously does not intend to repeat them. I tend to trust her with that.

Would an overhaul of the WiS project lead into a second Incarna? Definitely not, CCP isn't so stupid to do the same error twice. Without any doubt it will attract new players, something that even the critical blogs agree with.

My first PC ran with DOS, I know how enjoyable games even without graphic can be. Avatar interaction back then was something I didn't even dreamed of. But the new players of today are literally a new generation, even compared to the players only ten years ago. We are living in times where even for the cheapest games Avatar interaction is a standard and must have, without that you don't even need to continue any development, except for Minesweeper. Can CCP really afford it to reject that? Is this the way that leads to success?

Let me mention Twitch or Let's Plays on YouTube. Why is it that Eve related channels have only so few viewers if they exist at all? Because for non Eve players they are boring, they tell no story, they create no emotions. It's like watching someone plow a field in a farming simulator. There are peoples out there who like that but for the vast majority they are examples and reasons not to join Eve.

I know we are playing with clones, who don't need interactions in New Eden. They swim the whole day in that ectoplasmic liquid and have fun while being directly connected to the ships computer.
Do Avatars pee while swimming in that? I really would like to know that. Maybe that's the reason why that capsule has yellow tinted glass? Anyway, I differ from the subject. The player in front of the monitor is a human being with all its emotions and needs. Most peoples want to have something to identify with, to feel with and to have fun with. How can ignoring human needs and nature be good for the game?

After all there is no reason to reject "Eve in Stations". Let's give it a new untroubled name and support it.

It's a space related game with spaceships as a main feature, yes. Actively detracting players is something I don't intent. Like planetary interaction it is an optional feature.
If it is desirable is something everyone has to decide for himself.


I have no illusions regarding this. In my estimation CCP has to redo most of the work too. Better start soon than too late.
If they are capable of doing so is also something they have to decide.


So your answer is to continue the way CCP has gone since Incarna?

When I startet 3 years ago there were about 45.000 peoples logged on sunday evening, now it's around 35.000. For me that doesn't look like a success story and your comment confirms that. I don't think that continuing this way will somehow miraculously reverse that trend.

In this thread there are suggestions noted how to finance this without taking it from the core development.
Can CCP collect all needed money by those? Probably not. But some extra money is better than no money.


Is that really your answer? If you don't get what you want you "react with extreme hostility". Hostility against whom?
As long as CCP has players like you they don't need enemies. How old are you? Do you also cry?


I like portions of it, very yes. But I think Eve can be better and it earns it to be better, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

I think here we can agree, that not all players agree with that.


No that's too easy, life isn't black or white. Everyone has its own reasons to leave. I'm pretty sure CCP lost customers from both groups and not only because of missing features whatever they might be.

As I mentioned that game doesn't look very promissing for new players. Many of them leave because they find it boring or don't even try because of it. I doubt that your highly anticipated game mechanics alone will change that.

I fear a trend where this games turns into something that is only played by a slowly but steadily declining numbers of veteran players like you.
With the current decreasing number of players we have in 2022 only 10,000 players left, but let's asume your "way" will double that to 20,000. That's a number I'm abolutely not happy with.

You stated it by yourself, if CCP would start to look into the opportunities of WiS again you would riot, but you wouldn't left. Or would you?
The reintroduction of a modified version of WiS will indeed drive some old players like you eventually out of the game, but it will also attract highly needed new ones. More than today.
Losing 5,000 bittervets in exchange for 1,000 new subscriptions per month is something worth to be considered.


I'm sorry that I don't play the game the only right way, your way.

Please don't let the anger and hate about past events darken your view of the future.

That explains a fair number of them. Given that the space game had also been broken for years, the failure to deliver Incarna became a metaphor for their failure to deliver anything. CSM5 went into open revolt over CCP's lack of communication; CSM6 found itself doing frantic damage control with both players and CCP. I wasn't there (I arrived in September of that year, just in time to see the dingy Minmatar CQ in all it's original... glory), but everything I've read and heard about it was ugly.

CCP had been demonstrating ambulation technology, station interiors, advanced interior design and rendering technology (much of it borrowed from World of Darkness) for five years at that point.

Now? Here's the lay of the land, pretty much:

* CCP have cut their staffing levels by about 2/3rds since 2011. They are a much leaner (and sadder) company.

* CCP has finished writing down its wild profit projections and its failed projects. It just bought back bonds that it floated after the debacle in order to stay afloat. The purchase was painful, but not as painful as the 7% interest rate, especially in the current climate. They have otherwise cleaned up, simplified and tidied up their balance sheet according to this analysis.

* Nobody disputes that CCP has been on a tear working on the two games they're actually shipping. They might dispute some of the decisions at length, but nobody is accusing them of sitting idly by. They're even overhauling the core engine, which is ambitious and dangerous work in a live game.

* CCP Seagull has said that it's time to be bold again. The improvements that started rolling out with Crucible will continue, but CCP is looking beyond the current game. Not necessarily toward ambulation specifically, but toward an EVE 2.0--which CCP has also been promising for years now.

The last time they visited avatar gameplay a small team used rapid development tools and went from zero to playable concept in a few months, with then-Executive Producer CCP Unifex pronouncing the result a success. This is a night-and-day difference from 2011-era CCP. It means that, given the green light, a small group could quietly work on ambulation gameplay without consuming significant resources--it could even be a 20% project--and CCP would be able to hold fire on committing any significant resources (e.g., art) until the concept was where they wanted it to be. I'm not saying they're doing this. I'm saying they could be doing this with no discernible impact on their current, breakneck development pace. They've demonstrated that much.

Well, you start your first paragraph off with an obvious lie. EVE is, and always has been, a spaceship game, about spaceships, with spaceships, and involving spaceships.

Avatar gameplay was not even remotely in the original game. Go ahead and google "old EVE portraits" for me, and see just how much of a **** they gave about non spaceship gameplay.




Another lie. It's been proven to detract from the game, that's precisely what it did the first time. CCP ignored the game itself for years for this pipe dream, and pissed away all of that time not developing anything in EVE Online. That's precisely why people were so mad about it.





Ha ha, what? World of Darkness has more commercial appeal in it's IP than EVE Online ever will. The fact that WoD folded proved beyond any doubt that they cannot develop their own engine in house without collapsing, or turning it into garbage like Dust 514.





No, I'm not alone, and I know I'm not alone either, thanks to the Summer of Rage demonstrating precisely that. In fact, that particular lens might be better directed at you, and your claims that masses of people would subscribe to EVE Online if only we had wasted more time on Space Barbies.





You weren't around then, were you? Anyone who was would not be able to honestly ask that question.

No, it wasn't their "broken promise" of Space Barbies that almost killed the game. It was the sheer fact that CCP had the unmitigated gall to waste years of development time on such an unnecessary, worthless, pointless, hopeless fluff feature that added nothing to the game itself, and ignored the actual gameplay of EVE Online to do it. To make matters worse, they tried to implement pay to win to cover the costs of this gaffe.

WiS is poison. Only a fool drinks poison twice.

Saying 'this is a spaceship game' is about as meaningless as saying 'This is America'. EVE was designed to be a 'space simulator', not just a 'spaceship game'.

"]Well, you start your first paragraph off with an obvious lie. EVE is, and always has been, a spaceship game, about spaceships, with spaceships, and involving spaceships."

How is this a 'LIE? Can EVE be both a 'spaceship game' (as you define it) AND a 'space simulator'? Are the two terms contradictory? Are they subjective terms? Have you ever heard anyone from CCP, or game reviewers, refer to EVE as a 'spaceship game'?

As I said, you could call EVE a computer game and still be right, but that is your own prejudicial and reductionist interpretation of it. The fact that there are spaceships in EVE don't make it a 'spaceship game', any more than saying Christians living in the United States makes that country a 'Christian nation'.

"Avatar gameplay was not even remotely in the original game. Go ahead and google "old EVE portraits" for me, and see just how much of a **** they gave about non spaceship gameplay."

I still have my EVE portrait from before Incarna so I know what they look like. If CCP didn't give a c-r-a-p about 'non-spaceship play' at all, then we wouldn't have had the changes to the portraits, or planetary interaction, or industry and invention AT ALL.

"Another lie. It's been proven to detract from the game, that's precisely what it did the first time. CCP ignored the game itself for years for this pipe dream, and pissed away all of that time not developing anything in EVE Online. That's precisely why people were so mad about it. "

To say I am lying means that I actually know what the truth is, and I am deliberately distorting the argument away from what I know to be the truth.

You might say 'You are wrong' or 'You are misinformed' and be correct, but to say that I am lying means that you have to A) Know that I am aware of what the actual truth is, and B) I am deliberately trying to deceive people with what I know to be untrue.

If you say that I am lying, the onus is on you to prove why it is a lie.

How has it been actually proven to distract from 'the game', especially when all of us have our own interpretation of what 'the game' actually is?

You seem to think the focus is all on spaceships, that is your opinion, your interpretation, but there are some people such are station traders who never undock at all. Both play a different part of the game, but both agree that it is still part of the same game.

"Ha ha, what? World of Darkness has more commercial appeal in it's IP than EVE Online ever will. The fact that WoD folded proved beyond any doubt that they cannot develop their own engine in house without collapsing, or turning it into garbage like Dust 514."

Should we take your word on it? Dust 514 certainly has it's problems, but seems to work both commercially and technically.

"]No, I'm not alone, and I know I'm not alone either, thanks to the Summer of Rage demonstrating precisely that. In fact, that particular lens might be better directed at you, and your claims that masses of people would subscribe to EVE Online if only we had wasted more time on Space Barbies."

Ah, so the (in game) threat has gone from being general to being specifically aimed at me?

Do you know what an 'Argumentam ad Baculum' is? It is the fallacy of using threats to try and win an argument. It is usually the tactic of a scoundrel who has exhausted every other means of winning a rational argument. "Do as I say, or YOU will get it."

As I have said, getting threatened by someone from CODE is a little redundant. If I disagree with you, what exactly will you do in retribution?

I'm sorry to make this an 'attack to the person'. I think that the rest of your reasons for rejecting WiS were logical and plausible.

However, threats of in-game violence from a member of a corporation that ganks miners and haulers? It's pretty silly. So what happens if I change my mind and decide that WiS is a bad idea? Will CODE stop ganking miners and haulers then, or just me? Will those that vote in favour of WiS get ganked 'extra hard'?

Why does this issue infuriate you so much? Are you afraid that the inside world of the station will be so interesting and fascinating that the 'flying pinatas' will never undock so that you can blow them up?

Are you afraid you will be like the bully who can't convince his victim to step out of his house so he can beat him up? How delicious it is to hear these tears of impotent rage!


"You weren't around then, were you? Anyone who was would not be able to honestly ask that question.

No, it wasn't their "broken promise" of Space Barbies that almost killed the game. It was the sheer fact that CCP had the unmitigated gall to waste years of development time on such an unnecessary, worthless, pointless, hopeless fluff feature that added nothing to the game itself, and ignored the actual gameplay of EVE Online to do it. To make matters worse, they tried to implement pay to win to cover the costs of this gaffe.

WiS is poison. Only a fool drinks poison twice."

Alcohol is a poison too. Does your analogy still work? Have another beer.

Yes I was around at the time. Yes I asked the question in all honesty.

Again, this is another unprovoked attack to my person, questioning my own honesty in order to try and make your argument.

If I drank alcohol one time, and it almost killed me, yes, my analogy still works.

You can use a peanut allergy if you prefer. If something almost kills you the first time, you are a fool if you do it twice.



Whoosh. You shouldn't use your particular... quoting tactic... the way that you do. It abandons clarity.