These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE General Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

EVElopedia shutting down on February 29th.

First post First post
Author
ugh zug
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#41 - 2016-02-29 22:46:02 UTC  |  Edited by: ugh zug
eve came from the generation of mmos that let the players figure it out on their own with no hand holding.. mmos these days spoil all their players with loads of useful information that they take for granted. i remember back in the day, it was up to the players to share information, or not to share and keep it to gain advantage over their fellow man. i applaud ccps effort in saving money err i mean bringing the community closer together.

Want me to shut up? Remove content from my post,1B. Remove my content from a thread I have started 2B.

Ida Aurlien
HIgh Sec Care Bears
Brothers of Tangra
#42 - 2016-02-29 23:12:59 UTC
There updates again kill us all and. constant changing of the game are not making it player friendly,but making it very hard to continually change focus in the game. idk hard to follow a game that constantly changes
Annie Getyourgun
The Graduates
The Initiative.
#43 - 2016-02-29 23:55:37 UTC
They might want to warn folks that the Brave Dojo pages lean much harder towards a Mature rating rather than Teen.

One of my favorites is on the Fleet Basics page under "Scatter", "Starburst".
Soltys
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#44 - 2016-03-01 01:16:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Soltys
Well, while lots of the stuff was brutally outdated, there were also lots of quite useful information there nowhere to be found at the moment.

And that's quite a loss, as it's basically disappeared - until someone makes a use of that sql dump.

Jita Flipping Inc.: Kovl & Kuvl

Indahmawar Fazmarai
#45 - 2016-03-01 07:42:23 UTC
Zifrian wrote:
sero Hita wrote:
Mag's wrote:
Are you really surprised? Look at the whole forum debacle. Couldn't be bothered to port the history that came with the old forum, because :EFFORT:. That may also be lost at some point.

This is just more of the same. Soulless.

Well they do mention the alternatives:
CCp Falcon wrote:
With the introduction of the new Help Center and the ever developing Flight Academy project from our Customer Support Team, as well as the amazing (and far more up to date) player run wikis out there such as the EVE University Wiki and the Brave Newbies wiki, plus the availability of more up to date static data from the EVE Universe via CREST, we feel that the EVElopedia's life cycle has run its course, and it is now time to move on from hosting it.


It is not like you will be left with nothing. They said in the second last o7 show that they will expand on the Flight academy. I personally never used EVElopedia as I did not like the format and found it often outdated, for example finding the hull boni information. I instead used EVE uni, which is more up to date.

For an example compare :
EVElopedia
UniWikia

I know which one I find more informative. So I don't see the problem tbh?

In a way you are left with nothing. CCP has been relying more and more on players to provide the information to play its game. Furthermore, look at third party support and it's also relying on players to write its documentation and provide solutions to things like not having a consistent Database format saying "third party devs are a resourceful bunch!"

As someone who is part of this community, that is a poor model of service. Why? Because we get burned out doing stuff for a game we pay for, get little recognition for, and have to deal with a CCP changing its decisions constantly - then we stop developing/updating/and contributing. What does that leave the player base? Not nothing but pretty close.

For this change, look at the justification - brave newbies wiki. Brave was the hot ticket last year but they have waned recently. What happens when they decide to close up shop? What about Eve uni? For third party support, what happens when someone like Steve decides to quit playing?

I'm not saying that CCP shouldn't use players to support their game, but they really need to provide some consistency and reliable support to how they use it. Having one central wiki should be kept and supported for this reason. Without consistency you get a complete hodgepodge of resources, which are never complete or localized.


Now just wait if CCP adds F2P to EVE and the community is "gifted" with literally hordes of F2P noobs -that will be the end of the community and eventually of the game.
Nana Skalski
Taisaanat Kotei
EDENCOM DEFENSIVE INITIATIVE
#46 - 2016-03-01 08:01:23 UTC
What about the lush world we always could indulge in, co-created with players? How accessible is the knowledge of the days past....
And the scrolls are now scattered and hidden.

Good I rescued Arek'Jaalan scrolls.
Arkoth 24
Doomheim
#47 - 2016-03-01 09:18:02 UTC
Zander Kumamato
The Chaos Void
#48 - 2016-03-01 09:19:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Zander Kumamato
"EVElopedia has been discontinued"


One of the Worst Decisions™ ever.


CCP just keeps taking things away...

I don't pay you to REMOVE things. I pay you to ADD things.
Jaantrag
#49 - 2016-03-01 09:23:45 UTC
so .. yesterday for some reason wanted to check some info from the bookmarked wiki page .. and BOOM the wiki is closed and notice about the close was made serval days before ... isint there like a industry standard of 30 days for stuff like that ???? ..

forward page from the wiki ipoints to serval fan made wiki pages .. first thing there is the introductions of these pages owners or so .. how much isk do they pay for the adverts ?

why not just keep the hole thing read only mode for some time till u get the help center up and running .. (really dont like the format of that anyway ...

EVElopedia < add this to your sig to show u WANT it back

Kooch
Perkone
Caldari State
#50 - 2016-03-01 09:48:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Kooch
Ugh, duplicate post from the site being slow.
Suzanne Khale
Hoplite Brigade
Ushra'Khan
#51 - 2016-03-01 09:50:09 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
Davos Seaworth wrote:
I don't know.. 3 CCP devs are gone... closing the wiki.... squeezing money of player base.... signs of a sinking ship, if I worked at CCP EVE division I would start throwing resumes around.



3 devs of how many?

And do you know how many devs have joined CCP over the last year? Of course not, because no-one pays attention to that. They just want to whine and whine about people leaving.


In other news:

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/evelopedia/index.php/Main_Page


To stay in topic:

You deleted probably hundreds of pages of informations, some outdated but some very useful, and replaced it how?

Wormholes new help, just an example:

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203209772-Wormholes

Click it and tell me if you find it adequated. Really, this is outraging. Just put an advice on Evelopedia "These infomations may be outdated". You removed one of the best support tool for newbies.

Sure Help chat works, but it's not that you can get the same amount of information from written pages. You are just creating a wall between veterans and new entries.
Kooch
Perkone
Caldari State
#52 - 2016-03-01 09:52:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Kooch
Indahmawar Fazmarai wrote:
Droidster wrote:
The EVElopedia has not seen too much input and editing from players as far as I can see. I tried adding some content to a page and it worked, so it is definitely a functional wiki. There is a restriction that the person must be logged on and have an EVE account in order to edit it. You cannot edit it anonymously.

The information on sites (DED/unrated) is much better than that on the uniwiki so it is too bad it is going away.

It is strange that the company thinks the site is a burden to maintain. I would think a wiki would be kind of an auto-pilot kind of thing.


Well, historically CCP has had issues with documenting stuff. Many of the issues with old code come from the fact that nobody documented it, so new developers must do a forensic examination and retroengineer it to figure what's going on and how to work with it. That is compounded by how most of the old code was written as stackless Python, which is a very flexible coding tool but also haves an habit of hiding everything within black boxes.CCP develeped EVE with too little people in too litle time and too little budget, and so they had to cut the effort. Documenting software takes away time from coding, so they went for fully coding and no documenting.

Fast forward 13 years. Development processes have changed, have evolved, but some things never were learned. Now CCP is using Agile development, which is a fast way to code but requires extensive control and documentation. So we must suppose that now with Agile develpment stuff gets documented internally, yet that's just a guess. Some Glassdoor reviews point that CCP's development still is chaotic and mismanaged to the point that sometimes a team will destroy the ongoing work of another team. That is related with other CCP issues, lack of middle management and internal promotion (essential for agile development) and cliqueism (detrimental for everything skill related).

Enter customers/players. They don't need to know the code, just how to use it. That requires that someone CCP gathered all information of all teams working on code, plus backtraced every functioning system (undocumented) and its evolution (when and if and how was it updated) to establish a "image" of the status of the game in a given date. This, while the game keeps evolving at a frantic pace of change-of-the-month. It would be difficult since old undocumented code is old and undocumented, but would be the only way in which CCP could serve well the users of their software by providing an authoritative and updated source of information.

Regretfully, EVElopedia likely was "that guy's idea", which was implemented "back then" and once "that guy" quit, nobody ever looked onto it. Probably because it was -huh- undocumented.

Players also are disincentivized to document stuff; certain mechanics can be used for profit and advantage, and sharing them publicly would remove the advantage.The incentives for documenting "everything you know" are small and probably nobody wants to share but the bare basics... and now they'll be certain that CCP won't go out explaining stuff like "how to set up an Alliance" (just to mention a real case I was involved with).

We can bet that the shiny-new-idea being implemented (flight academy or whatever) will cover just some of the basics, will never go any further with really old stuff and will languish over time since, hey, players already are doing a better job than CCP could bother itself to do...


Having worked in environments like this before, I can attest to this, but man looking at CCP's glassdoor makes me really uneasy to be a subscriber. Looks like leadership needs to change or things are just going to get worse. It's a shame really.

Looking at some of these reviews, it really shows...
Quote:
American management from EA has been brought in to gut the studio. In less than a year this went from a stellar place to work, to absolutely terrible.

Granted I take online reviews with a grain of salt, but it's a lot of reviews that give you a peek at what's happening/happened internally.
Theo Sotken
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#53 - 2016-03-01 10:09:26 UTC
I just saw the Ice Mining video on the flight academy. LOL.

It kind of reminded me of when CCP lead all the highsec players into nullsec. Fitting a covetor for ice mining for new players? I can't see anything wrong with that!
Nana Skalski
Taisaanat Kotei
EDENCOM DEFENSIVE INITIATIVE
#54 - 2016-03-01 14:02:55 UTC
Quote:
Many of the issues with old code come from the fact that nobody documented it


Hahaha, you know, in one article CCP dev stated that he sees Icelanders as a makeshift culture.
You can access that article from german speaking forums or german part of EVE site.
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#55 - 2016-03-01 14:51:07 UTC
Nana Skalski wrote:
Quote:
Many of the issues with old code come from the fact that nobody documented it


Hahaha, you know, in one article CCP dev stated that he sees Icelanders as a makeshift culture.
You can access that article from german speaking forums or german part of EVE site.


That's something in common with Spain, actually. The abbility to improvise a solution with whatever resources are in hand but also the habit of never expecting pretty expectable things, that is, never being ready because of neglect.

A Spaniard is someone who can drive a nail with pliers because he forgot to bring a hammer. Blink


Nana Skalski
Taisaanat Kotei
EDENCOM DEFENSIVE INITIATIVE
#56 - 2016-03-01 15:34:10 UTC
Sorry, i mean culture of makeshift. Its here.

CCP Phantom wrote:
Good preparation and adequate planning are also rare because often things are done in quick-fix method to the last minute.
Blind Brother
Backwater Redux
Tactical Narcotics Team
#57 - 2016-03-01 18:42:26 UTC
While there were only a few pages I bookmarked and used in the Evelopedia, I'm a little annoyed at how every search I do for EVE Online now has dead links in the top five searches.

Is there someway you guys can get the now defunct web address removed from searches or do we have to wait for everyone to learn not to click those links so they'll decay naturally knowing they'll just lead to a naked space-butt guy and make me feel like I just got EVE-Rick-Rolled and podded?
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#58 - 2016-03-01 20:39:29 UTC
Nana Skalski wrote:
Sorry, i mean culture of makeshift. Its here.

CCP Phantom wrote:
Good preparation and adequate planning are also rare because often things are done in quick-fix method to the last minute.


I think we're talking about the same thing with different words. "Improvised" = "makeshift".
REE POMANIUS
Heaven's Harvesters
#59 - 2016-03-05 18:48:26 UTC
EVE is a great game. A lifestyle really.

With the discontinuation of Evelopedia I have started thinking about EVE and how I play it and have
decided to share these musings.

When you review Eve Offline (eve-offline.net) and look at the average pilots per period you see the trend:

All: 37K
5y: 46K
1y: 33K
6m: 30K
3m: 26K
1m: 22K

The question is, how does CCP reverse that trend?

Eve University is an excellent site and I have used it on occasion, the Planetary Interaction pages there
are well thought out and well organized. I have used it begrudgingly (see below).

I have not used the Brave Newbies site. As with all sites setup and run by a player corp/alliance, I don't like using
them as it gives them intel on me, my IP address etc (think about it next time your client disconnects). It's also
interesting that CCP would advocate such a site as it shows some favor or special status to one player
faction. This seems like it would alienate some players.

EVE Fitting Tool is one of those "indispensable" 3rd party tools that I begrudgingly use. Seems that this type
of functionality should just be part of the game. Download at your peril as all the warnings say.

In Evelopedia, I found the details on anomalies very useful although as others have pointed out, often outdated. The
trigger and escalation information documented for each anomaly were critical.

The Evelopedia/wiki type format make sense for the documentation required for a game as complex as EVE. More often
than not when I advocate the game to other gamers they tend to scoff and mention something about "spreadsheets
in space", or just kindof stare in amazement. It's difficult to recruit new players. Without a cogent documentation site
I feel that task just got harder.

The Flight Academy channel on Youtube is awesome and this type of documentation is clearly trending (has been for
more than a year really). But it doesn't fulfill the need for the reference type information that a committed player needs.
By committed I mean someone who would be part of the 22K (hopefully plus) average players online stat ... after 3-6 months.

The question really isn't why are they discontinuing Evelopedia but rather why was CCP unable to maintain their own
software documentation site? Like all things software, "rewrites" and "do-overs" tend to eventually win out over dedicated
system and software maintenance. I hope it's just that they are investing in a better documentation system that supports both
new and experienced players alike. Without it, I sadly assert the trend will continue.

Doing my best to promote my game,

REE POMANIUS


Droidster
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#60 - 2016-03-05 21:08:15 UTC
Kooch wrote:
Looking at some of these reviews, it really shows...
Quote:
American management from EA has been brought in to gut the studio. In less than a year this went from a stellar place to work, to absolutely terrible.

Granted I take online reviews with a grain of salt, but it's a lot of reviews that give you a peek at what's happening/happened internally.


Whoa, whoa, whoa, EA is in Iceland? That's a joke right?