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New dev blog: Introducing Team Avatar – the keymasters of bipedal gameplay

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Author
CCP Bayesian
#41 - 2012-02-23 16:26:08 UTC
Chiggy W wrote:
The problem is, this Devblog doesn't tell us anything but "Well we are still working on it, and we wont show you or introduce anything till it's ready, and we don't know what we will do exactly so give us your ideas." It sounds exactly the same as it did in 2006/2007, and we all know where that lead FIVE years later.

Really CCP, I have no problem with this direction providing the focus remains on FIS, but do not repeat the mistakes of 2007-2011. You guys really dropped the ball on Incarna and managed to taint the whole concept for a lot of players that had even a little bit of faith in it. Be very careful about what you say, and how you manage expectations, because this is a poor start (no timescale, no ideas, no real info other than we are working on it)


We should have more info later on, expect us to be making some noise rather than being vague and noncommittal but we need to have something to talk about before that! We're going to be running a roundtable at Fanfest so there should be more info coming out at least as early as that point.

EVE Software Engineer Team Space Glitter

adopt
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#42 - 2012-02-23 16:29:10 UTC
Can we have more minmatar clothing for the NeX store PURRLEASE
Seismic Stan
Freebooted Junkworks
#43 - 2012-02-23 16:30:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Seismic Stan
Whilst I understand that not every EVE player wants to embrace avatar-focused gameplay, personally I was excited by the possibilities and still am. If EVE is truly a sandbox, then another optional playstyle is always welcome.

Those subscribers who were not interested in WiS were understandably angered by the disproportionate use of resources and both they and those customers who were eager for avatar gameplay were disgruntled by the long and slow development time and the limited results.

Now the resources have been distributed in a more agreeable way, I understand that most of the people will now be pleased most of the time.

However, I can't help but be a little disappointed that this devblog seems to indicate that avatar development speed has now moved from glacial to tectonic. If it took half-a-decade to deliver what is currently on Tranquility, how long will it now take to see anything more significant?
BeanBagKing
The Order of Atlas
#44 - 2012-02-23 16:31:26 UTC
I think I fell into the group that liked the idea of total sci-fi, the idea of what incarna could be, but was dissapointed with both the end result, the direction it was taking, and the resources that were pulled away from space to do it. That doesn't mean I'm against the idea though.

Personally I would like to see combat in stations. I believe that's what drives the game. This doesn't mean ignore other things (spies, booster tradeing, storefronts, etc). But the thing that will draw me into it, and I believe a great deal of combat pilots, and give it that replay-ability you're looking for, is combat.

Imagine if you will DUST in a more civil setting. You have some "combat" types wondering around in full body armor, a great deal of industrialists dressed in the business suit look, their personal shields disguised into built in devices and the suits made of lightweight kevlar. Sidearms and bodyguards are plentiful in high and lowsec. Stations are ruled the same way space is. Highsec stations are protected by CONCORD security and station turrets, acts of aggression will assure a quick end. Security takes slightly longer to arrive in lowsec stations. The nullsec environment is run by the alliance that controls that area (NPC or player) and much like space, there's no response but their own. Hey! we could even have ratting (damn womprats chewing on the cables again...).

CCP Guard
C C P
C C P Alliance
#45 - 2012-02-23 16:31:44 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Guard
M'pact wrote:
I still don't get this fascination with making our Spaceships are srs bsns game into The Sims™ with Spaceships, but y'all can have it as long as the locked door to my Captain's Quarters cannot be hacked. The moment I can be ganked in my sleep by somebody I didn't invite in, I'll be cancelling my subscriptions.


Then I probably shouldn't tell you that by using my devhax noclip mode, I often walk right through your door at night and watch your character sleep.

Oh nm, I just did!

Lol

CCP Guard | EVE Community Developer | @CCP_Guard

Bagehi
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#46 - 2012-02-23 16:32:02 UTC
CCP Bayesian wrote:
Chiggy W wrote:
The problem is, this Devblog doesn't tell us anything but "Well we are still working on it, and we wont show you or introduce anything till it's ready, and we don't know what we will do exactly so give us your ideas." It sounds exactly the same as it did in 2006/2007, and we all know where that lead FIVE years later.

Really CCP, I have no problem with this direction providing the focus remains on FIS, but do not repeat the mistakes of 2007-2011. You guys really dropped the ball on Incarna and managed to taint the whole concept for a lot of players that had even a little bit of faith in it. Be very careful about what you say, and how you manage expectations, because this is a poor start (no timescale, no ideas, no real info other than we are working on it)


We should have more info later on, expect us to be making some noise rather than being vague and noncommittal but we need to have something to talk about before that! We're going to be running a roundtable at Fanfest so there should be more info coming out at least as early as that point.


Looking forward to the round tables. See you there.
Nomad I
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#47 - 2012-02-23 16:34:08 UTC
Avatars are fine, when some is trying to make a video, but in a game making exploding ships, I don't know what to do with them!

- When I'm buying something it must be a fast interface. It's annoying to wait on loading data. Even complex mouse pointer handling is annoying
- I don't need avatars in space





Crasniya
The Aussienauts
#48 - 2012-02-23 16:38:02 UTC
BeanBagKing wrote:
Imagine if you will DUST in a more civil setting. You have some "combat" types wondering around in full body armor, a great deal of industrialists dressed in the business suit look, their personal shields disguised into built in devices and the suits made of lightweight kevlar. Sidearms and bodyguards are plentiful in high and lowsec. Stations are ruled the same way space is. Highsec stations are protected by CONCORD security and station turrets, acts of aggression will assure a quick end. Security takes slightly longer to arrive in lowsec stations. The nullsec environment is run by the alliance that controls that area (NPC or player) and much like space, there's no response but their own. Hey! we could even have ratting (damn womprats chewing on the cables again...).


This would break the game, because without your capsule, a capsuleer's death would be permanent.

Soraya Xel - Council of Planetary Management 1 - soraya@biomassed.net

BrokenBC
no tax's are us
#49 - 2012-02-23 16:38:49 UTC
Hey at least someday in the future we will look Good when we blow someone up or die in a fire. I thought CCP had at last understood we want FIS not barbie on line, but I suppose it was to good to be true.
Nalha Saldana
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#50 - 2012-02-23 16:40:31 UTC
Crasniya wrote:
BeanBagKing wrote:
Imagine if you will DUST in a more civil setting. You have some "combat" types wondering around in full body armor, a great deal of industrialists dressed in the business suit look, their personal shields disguised into built in devices and the suits made of lightweight kevlar. Sidearms and bodyguards are plentiful in high and lowsec. Stations are ruled the same way space is. Highsec stations are protected by CONCORD security and station turrets, acts of aggression will assure a quick end. Security takes slightly longer to arrive in lowsec stations. The nullsec environment is run by the alliance that controls that area (NPC or player) and much like space, there's no response but their own. Hey! we could even have ratting (damn womprats chewing on the cables again...).


This would break the game, because without your capsule, a capsuleer's death would be permanent.


Im quite sure the cloning process isnt in need of your pod because its all destroyed when someone pods you.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#51 - 2012-02-23 16:40:38 UTC
Thanks for your work!

What provides "meaningful game-play" varies from person to person. For some no matter what you do with avatars they will not consider it meaningful. On the other hand, for Role Players, even a meeting room containing nothing but places to sit would provide meaningful game-play.

Do not be timid in releasing something early that might not please everyone. You cannot please everyone. Be willing to release something early even if it would be meaningful to just a small segment of the player base.

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Crasniya
The Aussienauts
#52 - 2012-02-23 16:47:25 UTC
Nalha Saldana wrote:
Crasniya wrote:
BeanBagKing wrote:
Imagine if you will DUST in a more civil setting. You have some "combat" types wondering around in full body armor, a great deal of industrialists dressed in the business suit look, their personal shields disguised into built in devices and the suits made of lightweight kevlar. Sidearms and bodyguards are plentiful in high and lowsec. Stations are ruled the same way space is. Highsec stations are protected by CONCORD security and station turrets, acts of aggression will assure a quick end. Security takes slightly longer to arrive in lowsec stations. The nullsec environment is run by the alliance that controls that area (NPC or player) and much like space, there's no response but their own. Hey! we could even have ratting (damn womprats chewing on the cables again...).


This would break the game, because without your capsule, a capsuleer's death would be permanent.


Im quite sure the cloning process isnt in need of your pod because its all destroyed when someone pods you.


The lore sits, that at the moment of imminent destruction, your pod downloads your consciousness and transmits it to the medical facility where your new clone is. Without your pod having access to your grey matter, this would be difficult.

Soraya Xel - Council of Planetary Management 1 - soraya@biomassed.net

darmwand
Stay Frosty.
A Band Apart.
#53 - 2012-02-23 16:48:47 UTC
Crasniya wrote:
The lore sits, that at the moment of imminent destruction, your pod downloads your consciousness and transmits it to the medical facility where your new clone is. Without your pod having access to your grey matter, this would be difficult.


Sounds like we need hats!

"The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp."

CCP t0rfifrans
C C P
C C P Alliance
#54 - 2012-02-23 16:51:31 UTC
Kasidis wrote:
I was one of the people who was very excited for Incarna. When it came out, I have to say, I was very disappointed. I'm glad you guys are focusing on something that will appeal to the masses, but Incarna cannot just be forgotten. I have a few questions for my lovely devs:

1. If dozens of people can't finish Incarna, what makes you think 5 will?

2. When can we expect establishments? we don't care how long, we just want an answer (you devs can be very vague and evasive)

3. Is there a chance we can invite people to our captains quarters any time soon? It would be a good testbed for technology and we would be able to show off clothes!

4. What is the biggest inhibitor to Avatar development?

I look forward to your answers! Thanks for taking the time to engage with the community!


Thanks for you feedback.

1. Five people won't finish avatar gameplay in EVE. However, we have a good focus and team structure to be able to define what it should be, once we have made a solid business case for gameplay that provides solid value, we resource the project appropriately.

2. Can't give you an answer on this, since we're reevaluating the plan, establishments may not be the top priority. The game play planned there was highly social and was more as a force multiplier or extension of in space gameplay rather than a proper ecosystem of gameplay itself. We're evaluating several options. If you feel strongly that EVE should have establishments, tell us!

3. We'll be investigating this soon, we might even run some tests on Singularity in some months time, but having people meet in captain's quarters is the same engineering effort as having them meet in establishments or a darkened alley. There are scalability and animation issues that need to be resolved, and we're reluctant to throw all our energy into solving that problem until we've converged on what the ultimate gameplay should be. That's because we may discover requirements or constraints in the final design that would require us to re-write or change the implementation we'd do allowing you to visit captain's quarters, thus waste valuable time building something that eventually gets thrown away for a better thing.

4. There's a number of things that have slowed us down in the past. For the first years, we had very few people working on it, then once we ramped up, we had requirements that it had to support two different games, and as such, we developed technology which we wouldn't have if it had been just for EVE all along. We were also working in two offices, which slows down communication. Lastly, we were introducing a whole new technology inside a legacy system, which takes more time than making everything new, especially when the legacy system is about things in space and your new tech is about people inside rooms. There were also changing requirements during the production phase, which resulted in thrashing. We'll probably write some very depressing Gamasutra post-mortem article about it at some point, as a warning for future generations.
Tanaka Aiko
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#55 - 2012-02-23 16:53:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Tanaka Aiko
was just thinking that if captain quarter have no interest given it has no multiplayer mode, a solo mode with ship interior and our crew would be already more interesting for solo gameplay.
damn i'm already thinking about ton of RPG possibilities ^^

would be funny accessing interior cameras, and seeing our crew move in our ship, ask them questions or things like that.
the other option like that would be viewing the people inside our planetery facilities.

building something with NPC characters may be easier for you to check part of the issue of the multiplayer functions, before doing it with real players

well anyway for multiplayer avatar, minigames are the obvious choice for the begining.
minigames that you play while waiting to undock for an op for example.
and on this idea, an ship interior version would be nice, for when we're waiting inside a pos forcefield for example ^^

every nullsec player know the time it takes from when you join a fleet to when you jump to the next system... it takes a LOT of time.
and i would really like the option to still play eve during these time than to alt+tab and browse the web.

from this concept the avatar mostly be a lobby to choose between the minigames.

it's another step from things like corporation quarter that would be mostly RP / chat things.
btw just thinking about my avatar showing some documents on the game, and given how lots of us use excell or others things, you never though about giving us some IG tools for that ? after all we have an ingame broswer, why not some grapher tools as we use them a lot ?
Xenuria
#56 - 2012-02-23 16:55:33 UTC
CCP Guard wrote:
CCP t0rfifrans and Team Avatar are going to keep the dream of bipedal gameplay alive while the rest of EVE Development focuses on spaceships. They've got both ideas and plans, but they want your feedback to better shape the future of avatar gameplay in EVE.

Read the blog here and don't forget that feedback, you hear!



About Time...

I want WIS!
I want new outfits and styles. I want the ability to send vanity pics and poses of myself to other players so I can brag about how swag I am.
Destination SkillQueue
Doomheim
#57 - 2012-02-23 16:57:33 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Thanks for your work!

What provides "meaningful game-play" varies from person to person. For some no matter what you do with avatars they will not consider it meaningful. On the other hand, for Role Players, even a meeting room containing nothing but places to sit would provide meaningful game-play.

Do not be timid in releasing something early that might not please everyone. You cannot please everyone. Be willing to release something early even if it would be meaningful to just a small segment of the player base.


The only thing I would add to this is, that be mindful of the expectations of the playerbase. Just because you technically didn't promise anything amazing doesn't mean people don't expect it and ultimately blame you for not delivering on their expectations. If you see it happening, bring those inflated expectations down to reality, so they don't explode in your face. Don't hype things up with another amazing WIS themed addtion, if all you can deliver at that time is one lousy meeting room, that gameplay wise is only useful for roleplayers.
Bagehi
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#58 - 2012-02-23 16:57:46 UTC
Nalha Saldana wrote:
Crasniya wrote:
BeanBagKing wrote:
Imagine if you will DUST in a more civil setting. You have some "combat" types wondering around in full body armor, a great deal of industrialists dressed in the business suit look, their personal shields disguised into built in devices and the suits made of lightweight kevlar. Sidearms and bodyguards are plentiful in high and lowsec. Stations are ruled the same way space is. Highsec stations are protected by CONCORD security and station turrets, acts of aggression will assure a quick end. Security takes slightly longer to arrive in lowsec stations. The nullsec environment is run by the alliance that controls that area (NPC or player) and much like space, there's no response but their own. Hey! we could even have ratting (damn womprats chewing on the cables again...).


This would break the game, because without your capsule, a capsuleer's death would be permanent.


Im quite sure the cloning process isnt in need of your pod because its all destroyed when someone pods you.


Jove don't need the pods - as shown in this short story - but, based on the stuff in Templar One, pod pilots have to be in their pod.
Omega Tron
Edge Dancers
Pan-Intergalatic Business Community
#59 - 2012-02-23 16:58:08 UTC
OK. Just finished read thru what's been put in this forum so far and haven't seen anyone suggest this ----

Take the stations that today current have no functional agent but do have them identified in the database and make them only accessable thru the door in the captains quarters. The missions can be the normal ones that already exist or make them special exploration ones. I think this might be a low hanging fruit option that could be done with miminal resoures.

The 2nd step would be to add NPC characters that are added in the station after the mission is accepted. They must be removed by guns or whatever to complete the mission. Maybe NPC gun shops can be part of this so that players can buy what is needed for the mission. Then enable the guns and ammo to be stored in the CQ in a container safe.

The 3rd step would be to enable the store's to bcome player own and operated. This would mean adding an NPC manufacturing of station only items so the shops can be resupplied. Again i think these are iterations that can be done with miminal resources and will bring the WIS events to earlier functionality and begin the process of integrating WIS in to the EVE gaming.

CCP's sand box is EVE Online.  The sand is owned by CCP.  We pay them a monthly fee to throw the sand at each other.  That is all that is here, so move along. Nothing more to be seen.

Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#60 - 2012-02-23 16:58:53 UTC
darmwand wrote:
Crasniya wrote:
The lore sits, that at the moment of imminent destruction, your pod downloads your consciousness and transmits it to the medical facility where your new clone is. Without your pod having access to your grey matter, this would be difficult.


Sounds like we need hats!


An alternative is before getting out of the pod a slower, non-destructive scan is made and would be used if you died while out of pod. Result: if you die out of pod you only lose those skill points you trained up since your last scan.


But there are many many other issues with in-station combat. One is the speed of light. That is the time it takes to get a signal to the server farm in London and back to your computer. This has so far limited Eve to running on one second time ticks, far to slow for gunfights.

Games like Dust use multiple servers scattered over the planet, and you can only use the ones close to you. Such sharding of the spaceship part of eve, even when we are out of the ships, is not desirable.

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