EVE General Discussion

I hope once a day is enough.

You couldn't be more wrong about what I was saying. I specifically asked them to go back and look at everything they have done to date and ask it it really was what they thought they would deliver, to fall back in love with the ideas they have already have and complete those promises. I also pointed out that finishing the unfinished content would be "new" content to the majority of the players. That I saw the potential of what they delivered so far and there must have been a reason for all of it to be introduced in the first place. To not be so A.D.D. and to finish what they started.

And to not let a minority of shouty whiners define the new shiny, that CCP knows best how to deliver their vision.

That more folks were happy with Eve than not, that many things could the cause of lower subscriptions.

By the way, here is an interesting statistic, our corp has twice as many active members (many new to Eve) since Incarna.

I know that Eve could be better, and that CCP has done better than recently, but I want the smart folks at CCP that I've been lucky enough to meet to stick to their guns and deliver their vision, but maybe to go back and deliver some of that not yet delivered vision before getting all wrapped up in the new stuff. To not cave to "crowdsourcing" and special interest groups.

Issler

oh it's not about what you said. it's what about CCP said.

yes CCP said that new unfinished content sells more than polish, and look where we got with that policy: half-baked features stacked up making for a great ammount of the game content.

but then CCP said "ohey, we will provide :excelence: and :quality: so don't worry!"

this was two years ago. in this space of time, the best content we had was Incursions and even then they are not that special. Altho they are better than Dots and Lines that was the motif for an entire expansion cycle (and it's very incomplete) and Space Barbies that nobody can see except you, because they thought it would be great to release a single room that took 18 months to do instead the whole thing.


in the path, they left FW still unfinished since the day it was released (which was like 3-4 years ago, can't precise the date), half of the sov mechanics that were supposed to be introduced in Dominion weren't even written in code, and still left corp and POS management in the mess that it is.



so yes, we waited 2 years to see how "awesome" Incarna would be, since they sacrificed so much for it. I myself expected (and in all honesty, my hopeful self still expects), to walk into a war room with a real-time updated full 3D map and manage gangs from the station or open a bar in some losec hotspot.


all we got was a room.



and CCP got a mass of players tired to be waiting.

This made me lol.

OP, we had a tyrannical dictator for president in my country for a long time. The guy was basically ruining everything in the country and neglecting people's concerns.

When the people started to gather on public areas and make mass protests, the national TV channel reported the mass protests as "vocal minority" and "a handful of hooligans" (they have actually used even more juicy vocabulary, but quoting that on this forum is prohibited per forum rules).

Needless to say, it didn't end well for the mentioned dictator.

From that time on, the phrase "vocal minority" has a totally new meaning for me and I generally don't like it.

So I'd agree if we talk about what CCP has actually done. And my post was a call to CCP to execute on the previous promises.

No one in CCP sits down, designs some cool content and meets with the devs and says, "OK, lets deliver a craptastic half bake of this document I am sharing with you!" They must have intended to deliver the feature complete. But over the last couple of years they A.D.D. themselves to failure. Listening to a bunch of screamy voices with largely special interests as their motivation can't make the A.D.D. any better. That is the core or my point. They need to be in a quiet place with no distractions and they need to finish what they started.

There is a concept in the better run organizations that you identify the key features and stack rank them by how crucial they are to delivering the intended experience. Some features are "nice to have" but you can ship whithout them and still deliver the vision. Others are key to the experience and are ship blockers. If those features aren't implemented and function as intended you don't bother releasing the product because it will fail to deliver the intended experience. You wait until you have those core features complete and then you ship. This is what CCP ultimately fails at every time.

What I would do if I owned CCP is simple. I'd go back and inventory EVERY feature in Eve and I would critically compare the state it is in today to the design documents and initial vision for the feature. I'd assign an owner for every feature and we would have feature court. I'd expect every feature owner to present the state fo the feature, the initial vision and motivation for the feature and how it fits into the overall vision of Eve. I then would make the owner provide metrics of how "complete" it was. It would be the "thunderdome" of Eve features. Eventually there would be collective agreed to stack rank of everything in game and that would be the basis for work going forward. Once the gaps in existing content were identified we would then allow controlled planned introduction of "new" content into the plan of record for Eve fesature development. I'd look for something like a 80/20 ratio of finish what you started over new shiny.

I'd estimate the planning/hashing/meeting/reviewing required to execute on creating this development plan would take a couple of months of the game design team and development leads. While this was happening I'd create a small team to immediately address low hanging fruit balance improvements and resource leveling to make Eve slightly better while all the deep thinking/planning is taking place. I'd also increase live events and other experience improvements that could freshen Eve while the real work begins. I wouldn't want Eve to be stagnent while working out the real plan to get Eve back on track.

The reality is that completion of the old half baked will be new content. Especially to anyone that came to Eve in the last couple of years.

So let me reword my plea to CCP. I believe in your vision, I see evidence of it everywhere. I also see that you seem to have forgotten about getting around to actually finishing what you set out to do. So go back and fall back in love with what you seem to have forgotten about. All of it. Then ask yourself in a very critical manner, where did we fail to deliver those core features for each of those experiences? Every one of of those undelivered features is a broken promise to the player base. We can never trust you if you don't make good on all the broken promises. You are not done with most of what is deployed today, it is creaky and patched together, incomplete and teases us with what could have been. You continue to build a castle on a swamp. Lots of folks are screaming at you with ideas as to how to fix Eve. You don't need to be distracted by that, you already know how to fix Eve, you've been designing your answer for nearly a decade, now just go back and actually deliver what you already know would be awesome.

Issler

1. Team BFF - then why can't we see simple balance issues addressed in a timely fashion.

2. Most of the resources on those other projects are new resources aquired for those projects. And not all of those resources are the "right ones" or could get up to speed to help with Eve in any reasonable period of time. So to bring up whatever is already allocated to the other shinies is really a distraction a useful conversation about what CCP needs to do about Eve.

3. I think shouty types add to the distraction and convince CCP constant new shiny is demanded by all. I also think they make CCP second guess their own vision.

4. You will never dig yourself out of the hole made by an off the rails project if you don't get your planning straight. They have to take the pain and get their priorities straight and a make a plan that delivers a balance of new shiny and delivers on all the previous broken promises.

5. Odd you are still here if its all doomed. What would you suggest, all of CCP throw up their arms and jump in the nearest volcano?

Issler