EVE General Discussion

I really think Kickstarter or something similar for WiS is a good idea. Something to show that EVE players DO care about WiS and will put their money where their mouths are. There's a very vocal minority claiming nobody wants it, but I have a feeling there's at least as many silent people who wouldn't mind at all.

There's another thing we could do, though I don't think it's in any way constructive. Incarna development was scrapped because of a temper tantrum and shooting of statues. Perhaps another temper tantrum and shooting of statues is needed to re-start the development? Trouble is, sane, sensible players who like the game and only want it to get better are not the type to behave that way.

(forums ate my post)

The safest bet would be to try and add the WiS stuff to the "new space" concept, albeit it makes no sense to deliver content that means either you're alone in a cell in hisec or fighting for your life in unknown space, with nothing inbetween, while the social spaces are the thing that keeps people pandering for WiS. Maybe CCP knows better than we what do we want?

Also I don't understand why avatars have been completely abandoned, turning everything said in Fanfest 2012 into a lie (at least, Fanfest 2013 just said nothing).

I don't think it was a lie, more what we learnt after Fanfest 2012 changed our outlook. A lot happens in a year and that learning I think was a good thing ultimately. That might seem like a distinction without difference to you guys though. :(

Think about it this way: after an atomic bomb hit, you do not run outside of your bunker when only one hour have passed , you sit and take your time.

So CCP is doing pretty much this, they sit and take their time. And they don't just sit on their asses doing nothing they are fixing things that were broken for ages. What I saw at "CCP presents" was that when Hilmar asked about the door, people said yes and not just few people a ton of people and then some. Now CCP knows that there is not just two and a half of a person that do want WiS. Probably they will start thinking about it more.

We know that summer expansion will be Odyssey, winter will hopefully be POSes and 0.0 revisit and then there is not long till fanfest 2014. Where even more people will say "hell yes, open that damn door already". So in the end of 2014 or early 2015 we could see more WiS content. (that of course if CCP won't screw up something completely cause there is always a big chance of that)

Somewhere around 10-15% IIRC.

This is ever the danger of showing someone something shiny. Part of Fanfest is really us showing you very cool stuff that we're trying out. Our tech art guys showed some awesome stuff they've been trying out with DX11 but always with the caveat that its not necessarily going to appear on a development roadmap soon. Some things are just easier than others and others rely on technology we need to migrate too. Then a lot of things, for example the drone UI depend on what teams decide to focus on. That they didn't happen doesn't mean they will never happen and showing stuff typically doesn't mean its ready for release even if it looks amazing.

See. that's an excellent point. But this stagnation leads to problems of its own.

Incarna launch was a mess. True. Not because of WiS itself, but because it was a perfect storm from three fronts - Incarna failing to deliver content, NEX store, and the infamous letter. This resulted in the "atomic bomb hit" effect you mentioned.

However, since then CCP stayed away from anything WiS. The last two years have been virtually 100% FiS. And what happened? Did the game grow? Well, yes and no. Total number of subs climbed past 500k, which is good. The bad part is, the PCU record hasn't been broken in over two years. This, to me, suggests that the new accounts are alts, and the actual number of actual people out there in the game hasn't grown. Arguably, it shrunk. Or at the very least, as PCU records show, the game never recovered to pre-Incarna Incursion expansion levels.

My point is, CCP can continue to do what they've been doing for the past 2 years. And they continue to do what they've been doing for 8 years before that. And the end result will be the same - the game will continue to stagnate. All the FiS development they did, all the improvements to the new player experience, all that still failed to bring in more people. Or if it did bring some, the amount is fairly negligible.

They NEED to push past "spaceships and spreadsheets" image that has been attached to EVE like a fig leaf for a decade now. No amount of new spaceships or space mechanics will bring new people in, or make those who tried EVE and quit come back. Anyone who wanted to play internet spaceships is already playing internet spaceships. Adding more internet spaceships won't add more people. But adding a whole new dimension to the game by way of meaningful avatar gameplay will turn this game into a full-fledges sci-fi sim, and population is very likely to jump.

Now, a lot of people are REALLY against "barbies in space". And I totally get that. But how can it be a bad thing if the game suddenly attracted hundreds of thousands of new people with this "barbies in space" content? No matter who these new people are, would adding a few hundred thousand new people to the game possibly be a bad thing?

Now, you could argue that "barbies in space" may not attract anyone at all. To that I say, extremely unlikely. Why? Simple. What is the best-selling PC game of all time? WoW? Call of Duty? Nope, it's The Sims series! Between the three games, the series sold around 50 million copies. Sims 2 alone sold over 20 million copies. There IS a market for this kind of stuff.

Bottom line, I feel the last two years PROVED, beyond any reasonable doubt, that as far as "internet spaceships" go, EVE has peaked. No amount of additional internet spaceship content will make this game move forward. It will either continue to stagnate, or it'll crash and burn if sufficiently strong competition appears. Those are the only two possible outcomes if they stick to the current internet-spaceships-only development plan. They need to diversify.

Now, I'm going to just say some more totally-off-the-wall stuff, so just ignore that if this kind of thing bothers you. But consider this - what if Star Citizen, for example, is a hit and delivers just enough MMO-like stuff (persistent world and character), and has vastly superior physics and combat mechanics? Can you look me square in the monocle and say this will not affect EVE's population one iota? What if Elite is a similar hit? What if Blizzard's next MMO is set in a sci-fi universe (e.g. Starcraft)? What if it is a sandbox, not a themepark? I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally plan to try out both Star Citizen and Elite when they come out. And while I'm doing that, I won't be playing EVE.

See where I'm heading with this? It's good to stay in the bomb shelter and play it safe. Until the food runs out. And then you starve to death.

Jame Jarl Retief, I could kiss you.
You make a dreadful amount of sense in your post.

Exactly.

I can add this graph. If the game have recieved a lot of new subs, then why the site visits haven't grown much. In fact, it's even kinda downtrend...

There is definitely need some diversity.

It's okay to balance ships, BUT you're doing it every year... On the last fanfest i've heard that there is no intention to do a perfect balance and it's good to have ships changing all the time... Well, maybe it's cool, maybe not(for thoso who always get nerfed), but how exactly does those improving the game? Shifting the balance between ships and everytime call it a "great FiS expansion"...

I liked the fanfest in general, amazing stuff... But what about the goddamn door, at least something new for us, the players who wants it, not a complete new world for the avatars yet, but something for the start. Is this so much to ask?

A couple of my mates who i invited to the trial account have been very surprized and when i told them that there is only one room, although of course, they were there for the spaceships... Because it's kinda strange after the games like STO, which i like to play sometimes too.

Because WiS it's not some cool and unique feature, it's just how the games are today - you can be in the space and on the ground. Only the ground or space it's kinda out of date ALREADY. not just possibly with the release Elite or SC. Hello? The future is already here.

No content or meaning for WiS? LOL, there will never be one, if you'll not start to make the WiS itself somehow... Open the door, add a few clothes - start with something...

rofl

not breaking the single day pcu record is the new metric for "eve is dying"

*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal