EVE General Discussion

I would say I know about 10 or so individuals that are currently interested in DUST that have never or simply don't play EVE. Out of those 10 or so only 2 of them have no interest in EVE at all. The others either are interested and have no time for EVE or intend to give EVE a try when they start playing DUST. I am certain that my small sample of friends means jack squat but I seriously doubt that DUST will have no beneficial impact on EVE's population. The more diversity EVE has, the better chance it has of growing in popularity.

It's obviously not going to be zero.

However, it's naive to think that EVE will "benefit" from Dust, by way of pulling in anything that would consititute a worthwhile number of subscribers.

I'm pretty sure that CCP isn't counting on bringing more people into EVE itself, but on selling as much crap as they can on the MT shop.

Dust isn't about CCP benefiting through increased EVE subs, but capitalizing on the PLEX and AUR sales. EVE doesn't even need to exist for Dust to survive or not.

As a F2P shooter Dust can stand on it's own. The Dust EVE connection is a little overplayed. Anyone playing Dust right now knows that. Most of the people I talk to don't even realize what the connection really is, or what kind of impact it could end up having.

These aren't friends, people who already know me and my EVE hobby. They're random people I meet in random matches and get to talking to. Hundreds of random people, the only thing in common is the game we were playing and a head set; I can count the number of people who new what EVE was or even gave a **** on both hands.

There're reason why they went with a console, and one of them being millions of people who never heard of or could care less about a MMO that a few hundred thousand people are playing.

See, out of all those people, what stopped 8 of them from playing EVE before? Those who had no time for EVE, likely still won't have time after Dust. And those intending to give EVE a try after they start playing Dust? Why wait? Dust is months and months away yet, EVE has been out for well over 9 years.

The way I see it, people who were interested in EVE, already tried it and either are still around or quit. And Dust won't bring them suddenly back, if they wrote off EVE already. And the gamers today had 9 years of EVE to do it in. Dust isn't going to suddenly make someone who had zero interest in EVE or spaceships jump out and yell "Man, I gotta get me some of that!" Just like playing Battlefield 3 doesn't make most people suddenly drop everything and go play a nice game of chess.

Despite what CCP says, they haven't really explained how the games would be linked at all. How will I, as EVE player, interact with a Dust bunny? Via chat window? That's not particularly fun. Have you ever chatter with someone online while you're playing one game and your friend is playing something entirely different? It's not as awesome as it sounds. You tell him "OMG, I just killed a Drake!" and he'll go "There's dragons in EVE?!" See what I mean?

But maybe it's just me. On one hand I'm happy they're diversifying and all that. But doing on PS3? When PS4 will be coming out in 2013-2014 at the latest? Huge mistake. Not to mention PS3 has been an absolute nightmare in recent years, I know hardcore PS3 fans that sold their consoles and are not going back. The whole security breach thing a few years back? The new EULA that basically says "no matter what we do to you, you can't sue us in class action". And even now, all other platforms have Skyrim DLC available...except PS3...which still has none. And that's just a few examples. And this is the basket CCP is putting its Dust egg into? Classy.

And WOD? I'm sorry, but how long since it was announced? And have we seen any gameplay footage, at all? Nope. Unless you count camera flying around an empty map without any NPCs or, god forbid, actual players? And the map is about 10% size of an average FPS game map. Woo, totally worth it? Now, compare that to Star Citizen that was announced a few months ago, and we've already seen pre-alpha footage of dogfighting, cockpit view, avatar movement, etc., etc. Though, fingers crossed, we might see something WOD-related at FanFest...5 months from now!

Maybe I'm beginning to suffer from a bitter vet syndrome, but I really think WiS was EVE's best hope to remain viable. Rebalancing old spaceships and changing how flagging works, while very much needed, isn't going to bring old players back, or new players in.

A lot of people don't like the simple interaction of ship vs ship without ever seeing or using your character. My wife is the same way...wants to see her character and not a ship all the time. Captains Quarters was a step in the right direction for her but not quite enough. DUST for her is more along her lines of what she wants to do and in turn wants to take a look at getting involved with EVE but not until she is playing DUST. She has a beta account but wants to wait until she is sure her character isn't going to be wiped again after release.

What do you call investing time and money into the development of two other games? What do you think they would be doing if that time and money had been investested into EVE?

I know what you'd be doing.
Walking around an optimized space station that didn't require your computer to be sitting in a pool of water to run. And if it didn't float your boat you'd be flying around space.

Performance has nothing to do with anything other then CCP releasing something that wasn't ready to be released because they were spread to thin. I wonder why they were sprad to thin?

CCP should start a Kickstarter for WiS. If enough people donate then it will get the go ahead and will be worked on, if it's way off the money can go towards FiS.

Quoting someone who knows little to nothing about CCP's ideas surrounding WiS.

Firstly, there hasn't been any intention to open WiS into one massive station with with everyone docked up there walking around in the same place, for a long time. Before the exploration stuff (which you seem to be ignoring completely, because otherwise you'd have to admit it was a good idea, and that all the arguments above do not apply) they were talking about Corporate Quarters. Enough space for limited numbers in a corp to hang out, and invite people from outside the corp in. Limited numbers. Corps would be able to tax gambling wins etc. Like running a club.

No one has ever said there are likely to be loads of emotes. CCP have always said they want Eve to stay atmospheric, which means no running, no jumping, and no **** emotes.

As for "nerf WiS we need targets in low and null" or "what keeps u in stations"; WiS would bring in a lot of players. Which means more people in low and null and more people in space. The people who hang about in stations will stay there, they will just have something to do. And if you add the exploration WiS stuff, they may even leave their stations and travel to dangerous space to try it out.

Hi all and thanks for this thread.

I was part of Team Avatar (or Team Absent as we seem to be now known as) and personally, reading through every page has been a bit of a rollercoaster to be honest. From the highs of the continued demand for WiS and it's lack of presence, to the lows of people still tagging it with 'barbie' and not seeing the overall potential of WiS.

Please don't think that all the positive feedback for WiS in this thread is going un-noticed. The sheer length of it is obvious enough to show people's continued interest.

Firstly, let me sum up a few things,

1. Team Avatar were formed to prototype 'meaningful' WiS gameplay.
That did not mean a /dance emote.
Our prototype focused around pve and pvp combat and exploration within 'Sites'.
The feedback from internal playtesting was immensely positive and we could all see it tying in supremely well with the current EvE ecology. Meaning that our WiS gameplay benefited the in-flight game and vice-versa. They should not be separate.
We showed the prototype at the last fanfest and to the CSM and got positive reactions from both groups of observers.
So the general direction we were going in was sound. We had faith in it but most importantly, it appeared that you did as well.

2. Team Avatar were disbanded.
The prototyping was finished, revealed company wide and received much praise.
A decision was made to 'shelve' WiS related gameplay for the foreseeable future due to technology requirements and a change in development focus.

3. The members of Team Avatar were moved onto other teams/projects.
All members of Team Avatar are currently on other teams working away on various things, either Retribution based and not.


Where we stand right now is that we have a successful idea for WiS, a detailed pre-production plan and the right people to implement it properly into EvE.
As I mentioned earlier, WiS is "shelved", not, and I re-iterate, not, completely and utterly abandoned to a dark depth that only Cthulhu could descend to.
I can't obviously speak for the entirety of the company, but I believe the overall consensus is that we, as devs want WiS to be out there and blowing all your minds right now.
Some things take priority though, and some things take time.. and yes I know it's frustrating to continue waiting, but believe me when I say it, but it's also frustrating to work on something so obviously awesome to not see it come out as a fully fledged feature at the end of it.

Anyway, I hope that clears some things up for you and apologies for the length.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that you get a +1 from me for the kickstarter idea,

A heartfelt response from CCP RedDawn.

They don't have unlimited resources. No matter how well Team Avatar did (and it sounds like they did quite well), they still have to weigh how long it'll take and how much manpower it'd take against other areas of the game (like continuing to fix Flying in Space, aka "the actual game"). They did this, and decided it can't be done now, so their work gets shelved. They can still pick it up later, they just can't do it right now.

This isn't difficult to understand.