EVE General Discussion

CCP did develop at least one working prototype Incarna engine some years ago. If you look on Google there should be several images still floating around, and maybe even a demonstration video. From what I recall, that engine didn't meet CCP's design goals and was scrapped.

This isn't anything terribly bad or uncommon. For example, Valve created three or four working prototypes for Team Fortress 2 before settling on a final design, which looked nothing like some of those prototypes.

only if CCP could talk to players and tell us the real reason of "no incarna" decision...
this way it all looks like one more broken promise and ppl feel like test rats for WoD... no WoD no playground for test rats...

I didn't exactly see my graphic card melt or even stutter, but my computer is quite new, even though it is your standard media computer, not a dedicated gaming machine.

WoD & EVE Incarna were to use the same engine. I think it is unfair to say we were just test rats. You have to start somewhere and I think what they meant this first phase to be was a load test, as in, how much load does it put on our servers, how fast are response times, etc. They even mentioned that in some dev blog, but no-one cared to listen.

E.g. I'm working on a non-gaming project atm for a large global company. We are implementing a new CRM system. We couldn't just rush it out the door, we had to start somewhere small. So one country is now running the new system, the rest is on the old and slowly the system will be rolled out. Small steps usually are safer. But there is only so much you can emulate on a Dev and then QA server. You must see the impact on the real production server, which in CCPs case is TQ.

So I fully support their approach, but the initial roll out was horrible. This was not an expansion. It was a live test.

Creating a new MMO game based off a new engine is very very costly. You invest in developing technology instead of buying licenses for an existing one - like the Unreal engine -, you need a large crew of developers, artists, etc. There is no short term ROI, so your investors/shareholders start to get nervous.

This extra load on their expenses was too much for CCP and thus WoD and EVE Incarna are ... well... effectively out of scope for the next years I guess. They cannot write them off, as in financial terms, that would mean to write off any development time etc as losses.

I truly think they wanted it to be awesome and looking at the details of the characters, I think one day it will be.

Should they have started smaller or using an existing, tested engine? Probably. The downside to that is the "seen it before" feeling you get.

Lets give them some time and see what comes out of it. I have waited four years for Incarna, I can wait longer.

The only thing that infuriates me about this is that some people do not realize, this is actually a loss for all, not a win for some.

Their powers of the dark side have blinded you!

I think that remains to be seen. It is a matter of how well CCPs FI department is, because if they do not play the "just put on a lower priority" card well, they will lose dramtically.

If I had any shareholder interest in CCP, I would start to ask some serious questions. But such a debate does not belong on a gaming forum, so I will stop it here.

Looks even better if you accessed the test servers before their mirrors were replaced with something more current. (They don't have the other three CQs anymore.) The new effects make avatars look really nice. If you were impressed with the Gallente CQ in Singularity, it looked even better in Duality last week.


Are they? I always figured that Carbon was for EVE and World of Darkness, while Dust 514 would only use Unreal Engine 3 and Enlighten. (Enlighten is the same lighting tech used in EVE.) I don't see why an integration with Carbon would be necessary since Dust and EVE are two separate games.

unfortunatally there are people like me that were only staying because we wanted to see what WiS was going to be like and now they have said they are going to basically ignore a promise they made to us. (Droping WoD and Nex store I don't care about but I have been waiting several years to see WiS and they just dumped it)

The Failures of Incarna were long foretold by C.S. Lewis on this small paragraph when he was talking, interestingly enough on Incarnation itself:



Namely, the extremely old-fashioned approach of people that are "in the know", read High-Ups in CCP, and the distinct and obnoxious way on how they pretend to have an "awesomeness" of vision on how things are, whereas the players, in their amateurish wisdom given the tools of the age (that far surpass the study methods of earlier eras) can not only reach the same pinnacle of comprehension but get the overall feelings of the inner workings of a way of thinking even better than the creators themselves.

I wish I could talk about Hubris from CCP, but that would require an argument of such proportions that only would serve to pinpoint the easier to spot motives behind CCP's latest way of thinking.

If you read this Massively article, and if consider it truth (you can create your own opinion just looking at the trajectory of CCP during the past year) you will come to realize, using the earlier analogy, that CCP is now a musty, extremely long and shortsighted behemoth. They failed to realize that despite their best intentions (bricks easily layered on the road to hell) they were simply doing it wrong.

Bear with me the message I'm trying to convey...

See, you have read the opinions of people here that roughly mirror those of many in the game. Incarna ITSELF was not the issue, and it bothers me much they seem to have failed to fully grasp the social consequences of their actions.

Their "awesomeness" was bright and shiny in their minds, like the treatises on Plato mentioned by Lewis himself., shattered with scholarly advice in the academic world but failed to resonate plainly in the world outside.

It's easy to see, on a very basic , almost instinctual level how many players rejected the notion of all that INCARNA entailed.

This needs no further explanation, its THERE. It happened. As long as you keep or anyone at CCP's try to pinpoint the "error" all they could do realistically is blame it on the playerbase. Needless to say the playerbase is not an homogenous unthinking blob, but an emotional monster, and this , oh yes, my fellow capsuleers, this is what they have failed to GRASP.

A topic worth of study itself by my lazy mind. Hence why I'm giving them a second chance and hope their "awesomeness" (CCP's) is obliterated and replaced with something else, "coolness" "great" or even plain "workable" could suffice. But "awesomeness" no thanks.

Anyway I hope this small blabber is at least insightful. For me it was.

Lets put it this way, if they are going to keep the store, then make a F2P version of it. Mixed Pay2Play with CASH SHOP games are ... well .... abhorrent.

Who knows, if things keep going downhill , it might even be a an irreversible trend, then compromises should be made. But we are not discussing this game as F2P station.

There are so many WRONG, UTTERLY WRONG CHOICES made by the top brass at CCP, that they could be considered AMORAL. I still wonder where were they taking advice, for a moment itself I thought SMEDLEY himself was prodding tentacles into CCP.

EVE is a niche game, and the whole conundrum of trying to take it out of its niche was sardonically destroying it in a mass AN HERO effect, slowly, but surely, like the martians coming to earth ripping off the H.G. Well's phrase.

This topic has as many answers as people in it. For me this an insulting slap in the face and a chronic repetition of the same mistake done by ALL COMPANIES in the world.

There are BOOKS, whole ENCYCLOPEDIAS in the areas of management and company policies dedicated to explaining this kind of destructive behavior in Corporations, I know at least 3 people, former colleagues of mine that work in this area of expertise , there's a gazillion proposals on how to cure it, prevent it or even plain detecting it before its too late.

The problem usually lies at the top. The People taking choices forgetting core values, the people leading the companies being isolated into small bubbles fomented and fed by the "cronies" that isolate the leader so they can keep control while giving him the Illusion of well being. There are political, and if you look at several CIA handbooks, techniques created for this isolation of upper management to destabilize whole countries and corporation with a strong man, dictator or Military Junta.

It's a Natural social phenomenon, the Isolated Bubble , or the act of "Losing Touch".

Several authors have a basic study on leaders and their inexorable way of losing touch with reality and the corp they lead:



This small quote from a Harvard graduate is just one of the many extrapolations on this effect.

Stephen Covey, Ram Charan and many other real world acclaimed authors in the field of leadership discuss this too, if you want to read them be my guest, but to the topic in discussion it only serves to pinpoint the slowly degrading way at the top. it's not INCARNA, it's a layering issue of social and psychological implications that shattered (hopefully for only a while) the core of EVE as it rocks CCP's foundations.

If Hillmar is willing to recognize his vision is wrong in the first place instead of defending it as sheer "awesomeness" and we players NOT GETTING IT, it might do more for eve than All the ship spinning, Hybrid rebalancing and racial CQ's planned for the winter xpac.

Healing begins at the top, not at the bottom. The userbase just reacts , like the emotional monster they are, to the vibrations sent from the conglomerate.

I don't think there would be a major issue with NeX stuff if it was available to the player market without having to flip a PLEX or having to pay a battleship sum for it. Maybe having clothing blueprint copies on the LP market would be a good idea? EVE can still have the NeX, but those items should always be available to the player driven system. More content that requires effort from the playerbase is a good thing, and is vastly more preferable than limiting the items to a separate market entirely. If people want to take a shortcut and pay for those items with real money, then they can. Simple.

Just for kicks I tried it on one of my older desktops today (4 years old!). Guess what? It runs just fine, no hiccups.
Invest in some quality hardware next time and don't try to run like 12 clients at the same time.

If you want to do that, you'll need this...

CCP allows for multiple clients, but that doesn't mean we all need to be restricted to WoW stoneage graphics because some cannot afford a cluster at home when trying to do cluster work.

PS: ATI card on this computer. No problems.