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Two years later: Walking in Stations

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Ambassador Crane
Hellhound Productions
#361 - 2013-12-13 18:40:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Ambassador Crane
Lady Zarrina wrote:
I would be very surprised if they move forward with WiS anytime soon. To get us walking in a closet took them 100% of their Eve focus for way too long. The graphic quality of what they release was fine, but they lost focus, took all their resources, melted GPU's, etc. Can you imagine walking in Jita with 2000 other pilots. I don't see it any time soon.

Plus, CCP just announced the layoffs with WoD (a game that I imagine would actually use lots WiS technology)


Which makes me wonder just how much of the backend has been further developed. Has any further work been put into streamlining it so as not to burn up GPU's? If so, how much work would it take to start creating these other areas? I mean, these layoffs were JUST leaked. Meaning there were people working on it, thus I'd like to imagine, people working on the software aspect of it to make it more streamlined.

INTRODUCING RACIAL CAPTAIN‘S QUARTERS
CCP t0rfifrans wrote:
All of those rooms were built using modular assets, so that the investment made in building the Captain’s Quarters will be capitalized on further when more environments get built. They have given us the start of a library of modules, which can be used to flesh out racially themed interiors for all sorts of interesting gameplay.


So as long as both the engine is more streamlined or complete and they have a library started for faster build times of the environments, then I'd imagine it really wouldn't take excessive effort or time to expand on WiS.

Disclaimer: I’m well aware this is a lot of theorizing and wishful thinking but I’d like to believe it’s a fairly rational conclusion.
Aralyn Cormallen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#362 - 2013-12-13 18:57:48 UTC
Ambassador Crane wrote:

CCP t0rfifrans wrote:
All of those rooms were built using modular assets, so that the investment made in building the Captain’s Quarters will be capitalized on further when more environments get built. They have given us the start of a library of modules, which can be used to flesh out racially themed interiors for all sorts of interesting gameplay.


So as long as both the engine is more streamlined or complete and they have a library started for faster build times of the environments, then I'd imagine it really wouldn't take excessive effort or time to expand on WiS.

Disclaimer: I’m well aware this is a lot of theorizing and wishful thinking but I’d like to believe it’s a fairly rational conclusion.

Of course, you have to bear in mind the reason POS's sit continually neglected is the oft-claimed excuse that they were introduced years ago, the people who dealt with it are long gone, and there is no=one around who knows how to work with it any more. When you consider, Incarna was years ago, there was significant layoffs after the summer of rage, and just recently, in divisions that worked on avatars walking around (WoD), then there is another entirely rational conclusion, that isn't quite so pleasant for your arguement...
Seleia O'Sinnor
Drop of Honey
#363 - 2013-12-13 19:08:08 UTC
Baroness Vulna wrote:
Kagura Nikon wrote:



The players did , whith their massive revotls, riots and demands that CCP scrapped the focus on incarna in favor of SPACE. CCP lost a LOT of costumers and only started gettign them back after they complied.

THey leaarned a lesson. Do not expect anything incarna related soon.



Well CCP is going to lose alot more players if they just ignore avatars and walking in stations because there are a great many players (i know of) who want that to be part of the game they play.

With competition coming, many will just go to the other games if CCP cant deliver. My point is, if one company can do a decent job with avatars and walking in station in BETA, why cant CCP do something decent for its customers who want walking in stations with their awesome internet spaceships?


Because of the code base, it's so large, and a legacy and so hard to change, more like hardware than software. Don't forget about all the bugs we introduce whenever we change the colour of a label...

Odyssey: Repacking in POS hangars for modules +1,  but please for other stuff too, especially containers. Make containers openable in POS hangars.
Anslo
Scope Works
#364 - 2013-12-13 19:14:31 UTC
While a staunch supporter of WiS...just implementing it is hard. Like universe making hard. Let me put it into perspective.

Eve's code is based of mathematics of chaos theory. The statistician who made it left. The new guy, a very well known PhD ....still can't figure this out.

The same people who study why the universe is as it is and express it mathematically are stumped by a game's chaos theory code.

Let that sink in...

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Stitcher
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#365 - 2013-12-13 19:24:45 UTC
Anslo wrote:
Please move this offtopic discussion to another thread and stop trying to derail/get ISD to lock this one.

Moving on, aside from war rooms, does anyone have feasible ideas for implementing say, EVA avatar gameplay compatible with the current server ticks?


I don't think that "Compatible with current server ticks" is actually that great of an obstacle - DUST and (when it's released) Valkyrie will both be operating at much faster speeds than that because they operate on battle servers which run at a much faster tick rate.

Shunting EVE characters between server nodes is routine, it happens every time you jump through a stargate. If it's not technically possible to move us onto a battle server without logging us off, then increasing or decreasing the tick rate of TQ's server nodes, unless I misunderstand how it works, is the basis of TiDi - did you see that Alliance Tournament match where time kept speeding up?

Might be I just made a dev laugh at my hilarious wrongness, but if that IS how it works then I don't see any obstacles to game mechanics that operate with much faster reaction times than spaceships EVE.

Of course, if I were to envision an avatar-based shooting mechanic for EVE, it'd play in a manner not dissimilar to the spaceships game - pick a target, activate weapons and modules, maneuver for advantage. you'd want cover and for the sake of verisimilitude, both sides should miss a hell of a lot, with hits really hurting. It wouldn't be twitch-based, it'd be about tactics and using the terrain and positioning to your advantage. You get into cover, the other guy gets into cover, you both shoot at each other a whole bunch, maybe you use some suppressive fire to pin them down while you move to a better firing spot, but they throw a grenade which forces you to expose yourself to return fire as you break for somewhere safer... whoever eventually wins should statistically do it by out-playing the other guy tactically, rather than by being able to score a 1337 pr0 noscope headshot. Luck should play a role - blind-firing in a panic with your crappy handgun could luckily get a dude in the eye, but it'd be really, really unlikely.

I'd envision status effects like "pinned" where your character won't lean out of cover to shoot for a few seconds, which is an opening for the other guys to sprint for a new bit of cover. "Exposed" where anyone attacking you gets an accuracy bonus just for a few seconds. "suppressed" which sharply reduces your accuracy and so on. There'd be a whole battery of EVA combat skills such as "concealment" which increases the effectiveness of your cover by 5% per level, "Opportunism" which increases the duration of your pinning effects by 2% per level, that kind of thing.

And if you do get killed, you reset to the exact number and distribution of SP you had last time you jump-cloned or were podded, so you want to be really careful or you could lose multiple skills.

The point is, it should be less about a player's skill with the controls, and more about their skill at reading the battlefield and exploiting the opportunities that present themselves. Chess, rather than boxing.

AKA Hambone

Author of The Deathworlders
Halcyon Harvey
Doomheim
#366 - 2013-12-13 19:25:55 UTC
Just out of curiosity...

In what way do proponents of walking around in a game about spaceships feel WiS has the potential to benefit everyone's experience? I mean, yes, of course, standing around watching someone try to figure out how to play Zero-G Plinko would be vastly amusing, but does direct avataric interaction in any way enhance what EVE effectively is - a game based on social interaction based on the current (and historical) format of the game?

I remember when all this was first announced I was in some channel on some TS or some such ****, and the general sentiment at the time was negative. Negative because nothing good could possibly come from further (purely cosmetic) elements such as teabagging someone's character or standing around awkwardly in a circle instead of spinning ships.

Forsaken (An EVE Thing)
Stitcher
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#367 - 2013-12-13 19:34:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Stitcher
Halcyon Harvey wrote:
Just out of curiosity...

In what way do proponents of walking around in a game about spaceships feel WiS has the potential to benefit everyone's experience? I mean, yes, of course, standing around watching someone try to figure out how to play Zero-G Plinko would be vastly amusing, but does direct avataric interaction in any way enhance what EVE effectively is - a game based on social interaction based on the current (and historical) format of the game?.


To illustrate the point I'm trying to make, I'm going to turn this around. I'm not mocking you, but hopefully this will do a good job of showing the way I see it.

Quote:
In what way do proponents of flying spaceships in a game about walking around feel WiS has the potential to benefit everyone's experience? I mean, yes, of course, floating around watching someone try to figure out how to activate their warp drive would be vastly amusing, but does spaceship interaction in any way enhance what EVE effectively is - a game based on social interaction based on the current (and historical) format of the game?


In my mind there is no real difference between undocking to fly somewhere and acquire a resource by, say, hacking, and walking through the CQ door to walk somewhere and acquire a resource by, say, ripping off a megacorporate lab in an elaborate Ocean's 11-esque heist.

In both cases you, the player, make your character's representative model (be it a spaceship or a humanoid avatar) leave the sanctuary of the CQ and venture out into open territory in search of resources, which come with an attached risk. In this vision the difference between a spaceship and your humanoid avatar is a purely cosmetic one - they're just different ways of displaying a similar activity.

Travel to place A, perform action B, acquire resource C, compete/collaborate with players D-Z. Doesn't matter whether you do that wearing your Tengu with the HAM launchers or wearing your shield belt with a gauss pistol, on an abstract level the activity is essentially identical and all that's changed is how that activity is thematically portrayed.

Seen that way, the disagreement over FiS versus WiS is a bit like arguing that a game where so far we have been moving spheres from one cube into another and clicking twenty times to receive a cake would be ruined if people had the option to move a pyramid from one cube into another, click twenty times and receive a donut instead.

AKA Hambone

Author of The Deathworlders
Nadia Barsrallah
Nerbles
#368 - 2013-12-13 19:38:24 UTC
To my knowledge WiS, and WoD are based off the unity engine. That with the fact that CCP has a prefab library, means that fleshing out actual enviroments is very trivial in dev time.
Halcyon Harvey
Doomheim
#369 - 2013-12-13 19:49:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Halcyon Harvey
Stitcher wrote:
Travel to place A, perform action B, acquire resource C, compete/collaborate with players D-Z. Doesn't matter whether you do that wearing your Tengu with the HAM launchers or wearing your shield belt with a gauss pistol, on an abstract level the activity is essentially identical and all that's changed is how that activity is thematically portrayed.

Absolutely... but here's the thing...

What you are describing with the pistol and the heists and all that... that sounds like a different game. Just being honest. And in the long and glorious history of games, I have never once been particularly impressed by efforts to shoehorn new formats into older ones. It simply doesn't work. To me, what makes EVE a truly sustainable MMO is that there has been a continuous development of the fundamental core mechanics and visual format. EVE with Star Wars: The Old Republic taped to its back doesn't appeal to me at all. I play EVE, as I always have, because it's EVE, not because it's a conventional MMO trying to be like everyone else. Investing time and money into doing something other than what you're best at, frankly, has always proved to be a recipe for disaster and, ultimately, failure.

Forsaken (An EVE Thing)
Anslo
Scope Works
#370 - 2013-12-13 20:08:19 UTC
EVA gameplay where you blow up another ship from the inside or explore a sleeper ruin is actually card games and strippers?

WHODA THUNK IT?!

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#371 - 2013-12-13 20:29:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Jenn aSide
Halcyon Harvey wrote:
Stitcher wrote:
Travel to place A, perform action B, acquire resource C, compete/collaborate with players D-Z. Doesn't matter whether you do that wearing your Tengu with the HAM launchers or wearing your shield belt with a gauss pistol, on an abstract level the activity is essentially identical and all that's changed is how that activity is thematically portrayed.

Absolutely... but here's the thing...

What you are describing with the pistol and the heists and all that... that sounds like a different game. Just being honest. And in the long and glorious history of games, I have never once been particularly impressed by efforts to shoehorn new formats into older ones. It simply doesn't work. To me, what makes EVE a truly sustainable MMO is that there has been a continuous development of the fundamental core mechanics and visual format. EVE with Star Wars: The Old Republic taped to its back doesn't appeal to me at all. I play EVE, as I always have, because it's EVE, not because it's a conventional MMO trying to be like everyone else. Investing time and money into doing something other than what you're best at, frankly, has always proved to be a recipe for disaster and, ultimately, failure.



Exactly this.

The player doing these things with a space ship is risking a space ship. if it gets blown up, that's work for the builders of ships and mods and the economy of EVE churns. The avatar that gets killed loses whatever items the devs put in that might aquire some values, like clothes or a laser pistol I don't see that being as good for the overall game and risking a space ship. Now maybe that player losing a ship because he was EVA exploring a plex, that might have some value.

But yea, trying to tack on a new game to an existing game isn't the wisest move. All the games i've played that have both spaceship game play and Avatar play (lately SWTOR and Star Trek Online) had those things from the beginning, the game was made to work with the 2 sides integrated from the concept stage.

EVE's minimalist "spaceships and spreadsheets" is much more appealing to me and I'd hazard a guess to at least a few other people. it's not just avatars that are unappealing, it's anything that's not like EVE. My buddy sent me this video of Elite's Alpha and I'm looking at it and not finding it very interesting, yet others are salivating at the thought of if, just like Star Citizen. Well, unless those games eventually feature some good Capital Ship gameplay anyways.
Anslo
Scope Works
#372 - 2013-12-13 20:39:04 UTC
No risk in avatar gameplay? Enjoy losing however millions worth of SP you trained between your last jump clone and dying out of pod.

Soft cloning aint no joke, yo.

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Halcyon Harvey
Doomheim
#373 - 2013-12-13 20:50:12 UTC
This whole "combat in stations" thing...

I see its mechanics being abused to cause epic amounts of grief. I see it becoming a function of trolling. I see it not being implemented the way anyone imagines it being implemented. I see tears... and revisions... and ultimately, I see absolutely no reason to engage in any of it.

Christ, why would I ever leave my CQ? What, so that a bunch of mouthbreathers in station can pop me and ROFLROFLROFL all over my rotting corpse because they don't give two turtle ****s about my "adventurous spirit"?

Forsaken (An EVE Thing)
Anslo
Scope Works
#374 - 2013-12-13 21:03:27 UTC
Sounds pretty Eve like to me. Replace avatar with ship in your post and youll see.

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Halcyon Harvey
Doomheim
#375 - 2013-12-13 21:09:57 UTC
Anslo wrote:
Sounds pretty Eve like to me. Replace avatar with ship in your post and youll see.

Yes, but that would make sense.

It would make sense for my avatar (lol) to be blown up and to be metaphorically teabagged in KB comments...

Why the **** would I want to do the same thing only with actual teabagging?

Forsaken (An EVE Thing)
Aralyn Cormallen
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#376 - 2013-12-13 21:13:54 UTC
Nadia Barsrallah wrote:
To my knowledge WiS, and WoD are based off the unity engine. That with the fact that CCP has a prefab library, means that fleshing out actual enviroments is very trivial in dev time.



If it was a simple and "trivial" as that, why didn't they knock out 20 more room types in all empire and pirate factions for Incarna's release? After all, it would have been silly not to do something so "trivial" when it obviously takes so little dev time, and it would have made Incarna's reception far less rocky. In fact, why did they waste so many months before turning out those other three "trivial" to do bedrooms, rather than release it with the first; or at the very least, a couple of days later, since it would be so "trivial" to do.

Or, you know, you're talking out your behind.
Anslo
Scope Works
#377 - 2013-12-13 21:14:14 UTC
Don't code for it. Server ticks can't handle it anyway. Besides straight up pewpew should be in space. We have dust for ground pew. WiS should be a little more intelligent. For instance, sabotaging a freighter before it leaves station to deploy an outpost, ruining a war plan and exposing an alliances motives. (too soon?)

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Halcyon Harvey
Doomheim
#378 - 2013-12-13 21:20:11 UTC
Anslo wrote:
ruining a war plan and exposing an alliances motives. (too soon?)

Isn't this already widespread behavior?

And how would you "sabotage" a freighter? Would WiS enable us to interact with the docked ships of other players? Some kind of "**** 'em over" mini game with a Skyrimesque lockpicking interface? Why not just steal it?

The problems are with the details. What exactly do people think WiS can add to the game if not, as pointed out, ground combat? I'll tell you... meaningless minigames. That's about it. Timesinks. Daywasters. Things that have nothing to do with spaceships or flying them? Picture corp members sitting around on couches, burping, comparing Pokemon collections.

Forsaken (An EVE Thing)
Anslo
Scope Works
#379 - 2013-12-13 21:23:32 UTC
(1) Eve is a game. It's already a waste of time.
(2) If you're just staying docked til hostiles leave, you're safe. WiS could let someone decant, sneak into your hangar and, depending on a factor like a skill, screw you over and **** your docked 8b isk rhea up without you ever leaving. Because **** you thats why.

[center]-_For the Proveldtariat_/-[/center]
Stitcher
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#380 - 2013-12-13 21:45:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Stitcher
Halcyon Harvey wrote:
What you are describing with the pistol and the heists and all that... that sounds like a different game.


Mechanically, it's exactly the same game. And I MEAN exactly. If I warp to an Angel Cartel deadspace and hack into their scatter cans, there is no functional difference between that and walking into a Lai Dai office and hacking their desk.

Nor is there any functional difference between those and, say, warping to a Sleeper deadspace and blowing them up for salvage, warping to an asteroid belt and mining for ore, warping to a station and trading some stuff, warping to a planet and exporting my PI products, warping to a POS and delivering my Invention jobs and so on....

The overwhelming majority of activities in EVE boil down to the simple mechanic of "travel to place A, perform action B, receive resource C."

So mechanically, it's an identical game. Thematically?

Thematically, EVE is about a science fiction universe, and there's no good reason save stubborn conservatism to consider spaceships to be inherently superior to avatars just because they've been around for longer. Both of them are just the game rendering your icon moving through a virtual space armed with a collection of tools which allow you to perform certain activities and interact with that space in different ways. Whether it's a Hamgu warping to a deadspace to shoot some Sleepers or a guy with a laser pistol sneaking into a maintenance shaft to plant a bomb is just window-dressing, purely cosmetic.

Quote:
EVE with Star Wars: The Old Republic taped to its back doesn't appeal to me at all.


Nor to me, and your saying that tells me that you've not understood what I'm trying to pitch here. I definitely DON'T want a tacked-on copy of another MMO, any more than you do.

What appeals to me is EVE on Foot: an EVE in which you do EVE things in an EVE way that's thematically and mechanically appropriate for EVE and interact with other EVE players in the EVE style while doing so, except that your icon is a person rather than a spaceship.

Like swapping out your battleship for a covops when it's time to do some probing, you're just hopping into the appropriate "ship" to do the job you're setting out to do, and it just happens that the appropriate ship in this case is no ship at all.

There is no good reason why avatar-based gameplay in EVE should be a WoW or SWTOR clone. Done properly in fact, EVE on Foot would be mechanically not very different from the spaceships side of the game. It shouldn't have you running up to somebody with a big yellow exclamation mark over their head and then bunny-hopping your way through a sea of respawning mobs to retrieve their mcguffin of choice - it should be sandbox, with your avatar being (to repeat myself) a different kind of spaceship "flying" in a different kind of space, interacting with other players in a way that could be profitable or dangerous.

It should be EVE. but on foot.

Halcyon Harvey wrote:
Christ, why would I ever undock? What, so that a bunch of mouthbreathers in space outside can pop me and ROFLROFLROFL all over my wreck because they don't give two turtle ****s about my "adventurous spirit"?


Are you getting the point yet?

Halcyon Harvey wrote:
It would make sense for my avatar (lol) to be blown up and to be metaphorically teabagged in KB comments...

Why the **** would I want to do the same thing only with actual teabagging?



So... wait, your entire objection to something that would form the foundation for a broad raft of new content is that you might suffer a minor indignity?

There have been some pretty crappy arguments in this thread so far dude, but yours wins the grand prize.

AKA Hambone

Author of The Deathworlders