Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Silas Vitalia on 17 Sep 2013, 12:43
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I might be wrong but we are well into announcement neighborhood for winter expansion, yes?
Do we have any conjecture or anyone with knowledge willing to chit-chat about what's on the horizon?
Is a promised expansion land of sweet gameplay milk and PF honey to soothe us on the way?
Or are the cracks starting to show and we are about to be proverbially pooped on with nothing but more stat juggling and no new gameplay?
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Isn't stat juggling what people were bitching about all the time though? Ugh, the screaming ranting bittermajority wins again this expansion I bet = =
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I'd posit that balancing should never be an acceptable substitute for new content.
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Trust me I agree. But the masses kept yelping 'why are you adding new content when you need to fix 34982756 useless things I unsub my 21 accounts until you do cause i like numbers and not fun!'
Fuckin' elitists man...
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Hey, i'm a bitter elitist and I don't agree with them :|
We need a healthy dose of both. But anyway people will always find a way to be unhappy. Eve is not special when it comes to niche stuff with a lot of bitter elitists.
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Marauder re-balancing and... that's it.
I guess spring 2014 is where the magic is?
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Someone might be able to enlighten me but I was always under the impression that 'balance' teams were separate from 'design' or 'content' teams in the company.
IE the guys twiddling the numbers for balance are not the guys making new code for features.
OR as some have said, the lights are on and no one is home (they are all off writing content and making stuff (tm) for other CCP projects)?
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The guys twiddling the numbers in a database remain gamedesigners, not programmers. Unless there is something seriously wicked somewhere...
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Wouldn't be surprised if they're working on other games or have been reassigned to help move numbers in the data base. Then again, Odyssey WAS a cool content addition, I must say. Maybe they have epic things planned? Who knows....no really who here WOULD know lol.
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Someone might be able to enlighten me but I was always under the impression that 'balance' teams were separate from 'design' or 'content' teams in the company.
IE the guys twiddling the numbers for balance are not the guys making new code for features.
OR as some have said, the lights are on and no one is home (they are all off writing content and making stuff (tm) for other CCP projects)?
Or it's possible that whatever they're working on won't be ready for 2013 release.
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I never understand with these companies why they just can't say these things.
'hey we are working on x, y, z things to come out in x, y, z release dates'
That way people don't think nothing is happening
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I'm really hoping for more starbase iteration, and more scanning and hacking iterations. More stuff for wormholes plz plz.
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I never understand with these companies why they just can't say these things.
'hey we are working on x, y, z things to come out in x, y, z release dates'
That way people don't think nothing is happening
The problem is the audience seeing it. More shitstorms, more bad PR, and more shit slinging.
"I PAY A SUBSCRIPTION I AM OWED A RELEASE EVERY 6 MONTHS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU I UNSUB" etc, etc.
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Ever since Incarna, CCP has been terrified to release new features and is focusing on iterating existing content. Well folks, this is iterating!
Have fun with it. Hope you're all happy.
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Are you a bittervet now Kat? :cube:
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I never understand with these companies why they just can't say these things.
'hey we are working on x, y, z things to come out in x, y, z release dates'
That way people don't think nothing is happening
Firstly, the people tweaking the numbers are designers, probably senior designers and possibly TEAMS of senior designers. Tweaking numbers is one of those jobs that REALLY easy to do but REALLY hard to do well. You need your best peeps, usually.
Secondly, the reason Devs don't release details of what they're working on is that you guys would be APALLED at how much of the stuff Devs work on doesn't work and gets thrown away. I mean that, plain apalled.
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Yeah, I think it's important to iterate on existing content.
Like WiSCQ, that could use some iteration.
:D
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My two cents would be to have a few gameplay goals and then create features and balance changes to support them.
IE
Design Goal:
Make it easier for smaller groups to own their own little territories, and make it harder for larger groups to easily maintain and defend multi-region empires.
Balance changes for this:
Extremely nerf force projection - (jump bridges, cynos, etc. It should not be possible to teleport capital ship fleets across 6 regions in 15 minutes, etc)
Change sliding scale costs for territory maintenance to make owning a single or small area affordable for small alliance, and owning an entire region extremely cost-prohibitive.
Like the wars of old, attacking another territory should have -strategic- implications on your own. IE if you take your giant capital fleet off to go attack another region, it should not be possible to instantly have them come home for defense.
No more static resources - Moon mining, asteroid mining, deadspace complexes, these things should be finite and ever-changing in location and amounts. You want to move the oasis around to encourage people to fight over them.
POS's should be more like mobile command centers, a home away from home that can move and be deployed out in the wilderness.
Supply Logistics and movement of goods needs to be nerfed in the extreme. It should MATTER where you buy things, and getting them to markets. Give people careers moving things to and fro. It is entirely too easy to buy things in one place and transport them to another.
I'd propose super strict limits on cross-empire trading. IE The Gallente Federation no longer allows ships from Jita full of trade items. If you want to buy something in the Federation, someone needs to make it in the federation. Make new gameplay involving smuggling, make it a -real- profession. Have players acting as border agents for a % of any contraband they scan. This spreads out manufacturing and business to new areas.
Come up with new gameplay and methods for getting materials and ships from high sec to null sec empires. I think lowsec could serve as the clearing house for this, the .1-.4 systems should be the places you need to go to get the shadow work done, the world between the empires and the null sec. Lots of chances for new gameplay here.
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Evidently there were a couple of leaks during the SCL stream? I haven't heard what was leaked yet, though, and wasn't watching myself. :x
Current rumor is that winter is more industry-focused, and that they have a nifty development arc that seems to include expanding the EVE cluster by allowing people to build stargates. So. Maybe they're making exploration more, y'know, exploratory?
But y'know. We'll see what's coming.
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There's a few player meets coming up, if I'm not mistaken. Traditionally some dev shirt wearing people show up to do a little song and dance, and a preview of things to come. We might know more soon.
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I think Marauders are not the only thing on the books as far as rebalancing goes for Winter - I recall something about pirate ships being on the block as well.
There's also a lot of other T2 ships still needing a look at. Blops need to be finished, Recons probably could use a small pass, etc.
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They actually used to have a part of the site that had (iirc) 3 categories: Stuff that would be in the patch, stuff they were working on, and stuff that they had done some preliminary design on and we're planning to get to at some point. This was, of course, in the days of yore.
It gave an interesting insight into what they were looking at doing, but suffered both from the issues Pieter mentioned and from being updated very infrequently.
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I'm still waiting on the interceptor balance pass.
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My two cents would be to have a few gameplay goals and then create features and balance changes to support them.
IE
Design Goal:
Make it easier for smaller groups to own their own little territories, and make it harder for larger groups to easily maintain and defend multi-region empires.
Balance changes for this:
Extremely nerf force projection - (jump bridges, cynos, etc. It should not be possible to teleport capital ship fleets across 6 regions in 15 minutes, etc)
Change sliding scale costs for territory maintenance to make owning a single or small area affordable for small alliance, and owning an entire region extremely cost-prohibitive.
Like the wars of old, attacking another territory should have -strategic- implications on your own. IE if you take your giant capital fleet off to go attack another region, it should not be possible to instantly have them come home for defense.
No more static resources - Moon mining, asteroid mining, deadspace complexes, these things should be finite and ever-changing in location and amounts. You want to move the oasis around to encourage people to fight over them.
POS's should be more like mobile command centers, a home away from home that can move and be deployed out in the wilderness.
Supply Logistics and movement of goods needs to be nerfed in the extreme. It should MATTER where you buy things, and getting them to markets. Give people careers moving things to and fro. It is entirely too easy to buy things in one place and transport them to another.
I'd propose super strict limits on cross-empire trading. IE The Gallente Federation no longer allows ships from Jita full of trade items. If you want to buy something in the Federation, someone needs to make it in the federation. Make new gameplay involving smuggling, make it a -real- profession. Have players acting as border agents for a % of any contraband they scan. This spreads out manufacturing and business to new areas.
Come up with new gameplay and methods for getting materials and ships from high sec to null sec empires. I think lowsec could serve as the clearing house for this, the .1-.4 systems should be the places you need to go to get the shadow work done, the world between the empires and the null sec. Lots of chances for new gameplay here.
I like these ideas. I don't know if they would have the intended effect, but I like the notion of trying for it.
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In the short term: CSM meeting notes mentioned that there should be a few more major features in Winter expansion (including one described as "something players have been begging about for ages"). So, we can expect... something. Whether it's a revamp or an entirely new features I don't know. They seemed pretty excited about it, though, and the current CSM is usually a levelheaded bunch.
In the medium-long term: Well, we've got lots of promises about the DUST-EVE link. They'll have to address that eventually... I hope. Sov overhaul is also something players have been moaning about for ages.
Superlongterminplanning: Um, I've got nothing. When I joined the game, the insane-long-term objectives seemed to be WiS (worked on, resulted in Incarna, failbombed for numerous reasons), some kind of RTS-ish thing on planets (halfway done - PI was a tentative first step, and the DUST link still holds promise. Needs more work, though) and placing large amounts of ingame infrastructure in players' hands (mostly done: JBs, jump freighters, freighter services, and PI have moved almost all the ingame production and shipping into players' hands, for better and worse).
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I eagerly await what is in store! Hoping to be wowed and excited :)
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Current rumor is that winter is more industry-focused, and that they have a nifty development arc that seems to include expanding the EVE cluster by allowing people to build stargates. So. Maybe they're making exploration more, y'know, exploratory?
Don't tease me bro!
The problem with making announced major changes to the industry balance is that the market goes crazy before hand and after. Just look at the major announcements to moon materials as an example.
A counter example is that the materials for Prototype Cloaking Devices (http://eve-marketdata.com/price_check.php?step=Show&type_id=11370®ion_id=&solarsystem_id=&type=history) changed in Odyssey 1.1. This was unannounced from everything I could find and if you look at the market data, it appears to have remained steady. The components have fundamentally changed. It now uses PI products, like Hermetic Membranes (http://eve-marketdata.com/price_check.php?type_name_header=Hermetic+Membranes+), which didn't have a huge spike in pricing. But it also means isolated producers are left having to figure out a new supply chain (like this guy, who now needs to setup the necessary build chain).
A good industry release will have to focus on making it more interesting to pursue as a group (that whole specialization thing) versus a solo activity. Lots of effort on the UI and tools available to corporations. It would be nice if there was a means to create in-game group projects, the industrial equivalent to a fleet if you will.
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New Player ALERT
Okay, so on one hand, everything is new to me in EVE so I can't say what I would like to see added or improved or what not (well, okay, free control flight would be neat, and all the clothes...)
From the sounds of things, and I've sort of seen it in the little time I've been in the game is there does seem to be a lack of content...there is a lot of things to do, but without really looking into it, the universe does not seem to have changed much or have expanded or altered. Say what you will about WoW, at least the expansions expanded the game world and provided new content. Item and game balance tweaks seemed to always be done between actual expansions (some of these requiring an almost new game version build), but even without the expansions, there always was something 'new' appearing.
I keep hearing about the debacle of Incarna...and from what I understand, yeah there were some poor ideas. I don't want EVE to become a sci-fi WoW...but the fact of the matter is Blizzard did something right in order to essentially destroy the MMOs that came before it and become the juggernaut of the MMO market. CCP doesn't have to mimic, but they could take a moment and look at what Blizzard did in the early days (as much as I personally liked Mists of Panderia, I do admit that it could have been better content and the dumb-down of the classes sucked).
I do have a background in programming, though not in gaming, and have been involved in the tech industry for 13 years now (not counting the time spent teaching myself about computers) and I can understand the difficulty in creating new content as well as the time it can take to put out a product that doesn't immediately blow up. I also understand the tendency for a company to get hand-shy when something they put out receives a major backlash from the consumer market. Trust me...I see it at my workplace...we're still dealing with an application that was written in Access 97 and 'upgraded' to Access 2007 (read, tables and some queries converted to work properly) because everyone in management is afraid to build something new.
CCP, not knowing how large their team is or current priorities or staffing is like, does need to look at adding new content. Not simply new ship hulls, modules, interfaces or UI changes...the universe needs to change in some manner. From the sounds of it, if these jump gates and whatnot go through, that does seem like a step in the right direction.
Despite all the drama that recently went down, I do feel CCP does have a decent relationship with the RPing community within their game...small things can also appease players (i.e. just drop all the rest of those wonderful clothes into the universe :P ). I'm of two minds on how that can be done...looking at WoW with the virtual pets...sounds funny that someone would pay $5-30 for a pet or mount, yet just about everyone did. Done right, that's a good source of quick cash injection. I know there are some articles of clothing that I'd be willing to pay for...but it does need to be done right. On the flip side, they can also just shrug it off and simple seed the 'verse with these items...maybe making them available in missions, exploration, or other means. I know...sounds simple, but I realize it isn't as simple as switching a byte...testing needs to be done etc. Still, it would be something that I think most players would appreciate.
Other more complex content comes to mind...and it sort of ties in with DUST and getting us out of the captain's quarters and interacting with each other visually. But, and this steals from Star Trek...let's explore the concept of the 'away party'. Whether it is the actual pilot or we create another toon for land exploration, I think that would blow the game wide open (personal opinion, could be horribly off the mark). This might mean CCP drops the whole console DUST and make DUST for the PC...I don't know. And it would require a lot of work, but I think something like this could easily draw new players to EVE.
And that brings up the question of how to make EVE attractive to new players. How do you keep new players interested and wanting to do things with all these bittervets kicking around? Not sure...guess the first thing might be taking another look at Incursions and providing content there that newbies can sink their teeth into. It has bothered me that I could not do anything regarding an Incursion cause of skill and finances. They could also look at ways of making FW more meaningful and more interesting for new players. I wish I could say how, but I tend to be a little more on the idea and less on detail in some aspects. I don't mind that it takes time to train skills and move up into larger hulls and more advanced modules, but any new content should take into consideration that you want to gain and keep new players.
And I think I shall end my stream of thought here.
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CCP's scared to death of the pitchfork-wielding, spreadsheet-loving, anti-WIS crowd so, I don't expect to see them take any risks with anything bold, or innovative. They'll toss us some ship tweaks, a few UI changes, maybe repackage some older content and try to pass it off as an expansion. :roll:
I'd like to be proven wrong but, the top management of CCP have said consistently since the Incarna fiasco that would be no "new Jesus features" so, I'm taking them at their word. Judging by what's happened over the past two years they're sticking to that pledge.
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Current rumor is that winter is more industry-focused, and that they have a nifty development arc that seems to include expanding the EVE cluster by allowing people to build stargates. So. Maybe they're making exploration more, y'know, exploratory?
Dex were are you! I have project! this might is what you need!
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Shitstorms are always on the horizon.
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just wait for CSM minutes......
Also, you need to watch again the fanfest videos, the new executive producer CCP Seagull clearly explains she is creating a framework to "from now on", have a little of "old-issue fixes" and a little of "new content". on every cycle.
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Not to be too much of a damp squib, but CCP's inherent schizophrenia when it comes to making promises makes this feel like an emotionally abusive marriage.
I'm not going to really trust much of what they way they will do, until they do it - this ten year ball and chain I love too much to leave has caused me a lot of disappointment by promising 5 star accommodation and delivering decrepit hostels instead.
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New Player ALERT
Okay, so on one hand, everything is new to me in EVE so I can't say what I would like to see added or improved or what not (well, okay, free control flight would be neat, and all the clothes...)
From the sounds of things, and I've sort of seen it in the little time I've been in the game is there does seem to be a lack of content...there is a lot of things to do, but without really looking into it, the universe does not seem to have changed much or have expanded or altered. Say what you will about WoW, at least the expansions expanded the game world and provided new content. Item and game balance tweaks seemed to always be done between actual expansions (some of these requiring an almost new game version build), but even without the expansions, there always was something 'new' appearing.
I keep hearing about the debacle of Incarna...and from what I understand, yeah there were some poor ideas. I don't want EVE to become a sci-fi WoW...but the fact of the matter is Blizzard did something right in order to essentially destroy the MMOs that came before it and become the juggernaut of the MMO market. CCP doesn't have to mimic, but they could take a moment and look at what Blizzard did in the early days (as much as I personally liked Mists of Panderia, I do admit that it could have been better content and the dumb-down of the classes sucked).
I do have a background in programming, though not in gaming, and have been involved in the tech industry for 13 years now (not counting the time spent teaching myself about computers) and I can understand the difficulty in creating new content as well as the time it can take to put out a product that doesn't immediately blow up. I also understand the tendency for a company to get hand-shy when something they put out receives a major backlash from the consumer market. Trust me...I see it at my workplace...we're still dealing with an application that was written in Access 97 and 'upgraded' to Access 2007 (read, tables and some queries converted to work properly) because everyone in management is afraid to build something new.
CCP, not knowing how large their team is or current priorities or staffing is like, does need to look at adding new content. Not simply new ship hulls, modules, interfaces or UI changes...the universe needs to change in some manner. From the sounds of it, if these jump gates and whatnot go through, that does seem like a step in the right direction.
Despite all the drama that recently went down, I do feel CCP does have a decent relationship with the RPing community within their game...small things can also appease players (i.e. just drop all the rest of those wonderful clothes into the universe :P ). I'm of two minds on how that can be done...looking at WoW with the virtual pets...sounds funny that someone would pay $5-30 for a pet or mount, yet just about everyone did. Done right, that's a good source of quick cash injection. I know there are some articles of clothing that I'd be willing to pay for...but it does need to be done right. On the flip side, they can also just shrug it off and simple seed the 'verse with these items...maybe making them available in missions, exploration, or other means. I know...sounds simple, but I realize it isn't as simple as switching a byte...testing needs to be done etc. Still, it would be something that I think most players would appreciate.
Other more complex content comes to mind...and it sort of ties in with DUST and getting us out of the captain's quarters and interacting with each other visually. But, and this steals from Star Trek...let's explore the concept of the 'away party'. Whether it is the actual pilot or we create another toon for land exploration, I think that would blow the game wide open (personal opinion, could be horribly off the mark). This might mean CCP drops the whole console DUST and make DUST for the PC...I don't know. And it would require a lot of work, but I think something like this could easily draw new players to EVE.
And that brings up the question of how to make EVE attractive to new players. How do you keep new players interested and wanting to do things with all these bittervets kicking around? Not sure...guess the first thing might be taking another look at Incursions and providing content there that newbies can sink their teeth into. It has bothered me that I could not do anything regarding an Incursion cause of skill and finances. They could also look at ways of making FW more meaningful and more interesting for new players. I wish I could say how, but I tend to be a little more on the idea and less on detail in some aspects. I don't mind that it takes time to train skills and move up into larger hulls and more advanced modules, but any new content should take into consideration that you want to gain and keep new players.
And I think I shall end my stream of thought here.
The problem is that you propose things that a lot of people have proposed over the years, but as long as you pronounce the forbidden words like "newb friendly", avatar gameplay, and the likes, you will get a pitchfork-armed angry mob shouting "Don't you dare develop something else than internet spaceships".
This has always been like 2 people fighting for the same blanket. And the ones usually winning are the ones lobbying for CCP to continue to develop exclusively for their tastes. Incarna was the perfect casus belli for them, an example of failure when they dare to try something different or daring.
Eventually it's always a fight done by the privileged to keep their privileges.
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Winter expansion is being announced via TwitchTV by CCP Guard and the dev team on 26th September at 20:00 eve time.
This was announced ten minutes ago on Facebook.
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At the latest fanfest Hilmar was almost knocked on his ass by the roar of approval for more Incarna and WIS stuff. He was clearly not expecting it and he went on to say that not this year unfortunately. So sounds like up till that moment CCP was quite ready to bury it in the backyard.
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I'm really hoping for more starbase iteration, and more scanning and hacking iterations. More stuff for wormholes plz plz.
Seemed like CCP were onto something with co-op PvE a la Incursions, but I'd also like to see co-op activities like those you mentioned: anomalies/sites that require co-operative scandowns, hacking/relics sites that require co-operative interfacing. This time, keep it out of highsec, though.
Not that I'd know how to implement such things... or if small groups would even enjoy them.
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A basic thing (tm) that would help a ton of people would be group industry projects.
Make it easy for people to combine resources and manufacture things in a coop pve experience.
In fact, make it so that the biggest and most expensive things require groups of people to construct cooperatively.
I'm not sure how it would work, but you'd have kind of a group pool of resources and various tasks that can be broken off to smaller groups or individuals for production goals or missions.
IE: Let's build a carrier!
teams 1 and 2 get minerals for x component
team 3 handles baking the part
team 4 assembles components
team 5 breaks campaign bottle on hull and launches ship
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teams 1 and 2 get minerals for x component
team 3 handles baking the part
team 4 assembles components
team 5 breaks campaign bottle on hull and launches ship sells it and runs off with all the ISK.
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Maybe, but you could use existing 'roles' architecture to ensure no one group has control unless corp ceo wishes
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Not to be too much of a damp squib, but CCP's inherent schizophrenia when it comes to making promises makes this feel like an emotionally abusive marriage.
I'm not going to really trust much of what they way they will do, until they do it - this ten year ball and chain I love too much to leave has caused me a lot of disappointment by promising 5 star accommodation and delivering decrepit hostels instead.
Amen to that. Not to sound too much like a bittervet, but this is probably why (as opposed to a decade ago, when I literally couldn't get enough time in-game to do everything that I wanted to do) my Eve time now is mostly made up of several month stints with 1+ years between them.
Funnily enough, it's interesting to compare Eve with Star Trek Online. Both are SF games with an interesting space component - Eve has far richer mechanics, but that's almost beside the point. Both also have an off-ship component. Where Eve went the route of trying to make Grey Poupon from scratch by assembling the component atoms (i.e.: their absolutely lovely character system and engine that they invented from scratch), STO uses a far more conservative engine that's shared with their other MMOs. The Cryptic Engine (STO's engine) isn't quite off-the-shelf, but it is fairly standard, and supports typical MMO levels of character customization. Looking at the two games side by side, Eve wins from both a beauty and a customization point of view, but STO has all the standard forms of character interaction that you'd expect: you can move around and emote and shoot things and the like.
To use Aelisha's metaphore, Eve promised a 5-star hotel and delivered a dive. Cryptic, in comparison, may only have a Holiday Inn, but at least you can leave your hotel room.
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A basic thing (tm) that would help a ton of people would be group industry projects.
Make it easy for people to combine resources and manufacture things in a coop pve experience.
In fact, make it so that the biggest and most expensive things require groups of people to construct cooperatively.
I'm not sure how it would work, but you'd have kind of a group pool of resources and various tasks that can be broken off to smaller groups or individuals for production goals or missions.
IE: Let's build a carrier!
teams 1 and 2 get minerals for x component
team 3 handles baking the part
team 4 assembles components
team 5 breaks campaign bottle on hull and launches ship
/plays the devil.
BUT I CAN DO ALL THAT SOLO WITH ALL MY 298383 ALTS !
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Current rumor is that winter is more industry-focused, and that they have a nifty development arc that seems to include expanding the EVE cluster by allowing people to build stargates. So. Maybe they're making exploration more, y'know, exploratory?
Dex were are you! I have project! this might is what you need!
Current rumor is that winter is more industry-focused, and that they have a nifty development arc that seems to include expanding the EVE cluster by allowing people to build stargates. So. Maybe they're making exploration more, y'know, exploratory?
Don't tease me bro!