Blogbanter #31

Posted by Morphisat in blogbanter on December 28, 2011

With 2012 almost upon us, I think it’s appropriate to look where Eve has gone this year and where it will be going. Well since the upheavel this summer, CCP has drastically altered it’s course. This resulted in a winter expansion that actually focused on improving the Space Game !

Blogbanter #31 focused on reviewing Eve after the winterexpansion. I thought it would be appropriate to link to it, since I am not subbed at the moment and won’t give you an opinion without actually havening played the new expansion.

This special ‘End of Year’ Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally including some kind of scoring system.

Freebooted : Blogbanter #31 and the end result.

 

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Whole lotta shakin’ going on

Posted by Morphisat in Uncategorized on October 23, 2011

Earlier this week I had already prepared a sort of news roundup kind of post. Then the CCP personel cut news hit and I was pondering another post. A lot has already been said about it though, I will make just a few comments here later on.

Incarna 1.1.2

Main thing this new update brings is Ship Spinning 2.0 ! The dread door is gone, you can now see your ship in your hangar without having to enter the captain’s quarter. CCP Aporia explains what’s up in this devblog. Other changes can be found in the patchnotes.

Eve Is Real

Shame the site is somewhat of a nuisance to navigate, but the idea is nice. The third level has been unlocked at the www.eveisreal.net website. This means Aurum reward, so you can finally buy those fancy boots you always wanted. I have been watching some videos and pics and it’s nice, also brings back some memories when I was still actively participating in (factional warfare) fleet battles.

Blog Banter #29 – Immersion

Which brings me to Blog Banter #29. The freebooted Eve Blog started a blog banter on Immersion in Eve. To be honest, I never really felt that much like a cold hearted Caldari business man when I played my main character. But when I was playing factional warfare in it’s prime, I felt much more immersed in the game, and it’s backstory ! I also learned to hate the Amarr. There are some very nice contributions to the banter, al in all a good read, check it out at Blog Banter #29.

The Lay Offs

No need in repeating the news here, every one who reads this will know about it now. Keith Neilson has a nice blogpost that also includes a list of names. What a lot of people already had been saying turned out to be true, CCP cannot sustain development for Dust and World of Darkness on just the income EVE generates. Maybe they barely could, but the drop in subs since MonocleGate hit hard. Of course it’s sad for those people that worked on WOD, but I can certainly understand CCP’s move here.

What I don’t get, and a lot of people with me, if I read the response to the layoffs on the blogs and forum, is that the Community Team was also layed off. Well almost all of them anyway. This comes across as if uppper management is somehow blaming the community team for the events that unfold around the Incarna release. Some of these people (for me CCP Fallout especially) were the face of CCP in a difficult time, and they made the most of a difficult situation. Ok CCP Pann’s post at the time was not so great but uhm, well we’re gonna let that slide… Needless to say the ‘suits’ are free of blame as it seems only ‘lower personel’ was fired.

It’s interesting how every time when CCP seems to get things right, ie focusing on Flying In Space instead of Incarna etc, they blunder in some other sort of way. I also wonder what all of this means for Walking in Stations, will it ever expand beyond the single room, where you walk around like a drunken sailor ? That would make Incarna the most useless expansion in an MMO ever, 4 years of dev time wasted.

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CCP In Desperate Need Of Cash

Posted by Morphisat in General on September 2, 2011

Nothing like a catchy, provocative blog post title ! Maybe I should apply for a job at EveNews 24 ! Whatever the case, I am of course referring to the new 13 plex for $199,- offer ! Seems like a weird deal. It really makes you wonder how desperate in need CCP actually is.

cash_pileNot much in game news as of late on this blog. My sub ran out (like so many active Eve bloggers it seems ?) late July. I still read failheap challenge, take a peek at evebloggers.com whether there is anything that catches my interest, and now and then the Eve-O forums. Since I hadn’t been playing much the past few months anyway, I don’t miss it much. I must thank the Hidden Agenda corp for making the last year and a half or so in Eve a fun experience. The events like frig tournaments were fun and there was a nice balance between activities and freedom.

My last blogpost refered to the press conference CCP and the CSM did after the events in july. I was reading Life in Losec’s post which refered to a post by Seleen that touches this very subject. I alread thought the statements made in that press conference were a load of crap, but to see a CSM member agree with that is interesting.

If I take a look at eve-offline it seems this time people actually did vote with their feet and a lot of subs are indeed starting to run out. I do find the graphs there somewhat hard to read, but if you look at the  ‘past three months’ one you can see a decline in active players. Of course it being summer and all has to do with that as well. And since we’re not getting the economic quartly any more that had sub numbers, we’ll probably be in the dark for a while on the real numbers.

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CCP Press Conference

Posted by Morphisat in Incarna on July 6, 2011

A very good write up on the event can be found on Gamereactor. Written by @petterm.

Just a few silly quotes:

The CSM-members themselves arrived in Iceland “worried, angry and paranoid” but soon they realized that it was actually a “shadow of a controversy” since there was actually no real controversy in the first place.

Ah there was no controversy ! Right …

According to the CSM, CCP should have explained the pricing of the items in the Noble Exchange from the start and what kind of strategy they had for it. If they had, Alex said, the whole thing would have disappeared in a “puff of logic.”

Oh rly ?

Meh, I have enough of the whole affair to be honest :) . Let’s move on…

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Dat Statement

Posted by Morphisat in General, Incarna on July 2, 2011

And finally the CSM and CCP statement about the Reykjavik Peace Summit has been released ! I am not quite sure whether there are winners or losers in this one, but if there were you could say the players won. The very popular eve feature of ‘ship spinning’ will be coming back and furthermore, only vanity items in the NEX store for the foreseeable future. I also liked the statement by the CSM that they very much disliked the leaked email by the CCP ceo, which was very out of touch with reality.

handshaking

 

We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins. We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services. We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage.

This is pretty much what most people would hope for, and it’s the best CCP could do at the moment. CCP must have looked at the numbers and seen all those unsubscriptions ! Also all the bad press this has giving made them change course. If there was a course to change (well the returning shipspinning is new).

I am sure there will still be drama and forum whining, ‘but they didn’t promise no non-vanity items ever !’. But those people will just have to play the game as it is, and not what it could be in a few years time. From a business point of view they cannot commit to non-vanity forever, as I already stated in my previous blogpost.

Fact remains that I still don’t like where CCP is going. Devoting most of the development time to Incarna, Wod and dust. Releasing crappy ‘expansion’. The sad state their 3d engine is in (this doesn’t bode well for Wod btw) etc etc.. But at least for now we see some light at the end of the tunnel (queue dramatic music).

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No plans for golden ammo

Posted by Morphisat in General, Incarna on June 26, 2011

A devblog that addresses the recent events in Eve has been posted by CCP Zulu. This one is much better in tone and even says “For that I am sorry”.

There are no and never have been plans to sell "gold ammo" for Aurum

 

Note that he does not say ‘there never will be’. At this point CCP has committed to the new Aurum store. I don’t think it will ever disappear. Nor will they make a commitment that it will NEVER contain any non-vanity items. CCP Soundwave in his piece in the leaked bulletin mentioned storage for ship fittings. (Feels a bit similar to bags in LOTRO). Something like that can still happen. Or skill points or whatever.

The CSM has been called up to Iceland, but to be honest I see that as a PR stunt. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be discussing. Performance troubles in Incarna ? The Aurum shop is pretty much untouchable at this point. The CSM won’t make CCP change it’s mind.

CCP knows perfectly well that non-vanity items would make a large percentage of people leave, they might at some point in the future when Eve starts dwindling down take that risk and milk the last few dollars from their cash cow. And we won’t like it, but it’s a business after all.

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Eve In Turmoil

Posted by Morphisat in Incarna on June 24, 2011

A series of events have lead CCP and the Eve players base into an NGE like situation. How did we get here ? First of all several pretty lacklustre expensions in a row. Then we got the ‘18 month halt because we’re developing a console game’ disaster last year. Then this year we had the ‘Dust is ps3 only’ debacle, followed by a $99,- for a website license devblog.

And in the last few days we got the badly coded Incarna, which fried some people’s pc’s and made a lot of people wondering why CCP spent three years developing an empty room with a screen. Furthermore the few vanity items (all five or six) were ridiculously expensive !

So far a lot of people were upset, and some threadnaughts appeared on the forum. Some people might have canceled, or at least canceled alt accounts. People demanded the old ship spinning screen back and all that. The situation wasn’t very pleasant.

scream_2

 

Then on the night of the 22nd of june, an internal bulletin was leaked. Apparently some people like Mynxee and Teadaze had already seen a similar one, and confirmed that it might very well be legit. A little later that night it also appeared on the forums (well links to the news article).

What exactly was wrong with the bulletin ? I think it was especially the tone of voice ! It made us, the eve players look like cows that can be milked for cash. Especially CCP_Soundwave came across as a money hungry Lead Game Designer, coming up with all sorts of weird plans to make people buy stuff from the NEX shop. Ammo, ships, it could all be bought with cash.

Then we got to a point where people expected some sort of response from CCP, and until now we still haven’t gotten a proper response. Just a ‘bear with us, we’ll make a statement soon’ thing, from a PR person I had never heard of.

So there you go, Eve on the brink of disaster. Most of the older vets saw this coming from a mile away. Even on this blog in early 2010 I posted a ‘I am concerned’ post. CCP has taken a different direction the past few years, since they are trying to develop two new games, financed by Eve players. I think this has turned out to be a little too expensive and they’re a little strapped for cash, but that is pure speculation !

To be continued…

UPDATE A pretty insulting devblog that was supposed to address the issues people have with the current direction CCP is taking actually said absolutely nothing… I guess CCP doesn’t care any more for the existing playerbase and is on the hunt for the new one that does not exist.

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Incarna 1.0

Posted by Morphisat in Incarna on June 22, 2011

Incarna was released ! As you can see below I am watching my screen in my Captain’s Quarters. And that’s just about all there is to it. You can walk over to the hangar and see your ship. Which is nice, though it seemed a bit small to me ? Tried a Raven and a Hurricane. The screens are kinda nice in the CQ though, I have to give em that.

Morph in his CQ

Other than that the lightning is all weird in some places, especially in shadows your face becomes deformed. The walking around bit itself is extremely cumbersome. I keep running walking into walls and other objects.

Overal feeling: So this is it ? After three years (as far as we know), this is all they can come up with ? I am sure there are plenty of freeware games out there that do walking around in a room better. After spending about 2 minutes in your 3d room you have seen all there is and might as well turn it off. It doesn’t add anything to the game for now. I think they would have done better to wait until we can actually spend some time with other people, at least a corp meeting or something would have been interesting.

And I am not even getting into the whole MT shop thing, there are now only a handful of items for sale, at ridiculous prices. You can browse the Eve-O forums for more drama.

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Dust in the wind

Posted by Morphisat in DUST on June 7, 2011

After reading the news this morning that Dust 514 would be a PS3 exclusive, I was planning on writing an extensive blogpost about it, but Roc Wieler already wrote one that I might as well link:

Oh for Dust’s sake !

He exactly words my sentiments, when he says ‘could I afford a PS3, yes I can, but not for just one game!’. I already own an xbox 360 and quite a few games, but it’s catching dust (!) already. I am not going to buy another console.

DoubleFacePalm

Furthermore from what I understood so far, Dust 514 will be free on the PSN network, and you can buy stuff like weapons through the RMT store. On the xbox I have played games like that, or spend a few points in the marketplace to do so, and usually you play these games a few times and then just forget about it. Won’t the same happen to Dust ?

Anyway, I am not quite enthusiastic lately the way things are going in Eve-Land…

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Aurum

Posted by Morphisat in Incarna on May 28, 2011

In a devblog published 27th of may CCP announced the upcoming Microtransactions Store coming to Eve. You’ll be able to buy cloths (and monocles) for your character from this store. And you’ll need ‘Aurum’ to be able to buy them. Aurum comes from turning in Plexes. So what’s the argument from CCP to it this way ?

So we’re left with the question of how to give you the customizability and uniqueness you want without simply raising the subscription rate.

Aha ! If this is the case then you simply suck at doing business. Why invent a new ‘feature’ that you claim you can’t actually afford to bring at the current subscription rate ? I don’t believe the above argument for a second. Eve is already one of the most expensive MMOs out there. It’s used to fund the upcoming other MMO, and Dust. CCP simply wants to make more money, why not be honest about it.

Basically they have been working on Incarna all this time, and letting the space game slide, while working on a side game which doesn’t even offer gameplay, and you need Real Money to be able to use. Your $15,- a month is only good for an orange noobie overall. Also ship decals, alliance logos on your ship etc will have to be bought through above mentioned store.

This is also is a step away from a player driven economy. CCP will set the price of cloths and no one else.

You might also wonder who is interested in this ? I think they want to just get a new player base that wants to spend money on these kind of things. I don’t see Eve players as the type that enjoy playing Barbie in space. And where will it end ? Faction ammo next ? Faction blaster ? +10% missile damage boots ?

As you might have guessed from the above, I am not enjoying this decision by CCP at all. The responses to the devblog have been mainly negative too and #tweetfleet wasn’t too excited either. But then again as I said, I don’t think we’re the target audience any more.

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