Category: Incarna

CCP Press Conference

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…

Dat Statement

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).

No plans for golden ammo

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.

Eve In Turmoil

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.

Incarna 1.0

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.

Aurum

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.

Incursion 1.5

Incursion will be deployed on May 19th, which is tomorrow as I write this. A couple of big things in this one, which quite surprised me as I wasn’t even aware they were coming !

Blueprints

  • Unique icons have been created for Blueprint originals and Blueprint copies so you can visibly differentiate between them.

Wow, just wow. A change all industrialists have all been waiting for ! And for years CCP said that it couldn’t be done, because they couldn’t distinguish a copy from an original if I remember correctly. Finally that nonsense comes to an end and finally you can see if you’re dealing with a copy by just glancing at the icon instead of having to click on it and go to the appropriate tab etc..

Blue-Prints_2

Ships

  • The capabilities of the onboard scanner have been substantially increased. The range is now 64 AU and the delay to return results is only 10 seconds.
  • Ships with jumpdrives are now unable to use jump bridges with the exception of ships belonging to the Black Ops ship category.

Mixed response to this one. I don’t dwell in 0.0, nor do I use jump drives so it doesn’t effect me personally. I guess CCP thought traveling around was getting a bit too easy and toned it down. The onboard ship scanner will be improved as well. Nothing wrong with that I guess.

Agents & Missions

  • Agent Quality has been removed meaning that all Agents are now +20 in terms of payout and -20 in terms of access. Go forth, Capsuleers, and explore the world outside of Motsu and Dodixie.
  • Agent Divisions have been simplified from 20 down to just 3. The new Security, Distribution and Mining divisions now provide uniform types of missions instead of a mission type that was percentage based.

Ah another big one ! The very confusing Agent Divisions will be simplified and you actually know for sure you’ll get a combat, courier or mining mission. Very welcome change in my opinion. Also the quality system is basically removed. I guess putting them all to +20 was easier than just removing it. This will bring in somewhat more cash into the economy I guess, but will spread people out more, which can only be a positive thing. Although I am sure people will still sort of stick together as it’s easier to buy and sell your goods. But still, people will probably spread out. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

Furthermore the various connections skills will be removed as a consequence of the above. Only a few remain from what I read in the patch notes. The skill points for those that have already gotten the skills will be reimbursed.

Players who have the old skills already trained will have those skills removed and receive replacement skillbooks in the hangar of their home station and have the skillpoints reimbursed.

There are some more fixes and changes, but these are the really big ones. Some very welcome changes I think !

Links:

Captain’s Quarters on Duality

Unfortunately I couldn’t install the test client because of a ‘time out while downloading’. I was planning on making a little youtube video, but unfortunately cannot at the moment. Luckily someone posted a link to a youtube video in the feedback thread, which I have now linked below.

It looks very rough around the edges. After years of development, it’s apparently still in ‘Early Alpha’. It would be quite an achievement if they would get this up and running, in a reasonable shape in a few months time. Somehow I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

Sims in Space

Finally Incarna is getting real. The blog post Captain’s Quarters reveals what is coming first. And I must say it looks very pretty. The big question of course is ‘is this useful / fun in any kind of way ?’. Unless you’re forced to dock into your own private 3D space in the station, won’t this be something you look at every once in a while and forget about it ? It seems like you can’t actually do anything in your private quarters.

The second reason is that the last thing any of us want out of the introduction of Incarna is any detrimental effect to existing gameplay, server performance and other unforeseen but possible side effects in an environment as complex and interwoven as EVE is.

This quote from the devblog is a little odd. I thought that CCP had always stated that Incarna will be a side thing run on different servers and won’t effect the current game. Apparently that is no longer so ?

We haven’t worked on Incarna/WiS/Ambulation for five years. Focus has been on development of EVE. Even for this summer Captain’s Quarters are one feature among features.

From the forum thread by CCP Chiliad

This is a really weird statement. From fanfest 2006 on forward CCP has said they were working on Incarna or whatever it was called at the time. Seleene’s blog has a nice post that also refers to this. CCP Chiliad either expresses himself the wrong way or he’s just confused. Probably best not to read too much into it, but CCP employees should be a bit more careful about what they say in public.

Anyways, it’s a good thing that finally after all this time Incarna is finally getting real. Though it seems that all the worries from a lot of people, CSM 5 included, that there won’t be much substance to it, are getting real as well.