Tag: 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…

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.

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.

CSM 5 Disapproval

There is a very interesting article over at massively.com that sums up the current CSM situation very well. You can also read about it on Mynxee’s blog and Keith Nelson’s amongst others.

Basically what it boils down to, is that CCP is allocating it’s resources to Dust and Incarna and Eve itself is on the backburner. This comes as no surprise as the last few expansions have been rather thin and fundamental fixes are rare these days. They are focusing on getting in new players with Incarna (walking in stations in case you didn’t know) instead of holding on to the current ones.

I don’t care too much for walking in stations, especially not when it will be released in a half hearted manner, like most of these new features. And I doubt it will really enhance our gameplay in any way. Sure it’ll be fun for ten minutes and corp meetings might be enjoyable, but it will appear to the average eve player as fluff I am afraid.

And they have been working on it for quite some time and dedicated a lot of graphic artists and coders to the project. Think of all the other stuff they could have done ! Maybe a more balanced approach would have been better. Dust and Incarna better be a success. Or perhaps once they’re out CCP can focus on spaceships again, which has so far been their strong suite !