EVE Online: CCP tells players that they won't fix the game

Thuleman

Supreme [H]ardness
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As many of the long time [H] readers know, I am an avid EVE Online player. I have played other MMOs as well but always maintained my EVE Online accounts over the years. At times I had as many as six active accounts though I have been down to three accounts for a while now.

Recently CCP, the publisher of EVE Online, has come under fire for straying too far from their commitment to excellence in neglecting near-game-breaking issues. The player frustration over those issues came to a head during the latest CSM meeting and can be read about in the CSM June 2010 Meeting Minutes.

CCP just brushed off complaints current subscribers have by saying that:

CCP said:
It was mentioned by CCP that the data does not seem to support that polished quality sells better than new features.

In addition they said that:
CCP said:
CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features.
The time-line to finish Incarna and Dust 514 is 18 months. So for the next 18 months the game as it exists today will not see any improvements at all.

This leads me, with heavy heart, to cancel my three remaining accounts and walk away from a game that is unique in today's MMO scene, that I have come to love, but that I can no longer support since a host of issues remain unresolved.

CCP has repeatedly mentioned that current players have no input on development decision making and thus the only recourse current players have is to vote with their wallet and cancel their subscription.

I am certain that CCP will not miss my $45/month, but it is my hope that many other EVE Online players will consider what's at hand and come to the same conclusion. Perhaps at some point CCPs data will then support that polished quality sells better than new (useless!) features.
 
You did the right thing. The bottom line is all that matters to them. Affect that bottom line then they'll listen.
 
Sounds about right, I'm so glad I don't play anymore. They got enough of my money as it is. Server failures galore, which lead to extremely sketchy roll-backs after fleet battles. But at least they managed to throw lavish fan "fests" every year.

Did they really say that part about new features (that usually break the game) being more important than polish? Despicable thing to say, even if true.
 
At least they are honest about it. Many developers say oh yeah we will fix that later, but then dont.
 
At least they are honest about it. Many developers say oh yeah we will fix that later, but then dont.


completely agree.. i do give them credit for being up front and honest about it.. while sure it may be the wrong thing to say.. at least they said it.. ive had an eve account but i didnt have to pay for it.. it was bought using in game money that my cousin had so i could play.. though i sucked at the game then and still suck at it now after 9 months of playing the game.. but oh well..
 
op, can I have your stuff? my character name is jawfish, I will get a forklift ready to carry your spare isk away :p

ok but seriously here, they never said 'we are not fixing xyz', they just made their plans and devloper allocation more transparent. every software company I have worked at has done this, primary focus is on the future and a small team cleans up bugs, balance, and misc ui issues.
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I paid for my accounts exclusively through in-game currency, but someone else paid the $45/mo on my behalf and I paid that someone the in-game currency. It's still $45 less per month they will be getting.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the free time I have from quitting WoW and EVE within 30 days of each other, I suppose TF2 here I come...

op, can I have your stuff? my character name is jawfish, I will get a forklift ready to carry your spare isk away :p
Nah, I am holding on to things, though it is unlikely that I will still care about the game in a couple years I do want to have some assets to come back to in case CCP does decide to fix the current problems.


ok but seriously here, they never said 'we are not fixing xyz', they just made their plans and devloper allocation more transparent.
The "won't fix the game in the next 18 months" didn't fit into the topic.
 
Regardless of the game, if you stick around long enough, this is how you're going to feel. MMOs are a love hate relationship....
 
I read the minutes in full and I was actually impressed with how CCP does things and how transparent their process is. I wish more MMO developers would do something like this. I certainly wouldn't quit over it.
 
The "won't fix the game in the next 18 months" didn't fit into the topic.

Keep in mind it looks like these were quickly jotted down minutes from a meeting. If they came out and said "We will make no improvement or fixes to any existing game mechanics and content for 18 months" then I could understand the shit storm.

They are being honest and letting people know what the situation is, their focus is on new content and game mechanics, they still have people making fixes and improvements, just not as many as people would like. Many MMOs have issues go unresolved for years and all the players get to see is a bunch of PR bullshit about how they are looking into it.
 
Keep in mind it looks like these were quickly jotted down minutes from a meeting. If they came out and said "We will make no improvement or fixes to any in game mechanics and content for 18 months" then I could understand the shit storm.

Maybe you missed the very first thing that the minutes say:

"Note: These Minutes are the result of collaborative authoring effort between CCP and the CSM in an effort to ensure that discussions, issues, opinions and commitments are portrayed accurately and completely."

Obviously there won't be a press release saying that the current content will not be fixed. The minutes are as close as you get get and they did say that they have no intention of even looking at things ahead of the 18 months dev plan for Incarna and Dust.

NKDietrich said:
I read the minutes in full and I was actually impressed with how CCP does things and how transparent their process is. I wish more MMO developers would do something like this. I certainly wouldn't quit over it.
If you are not affected by the broken game, or you simply don't feel that whatever is broken is significantly enough busted for you to quit, then don't. I am not trying to convince the happy that they should quit, I am encouraging those who are unhappy to quit since a fix is a long ways out.
 
If you are not affected by the broken game, or you simply don't feel that whatever is broken is significantly enough busted for you to quit, then don't. I am not trying to convince the happy that they should quit, I am encouraging those who are unhappy to quit since a fix is a long ways out.

So what do you feel is completely broken about the game that you need fixed immediately?

Also:

Originally Posted by CCP
It was mentioned by CCP that the data does not seem to support that polished quality sells better than new features.

Anyone that tells you otherwise is full of it. New features and new releases sell. Regardless of how many smoke and mirrors companies want to put down, new shit sells more than fixing old shit.

CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features.

This has nothing to do with them not fixing anything. They still have people focuses on game fixes. Also based on their information, looks like they have 15 people dedicated to fleet lag. That is a few million a year right there just for that one issue.

Once Dust 514 launches, they know they are going to have to fix a ton of shit since no company gets a project like that right on the first try.
 
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Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the free time I have from quitting WoW and EVE within 30 days of each other, I suppose TF2 here I come...


What caused you to quit WoW too (or what was the reason)? Just curious...
 
Obviously there won't be a press release saying that the current content will not be fixed. The minutes are as close as you get get and they did say that they have no intention of even looking at things ahead of the 18 months dev plan for Incarna and Dust.

Meeting Minutes said:
The summer point release is entirely focused on technical issues, with upgrades to Python and underlying code in general.The winter expansion will focus on polish of existing features, mainly planetary interaction, and preparation for coming expansions. The aim is to include new character modeling, which involves new technology and new artwork.

This seems to be a bit different than you are portraying it.
 
What really happened in the meeting was CCP told CSM that they did not have resources specifically available to fix issues that the CSM brought up. CSM is there to relay player opinions and issues, not to allocate resources and shift development.

There was not grand moment of CCP telling CSM they were not fixing *anything*.
 
What caused you to quit WoW too (or what was the reason)? Just curious...
I loved WoW, I still do, wife aggro issues. I couldn't be in a high end raid guild with 4 mandatory raid nights and keep the spouse happy.

So what do you feel is completely broken about the game that you need fixed immediately?
There's no point in me listing what I feel is wrong because there will be 43749327 rebuttals saying that it's not a big deal. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they are content with the game. You'll just have to trust me when I say that as someone who has been playing, and paying for, EVE since October 30th 2003 the current state of the game is no longer acceptable to me.

New features and new releases sell. Regardless of how many smoke and mirrors companies want to put down, new shit sells more than fixing old shit.
One of the first rules of business is that it is a lot cheaper to retain a current customer than to gain a new customer. CCP did a good job keeping current customers though it started to slip with Dominion and certainly with the Tyrannis expansion. They are counting on signing new customers faster than the customer attrition rate. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. Personally I think that Dust 514 will be utter fail. I also think that Incarna (walking in stations, WIS) will not attract the WoW crowd to EVE. Throughout the years CCP did try to dumb EVE down but at the end of the day it is a complex game and will never be "mass market" even if you can walk around in stations.

Also based on their information, looks like they have 15 people dedicated to fleet lag. That is a few million a year right there just for that one issue.
Let's just start by saying that they are attempting to fix the lag Dominion introduced. Pre-Dominion large scale fleet fights were actually doable, since then not so much as is seen by the massive amount of Titans that have since been destroyed as compared to the occasional Titan loss prior.

This [fixing PI] seems to be a bit different than you are portraying it.
Except that the total fubar that Planetary Interaction is wasn't old content. It's new content that has just been introduced weeks ago, now they are spending resources to fix that (which has no bearing on EVE and has everything to do with Dust 514). Planetary Interaction is a precursor for introducing Dust 514 into the EVE Universe. EVE Online did just fine without PI and there's nothing of value that PI added to the EVE Online world.


What really happened in the meeting was CCP told CSM that they did not have resources specifically available to fix issues that the CSM brought up. CSM is there to relay player opinions and issues, not to allocate resources and shift development. There was not grand moment of CCP telling CSM they were not fixing *anything*.
You are correct in saying that from CCP's perspective they don't want this to be a grand moment. However, it was for the very first time that CCP told the players that their opinion really doesn't matter since it doesn't affect development priorities.

That effectively negates the whole point of the CSM. Regardless of CCP's intent (PR stunt!) the player perception of the CSM was that the CSM brings issues to CCP's attention and then CCP follows up on this issue, not that CCP files the issue away for it to never be looked at again.

For the first time CCP came out and just admitted that the CSM has no influence on decision making, which in turn makes the CSM a farce at best. That's what many players are up in arms about (in addition to current content not getting fixed).
 
I loved WoW, I still do, wife aggro issues. I couldn't be in a high end raid guild with 4 mandatory raid nights and keep the spouse happy

Ahhh... yeah. My wife is a wow addict (and I still play too). Every time I hear guys say this, I count my lucky effin stars. :)

/brag
 
Thuleman, I agree that Dust 514 might be shaping up to be a total failure. There are so many FPS games on the market, if Dust 514 does not take off immediately, the game servers could be a ghost town in 2 months, then the whole thing sets back EVE.

Anyway I think that if CCP really wants to attract new people, they could go back and redesign the tutorials again and make them not suck. The new user experience is still a nightmare, I cannot imagine how bad it was when the game launched. CCP's staff are not masters or presenting people with information in a manner that lets them retain it.
 
Anyway I think that if CCP really wants to attract new people, they could go back and redesign the tutorials again and make them not suck. The new user experience is still a nightmare, I cannot imagine how bad it was when the game launched. CCP's staff are not masters or presenting people with information in a manner that lets them retain it.

I agree. Tried to play Eve 3 times and the tutorials suck for people that haven't played the game before.
 
Ahhh... yeah. My wife is a wow addict (and I still play too). Every time I hear guys say this, I count my lucky effin stars. :)

/brag

You're bragging that your wife is fat?

/sorry

On-topic: haven't played EVE for quite a while. Not as much because of game issues, just found that I have better things to do and my GF would rather me do other things.

Still log in from time to time though.
 
The time-line to finish Incarna and Dust 514 is 18 months. So for the next 18 months the game as it exists today will not see any improvements at all.

This is an incorrect statement made by ... umm ... more "zealous" individuals than yourself on the EVE-O and Scrapheap forums. It was never stated as such, and the development post made last week reiterated that there are still teams working on EVE Online. There's still going to be a winter update. Incarna is ambulation, and it'll likely be the focus of the winter update (among other things.) There's still teams working on several other important features of the game, per the CCP post on the issue.

To say that CCP is ignoring EVE and "the next 18 months the game as it exists today will not see any improvements at all" is flatly wrong. I'd strongly suggest re-reading the comments as they were posted (the CSM notes were far from accurate as to what happened at the CSM meeting, per several of the CSM's who commented on the CSM notes) and recognize that they still have people working on EVE Online!

Nah, I am holding on to things, though it is unlikely that I will still care about the game in a couple years I do want to have some assets to come back to in case CCP does decide to fix the current problems.

The "won't fix the game in the next 18 months" didn't fit into the topic.

This is what I did--I decided to stop playing in late-2008 and reactivated a few months ago. For me occasionally jumping in and out of games keeps things interesting, so it won't be long before you find yourself a new addiction. :)

One thing to keep in mind is you probably won't be part of your corp/alliance anymore, so you might want to move assets to low sec just in case.

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You're bragging that your wife is fat?

/sorry

Ouch... Actually my wife is a red head bombshell. Hot and not fat :)

Met her in WoW too so I'm lucky as hell my wife shares my enthusiasm for games. My ex-wife (lol at the 'ex' part) *hated* computers and gaming with a passion not seen since Hitler.
 
To say that CCP is ignoring EVE and "the next 18 months the game as it exists today will not see any improvements at all" is flatly wrong.
Ahh ..., let's review ..., CCP Zulupark, now renamed to CCP Zulu (but the Internet never forgets) is the genius who suggested the whole target-painters-sieged-dreads fiasco, and who hence has clearly no idea how the game actually works, was promoted to Senior Producer. This painfully reminds me of the age old wisdom that the easiest way to get rid of the incompetent is to promote them up, that way they are out of your hair and become someone elses liability.

Anyway, CCP "I don't have a clue" Zulu wrote a Dev blog in an attempt to damage control the CSM report: iterative development and what's happening in 2011.

There are no two ways about it, out of 104 developers 70 are working on Incarna (walking in stations, wheeee! /sarcasm), 10 are working on EVE Gate (wtf), 15 are working on improving lag which didn't exist at the current scale until about half a year ago when it was introduced by the Dominion expansion, and 22 are working on EVE content.

Not so fast!!!
Out of the 22 that work on content 7 work on art (very important, obviously), 7 work on PvE missions (also very important, obviously), and 6 work on EVE features. Of the 6 that work on EVE features 100% have decided (or were directed) to work on PvE features.

No matter how hard they try, EVE will never be WoW in space. However, according to the blog zero developers, or 0% of the work is being directed at fixing currently broken or imbalanced issues in EVE. 104 developers and not a single one of them is assigned to look at all the things that are fucked up.
 
Ahh ..., let's review ..., CCP Zulupark, now renamed to CCP Zulu (but the Internet never forgets) is the genius who suggested the whole target-painters-sieged-dreads fiasco, and who hence has clearly no idea how the game actually works, was promoted to Senior Producer. This painfully reminds me of the age old wisdom that the easiest way to get rid of the incompetent is to promote them up, that way they are out of your hair and become someone elses liability.

Anyway, CCP "I don't have a clue" Zulu wrote a Dev blog in an attempt to damage control the CSM report: iterative development and what's happening in 2011.

There are no two ways about it, out of 104 developers 70 are working on Incarna (walking in stations, wheeee! /sarcasm), 10 are working on EVE Gate (wtf), 15 are working on improving lag which didn't exist at the current scale until about half a year ago when it was introduced by the Dominion expansion, and 22 are working on EVE content.

Not so fast!!!
Out of the 22 that work on content 7 work on art (very important, obviously), 7 work on PvE missions (also very important, obviously), and 6 work on EVE features. Of the 6 that work on EVE features 100% have decided (or were directed) to work on PvE features.

No matter how hard they try, EVE will never be WoW in space. However, according to the blog zero developers, or 0% of the work is being directed at fixing currently broken or imbalanced issues in EVE. 104 developers and not a single one of them is assigned to look at all the things that are fucked up.

I know how this looks, I am just thinking its not all doom and gloom. I work for software companies, we almost never have dedicated people that are specifically for bug fixing, yet tons of stuff still gets fixed regularly as part of normal development work flow. i've also seen 2 people put out a huge software patch with patch notes multipe page long, so I know numbers are not very important in these matters.

the fact that they have 15 people on the lag issue i confirmation that they do indeed give a shit about player complaints (regardless of when or what broke it). once they squash that, those are free resources.

also I presume the 13 non-artwork people working on eve space flight suff will be fixing bugs and balancing things as they go along.

anyway if you are not having fun, that is the best reason to quit. I just feel a bit sympathetic towards ccp due to the backlash they are receiving for being transparent. if people knew how things worked at other dev studios, the player reaction would be much worse.
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Ahh ..., let's review ..., CCP Zulupark, now renamed to CCP Zulu (but the Internet never forgets) is the genius who suggested the whole target-painters-sieged-dreads fiasco, and who hence has clearly no idea how the game actually works, was promoted to Senior Producer. This painfully reminds me of the age old wisdom that the easiest way to get rid of the incompetent is to promote them up, that way they are out of your hair and become someone elses liability..
Don't forget his other past actions:
- Zulupark delayed the Amarr getting a boost, back when they were horrible and were proven horrible.
- Zulupark delayed the boost to the Minmatar for years after several nerf/buffs made most Minmatar ships worthless in PVP situations, particularly battleships. This was despite the recordable and tested facts that were presented directly to him regard problems with projectile weapons and Tempests in particular. His counters to them turned out to be based on the belief that Minmatar ships “feel balanced”, as well as comments made by Zulupark that ended up being factually inaccurate and misleading. It wasn’t until CCP Nozh actually ran the numbers that proved the EVE community correct that the ball finally got rolling.

Taken from 2nd Anomaly from the Left
 
I normally don't like quoting whole posts without adding my own comments to it, but in this particular case there really isn't much more to add to what one in the know is saying about all of this:

Robert Woodhead said:
Here is my argument for why visibly implementing items in the CSM backlog is good business.

1) EVE players can roughly be divided into two groups -- new players that have a high attrition rate, and veterans that stay subscribed practically forever no matter what.

2) Clearly, the optimum strategy is to convert as many new players into veterans as possible. The immersive nature of EVE encourages them to stay around for a long time, even if you don't address their complaints.

3) There are basically two techniques you can use that will increase the number of high lifetime-customer-value veterans. One is to use marketing to increase the new player intake (frequent new feature releases), some of which will become veterans; the other is to polish the game to increase the new player to veteran conversion ratio, which permits organic growth.

4) CCP seems to be leaning heavily towards the first strategy (not just in EVE, but in the development of extensions like Incarna and linkages like DUST). The current players, although most of them don't realize it, are arguing for the latter strategy.

At this point, allow me to concede for the purposes of this argument that the statement from the minutes that "the data does not seem to support that polished quality sells better than new features" is entirely correct. I contend that even if this is so, there are compelling business reasons why CCP should devote more resources to polishing the existing game.

5) It is implied in the minutes that DUST and Incarna should be released in about 12-18 months. However, as anyone in the software business knows, schedules have a distressing habit of slipping.

6) If anything should happen to injure the EVE cash cow during the development period, CCP could find itself in serious difficulty. Examples of such risks include another game finally "getting it right" and siphoning off veterans, catastrophic PR failures (or DUST/Incarna delays, which imply even longer waits until player issues are addressed) finally pushing the veterans over the edge, or a failed expansion choking the influx of new players.

7) Similarly, if the new products turn out to be less successful than anticipated, CCP will be back to basically having a single point of failure -- EVE -- and so it would be wise to ensure that it is a cow that can be milked for as long as possible, while you regroup and try something new.

8) Devoting additional resources to polish, if done in the correct way, is a method of buying insurance against the consequences of the risks mentioned above. Some of the benefits include:

* It energizes your existing player base, turning them back into evangelists for your game, which in turn promotes organic growth.

* You can prioritize the polishing process to emphasize items that will impact new player retention (for example, UI improvement) while still providing benefits for the veterans. The CSM can help with prioritization and quick iteration of proposals into forms that get the most bang per developer-buck.

* There is significant PR value in the very fact that you are spending time and effort to make EVE more "noob-friendly". It gives potential customers a reason to take a second look.

* It may actually turn out to be a more profitable strategy than the current one, but even if not, the cost of the insurance is low.

It is for these, and many other reasons, that I believe you should re-assess your development priorities with respect to EVE.

Sincerely,
Robert Woodhead,
CSM5 Delegate
 
Ahh ..., let's review ..., CCP Zulupark, now renamed to CCP Zulu (but the Internet never forgets) is the genius who suggested the whole target-painters-sieged-dreads fiasco...
I am starting to clutter up my own thread but I felt it was important to set this straight, Zulu wasn't actually the target painter dude, Nozh was: capital ships in dominion.

I think that after all this time I am just bitter. When I first started this game there was nothing, no clue as to what to do, no clue as to how make money or what goals to set. It was immediately clear to me that skill training will reward those who are loyal to the game and that there will be no way to make up for lost time, so I stuck with it over the years.

I have seen CCP go from being a small, almost indie, company that truly cared about the product and the end users to becoming a global enterprise and I feel that in order to sustain that growth they inevitably sold out their ideals.

It's not unusual for a business to grow and make adjustments along the way which in turn make the business deviate from its original mission and vision. However, when corporate greed is ruining my game play then I feel entitled to get pissed about it.
 
I take you didn't take too kindly to the part where they said they wouldn't be able to devote a massive amount of resources towards improving lowsec and FW I take it. Other then those 2 items I can't really think of anything completely broken that they said they couldn't/wouldn't devote to for atleast 18months do to higher priorities. Don't think those 2 items alone are worth rage quitting. Maybe you should change things up from the norm. If your doing 0.0 try switching to lowsec/WH's,ect ,ect. But In the end no matter the activity, eve is what you make of it and the people you hang out with.
 
yeah i played 2 years myself and there are some issues that i found that made me quit. some ships are still way unbalanced vs other race ships. amarr interceptors i believe and assault frigates if i recall. host of other things besides the lag issue but i heard that got better.
 
There are no two ways about it, out of 104 developers 70 are working on Incarna (walking in stations, wheeee! /sarcasm), 10 are working on EVE Gate (wtf), 15 are working on improving lag which didn't exist at the current scale until about half a year ago when it was introduced by the Dominion expansion, and 22 are working on EVE content.

Not so fast!!!
Out of the 22 that work on content 7 work on art (very important, obviously), 7 work on PvE missions (also very important, obviously), and 6 work on EVE features. Of the 6 that work on EVE features 100% have decided (or were directed) to work on PvE features.

No matter how hard they try, EVE will never be WoW in space. However, according to the blog zero developers, or 0% of the work is being directed at fixing currently broken or imbalanced issues in EVE. 104 developers and not a single one of them is assigned to look at all the things that are fucked up.

I'm not sure why you devoted almost 2 paragraphs to thrashing CCP Zulu, but I suppose your hatred of him is well-known now.

I don't see the issues that other see, I suppose. "Fixing" isn't necessary for anything I do on a day-by-day basis in EVE. POS fueling and running reactions works as intended and gives me the results I expect. Planetary Interaction also works as intended, minus a very rare bug that'll let an extractor run longer than it should (which doesn't really help or hurt, it's a minor inconvenience.) 100-man gangs have few issues with lag (and since I run in Armor HAC gangs I'd fall in this category for PvP) unless they run in to a system with several hundred pilots in a system.

I also think you conveniently skipped these two paragraphs from CCP Zulu:

CCP Zulu said:
....currently they are focusing on "fleet fight in a can," which is a borderline sentient AI-testing automation feature that allows us to instantly simulate interesting aspects of massive fleet fights, getting tighter feedback loops to the expert team that is working on improvements on that front (we are talking MIT Ph.D. here). There is a team dedicated to making tools and reporting mechanism for the customer service department. The core infrastructure team (patch delivery mechanisms, among other duties) is in there, and then there‘s a another team dedicated to performance monitoring and improvements.
On top of that we have some (space) cowboys running around injecting code into Tranquility live to debug fleet battles and fix exploits (these are the same people that do code reviews and architectural integrity checks for the EVE codebase). This is where the MIT Ph.D. come into play. This doesn‘t fall under the classification of a development team but contains computer scientists, QA people, operational staff and others. They are hard-at-work (often well-outside normal working hours) profiling and diagnosing all sorts of lag-related issues or trying to catch fringe cases that are impossible to reproduce on our test servers. This team will be greatly assisted by the "fleet fight in a can" sentient AI.

You have to know where a problem is before it can be fixed. I'm pretty sure their development teams have said "Sorry, we don't know where this problem is" and their hardware folks are saying "Everything looks fine over here, we don't know what's up." They have groups of people dedicated to fixing this issue but no developers because developers can't solve a problem they can't replicate. If they assigned 4 development teams to fixing the lag in EVE they'd spend their days diving through code with no clear purpose or outcome. What does 'fix the lag' mean in software development terms? People like to throw around buzzphrases like "optimize the netcode" or "streamline the process" but they don't know shit about actual development. Developers can't fix what they can't experience and CCP developers have been unable to experience the same situations that Tranquility live server fleet fights can provide.

I've been a software developer my entire professional career, as well as a software development manager for a significant portion of that career. CCP is doing it right--they have guys experiencing the issues and writing debug tools to diagnose the problems. In a few weeks/months they'll likely take a development team from one of the other projects (most likely PvE feature team, since once the features are added they aren't needed to verify the art/mission stuff) and get them on fixing anything the "fleet-in-a-can" tests show as errant.

I see them organizing their resources behind making EVE an actual IP (vs. a single MMORPG product) and they have to devote resources to see their vision through. Complaining that EVE Gate is taking up resources that could be devoted to EVE Online is like complaining to Blizzard that their web team isn't developing content for World of Warcraft. The two aren't necessarily compatible and even an avid gamer probably doesn't know the difference beyond saying "yep, that person's a developer, now get him focused on what I want done." I specialize in Windows development--you don't want me programming a mobile device or writing a web app. Assuming that these development teams are a jack-of-all-trades type of team who can easily shift from one project type to another is naive.

Please try to give CCP a little more credit. Right now I am giving CCP the benefit of their years of experience on these issues. I am unhappy that 500+ man fleets are basically impossible to navigate properly, but I see CCP doing the right thing here and diagnosing the issue before putting development resources towards resolving the issue. That's the right way to do things, whether or not the elitist, unknowledgable screwballs on Scrapheap and EVE-O forums understand that.
 
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You did the right thing. The bottom line is all that matters to them. Affect that bottom line then they'll listen.

Yep, vote with your wallet, money is the only language businesses understand, it's a shame that's the case but it's true.
 
I take you didn't take too kindly to the part where they said they wouldn't be able to devote a massive amount of resources towards improving lowsec and FW I take it. Other then those 2 items I can't really think of anything completely broken that they said they couldn't/wouldn't devote to for atleast 18months do to higher priorities.
Let me start listing a few for you (not including two major things you mentioned already):
- command ships are utterly useless now
- corporation management mechanics + UI is so bad leaders quit EVE over it
- sov (last sov overhaul was a complete failure from the stated mission
- alliance disband (how fucking long can it take to fix that?!?)
- overview bug (has been in game for 3+ years!!!)
- LOLrockets
- LOLsubsystems
- PI (working as intended? yeah, if you want carpal-tunnel)
- etc. etc. etc.

Then CCP comes out and says they have an MIT Ph.D. on staff, I am not impressed, look up what that Ph.D. did and you will find papers and a thesis about robotics, very applicable to EVE indeed.

Lag ..., of course they put people on fleet lag. For whatever odd reason subscribers put up with all the crap just to have a good fleet fight. If they can't have that then they will really quit. The inability to fix fleet lag will result in players quitting for sure, while the other issues will result in a bitter subscriber base that still keeps paying their angry $15/month.

I'm not sure why you devoted almost 2 paragraphs to thrashing CCP Zulu, but I suppose your hatred of him is well-known now.
Erm ... this is CCP "Nerfing Capitals" Zulu we are talking about here, the same guy who uprooted the whole cap overhaul after CCP Nozh and the community had already worked out an agreeable way to change things around.

You have to know where a problem is before it can be fixed.
Note how I have consistently excluded lag from my list of complaints?
Other than that, the subscribers are pointing out problems other than lag, it's easy to see where those problems are, it's just that CCP believes it's not worth to fix content people are already willingly paying for as is.


Assuming that these development teams are a jack-of-all-trades type of team who can easily shift from one project type to another is naive.
LOL, hence you should never assume what others assume. Just because CCP has 4739569369 web developers doesn't mean that one suggests the web developers should work on combat balance. You make the false assumption that folks see the developer as a person, rather than as a resource expressed as a number on the balance sheet. Spend less MONEY on EVE Gate and more MONEY on fixing EVE Online. If that means to let some web developers go and hire some kid that knows Python then so be it.

Please try to give CCP a little more credit. Right now I am giving CCP the benefit of their years of experience on these issues.
Actually CCP has years of experience in that they have no need to fix content, subscriber numbers are up anyway. EVE Online is hugely profitable, so very much so that it pays for the development of Dust 514.

CCP went from a company that employed 40 people to a company that employs 400+ people in a few short years. When there were only 40 people those 40 would still listen to what the players have to say. Today CCP comes out and says flat out that subscribers aren't stakeholders in EVE Online. Well fuck that.
 
been playing since 2003, current characters are 2005. I agree with Thule...the CSM proposals to fix things wrong with the game was pretty much trashed by CCP.

Here's an 86 page threadnought:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1327362

players like us want the game FIXED before we get new (useless?) add-ons like Incarna (walking in stations) or games we won't even play (Dust514).

Someone asked what specifically was wrong with the game, so here's a list of things that I and many others say are wrong with the game:

Rockets - totally useless at the moment, they don't do proper damage (I have rocket specialization 5 and have had it since 2006, and haven't used rockets since 2006)

Fleet warfare lag - not just 0.0, but lowsec, highsec, wormholes...last week the in-game reporters (staying in role-playing character) reported a nullsec fleet fight was interrupted by 'spatial anomalies' but was actually stopped cold by lag. Player backlash over that was intense.

Faction Warfare - introduced then abandoned. It needs serious fixing. You can't even remote repair your own corp mates without taking a faction standings hit...yet you can RR anyone else in any other aspect of the game without taking a faction hit. The fact that this is 'faction warfare' and you get standings penalty for repping your own fleet members is just insane.

Sovereignty - with Dominion, they updated SOV warfare, and introduced massive lag. 500 vs 500 fleet battles were decent before Dominion, now even 20 vs 20 in an empty system is lagged to hell. On top of this, they promised Treaties, yet we've seen zero treaties and no plans to implement them yet.

Assault Frigates - Tech 2 frigs that only get 3 bonuses. Every other T2 ship in the game gets 4 bonuses.

POS (Player Owned Starbase) - alliance roles are not implemented properly. You can't even see/take from alliance POS's when you've set the permissions properly. This has been a problem for many years.

Alliance / Corp permissions - same almost as POS stuff. Not only that, the interface is horrible to set permissions.

UI - User interface has been problematic at best, horrible at worst. Consider that the game was made back in 2003 and not updated properly for modern widescreen support. Add to this the terrible font (both the font itself and the size) and you easily get eye strain from it on 1920x1080 resolutions (even my 1680x1050 is hard on the eyes). The zeroes and the o's are so similar that when someone types a nullsec system name like F07- IR (example) you can't tell if it is zeroes or o's, and you can't hardly tell if it is 1's or I's.

Socket Closed disconnects - it has been shown time and again that this is a problem with Eve, not with player connections, yet GM's and devs still say it isn't on their end. These players have no issues connecting to any other MMO and staying connected, not any other multiplayer game.

Audio - still an issue.

Graphics - you see turrets on your ships, but you don't see launcher. The launcher animations are still terrible.

Planetary Interaction - a massive "Farmville" click-fest. You have to sit at the planet and click click click click click click click click and on top of that, you still can't upgrade your Command Centers without ripping the whole thing down and starting over with an upgraded one.

EveGate - "Spacebook" as it is a social site like Facebook for Eve, but hardly anyone is using it. All the time spent developing it would have been better used to fix the UI of the game.

There is prob more but this is just off the top of my head. I haven't unsubbed yet (pay for my 6 accounts with PLEX using in-game money). But getting closer to it if the roar of the players in the forums doesn't drive the devs to actually abandon new features for a while to fix current issues, some of which have been around for years.

I've just taken one of my alts down to lowsec to begin a life of piracy. Hopefully that will keep me interested in Eve for a while, but the way it is going, there are 14 of us in the alliance who are seriously considering quitting and moving on. Fourteen players with I think about 35 accounts between us. 35x$15 = prob not a drop in the pond to CCP but maybe if more of us go this route, we might get the fixes we have been whining about for some time.
 
Originally Posted by CCP
It was mentioned by CCP that the data does not seem to support that polished quality sells better than new features.

I think they're reading this completely backwards.

Nobody regards it as a new game. It does not get the luxury of new shelf displays or waves of new reviews to enlighten new customers. New customers are recruited primarily through word of mouth and old customers leave with two or three accounts active after getting sick of CCP. People are primarily involved in the PvP storyline of the game - something that evolves no matter how the gameplay changes. People do not just "get bored" with a rapidly evolving half-million-person political situation, or with a dynamic mission of piracy against determined empires, because the rules haven't changed recently. Bugs and server performance issues are the single greatest reason (that CCP has control over) that mature players up and quit the game. New features, on the other hand, have never been a particularly important reason to go back to the game, speaking as an ex-Eve player. Once those players are well and truly out of the lifestyle they're not coming back to see just the new eye-candy or to try out the new ships: they've severed ties.

The goal for CCP is not primarily to make the game more fun or addictive - they've succeeded there. The goal is to reduce churn. New content in Eve was always *MUCH* less interesting than the bugs were irritating. Losing hundreds or thousands of man-hours of work to a game bug that wasn't coded properly is why players decide to quit jumping through hoops. They don't continue to jump through hoops because the hoops get slightly bigger or more brightly colored. The number of people I knew that quit because faulty territorial mechanics halted their campaign of revenge or required nightly GM waits, or fleet battles ended in "draw" while the node went down, is staggering. The number of people who quit because you couldn't walk around your spaceship? Zero.

Our clan went through so many frustrations with different features of the game that weren't implemented in a "quality" fashion we eventually resorted to small-squad hit-and-run ganking as the only thing that remained consistently fun from patch to patch. As part of alliance play, every fleet action had to be scripted out to figure out how well the node could handle it, and to say this pierced our suspension of disbelief is a laughable understatement.

Server upgrades and optimizations had the single biggest effect on extending our play of any new feature in my three years in the game. The problem is they generally only lasted for a month or two until the playerbase expanded to equilibrium with lag. The situation is that cluster performance is THE limiting factor on CCP's revenue.

Edit:
CCP's playerbase is uniquely word-of-mouth oriented. The first thing that old players do when they get disgruntled with lag and errors? Stop inviting their friends to play.
 
I agree, over the last year or so, I and our corp/alliance have probably brought in about 15 new players, and the only way we've retained most of them is by careful tutoring and/or hand-holding so they can learn the game (and be in a social environment) without getting overly frustrated. Without word of mouth...Eve wouldn't be anywhere near as big as it is (which is still small fish compared to some MMO's for sure, but it is the only MMO besides WoW that has consistently increased subscribers over the years).

I remember playing back when getting 3,000 users at the same time was an incredible feat!
 
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