Originally posted by PrinceDamien

If I'm not mistaken, I read once that CCP's real dream with EVE was never for it to only be a spaceship game. CCP wanted from the beginning that people would be able to walk around with their avatars. CCP's vision of EVE Online was that of a living galaxy, with stations, planets, spaceships.

That maybe true, I really have no idea what their vision is.  But CCP is after all a business, and when Incana (the captains quarters update) was release, it wasn't just the out cry from the playerbase to stick with "flying in space" development, it was the subscriber numbers they lost in the months after the "walking in station" update came out which gave them pause.  People were not happy, and they were telling CCP with their wallet, shortly after CCP said in Dev. blogs they would focus on what people wanted, and released Crucible, subscriber numbers shot back up to pre- incana numbers.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Piraal
Very few of the actual playerbase want to walk in station, but CCP still has some dev.'s working on it, it was also the framework for world of darkness.

You are wrong, it was very few, but EXTREMELY VOCAL hardcore segment of the playerbase that did not want it!

There were plenty of people that want Walking in Stations.

But like in so many MMO's. Devs always seem to crave in for the Vocal minority. /sigh

I care nothing for walking in stations. Never thought that was what this game was about.

Originally posted by Piraal
Very few of the actual playerbase want to walk in station, but CCP still has some dev.'s working on it, it was also the framework for world of darkness.

I hope they do more with walking in stations - I resubbed because they had added it, and then unsubbed in disappointment at how much talking they had done for no real improvement in the game.  Blowing up SBUs was still as much fun as eating chalk, there were essentially the same old powerblocs and everyone else were simply pawns to those blocs, and pretty ships becomming prettier didn't make ice any less boring to mine.

Well as a newish player that recently went back, i must say the whole avatar/character create in EvE is pretty amazing. I'm comparing this specifically to recent MMOs like The Secret World, which was built alot around customizing your character . So in terms of customizing your face, clothing, character looks, EvE has done an awesome job , the actual "use" of that whole engine is unfortunately not realised, seems to boil down to taking a screenshot of your awesome avatar , but still scary to think that this is better than alot of MMOs out there where you stare at your avatar all the time.

Maybe they should license it or something, since i can think of alot of MMOs where everyone complain about the customization options and the devs can't seem to get it right ;-)

Originally posted by Piraal

Originally posted by Hokie

Okay, someone help me out.

What exacly is unified inventory?

I know what I think it means. But I want to know what it really means.

When your in station you can see everything you own in one window in that station(personal hanger, ship hanger, corp hangers), and you can drag, and drop things from say your personal hanger to any of the ships in the hanger cargo, without  opening up any other windows.  It's just much less clicking, much less screen cluter, and its much easier to see everything you own in that station in one window.  But like someone else already said it was released months ago,  and it was alittle buggy when it first came out, and people in general don't like change, so there were many forum tears.

actually there is much more clicking involved, especially if you have several ships at a station, which most do, its necessary to shift+click to open a new window for the destination you want to take an item to, and then do the same for wherever the item is located, and drag and drop between these two, it can be easier to use the hangar view, and right click on a ship and select cargo, then shift click on the cargo hold, and then do the same again for another ship to transfer items from one ship to another, this is because unless you do this, each time you open a cargo view, it will overwrite the previous cargo view, meaning you cannot drag items between the two without shift+clicking open another cargo view seperate from the main item view. it does become a bit of a click fest at times, especially if you want to grab a few drones from a carrier to dump into another ship. Its a system that takes a bit of work to get used to. as it is anything but a simplified system.

These changes are badly needed.

For Great Justice!

Originally posted by JeroKane

So I guess we can safely say that "Walking in Stations" can qualified as utter failure and nothing will be done anymore.

They can then just as well remove it from the game. As right now it's just an utterly useless resource hog. /facepalm

A real shame. As I have always been looking forward to the avatar implementation and fully functional space stations and meet other players. /shrug

wait a moment,

you think that is a quick task? They must be adding a whole new game on top of what is there, and the current Walking on station thing is just a glimpse of what is coming in the future.

haven´t you seen the future vision trailer of EvE?

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Piraal
Very few of the actual playerbase want to walk in station, but CCP still has some dev.'s working on it, it was also the framework for world of darkness.

You are wrong, it was very few, but EXTREMELY VOCAL hardcore segment of the playerbase that did not want it!

There were plenty of people that want Walking in Stations.

But like in so many MMO's. Devs always seem to crave in for the Vocal minority. /sigh

 

True, it´s the vocal minority which screams "waste of time" for new gameplay ideas like WiS, but the EvE vision is still making it the ultimate Sci Fi simulator, and that includes walking on stations, social interaction with avatars on bases.. etc.

I mostly saw huge support for it and some hardcore vocal minority rallying against it, like always the boycotters against great ideas always hold up progress everywhere. It is in their nature.

But look at Dust514, I think both games will grow together over time, this is obvious.  

Originally posted by Piraal

Originally posted by PrinceDamien

If I'm not mistaken, I read once that CCP's real dream with EVE was never for it to only be a spaceship game. CCP wanted from the beginning that people would be able to walk around with their avatars. CCP's vision of EVE Online was that of a living galaxy, with stations, planets, spaceships.

That maybe true, I really have no idea what their vision is.  But CCP is after all a business, and when Incana (the captains quarters update) was release, it wasn't just the out cry from the playerbase to stick with "flying in space" development, it was the subscriber numbers they lost in the months after the "walking in station" update came out which gave them pause.  People were not happy, and they were telling CCP with their wallet, shortly after CCP said in Dev. blogs they would focus on what people wanted, and released Crucible, subscriber numbers shot back up to pre- incana numbers.

The subscriber loss had very little to do with walking in stations. There was a small outcry from the lack of ship spinning when the CQ was disabled (with the ship fitting screen being a poor substitute) but CCP addressed this quickly and people were happy to wait.

The reason for the subscriber loss was through the monetisation of Eve. It initially started in the Trading are when CCP released information that no longer would 3rd party apps that received payments or services in game be allowable under their licensing. So for example any killboard providers that took ISK payment would no longer be allowed access to Eve APIs (rendering any autolinking of kills obsolete). This would have been relatively small but then when Incarna dropped people realised that the vanity items were heavily priced. It then came out that added to this would be 'Golden Ammo' - the ability for people to use timecards swapped for Aurum to purchase special items, such as ship upgrades or ammo upgrades. By itself this would not have been too bad, after all you can buy timecards for ISK and get exactly the same thing, but as the items were agent provided it meant that it bypassed the industrial part of Eve which would have severe consequences for the economic aspects of the game (which is one of it's strongest points). All this led to a strong feeling that CCP were just trying to screw the playerbase for money - quite a shockwave as CCP is a lot closer to the playerbase than many other MMOs and the realisation that they were a business kinda shook people up a bit.

So the environment was volatile and there were many threads started to express this. All it needed was a spark to really set if off - and that's when the internal newsletter was leaked with the headline "Greed is Good" echoing Gordon Gecko's famous line. That's when you got the Jita riots and the sub cancellations. Of course many people who were on long term subscriptions just cancelled to add their voice to the protest (and I know one person that subbed up for 6 months and then cancelled so he could add his voice without losing his ability to play). That's when CCP went on full back-track.

So walking in stations was not popular, many like myself felt that the last thing we wanted was a way for people who insisted on staying docked up having a way to prevent them getting bored, and there were lots that felt that their sub money should be spent on core features and not fluff (or practice for WoD), but I don't know of anyone that quit over it.

I was a 6 year vet and quit the game, not soley due to the lack of walking on stations but I feel it walking on stations would have been something that made me engage more with the game.  I really wanted to see my avatar walk out of a battleship once in a while.

On the flip side, there is nothing in the patch that makes me go 'wow' I need to return.   That is a shame for players on the fringe. Either way EvE will continue to go strong.

Originally posted by Drevar
Still waiting for the long promised and put off mining and industry update.....

Right! They've been pretty darn quiet about this one for a while now...

Kudos to CCP for working on some systems and mechanics that could really use an overhaul.

Personally though, there's not much in that expansion that makes me want to return. I'm not a fan of free-for-all PvP and I'm not interested in living in null-sec or being part of a huge corporation. I prefer the lifestyle of a lone hi-sec industrialist. I love crafting and doing my own thing while still being part of a living breathing universe. Unfortunately, that lifestyle doesn't seem to be a priority for CCP. In fact, they seem outright hostile towards it whenever I read dev blogs about their long term ideas for the game. Until I see a change in that and/or some real progress where walking in stations is concerned, I'll stick with other MMOs. A shame though, since I'd like to see sandbox MMOs become more successful.

Originally posted by Piraal
Very few of the actual playerbase want to walk in station, but CCP still has some dev.'s working on it, it was also the framework for world of darkness.

You get this from where??? I see all the time players asking for that option. Station walk can be only one big +

Originally posted by JeroKane

So I guess we can safely say that "Walking in Stations" can qualified as utter failure and nothing will be done anymore.

They can then just as well remove it from the game. As right now it's just an utterly useless resource hog. /facepalm

A real shame. As I have always been looking forward to the avatar implementation and fully functional space stations and meet other players. /shrug

Devs have real-time metrics in every mmo that tell them who is using what features of their game at any given time.

That being said, if walking in stations was a failure as you naively claimed, it would have been removed by now. I know personally I use the feature 100% of the time since day one. 

Originally posted by Piraal
Very few of the actual playerbase want to walk in station, but CCP still has some dev.'s working on it, it was also the framework for world of darkness.

You have no proof to base that statement on that about how many use walk in station feature. 

Originally posted by Butch808
I'd pick up EVE instantly if it had walking in stations.

Er...so they gave us walking in stations with captains quarters, so where are you? Oh wait, you want to do something more than see your character? OK, what exactly?

Do you want to walk around and chat with other players? Is that enough or do you want to drink with them in a Catina? Does CCP need to add storefronts, shops, bar room brawls, and perhaps ship boarding and ground combat as well? Where does it end?

You are asking them to create an entirely new game and if you hadn't noticed, they over extended themselves with Dust 514 and WOD and EVE itself has suffered for out.

In the end they know if you aren't playing EVE for what it currently offers (which is truly unique among MMOS) then no matter what they add as far as WiS goes is never going to keep you long enough to make it worth their while.

"It's all about immersion, according to Olafsson, who says that the new avatar-based sections of the game will give players a stronger sense of self and a deeper awareness of the game environment and the scale of New Eden." 

That is from an interview with one of the CCP devs about the purpose of the implmentation of avatars in EVE. EVE is trying to evolve as any surviving mmo has to do or end up shutdown.

The whining kiddies in EVE who fight against that evolution might as well go play some browser-based space shooter if they can't handle evolving. 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/10/ccp-video-blog-talks-eve-immersion-incarna-deployment/