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EVE Online Interviews: The Mittani Speaks Out
EVE Online has seen its share of controversy over the past several months and bloggers across the globe have been speaking out. One of the most prominent is The Mittani, leader of the largest EVE alliances, Goonswarm Federation. He's posted a stinging article about what he calls "the stagnation of EVE since Incarna. MMORPG.com caught up with The Mittani to talk about the controversy and more. Read on!
By William Murphy on September 08, 2011
| MMORPG.com: | Can you tell us a bit about who you are how you're involved with EVE, for those who don't know? Basically, why the CSM is a big deal and how they fit in with CCP. |
| The Mittani: | I'm the leader of the largest alliance in EVE (Goonswarm Federation) which contains about seven thousand pilots, and I'm the Chairman of the CSM. For the last two years I've written a column at Tentonhammer.com called 'Sins of a Solar Spymaster' about espionage and politics in EVE. I've been playing since 2005. The Council of Stellar Management is a player-elected advocacy group of nine players that represents the EVE playerbase when dealing with CCP. Twice a year the CSM visits the CCP office in Reykjavik to discuss upcoming expansions and content for the game; in addition to the summits, we are also in near-constant contact with the developers through Skype and the CSM forums. The CSM is considered a formal stakeholder in CCP and in the development process. The relationship is largely a positive one, as the CSM and the game design team at CCP see eye to eye on most issues involving 'Flying in Space', the part of EVE that most people consider to be EVE. The CSM is an almost unique institution among MMOs; it was created by CCP in the aftermath of a developer corruption scandal to restore trust between the company and its players. Sometimes the CSM is just there to bounce ideas off of, like a sounding board; sometimes things get contentious and the CSM behaves more like an aggressive watchdog, calling the company to account. |
| MMORPG.com: | There's been some controversy lately, stemming from a post you made in private to your Alliance (Goonswarm). What exactly got you riled up? |
| The Mittani: | A well-regarded EVE blogger named Jester put together some damning charts which demonstrated that the number of players logging into EVE has stagnated in the aftermath of the incredibly controversial Incarna expansion, which was seen by many as a gameplay-free engine test for CCP's hypothetical World of Darkness MMO. Expansions in EVE typically show a spike in player interest in the game, but two of the last three EVE expansions have not featured any 'spaceship' content. The June Incarna release and the controversies surrounding it not only provoked literal in-game riots and a wave of players leaving the game, but Jester's chart demonstrated that, even three months later, the game has not recovered. The CSM has been trying to convince CCP to allocate more development to what CCP calls 'Flying in Space', the core spaceship-based gameplay that most customers have signed up for, as opposed to Incarna, 'Walking in Stations'. In the face of declining logins and player interest, the CSM was going to publicly spotlight the neglect of Flying in Space in a formal salvo at CCP's upper management. It's important to reiterate that the CSM gets along smashingly with the developers who actually make EVE, and we desperately want CCP's management to give these guys the resources necessary to make a beautiful game about spaceships. Expecting the formal CSM spotlight to be ready in about a week, I wrote an update to my alliance to warn them that things were about to get ugly between the CSM and CCP's management. The CSM expected that after we published the spotlight we would have to do a major push to get media attention. Instead, even before the spotlight was written, Eurogamer published my internal update, and so we're off to the races. The story went viral and there has since been a blizzard of coverage which has helped us focus our pressure on CCP. Since the CCP management is much more reactive to media pressure than quiet customer discontent, the CSM is quite thankful for the coverage. |
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| MMORPG.com: | So you're of the belief that EVE is being used lately merely as a testbed for World of Darkness. Do you have any proof of this, or is it merely a feeling you and others have over recent content updates to EVE? |
| The Mittani: | CCP has made no secret of the fact that the Carbon code framework is intended to provide a code-base for all three of its titles - EVE, Dust 514 and World of Darkness. That Incarna is a framework for the World of Darkness engine isn't a matter of speculation. It's important to understand that EVE players do not object to the idea of CCP developing other titles - personally, I'm a huge fan of White Wolf and the WoD. The controversy for the EVE playersbase is that the Tyrannis and Incarna expansions were perceived as being largely irrelevant to the core EVE experience. Tyrannis introduced 'Planetary Interaction', a little- used feature that will eventually somehow create a link between EVE and DUST 514. Tyrannis also was so poorly implemented that fixes for it ate up much of the development of the Incursions expansion, which at least had some spaceship content. Incarna has, since its release in June, provided EVE players with a single dingy room and nothing to do within it besides watching a single avatar sit on a couch. This lack of focus on spaceships might be tolerable if the core spaceship gameplay of EVE was running well, but there are presently a number of dangerous imbalances that have been long overdue for iteration and fixes by CCP (we're talking years, not months), and that damage is reflected in the stagnating number of people actually playing the game. The combination of neglect and botched, non-spaceship expansions is pushing the game towards a dangerous tipping point. Since EVE is a single-shard game, the social dynamics of the controversy makes this situation critical. Other MMOs occasionally see servers fall below critical social mass and implode, and they simply merge the players from the dying server into a healthy one. There is nowhere for CCP to merge New Eden should the playerbase continue to lose interest in the game. We must prevent this. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Has there been any word from CCP? What is it you'd like to see them do in response to this brouhaha? |
| The Mittani: | The CSM has a lot of friends within CCP who vehemently support our position; you don't move to Reykjavik and work for CCP unless you want to work on a spaceship game. Our conflict is primarily with the upper management allocating the dev teams to non-spaceship content. The CSM feels that they have not taken the concerns of the players seriously enough and that this presents a threat to the health of the game. EVE needs new things to do, not new clothes for our avatars to wear. In addition to fixing the broken aspects of Flying in Space, CCP needs to dedicate more feature teams and developers to their flagship product - which is, incidentally, their only actual product right now. New ships, new regions, new ideas, new activities - in spaceships. A great example of an expansion done right is Apocrypha, which introduced wormholes that led to completely new types of space and a whole new class of new ships. |
| MMORPG.com: | Your claim is that EVE's main feature, you know that "space" bit, is being neglected. From an obviously seasoned player's perspective, what needs to be done to remedy this? At PAX, quite a bit was talked about the future of EVE and 0.0 changes (sovereignty caps, supercaps, and the continuation of work begun back with Dominion). Is this not what you had hoped for? |
| The Mittani: | We absolutely support the developers working on Flying in Space right now. CCP Soundwave, who was recently promoted to the lead spot for FiS design, is arguably the most competent design lead CCP has ever had, and his team are likewise standouts. However, they flat-out do not have the teams and resources to get their excellent ideas implemented. The CSM and the game design devs see eye-to-eye on most of the issues of the day - bringing sanity to supercapital ships, iterative hull balance, and addressing the lack of purpose in nullsec. But these are fixes to the 'sucking chest wounds' of EVE gameplay. EVE can't be sustained on fixes and tweaks alone - it needs proper spaceship-focused expansions once again, flagship expansions that the playerbase actually wants, expansions that provide new things to do in the sandbox. |
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| MMORPG.com: | As a part of the CSM, your voice obviously carries a lot of weight in the community and with CCP. I know this post wasn't meant to be released and spread like this, but now that it has, do you wish there was a better way to go about your concerns? |
| The Mittani: | The strategy the CSM intended to use to spotlight these issues was always the same: make an announcement of the risk the game is facing from neglect and hammer CCP's management in the media. CCP's upper management has made it clear over the years that they are willing to ignore player uprisings and mass postings by players on the game's own forums, but they have responded with alacrity to negative media attention in the past, as this impacts both their marketing budget and the esteem of their peers in the industry. So, strategically, the Eurogamer coverage hasn't changed much for us. Tactically, I'd prefer events to have gone as the CSM had planned originally. I'm a polarizing figure in the community, and much of the initial press suggested that the CSM's criticisms of CCP's management came from me individually, rather than being the consensus opinion of the entire CSM. The CSM has since been very active in public to make it clear that FiS Neglect is our unanimous concern. The CSM had intended CCP to read the Goonswarm update as a shot across the bow before we went public with a formal FiS Neglect spotlight, a last chance to negotiate before chaos erupted. However, the CSM had recently concluded that negotiating privately with upper management was a nearly fruitless proposition, so I suspect it wouldn't have made a difference. |
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| MMORPG.com: | We plan on interviewing CCP about this as well, if there's one question you'd have us ask them, what would it be? |
| The Mittani: | EVE is a game about spaceships. When are we going to finally see a proper, all-developers-on-deck spaceship expansion like Apocrypha which truly expands the universe that the players love? Please be nice if they send you to someone on the community team or game design. While the CSM is angry at the upper management of CCP, it's very important to distinguish the poor decisions being made at the top of the company from the great work done by their employees. The CSM doesn't want this to turn into a "Rarr! CCP is a monolithic entity, incoherent rage goes here" mess. |
Soo... After reading that it seems that WoW is not the only place that has paraniod and stingy vets ready to blame anything then themself for the facrt that they love has gone stale. And in turn has the vets still playing using the fact to propell their own agenda.
That curve looks pretty normal for a game of that age.
Good thing you guys decided to interview The Mittani. Better to hear it directly from the man then having to read in other articles about what he supposedly said.
And he's right ofcourse. I just hope reallocation of resources is still possible in the CCP development teams, so that we can see a decent upgrade within 6 months the latest.
I'm curious in what state the WoD project is in now, but I'd much rather see some Eve improvements; these last months haven't exactly convinced me to come back.
A poorly thought out statement to make considering the recent developments in EVE. WoW's fundamental gameplay has never changed from the start, you cant compare that with the situation here in any way, its a completely different scenario
WIth the big change in direction the games taking, and the developments CCP are clearly focussing on, I dont think that anything said wasnt justified, vet or not.
The Mittani is one of Eve biggest blowhards.
If you know his views on WH's you will quickly see he has no idea what he is talking about. He has his head so far up 0.0 and the goons he has forgotten how to play Eve.
I even voted for him but I see now it was a mistake.......
Eve is going in exciting directions. The FiS game is all still there, it’s not perfect but it is still the best mmo out. With the addition of Incarna, it opens up untold possibilities. All CCP needs to do is give Mittens some big throne in 0.0 where he can stroke his epeen from, that will shut him up.
CCP have always favoured cautious and incremental change over the "big bang" implementations, which is something I actually admire them for.
That said, they may have been too cautious with Incarna. It was a huge change in direction of game content for them, and they may have been too nervous too flesh it out further before seeing how it affected server performance in a live environment. However, the playerbase has been tantalized with "walking in stations" for years now, and the first glimpse of it was just a massive anticlimax.
If the CSM says that there's a shortage of resources deployed in FiS, then I have no reason to disbelieve them. They have direct contact with developers, I don't. The alternative is to make up my own "truth" based on my own selective reading and paranoia.
Perhaps CCP has reached "crunch time" in the development-cycle of their other 2 games. World of Darkness (WoD) has been in the oven for quite a long time (with no progress announcements), and Dust-514 is intended to launch in 2012 iirc. It could be that these pressures are pulling their focus away from large manhour-intensive new updates for EVE FiS.
The acquisition of/merger with White Wolf, development of WoD and Dust-514 has no doubt required a large chunk of capital investment. The staff of CCP has grown extensively over the last 3 years. If these 2 new projects don't fly, CCP may be in a very awkward position.
First off he is a goon, which pretty much puts him in a very bad way to start with, then you add in he is looking out for his corp first and his perspective of the game is that of a veteran 0.0 player which is a definite minority.
My thought is, he will be very upset when he sees the changes CCP will be making to the game in the future.
So far WoD seems vaporware for many... and Dust wont save them. Future is not that bright...
well DUST514 is going to be a PS3 exclusiv.. thats Epic Fail #1 right there... thats assuming it ever makes it to release.. which is far from certain... as for WoD possibly being vapourware.. i'd have to agree.. maybe they need to concentrate on Eve and ditch some of these dodgy ideas, they could end up being very expensive lessons...
I have only been playing the game for a little over a year. I have found EVE to be the best game out there at the moment. I love the sandbox. However, I believe that Mittens is right about quite a few things. FiS is the most important aspect of EVE. WiS is neat and has awesome possibilities, however, if you neglect FiS then you can expect people to leave the game.
I am a miner/explorer. I think there are lots and lots of possibilities for them to open in the area of discovery. Why not create a few dozen of so systems? Have a few ancient gates open up or something. Have the Jovians open up trade, have us be able to investigate pulsars, quasars, black holes, and other phenomenon...and if we get caught in a black hole...blow us up...there are limitess possible ideas for FiS.
anyways...just some thoughts
I may hate the Mittani and revile his playstyle, his copr/alliance, etc but he is a good advocate for EVE. He's not one to be cowtowed by upper management, he isn't afraid to speak his mind, and I believe for the most part he has the best interest of EVE at heart. In general I totally agree with what he's saying here...
Honestly, Planets and Incarna are what brought me back. I don't think they should ever be the central part of what Eve is about, but these pieces are important because they make the game more whole.
Intresting to see what happens in the nexts few months......
***Dances with Ho Kthanid Amarr Ladies***
lol, completely transparent. Eurogamer just "got" hold of the internal post and published it because they are that interested in posts made by the Mitt. Then it just "went" viral.
Transparent ploy and head up his own ass.
If CCP had not buckled the very first time Goonswarm threatened them and purposefully crashed the forums with their threadnaughts then all these years later, they would have avoided many "media circuses" caused by EVE's resident troublemakers.
MIttani is a tool. But he is right about EVE decline. Although it took him a year longer to notice the obvious then me.
Yeah because Eve was so much better when developers were secretly helping their favorite corps with massive advantages that nobody else had access to. The person with his head up his own ass isn't The Mittani.
Actually I think they are aware of the problems with Eve and are going to address that in the near future. CCP's number one problem has been far too much catering to the veteran player and not to retaining new players.
Walking in stations was necessary to actually show people they had avatars and not spaceships. Despite all the vets crying it has affected them little. The changes coming up though will affect them greatly so get ready for a lot of gnashing of teeth. CCP knows it has to open up low sector and 0.0 areas to more players so that means effectively disabling the super alliances like goonswarm.
So all in all, Mittani is right to fear what is coming, his alliance is one of the ones that will take the blunt of it, but it will open up the game to a lot more players and CCP knows they really have no choice if they intend to grow the game. You know what the funny thing is, Mittani's initial foray into Eve was to take on the larger alliances with lots of small ships, now his alliance will have the same thing done to it now that they have superiority in the larger ships. Kind of funny to see the irony in that.
Mittens has pretty accurately reflected my concerns and issues with EVE.
As for those who are attempting dismiss what he says purely because they dislike his personal style or his alliance, they are sounding far more immature than the goon stereotype they claim to be reacting against. Dispute him on the facts, dispute him on the analysis, dispute him on the conclusions if you like. Disputing him because he's a goon is simply stupid. Ad hominems don't make him or his message look worse.
Falling PCU numbers are a weathervane. People who can't think of a reason to log in and play will pretty soon start wondering why they're maintaining a subscription at all. EVE's unique PLEX system has almost certainly provided a buffering effect in keeping subscriptions up - an even moderately wealthy player can easily maintain his subs without spending real life money. A shockingly high percentage of 0.0 players are now "burning fat" - selling off in game assets for ISK to buy PLEX with - rather than paying actual money. When those assets are gone, so is the player.
0.0 is a wasteland now. Horribly imbalanced supercapitals, and a sov system that's so bad that invaders are literally paying other people to grind the structures for them have left sov 0.0 largely deserted by anything except the occasional bot, a few renter corps who haven't noticed or don't care that no-one else is out there, and a few powerbloc fleets waiting on their Titan to bridge in on a 3-man drake gang.
The mans a tool, and so far up himself it's not funny, but in this instance, and on this subject, all power to mittens tbh, despite his stupidly white-knighting for them in that cringeworthy video.
The ccp upper managment are drivng EvE into the ground with their insane decisions, and they will end up taking the staff down with them if they carry as on as they are.
The best MMO on the market might die yet again due to management idiocy.
I think World of Darkness wont be the success CCP hopes it will be, its obvious at this point that you cant make judgments about the quality of the game but my opinion stems from CCPs RMT policy.
EVE players and the gaming press where simply stunned by the cost of the vanity items offered in Incarna, you could buy a real life EVE T Shirt from CCP for slightly less than the virtual vanity T Shirt in the in game store. Do not even mention the monocles, $70 for a small vanity item is not just excessive it was lunacy. If CCP are that stupid when it comes to the item shop in WoD I can see the game never getting off the ground.
WoD will definitely have a cash shop it just remains to be seen what form it will take, the game could be sub based with additional items or it could be a P2W style game. A F2P/P2W game with $35-70 items would be a disaster.
Funny how a kid like Mittani touts so many useless titles and yet seems to know so little about how game developement works, or what the original vision for EVE was several years ago. I was in beta and been around EVE as a player from the beginning and it is not 100% about the ships. The goal CCP has said time and again is to develope as immersive a universe as possible. Well guess what, that involves adding features other than how fast a trigger-happy gate camper can gank a newb.
Personally at this point I hope CCP keeps players like Mittani waiting for EVE content and finishes WoD.
It's no wonder the population in EVE is stagnant lately with how crude, vulgar, and plain ignorant most of the EVE playerbase has become, making it a challenge for any new player to find any fun in the game.
Yes, the massive rise in subs and people logging in to look at their character sitting alone in a dirty motel room has certainly justified the astonishing amount of resources pourde into Incarna :eyeroll:
If the Incarna team hadn't been so shockingly unproductive, wasteful, oblivious to player requirements and demanding of resources need for the actual game that people played, if Incarna had actually delivered walking in stations, I would have been very happy with it. But what do we actually have to show for a project that has devoured the lion's share of resources for TWO YEARS?
A single poorly rendered avatar in a 7-11. No gameplay. No multiplay. No point in using it. Plenty of promises that "this is just the beginning, it's a platform for ~awesome~" of course, but looking at what CCP have done, rather than listening to what they say... they've got nothing.
90% or more of the players have looked at CQ once or maybe twice, and then simply disabled it.
The only "feature" that was added with Incarna was the humiliatingly dreadful cash shop.
Forgive me if I am underwhelmed with this much needed alternative to the " trigger-happy gate camper" features we miss.
Your ignorance of the topic is astounding.
Goonswarm and TEST are probably one of the bigger reasons new players even keep trying out EVE, as they welcome new player with open arms unlike most alliances/corporations in the game.
If Walking in Stations is so amazingly popular, how come subscriber numbers have stagnated since the release of Incarna instead of increased?
And Mittani has spoken for nerfing supercapiticals, such as super carriers. As such, Goons and TEST are actually at a disadvantage when it comes to large ship usage against DRF and other groups. So, technically they are still fighting larger ships with more smaller ships. Just that the smaller ships are bigger than they used to be.
Your ingorance on the subject is astounding, as you are pretty much wrong on every single point you make. Go toss around your made up facts on the EVE-O forums, they seem to love that stuff there.
Actually CCP employees are paid in euros if they choose to.
I wish that Dust514 was on the PC, I'd love to jump back into the Eve universe in FPS style but it's no surprise that CCP is known for their specialized products. I think it'll be niche, which is what they're good at.
The fact after years of working on WIS/Incarna they could barely deliver one shoddy room with zero gameplay and even that one room is so shockingly coded it caused hardware failures due to heat issues just proves they can't deliver on the target they set themselves.
As a company they need scale back on their WOD/Dust plans fully support the FIS team and sort out the core game play issues fix the only product they have before it dies and then they can re-evaluate what they really want to do and more importantly what is actually achievable for them.
Verax
Selene, another memebr of the CSM and a former employee of CCP has written a blog on this http://seleenes-sandbox.blogspot.com/2011/09/reality-check.html. It shows that Mittani is correct in saying that the CSM speak with one voice and it is an interesting view from an ex-dev on CCPs inner workings.
Alongside what Selene says in his blog above (and the entires CSM voice on this) CCP have also had a lucky break that no new AAA mmos have been released recently that would draw mass players away during this time of lack of content. With some highly anticipated MMOs nearing Beta stages soon they need to act quick before the game has a mass exodus. When a game becomes known as dying fast, rats leave the ship and little new blood is brought in to replace them.
No Eve = No Dust514
I've gotta shake my head when I read stuff like this. For years prior to Incarna, "Walking in Stations" was such an alluring, sexy concept - and now that it's out (well, only the first part of it, the Captain's Quarters) - players can't get enough of Flying in Space.
I really wouldn't want to be an MMO developer. There's no possible way to make your community happy for any considerable length of time; as long as you change the game (which you'll have to do, or else they'll accuse the game of stagnating), you'll be "breaking" something or doing "something stupid."
Drivel.
It's the way it was implemented, coupled with the ingoring of the major part of the game (Flying in Space), coupled with the "18 months" saga, piled on top of all the previous idiocy ccps upper management have displayed that provided the perfect storm for all this.
Listening to the playerbase rather than railroading them all into playing a way a large portion of didn;t want to... It's not like people weren't screaming at them what needing looking at.....
Iterating on previous additions that were unfinished, Fixing bugs that had been in the game for YEARS, fixing obvious imbalances that even they themselves acknowledged a long time ago, making CHOICE a major part of improvements...... and many, many more.
You are looking at this through a very limited lense. The Issue is not that people do not want walking in stations but goes back about two years.
1.The past three expansions have not had near the content of earlier EVE Expansions despite steady growth in profits for the game.
2.A Blog was released saying like 80% of Devs were working on what is basically a glorified station interface that the community kinda wanted. There would be no in space improvements for 18 months.
3.CCP said they were not going to add Cash Shops and added them. Not so bad cept a Newsletter got leaked talking about P2W Items and calling the players the Golden Goose. There response to this was a Dev Blog talking about why prices were high on current items citing Japanese $1000 Jeans(Seriously), while ignoring player concerns.
4.Players in the months up to the expansion stated pretty much unanimously that they would like a Station interface when docked, current or a new one that allows them quick access to gear without loading station enviroments. Despite this they did not do this and used a static image of the door leading to the rest of the station.
5. Incarna the Expansion touted for years as making EVE a whole new world, the one where they got 3 Sup Par Expansion because Dev Time was needed for Incarna, the Flagship release of EVE. It was one Instanced Minmatar Room. That is it, no interacting with other players which is the main thing everyone wanted, no other Captains Quarters just One Room and a Cash Shop.
/Clap Clap Clap.
Incarna is a whole new level of MMO disapointment like if Cata was a new Death Wing Pet and a Sitting Room. So Hyped up by CCP then crap.
After the players got angry CCP flew the CSM's to talk about how to fix it. They said they would release the minutes soon they were just finishing local translations... ten weeks ago. They said they'll bring back a Station Interface and no word on that.
Players being entitled bitches on the forums is always done by nobody's with a chip on there shoulder and are prombtly told where to shove that chip by the players. This is different, most of EVE's core contributers and community members are the ones speaking out. EVE has a tight Community that has a lot of love for EVE. It has been said many times by the Dev's, News Sites and Players that the Community is what makes EVE so great.
Mittens is right about this. The CSM's are here to represent the players and some are angry, most are disapointed and a lot have ether unsubbed or stopped logging on. They want to nip this in the bud and end fears about EVE. EVE Players were a happy bunch compared to most MMO's but there not anymore.
They should be again.
I totally agree with The Mittani.
Apocrypha was a fantastic expansion - we need more expansions that were as good.
I think WiS could be amazing, but it seems that CCP are limiting Eve's funding, so FiS should have priority for the forseable future.
WoD doesn't seem to fit into any form of EvE SyFy universe as near as I can tell. Dust is just BS. I am betting you CCP are setting up bank accounts in the Bahamas and then just go banckrupt on everyone at some point in next year or two.
Totally correct.
My view is that WiS could have been brilliant, but there is nearly nothing to show for it after several years, so development should concentrate of FiS: This is because FiS is Eve's (and CCP's) 'bread and butter' - the central nub, and it must be continually added to with good material.
Try checking out the word developement. It doesn't equate to instant gratification.
Dismissing the head of a player elected organization that discusses developer prioritization because of his in-game persona is, in my opinion, absolutely daft. Regardless of your opinion of the indivual himself, the entire player elected body of the CSM appears to be in full agreement that the upper management of CCP is neglecting what is currently their sole MMO title.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the game as it is, and many player's love the current game, and the new directions CCP have picked. However, there are serious flaws with the game that have not been adressed by CCP. Some date back several years. The interview is also absolutely correct that two of the past three expansions have been very lackluster and have left very few 'new' things for player's to do.
Unlike standard theme park games were developer's design new content for player's each expansion, sandbox games deliver the environment for player's to create their own content... but once player's grow bored with the game itself, and the developer's no longer have the time to invest in growing the sandbox... things rapidly reach a point where the game will just die out.
The last few expansions have had VERY few things for player's to partake in. In theory CCP was going to totally revitalize the New Player Experience so new player's had a more streamlined way to enter the game. That content ended up taking about an hour for new player's to go through... then they were dumped in a 8-10 hour outdated tutorial system that, in some cases, directly conflicted with things that were explained in the new tutorials.
That's a small example, but if CCP cannot even spend time trying to appeal to NEW player's, it's no suprise that many of the veteran player's are feeling bored. The fact that CCP has bitten off entirely too much with their two new game releases, coupled with the absolutely horrid state of the world's finances and their obligations to stockholders to complete these new games means it's absolutely to be expected that they would ignore their flagship title.
That... couldn't possibly be further from the truth.
You can see on Youtube the promo video's CCP presented for that new feature back in 2007. Let me repeat that... 2007.
I'm not entirely certain what year it is now, but the vision CCP presented in 2007 looks absolutely nothing like what they actually released nearly half a decade later. Maintaining any level of excitement over a vaporware feature set, then seeing the absolute shambles of what it was released as... how could the community possibly be happy?
And that's ignoring all the overheating issues they added with their new poorly coded engine. Yes, some of those issues have been resolved, but not all... not by any means.
Further, CCP promised to iterate on their new Walking in Stations system, but the closest we've come to seeing the other portions of it is from a NY fashion designer working for Lady Gaga... apparently CCP was willing to share their product with a fashion show... but not their paying customers.
My chairman. VoV
Agree on everything the CSM is doing / done and have done what I can to bring more hits on this news through other social sites.
EVE once again is in the news, all for the wrong reasons.
CCP egos knows no bounds and that will be their downfall.
You do not know what your talking about.
Does WoW have two free expansions a year ?
Has the play style of WoW change since release?
Answers no.
They have nothing in comparrison. The players in Eve love the game they just want CCP to listen instead of concentrating on fluff to cater to the "my little poney" crowd. Like the ones who play WoW.
I play Eve and personaly I do not want it to be flooded by WoW players. Lets keep things in space. Incarnna is a fail.
You have no clue ...
We were shown videos of WiS prior to Apocrypha that featured a WHOLE STATION !!! Hillmar himself was presenting the environment with bars, palyer run shops, corporation/alliance war rooms etc. IT WAS AWESOME !!! Even then people protested against allocating DEV and server resources to this because we had performance and balance problems.
Fast forward to Incarna. We got ONE ROOM where you are alone and cannot do anything new. Badly coded as well since the performance was/is abysmal. We still have the balance problems (some got worse) but no new content and worse client performance. And declining PCU.
Now we should shut up and quielty pay for the game ? The Mittani and the CSM have my full support on this.
I have to call BS on this!
Because If this is the case then CCP will have to lose a crap load of players to satisfy your fantasy. The OP is right and its not because i have been playing the game from 2003. I dont like Goons ... never have. But the OP is on the CSM and we did elect him so he does represent the players in this regard.
And if you did not vote then dont complain about it not being so... to thoughs that have not! Because many have been to lazy to make there voices heard in CMS voteing ... but would complain about the condidates.
"Walking in stations was necessary to actually show people they had avatars and not spaceships. Despite all the vets crying it has affected them little."
Thats not it... I like the idea but not at the expence of the core gameplay. I think its important to develop this idea but not try and skin the players with the NEX $70 a pop store. They give me the feeling that i am being SHROOD HARD ... I mean $70 for an item.
But hey there is fool born everyday ... and thats there target market!
"So all in all, Mittani is right to fear what is coming, his alliance is one of the ones that will take the blunt of it, but it will open up the game to a lot more players and CCP knows they really have no choice if they intend to grow the game."
What fantastic SPECULATION on your part. If all the vets left ..what do you think would happen to the EvE economy ... and how many new players would have to replace them. ..I can see your a NEW player .. noob.
..well said Mittani ... i have already voted with my subs so i cant support you on the offical EvE forums ... GO CSM !
Even if you can not support the CSM via the official forums, you can still support this initivative by talking about it on the forums, twitter, youtube, gaming sites etc.
The Mittani did a follow up post here on how everyone can do their part. :)
http://www.kugutsumen.com/showthread.php?9644-Goonswarm-Federation-The-Last-Bastion-Of-True-Gooniness&p=295116&viewfull=1#post295116
Everything ends and I guess decline of EvE has started. Game was neglected by CCP for too long , they made wrong decisions and things that need fixing piled up tremendusly. They imho don't have enough resources avabile to bring back EvE back on rails , as they cannot and don't want to relocate resources from Dust and WoD.
Well anyway , it was nice to know you Eve. Bye bye o/
The concept was indeed sexy. it still is.
What they actually delivered was about a sexy as the 4-day old corpse of a crazy cat lady.
So I'm sorry, but no. You don't get to blame this on fickle players misleading the poor harassed developers.
Try checking out the word "deliver" - it's what you haven't done when 70 people take 2 years to produce one single small room where you can't actually do anything or see any other players, and call it an MMO expansion.
Hey now, those $70 monocles won't make themselves! :P
This is funny actualy. The core EVE lore never even discussed leaving the POD as a 'feature'. It was described as a dreadfull and unneeded ordeal for the pod pilots.
The non-avatar aspect of EVE was one of the differentiating things. You were a spaceship. Or rather a POD. There was no crew on your ship. Just an automated vessel controlled by your brain from the pod. Eternal darkness in exchange for deadly efficiency. Even the cloning system was set up to KILL you to make sure only one of your clones actualy contained the consciousnes that formed you as a player.
It is the same situation as people complaining about Wildstar Online cartoony graphics. It's a matter of taste. You cannot please everyone at once. However changing some of the core concepts of your game for that is the worst you can do.
Not to mention that anyone who's ever spent anytime camping a gate knows it's pretty much the diametric opposiite of instant gratification.
I for one are just waiting for a new shiny MMO to come out and i'll will be consigning my EVE career to the scrapheap.
I would be surprised if i was the only one in this situation
The main reason for EvE Online stalling is the totally screwed up 0.0-mechanics. People are just fed up with this supercap-crap and blob-warfare.
Back in the days there were more smaller entities in 0.0 with way more small fights... we're speaking of RMR-times here (2006).
In addition to this screwed up mechanics there's this useless Incarna-feature, that the community actually never wanted to begin with besides a few excited and very vocal players. It was clear some three years ago allready that Incarna wouldn't add any real gameplay, so the majority said: screw it.
The last thing the community is asking for years allready is to fix low-sec and make it a pirates-game again. High-sec needs to be divided by low-sec to make travelling across the universe and transporting goods a risky task again. It makes lorewise no sense that the faction-areas are not divided by atleast two or three systems of low-sec either. Back in the glory days of Yulai it was way better.
Wormholes are fine as they are with lot's of stuff to do and totally balanced by risk-vs-reward.
LvL 4 missions are inbalanced as hell aswell as NPCs dropping tons of loot. LvL 4 missions need to provide less rewards in comparison to the non-existent risk to them and NPC-lootdrops (loot and especially dronealloys) are producing way too much minerals. Mining should be the prime-source for minerals.
Shooting NPCs gives money allready aswell as salvage-parts, that should be enough allready to make it worthwile farming them.
With that being changed there would be organized mining-ops again that give those industrial players more worthwile things to do and it would aswell stop the PvP getting somewhat meaningless as prices for ships and equipment would rise again to a point where you can't loose hundreds of battleships in 0.0-warfare that doesn't make any sense. War in 0.0 should be meaningful and it should be an investment. Currently we basically throw hundreds of battleships away in some fights just for the lulz.
Mittani and the CSM basically only mind their own business when talking to CCP. They want to change the game into the direction that suits their alliances best, and the CSM basically only consists of the big 0.0-alliances as they have the biggest base of players voting yor the CSM-candidates. That's the reason why the last patches made 0.0 even more boring with the changes to supercaps and the changed sov-mechanics.
If they really anted the 0.0-game to change for the better, then they would kick CCP around for removing jumpbridges, jumpfreighters, depleting moon-minerals etc, etc, etc...
I'm still logging in and take part in the fleetfights, but I don't bother about the outcome anymore. I'm basically only logging in to speak with my long-time buddies and to get the money for my next PLEX. Sometimes we even have some fun ganking someone in a small roaming-gang, but that's rare due to the very little amount of targets these days and the current big NAPs in 0.0 don't help there in any way.
So yeah, The Mittani is asking for FiS, which is good, but he and the rest of the CSM is asking for the wrong solutions for the last three years to actually fix the game.
Having the devs work on more 0.0 crap with an unrepresentative player council colluding with the goon in charge of FiS design (CCP Soundwave) to turn the game further to their advantage is exactly the way to have the game continue to plumet.
There was a completly 0.0 focused FiS focused expansion after Apocryphia. Does "Dominion" ring a bell ? Anyone ? And the dev who ruined supercapitals in the first place is a "player" on the CSM right now...
The neglected parts of the game are highsec, lowsec not 0.0. But goons only see what goons care about.
What CCP needs to do is finish the work they've started on Incarna so that we have a playable multiplayer enviroement rather than leave yet another thing unfinished and tell the 0.0 guys to go f* themselves. Plenty of things to do in 0.0, plenty of people willing to go there if they quit (and the russians aren't going anyhwere). In the meanwhile the majority of the playerbase hasn't seen content in years.
You must have forgotten about incursions, which are often in highsec.
I for one think it's great of CCP to release things like Incarna, and DUST 514. I think it's awesome how they're actually trying *new* things.
Now, I'm not an EVE player, but seeing that they're actually adding things to the world of EVE that are not only just spaceships just goes to show CCP is a company of innovation. Innovation has long been something lost with most MMORPG companies, and I'm proud to see atleast CCP is trying something new for it's games.
Flying in ships will always be there, and it will always be a part of EVE. There's no doubt that there will be future updates on ships, and new space to explore; but until then, I don't see why people can't have the patience to let CCP try something new.
Heck, seeing all this stuff coming out makes me want to subscribe to EVE~
If by "welcome with open arms" you mean "assign new players to guard a mining op for 4 hours to do mind numbing grunt work" or scamming new players, I would agree. No group in the history of MMOs has driven more people away from MMOs then the Goons. If you are an elite in the Goons, you have a great time. Good luck being a new player.
The super-blocks have killed new players coming in. They continue to lock down 0.0 catering to the existing mega-corps. Their accounts per player is getting out of hand post-plex and CCP hasn't done a thing about banning bots except a shit load of lip service. Sneak around 0.0 and see the 50 hulk macro fleets grinding away for 20 hours non-stop.
Browse Tash Murkon region and see the same 50 bots running the same script over and over and over and over like clockwork. You have to love the same mining barge warping to belt 4 189 seconds after the server comes up then to belt 5 55 seconds later then back to belt 4 and hit the scordite at the midpoint arc and run the same macro 7 days a week, 20 hours a day.
CCP is a hostage now of it's own elite and it will choke to death without new players consistently coming in, AND STAYING.
I am working on a presentation in fact: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0wpgsPXqkH-ZGViZTE1Y2UtNTY0Ny00ZDQwLTg2OGEtMDA5NTg0OThmYTM0
It is a VERY early draft, was planning on a June or July release but what I keyed in so far may point a few things out. I have about 60 pages of notes I have to cram into the slides, revise, then lay down the presentation but in short: Eve NEEDS new players. Goon and the 0.0 super blocks are killing Eve.
Which are camped by large blob suicide gank gangs that kill anyone dumb enough to show up to try them.
"Goonswarm and TEST are probably one of the bigger reasons new players even keep trying out EVE, as they welcome new player with open arms unlike most alliances/corporations in the game."
PROPAGANDA CHECK -
GoonSwarm and TEST do *NOT* recruit players from the EVE Community. They don't "welcome new players with welcome arms". They recruit *ONLY* people who have been active members of their little troll community on SomethingAwful.com for 3 months. They only recruit little mindless workerbees who want to be popular in the "edgy" and "cool" troll community.
GoonSwarm *HATES* the general EVE Online community. They frequently call us "dumb pubbies" - pubbies, meaning "public". This outlines and illustrates that their little clique sees themselves as separate from EVE Online. And their own mission statement is to ruin the game for other players.
So please, put your propaganda away boy, nobody buys it anymore, and if anyone says something good about goons, it's because THEY'RE a goon on one of the "spy" accounts.
Goons ruin the game.