Avatar Gameplay Polls and Discussion - WiS & Beyond

[Pearl_Abyss_Diver]

You do realize they source game development out to third parties (e.g. Sumo Digital)? Not everything at CCP is developed in house.

[Trinneth]

Walking in stations was in development for five years. For some of that time dev capacity was boosted by having teams from World of Darkness work on it too.

The result was a feature so underwhelming that most players chose to turn it off.

I think most of the players saying ‘yes’ to this are both overestimating the resources CCP are willing to put into developing EVE at this stage and seriously underestimating the opportunity costs here. If that kind of dev capacity was available, think of all the features we could have instead.

[Pearl_Abyss_Diver]

That initial long development cost factored in CCP trying to build their own quickly antiquated engine. These days, for pretty much all non-Eve projects (Echoes uses NetEase proprietary graphics engine) all projects run on Unreal Engine 4.

[Pearl_Abyss_Diver]

@Trinneth

I think most of the players saying ‘yes’ to this are both overestimating the resources CCP are willing to put into developing EVE at this stage and seriously underestimating the opportunity costs here.

Another thing to keep in mind is the Pearl Abyss acquisition and the impression most of us got that they were primarily interested in an Eve relaunch into China. An additional MMORPGFPS hybrid that already has foundational gameplay developed may suit PA’s objectives in the Chinese market.

[Chance_Ravinne]

Pearl Abyss loves mobile gaming. Pearl Abyss loves the Asian market. Asian market loves mobile gaming. Asian market loves avatar gameplay.

Make the avatar gameplay A MOBILE GAME that (wait for it) OPERATES ON TRANQUILITY.

• Mobile client doesn’t distract from SPACESHIPS on desktop
• Possibility to play BOTH at the same time
• Create a rich in-station culture of NEW players, aka NOT parasitic to EVE’s existing gameplay
• Get this out the door before Star Citizen comes out in 2028

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Bataav

They did it when they introduced wormhole space. They did it when they added abyssal space.

lol, you are comparing space to a station?

@Arrendis

Because there’s no reason to make it so that people have to do it there. If they want to keep doing it the way they’re doing it, let them. Nullsec existing doesn’t mean people can’t live in highsec. J-space existing doesn’t mean people have to live in j-space.

Once again comparing space where you can fly ships and fight to empty stations where you can do nothing makes no sense.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Chance_Ravinne

Make the avatar gameplay A MOBILE GAME that (wait for it) OPERATES ON TRANQUILITY.

• Mobile client doesn’t distract from SPACESHIPS on desktop
• Possibility to play BOTH at the same time
• Create a rich in-station culture of NEW players, aka NOT parasitic to EVE’s existing gameplay
• Get this out the door before Star Citizen comes out in 2028

So its a game, where you don’t do anything but stand around and look pretty?

Player content is ERP?

[Arrendis]

@Salt_Foambreaker

Once again comparing space where you can fly ships and fight to empty stations where you can do nothing makes no sense.

And once again, you’re making that assumption that there’d be nothing to do. Lots of things can be added as options without making them ‘you must be in Avatar mode to do this’.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Arrendis

And once again, you’re making that assumption that there’d be nothing to do. Lots of things can be added as options without making them ‘you must be in Avatar mode to do this’.

When you create an optional interaction that translates to the same UI has to be coded twice, once in station and once for those who do not WiS.

The funny thing is no one can even come up with one thing that is EVE related that you would do in a station.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

Also lets not forget the char creation is too detailed to reproduce exactly; in CQ single chars lagged.

So the chars in station would be a lower res approximation.

[mkint]

So, before I unfollow this thread (this thread that I’m actually surprised hasn’t been locked yet) I’ve just got one thing.

No. No, CCP’s not doing avatar stuff. They’ve fully investigated it and decided it’s a company-destroyingly terrible idea. And they probably never will. End of story.

CCP, can this thread be locked now? Reopening closed threads or spam threads or whatever. This dead horse isn’t getting any less dead.

[Arrendis]

@Salt_Foambreaker

The funny thing is no one can even come up with one thing that is EVE related that you would do in a station.

Or, you know, you came right out of the gate with pure negativity, so it’s only the stubborn jerks like me who’ll waste our time bothering with your sorry butt. And really, why should they bother responding to you? So you can be negative some more? @whee. That’s really gonna get them flocking to entertain your petulant demands that they justify themselves to you, isn’t it?

They’ve already removed the full-physics rendering on the character models. Any new WiS would almost certain use existing, 3rd-party engines like CryEngine to do it, so set aside the crocodile tears about ‘low res’, because let’s face it, nobody believes you care about that, it’s just one more thing you get to be negative about.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Arrendis

Salt_Foambreaker:

The funny thing is no one can even come up with one thing that is EVE related that you would do in a station.

Or, you know, you came right out of the gate with pure negativity, so it’s only the stubborn jerks like me who’ll waste our time bothering with your sorry butt. And really, why should they bother responding to you? So you can be negative some more? @whee. That’s really gonna get them flocking to entertain your petulant demands that they justify themselves to you, isn’t it?

They’ve already removed the full-physics rendering on the character models. Any new WiS would almost certain use existing, 3rd-party engines like CryEngine to do it, so set aside the crocodile tears about ‘low res’, because let’s face it, nobody believes you care about that, it’s just one more thing you get to be negative about.

First, you quoted my request for a single thing to do in stations and came up with nothing.

Second, everyone who doesn’t agree is just being negative? Did it ever occur to you we saw this happen before? We remember what a total failure it was.

But we are just being negative because Johnny come lately wants to stare at his own pixel ass?

[Arrendis]

I remember what a failure the original WiS was, too. More, I remember that they half-assed it and tried to cover their asses by cannibalizing the art and development teams from World of Darkness, which contributed to the horrible mismanagement of that team, the shuttering of that project, and the eventual closure of the Atlanta office. Because no, dumbass, I’m not a Johnny-come-lately.

I didn’t ‘come up with nothing’, I didn’t address your request. I didn’t address your request because in all the threads I’ve seen you post in, all you’ve ever brought is negativity. No ideas were reasonable or decent in the wardec discussions of the CSM minutes, either, for example. Nor anywhere else you’ve posted.

It’s more than possible to disagree without being negative. It’s just not possible for Salt Foambreaker to post without breaking out the salt and foaming at the mouth about it.

Believe me, if someone wants to stare at their own pixel ass, there’s a lot of games out there where they can already do it, and do it with better pixel asses than any implementation EVE will ever see. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t buy into the original promises of WiS, like social interaction both good and bad, market trading, political intrigue, and yes, even violence in stations and out of the pod. You want to limit your gameplay, great. Feel free. But taking a massive deuce all over everyone whenever they say ‘hey, we’d like more options’ just makes you a douche.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Arrendis

I remember what a failure the original WiS was, too. More, I remember that they half-assed it and tried to cover their asses by cannibalizing the art and development teams from World of Darkness, which contributed to the horrible mismanagement of that team, the shuttering of that project, and the eventual closure of the Atlanta office. Because no, dumbass, I’m not a Johnny-come-lately.

I didn’t ‘come up with nothing’, I didn’t address your request. I didn’t address your request because in all the threads I’ve seen you post in, all you’ve ever brought is negativity. No ideas were reasonable or decent in the wardec discussions of the CSM minutes, either, for example. Nor anywhere else you’ve posted.

It’s more than possible to disagree without being negative. It’s just not possible for Salt Foambreaker to post without breaking out the salt and foaming at the mouth about it.

Believe me, if someone wants to stare at their own pixel ass, there’s a lot of games out there where they can already do it, and do it with better pixel asses than any implementation EVE will ever see. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t buy into the original promises of WiS, like social interaction both good and bad, market trading, political intrigue, and yes, even violence in stations and out of the pod . You want to limit your gameplay, great. Feel free. But taking a massive deuce all over everyone whenever they say ‘hey, we’d like more options’ just makes you a douche.

So you have no clue what people would DO in stations and instead choose to attack me to cover it up.

You know you are wrong when you can’t stay on your own topic!

[Arrendis]

@Salt_Foambreaker

You know you are wrong when you can’t stay on your own topic!

@Veskin_Sentinel

Hey!

Not my topic, Salty.

And no, I didn’t ‘choose to attack you to cover it up’. I explained why you’re an idiot. You want ‘you have no clue so you attacked someone to cover it up’, here, I’ll give you an example of that:

@Salt_Foambreaker

But we are just being negative because Johnny come lately wants to stare at his own pixel ass?

There you go. That joker has no clue, and was just trying to cover his ass. Didn’t work though, did it?

You want a list of things that could be done through a WiS system?

1. Research
2. Market Trading
3. Hacking
   3.1 Break into places by hacking the security system, steal peoples’ crap.
   3.2 Kill people by breaking into places through hacking, or just by hacking their own hangar’s automated defenses.
   3.3 Duplicate research someone else is making, and so steal yourself BPCs off their BPOs.
   3.4 Espionage via hacking.
4. Social interaction.
   4.1 The classic example is the casino, but CCP might be leery of that (though as long as the only things being gambled is ISK, via automated systems under CCP’s control, it should be fine).
   4.2 Literally every other form of social interaction known to man, conceivably.[1]

You’re the guy making a big deal about ‘did it ever occur to you that we saw this happen before? We remember…’ without, apparently, remembering a damned thing about just what they were trying to let people do. You want to know what people could potentially do in a station? Go watch the presentations leading up to the Incarna faceplant.

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1. Just doing this as a ‘you’re a capsuleer with freaking implants that let you be a ship, how hard would it be for everyone to use VR to teleconference?’ would probably make a lot of people happy, even without the rest of a station environment. But you know, once you do that much, you’ve done the hardest part, why stop there?

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Arrendis

• Research
• Market Trading
• Hacking
  3.1 Break into places by hacking the security system, steal peoples’ crap.
  3.2 Kill people by breaking into places through hacking, or just by hacking their own hangar’s automated defenses.
  3.3 Duplicate research someone else is making, and so steal yourself BPCs off their BPOs.
  3.4 Espionage via hacking.
• Social interaction.
  4.1 The classic example is the casino, but CCP might be leery of that (though as long as the only things being gambled is ISK, via automated systems under CCP’s control, it should be fine).
  4.2 Literally every other form of social interaction known to man, conceivably.[1]

1 and 2 we can do now, why would we WIS for that?
3, really, in the age of asset safety?
4 this is it, and since we already have chat, this is just looking at each other.

The whole extremely expensive undertaking comes down to staring at each others avatar.

No, -1.

[Arrendis]

@Salt_Foambreaker

1 and 2 we can do now, why would we WIS for that?
3, really, in the age of asset safety?

1 and 2: We can kill things and mine in highsec, why would we need low, null, and j-space? People want more options.
3: Maybe especially in this age of asset safety. Holy carp, gotta get rid of all that stockpiling crap somehow.

The whole undertaking comes down to more ways to keep people in EVE, instead of ‘yawn, ok, I’m’a go play something else’. Because let’s face it, the gameplay in space isn’t exactly ‘seat of your pants, thrill-a-minute’ stuff that keeps everyone riveted and unwilling to go do other things. That’s the issue that wardecs were causing: people would go do other things, and once they did, they didn’t have a reason to come back.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Arrendis

Salt_Foambreaker:

1 and 2 we can do now, why would we WIS for that?
3, really, in the age of asset safety?

1 and 2: We can kill things and mine in highsec, why would we need low, null, and j-space? People want more options.
3: Maybe especially in this age of asset safety. Holy carp, gotta get rid of all that stockpiling crap somehow .

Regarding #1, the point is it would use the exact same UI as if you were docked. You wouldn’t do it any different, WIS would add nothing special. It is not a WiS activity.

WiS doesn’t add any meaningful gameplay to EVE.

It is just not that kind of game. You might like SWTOR.

[Arrendis]

@Salt_Foambreaker

Regarding #1, the point is it would use the exact same UI as if you were docked. You wouldn’t do it any different, WIS would add nothing special. It is not a WiS activity.

That would depend entirely on how that UI was set up, now wouldn’t it?

@Salt_Foambreaker

WiS doesn’t add any meaningful gameplay to EVE.

WiS doesn’t add any meaningful gameplay to what you want out of EVE. Other people, apparently, feel differently.

@Salt_Foambreaker

It is just not that kind of game.

One of EVE’s big selling points is just how much it is ‘whatever kind of game you can make of it’.

@Salt_Foambreaker

You might like SWTOR.

The first 50 levels, yeah, that was good. Good multi-threaded storytelling there. The pre-Revan x-packs were weak. Revan and the Fallen Empire x-packs were good storytelling, but way too narrow. It lost all of the multi-threading 'this is about you, not just ‘generic hero #24’ that the first 50 levels had. All in all, not bad, but like all themepark games, way too limited.

And for the record:

@Salt_Foambreaker

4 this is it, and since we already have chat, this is just looking at each other.

As someone who’s been doing chat-rp since the late '80s[1]… yes and no. Yes, it’s just looking at each other. So what? People wanna look at one another, and it’ll keep them in the game? Let 'em. It’s a way to keep their money coming in. Adding more clothing options that aren’t just re-skins of the existing crap would already drive more microtransactions, and that’s without actually using those assets for anything.

Make those assets useful, and the people who’re buying them now will buy more. Christ, RPers are worse clothes-horses than teenage girls, they’ll devour every decent new outfit CCP can produce. And it’s not like anyone’s got room to criticize that. SKINs are just space-barbie with ships, and those are pretty damned popular especially among the ‘lolRP’ crowd.

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1. Personally, I prefer pure chat. Visuals are lazy. Gimme a good, well-written descriptive paragraph any day of the week. Unfortunately, even now, CCP’s chat system really isn’t up to the task of handling a decent-sized chat post.