CCP lays of dozens and closes VR department

Communications Center General Discussion
#72

I hope this means they will finally tackle the big visions they once had again without distraction.

The integration of multiple games with Dust was something really new and exciting and it got a lot of interest from inside and outside the EVE community. Sadly the lock to PS3 meant that only a couple of the interested players where attracted to the product. I even purchased a PS3 to play it, and I hate consoles to the bones. But the low resolution and unresponsiveness as well as the fraking console stuff like you can’t even make it play the in-game sound over the headset and stuff just killed it for me and I never touched it again.

Let’s hope they really bring Dust back from the grave to the PC and take up again the vision of the one Universe.

2 Likes
#73

this is a sign and mean there need to come better VR/AR hardware and
that will not be earlier then 2020-2025 before enough people going to buy it to make money with it

And maybe they need to invest more in EVE because of SC

#74

It’s still sad but people saw it coming. VR just isn’t there yet. The scary part is they still hold to the FPS premise. Lawbreakers anyone?

1 Like
#75

Sad to see people losing their jobs, but also glad that this does not affect EVE itself.

#76

Nice to see a familiar face in here.

#77

I won’t be at EVEsterdam this weekend, I need to hang back and work on a few things here at the office.

Everyone else who’s still scheduled to attend will be there though.

There’s really not much else to say publicly about the situation at this stage :slight_smile:

#78

To bad, you’ll be missing out on some fun… as you probably already knew. :scream:

#79

Rumors say that CCP Phantom has been fired too. So sad :frowning:

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#80

CCP Logibro was one of the biggest supporters fo the Eve-O tournament scene, and the Thunderdome server. His loss will be keenly felt.

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#81

CCP LOGIBRO IS GONE???

NOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Logibro was my FC on Sisi during the mass test… he was the nicest dev of the ccp that I actually liked!..

CCP Seagull… give him a job… that’s fawked up… now im seriously pissed off now at CCP games and their incredible lack of vision… your visions fail… have you not thought about this… was this all a cash grab… ffs…

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#82

Dear all,

EVE is a great game. Keep expanding it and making it better. Do not kill the golden goose that you have created. Keep investing in it. There is nothing wrong with having just one goose/horse to bet on.

If CCP owners/executive team fail, one day we will have an option to buy the remains of CCP and let the devs work on the game until their and our retirement ;). Maybe we should already start organizing an effort to buy out EVE from CCP :wink: to make it even in that aspect a community driven company ;). I will be happy to invest few thousands bucks in such shareholder structure.

best,
LastGold

#83

Dear CCP

Several years ago at Fanfest (probably after the Summer of Rage) Torfi stood on stage and said “we are going to be laser focused on Eve”.

Perhaps after yet more failed projects and more staff put out of work you will finally figure out that it is the best thing you can do.

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#84

They wasted a MASSIVE amount of cash chasing a VR dream that is years from being anything other than a gimmick. We have plenty enough information to make that judgement. With that said at least they’re trying. You can’t be a trail blazer without making a few wrong turns… I wonder if it’s too much to hope CCP put full attention back on the game that brought them here instead of rinse and repeat scratch and sniff canned laughter for the masses. I for one am glad this VR nonsense is over with for now.

6 Likes
#85

This is right. The board decides and often comes up with crazy ideas that they read in magazines while waiting at the dentist. This is why some companies get the ■■■■ rid of the boards!

In case of VR, the decision factor was, is and will be very simple:

is it better and cheaper to play a game on a VR set, and can you create an insanely great product around it?

…especially considering the fact that gaming requires extremely quick reactions (like in sport) and evolves more and more towards team collaboration and PvP; or is it better and cheaper to run a game on three 4K gorgeous screens and a mouse+keyboard !

Can you imagine playing a game with a VR set where you need to input sometimes 5-10 actions in a split of a second in a PvP situation (Ouch… my neck, can’t turn my head anymore !) ? No Way Jose !

For me the answer is clear: NO, you can’t beat a screen/mouse/mechanical keyboard combination.

Now for the 100 CCP people who were dismissed (I still cannot believe that they hired 100 people for this VR garbage, what a blunder!) I am extremely happy for them because now they have the opportunity to find a real job and if its in software they can now finally do something useful (tip: for example work on EvE online) !

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#86

So Sion Kumitomo was right.

And was libeled and banned from the CSM for telling, what we now know to be, the truth!

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#87

Actually, yes, you can beat a mouse/keyboard combination. You just need a game that doesn’t require the player to input 10 actions/second. It’s been done before: there have been some great flight simulators that require a great joystick, and playing these games with a joystick was arguably much better than mouse/keyboard.

They were trying this with Valkyrie, and the control interface for that game was actually good. Don’t imagine playing EVE with a VR set, CCP isn’t trying to do that. They’re trying to diversify, and that means they just need to make a POPULAR, profitable game, not necessarily related to EVE in any way.

Valkyrie was more a proof of concept rather than a full, quality game, and the VR sets are too expensive right now for the visual quality they provide. I would definitely pay $700 for a 4k-equivalent surround visual experience, that would be awesome. I don’t play phone games, but a lot of people do, and for example Darkest Dungeon is a pc-like game that’s been ported (finally) to the phones and is pretty cool. But CCP doesn’t have to make an EVE game for phones, they just have to make a good phone game.

#88

The next iteration in VR needs to have MoCap and Facial Recognition built into it, and made small enough to wear like a pair of glasses. Eve needs to focus on Story, Advertising, Immersion… Movie or TV series might be a good play. Tie in the Story to in game Events and you could draw a lot of ppl into the game to be a part of the Story. CCP Falcon I would love to chat with you some time and pick your brain on some of the fuzzier outliers in the EVE Cannon. I have a lot of great ideas for story arcs! Best of luck CCP.

#89

We just want quality games, not proofs-of-concept. CCP can do the quality, their technical and artistic talent pools are excellent, but they need to put in the effort to release full games. Aim for at least 200 hours of playtime, for a single-player / offline game, for example.

There’s also the problem that any toy will get stale after a while, and we can PVP across the same space for quite some time, but eventually what’s the point? I think the wormhole expansion was great because it added new areas to explore and abuse, but more importantly I think that CCP needs to periodically enlarge the galaxy like that and tie-in new things for high-, low-, and null sec groups / alliances to do / explore / exploit. If they want this game to stay alive, they need to periodically refresh it with new areas or things to catch our interest.

And, if this were Blizzard or EA, the wormhole expansion would have been a paid expansion. New zones to explore, new gameplay, definitely would have charged a box price for it. Citadels aren’t like that; they’re new toys, technically, but they’re more of a re-work of the basics of the game to move towards player stations rather than NPC stations. Hopefully once they’re done with it, they unlock the map for dynamic sec-status and/or add new solar systems for us to play in. Paid expansion, hopefully worth it, so the need to come up with other games isn’t so strong; maybe they can just do expansions that are games unto themselves, get their profit / growth that way.

#90

I would suggest that it is too late then. You are no an entrepreneur at that point, but a follower. An entrepreneur is one who leads innovation vs. following it.

Were the early innovators in the home PC market waiting for people to start buying home PCs? No, because there were no home PCs to buy. Similarly with video game consoles. When Atari first came out with Pong there were not thousands of games? No.

Your approach is not innovative nor entrepreneurial, sorry.

Again, not innovative, IMO. This is doing the same-old thing. Something like what they seem to be doing, implement structures that can essentially side step that code and move forward without having to unscramble the omelette. so to speak, may be the better approach…or not. Innovations can and often do fail.

Large companies with an enormous library of intellectual property are usually going to be far, far less innovative. Spending resources to protect that intellectual property is often a preferred strategy. Case in point, may Sonny Bono burn in hell for eternity. Such companies become bureaucratic and sclerotic.

My point is if you are going to get in on at the beginning of something big, you have to be out there doing stuff that 99% of people find to be a complete waste of time. CCP rolled the dice on VR and it came up snake eyes.

#91

Sadly, just heard from another source, Shadowcat too. This makes me really think about the future of the German community and localization…

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