Or, in much simpler terms… There is a lot of features that are now present in the game for which you simply have to know the mechanics for, otherwise you are looking at potentially very costly loss.. or losses. Even the amount of that information is huge.
It’s one thing to nostalgically rant about Dense and Concentrated Veldspar, but whole another thing if you take into account that Kaolin and Argil Kylixium… or Overcast and Stormy Ueganite exist. That’s only a complexity in the naming on a single type of ore, on top of a complexity of knowing what the ore refines to. There are currently 80 variations just for ore, not including ice, moon materials, gas,… just plain ore.
Scanning used to be an art form, a skill set that had actual value both for exploration but also for covert scouts. Now it’s just fishing in a barrel, with explosives.
I think there’s still skill in scanning, even if less than before. It may be more streamlined now, but you still have to know what you’re doing to catch people who aren’t on grid with you with combat probes.
Sounds good to me, what should we do? Spam cargo containers with “Jet Can - Grade I” then name our ships, Revert it Fozzie! ? We might get some attention over this weekend, I doubt it will influence their decision. It isn’t like they asked our opinion on the change in the first place. I think I would have remembered something like that.
If you get attention at all. All of the players that I know reacted with “Finally…. It was about time.“ or with “Now to roll back mining crystals.“
Personally, I’m interested in the subject because I’m learning game design and development. It’s clear to me that this was a good decision, from game design perspective (read my longer post above, if you want to know more).
These kind of changes are what is going to kill the game. The more you change the core of the game that has kept veterans around, the less attached they become.
CCP is the worst corporation I’ve ever seen when it comes to retaining your core player base who pays all your bills. They do everything possible to drive them away.
The whole point to flavor in any game is to add immersion content. Fozzie and the other devs are removing the minutiae. This makes their job simple and easier, not the game better.
It is like some new guy walks into your corner shop and tells you he is going make things better and more simple. Then he pulls down all the neon signs and removes all the displays. Your clients come in to pick up the displays and neon signs. “What’s wrong with them? Weren’t they selling the product?”. At some point, they either demand ad space or refuse to stock your store because it looks too generic and stale. Old regular customers don’t recognize it anymore and new customers, will come in once or twice to look around, shrug, “I have seen this shop everywhere I go. Nothing new or different here.”. I have witnessed this process on other games and apps attempting to blend in or blatantly copy the others. It never works as they expected. They alienate the current base users and don’t pull in enough new blood to replace the loss.
Fozzie and others like him trot off to the next game to demolish.
Like it ever had any ? If someone told you 40 years ago that one day you’d be sitting there 8 hours a day watching a mining laser slowly grind away at an asteroid…you’d think this was probably some MK-ULTRA top secret test to see if the Soviets could be driven mad.
According to an old forum/Reddit post, there was a time when missiles used to have different, unique names for each size and damage type. The system of using consistent names for damage types (Mjolnir for all EM, Scourge for all Kinetic, etc.) was a change implemented to simplify the game.
Thanks for that - I remember the uproar when CCP introduced standardised missile naming - now I can’t even remember what each missile was called originally. Heh.
Apparently people threw a fit about the change to missile names as well
@Spacetramp_Drago they do only after they have gutted the game they are working on. Such a man is Chris Whiteside who has been employed with Guild Wars 2 among other games to “fix them”. He talks about reduction and downsizing being a good thing. We can do more with less. That is the kind of double talk he uses. I don’t know what other projects CCP Fozzie has worked on prior to Eve Online but I don’t know the man’s track record.
However, if you look up Whiteside on Google be sure you include “game designer” as there is a cricket player by that same name. I suspect most companies hire this hitman on his word and not really paying attention to what he did in the last game. Should CCP hire Chris Whiteside, the game will suffer greatly at his hand. He will just get rid of 50% of the missions and remove the unused systems too! Too many PI materials in this game let’s simply it to say twelve. He goes in with an ax and sledge, ignores the players and how they feel.
@Uriel_the_Flame the money men love hitman Chris Whiteside, he takes out the staff while slicing through the game too. I suppose that is multitasking?
