Was that a sideway mention that there may be a 3 dev crew working on updates/expansions for missions/sites?!!
…or was that merely for illustrative purposes? 
you tease,you.
Just illustrative purposes. I think people are forgetting the costs that CCP has to incurr in order to keep CQ alive - not improved, just “not crashing the game actively”, which is where a 3 man team previously worked. Obviously, not going to help the 100% full on space barbie players who just enjoyed the depth of the CARBON engine’s customisation, but for those of us who enjoy a more holistic view of New Eden it’s fairly important.
the problem I have is that while EVE is about epic space battles, and it’s a good idea to concentrate on those things, there are other games being developed (also understandably) outside of EVE the space ship game, by CCP, that probably don’t have much of a chance of finding the kind of longevity EVE has.
If those games turn a profit that’s justified quite solidly. Even if they don’t, there’s the soft benefit of more awareness for other CCP developments, I think? Maybe.
The development of those games outside of EVE is proof there is value in ambulation gameplay, and additions to the EVE universe. So it’s the choice to not integrate them with EVE that I disagree with.
I also don’t have much hope for games like Dust or Nova because outside of the EVE launcher, they’re just another shooter. But I would be happy for CCP if they do well, of course.
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Jin’ there’s lot’s of things in the game that have time dedicated to them purely on a maintenance level. That’s kind of a non-point really, because if CCP hadn’t decided to remove the CQ, you wouldn’t be here at all arguing it along the lines of the technical trade off in doing so.
It’s not like this resulted from a long process of discussion with the CSM.
Lot’s of things have technical trade offs. They made a decision and explained it in terms of player use and dev time. Very similar arguments could be made for other content in the game also.
Additionally, ‘purely on a maintenance level’ has also been a choice of CCP. They could have made a different choice long ago. So it’s totally understandable that there are people in the community disappointed with the actual decision made - to not continue to support a part of the game they enjoy.
Even just a couple of days ago, on Reddit you made a post in relation to PVE revamp that many in this thread feel probably should have applied to the CQ as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6yg4uo/a_plea_for_a_revamp_of_pve/dmon5gc/
Keep the current content until/while additional/new development occurs. That CCP walked away from the CQ, without any plan or time on the roadmap to develop a new version, is sad for the game - irrespective of whether you are in favour of avatar play or not. Any time promises are completely abandoned by CCP is a bit of a downer.
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It has been a long discussion with CCP actually. They came to us with the suggestion, and we asked important things such as if this would make it more difficult to implement CQ in the future. We’ve discussed the pros and cons with them extensively for the past 8~ months.
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Ok. I stand corrected on that then.
I seem to recall a CSM member saying the CSM had no prior knowledge of the announcement.
That almost in some ways makes it worse. So the CSM was consulted for 8 months on this change and not one of them consulted with other people in the community, even in a non-descript way?
No wonder many people see the CSM as a useless construct.
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That is a kind of weird analogy you’re trying to make. Belt rats and old AI needs next to no active maintenance, whereas CQ required very active and involved technical resources to keep at a “Not crashing the game” level of functional. If CQ had taken a days work a month or something similarly low to keep active, I would have fought to keep it, but that was simply not the case.
Yes, it sucks that CCPs approach to long term development is “Wait for it to get so bad that we can rip it out and replace it, and therefore market it as a new feature”, but that’s unfortunately a symptom of having a game that’s too big for it’s development team. There’s nothing we can really do to fix that in the near-mid term, unless someone wants to casually throw CCP enough RL money to hire 6-7 new feature teams.
You recall incorrectly, we discussed this at the last summit of CSM 11. Unless they were a new entrant in CSM 12 in which case they may not have been aware, but they should have been reminded in the weekly meetings leading up to it.
The NDA exists - we were legally forbidden from doing so unless CCP either A) told us to, or B) revealed it themselves.
Only if you want to misunderstand the point.
I understood the point, but did you understand the scale?
Yes, it’s the inability of the CSM to adequately consult with the same people they all claim during elections to want to represent, that make the entire idea of a CSM pointless.
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I would be satisfied if my EVE characters are integrated into Nova in a meaningful way. As in their likeness is preserved, as well as their name and corp history or any other token gestures that cross over between EVE and Nova through RP and their appearance.
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Jin’, based on the CSM minutes I honestly don’t put much stock in anything you might write in relation to the difficulties or otherwise of the technical side of the maintenance.
Steve. Totally.
You. no. And that’s not trying to insult you. No one can know everything about everything. I think you do a great job in relation to other aspects that you are knowledgable of. But technical aspects of the coding requirements and maintenance requirements, not so much.
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I’d imagine that being able to talk to the team and ask them “How much time will this take you over the course of a month” is an adequate assessment of the time taken to keep a feature functional. I have worked with coders before, I just don’t know how to do it, or any technical details behind it.
The CSM’s interaction with the community is primarily based on things that are already in the game and helping CCP prioritise fixes/problems properly in that regard, which is something I think we do reasonably well, alongside gathering feedback on changes/new features like this.
The NDA shield is used to allow the CSM to work as a focus group/sounding board inside CCP for new ideas to gauge a reaction from the community overall.
Sure and that’s great you think so. However, I’m still allowed to have a different view on that and to look to other members of the CSM in relation to those issues.
In the same way, I wouldn’t place as much stock in anything Steve offers on nullsec conflict, though he’d be the first I’d look to read in relation to industry, etc.
Different people bring different experience, knowledge and skill to the table for discussion. We are all free to rate those skills and knowledge how we see fit. My view doesn’t have to align with yours and don’t be insulted if it doesn’t in relation to this issue. You’re great in other areas.
Overall though, 8 months of CCP engagement with the CSM on removing the CQ, with no wider engagement is pretty crap; and I’m not one of the people upset about the CQ removal. I accept CCP’s reasoning on it.
I just think it’s crap that CSM candidates write threads in the forum about how consultative and collaborative they will be and then turn around and say, well we discussed it for 8 months, but NDA durr hurr. However, that is off topic for this thread and I’m clearly not the only person with this view. It’s been discussed to death everywhere.
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Fair enough, thank you for being respectful.
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I don’t think it’s just ambulation and CQ that suffered, or has suffered. For a space ship game the ship animations are oddly limited. The blackbird and its variants have those two eyelash antennae things that wander up and down but their animation is hardly meaningful.
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Well, from the devblog, team Trilambda spent 4-6 weeks per year maintaining the art assets for the CQ prior to its removal.
So whether it’s CQ, animations or other art related work (and you would know the effort required on 3D assets, animation, textures, etc. better than most of us), at least there’s more time for SKINs now that can be monetized.
/s
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Ugh skins. Great little moneymaker if they took down old offerings from the NES. To prevent market saturation.
So my knowledge of the pipeline at CCP is limited, for any game for that matter, but relatively speaking, the pace of new stuff is just… oddly slow. Other games have cinematic short films and animated advertisements in general, and on a regular basis.
A 3D HMD game like Sparc would take maybe six months as an indie game, and I recall Hilmar announced the concept back in 2014? It turned out just how I imagined it would, like a 3d Ping Pong clone.
I’m just underwhelmed.
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