Video explaining where your money is going.
This is what reddit is talking about, and I think they are right.
When you see CIG Star Citizen getting so much devs and compare numbers with EVE Online team, the numbers show that:
CCP funnels money from EVE to other projects, that then flop, because they are also understaffed.
CCP never learned anything.
CCP should develop only EVE online untill the game is a lot bigger and have more players playing good game. Instead we get this:
This message is approved by the Association of Cat Ears Lovers.
There needs to be a leadership change at the very top levels…if this was a business outside of the gaming industry shareholders would be talking about having a vote of no confidence at this point.
Oh yeah, this is genius level analysis right here.
Themepark versus Sandbox
First, different MMO’s require different amount of work, and theme park style content is generally regarded in the industry as requiring more work (and it’s why some MMO’s do a lot of recycling in order to create new content). Now, I know Star Citizen features sandbox UPvP; so, it’s not a pure them park MMO. However, it does (or had) theme park style content such as the campaign. So, it has/had more labor intensive content in it.
Scope/Feature Creep
Star Citizen has/had more types of game play / game modes (i.e. ship game play and a FPS shooter, campaign and an open world sandbox).
Graphics
The amount of work you can poor into graphics can vary dramatically, and Chris Roberts has placed an extremely high priority on high quality, realistic graphics. Without even seeing a breakdown of each studio’s staff, I’m willing to bet a significant difference in staffing sizes can be found in the graphics department. Of course, Star Citizens graphics and aesthetics are both really good, but graphics do not a game make.
Immersion
Star citizen has ship interiors and massive cities, both of which require a ton of extra work.
Redoing stuff
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t Star Citizen been in development so long that they’re redoing assets? Oh, and I’m sure it’s no big deal. But, in the interest of completeness, I thought I’d mention the fact that THEY HAD TO CHANGE ■■■■■■■GAME ENGINES. So, idk, but I’m thinking that kind of stuff will create a bunch of extra work.
Efficiency
Productivity can vary between studios and over time. Easy to use tools, familiarity with the tools/engine, optimized work flows, cohesive teams, a clear direction, good morale, and adequate rest all contribute to high productivity. While having to learn new tools/engines, tools that seemingly fight you, unoptimized work flows of inexperienced/mismanaged studios, teams not working together, the need to scrap content because it does fit with the game, or fails to meet quality standards, terrible employee morale, and burnout all contribute to a lot of wasted effort. So, you can’t just say more people = more content, because that’s demonstrably untrue. Some studios are more than capable of delivering more with less, while some bloated teams have failed to deliver anything at all.
Conclusion
You can not compare the team sizes of any two video games, and assume that one is understaffed because it has less people. Even if the games were exactly the same (i.e. genre, scope, graphics), which is a big, big “if”, there’s still the possibility that the discrepancy isn’t due to one team being understaffed, but the other team being inefficient and bloated. Speaking of which, isn’t Chris Roberts known for a being a creative type person with extremely large ambitions and terrible project management skills?
Afterthought
Now, smooth brain analysis aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some internal issues that are hurting productivity. I mean, humans are notoriously bad at estimating how much work is required to do stuff (see the planning fallacy), and most of us are at the peak of Mount Stupid when it comes to game design, buuuyuuut, it isn’t exactly like CCP has been wowing with what they’ve been delivering with the team size that they do have. Of course, they’ve also said that they’ve developed better tools that will make it easier for them to make content moving forward (i.e. tournament and live event tools). So, that does help to explain where at least some of their effort went. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no issues in that studio that need addressing.
How can you even compare Star Citizen to Eve in staff count?
In order for CCP to be as “rich” as Scam Citizen, they would need to start racking up thousands from the community - what would eve community say if CCP started selling JPGs and in game ships for thousand bucks each?
Just for reference community went up in arms here over a minor price increase in the monthly subscription - just imagine if they started instancing ships for 1,000 or 10,000 bucks each for the whales.
And where is your analysis of why CCP cant keep players in EVE. Without blaming it on players of course.
I will go there for you, where you dont seem to go for some reason.
Do not ignore the obvious. The dev teams make content, doesnt matter if its cat ears or new spaceship, you will need a person to do work. And the numbers dont work in CCP favour, when a lot of people is making a game that nobody ever played, for years. Similarly to WoD. But they change titles of the game in development this time. Its that they are too small to commit to make 2 games at the same time. SC have it easier as both their games share majority of everything, and they can do all those bad things and still get ahead where CCP could never go, still there are issues, and its still worked on on massive level, which seems to bring more money and players. Content is king, game is your content. People come for content first no matter the genre, and they can stay for people. When there will be no content, players will to play it just dries out, all players.
There, I went there for you, where you dont seem to go for some reason.
if you want to see results, you have to pump those EVE online dev numbers up, CCP. Those are rookie numbers!
CCP had less staff when the game was better.
Yeah, I saw that video and seemed kind troll-y. Even the quick assumptions on income and headcounts etc were poorly done, and leveraged to make Eve look worse. I mean, guy ended his video with his referral link so… Yeah.
However, that’s also not to say that CCP have been playing fair with their income versus development of the game. I’m the first to defend the work being done on the game’s backend - from what little I know it’s comprehensive, long-needed and does in theory set eve up for the third decade. All good stuff.
However, jacking the sub price as you come to the end of that process but before delivering any new content built off the back of this work was a serious mistake. If they’d had the balls/signoff from PA to hire the extra staff and run with reduced earnings for the six months it’s gonna take em to start delivering on the promises (and yeah, lol, still huffing that copium), THEN raise the sub price, I don’t think as many would have walked away.
As it stands though, actives are seriously low and there’s real risk of the game just whimpering out over summer before any of this work gets a chance to pay off.
Sad times my friends. Sad times indeed.
There are a lot, and I do mean a lot, of businesses that are understaffed. As I said in another thread: we often work the equivalent of two jobs in one position because the boss gets greedier by the year and doesn’t want to hire more help.
The typical exemple is the store with 15 cash registers but only one is tended. That’s just an exemple though.
But EVE isn’t a new game and even if they’re having trouble deciphering the old codes they can still do a lot of things and work aroun it, like they do with add-on stuff like Traglivian invasion.
Of course, if they’re taking human resources away from the game to work on other projects then things that are supposed to help with player retention and new players will take a lot longer to make, to the detriment of the game.
I have never blamed players for all of Eve problems. One of my arguments was that bad morale was contagious, and that it can negatively impact player retention. The other was that CCP is financially incentivized to cater to larger demographics. What you are doing is repeating Kezrai’s straw man fallacy version of my arguments.
Moreover, none of this changes the fact that there were serious flaws in his analysis.
And, not for nothing, but I do give CCP crap for a lot of things. What some people seem to brook issue with is not “the fact” that I blame the players for everything, but that I speak out against bitter vets who act like space karens, and have the audacity to question bad analysis. But they can’t really argue with that. So, they come up with straw man versions of my arguments.
Actually, side projects is no longer true.
They are just funneling money for PA all the way until the game shuts down.
That is all.
People cry and argue all the time to the point where it becomes this grey wall of terribless. It’s always the same people and the same type of players and they’re all using it to try and further their personal cause and playstyles. There is very little actual honest conversation going on and as such there is no point in even having that conversation as people are simply not willing to be honest and real.
We actually know very little on things within ccp, their goals or reasons. Anyone claiming differently is lying and should thus be ignored. Beyond that, the ragers are mostly people who’ve been playing the wrong game for way too long and instead of accepting that like adults and move on they cry like toddlers. People should probably crypost less and play more or, as said, just move on. The forums really need to become omega only, that would help.
CCP does what CCP does, like it always does and has done. Some of it outright stupid, some of it because it needed to be done even though one (who is affected) might not like it, some of it for long term viability, some of it for short term profits. It is what it is.
@Uriel_the_Flame That seal is cute.
Did you get a degree in business administration? This is really spot on to what I learned in my supply chain management classes! Logical and well thought out responses.
This should be logical to everyone and a building block of a solid cohesive team in any business.
I believe this with the lack of quality control done every patch/event realized. We can only speculate but from what I see I believe they have a management problem. Delivering perceptions to the public (us) is important. Then we speculate and keep on speculating, and it spreads to everyone. Ultimately hurting their reputation. I wonder what the business case papers look like for when CCP started these other projects.
If is a beautiful game, i think with the exception of all the nerfing they have done a pretty solid job. They could have added new more expensive ships that are only like 2 percent better to combat inflation. What they should understand though, is that a lot people just like pve and they will probably get much more players if highsec for example was pve only. And no i play in null, wh and lowsec, i hardly ever come in highsec myself. It good they are goinv to try this on the new map.
They are trying this with the China server and it is coming later to the main server where highsec will be pvp-free zone with zero conflict. There is also a longer run test project to remove all conflict in the game open world areas and focus pvp to filament instanced content for streaming and competition. Majority of players seem to want this.
You have a source for any of that?
