Possibly not, but I wanted to make sure it got noted that no, the guy who ‘suggested’ it did not think that was a good idea. It was very much a ‘yeah, remember when the Drone Regions had that, and they were shitting out supers? Imagine how that’d go now…’
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Words to the effect of “we don’t have any data on that” come up a worrying amount of times here…
I’m not really happy about the huge focus on new player retention either, you should have fixed the tutorial a long, long time ago, why am I still hearing about this? It’s not unusual for an MMO to redo the tutorial at some point but there’s typically nothing actually wrong with the old one and they just want to make it a bit flashier so it shows off features/gfx enhancements that have since been added. This is how you like to say the “industry standard”. This game is what 16 years old? and the tutorial still isn’t just bad, it’s not even accurate!
More to the point what exactly is the point of trying to retain players for 30 days only for them to then find out everything beyond that is half-finished ideas that are half-implemented then forgotten about?
Most worrying of all is the complete lack of vision on display here, please don’t fob us off with that “it’s a surprise” line, the only MMOs that don’t have roadmaps for everyone to see are the ones in maintenance mode and that’s not a vibe you want to be giving off right now…
Please finish tiericide.
Please do monthly balance patches.
Please revisit old content, spruce it up a bit and bring rewards in line with the modern game.
NPE Protip: After the fancy intro most modern games begin with something like “press WSAD to move” as gamers we all know this and it comes as no surprise that we press WSAD to move, if you’ve never played a game before in your life however, this is a rather important hint.
Now the problem with EVE is that it doesn’t really control like any other game (or like a trailer will have most people imagine) so even experienced gamers will probably have a hard time just figuring out how to move around and the current NPE comes at this all wrong. You need to get the player feeling like they are flying the ship and in control in the first 30 seconds, having them click tooltip prompts to do things does not achieve this.
Using tooltip boxes to move/warp you around is a terrible idea because that isn’t how you normally move/warp around.
You need to actually show people how to play not just herd them through the NPE with as few bumps as possible (though I’m sure it looks great in the data because it takes you longer to realise you have no idea how to play :D).
Most criminal of all though you never show players that zooming out and holding down the approach key and double clicking is the actual way they should be flying most of the time, imagine the first FPS you ever played only tells you about the fire button…madness!
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It might be a smooth and long climb but that fact it’s on Mars somewhat adds to the challenge… 
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Ok… so… you are writing the entire NPE here?
You seem to be thinking that most MMOs aren’t in this state, just because CCP are actually honest about why they are redoing the tutorial doesn’t make them worse than the industry standard, just because they publish the actual retention rate doesn’t make them horrible.
And honestly all the MMO’s I’ve played, basically none of them actually had any kind of roadmap, they might tell you the area of the next expansion… but that’s easy to do in a gear treadmill MMO when a new expansion doesn’t have to be balanced against existing content because it simply replaces the old end game with all new content.
In short, you seem to be a bit lost as to the true state of the industry, and especially as to why EVE is different in it’s development.
If CSM didn’t know about blackout, then even CFCCP doesn’t care about CSM, and I don’t know why should we.
If CSM knew about blackout, they are just as guilty and useless as CFCCP.
#AbolishCSM
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Then he and the CSM who came up with this OM-metaphor should use a different mountain for his metaphor. Just because Olympus Mons is taller or wider or larger does not mean it’s a more difficult experience. This very same approach (ever bigger, ever more, ever greater) has brought us to this point where people throw around the biggest things in EVE (synonymous with the biggest, tallest mountain in our solar system) like candy on Halloween.
I’d suggest the Jupiter moon Io is a better metaphor for how to make EVE better. With its treacherous surface and wild volcanoes it stands for an EVE where you have to take anti-stress prescription drugs for every step, every turn you take. It offers some calmer areas where you can start out but also lots of adventurous and dangerous places where you have to be on your toes 110% of the time.
Yeah. But keep reading, They go on to explain their analogies with more detail. :
CCP Muppet Hunter mentions that it may not need to necessarily be Mount Olympus but rather something like the seven summits that many of these people take on in real life.
CCP Burger […] goes back to the Mount Everest analogy and says that there are factors such as weather that the climbers need to take into consideration, and that adds a new dynamic to the situation. He says that a lot of the Chaos Era stuff is like this weather without any agency. He says that it is not necessarily a healthy chaos as there is no way to master it or predict it.
[…] (emphasis added below)
CCP Hellmar refers to the graph and says that the veterans have gotten to the point of having total control with their infrastructure and knowing everything.
[…]
CCP Hellmar talks about an idea of procedural regenerated resources and how this would cause conflict and shakeup in the game, whereas the current design of resource allocation in the game currently leads to stagnation at the heart of it all.
[…]
CCP Hellmar says that people are challenging CCP that they have no vision for the game and says that this is the vision.
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A quote from the old forums about dynamic resources:
Jekyl Eraser: Moon and planet income should be dynamic. If there is static content players will behave static after the first war.
CCP Greyscale 2011.08.03 16:39:00
I’m still yet to be convinced about dynamic resources. We generally want players to claim space, settle down, develop it etc, and if doing so means their space becomes worthless, what’s the point? Specifically with the “random moon movement” thing, I’d also be concerned that some little corp will have claimed a dead-end constellation in the middle of nowhere and developed it, only to have a major moon appear, followed by a big alliance who turfs them out to get at the moon.I’m not dead-set against the idea, I’ve just not seen a really good argument as to why it’s sensible.
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Procedural is not random however.
It uses a pattern. And often that pattern can be influenced.
However yes, it’s a valid and long brought up point any time dynamic resources are addressed.
Some people lately have suggested the point that I find good that developing space should be good for minerals, but bad for rats. So the best ratting would be in a totally unclaimed system (fallow ground), while minerals you would get a good supply of the basics in a well developed system, but you might need to hunt fallow ground for the rare minerals.
To me this achieves a good balance of the two, that small guy in a corner isn’t suddenly going to own the most valuable moon, because it’s already developed space, you might get a once off find, but a once off isn’t worth a huge war over normally.
And it still rewards developing a limited area, while putting a natural limiter on developing space because you also want to rat.
Personally I’d love more dead space that couldn’t be claimed in Null “Space weather makes Stable structures not possible in this system”. That then provide buffer zones so you don’t have to blue your neighbours, as well as breaking up empires into smaller chunks with holes through them.
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Yes, and exactly because they want to convince people that a more dynamic environment is their vision I believe that Io would be a better analogy than just a bigger but still static hill to climb. Io is a dynamic, treacherous environment with lots of things to explore and things to better stay away from if you don’t want to get burnt. With OM or even the Seven Summits, you just have the same thing in slightly different scales.
Using/Adopting the wrong metaphor for your vision already taints the confidence in their capabilities. Blackout was yet another example of this tainted confidence in action.
When was that? I’ve run across reprocessible alloys in drone sites, but I wasn’t around for whatever apparent glut of resources they provided the null blocs.
Speaking of the drone regions, does anyone get the feeling we might be seeing the new Rogue Drone faction start taking and holding territory there? It would certainly be an interesting addition to the game, and it’s not like having drones that will converse with you are without precedent.
You look different without your sled and the reindeer. I’m still waiting on that titan I asked for a few years back too before I leave any more milk and cookies out.
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Maybe because changes in those areas don’t cause 10k threads to be generated about how 30% say the change sucks, 30% says the change is awesome and 40% vote they’d kick CCP square in the balls?
NPC’s already drop minerals, just usually crap ( 40k trit or pyrite ) ones ( e.g. Sansha Hauler/Bulker) and a bunch of crappy modules that can be reprocessed down.
Well after reading through this and the meeting minutes I give this game another year or 6 months before it folds.
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This bit I found especially interesting, does CCP not look at how and where resources are harvested by the big groups?
They hold far more sov than they can possibly utilise and since Cyno changes made rescues that bit harder I’d imagine they are concentrated into a smaller area, so if procedural regeneration were to become a thing - They just move to another part of their space and farm it then move again and so on.
Alternately, they could without raising too much of a sweat just take sov belonging to small/er groups near them and as CCP have already acknowledged small/er groups to be “collateral damage” in the chaos era. . . Well. . . .
Some conflict may arise from such a change but not the sort that is needed to address the current state of things. All it would likely do is force the few remaining small/er groups to ally with the big groups.
Resource depletion and procedural regeneration sounds like a good idea but it isn’t going to be a real “conflict” driver.
this is the vision. This sends a chill up my spine every time I see it. What Hilmar seems to be missing is, it took players years with help from CCP to get to where we are now. Simple “fixes” aren’t going to have any real impact on the overall stagnation.
Without giving players reasons to want to change the way they do things all “chaos era” will do is help the largest groups further solidify their stake in sov nul.
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Having now read and reread the minutes here are my concerns:
- little or no time shows up in the minutes discussing Low-Sec
- little or no time shows up in the minutes discussing hi-Sec
- I don’t see a strategic direction for the game- Regardless of what CCP Hellmar says
- I see a lot of discussion about issues with retaining new players, but not a lot of solutions
- Yes, bots are an issue, but I don’t see any clear solutions or actions to remove them in a systematic way.
- As a solo Industrial player - I see nothing in the minutes that either excites me or scares me. Once again what I do and how I play is ignored by the CSM and CCP.
- Boredom continues
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I would be thankful at this point, it’s not mentioned …
That’s the most frightening part in all of it. No, procedural generation and more RND elements won’t solve anything. Resource depletion upon over-usage and more realism is much more important.
The goal must be that holding together a large group should become exponentially more difficult. Of course nothing CSM will ever endorse.
Yeah, they put 80% of dev power in a new NPE developed in the dark … this will fail as any attempt before, because the creative team is disconnected from the EvE sandbox. The proposal to open Abyssal instances for new players is telling the truth about this wrong direction.
Also funneling new players into the big nullsec blocs as early as possible is not the solution but one cause of the problems the game has with its demography. We don’t need more krabs and F1 pushers, who have no clue about the game, and fold the moment some inconvenience is put on the only playstyle and mechanics they were told to become good pawns.
If I would read that evidence piece of incompetence as a stakeholder, I would exchange the management.
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Many years ago.
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Glad to see the meeting minutes published.
Good to read people’s comments. I’m taking notes for my CSM report out.
Feel free to reach out directly if you have questions or concerns and don’t want to post here.
Twitter: @dunkdinkle
Discord: Dunk Dinkle#1095
Email: dunkdinkle@gmail.com
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