Mark your "boxes" CCP!

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
21

Sorry guys, despite all the propaganda that CCP’s Customer Support (which is a joke in itself) constantly spouts, I don’t believe it…

There’s much more to it, especially if you consider the fact that most of the ships and modules in Eve were written in that old code yet CCP can easily change them with no problems… Not to mention all the systems, planets, security levels, game mechanics, etc were also written in that old code yet CCP can still easily alter and change them as well…

Besides that, most of those old Dev’s are probably still alive and could be paid as independent contractors to do it…

The main reason CCP doesn’t do it is because they’re money hungry and don’t want to spend the time and money to do it… Most likely their bean counters have also said it would require shutting down the game for an extended period of time which would result in them losing more players…

I know some of the CCP fanboys won’t accept the reason I stated above but it’s a lot more feasible than the ‘Nobody understands the old code which will break the game if messed with’ excuse.

3 Likes
22

Well said DMC, however just for the sake of argument, let’s assume it is true, are they saying they are too incompetent to understand the old code and too unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources to understand it? :thinking:

To be honest this sounds even worse than if they just said “nah we don’t want to spend the money”. At least to me the latter is less bad (but ofc still bad enough to blame them for it).

:psyccp:

2 Likes
23

It’s probably a combination of everything but I think the overriding factor is money, A big majority of game changes are graphics, which is just window dressing… Basically they just keep putting more Icing on top of Eve’s little Cake to make it appear better.

Bottom line is CCP invests the least amount possible into the game to keep it going while constantly pushing sales for PLEX, Ship Skins, SP’s, etc…

So yeah, I don’t believe the excuse that nobody knows how to work their ‘Legacy Code’ crap which will break the game if messed with, especially since they constantly mess with it for all their game changes.

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24

Isn’t CCP or PA yearly financial reports public info? I seem to have read on these very forums they make a couple dozen mils of profits each year. So assuming that is true I’m pretty sure they could afford even an entire team of programmers for the duration (even if entire years) of the task and still barely notice the difference in their bottom line. :thinking:

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25

Surely money can’t be the issue?

I read somewhere recently that they made over $50m last year alone so I’m sure they could hire someone competent enough to go through the code and start to rewrite it all, or at least unravel it.

Was it this bad when Seagull and the guy before her were running the show? I don’t think so.

Plus we had far better updates through the year.

3 Likes
26

Except you’re forgetting the context of the magic word - ‘Profits’…

Basically they will do as little as possible and extract as much as possible for as long as possible to keep raking in ‘Profits’…

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27

I’m aware, that is where the part barely notice the difference in their bottom line comes in and if that is still something they go out of shape about then that is called: greed.

:psyccp:

Unfortunately not too surprising in the games industry where just the past year thousands upon thousands were fired, some cases simply just to increase their bottom line a tiny bit, yet the CEOs got a bonus in the millions.

:thinking:

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29

CCP’s mantra of ‘Greed Is Good’ hasn’t changed, even after it was publicly exposed back during the infamous 2011 ‘Summer Of Rage’…

Also @Spacetramp_Drago I believe CCP Soundwave was the Director before CCP Seagull… In fact I think the ‘Legacy Code’ myth actually started back with him… And yeah, back then Expansions and Events had a lot more substance to them…

Eventually CCP will have to invest actual time and money into the Cake of Eve, but they’ll only do that when their profit line starts dropping…

Hopefully CCP won’t wait too long to do that… Unfortunately their history warrants a different expectation…

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30

Before that probably will invest in at least half a dozen failed projects again just for “good” measure. :upside_down_face:

:psyccp:

1 Like
31

Yeah, those are Tax write-offs which actually helps them keep their profit line…

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33

One of the things that are thought at the very beginning of every programming language course is how important is for maintaining the code and its debugging when more features are added later that the developers document it at any level starting with the naming of variables, functions, classes, interfaces etc, adding of comments inside the code about its functionality and purpose etc, so when later someone else or even the original creators themselves have an easier time deciphering what the purpose of the code is and how it achieves it!

For example, in the data files of the recent monthly report, the very first row of each contains the names of variables that the data of each consecutive row is assign to. And as you can easily tell they are very well documented, just by looking at the name one can easily tell which data they contain. Here is the list with variable names for the file - kill_dump.csv

kill_datetime,
killer_corporation_id,
killer_corporation_name,
killer_alliance_name,
victim_corporation_id,
victim_corporation_name,
victim_alliance_name,
victim_ship_type_id,
victim_ship_type_name,
victim_ship_group_name,
solarsystem_id,
solarsystem_name,
region_id,
region_name,
isk_lost,isk_destroyed,
bounty_claimed

So I don’t buy any of that “all the original coders left, the knew have no idea how the old code works”!

What I agree here is that loosing a good experienced employee who not only know what he/she is doing but also knows how the company works, all the steps, the ins and outs, is a great loss, hurts the company and it takes many months even years to overcome it.

1 Like
34

The change in the code they need to do in order to warn the players about the corruption level in the system where the mission objective is requires adding few lines of code, which would look something like this in pseudocode

If (check_system_corruption_level(system = mission_system) > 0) {
// code that adds extra text after the name of the system with a warning,
// the code should allow mouse-over so the player can learn more about
// what the warning means and what to expect in the system
}

And this check up code should be inside the function that builds the mission and displays the mission’s info window!

This shouldn’t be that hard!

1 Like
35

Updating the missions and making them catch up with the rest of the game could actually be very beneficial if they do it right and my guess is they don’t know how to do it, because even that they may have changed the loot tables, the rats AI and ship composition, etc cosmetic changes the missions are the same as I remember them when I started the game in 2009!

The best thing about missions which I don’t think CCP realizes works in their favor is that they provide a very good intro learning curve for NEW PLAYERS which is what CCP needs in order to increase their profits and can provide a massive variety of objectives that can keep a lot of the players interested in playing the game rather than quitting it because they got bored!

1 Like
36

While I agree with some of your thoughts. They quit because their snowflakes who can’t win by just showing up? From the yrs of reading on the forums, that’s the general impression I get.

CCP is trying to attract the wrong crowd and killed the game in the process.