Personally I tend to use player driven resources for everything that I play; it’s very rare that I go to a developer resource for ingame stuff. There again I’m old and my gaming history goes back to heady days of cassette tapes and no documentation.
But, in CCP’s defence, how do they document a game in which unforeseen results and emergence are the norm; CCP introduce new stuff and then sit back to see what we do with it.
The majority of games have the player following a set path with very little leeway in the mechanics, and thus easy to document.
Eve is the opposite, the mechanics are looser than a wizard’s sleeve and the path the player follow is one of their own design.
A car can take you lots of places but it still have a documented list of specifications that someone can look up if they want a detail on something.
For about 2yrs they had a great system of showing you what was in the pipe. I didn’t always agree with those changes but it sure beats the way these cow boys do their “releases”.
As stated, being a weekend, we wont hear anything from CCP till at least Monday.
My take so far is the lore/bloodlines should matter to the RP crowd. CCP should have just put a bypass on the portrait part that you could come back to in the future just so ppl could take note and make the choice to speed up the making of a character or for the ppl who enjoy such things, they could complete at that time.
This has got to be a slip since as bad as CCP is at communication, this is without precedent, a new lvl of screw up for them.
Fire the team on the character creation then. They’re not making it better and money is better spent just hiring people to read the legacy code in eve and make a documentation, or something else.
@Komi_Valentine thanks for taking the time to create it. I also like the comparison with the older creator. BTW Komi I’d like your feedback on what I’ve described as two possible silver linings in my previous post.
…ok, but…What does that say about how CCP views the importance of the CSM they set up? Regardless of whether or not this feature is a A/B test put on TQ by mistake, if CCP didn’t say anything about it previously to CSM, then that means CCP doesn’t care one scrawny rat-patootie about the opinion-filter and feedback of the CSM they set up.
Obviously such a thing as changing the whole character creation process wasn’t whipped out just on Friday afternoon before COB. CCP is declaring they don’t care about the opinion of the CSM and by extension the opinions of their players.
I believe it was good ol’ Hilmar who once said “Don’t look at what they say, look at what they do” in regards to EvE players expressing their displeasure at CCP’s actions. By not saying anything about such a big change in the structure of EvE that has stood/been built on for the past 17 years (and it’s not going to just affect RP, there are major effects on the groundwork of the game at stake here) CCP is loudly declaring their choosing to go to…a very different route as far as communication with their players.
Would love to see the ship skin system actually be used. It’s another great idea that wound up looking half-assed because CCP wanted the real money portion of the store, but didn’t want to upset the players who weren’t interested in skins. Now they just poke it with a stick once in a while to see how it affects logins and PLEX purchases. I don’t mind it being in the game but they could at least act like they want it to be in the game. There are a number of skins I’d drop PLEX on, but they aren’t available on the ships I want them for (Aurora Universalis Orca please). Making skins unique to Caldari, Amarr, etc. I can see. Making them unique to Capitals, yes. Making them unique to one specific ship is pushing the limit. Limiting them to T1 variants is lame. At the very least they could use a hue shift and make a different version of the Aurora Universalis skin for the Vexor hull, and let it be applied to the Ishtar. Oh, and anyone who happens to like the Keres or similar ships apparently can just **** right off.
They need several devs dedicated to ship skins if they wanted to make it integrate well into the game in a manner that also allows for cash-shop purchases to increase.
Sadly, I’ve seen this all too much in other games. Part of the “scarcity & chaos” model. Give the players what they want, but only for a limited number of a type of item, because apparently studies show that people will keep paying subs, keep buying cash shop items, etc. if there is “hope” that the item they want a skin for might get it in the future. Some games thrive financially by teasing the players who are “completionists”.
Much as I cannot stand some aspects of Eve, I wish it was Eve that would be the one to say “no” to the cash-shop whale farm and strike out and do something really radical: Make a game that focuses on quality, not some invisible investors ROI.
The problem is that doing anything about it requires throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It’s like, yeah, we can get unhappy with something CCP does, and stop paying subs, and then the game gets all ■■■■■■ up because of it, which is something we don’t want.
How are we supposed to punish CCP without hurting EVE in the process?
I was not here at the beginning. First joined around 2010. While the game was rough, it did seem, at the time, like the company was focused on making a great game. I’m sure there are differing opinions on it, but regardless of the truth about their influence being used inappropriately, the CSM was an idea that made it feel like the devs both cared about the game, and cared about what the players thought.
Compared to a number of other games I’ve played, CCP really seemed to make an effort to listen to the players feedback. The recent reversion of the drone changes is an example (yes, I realize not everyone was unhappy about the drone changes, but CCP clearly felt there was merit to reverting them.)
The unfortunate thing is that currently, CCP has joined the trend of having the official forums be just a placeholder. A checkbox on the list of things to use in a sales pitch “we have our own forums where people can talk to and get feed back from the devs and other players”, meanwhile the company let’s reddit handle the real work.
tl;dr: yes, it seemed that way when I originally joined, but not anymore.
At least I caught that! 