Remember the "dedicated balance team" ccp promised last summer? CSM member reveals ccp ***canned it

[Mr_Lopez]

You can determine success multiple ways. I think the two here we are having a discussion about are frequency of use and the number of people using it. Both burners and incursions are run all the time. But by how many people is the issue. The amount of people constantly running incursions is small in comparison to those who do other forms of pve taken as a whole. So I suppose you could look at it from at leased these two standpoints and say it is both unsuccessful in scope but successful in its constant use.

In short these two pve activities and not a massive group and are just a drop in the bucket and overall though some complain there isk being made outside of null. no risk no risk!. There are not a tremendous amount of people doing them yet there are being done all the time.

And the reason you detailed in your post and that I quoted explained why from a overall numbers perspective they exclude most of the player base (though I didnt at the time of my post see there was more than one way to quantify success or failure in this instance). That being expense, skills, travel and reliance on strangers for incursions.

[Yiole_Gionglao]

I think that one of them doesn’t pretends to like his coffee a strong, hearty roast while drinking milky, sugary caffe latte.

[Ramona_McCandless]

I think that is an accurate assessment.
However, to get lots of challenging difficult stuff done well, a milky, sugary caffe latte is just right.

[Corraidhin_Farsaidh]

Add a sprinkle of cinnamon to perk you up as you go

[Ramona_McCandless]

What an odd way to spell Bailey’s, but yes.

[Gadget_Helmsdottir]

–Gadget likes less sprinkles and more banana liquor

[Zircon_Dasher]

@Jenn_aSide

CCP has been responding to these unrealistic PVE player demands since 2009 starting with incursions where the “pve community” shouted “give us group content!!!”.

Result: Most players quickly ignored to go right back to solo mission running for less income than they cold have made incursion running.

Source?

@Jenn_aSide

The vocal pve community says “give me a challenge instead of these weak NPCs”.

Result: CCP responds with Burners and Drifters and null sec officer spawns that can kill carriers (before they were ush overs) and all kinds of things like that.

The first part i quoted had a logical format: Player request ----> CCP response ----> Outcome.

This part is in the following format: Player request ----> CCP response -----> ???

What is the outcome? Oh, and can you include some evidence for this one too?
Cheers!

[Jenn_aSide]

The outcome was obvious (and would be easier to see if one doesn’t decide to nitpick uselessly). The burner community is small and the drifter community is non-existent save for ONE group that runs drifter wormholes (They are mentioned in this thread about tanking drifters).

As for proof regarding the incursion assertion, You can gather this yourself via dotlan maps and looking at the statistical dips in npc kills when incursions were introduced (November 2010). People tried incursions, and quickly abandoned them. a few years ago there was a post by CCP quant expressing surprise at the fact than at most on any given day only 1.5% of logged in players would participate in incursions. Another post mentions the fact that almost 20% or so would run missions and even more would mine in the same time frame.

(I don’t have the source saved but the general gist was saved by a poster I actually didn’t care much for who put it in his signature thinking it made a point…that it did not lol. You can read that sig here.)

CCP Quant: Of all those who logon in Eve, 1.5% do Incursions, 13.8% PVP and 19.2% run Missions while 22.4% mine.

---

The point of it all is that is something Yiole Gionglao alludes to a few posts up about coffee. Bottom line is that people are horrible and understanding what they want.

In his TED Talk on spaghetti sauces, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the food industry made a big mistake asking people about their preferences and conducting focus groups. Gladwell says that “The mind knows not what the tongue wants. […] If I asked all of you, for example, in this room, what you want in a coffee, you know what you’d say? Every one of you would say ‘I want a dark, rich, hearty roast.’ It’s what people always say when you ask them what they want in a coffee. What do you like? Dark, rich, hearty roast! What percentage of you actually like a dark, rich, hearty roast? According to Howard, somewhere between 25 and 27 percent of you. Most of you like milky, weak coffee. But you will never, ever say to someone who asks you what you want – that 'I want a milky, weak coffee.’”

In this context, you can see PVE players do the same thing. PVE players tend to ask for ‘more immersion’, ‘better pve’, ‘dynamic pve’, ‘procedural generated PVE’, ‘more interesting AI’, ‘group content’ and the like.

But what they DO is mine, and run missions, do exploration and farm anomalies even though this game has added since 2009 (me takes deep breath):

Incursions
Drifters/Drifter Wormholes
NPC Mining operations
FOBs
Sotiyos
Resource Wars
Clone Soldiers
Burner Missions

Me? I’ve embraced my “weak, milky” nature. I farm anomalies and run non-burner mission and feel no need to lie about it…

[Tipa_Riot]

Hey, I like hunting Clone Soldiers.

Seriously, I see the Clone Soldiers on the positive side. It’s accessible content, easy to kill in PvP ships, good sustainable reward (well balanced), can facilitate PvP. Much like the event sites.

[Fluffy_Moe]

@Tipa_Riot

Hey, I like hunting Clone Soldiers.

Seriously, I see the Clone Soldiers on the positive side. It’s accessible content, easy to kill in PvP ships, good sustainable reward (well balanced), can facilitate PvP. Much like the event sites.

Yup, same here. Whenever I have the time if I go to LS for anom or whatever, I swing by the belts and pick the ones that are tehre. often none, but sometimes, just sometimes I get a couple in a row.

I also like burner missions because they’re relatively quick to complete. I’m not pro at them like some people, lose a ship here and there, but hey

Incursions, FOBs are useless content to me due to its lack accessability. Few years ago when I had vastly more playtime available and there were a lot more groups doing them I have done some as well, but not since then. FOBs are to steep in reqs / grouping for me to do.

Mining / Indy crap, all the mining stuff and resource wars as it is is useless to me. I am now purely a combat player with a little bit of hauling on the side, largely of my own stuff.

Drifters / Drifter wormholes, to steep all around, inaccessible, double that for WHs. If I go to WHs its only for some explo in an explo fit ship or on super rare occasion to get an alternate route somewhere, not looking to fight drifters.

[Baba_Ji]

Coffee black,no sprinkles for me lol
On rare occasion real molasses sugar.
Several times a year from company in Hawaii. Its expensive beans,but I don’t mind it. Great for company during holidays. Always gets a good comment.

Oh Ya Balance?
Not happening

[Jeremiah_Saken]

@Jenn_aSide

Me? I’ve embraced my “weak, milky” nature. I farm anomalies and run non-burner mission and feel no need to lie about it…

Since you avoiding answering my question I assume you don’t do exploration at all, yet you keep rejecting every idea to improve it just because your aproach on pve ends with anomalies and missions. That is the real problem pve in this game is so crap. CCP listen to the wrong people. You were the part of pve roundtable about RW which became huge failure. Maybe CCP should start to listen players with ideas like mine instead taking feedback from players like you? Because nothing change here, we still get a content for nobody.

My exploration idea does not change base principle of the exploration mechanism, you still have to scan, hack site and still be vulnerable to hunters. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Immersion is huge thing in gaming industry. CCP know it is. We have Caroline Star event, Kyonoke plage with LARP on fanfest, there are plans to improve visuals of planets, stations and gates to mimic “living breathing world”. So, you just don’t see it. Think outside your anoms for some time, just because you like it doen’t mean other areas of pve should not be improved.

[Jenn_aSide]

The idea that somehow adding random crap is going to help is nonsense. Walking in stations level nonsense.

(Disclaimer to the fine folks at CCP, im going to say some harsh stuff, I mean no harm but I see this as the truth)

CCP doesn’t DO ‘immersion’. The one thing, the only thing that CCP has ever really excelled at was providing an environment for people to play in and tools for them to use to manipulate that environment (and each other).

EVERY…SINGLE…ATTEMPT… to do something other than that, to ‘improve’ and ‘expand’ the game and the company have failed. Walking in stations, atmospheric flight, DUST and the DUST/EVE link, WoD, making the game ‘easy to learn, hard to master’, sparc and many other side projects, maybe even Valkyrie and “project legion” that no one even talks about anymore. ALL of it failed or floundered.

But the basic in environment, and tools to manipulate it? That’s still going strong 15 years later. EVE’s PVE, meaning the PVE people actually do is all ‘environment and tools’ with very little immersion value other than that which an engineer experiences when deep in thought about new ways to make and break things.

Anomalies and missions and things like FW missions and plexing are the most popular PVE despite being lower paying on an individual basis (you can make way way more doing burners, or farming incursions, or blitzing lvl 5 missions) than other content because they appeal to sandbox players who generally don’t give a damn about ‘story’ and ‘immersion’ but who appreciate ‘simple’ and ‘soloable’.

Same with mining and exploration. Nothing is more boring than mining, yet a full 1/5th of people playing EVE will do some mining while logged in, because while mining sucks, building a mining operation or using minerals gained by mining to do industry doesn’t suck, it’s fun.

Nothing in your idea hurts anything I guess, but it’s useless and CCP shouldn’t be spending time adding random crap to things because people are bored looking at the same scenery. If you want immersion you should probably be playing a different type of game made by a bigger company with a track record of providing immersive content.

CCP can’t provide you what you want even is they wanted to. The past proves this.

[Nana_SkaIski]

@Jenn_aSide

EVERY…SINGLE…ATTEMPT… to do something other than that, to ‘improve’ and ‘expand’ the game and the company have failed.

Its not only about EVE.

Just how CCP Leelooo said with a bit accusational tone to “powers that be” inside CCP.

it’s easy to turn to a blank page but it’s very hard to change how your handwriting looks

What is with that?:

@Jenn_aSide

(Disclaimer to the fine folks at CCP, im going to say some harsh stuff, I mean no harm but I see this as the truth)

These fine folks, you mean who? Hilmar? He priced monocles at $70 saying to dev who have done pricing “you have no balls” and told lore team to write PR stuff for him when players raged. How is he fine???

[Jeremiah_Saken]

@Jenn_aSide

Anomalies and missions and things like FW missions and plexing are the most popular PVE despite being lower paying on an individual basis (you can make way way more doing burners, or farming incursions, or blitzing lvl 5 missions) than other content because they appeal to sandbox players who generally don’t give a damn about ‘story’ and ‘immersion’ but who appreciate ‘simple’ and ‘soloable’.

Wrong. They do them because there is nothing to choose from and there is no immersion in this content. My ideas doesn’t change it from simple and soloable, it’s still the same content, only in more engaging package.

@Jenn_aSide

CCP can’t provide you what you want even is they wanted to. The past proves this.

The past proves they were listen to the people like you and that didn’t take them anywere. We got RW and it’s part of your fault because you were providing feedback about it. So sorry, I don’t take your arguments into consideration, because they prove to be wrong. It’s your own words “players want…”. It seems that what player: Jenn_aSide want and gave feedback about doesn’t work either. Maybe it’s time to change course.

[Jenn_aSide]

@Jeremiah_Saken

Wrong. They do them because there is nothing to choose from

I made a list of some of the things there are to choose from, it’s like 5 posts up and inculdes things like FOBs and Incursions. People choose anomalies and (non-burner) missions and mining and exploration content.

The past proves they were listen to the people like you and that didn’t take them anywere. We got RW and it’s part of your fault because you were providing feedback about it. So sorry, I don’t take your arguments into consideration, because they prove to be wrong. It’s your own words “players want…”. It seems that what player: Jenn_aSide want and gave feedback about doesn’t work either. Maybe it’s time to change course.

The above is stupid. RW wasn’t even announced or mentioned during the last teamspeak roundtable I attended. How can i provide feedback about something I wasn’t told was going to exist. Even if they had told us, it’s high sec content, I would have had nothing to say about it (other than “it’s not a good idea”).

BTW, it’s really dumb to post about what I said in a meeting you didn’t attend… This is why I generally avoid responding to the nonsense you post, because it’s worse than misinformed. Again, Im sorry your idea has no merit, but it doesn’t. You are barking up the wrong tree. If you don’t like exploration, find something else to do.

[Jenn_aSide]

@Tipa_Riot

Hey, I like hunting Clone Soldiers.

Seriously, I see the Clone Soldiers on the positive side. It’s accessible content, easy to kill in PvP ships, good sustainable reward (well balanced), can facilitate PvP. Much like the event sites.

And nothing is wrong with any of that. I like events like Crimson Harvest for the same reasons. Not talking about individual likes and dislikes, talking about ‘general direction’ here. It’s ok to add little side content like that once in a while to spice things up.

The problem is that (as indicated in the Massively article I linked earlier) the entire pve focus is wrong.

My opinion is that it’s wrong partly because PVE players have continually asked for it (making CCP think there is a large ‘market’ for that kind of content when in fact very few people stick to it long term). Like how a tiny vocal minority had CCP pursuing walking in stations, which would have probably been another play station home-like burnout.

And also partly because CCP is a business and people who work for it need to be constantly seen to ‘innovate’ and ‘explore new ideas’.

No one at CCP is going to get promoted or even be given a raise if all he or she says is “you know guys, we need to add more missions and anomalies and different kinds of rocks to mine and maybe a new exploration site or 2 from time to time”. That’s not sexy or exciting.

Apparently , “I gave people more of what their in game PVE actions demonstrate they actually wanted” is not good resume material for someone trying to get hired by Riot games

[Yiole_Gionglao]

[quote=“Jenn_aSide, post:504, topic:53522, full:true”]

@Tipa_Riot

(…)
Apparently , “I gave people more of what their in game PVE actions demonstrate they actually wanted” is not good resume material for someone trying to get hired by Riot games

LOL, my Sarcasm-O-Meter needle jumped so fast that it caused an earthquake… No, it’s not as if the company where many former CCP devs ended up 2 redundacy rounds ago is giving League of Legends players more of what their in game actions demonstrate that they actually want…

[Drago_Shouna]

More “Immersion” and “engagement” usually ends up equating to being a pain in the arse.

So no thanks.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Jenn_aSide

Same with mining and exploration. Nothing is more boring than mining, yet a full 1/5th of people playing EVE will do some mining while logged in, because while mining sucks, building a mining operation or using minerals gained by mining to do industry doesn’t suck, it’s fun.

I have argued that the semi-AFK nature of mining is actually a plus. That people can log in, get on comms, undock and mine and chat, or watch Netflix, or tend to other things in game, etc. All while in the background one of one’s alts is still bringing in the ore.

AND…while mining your ore/minerals does not make them “free” it does cut down on transactions costs. You don’t have to pay a tax when buying the minerals. You don’t have to transport the minerals (or transport them as far). etc.

Yet everyone says, “We have to fix mining.” Here’s a hint…maybe it isn’t even broken. After all, plenty of rocks get mined. The market seems to be in decent shape in terms of making stuff in game…maybe it is just fine the way it is. If this is the case, the “fixing” it could actually break it.