Poll: EVE-Online, first actual serious trouble signs or business as usual ?

[shiig]

Subscriber number increase is slowing down, it will eventually reach a peak, then it will trend downhill... and the fact older players are increasingly disgruntled is not going to help things.
This is a departure from everything that happened in EVE so far, and would put it on par with almost every other MMO out there.
If EVE becomes "just another MMO" it might as well be dead.

There is a limit to what audience any game or sport or any form of entertainment can reach. The subscriber increase will always eventually decrease, it's just what happens when most of the people interested in the game are already playing it.
EVE is so vibrantly different from every other MMO that, to a fan, the game can probably never be equated to "just some MMO". EVE won't die. It might take a few hits during it's time, but it will not die.

 

[archvile93]

Yes, but how's the game itself? I don't think this is going to kill it unless the actual game has also gone straight to hell.

 

[Tibike77]

Dust 512 or whatever its called will bring new life to the game methinks

You mean, the consoles-only shooter that will NOT be directly linked with EVE (which is a PC-only game) ?
Ha !
The only links will be indirect ones, and each game can exist without the other.
That much was already started since it was first mentioned.

 

[Tibike77]

Yes, but how's the game itself? I don't think this is going to kill it unless the actual game has also gone straight to hell.

The game itself is still relatively good. But not quite as good as it used to be.
Even in the game itself, most recent changes and additions came with glaring lacks of QA and very little foresight. Quite a few balance changes which were supposed to do something ended up having the opposite effect, all of it happening after the devs were repeatedly warned by the playerbase that it would happen the way it happened.
It's not catastrophic, YET.
But not much is missing for the "enough is enough" sentiment to explode.

 

[weker]

Dust 512 or whatever its called will bring new life to the game methinks

You mean, the consoles-only shooter that will NOT be directly linked with EVE (which is a PC-only game) ?
Ha !
The only links will be indirect ones, and each game can exist without the other.
That much was already started since it was first mentioned.

seems their doing false advertising then

 

[Tibike77]

[...] the consoles-only shooter that will NOT be directly linked with EVE (which is a PC-only game) ?
The only links will be indirect ones, and each game can exist without the other.
That much was already started since it was first mentioned.

seems their doing false advertising then

You mean this

Spoiler

video ?

That was not advertisment for something that's going to come by any time soon, but a "vision" of how they imagine the game might eventually turn out to be if they can make it so.

DUST 514 is developed by the China office almost exclusively (with just a small common-ish team for whatever interfacing means they want to provide between EVE and DUST), whereas the Iceland office deals with EVE and the USA office works on the WoD MMO that's supposed to use the same back engine (and similar visuals) as the next EVE expansion (Incarna), the temporary//current results of which you can see in that video.

 

[LordFisheh]

This kind of thing is what I hate about the otherwise awesome EVE community; entitled, arrogant players acting as if they should be running the game. The forums are provided, free of charge, and yet people seem to think that they've been short changed if they don't work perfectly.

Just a few days ago, the servers were down longer than usual. The forums erupted with entitled whiners complaining that the game was clearly dying since the servers weren't up yet. Then, when the latest patch came out, the forums again exploded with tears - apparently, the download was taking too long, which was clearly CCP's fault, and yet another example of how the game is dying.

Really, I'm barely exaggerating.

 

[Tibike77]

Really, I'm barely exaggerating.

I wouldn't say the EVE community is much quicker to anger than most other long-established communities whenever something they're used to working all of a sudden gets replaced with junk.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha~!
Because a poll on an internet forum totally matters!

What matters is that last year, EVE players bothered to support the devs, while this year, they could no longer be assed to.

This doesn't seem like a huge deal. I mean, yeah, they fucked up, but they seem dedicated to cleaning up their mess, as opposed to another recent MMO disaster that Square-Enix will never, ever live down.

When your new forums can potentially allow anybody to inject keyloggers in some of the less well-protected visiting machines ( see http://www.machine9.net/blog/?p=592 ), you better clean up your mess, don't you think ?

This reminds me of something[...] It sounds like CCP stuck up an early version of the forum by accident, most programs for online databases allow different work environments so maybe they accidentally activated the wrong one?

The new forums were announced as "in development" for a long time (devblogs of the "almost finished" version came out in late February 2011), they went up as "open beta tests" TWICE before the final (failed) deployment, each time people complained to high heaven about many things wrong with them (which were promptly almost completely ignored), also, ALLEGEDLY, the security vulnerabilities were reported by some players (and discovered by many others) at the time of those tests, yet CCP still went ahead and deployed them in spite of serious protest and some (alleged) warning.

 

[weker]

[...] the consoles-only shooter that will NOT be directly linked with EVE (which is a PC-only game) ?
The only links will be indirect ones, and each game can exist without the other.
That much was already started since it was first mentioned.

seems their doing false advertising then

You mean this

Spoiler

video ?

That was not advertisment for something that's going to come by any time soon, but a "vision" of how they imagine the game might eventually turn out to be if they can make it so.

DUST 514 is developed by the China office almost exclusively (with just a small common-ish team for whatever interfacing means they want to provide between EVE and DUST), whereas the Iceland office deals with EVE and the USA office works on the WoD MMO that's supposed to use the same back engine (and similar visuals) as the next EVE expansion (Incarna), the temporary//current results of which you can see in that video.

soooooo this could breath new life into the game XD

 

[Tibike77]

soooooo this could breath new life into the game XD

I don't see how it's supposed to, when even the target audience is completely different, and they're (for all intents and purposes) two separate games.
By the way, the part of the game which DUST is supposed to interact with ("Planetary Interaction") is still a half-resolved mess, and it would make almost no (in-game) financial sense to spend any amount of effort on assaulting enemy planetary bases (not yet anyway) or bothering to defend yours (because even rebuilding from scratch on a regular basis doesn't mean such a big deal).

So because they didn't vote for CCP in a stupid internet poll that means nothing to anybody, they aren't supporting the developer? Now, see, here I thought that they were supporting the developer by continuing to play the developer's game. Thanks for clearing that up for me, bro.

You keep forgetting that little bit of relevant info, namely one year prior, they did, but now, they didn't.

One can keep playing long after becoming thoroughly disappointed with the developer.
Case in point, people still play SWG, and you won't hear them sing SOE any praises.
As long as the game doesn't TOTALLY turn to crap, quite a few people will find it extremely difficult to quit a game they spent many years advancing in, especially when they can "not pay" cash by using in-game funds to remain active (until in-game funds run out).
A lot of the more disgruntled older players are in-game rich enough to afford to keep their accounts live with next to no effort, and depend on a network of friends to derive some enjoyment of the game more than from the game itself already.

 

[Tibike77]

It's not necessarily true but it's another possibility. Whacking together a forum is quite an easy task for a professional so I doubt they'll have been dumb enough to leave those problems there on purpose.

72000 claimed manhours from the web dev team, for what was a glorified reskin of open source software ?

 

[weker]

It's not necessarily true but it's another possibility. Whacking together a forum is quite an easy task for a professional so I doubt they'll have been dumb enough to leave those problems there on purpose.

72000 claimed manhours from the web dev team, for what was a glorified reskin of open source software ?

.

looked worthwhile to me
I am trying to get into for a second time and this new character style is one very very attracting feature for me

 

[Lunar Templar]

if i said i was surprised EvE was still around, would you hold it against me XD

 

[Tibike77]

if i said i was surprised EvE was still around, would you hold it against me XD

If you tell me how to physically hold a surprise against you, I will

 

[weker]

if i said i was surprised EvE was still around, would you hold it against me XD

not at all but is has the most dedicated fanbase ever