Zebramind
Caldari
The Violet Hour
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Posted - 2009.10.01 11:01:00 -
[93]
tl;dr : Don't, CCP. Oh, you did! 
@CCP Fallout, all the talk about butterflies, emergence and the "sandbox" is somewhat empty, right?
I have no particular use for, say, carriers, and I am not on about the actual changes. I just note that you are in the process of removing a degree of freedom from the game, i.e. the player's option to fit some ship outside its intended role and play differently. And as far as I can tell that goes contrary to the CCP hype, in general.
So why is CCP so anal about "roles" anyway? Basically, you could have just implemented the friggin fuel bays and that was that. I'll answer... since that makes it a lot easier to make my point... you are out to grow your customer base by differentiating the various game "roles" to inhibit someone from filling more than one role effectively, given some skills and investment. News at 11 maybe, I know. So why don't you just say so? "Hi little ones, welcome to our sandbox. We control your game. Now, you can only have either a bucket or a shovel, so if you need to fill your bucket go find someone with a shovel. And you can invite a friend... isn't that awesome! and cool!" 
That is basically the proposition. Why all the crap, then, to try to justify these changes in a gameplay context? Fact is "awesome" and "cool" fill dev blogs these days all the while actual EVE awesomeness suffers as you try to optimize business.
I am well medicated today and recognize that I sound all wound up (which I am) but imo it is, in fact, a big deal to begin inhibiting people to a fixed set of roles, in order to force collaboration, because it messes with some fundamental anarchistic quality, essential for its staying power, that EVE has. Let people mine in their MS if they want without imposing artificial restrictions - the thing is huge, of course it can be set up to mine or haul or whatever, tbh. If you remove or over-limit the lattitude for diversification in gameplay you will eventually loose the texture and emergence that you are trying to pitch as the central EVE narrative.
Making roles orthogonal with respect to skills and in-game investment maximizes out-of-game revenue per player - no doubt. Unless they get bored, of course. Which, I believe, would be bad business. And it sucks somewhat to be fed the bull**** spin on it. Nothing wrong with optimizing business but be straight about it (and do it properly).
So, your dread friend ( yup) had been creative and done something outside of the box to gain an advantage. Which is what EVE is really about. Right?
And now my real question: How do you like my use of emoticons? (be honest)
/Zebra
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