McRoll
Minmatar
Heatseekers
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Posted - 2010.01.11 21:11:00 -
[2]
 Originally by: Kalexander
Originally by: McRoll
Think about Incarna as a development project where many developers, money and lots and lots of programming time is poured into. I'm asking myself whether that development time would have been better invested in other things like balancing or something that adds more depth into the game.
Thats where your assumptions can be wrong though you see, I think Incarna is the very definition of depth. Its completely different types of features, and can be leveraged to enrich the game in ways that have no limitations we can currently correlate with. Pew Pewing red crosses isn't going to get any "deeper" in terms of game mechanics I'm afraid. As refactoring those ancient systems would take significantly more work/risk than creating completely new and original game features like Incarna or planetary interactions that supplement Eve as we know her now.
You are also subscribing to a logic that may not be correct, where that, additional new features are automatically at the expanse of work to old ones. We simply don't know if that can be true or not. How do you know the "money" people at CCP wouldn't just lay a bunch of people off and still keep the same specific smaller focused team "polishing and fixing" old content thats doing so now? I'm sorry, but from a business standpoint, its usually typical to spend your resources on progressive new features than the polishing of older shipped ones.
You are right, it is better for the company to develop new stuff, but is it really better for the customers?
Shiny new avatars will surely attract new people and CCP gets money for that. Doesnt mean that the game gets better though.
I will now say something about World of Warcraft, even with the danger to get flamed just because I mentioned that game. I used to play it in the past, before the 2 addons arrived. Back then, the game felt completely different than it does now. When more and more players started playing, Blizzard tried to please everyone. They made content easier, they took away the "limited to one server" battlegrounds where you knew each other and made a big pool of them. Only brainless masses without teamplay now. They simplified many things, just to please everyone and attract even more people. Right now, WoW is not what it used to be and things like that might happen in the future to Eve as well.
The more new players come, the stronger their voice will be. They might want things that can throw the gameplay overboard. Some people are already complaining that CCP lowered prerequisites to certain skills and professions like exploration. Think about people demanding arenas and no real ship losses. Would you like something like that? Bit drastic, but where money is(new players), CCP might get weak.
And I dont know much about programming but I guess its way more difficult to implement a completely new game mechanic like walking with an avatar in a very old code than improve gameplay aspects of existing things. I hope that Im wrong and Incarna really adds some useful things to the game but the other way is more realistic. It might turn out in some rooms where a crowd jumps around spamming emotes. I lived through that nightmare in WoW already, really dont want it there.
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