Schani Kratnorr
x13
IT Alliance
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Posted - 2010.07.17 07:44:00 -
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I dont know which was more sad. Watching Steve Jobs as he explained how his eyePhone version four would one day rule the world, or reading the long-winded dev-blog damage-control by Zulu(park.)
Being a "week-one veteran," I am a somewhat rare commodity in terms of perspective (not necessarily skill *cough*). While it is great to see CCP actually continue developing their game(world,) I cannot stress how important it is to get to grips with the performance issues. Latency and poor client PCs aside, it is clear that something got (more) broken with Tyrannis.
While efforts to hunt down and kill these issues have continued on the test server, customer patience on TQ is wearing thin. The mood has been going from "optimistic," to irony-heavy, self-disillusional flagellation.
It is absolutely essential, that fleet fights become viable again. With iHUB/TCU/SBU/station hit points as they are, it can be argued that sov. features are balanced around hundred+ fleets (at least.) Most of the time 100 vs. 100 work just as they used to. A bit choppy, but nothing crippling. Sometimes however, jumping twenty guys into a system to fight fourty feels like undocking from jita while de-fragmenting your hard drive, downloading a patch while operating your graphics card without sufficient cooling - something is not entirely as it should be.
If you fail at fixing the issues, then the only logical step is to re-design the game to force smaller engagements. Radical stuff like... Move the SBUs to the out-gate, introduce a "jumping-though-a-gate-limbo-state" with a que, limit the number of slots using a dynamic hard-cap for each "stressed" system, or simply re-think how EVE mass-warfare should look and play.
Currently, and always, EVE has encouraged "blobbing." One guy attempts to engage another. He then ask for help and before you know it fifty people or more are racing towards the same grid. Given enough time, and a sufficiently complex task, EVEs alliances have proved they can amass players in the hundreds. It is not uncommon for large alliances to "max out" the fleet, and create two or more separate fleets.
My point is this. By design, EVE encourages fleet sizes that are non-viable given the current state of things. It has been a decent amount of time, and there has been no measurable progress on the performance issue (no! client side tweaks count for nothing.)
Patience is running out, and every time a new feature is announced or added, the jaded gamers feel like you are neglecting the one major issue that unites even the fiercest opponents.
New features is THE KEY to ensuring subscriber growth and customer satisfaction. Allow things to stagnate, and you fail. Having said that, keep in mind that single-shard mass combat has the potential to absolutely rule all other MMOs. Add some FPS action and a sims-like avatar-based interaction, and you will have enough money to buy all CCP staff a twenty-four carat mansion thus significantly increasing their chances of procreation.
...
wow, that got a bit long... Well. there you are CCP.
We love you, we really do. But please, please, please do what you can to "fix" it, so we can actually do those 500 vs. 500 stupidly epic (and schematic) fleet fights. Consider rubbing cheeta-blood on the servers. Hire a shamen or priest. I am sure the occult arts may have a ritual that can invoke the server-gods. Just get it done. If you do, I promise you we, the players, will take the game play beyond anything you ever dreamed.
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