Jade Constantine
Gallente
Jericho Fraction
The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2010.08.03 16:55:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Bad Princess
Is all of this "Eve is dying", "Devs Suck", "Sky is falling" whinee garp something that happens cyclically, or is all of this noise something that has real substance?
Well I started in 2003 when the server was around 5000 people and the game was pretty rough and ready. Every week seemed to have some new drama, every patch had calls for "rollbacks", there was plenty of drama with GM actions and interventions (mine field removal, fleet teleports and the Jovian mining laser scandal etc etc) but the thing was there was a real sense that the developers were playing the game too and it was a process of collaborative developent alongside the player base. Things got fixed and fast. The game improved massively over the course of a couple of years and the scope with it. Of course nothing was perfect, I had my own feud with the old t20 era community manager that lasted years but in the end it got resolved. Drama and bugs and exploits and fiascos all seemed to add intrigue and excitement to the game because the developers were involved and were taking us along on their journey to make the best dark science fiction universe where brutality and betrayal were commonplace and the unwary could lose anything to a bad decision or simply bad luck.
I think we did hit a similar low point before Apocyrapha though - then it became apparent the old developers were leaving for the states and the Vampire game and Eve had six months of not much attention and it was a bit of a shock to the system and during the first CSM (on which I served) we were told that Eve was returning to its roots and most of the development talent was coming back to work on the super expansion to come (and it paid off) apocrypha was superb and remains my favourite expansion ever.
But after that I think things have slipped again. The vision desire for Eve the all-encompassing space opera simulator has exclipsed the perception that promises must be kept and expansions should be iterated until all the announced features are implemented. Faction warfare, dominion, tech3 these are orphaned features now and there is a lot of unhappiness. And ironically the CSM function could have been used by CCP to warn them about this - certainly the players have been very good about using the assembly hall to highlight issues and preferences and the only tragedy of the CSM project is how little CCP have ever seemed to listen to it.
Whats unique about this summers Eve doldrums is just how bleak a future with no substantive development on unfinished and much loved features will look for 18 months. At the moment the state of the game is not too good. I'm not a 0.0 blobfest player and I never really liked the huge 500 a side sovereignty fights - but I do like roaming small gang pvp and even that is not currently possible in 0.0 due to horrible lag, session-bugs, traffic control and generally horrible performance. Dominion hasn't really worked to make the 0.0 game more dynamic, its just let to increased blobbing (and terrible lag). PI is frankly unfinished pre beta ish with no real interactions between players on the planets (and nothing like the fanfest presentations promised us).
Faction warfare could be utterly brilliant if it had a developer team working on it mind. Its a massive missed opportunity.
But we keep coming back to the 18 months thing. If Eve had launched with a single patch and the devs telling us (don't worry about bugs and unfinished features we'll start working in 18 months) then it would have crashed and burned and sunk without trace. The game flourished and survived because it had constant care and attention and a lot of continuous work. Now seven years on the code base still needs care and attention because nothing lasts forever. And it needs work now, not in 18 months time. Incarna and Dust might be pretty, but they are nothing if the core game is abandoned.
Still I just resubbed my accounts - mostly because Eris is still working for CCP :)
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