Dallenn
Minmatar
Jericho Fraction
The Star Fraction
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Posted - 2011.06.24 15:15:00 -
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Well here we are, waving our pitchforks and clamouring for the wizard to come out of his tower...
It's rather obvious there's a few risks indicating where things might be headed, at this point:
Risk 1: Microtransactions take over and ruin the game design
We have recently seen this in World of Tanks, and it is the reason why we are now playing Eve again and not that title. If a game starts employing microtransactions for anything central, the developer has a reason for incentivizing frequent microtransactions by the player. In other words, the goal of game design will be to generate revenue, not to satisfy the appetites of the gamer. This will break things at many levels. For example: high power units being overly powerful, making low power units useless; no role is designated to low power units, instead they have to go to the same battlefield as high power units; buying items helps in grinding to the higher power levels - you get the idea.
If we see Eve heading this way, I am sure a lot of subscriptions will drop, making the business model self-defeating.
Risk 2: Only WiS can drive microtransactions and new subscriptions, making this the focus of Eve development
If CCP thinks that Walking in Stations is a good and interesting environment for microtransactions, they may concentrate Eve development there, and forget about revisiting important aspects of existing gameplay, such as readjusting PvP to enhance small scale skirmishes, developing PI into a meaningful game feature, and so on and so on.
Well, this is not as bad as Risk 1, because we'd have the existing in-space aspect of the game as it is now. But we deserve better - our subscription fee that falls into CCP coffers every month, every year, is a lot of money - it is much more than what we pay to play any other game, and we deserve CCP doing their best to satisfy our particular appetites.
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I say these are risks because what this all is based on is one internal newsletter - not a design spec or a statement of any decision, just some shared thoughts where the various MMOs might be heading. As such, CCP has an easy time remaking any decisions - if they even have made any regarding many of the subjects. But we as players will be watching this space with high interest.
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