Concept ends when you have a roadmap from start to finish of development, when you have discussed and brainstormed every possible outcome to every possible situation, when you have artistic representational drawings of the environment, characters effects, lighting, and miscellaneous models, You should have enough concept material that when you give it to another person not involved in the concept they can tell you exactly what is going to become of it, after many hours of boring boardroom meetings, the concept is a foundation, and with an unfinished foundation even if you do manage to build it, it will fall down around you.



This is obviously a lesson you learnt from Incarna, but isn't this the point of concept? Surely you know what the end goal is, how can you not, you can't just make things and hope they turn into something fun.

Playing what you have is mostly irrelevant because you do it in isolated environments that can be predicted, the experience will NOT be the same when released to the general EVE population, whats fun in the office is not neccesarily fun for the people who haven't worked on it.

In my opinion if you cannot gaurantee it's going to be fun or worthwhile for the players, then your not ready to start development.

Regardless I don't know how much work you have done on this, concept or otherwise, there is no way for me to know (unless I secretely work for CCP) but if you do have a strong foundation, concept art and clear roadmaps, maybe you should release some of that instead of just creating a forum post trying to hype things up. talk is cheap as they say, typing cheaper.

Concept ends when you have a roadmap from start to finish of development, when you have discussed and brainstormed every possible outcome to every possible situation, when you have artistic representational drawings of the environment, characters effects, lighting, and miscellaneous models,

Clearly we need total darkness, a suit flashlight that stops working, an infrared camera and rogue drones that don't show up on an infrared camera

and magnetoboots, these are essential

When you say community involvement from an early stage, what do you mean?

More than that, I am an immortal capsuleer capable of taking and discarding planets, flesh and souls as a child would toys, and I do not expect having to tolerate wearing boots of the non-magneto variety

Hey guys, thanks for the positive reaction. Like stated above, our vision is to make the EVE Universe the ultimate science fiction simulator. Saying that EVE is just about spaceships, is a bit like saying that phones should only be about making voice phone calls one on one with other people. Indeed they did start out like that, but as technology evolved, they become something much bigger. We hope you guys stay with us long enough for that dream to materialize.

Oh and to someone that asked if it can be safe. Sorry, nope. The EVA gameplay is not safe, it's as safe as going into a wormhole. That's also what makes it interesting.

The prototype itself has been finished and has been presented internally to the company stakeholders, the CSM and finally to the company as a whole. The feedback from that was overwhelmingly positive.

Oh and to someone that asked if it can be safe. Sorry, nope. The EVA gameplay is not safe, it's as safe as going into a wormhole. That's also what makes it interesting.

Is there any discussion of using station environments as a "open beta" for the multi-character environments before shoving us into combat environments with no training in the UI?

Is there any discussion of using station environments as a "open beta" for the multi-character environments before shoving us into combat environments with no training in the UI?

We did consider it, but It actually takes quite an effort to make simple multiuser environments without any mechanics. It's almost half the work of doing the real feature, so we are not doing that as this point until we are commited and resourced to move forward with proper in-station gameplay.

my only issue is why do this when there is DUST? It would seem logical to just have DUST guys go into these wrecks - especially if it becomes essentially another FPS in ruined maps.

I don't see how - again, in the grand scheme of things - this is any different from exploring anomalies from my battlecruiser by shooting said sleepers with space guns. Other than the switch of the gaming genre to one perhaps not everybody (myself included) particularly enjoys. End result is the same, you go in, you shoot some NPCs, you get loot. Only the visuals differ...

Time based puzzles, like the hacking minigames you see in other games, would be a great inclusion.

Here's an example for inspiration.
Puzzle

While I like puzzles, and that's a good example if it was a pure exploration game type. this is action adventure. If you ever played Bioshock 1 you would recall how much the hacking pipe puzzle game took you out of the pace of the game.
We are more likely to see randomized corridors and choosing between dealing with auto turrets or time locks that will trap us in hostile environments for X amount of time.

I really want more WiS game play. I was kind of hoping for some kind of in-station sociable environment first, rather than the whole exploration thing. Would be nice to see the mini-games and gambling etc.

No, i'm not a carebear (most of the time). I do like blowing stuff up in my spaceship, but I would really like to see some station interiors. As for the exploration idea, I think it sounds fantastic and I cant wait to try it, but it would have been nice to see "Corporate Quarters" first.

Why are you surprised that the gameplay of "a bunch of dudes emoting each other in a room" is not priority.