babyblue
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Posted - 2006.12.02 13:36:00 -
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Edited by: babyblue on 02/12/2006 13:37:08
 Originally by: Ishquar Teh'Sainte
do i get this right?
in beta it was "warp to 3km" ... but then the Devs saw - "nah .. that's not good for the game in the way we intended it to be, they are travelling to fast .. New Eden should be perceived as a vast space" ...
so they increased the traveltime with "warp to 15km", and all the years they didn't had problems with it from a gameplay perspective (else they would have decreased the warp to distance)
No this isn't right. The original distance was increased in order to create greater "zones of interaction". It was recognized that the early game (without bubbles, interdictors, etc.) gave no opportunities for players to fight each other - err, I mean for one player to gank the other [because we all know that if two players want to fight each other, they can regardless of warp distance!]. So it was increased to 15km; giving 15km for one player to "interact" with the other.
The main problem with this was that it resulted in travel times increasing. Not just travelling from one side of the universe to the other, but travelling from here to next-door. Increasing travel times are directly correlated with increasing boredom/frustration (I've spent approximately 1/2 my characters age actually susbscribed because of this), so the player-base invented the "insta". As with all fantastic ideas, the insta quickly spread (Meme theory) resulting in system performance problems.
Now here is an analogy to help: at my University (many years ago), a new building was constructed with a large patch of grass to the side. Rather than cut out and make a path across the grass for people to walk from one building to the other, the University left it to grow. After a year, a path had developed where the grass didn't grow because students/staff had walked from one point to the other on their preferred route. Now the builders came along and filled in this path with concrete. The end result was an optimal preferred path from A to B for the students.
So as with all things involving human activity, it is possible to proscribe the "rules" or let people create them themselves. In the case of WTZ, the players made their own path (with bookmarks) and CCP have simply filled it in with concrete. The result of all of this is a better game.
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