CCP t0rfifrans
C C P
C C P Alliance
367
   |
Posted - 2012.02.23 16:51:00 -
[2] - Quote
Kasidis wrote:I was one of the people who was very excited for Incarna. When it came out, I have to say, I was very disappointed. I'm glad you guys are focusing on something that will appeal to the masses, but Incarna cannot just be forgotten. I have a few questions for my lovely devs:
1. If dozens of people can't finish Incarna, what makes you think 5 will?
2. When can we expect establishments? we don't care how long, we just want an answer (you devs can be very vague and evasive)
3. Is there a chance we can invite people to our captains quarters any time soon? It would be a good testbed for technology and we would be able to show off clothes!
4. What is the biggest inhibitor to Avatar development?
I look forward to your answers! Thanks for taking the time to engage with the community!
Thanks for you feedback.
1. Five people won't finish avatar gameplay in EVE. However, we have a good focus and team structure to be able to define what it should be, once we have made a solid business case for gameplay that provides solid value, we resource the project appropriately.
2. Can't give you an answer on this, since we're reevaluating the plan, establishments may not be the top priority. The game play planned there was highly social and was more as a force multiplier or extension of in space gameplay rather than a proper ecosystem of gameplay itself. We're evaluating several options. If you feel strongly that EVE should have establishments, tell us!
3. We'll be investigating this soon, we might even run some tests on Singularity in some months time, but having people meet in captain's quarters is the same engineering effort as having them meet in establishments or a darkened alley. There are scalability and animation issues that need to be resolved, and we're reluctant to throw all our energy into solving that problem until we've converged on what the ultimate gameplay should be. That's because we may discover requirements or constraints in the final design that would require us to re-write or change the implementation we'd do allowing you to visit captain's quarters, thus waste valuable time building something that eventually gets thrown away for a better thing.
4. There's a number of things that have slowed us down in the past. For the first years, we had very few people working on it, then once we ramped up, we had requirements that it had to support two different games, and as such, we developed technology which we wouldn't have if it had been just for EVE all along. We were also working in two offices, which slows down communication. Lastly, we were introducing a whole new technology inside a legacy system, which takes more time than making everything new, especially when the legacy system is about things in space and your new tech is about people inside rooms. There were also changing requirements during the production phase, which resulted in thrashing. We'll probably write some very depressing Gamasutra post-mortem article about it at some point, as a warning for future generations. |