Unkillable Cat's Unpatriotic CCP Mockery Thread (aka WoD got cancelled)

Unkillable Cat · May 13, 2015

To be fair, the way CCP pitched the walking in stations concept was magnificent. MMOs, for many people, are about constructing an artificial persona and allowing you to act as that persona. EVE's first shortcoming is that it only allows for a facial photo, nothing more. At all other times you're inside a flying ship in outer space, whizzing back and forth.

Walking in stations was supposed to allow the capsuleer aspect of the game to get some love, to add clothing and hairstyles, then setting up locales where people could combine these artificial personas and have them interact outside of internet spaceships. They went a long way towards developing a board game you could play at a bar in a station, for example. There would be conference rooms so that alliance heads could meet in (artificial) person and talk, but the best idea of them all (IMO) was the Green Room, a room where your in-game avatar could stand in front of a green screen so that graphic designers could insert whatever background, setting and effects would be needed, whether it was for a propaganda video for your corp or a LARP rendition of an episode of Gilligan's Island.

That was 8 years ago, and by then they already had 2 years of development complete. What have we got in that time? We have the Captain's Quarters which have shinier methods of accessing basic in-game resources, full avatar customization but only a couple of square feet for you to strut around them in WITH NO MEANS TO INTERACT WITH OTHER CAPSULEERS, and a balcony leading to a window displaying the ship you're currently "in". They couldn't even manage to remove the connection to the spaceship, which is the WHOLE POINT OF WALKING IN STATIONS.

Whiran · May 13, 2015

To me walking in space stations would have been a brilliant addition to EVE Online - they were pitching stuff like bars, meeting places, stores, and interactions with other players. Cool stuff.

I wanted them to add camera drones to the game so people could watch fights from a space station and maybe even coordinate from there (via mumble). The opportunity to add to the game was huge.

However, they also added outrageously priced macro-payments for dumb things. Players freaked out over that (rightfully so) for a game that was already subscription based. The idea of a macro-store was really dumb in a game who's economy was primarily driven by players. Introducing a set of gear that was only obtainable outside the player economy in a game where one of the primary selling points was the players doing everything... just dumb.

Walking in stations got thrown out with the expansion of the macro-store. CCP realized they had made a big mistake and then got confused as to what mistake they made. To make it easy they simply dropped everything to do with that particular expansion and "refocused" on spaceships in space. Walking in stations has languished since.

If walking in stations had happened I believe that EVE Online would grow faster - but, then again, EVE is really about spaceships so focusing on spaceships isn't a bad idea. They lose out on a large potential player base but gain other players.

I don't believe that EVE Online is still growing year after year - I think they've begun to stagnate but I haven't paid much attention since I stopped playing a couple of years ago. The last record for concurrent users in EVE was set in 2013 with just over 65k online. The peak for 2014 was just over 57k. You can see EVE's popularity here: http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

omega21 · May 13, 2015

Remember the :obviously:

scandal too, I never touched EVE and even I know about that. Maybe walking around *might* have extended replayability a bit, it could be like Second Life or some shit, but that's not the game's core business I suppose.

Shame, the shit that Unkillable Cat mentioned sounded really neat.

lightbane · May 14, 2015

The question is: Would that feature actually work at all if it was released? Considering the kind of psycopaths and/or SA Goons this game attracts, I'm sure having avatars walking around would more often than not degenerate to endless insult contests and things like that (and perhaps an increasing demand for a "backstab" option to kill each other).

Unkillable Cat · May 22, 2015

And CCP just published their fiscal report for 2014 - and they're in the red. Again.

They're reported a loss of $65.7 million, and their assets are now $15.3 million in the negative.

Most of this is due to R & D expenses, but they've been downsizing heavily and are losing staff everywhere. The latest one is also one of the funnier ones: The host for their Alliance Tournaments (of which one is coming up this summer) quit his job at CCP because - he believes he's better off working with his girlfriend in tourism.

In Svalbard. I didn't even know Svalbard HAD tourism.

Meanwhile their minute changes to EVE are failing to bring in new subscribers: Occasionally they manage to cause spikes of new players to join in, only for them to quickly leave a few months down the road.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - CCP's future hinges on EVE: Valkyrie (a launch title for the Oculus Rift) being a success. If that folds, CCP goes with it.

Most of the discussions here in Iceland revolve around the fact that CCP wants to relocate its headquarters out of the country - but ONLY for the executives and the managers. You know, the same bunch of dimwits that put CCP in the horrible position that it is in today? *golfclap* That means that departments like the art department and Ops (whom make sure the game stays online) will remain here in Iceland.

"Rats fleeing a sinking ship" has been mentioned here before in regards to CCP, but instead of it being staff fleeing the ship of CCP, it's CCP fleeing the ship of Iceland. We have currency embargos in place which are slowly killing the Icelandic economy. When CCP is bailing out, it's time for everyone else here to look for a lifeboat.

Tzaero · May 22, 2015

"YESSH COME TO MEEEEE"

He's ready for them as the subscriber base probably flee will to Star Citizen if EVE goes kaput.

Unkillable Cat · May 22, 2015

oasis789 said:
That's not the narrative I'm getting... Here it's all about brave, clever, feminist Iceland taking on the big banks and saving themselves from neocolonialism.

The only thing keeping Iceland going today are the currency embargos. Vulture investors are looking to liquidize their assets here (the old banks) and take them out of the country. That would utterly destroy the Icelandic economy, leaving us in a worse state than other EU nations like Ireland, Spain or Greece. The Finance Minister has just announced that a bill will be introduced next week to deal with lifting the currency embargos, but in order to do so the Senate's session will have to be extended indefinetely, which is a violation of so many laws and regulations that it's unprecedented.

We're currently into the fifth week of various strikes from various professions within Iceland, with large unions like the tradeworker's union and nurses having announced strikes as early as next week.

Events like The Games of the Small States of Europe (GSSE) will have to be cancelled if those strikes aren't resolved, as there'll be no one to tender or service the hundreds of people that'll be coming to Iceland for the games.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Another economic collapse looms over us.

Ninjerk · May 22, 2015

Jesus. Get out of there, Maverick!

Unkillable Cat · May 22, 2015

One other aspect of this I forgot to mention: The upcoming strikes will affect CCP staff as well, though it is uncertain which departments will be hit the hardest.

Unkillable Cat · May 22, 2015

I think that the popularity of the Pirate party in various polls is more a case of the nation punishing the other political parties, which have either proved themselves corrupt or incompetent (or both). The Pirates aren't qualified to run the country, they just haven't screwed up yet.

What is needed here is a purge of the political system. New people brought in with no connections to the old parties, and actually care more about the nation and its future than their own asses. Difficult to achieve and unlikely to work.

omega21 · May 24, 2015

Thanks for the Icelandic insights, always good to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Unkillable Cat · Jun 3, 2015

Just when I thought that CCP was getting competent at patching their game, they released the Carnyx patch for June 2nd.

Two things of note:

# They were planning to kill off complexity and redundancy by rebalancing several items that had too many "tiers" to them. One such item were run-of-the-mill 50mm armour plates, which not only got turned into 100mm armour plates, but for many got turned into special "storyline" 100mm armour plates, which sold for millions of ISK a piece. Even worse, players noticed that if you smelted them down you'd get Takmahl components that were worth roughly 15 million ISK for each. And many players got HUNDREDS of these armour plates out of nowhere (I myself got 26 of them).

# To coincide with the Carnyx update, CCP decided to do a 10% discount on AURUM (the in-game in-store currency) purchases via Amazon - except they got it wrong at they went live with a 90% discount.

Also part of the Carnyx patch was the Caldari ~~Tactical Destroyer~~ Space Stick Insect, the Jackdaw:

omega21 · Jun 3, 2015

Are all EVE ships this ugly?

Unkillable Cat · Jun 3, 2015

No.

Most of them are worse.

made · Jun 3, 2015

Unkillable Cat said:
No.
Most of them are worse.

I like most of their ship designs.

What I don't like is that they now apparently sell ship skins for $$$.

Unkillable Cat · Jun 3, 2015

made said:
What I don't like is that they now apparently sell ship skins for $$$.

Yeah, that one is a bit of a stinker.

Instead of customizing the looks of your ship (which ranks highly among the "most requested features in EVE") CCP reached the "compromise" of creating ship skins, which are like clothes for your ships. They become a collectible thing like skillbooks, are permanently assigned to your character and it's up to you whether they're active or not.

But they're all being sold in the AURUM store, not via the in-game economy. At least they're not that horrendously expensive as that monocle.

Except here's the kicker: They have lots of pointless skins for pointless ships at low prices, and then they have the good skins for the good skins at expensive prices...and with limited durations. Want that Lai Dai skin for your frigate? No problem, one-time purchase and it's yours. Want that Guristas skin for your Cormorant? 6 million ISK for 30 days, then it expires, time to buy a new one. And the price multiplies almost geometrically as the ships get bigger. One skin for an industrial ship I was interested in sold for 1 billion ISK last time I checked, and the skins for the capital ships go for 2+ billion ISK - so that AURUM fiasco yesterday led to some large purchases being made, and the ship skin market taking a dip.

Berekän · Jun 3, 2015

All the temporal skins are ingame drops.

Unkillable Cat · Jun 6, 2015

Here's another fine mess CCP has gotten us into. I'll just quote the post and let the few EVE players that are reading this follow the instructions.

As most of the regulars here can likely recall, one of the changes that CCP made this year was the relocation of EVE's assets from the client directory to a shared resource cache, while at the same time getting rid of STUFF archive files in favor of loose resource files (about 64K of them, at last count).

This also involved changing how CCP distributed and unpacked updates. Now CCP just sends over new files as necessary, and due to their versioning system replacement files rarely have the same name as the file they functionally replace.

However in CCP's infinite wisdom, they currently don't remove files the client doesn't need. Rather they simply keep them around until, I don't know, they get around to deciding to remove them through the launcher? As a result the cache can quickly stock up on extraneous files, to the tune of multiple gigabytes.

And here's where today's PSA comes in: the EVE client distribution comes with the tools necessary to get rid of these extraneous files, to purge the resource cache. Go to the EVE client directory and run rescache.exe purge, and watch as your HDD/SDD sheds gigabytes of weight.

In my case it was 20000 files and 6 Gb reclaimed.

Vaarna_Aarne · Jun 6, 2015

So what's the deal with Onyx Path? Any juicy insider bits about CCP screwing over White Wolf one time too many?

Unkillable Cat · Aug 4, 2015

It's been pretty quiet over at CCP...but then again, I haven't been paying much attention to their shenanigans either.

They did, however, announce a new EVE Online-spinoff called EVE: Gunjack, which is a SP version of Valkyrie. You're in a turret, you shoot waves of ships that come at you in predictable patterns, repeat.

It's geared for mobiles and the Samsung VR, so CCP seems to be hedging their bets...all in VR. Now it's two things that have to work out for CCP in order for them to not go under when VR headsets are finally released.

In EVE Online, the only worthwhile news I've heard lately comes from the "it's a bug, but we're calling it a feature!" department. Since clones are a big factor of EVE Online, the game allows for a player to purchase and install jump clones at stations, which a player can then "jump into" to expedite travel or set up a different implant layout. One of the hindrances to making that viable was the standing requirement needed to use the jump clone services at a station - your player needed a 8.0 positive standing with the station's owning corporation. This means tedious grinding by running missions, which led to the "emergent gameplay" of corporations that offered to grind the required standings for you.

This system has been around for many years, until recent changes to EVE's sovereignty code removed this standing requirement altogether, by accident. It was not intended and did not appear in any patch notes or announcement. When players pointed this out, CCP response was that they were going to keep it this way - a thinly-veiled effort to hide their own incompetence and lazyness, while screwing over dozens of corporations (and hundreds of players) by removing their primary income at the drop of a hat.

J1M · Aug 6, 2015

Just like a real government. Sounds like EVE is a realistic game.

Unkillable Cat · Dec 8, 2015

*bump*

I thought I'd let people catch up on what's happening in CCP-land.

# That minigame of theirs, Gunjack, was released last month. I haven't heard any sales figures or anything, but they deserve praise for actually getting something out the door...

# Valkyrie is still on-track for the first half of next year, but otherwise little info is available on that.

# EVE Online is struggling now. Ever since they launched the game in 2003 their subscription numbers have been steadily rising, until about 2011 ("The Summer of Rage") when it reached it apex and has been declining ever since. The subscription numbers are now back to the same numbers as they had in 2007, the year that saw the release of the first graphical overhaul for the game.

# Two strong staples of the EVE Online community have folded in the past few months. The Battleclinic website, the first killboard for EVE and included a robust ship-fitting guide and has been around for years, is closing down later this month. While they've mostly become irrelevant in recent times, they're still a sure sign that the game is bleeding out. But not as sure a sign as the other item...

# Red vs Blue, the largest PvP alliance in the game, announced a few months back that its directorate and community managers were quitting and walking away. That means that those large PvP events that the alliance hosted to allow players to get into fights and such, are over. The alliance still stands though, and hopefully some new leadership may come along and breathe life into the alliance and let us see regular hundreds-vs-hundreds ship fights all over the game.

# On the financial side, CCP has finally finished restructuring its assets after writing off so much money because of the White Wolf fiasco. One aspect of that is getting new capital from large investors from the US, whom will be taking seats on the board of directors. This can only be a good thing as a LARGE part of CCP's mismanagement comes from the board of directors, and they've never been held accountable. Not one of their stupid decisions has been challenged, not one of them has resigned. With the new seats being filled by "outsiders" with a better business sense than CCP has ever had, the number of stupid decisions should drop sharply.

# On the upside, EVE Online just had its servers and technical infrastructure updated, and the patch deployed today will show off the first aspect of that upgrade. Currently space in EVE is rendered in-game in a series of grids, usually in boxes about 250km3. Your in-game overview only shows things that are "on-grid" but not things that are "off-grid", even though they could be within 10km of your ship. After the patch, this box will be 7800km3. No, that's not a typo, this is a massive gamechanger.

# The reason they're making this change to the grid is because of another big change: Citadels. Currently there are two types of player-built structures: The so-called POSs (Player-owned structures) and Outposts (player-built stations), with the former needing to be fueled and maintained regularly (as well as being vulnerable to attack) while the latter can only be built in certain areas and are indestructible once built. The upcoming Citadels replace both structure types and come in 3 sizes: Small, medium and humongous. Small citadels are intended to replace POSs and are aimed at individuals or small corporations, while the humongous ones are intended to replace the Outposts. Those are too big to fit on current grids, which is why they're expanding the grid to this size. They're also supposed to allow Titans to be docked in them, which should give you an idea of their scale. And yes, they can all be destroyed.

# There's also one minor upgrade to EVE coming that should give people an idea of just how incompetent CCP has been over the years. Currently ALL calculations and in-game effects (in space) are calculated in one of two ways: A direct line between Point A and Point B, or a radius expanding from a single point (area-of-effect). All weapons, all modules, ship travel, interactions with objects in space, etc - they ALL use one of these two methods. (This is why your ship warps right through stations, planets and even suns when traveling.)

CCP seems to have FINALLY found a way to implement new and different calculations. Along with the citadels will come the much-awaited rebalancing of capital ships, and one part of that are new types of "Doomsday weapons", the big-ass guns that can be fitted on Titans. In their first incarnation, they were a area-of-effect attack that hit every ship on the grid...and usually cleared the grid of players. Later they were nerfed into a single blast from Point A to Point B. Now they'll get Doomsday weapons with much more complex effects, like one that creates blastwaves that travel out in a certain direction (Point A and Point B moving along an axis, hitting only targets that get between them), or a scythe-like attack that only affects a thin line of space close to the Titan, plus more. Oh, and the humongous Citadels can now wield Doomsday weapons to create Death Star-esque battlestations.

This really opens up the game to a host of new possibilities in terms of weapon systems, modules and whatnot, but the problem lies with CCP itself: These new changes seem to be coming far too late, and CCP has a reputation for overstating their upcoming changes and needing to pedal back for what they actually release. Citadels aren't scheduled for the game until around May of 2016, and so far there are no signs that any of these announced upgrades are stemming the tide of quitters from the game.

I've been saying this for the past year (probably longer) but it still stays true: CCP's future will be resolved in the first half of 2016. Not that they will be going under, more like they'll come "under new management".

Unkillable Cat · Dec 12, 2015

Whale whale whale - looks like CCP netted itself a big catch this week. EVE: Valkyrie will now come bundled with the Oculus Rift.

Meanwhile, EVE players are floundering over the new grid sizes. Seems that CCP forgot that NPCs can target, lock and warp scramble players anywhere on the grid, even on the new gigantic grid. So in those cases where there are hostile NPCs on a stargate and you can't kill them, your only option is to either die slowly to them, or fly off-grid the old-fashioned way...a method that previously could take about 10-15 minutes on average, but could now take a couple of hours.