Showing posts with label CCP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CCP. Show all posts

Friday, July 22, 2011

Tobold's MMORPG Blog: The forum lies

Tobold's MMORPG Blog: The forum lies

Tobold offer's up an excellent analysis of Ben Cousin's (of EA) speech about Battlefield Hero's "pay to win" model.
Weapons for real money were introduced that were better than any weapons you could get by playing, and simultaneously it was made harder to play for free.
I wanted to nitpick something Tobold said:
Thus when the CEO of CCP recently commented the uproar of the EVE community on a similar issue with "I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say", he was completely right. The forum lies.
First, comparing EVE to Battlefield Heroes is an apples to oranges comparison. EVE is and will continue to be a subscription game and unlike most subscription games, EVE ties A LOT of a player's power into how LONG they've been a paying subscriber. BF:H started as and continues to be a free to play game which players can now spend money on to have an advantage.

While BF:H simply changed to make it a bit harder to play the game for free, the proposed changes for EVE threatened to undermine the entire structure upon which the game was built.  To emphasis this point, the EVE changes threatened to undue years of commitment from loyal customers who were PAYING TO PLAY THE GAME. EVE was not in threat of closing.  CCP appeared to be trying to squeeze more money of of their paying players simply because they thought they could.  EVE was not in danger of closing down as BF:H was.

It was not just the forums that were ablaze over the EVE debacle.  It was the entire EVE community, from fan sites to the elected player representatives.  There was a consistent message on all fronts "DON'T FUCKING DO IT CCP".  

Secondly, I would caution that while forums may "lie" in general, there is still valuable feedback to be found amongst the noise.  While only 2% of players may post on the forums, I guarantee there is another 10% that have the same exact complaints and/or feedback as the forum posters.  The danger is that 10% is silent when they leave the game. 

Monday, August 09, 2010

MMO Developers: Read this, learn from it

Gamasutra has an article posted wherein CCP outlines their design philosophy behind EVE Online's single-server design. It's an amazing read and no blurb I can quote from it does it justice.  But I'll throw a teaser out to get you to click on over:
The real solution to this problem is to embrace the notion that in an MMO, just like in any other social network, players are the content. Once that is accepted as a fundamental design guideline, it becomes easier to navigate the challenges involved in creating and maintaining a single shard architecture and actually gives the advantage to that design model.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

A Self-Serving PC Gaming Wish-List

It's not my birthday, but I was inspired by Alec Meer's birthday post over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I want these things.
  • A Free 2 Play Warhammer Online.
  • A fantasy-based EVE Online (where is World of Darkness anyways?).
  • A Shadowbane that doesn't make me want to vomit on my keyboard.
  • Battlefield 1942 recreated in Battlefield: Bad Company 2's engine, destructible environments and all.
  • An announcement from 38 studios on what their MMOG will be.
  • To figure out what ever happened to Project Offset.
  • Some sort of hypno-therapy that makes me incredible at FPS games overnight.
  • To never see or hear the phrase “dumbed-down” again
  • A loaf of bread.
  • My kid's two front teeth (teething sucks btw)

NOTE: Yes, I stole a couple of Alec's ideas and changed or did not change the words slightly.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Scott Jennings in Left Field, Finds Dust

I predicted that in 2009:
8. An MMO project will come out of left field this year and surprise us all. Scott Jennings may or may not be involved, but he’ll blog about it regardless.
Sure enough, Scott Jennings does not disappoint. Read his blog post: CCP comes out of left field, shoots everyone in head. So, he's not involved, but he blogged about. For those keeping count, that's TWO predictions proven true this year.

Personally, I don't feel this has come out of left field. When CCP announced Dust 514, a lot of us suspected it was their fabled and quasi-demonstrated first person avatars addition to EVE Online. Sure enough, they've announced it as such:
The announcement, with the trailer tagline of “one universe, one war”, came at the end of a talk about the history of CCP. It left many GDC Europe keynote attendees — perhaps expecting an announcement for World Of Darkness, CCP’s other rumored project — significantly surprised.

The trailer, with slick in-game graphics, showcased a space station and then impressive first-person shooter gameplay. Petursson said that Dust 514 is “our take on a console MMO”, and was made after the company “looked hard at what people wanted to do on consoles”.

In fact, when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can “fund mercenaries and give them goals” in the console title.

CCP’s Petursson hope that “these communities will meld over time”, expecting specific Dust 514 corporations to start with, but eventually social structures that bridge across the two. He quipped of the new game and the relationship between the two titles: “While the fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying.”
So, I have to disagree that its as far out of "left field" as Jennings makes it out to be. Maybe I can bite on the console and PC interaction, but overall it was pretty much expected.

I'm interested, but I have to see it in action (outside of a developer walk through) before I can give my blessing. I am still not enthused by how CCP treats the EVE community, letting a few gremlins cause a shit-ton of damage for no other reason than CCP can't control their own developers, let alone the community.