Jester’s Trek: Commitment

By Ripard Teg | Jul 28th 2012 4:29AM
64 Comments

Jester’s Trek: Commitment

Out in Iceland, you can’t hear it, but CCP is breathing a collective sigh of relief.  This whole summer is a demonstration of how good David Reid, CCP’s Chief Marketing Officer, is at his job.

Fair warning: you’re about to read one of those posts that gets me yelled at.  Buckle up.

A year ago tomorrow, I wrote a little post that I called “Reinforced“.  Go give it a read.  I’ll wait.

Bit like waking up from a dream, isn’t it?  Bet you forgot about that whole “Jita riots” thing.  And that whole “Greed is good” thing.  And that whole $99 commercial licenses thing.  And that whole forums thing.  And the Scorpion for Aurum thing.  And the “Door” thing.  And the space-pants thing.  All that stuff was only a year ago.  Only a year.  The EVE Online tower was reinforced.  But the battle was won and it’s been saved, repped up, and is now operating more or less normally.  July is passing quietly, the anniversary of the Jita riots unmarked.

Which is funny to me, because conditions this summer are nearly identical to the conditions last summer.  CCP is just handling it about twenty times better than they did last year.  Their communications and marketing strategies are working wonderfully.

Don’t believe me?  Consider: CCP is currently in another :18months: cycle.  They’re committed to their current development direction… and that development direction has almost nothing to do with spaceships.  Oh sure, there’s some “tiericide” going on, a few new mods, mining barges are getting tweaked, we’re going to see a new mining frigate, and factional warfare got a nice unintended bump.  But the age of the “Jesus feature” is over, remember?  So we’re not seeing new capital ships, new tech three ships or mods, no wormholes or incursions or new missions, only the slightest modifications to the horribly broken T2 production cycle…  Unless the CSM Summit Minutes reveal some remarkable new strategy, there’s nothing major coming down the Pike.

…except DUST 514.  You know… space-barbies and space-pants… paid for with Aurum.  Heavily armored and heavily armed space-barbies and space-pants, to be sure.  But they’re not exactly spaceship-shaped.

Meanwhile, everything that’s happening in EVE is really not much more than well-excecuted smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that the Kama Sutra position 43 is exactly the same as position 42, except with pinkies extended.

But the EVE player base is just fine with that.  One guy on Failheap even said that the minor Inferno patch coming on 8 August is better than what we got from Incarna and Tyrannis… put together.  If that’s not a good demonstration of good communications and marketing, I don’t know what is.

Check out this Gamasutra article featuring an interview with Jon Lander aka CCP Unifex, another really smart guy.  Again, I’ll wait.

It’s kind of an interesting article in this context, isn’t it?  Check out this quote in particular:

And even though some players have criticized aspects of Inferno, says Lander, “participation goes up, because it’s not about giving players a feature to play through; it’s about giving them tools to do their own stories.”

It’s a really smart insight into what makes EVE EVE.  As I’ve said before, the players are the content.

I’m not sure I have a point to all of this — that’s why I’m going to get yelled at.  And I’m not feeling negative about the game at all.  Quite the contrary, I’m as charged up about EVE and EVE’s future as I’ve ever been.  Guess I’m just as committed as CCP is.  ;-)   But it’s really fascinating to me how little there is that is concrete for that feeling to rest on.  Others are certainly feeling differently about it.  EVE News 24… you know… EVE News 24… has said that they’re going to start covering games other than EVE.  Because they feel like EVE is stagnating.

I think it’s wrong to call it that, and I’ve written as much.  But certainly, a lot of the EVE community is hanging out, watching, and waiting to see “what comes next” with this game.  Same as they were last year.  But they’re a lot quieter and more relaxed about it than they were at this time a year ago, even though conditions haven’t changed all that much.

How long will that commitment last?

Send us Intel/Corrections via dropbox or shoot us an e-mail

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  • Qwerty4812

    a polarized eve map, we all assume that it will be the downfall of action. But, what if it leads to a long term war?

    • Anonymouse

      Or it will lead to the exact situation ccp wants. What that is is anyone's guess at this time.

    • ?.?

      It wont lead to a long term war because its in neither interest to be caught in one. There may be wars within the soco space, but thats about it.

      The Cold War, yes im making a real life reference, did not see a conflict because it was polarized, and history has showing situations like that time and time again. Only difference with this is that there aren't 2 behemoths, only 1, and then the other end is a ragtag group that can hardly stop bickering at one another.

      Eve players are realists just like most politicians, goons may take advantage of SoCo indecisiveness, but it wont be some epic long-term war, it will be a sad, sad day for nullsec.

    • Shogun

      Next war will probably be the cfc blob steamrolls some crappy allience like IRC, or CVA, all the cfc dudes will call it something stupid like "Greatwar" well patting eachother on the backs as if they accomplished something of note.

      • Goon

        Don't be stupid, we love IRC. They actually undock to fight us!

        • aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

          yup IRC is the best.

        • Urziel99

          confirmed. IRC has guts when we roam there. We don't want to destroy them.

    • Tallian

      Doubt it, CFC only needs more space if more people join. Delve was taken because TEST wanted to fight down there, but I imagine its not gonna be held long, or TEST will give up fountain or something equally silly.

      Holding too much space causes entites to overextend, which ultimately spells losing, and the Mittani knows this.

      CFC will continue to pick low grade wars, or try to provoke Great Wars(Delve shoulda been, but only one corp was even willing to put up a sustained fight) but is unlikely to try and take more space, which will prevent alot of the grand conflicts of history.

      Too bad, tho. Maybe the next war is going to end up being highsec vs null, if a sufficiently charismatic leader rises.

      • Simon

        When you can stick a thousand dudes in a system, and cause 10% tidi, you don't really have to worry about how far your dudes have to travel, you can literately setup a titan chain from VFK to delve before 20 dudes die in a 10% tidi fight, reship those 20 dudes, have them reship, and back into the system before another 20 die. Distance means nothing when you tidi a system, and CFC can tidi a system at will.

        • Tallian

          I know, I've been in more than one CFC fleet.

          You do need prep time to do that, which defenders do not always have, and more than that, people don't like TiDi fights much more than the hell that we had before TiDi. Its less painful, but still not as fun as it could be.

          And distance does mean plenty when you are the one having to run even 5 jumps through the systems around a fight alone, which is frequently the case(hint, you need a cyno lit in the combat system to open a titan bridge there, and cynos die fast, what with being something you can warp to on the overview).

          CFC can do it, but it would be completely pointless. Til recently I was in FA, and FA uses about 20% of their space, the rest is just an annoyance to deal with, and costs alot of extra isk in sov bills.

          CFC doesn't want more space unless more people join, that simple. Everyone has a home, and has enough room to stretch their legs in their home systems. More than that just eats into money better spent on other things(like SRF)

  • Anonymouse

    Until someone points out something that makes ammunition fly towards the Jita monument again.

  • Glenn

    "it’s about giving them tools to do their own stories"

    The biggest problem CCP has is that they, rather than the players, become the story all too often. Gankers vs Miners, Datacore farming, FW exploit, Incursion, all where "fixed" with with the subtleness of a sledgehammer, no gradual tweaks to get the balance right. Doesnt matter how you play EVE, chances are CCP has f*ck your gameplay.

    If you look at the all time player activity at eve-offline, its not clear to me that EVE has recovered, subs will remain high as long as the disgruntled still have ISK to buy PLEX, but its activity thats important.

    God features was a bad idea generally, but overall it did give them a direction, i dont see any grand future vision for EVE, other than bombing planets.

    • Anonymouse

      +1000 to you.

      Over the last two years of my time with Eve, I have lost count of how many times something CCP has done has made me or my corp completely have to change what we're doing. First a mission change took away my income as a salvager following behind the guys doing the level 4's. Then, we went to rent in nulsec… Just as my corp got into doing nulsec havens and sanctums in our quiet little -0.1, the anomaly nerf. We tried mining at that point, but they broke the jump bridge networks, making it hard to get our meg/morph to highsec…. And the prices were bombed out by that point because of Drones, so we figured we'd try them out next…. Just as we started breaking even in drone space, the alloy nerf removed our capital manufacturing capability. So we started messing around with PI in low and npc 0.0 so we could skip the rent payments… Just as we started making headway with that, the poco change…and the folks in that area put it up to about 50% tax for outsiders… I guess with the mining barge change, they finally will give us something to do… Or maybe we'll just get a minecraft server going…

      • U know who

        Over the last two years of my time with Eve, I have lost count of how many times something CCP has done has made me or my corp completely have to change what we're doing.

        I started making horse buggys, then that fucker Henry Ford rolled into town…

        Change and subsequent adaptation to the change is the core of this game.

        Welcome to "Digital Darwinism"

        • Anonymouse

          Should it happen every other month though? My corp prefers industry and intrigue, and though we roll with the punches, how many kicks to the proverbial groin can you take before you just shutter the windows and close for good? We like Eve, don't get us wrong, but we would like at least something to be stable and not shifting sand…

          • myself

            Maybe your corp could roll with the punches better if you didn't jump ship every time the gravy train left the station. All of those things you used to do became more difficult, not impossible, and not of them became unprofitable.

          • Not myself

            Everyone does it m8, otherwise no one would complain about it….He is just someone willing to post his opinions here about though…

          • Tallian

            Not everyone does it. I don't and have only been in 1 or 2 corps that did it. Those corps all collapsed due to moving around so much.

          • Anonymouse

            Well, some corps and alliances stagnate if they stay still too long. Others thrive in such an environment. PL constantly moves around as part of their way of life and don't seem to have many issues with losing people.

            It's all about how people handle change. Every one of these changes was played with, toyed with, strategized around, and eventually we just decided that it was time to do something new because we just couldn't do things our way anymore with the size we were.

            At least with the mining barge change, ccp gave us the carrot first… But we've become all the wiser that eventually there will be a stick too…

          • Anonymouse

            Heh, jumped ship? More like we had to evac because someone or another decided to get pissed off and have a turf war, or we could just no longer afford the rent after the changes. Not everyone has a hundred man corp and can weather any storm. I envy those guys. At our peak, it's just been the main 5 and a few others who for one reason or another tagged along. (And the alt army that brings us up to 30 or so) We've played many mmo's together, and will continue to do so even if we leave Eve.

            As for picking something fun and just do it, every one of those things was fun until the nerf hammer came down. We tried to weather every one of them…

          • Tallian

            Instead of following the almighty buck, maybe you should just have some fun.

            If you notice, they nerf shit thats overly profitable based on effort/risk involved(CCP doesn't seem to understand the difference between the 2) so just pick something that sounds fun and do it.

          • Anonymouse

            Define 'fun.' Every single person on this board and in game has a different idea of what they enjoy. I already said we enjoy industry and intrigue, something Eve has a lot of. Our average conversations revolve around what new big thing we can try to build next. At the moment, it's freighters, tcu's/sbu's and what we're going to throw in the research tower next. (We love seeing people buy the tcu's and sbu's, it is like getting a little preview of something about to happen)

            The only thing we don't find fun is actively being aggressive towards others. Self-defence sure, but just going out to find someone to beat up just reminds us all of the 'playground wars' we grew up with. Though Eve has a strong pvp element, we all decided before we subscribed that we wouldn't be the bully in the sandbox, but that we would try to equip the victims (sometimes ourselves, heh) so they could defend themselves. To that end, we have so far been successful. And it's been a fun two years in spite of the changes. It just gets a bit tiresome at times that just as you get trained for something they rip the rug out from under you.

          • Tallian

            I'm sorry, I wasn't aware I told you to go PvP.

            I told you to go have fun. Don't think about profit potential, think about what sounds like fun. Don't bail on it because the income gets nerfed, if you bail on it, do so because its no longer fun, and remember, fun != income potential, or rather, just forget about income potential at all.

            If you wanted to make stuff to kill people with and sell to others, then go ahead and do so. Set up a pos, do some invention, eat a bunch of factory line time in those lovely highsec stations, but don't quit because they nerfed something that made it less profitable.

          • Anonymouse

            Sorry, thought I was being told once again that because we're not shooting people in the face, we're not having 'fun.'

            We do things because we find them interesting or challenging. But there is only so much a small corp can do. We tried joining various alliances and had our days and nights turned into a job in game as we tried to meet the often impossible demands of 'serious business.' We've been with three different rental alliances and did fine with our space until some fundamental thing got changed or the landlords got into pissing matches.

            We'll survive as long as there is something interesting to do, or someone interesting to watch/assist. But if something starts wasting more time than the benefits accrue, and we can't find a solution/fit/strategy that works, we move on to something else.

      • goonfucker

        this was a fantastic post. +!

  • http://www.facebook.com/aveledeizi Elzė Jasiukėnaitė

    amen sir

  • https://www.facebook.com/Colin.Howells2 Colin Howells

    As a new player to Eve (about a year) I just want to say that most of the people who get angry about the direction of CCP with Walking in Stations/Dust are veterans.

    Personally I dont mind the addition of walking in stations because of the potential to create new stories and feel a little bit more connected with the universe. I love spaceships but when i first tried out the game a year ago my only complaint was not being able to chill out more in the stations. I'll probably get flamed for this but I just wanted to share the perspective of the non-veterans as they tend to be the most vocal.

    • Anonymouse

      When there is as much to do inside the stations as there is outside, I will change my mind. As long as it's just the Forever Alone Minmatar Closet™ I will rage at the door and the amount of wasted effort. I miss my old character portrait as well, it had more soul and personal flavor. Now I have a dozen people who look like me gallavanting around the universe.

      • Dice

        If we changed all the ship skins to be identical, except with a large letter-plus-number designation on them, so pilots can tell them apart, the playerbase would (rightfully) be furious. EVE is about far more than just "what there is to do" – it's about the immersive universe, the backstory and the stories created by players.

        And the OP is saying that for him, walking in stations could help his feeling of immersion, and therefore fun, in EVE. You can rage all you want, but you're not him. It might not improve his game, but apparently he think it improves his. And if his views are representative of the views of a significant portion of the playerbase, then he deserves to be listened to.

        That said, there are some things I want far more than improved Incarna stuff, personally.

      • Tallian

        Its not just the Forever Alone Minmatar Closet™ now tho. There is also the Forever Alone Gallente Closet™, Forever Alone Caldari Closet™, and the Forever Alone Amarr Closet™(which should at least have some slaves, sheesh).

        • Anonymouse

          Sorry, I forgot to turn it back on to look at the other types…

    • Iamchucknorris

      dude the walking in stations was the dumbest idea and it cause a lot of problem. 1 it was worth it 2 it burn a lot of people graphics and getting in peoples ways of playing the game 3 no more space ship spinning and 4th tell me what you can do with walking in statoin that is practical in anyway. You can do way more in the ship hangar (that add it in later when a lot of people complain cause no ship spinning or hangar at all) than in walking in station. Walking in station is like a bad feature everyone turns that shit off and i mean like 99.9 percent

    • buggrit

      I do actually. Its on a stupid console. Screw consoles, I got a PC. So I'm out of it, and so is a sizeable portion of EVE.

    • Glenn

      I think a lot of the rage about Walking in Stations isnt about the what it is, we can turn it off so there is no reason for anyone to be upset about it now. The rage is about the development costs, 18 months, and what we might have got of they hadn’t done WiS.

      I have it permanently turned off, but it doesnt make the game seem more complete to me that its possible.

  • Vajrabhairava

    The difference from a year ago is that now the bittervets are back sitting on the fence, seeing if it Eve will get fixed or not. A year ago we were leaving in droves, because it was headed downhill fast.
    –
    Also, since a year ago: Tier3 BC, a cool new shield boost mod, pretty OK frigate rebalance coming … they still have a LOT to fix ( Tech, Nullsec generally, corp interface, POS'es, SuperCap blobs, etc. etc. etc. ) but at least there are no huge steps backwards just released over the loud objections of players.

    • Anonymouse

      Oh, you mean like the new unified inventory?

  • Treston Cal

    EVENews24 hinges a lot of its activity on the politics of 0.0. Being that there are not many major changes to this system and the changes only reflect something down to a personal level as opposed to a global shift in the game, I'd say EVE has stagnated for EVENews24. Weekends seem to produce no news on the site – other than propaganda material from both sides of the fight and we generally have to wait 2-3 days before we get a better overview of how the fight went and a video with some shitty music to boot.

    • whatever

      "Weekends seem to produce no news on the site – other than propaganda material from both sides of the fight and we generally have to wait 2-3 days before we get a better overview of how the fight went and a video with some shitty music to boot. "

      but that's an issue with the quality of EN24 journalism, not with a lack of activity – as you point out the fights do happen, EN24 just doesn't manage to provide independent and timely coverage of them.

      • whatever

        adding to that point: I think EN24 makes a major mistake in not trying to provide impartial reporting

        If I have to dig through layers of propaganda, personal grudges and hidden agendas anyways, then I'm better off reading the first-hand reports as things happen on kugu rather than the second hand account on EN24 several hours (or even days) later.

        I think there is a huge market for "neutral" reporting and analysis on 0.0 activities (which doesn't have to occur in real-time, even a weekly format would be fine for that sort of thing) and EN24 should have tried to move away from tabloid-style "riverini writing bad things in broken English about alliances he doesn't like" towards being the Foreign Affairs or Jane's of New Eden.

        If you don't have the manpower to provide timely coverage of events as they unfold, then focus on putting the events into context for the rest of us.

        0.0 politics is complex and many readers that are intrigued by it have a hard time to follow developments – who is friends with whom? what are the strategic objectives? what are the hidden agendas? who are the people behind the characters? what parts of EVE/0.0 history help to understand this conflict? what's the prevailing sentiment among the grunts inside that alliance? …..

        Get some reliable sources of your own in the major alliances, get a handful of analysts with strong background knowledge of 0.0 politics and then cut through the bullshit, propaganda, … and explain the world to your readers in a concise and unbiased manner.
        Clearly separate factual reports from opinion pieces and if you feature content from blogs, … have it screened by one of your editors first to make sure it matches the standards your own content is subject to.

        • U know who

          " I'm better off reading the first-hand reports as things happen on kugu" much of KUGU is a PL / Test circlejerk where alternative opinions are collectively shouted down. If you read it in that context well ya..there's less latency but the information is just as skewed.

        • Craig Wallace GENTS

          The problem with "impartial reporting" is that everyone that reports information on this site is also a player in an alliance, just as you are. What you are asking for is a neutral position that isn't grounded in the experience of the reporter, when this is all reporters can rely on when analyzing and reporting news.

          Ultimately, it's up to the reader to interpret the reality of the situation. When somebody says "All I want is 'neutral' reporting", all they really are saying is "I wish somebody reported the news based on how I would interpret facts", and how you would interpret facts may differ wildly based on your relationship to the subject.

          On top of all of this, you have a problem with the EVE media structure: reporters don't have unlimited access to the many sides of a story. As a member of an alliance, I have access to the narrative that my alliance builds and now facts are represented , but I have no access to the narrative that my enemy builds and now facts are represented to them. The only place where these stories are weighed against each other is here on these forums (EN24, Kugu, and others). The news IS the politics, and the politics is created in the comments section, not the original headline.

          So, TL; DR, everybody is biased in some way. Accept that, and learn to navigate the political realism of EVE.

          Recommendation:
          - Become a savvy media consumer and find "the scoop" yourself: consider becoming an EVE journalist.

          • Ashesofempires

            A lot of EN24 readers under-appreciate the difficulty of cutting through the static to find the actual story. As Craig Wallace said above, the people who submit the news stories, either here or on Kugu, are a party to the conflict, one side or another. We may get multiple versions of the story for a more complete and unbiased look, but sometimes just one side makes a formal post.

            Taking that information, and talking to participants from both sides to reconstruct a battle isn't so easy either. Even in a battle involving thousands, details and even the timeline of events can be forgotten in the moment. Especially when people get killed, re-ship, and come back to the fight, or to another fight in a different part of the same system. The chaos of battle makes completely impartial fight reporting, in a timely manner, impossible without fraps of the event.

            That having been said, it would be cool if it were possible to allow a wholly neutral 3rd party to observe fleet fights as they happened, without fear of being attacked and killed by the participants. Unfortunately that's not likely to happen, what with the state of paranoia that most null alliances operate in, with the prevalence of spies and all. They wouldn't risk having their movements, fleet composition or super capital status leaked to hostiles just for the sake of news, especially if they aren't winning the fights.:

          • Tallian

            If a reporting organization grows influential enough, and is able to maintain an unbiased reputation across the board, then they become a weapon in themselves for their goal. After all, refusal to let someone know that a fight is going down, and to maintain blue status with the reporters would imply you are afraid of the truth, which is something likely to cause massive moral issues with your alliance.

            Problem is, no one has the neutrality, the interest, and the political savvy all in the same place to do it.

            If Chribba, or Wollari were to do it, I'd be willing to bet they would be successful due to them have the politcal leverage and reputations as trustworthy 3rd parties to do it.

            Best EN24 has is Bagehi, and hes a TESTie.

        • http://www.fiddlersedge.blogspot.com Mord Fiddle

          There's certainly an interest in what you describe. A lot of capsuleers want to know what's going on in nullsec without picking through the troll posts on Kugu, Failheap and such in order to find and distill the news. A number of bloggers and podcasters have taken a cut at the more or less neutral reporting/analysis you describe, myself among them.

          Trouble is, doing that sort of thing in a way that delivers quality content on a consistent basis is a huge tine sink – practically a full time job – leaving the dedicated reporters and analysts little time to actually play the game. After a time the rewards for the work (which rarely help pay the rent) are not enough to justify the continued effort.

    • goonfucker

      As a person who participates in many of the reported wars, from the goon side, no less. im sorry, but i honestly enjoy EN24. the 'news' is really more of a running 'blog' where the poster kicks off with their opinion (on either side) and then the comments are the real meat of the content for the site. I often hear about fights from other parts of Eden that i knew nothing about. I often am referred to bloggers that i would have never known existed, and ya. its better than a forum. just my opinion, but the fact that the website's lead editor is from the 'other side' of the fight, actually kind of envigorates the reading for me.

  • DarthNefarius

    One thing I rarely see commented on is that Inferno was supposed to spur Wars and to be honest I doubt it succeded at all.
    The only exception may be the Drone regions not becuase they are not more profitable in any way but the opposite & the big alliances moved out giving smaller ones a chance to claim a strech of SOV for thier own & they are fighting over the scraps.
    Its sort of funny the one thing (dogpiling) that actually balloned the number of those at war was nerfed out of Inferno.

  • Aristophanes

    Imagine EVE as a farm and the players as cows.
    CCP is the farmer but a farmer that do not want to be a farmer more.
    The Farmers wants to be a formular one racing team.
    Because of that, CCP milks the cows because they need the money to fit new cars.
    Who is surprised that it stinks in the cowshed

    • Glenn

      Yes, but wouldnt you say CCP are fitting tractors, not formula one cars ?

    • ?.?

      That was horrid, try again

  • ilikeponies

    you were all born in the long summer. The white walkers have been gone for thousands of years and aren't coming back. even despite of these "facts"………………..winter is coming…………….

  • powersv2

    in this post a nerd infers that he is familiar with sexual positions.

  • -A- FC

    We are waiting to see what happens.

    Some of the new modules are good and add some more playability, and the rebalance is needed, lots of old content being given a purpose (frigs and cruisers).

    Better mining ships may lead to happier miners and reduced mineral prices.

    The critical points now is reduced mineral prices, fixing moon issues and to remove blob based sov grinding all of which are terrible terrible things created CCP to hot fix previous design flaws without any thought and left to fester for years. Now this is made worse by player manipulation of the game (highlighting the issues) and the current CCP inactivity to actually fix the basic game design causes of these issues (rather then just fiddling with the symptoms) in the hope of not annoying the worst elements of the game which are actually direcly and indirectly causing a worse problem. The same elements complaining that the game is sucky and stagnating because they threw all the sand out of the sandpit like a stroppy 2 year old.

    In the end though balance is balance not content. What CCP need to really work on is some actual new content every 12 months to draw in new players. Content, as in, completely new things to do in game. The only thing CCP have actually done regarding content for 3 years is wormholes and to a much lesser extent incursions.

    I am assuming at the moment the only new content will be a few new ships and modules to keep the old subscribers content if not happy and to finish connections to dust, which for CCP's business model, is were they get their large growth revenue and hence were they have invested all their development money they skimmed off EVE for years.

  • Jester's Hike

    First i must commend Jester on another good article. This time i feel like he missed a crucial point though. During the first "18 months" (that turned into 36 months) cycle you had CCP informing us they were sadly not going to pay much attention to us over the course of the next few years – promising something exciting at the end.

    Let me continue on that note for a second, as i see we have some newer players here in the commentary discussing WiS and veteran players. When it turned out those postponed 36 months didn't deliver anything even near being called exciting the summer of rage occured. It's not that the community hate Incarna or WiS, it's just become a symbol of poor design, customer commitment and communication – as 30 of those 36 months was poured into Dust rather than EVE. I don't mind cross-features (character designs usable for Dust, WoD and EVE) but Incarna angered the playerbase because it had so little to show for EVE (who paid for the party).

    Now back to this article… Jester is indeed right that we're looking at another "18 months". What he doesn't take into account, and why most of the community is letting things slide has nothing to do with the performance of the CMO or the Creative director. After the summer of rage, during the mea culpa, CCP asked the community for 18 months of leeway to get back on track and fix post-Dominion EVE.

    They had 6 months to clean the construction site in a show of good faith. That was Crucible. For better or worse Crucible did just that. The good and the bad were all things that the community asked for, and if there's any criticism to be given it's rather that they may have listened a bit too much to us and rushed certain features. That's understandable though. Next the leeway assume another 12 months to fix the "sucking chest wound" as CSM Mittens once labled it.

    That's why the community is quiet this summer, 18 months have not passed, and we assume patch roll-outs like Crucible and Inferno focused on "little things" to be continued clean-up of the yard while we wait for the house to be built. Muscle should for these 18 months have been spent on the core of the game. Comming this winter we expect to see results of those larger ideas (farms and fields, ring mining etc.) that have been floating around for years. The upcomming winter expansion marks the leeway, and then it's time to see result. That's why the community is quiet and amenable at the moment – we gave them the leeway. Expect to see more miscontent if the winter do not deliver. This summer had no expectancy and no reason to mark an annual event of rage.

  • Shogun

    I think he forgot about the frig. rework that is seeing all that all the frig. have combat roles, and that the same will happen with crusiers once the frigs are done. How about the V3 reskins? are we implying that those reskins are not about spaceships? I guess having the whole whole art team working on reskining all the spaceships in the game has nothing to do with spaceships.

  • WTFWTF

    EVE IS DYING ! VETS ARE KILLING IT !

  • fa 123

    Eve is as good as ever for me.

  • pop

    jester your an idiot.

  • Youaskedforit

    I'm beginning to see Jester as a "the glass is always half-empty kind of guy". Last year we wanted a stop on the incarna bullshit and CCP fixing the little things that we needed.. and that's what we wanted and that's what we got.. so now we are not happy about that.. because now we want new cap ships and shit? wtf? During these 12 months this game has become a hell of a lot better. So many stuff that i have wanted to be fixed has been fixed and even some stuff that i didn't even know i wanted was fixed and i love it.

    A lot of eve bloggers spend much time on different theory's of what CCP is up to and why they are doing stuff.. and how good they are at misdirect or lie or conspire against us.. but i'm also seeing a small cluster of ppl from the eve community looking to play the community.. trying their best to make people rage. I used to like Jesters blogs.. but let's face it..after the jita riot story's it hasn't been much good coming from Jester.. he keeps reusing the same stuff… and here we go again with a blogpost about "surprise" Jita riot and the summer of 2011 problems.. and with a new spin.. this time DUST 514 is almost as bad as Incarna..and lets all rage because CCP has done it again.. but wait.. they didn't.. because the fact that DUST was going to be a free game and it was going to use Aurum has been well known for a long time.. its no surprise or something that CCP has lied about or been hiding from us. There has been not secret plan about this.. there is no reason to rage about it.. but still here we go again.. i don't know if Jester is as bad as Mittani…or if his just a bad troll.. or maybe he works for a company that want's CCP to fail..but i'm beginning to question Jesters motive behind his posts.. because it's always the same thing..

    • Simon

      Jester forgot to mention V3, and frigate role buffs, or do those updates not count as spaceship stuff?

      • Ashesofempires

        He neglected a lot of things, like the fact that the team developing DUST 514 is based out of Shanghai, or that the number of people working on Dust in Iceland is very small. Or that the number of projects they've got going on for the EVE Universe. Hey Jester, here's a small list:

        Starbases
        Tech
        More War-dec stuff.
        Pirate faction warfare possibilities
        Ship rebalancing.

        That's a lot of their plate, and Jester is bitching and moaning because a couple of network engineers and carbon framework dudes and their liaison are working with a whole team of devs from Shanghai China.

        • http://blogspot.jestertrek.com/ RipardTeg

          Yes, but a) all that stuff is in the *future* and b) none of that stuff is brand new major features. They're just repainting the ship that we already have. Literally.

          • Ashesofempires

            Are you fucking serious? Of course it's in the future. However, my point (which you missed entirely), is that CCP's Iceland Studio, where EVE is worked on, has ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH DUST 514. Iceland people are working on EVE, and SHANGHAI CHINA is where DUST 90210 is being developed. Pull your fucking head out, for fuck's sake.

            Just because the shit on my list isn't brand new doesn't mean it doesn't take considerable development resources.

  • OcswarmFederation

    People keep worrying about stagnation in 0.0 due to the CFC but they fail to take into account politics. Every major religion ( and I'm using the theocratic example because most people view it as a cult of personality ) gets to a certain size and experiences a schism or two… or twenty. How many denominations or Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are there now? When the CFC gets too large and good fights go away it will fracture and turn on itself. I'm IN the CFC and I fully expect this to happen eventually. We're not like zealots, we're like Orcs… or Scotsmen. When there aren't enough enemies around we start killing each other.

    On Dust? Well, call it barbies all you want but the CFC has a lot of cash reserved and many of us are chomping at the bit to fund our own semi-private land based armies. Given the EVE economy, we get to be warlords. FUN! And we didn't even need to install Dwarf Fortress to get it.