In the latest entry of Jester's Trek, RipardTeg refers to one of the big problems facing Eve Online; pilots finding themselves limited by what they can't do, with many people quitting when they're faced with the issue of what they aren't capable of.
My opinion is that part of the problem is the sheer versatility afforded to pilots who have sufficient skill points to fly ships equipped with full racks of Tech 2 modules. The reality of Eve Online's balance system is that Tech 2 is a linear upgrade over Tech 1 and meta level modules; very few popular ships are significantly limited in what Tech 2 gear they are able to equip.
When all the good ships come with the expectation of the pilots maxing them out with tech 2 modules, pilots are hitting the utility wall much sooner than they could if less skill intensive modules were more viable in combat than they are today. The right direction to tweak ship balance is, in my opinion, downwards; it should be harder to pack a ship full of tech 2 modules than it is today.
When a player doesn't have to train as many skills to fly a ship of interest, the problem of situational flexibility can become much less significant than it is today. If I'm right, nerfs might just be what the doctor ordered for improving the mid game appeal of Eve Online.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
What Do You Mean, Jesus Is Dead?
In his most recent blog, CSM Member Trebor Daehdoow (Robert Woodhead) made special note of Hilmar's declaration that "The era of the Jesus feature is over.” Since the minutes aren’t out yet, I'll speculate for a bit; what CCP learned lesson is encompassed by Hilmar’s statement?
What counts as a Jesus Feature? I think we can call the self-referenced Incursions, alongside Apocrypha’s Wormholes, to be examples of Jesus Features, and relatively successful ones at that; they are, and have been, generally enjoyed by most player participants. On the other side of the coin, Tyrannis’ Planetary Interaction and Incarna’s Walking in Stations flopped for, among other reasons, being dull, tedious and devoid of entertainment value.
If these four features are examples of Jesus Features, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with making a big "Jesus Feature" the focus for an expansion. However, a big feature focus only really works if other components of the game that players like, or have, to use are not broken and not in need of work; unusable, unenjoyable or unworkable content seriously damages the appeal of the game. When big problems are neglected in favor of shiny new things, what might have been a good feature is immediately tarnished by what its introduction took the place of repairing. If the big feature just plain sucks, the results can be, and have been, absolutely devastating.
If CCP learned that big features have to be good features - for the game and for the player alike - and can’t take the place of fixing what’s currently broken, we should be in good shape for the future. If CCP has learned to not try to make big features, we’re probably in for some rough spots ahead. Time will tell what lies further down the road.
What counts as a Jesus Feature? I think we can call the self-referenced Incursions, alongside Apocrypha’s Wormholes, to be examples of Jesus Features, and relatively successful ones at that; they are, and have been, generally enjoyed by most player participants. On the other side of the coin, Tyrannis’ Planetary Interaction and Incarna’s Walking in Stations flopped for, among other reasons, being dull, tedious and devoid of entertainment value.
If these four features are examples of Jesus Features, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with making a big "Jesus Feature" the focus for an expansion. However, a big feature focus only really works if other components of the game that players like, or have, to use are not broken and not in need of work; unusable, unenjoyable or unworkable content seriously damages the appeal of the game. When big problems are neglected in favor of shiny new things, what might have been a good feature is immediately tarnished by what its introduction took the place of repairing. If the big feature just plain sucks, the results can be, and have been, absolutely devastating.
If CCP learned that big features have to be good features - for the game and for the player alike - and can’t take the place of fixing what’s currently broken, we should be in good shape for the future. If CCP has learned to not try to make big features, we’re probably in for some rough spots ahead. Time will tell what lies further down the road.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Painful but Necessary
The changes to PI taxation haven't been particularly popular; it's now substantially more expensive than it once was to import and export PI goods, dramatically increasing the overhead costs of maintaining a PI installation.
The increased pain is a good thing; there are not nearly enough ISK sinks in Eve Online. After PI was introduced, the biggest ISK sinks in the game after skills and blueprints - POS fuel, starbase structures and new outposts - no longer existed in this role. Since then, the amount of ISK entering the game has increased substantially.
Inflation is never good for the long term health of a game economy. Adding more sinks, including the 10% market rate surcharge on P.I. goods, will help the game in the long run.
The increased pain is a good thing; there are not nearly enough ISK sinks in Eve Online. After PI was introduced, the biggest ISK sinks in the game after skills and blueprints - POS fuel, starbase structures and new outposts - no longer existed in this role. Since then, the amount of ISK entering the game has increased substantially.
Inflation is never good for the long term health of a game economy. Adding more sinks, including the 10% market rate surcharge on P.I. goods, will help the game in the long run.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Now Comes The Hard Part
Crucible is a monster of an expansion. With new ships, the desire for new tools to blow other people to smithereens has been filled for the first time since Apocrypha. With engine trails and nebula, everything old is new again. Combined with V3, the game is beginning to genuinely resemble the rosiest of nostalgia tinted glasses. With dozens of interface tweaks and minor gameplay changes, Eve Online is gaining the most client functionality in ages. When the new balance factors are thrown into the mix, the dreaded era of Super Capital Ships Online might finally be coming to a close. Meanwhile, Dreadnoughts are returning to viability through more DPS and shorter siege timers. All told, Crucible is one of, if not the most, welcome, feature packed expansions in years and it's just days from being deployed. Congratulations on creating such a wonderful expansion, CCP; this is the first time I've felt excited for an expansion in years!
However, with the low hanging fruit out of the way, now comes the hard part.
While Crucible packs an amazing quantity of new features that improve the experience of playing Eve Online, it does not, nor was it ever capable of, dealing with some of the deep, underlying flaws of current game mechanics; there simply was not enough time to do so. The task that lies ahead for the task masters and game designers is to address the underlying causes of Eve's economic woes, the non-existence of Risk vs Reward, the ease of force projection, the doldrums of daily life in null security space, the limitations of modern player made infrastructure, the proliferation of outposts, and the difficulties in finding meaningful PVP across much of New Eden, among other problems.
These are not easy problems to solve. The community has been wrestling with most of these issues, in some form or another, for several years. Many potential solutions have been discussed ad-nausea, but there has not been an environment conducive towards putting new ideas for revised game mechanics into production at CCP for many years. Fortunately after the fallout of Monoclegate and the related dramas, the main stumbling blocks appear to have been pushed aside, allowing the designers a shot at delivering what they, and players alike, have all wanted to see done to make Eve Online the best game it can be. I'm looking forward to, and sincerely hope everyone's up to the challenge of, seeing CCP addressing the hard parts.
Good luck and God speed in this endeavor; it's not going to be easy!
However, with the low hanging fruit out of the way, now comes the hard part.
While Crucible packs an amazing quantity of new features that improve the experience of playing Eve Online, it does not, nor was it ever capable of, dealing with some of the deep, underlying flaws of current game mechanics; there simply was not enough time to do so. The task that lies ahead for the task masters and game designers is to address the underlying causes of Eve's economic woes, the non-existence of Risk vs Reward, the ease of force projection, the doldrums of daily life in null security space, the limitations of modern player made infrastructure, the proliferation of outposts, and the difficulties in finding meaningful PVP across much of New Eden, among other problems.
These are not easy problems to solve. The community has been wrestling with most of these issues, in some form or another, for several years. Many potential solutions have been discussed ad-nausea, but there has not been an environment conducive towards putting new ideas for revised game mechanics into production at CCP for many years. Fortunately after the fallout of Monoclegate and the related dramas, the main stumbling blocks appear to have been pushed aside, allowing the designers a shot at delivering what they, and players alike, have all wanted to see done to make Eve Online the best game it can be. I'm looking forward to, and sincerely hope everyone's up to the challenge of, seeing CCP addressing the hard parts.
Good luck and God speed in this endeavor; it's not going to be easy!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
A Counter-Argument To A Case For Keeping High-Sec
This particular blog entry is a response to Black Arturus' latest blog entry, which you can read here:
My Case For Keeping High-Sec, by Black Arcturus
In a sense, Black Arcturs' blog post is somewhere along the right track; forcing anyone into nullsec is a moot point and a pointless endeavor; it always has been and always will be, as what attracts a player to high security space is the general safety it provides. The problem with high security space is the various things that discourage a player from venturing further. Level 4 missions and Incursions provide a safety blanket of easy, low risk ISK. It's a universal human trait to fear losing what you have.
The argument has been made that the solution to encouraging people to enter 0.0 space is to increase the rewards it offers rather than reduce the rewards in High Security space. You can’t rely on power scaling 0.0 to attempt to attract more people to 0.0 space; ISK is rarely the reward, in and of itself, but income is a necessity to living in null security space, much like anywhere else. I don’t think it’s possible to generate more currency than with Incursion farming. This is a fundamental flaw with the current state of Eve Game Design, as Incursions and Level 4 missions are utterly skewing the risk/reward ratio in favor of high security space. Balancing upwards is not a valid method to balance out this equation due to the already persistent and massive problems mudflation has introduced to Eve Online.
Ultimately, I disagree with the assessment that high security space is fine as it is; it is not. The current state of High Security Space introduces far too much currency into the economy and invalidates one of the major motivators for prospective pilots to go out and explore the deep end of the game through its safe, easy, ludicrous quantities of money minted each day.
Highsec doesn’t generate the stories that draw players to Eve Online. High security Space does not create the deep social connections that hold people in game for the long term. The only thing High Security Space provides is a safety net which, by all established player accounts, is only getting safer and more lucrative with each expansion. While safe cash and easy access to replacement toys are what every player wants in the short term, all that catering to these desires accomplishes is the degradation of the long term viability of Eve Online's sandbox and ever more rapid churn of players that burn through the limited content Eve Online has at its disposal.
Eve Online is at it’s best when players interact with other players. It’s far past time that players stop lobbying CCP for even more barriers between themselves and the player vs player experience.
My Case For Keeping High-Sec, by Black Arcturus
In a sense, Black Arcturs' blog post is somewhere along the right track; forcing anyone into nullsec is a moot point and a pointless endeavor; it always has been and always will be, as what attracts a player to high security space is the general safety it provides. The problem with high security space is the various things that discourage a player from venturing further. Level 4 missions and Incursions provide a safety blanket of easy, low risk ISK. It's a universal human trait to fear losing what you have.
The argument has been made that the solution to encouraging people to enter 0.0 space is to increase the rewards it offers rather than reduce the rewards in High Security space. You can’t rely on power scaling 0.0 to attempt to attract more people to 0.0 space; ISK is rarely the reward, in and of itself, but income is a necessity to living in null security space, much like anywhere else. I don’t think it’s possible to generate more currency than with Incursion farming. This is a fundamental flaw with the current state of Eve Game Design, as Incursions and Level 4 missions are utterly skewing the risk/reward ratio in favor of high security space. Balancing upwards is not a valid method to balance out this equation due to the already persistent and massive problems mudflation has introduced to Eve Online.
Ultimately, I disagree with the assessment that high security space is fine as it is; it is not. The current state of High Security Space introduces far too much currency into the economy and invalidates one of the major motivators for prospective pilots to go out and explore the deep end of the game through its safe, easy, ludicrous quantities of money minted each day.
Highsec doesn’t generate the stories that draw players to Eve Online. High security Space does not create the deep social connections that hold people in game for the long term. The only thing High Security Space provides is a safety net which, by all established player accounts, is only getting safer and more lucrative with each expansion. While safe cash and easy access to replacement toys are what every player wants in the short term, all that catering to these desires accomplishes is the degradation of the long term viability of Eve Online's sandbox and ever more rapid churn of players that burn through the limited content Eve Online has at its disposal.
Eve Online is at it’s best when players interact with other players. It’s far past time that players stop lobbying CCP for even more barriers between themselves and the player vs player experience.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
An anger two years in the making
What really chaffed our collective player asses for the past two years of expansions before finally blowing up in Incarna was the common thread of squandered potential that the past two years of expansions have had. Eve Gate, Incarna, Planetary Interaction, the revamped Sovereignty System, etc. all had good shots at being really, really cool features. What we ended up with was material that was not thought through with regards to game impact. All of these features, with their gaps in gameplay, serviceability and enjoyability left a distinct impression that someone at the top of the feature development food chain didn’t give a rat’s ass about the end user experience. The background of CCP's top management is no secret; a lot of them come from a technical background; the features with the most squandered potential were all developed on the grounds and basis of being a technical showcase, rather than genuinely improving the game for the consumer, before they were dropped completely after delivery.
The development teams are incredibly passionate about the game; I have no doubt about that. However, between the meetings with the CSMs, the feature deliveries, and the multitude of flaws known well in advance of PI and Incarna’s arrival on Tranquility, what makes itself clear is that the management wasn’t willing to fix things because they just didn’t give a fuck; the retention of long time players was taken as a given, regardless of the quality of features or what long time players had to say.
The last straw came in the form of FEARLESS and Incarna’s perceived purpose as a vehicle for psychotically overpriced virtual “goods.” The various communications missteps, on top of the previous years of neglect and a newly seen intent to fleece existing customers for more money drove players to leave Eve Online. Two years of misguided intent ultimately culminated in a terrific loss of players, a dramatic 180 turn in the direction of EVE Development and the layoff of 20% of CCP’s global work force; a very heavy price to pay.
This general summary skips a great many details about attitudes and cultures, but the features themselves, the front end of what we have to experience, are what cultivated the mass Incarna exodus from Eve Online. It's no surprise that delivering high quality features that satisfy long term gripes, even if they don't fix the botched jobs of the previous two years, have done wonders to stabilize the bleeding of subscribers. I just hope the right people recognize that many people consider the winter expansion's feature set to be a down payment on additional, long overdue repairs.
The development teams are incredibly passionate about the game; I have no doubt about that. However, between the meetings with the CSMs, the feature deliveries, and the multitude of flaws known well in advance of PI and Incarna’s arrival on Tranquility, what makes itself clear is that the management wasn’t willing to fix things because they just didn’t give a fuck; the retention of long time players was taken as a given, regardless of the quality of features or what long time players had to say.
The last straw came in the form of FEARLESS and Incarna’s perceived purpose as a vehicle for psychotically overpriced virtual “goods.” The various communications missteps, on top of the previous years of neglect and a newly seen intent to fleece existing customers for more money drove players to leave Eve Online. Two years of misguided intent ultimately culminated in a terrific loss of players, a dramatic 180 turn in the direction of EVE Development and the layoff of 20% of CCP’s global work force; a very heavy price to pay.
This general summary skips a great many details about attitudes and cultures, but the features themselves, the front end of what we have to experience, are what cultivated the mass Incarna exodus from Eve Online. It's no surprise that delivering high quality features that satisfy long term gripes, even if they don't fix the botched jobs of the previous two years, have done wonders to stabilize the bleeding of subscribers. I just hope the right people recognize that many people consider the winter expansion's feature set to be a down payment on additional, long overdue repairs.
Monday, November 7, 2011
It's Time For a Blanket Nerf
Power creep is a bad thing since it makes things harder on newbies, creates a cycle of complaints about boosting, makes everything that wasn't boosted almost useless, and we jumped off that cliff years ago. Making things right is probably going to make everyone mad; everyone's favorite ships will have to suffer for it.
Before I tick you off to the point that you stop reading, let me explain the perceived problems in the current state of affairs and apologize for the slight ramblings; this blog post tries to cover a lot of ground.
Power creep, a gradual increase in the power of the tools (ships, weapons, modes of transportation, etc) over time, is fundamentally bad for the game's organically grown collection of ships, modules, game play systems and other features. It is fundamentally impossible to boost something into parity with another something without eventually making them into the same thing; inequalities in performance are something that we are going to need to learn to accept. This doesn't mean accepting the status quo; some features need to be adjusted to be more or less effective than they are today. From the beginning, people have cried "don't nerf, boost!" It's an unsustainable practice; reductions in power are just as valid a tool as boosts in power, and they can be more effective as well.
The obvious form of power creep comes in the aforementioned form of boosting, a prime example of which was the recent changes to tracking enhancers and projectile turrets. One of the most insidious forms of all is stealth boosting; reductions in the performance of modules that increases the effective power of others by removing the viability of their established counter. Slightly less obvious is the introduction of new ships, which often carry exceptional capacities to fit modules over their predecessors.
Ships that can easily fit idealized load outs without making compromise are one of the ugliest forms of power creep that have made themselves manifest in Eve Online. In light of this I propose a Nerf to the CPU and or grid of every ship that can comfortably fit 90% Tech 2 modules of the right size and doesn't leave you in strong want of another module slot in order to force players to choose what their ship is optimized towards, invest in more tech 1 modules, or to invest in faction/deadspace gear.
Most of you probably realize that this proposal impacts ships like the Drake, Hurricane, Harbinger, Myrmidon, Oracle, Tornado, Tempest, Armageddon, and Tengu. Unfortunately, I think this is a necessary evil; these ships, some of the most popular in the game, do not have to make a real choice in how they’re fit; they can be optimized in tank and damage output with ease, taking away a significant portion of innovation in ship fittings while robbing the game of potential depth and complexity. Tech 2 is too much of a linear upgrade over most t1 and meta level N gear to allow Tech 2 modules to constitute a super majority (90% or more) of a ship’s equipment.
So what would a post nerf world look like? Well, let’s look at the Drake. The Drake is a ship that can readily fit a full T2 tank, full rack of tech 2 damage modules, and a full load out of tech 2 missile launchers. With a little less CPU, the Drake can no longer load up a full T2 set of all three. Most of a Drake’s preferred T2 equipment does not have a meta level tech 1 counterpart, which forces the pilot to pick and choose where he’s going to invest his fittings. A subtle change, but the little changes add up over time.
This is no quick fix for all of the game’s ills, but it does begin to address the problem of ships that can equip full tech 2 load outs being inherently better than ships that cannot. There was a time that this wouldn’t have been an advantage, but that day was when the only way you could get Tech 2 gear was to have a Tech 2 Original Blueprint; those days are long gone. Right now, a natural optimum emerges from modules that are a linear upgrade in performance without penalty. To bring opportunities for tactical exploration, those optimums need to stop being viable. What freedom is there in methods and tactics when there’s a defined right way to fit your ship?
It almost seems paradoxical that removing ability increases possibility. What a funny little world we live in, isn't it?
Before I tick you off to the point that you stop reading, let me explain the perceived problems in the current state of affairs and apologize for the slight ramblings; this blog post tries to cover a lot of ground.
Power creep, a gradual increase in the power of the tools (ships, weapons, modes of transportation, etc) over time, is fundamentally bad for the game's organically grown collection of ships, modules, game play systems and other features. It is fundamentally impossible to boost something into parity with another something without eventually making them into the same thing; inequalities in performance are something that we are going to need to learn to accept. This doesn't mean accepting the status quo; some features need to be adjusted to be more or less effective than they are today. From the beginning, people have cried "don't nerf, boost!" It's an unsustainable practice; reductions in power are just as valid a tool as boosts in power, and they can be more effective as well.
The obvious form of power creep comes in the aforementioned form of boosting, a prime example of which was the recent changes to tracking enhancers and projectile turrets. One of the most insidious forms of all is stealth boosting; reductions in the performance of modules that increases the effective power of others by removing the viability of their established counter. Slightly less obvious is the introduction of new ships, which often carry exceptional capacities to fit modules over their predecessors.
Ships that can easily fit idealized load outs without making compromise are one of the ugliest forms of power creep that have made themselves manifest in Eve Online. In light of this I propose a Nerf to the CPU and or grid of every ship that can comfortably fit 90% Tech 2 modules of the right size and doesn't leave you in strong want of another module slot in order to force players to choose what their ship is optimized towards, invest in more tech 1 modules, or to invest in faction/deadspace gear.
Most of you probably realize that this proposal impacts ships like the Drake, Hurricane, Harbinger, Myrmidon, Oracle, Tornado, Tempest, Armageddon, and Tengu. Unfortunately, I think this is a necessary evil; these ships, some of the most popular in the game, do not have to make a real choice in how they’re fit; they can be optimized in tank and damage output with ease, taking away a significant portion of innovation in ship fittings while robbing the game of potential depth and complexity. Tech 2 is too much of a linear upgrade over most t1 and meta level N gear to allow Tech 2 modules to constitute a super majority (90% or more) of a ship’s equipment.
So what would a post nerf world look like? Well, let’s look at the Drake. The Drake is a ship that can readily fit a full T2 tank, full rack of tech 2 damage modules, and a full load out of tech 2 missile launchers. With a little less CPU, the Drake can no longer load up a full T2 set of all three. Most of a Drake’s preferred T2 equipment does not have a meta level tech 1 counterpart, which forces the pilot to pick and choose where he’s going to invest his fittings. A subtle change, but the little changes add up over time.
This is no quick fix for all of the game’s ills, but it does begin to address the problem of ships that can equip full tech 2 load outs being inherently better than ships that cannot. There was a time that this wouldn’t have been an advantage, but that day was when the only way you could get Tech 2 gear was to have a Tech 2 Original Blueprint; those days are long gone. Right now, a natural optimum emerges from modules that are a linear upgrade in performance without penalty. To bring opportunities for tactical exploration, those optimums need to stop being viable. What freedom is there in methods and tactics when there’s a defined right way to fit your ship?
It almost seems paradoxical that removing ability increases possibility. What a funny little world we live in, isn't it?
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