Broken Toys

How much did that video cost? What is the expected ROI?

They didn’t do that video for fun, btw. Shocking revelation to anyone?

It’s a corporate image buff, but not along the lines of making them look like they’re seriously good at their jobs. It’s along the lines of softening their image – they’re goofing around, trying to make sure you know they’re all around fun people. So, next time you have one of their GMs revoke your account for exploiting, don’t look upon them as The Man keeping you down.

The videos they make at CCP usually come to life grass-roots style.. Some guy/gal has an idea they think would be hilarious and start running around with a camera..

Tbh, if I was looking for a job in the games industry (which I’m not, thankfully!) CCP would be on the top of my list. Everything just screams “utterly awesome work environment” to me.. Of course, I’m partial to people with the ability to make fun of themselves, especially among CEOs.

Also, on a content level – CCP is doing some really innovative, unprecedented stuff with EVE (and/or dust).

@geldonyetich

So it’s purely an opinion call? You’re basically saying if I dislike it it’s a grind?

Character advancement both is in no way a grind by your definition as it lacks the repition of mastered actions criteria.

Player skill by definition can’t meet the criteria.

How does it meet your grind criteria?

@harl
Gee, harl, I sort of better defined what I meant by that in my later posts, and it wasn’t what you’re blathering on about.

I wish I could merge these together.

I’ll give the developers this much credit: pacing is tricky. Me, I’m hard to satisfy in a game like EVE Online or World of Warcraft because I’ve already mastered most of the activity before I even started playing the game.

Each MMORPG brings something unique to the table, and once those aspects have been exhausted through practice, what have I got left? The same boring old grind.

If you operate with an understanding that this is what the grind really is – boredom brought about by poor pacing – it is never forgivable.

Why the pacing is tricky for the developers is that I’m not the only player playing. I’m one of the more experienced players they’re going to run across. If they could entice in average_Blizzard_fanboy_who_never_played_an_mmorpg_before_in_their_life_5931031 then they will have somebody who is very easy to entertain. I’m not.

Thus, these days, I spend a lot of time creating. For all the games there are being created today, there’s far too few of it that is actually new and entertaining.

No you don’t explain it. You mention “the grind.” I don’t understand what grind you are talking about. There are grinds in that game, mining and missions, but they are all optional. What grind are you talking about?

Do I need to point out the individual sentences to you where I implicitly describe the grind? Are you really that bad at reading?

I’d try again, but at this point I’m thinking if you didn’t pick it up the first 2 times, you’ll probably not pick it up on the third.

PvP is only costly if you use the expensive uninsurable ships. If you use standard ships PvP is effectivly free. One of the major complaints in the game is that ships are too cheap and can be used to suicide gank people in the policed areas of space.

PvP is viable with newb characters. PvP can’t meet your grind criteria as it’s never repeditive.

You’re mostly talking to yourself here. Yes, we all acknowledge these flaws.

You claim PvP has no strategy but admit you only played for a bit. There’s a strong correlation here. PvP is not simple.

There’s a difference between finding involvement in a game to be insufficient to be a satisfying gameplay experience and finding there to be no strategy at all.

The only admission I see here is you can’t be bothered to take the time to read and get hot and bothered over what you think you saw.

I hear the avatar complaint a lot. I don’t understand it but I still pay to play MUDs because I think their environments are richer. In the AAA games you’re just killing different color pixel each level, oh these goblins had a red tint!

I actually specifically mentioned the avatar complaint is not one of mine.

Ah, I see you’re still fending off the EVE supporters, Geldon. Mind if I give you a hand?

I played EVE a grand total of two months; that’s because I bought the boxed edition they put out for the fifth anniversary. By the end of the second month, I was just logging in to replenish the training queue, in case I decided to return (but I don’t think so). I started playing with a couple of friends, at roughly the same time. I was the last to leave, as none of them renewed after their initial free period.

I never left high security space. I never PvP’d, because it never really was my interest. What I mostly play MMO games for is the economy. I love producing, trading, trying to develop a niche line or corner a market. That’s why I enjoyed Pirates of the Burning Sea until everything started being made in-house by societies (as nothing could beat cost prices).

EVE brags about how complicated its economy is, but I quickly found it both mind-numbingly simple and impossible to make a profit out of it because everything was concentrated in cartels.

The size of the map should have given birth to regional trading posts, but it was all about Jita. We weren’t even in that vicinity, and I would hardly want to spend an hour travelling from our base to there. So I looked at local trade opportunities, and for a while I produced ammunition of all kinds. The problem was that nobody bought in our area, and the prices in neighbouring parts made it more profitable to just refine the ore and sell it. I looked at other trades and it was all the same thing. So why bother with production if you can avoid it altogether?

But then, mining, inevitably, became boring. Our little corporation went nowhere. We received invites from similar loser corporations that would just carry on doing loser activities we could do in our small group, where we at least had the advantage of all knowing and trusting each other. The game was just rife with paranoia. There wasn’t a single contract available that didn’t look like a ripoff or a scam. PvE was just one huge boredom exercise for cash.

And as I said, I never got around to the PvP. Didn’t want to grind for replacement money.

Good riddance to that game.

Yeah, maybe ‘good riddance’ was a bit much. EVE was just a case of intense boredom to me, which looked pretty interesting when starting out, but sucked out all the fun out of sheer repetition. What can CCP be blamed for anyway? Letting the SA goons run through their game while cheering them on? I’d sooner blame the SomethingAwful phenomenon.

And maybe it’s the entire MMO player culture (the “old-skool” part of it) which should be blamed. CCP’s part in this has just been to cater to it, and at any rate, not as offensively as Aventurine.

Speaking of which: We really need a new Darkfall update.

Maybe. But then, there’s only so much you can say about a bird hitting a window.

Speaking of which, I wonder if Tasos twitters.