Largest player battle ever in Eve Online - I was there

So in case your games site hasn't told you yet: Yesterday on July 28th the largest player battle happened in Eve Online with over 4000 players participating.

Coverage of the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/28/4565558/eve-online-biggest-space-battle-in-history

And the Mittani report: http://themittani.com/news/live-reports-battle-6vdt-cfc-victorious and an aftermath report of it of the same site: http://themittani.com/features/6vdt-cfc-battle-report.

We won. Our enemy, the TEST alliance, retreated to Delve, another area of the universe. Their retreat basically give us the region "Fountain" under control.

If you ask how it feels to be there let me explain: if you haven't done this kind of mass battle yet you will get frustrated, annoyed even. The reason is that the only way CCP can run such a battle is to slow down time. They call it TiDi which makes all actions slower than real time. In our case TiDi was so bad that all actions took 10x longer than normal. That doesn't sound much but imagine targeting a ship takes 3 minutes ... and shooting it up to 10 minutes. The whole game runs in slow motion in this one sector.

The advantage of such a TiDi is that the game doesn't lag or crash, it only slows down. If you are used to it and learn to cope with it its actually fun. I finished GoT season three while fighting in it. Yes that's how much time you have.

You might argue that this isn't fun but you need to know that Eve is not an action game, everything in Eve is slow so slowing it down even further to fight crash lags is no problem at all. Many players complain about it who never fought in these battles, but they work and you must work them because otherwise you can never defend against .... 3000 players invading your system you worked years for.

There will be a time when server architects know how to run 4000 players in one "arena". But so far there are still physical limits to overcome and Eve sets a record here.

Now that the news is spreading even the BBC covers it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23489293

What bothers me in most computer games

Yesterday I answered an interview of the magazine Spiegel about Eve Online and one of the questions was "What do find so fascinating about Eve?"

When I answered I realized what the single thing is what bothers me on most games to date: they tell me what to do and how to do it. The freedom is so limited that you feel like a game on rails. Worst invention of the industry in this regard: QTE. Yes I mean you Call of Duty.

The one single player game I played recently for longer was Dishonored. I could pick up my mission when I wanted, still could roam around my base afterwards and went to the boat which dropped me in the mission area. Even there I could approach my goal as I wanted, there was no timer, path or QTE telling me how to do it. I love that game.

In MMO's its similar: World of Warcraft has a path of success. You level up, then you do your attunement quests (old times), then you did 5 man heroics until you get bored and finally you raid and progress until you beat the end boss of the current expansion and have the ultimate gear ... until the next expansion made it worthless. What a waste of time? What a way to be masochistic?

In Eve Online you are a pilot of a space ship. So there. Thats it. What do you do? Well what do you WANT to do? Simply do it. Pirate? Diplomat? Spy? Trader? Logistics? Flying missions? Troll? Scammer? Being part of large scale war? Explore the universe for alien artifacts?

And here is the problem why those "sandbox" games aren't as big as World of Warcraft: in order to enjoy the scope for the game you have to know what you want, you need to motivate yourself. And exactly here most players fail: they want to be entertained but not work for it. They are lazy.

And game developers are lazy too. Because producing a game on rails is easier than creating a sandbox. Otherwise we would see more of them as they are very successful even as single player games.

Eve Online - post two

CCP held their yearly fanfest last weekend and also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Eve Online. So CCP showed Dust514 and also details about the next expansion Odyssey.

That's where I come in with my rant. As in the last years all we get is graphics and data edits. We get "new" ships which are nothing else then modified existing ships with new data and texture, the latter even taken from existing ships.

Again: we get re-balancing in mining and ore, manufacturing materials and some UI improvements which are overdue.

What surprised me is stuff like in their keynote video they were surprised how well received the UI changes from probing were. Didn't they know what we were fighting with their sucky interface all the time?

To summarize: all changes they announced as an "expansion" is work from a small team, very small team. And that is where CCP is intelligent about their propaganda that a major team is still maintaining Eve. Its not. All their eggs are in one basket and that's Dust 514.

I think the community of Eve is being mislead and they don't even realize it. CCP is overspending on a genre they don't have experience in: a f2p shooter on a console which just is in its last year and dying. That is great business (not!).

And to top this off they announced a 10th anniversary collectors edition of Eve Online for fucking 149 Euro. What?

Eve Online - post one

If you ever wonder why MMO's are so vastly different to "multiplayer" or "single player" games read this. Simple as that:

http://kotaku.com/the-extraordinary-mischievous-too-short-life-of-sean-481060252

Eve Online - the future of online games?

Many people ask me why I use Eve Online as a reference for game mechanics, even though most players who tried Eve know it basically is a hardcore game for old farts. Its accessibility doesn't exist, the tutorial still sucks even though it has been revamped multiple times now.

Still Eve Online hit the 500.000 subscriber mark - after 10 years. Compared to World of Warcrafts 11 million Eve must be a failure, right? 10 years and only 500k subsribers?

Well it isn't - as it solely finances CCP's Dust514 f2p PS3 game (thats a lot of abrev right there) and also finances their Vampire game in development.

Why Eve is so important is that it is a sandbox. A nice interview what this means to your player base is found here, and it will push away some of you who might just have thought trying the game:

You will hear that CCP doesn't do anything against scammers or even Ponzi schemes within the game. So beware, space is a dangerous place as its inhabited by the most dangerous creature known to man: himself!

So back to topic: Sandboxes are important as they seem to be a solution to the content dilemma MMO's have. Developers never catch up with the speed of players consuming content. So making a sandbox is an obvious choice.

The funny thing is that MMOs then come around full circle as they started out being sandboxes: Even Ultima Online was one, and one of the best.

The problem is that sandboxes are not understood by many developers. The easiest thing you need to learn is the hardest: let it go. Do not control. Something the designers of todays quicktime event games have a hard time to adapt to. Or managers. Even worse.

CCP Dust 514 and Eve Online

(warning, contains some fanboy talk from Teut)

One of my favourite bloggers of Eve Online Jester Trek wrote an article about Dust 514 and CCP. He is right of course but still writes an "if CCP finds an audience for Dust 514". He still has hope.

Let me explain what Dust 514 is: it is a f2p Sci Fi first person shooter on PS3 connected to the Eve Online Universe.

Let me decloak (eve insider!) that sentence:

f2p: Free to play, the first of CCP. They never did a successful f2p business strategy.

SciFi: Niche, few female players, i.e. less reach. But for f2p you need to maximize reach to get revenue. Risky genre and setting for f2p.

FPS: CCP never did a FPS. Many people think developing an FPS is easy, but if it was there would be more successful ones besides Halo, CoD and Bf. Oh did I mention this FPS runs on console?

PS3: Yes, Playstation only. This means more restrictions in terms of technology. Oh did I mention this is the first console game of CCP? Did I mention that this is also the first f2p title on PS3? And Sony's payment systems really suck, i.e. less revenue as f2p live from a variety of payment systems?

Connected: This is the interesting thing. No one ever did something like this. If this works great, if not major fail as it is the ONLY innovation Dust has. But: it never has been done before = risk.

So there are a lot of risks there and I see no mitigation from the side of CCP. Knowing the history of CCP they often fly blind until they get a community backlash and then fix it. If they fly this tactic then Dust 514 will fail really fast - and might even hurt Eve Online, their only cash cow which currently pays for all of this.

And what do Eve Online players get in return while CCP spends all money on Dust 514? Shiny new graphics and some new ships. Thats all.

Wake up Eve Online players, CCP fools you currently with shiny graphics and no new game play.

Online Games are made of people

Sometimes life reminds you that the people you play with in online worlds - like Eve Online - are real people. Sometimes someone like this never comes online again.

Yesterday was such a day in Eve Online when one of the most important diplomats of my alliance went offline forever - having been killed in yesterdays attack on Americans in Libya.

Cheers mate, fly safe wherever you are:

http://themittani.com/news/rip-vile-rat