A lot of People (me included) wanted WIS to be fully developed and Integrated into the game.
It´s this very vocal Group of EVE players that litterly threatened CCP to stop it and change Development direction and continue do the same old same old that benefits the largest Corps in the game.
I dont know when you started to play eve but WIS announced at 2007 http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11409 promised a lot and 4 years later delivered nothing , only inside a room with an avatar can do nothing . And before 18-24 months it was released eve was a ghost ship / abondened by devs with full of bugs waiting to fixed.
CCP took to money from eve players and focused on dust514 and WOD and gave nothing back that period ( 2009-2011) than and than ''Greed is good '' happened and they pulled another ostrich and angered whole player base .Basicly CCP took money and gave back nothing for 2 years and angered players , it was not WIS alone (and probably it was last thing on list ) and i say this someone not interested with WIS .
Players was against CCP and all the moronic things they did, not just WIS ( although it was no purpose with that crappy implamantation i think ) even just store fronts could save WIS . You should ask CCP what happenedl to all promised things , dont blame players for that crap.
What players wanted working and bug free game ,if they want to make another game ok as long as they had been keep eve at working condition and i think nobody can argue against it . You should ask to CCP why they did this moronic thing and abondoned eve at that time .
an awful lot of guessing and assumptions. Like an early poster said, we would have to know the reason the layoffs occurred and what positions were involved. Until we get concrete info, we're all just peeing in the wind.
Still WoD is Top 5 Most anticipated in this sterile genre. Hope they just release a smaller Game and let the players build/run it.
Doomed to failure from the start. We all know gamers in general have no clue what they want, they just shout about what they think they want. When they get it they disappear onto something else because they didnt like it.
Sad news indeed, I'm currently playing Eve for my 6th or 7th time over the years, great game but the content being released these days is not up to par with what you'd expect from CCP. Totally agree about Dust, was an utter disappointment that I myself would still give a try if it was on xbox or pc.
Haxus Council Member 21 year MMO veteran PvP Raid Leader Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Originally posted by Distopia Seems my interpretation of past events was pretty spot on. They obviously were looking for ways to make more money back during Monoclegate. Instead they let their players dictate their business plans.They were also looking to bring new untapped players into EVE with their direction with WIS, again they let their current players dictate their future business plans. I'm sure that's all fine and good for their current audience, however for them and everyone looking forward to WOD? Not so much.
They are in a situation where they must cater to the EvE players. If one leave, its like 4+ subs. Its a weird scenario with so many subs belonging to so little actual players. But yeah you can hold a lot of sway that way.
I see this as the result of the upper management of CCP being more devs and designers rather than business people. Two cuts to same team in less than year pretty much screams that your resources are being spread too thin.
WoD and VR both need to be canned until Eve and (more importantly) Dust are on solid ground. Unless you're a research university, technology demos don't generate revenue, and that's all VR is at the moment. New titles several years from completion don't generate revenue. You need plenty of cash on hand to due either of these; attempting to do both in a company the size of CCP is, quite frankly, stupid.
I worry about the direction CCP is going. I don't think releasing DUST as a PS-only game was a very bright idea and from what I can see, it has not generated the kind of revenue nor brought in the new players to Eve they had hoped.
If I was running CCP, I would create a copy of Eve and launch it on a second set of servers. I would change the rules of the game to make it less brutal: auto contracts to prevent scams, no gate camps in empire, no can flipping and other things to attract more non-pvp-focused people into the game. It could be launched as a "first-step" to Eve and as people play there and learn to love the game, they would eventually move into the original servers where the real action is. The beauty is, it would take very little development effort since they can use the current game and only change the rules a bit. It would have more of a chance to bring in revenue than DUST and would be much cheaper and faster to launch than WoD.
Eve is the worst of projects you could ever get involved with, it is a maintenance death spiral with a very gradual slope.
Before all the Eve fans jump on me, what has the game been doing? Exactly. NOTHING. Oh it continues to make money BUT if you log in you soon see a player base of just a few thousand people. Many more pay BUT not enough to fund new development. Instead, all resources are being spend keeping the game alive, which is never quite enough to boost the game upwards.
Any business sim player will regonize the scenario, where you themepark, train empire is just bringing in enough money not to go bankrupt but you don't have any money to expand.
WOD has been in development limbo for how long now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr_KVNrxtRI the cloth simulation trailer is 3 years old now. It still looks amazing but without a game, what use is it? A new company can attract investors willing to gamble but CCP has shown exactly what they can do with a title... break even. All that needs to happen is for another company to make a space trading game that is just slightly better and CCP will be gone.
CCP needs to accept that Eve is a dead end. Yes it has a lot of players, yes it is making money but the harsh reality of business is that just breaking even isn't enough, you got to be able to invest into the future. To develop the next product when your current one expires. Your run a fryer, you got to make enough money not just to buy new fries but to replace the oil, the fryers themselves and eventually the building. If not, you are just delaying bankruptcy.
Eve has reached its peak. It won't attract more players with things like Dust because at its core, it is a spreadsheet with not very good graphics and there just aren't that many people intrested in playing it.
Everyone who wants to play Eve is playing it already. WOD could have been a new product for a different market but even if it were still to launch with such a long development time it is bound to feel archaic.
CCP Atlanta is not even true CCP...it's White Wolf Publishing which was bought lock stock and barrel by CCP. So I would say there is little motivation to keep those employees around, especially if they arent fitting into the plan of things.
Originally posted by Ziegler CCP Atlanta is not even true CCP...it's White Wolf Publishing which was bought lock stock and barrel by CCP. So I would say there is little motivation to keep those employees around, especially if they arent fitting into the plan of things.
I don't think there's anything left of good old White Wolf. CCP gutted them to literally one man coordinating freelancers, printers, etc after that EVE Online monocle debacle lead to layoffs. Or so I last heard.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
What makes it very odd is that CCP is making a killing with Eve, a game that runs for pennies raking in millions.
point being that if they truly were committed and cared about WOD,they most certainly could afford to do it full steam ahead.
It really makes me wonder wth is CCP doing with all the money they make,are these guys filling up offshore accounts ready to sink the ship soon?When you have a lot of money and lay guys off from an unfnished product,there is something seriously wrong under the hood.
To me it is a no brainer,they couldn't care less about this game anymore but they will tell you they do because they want to make something out of this investment.
This is what kills me about so many gamers, thinking they know stuff about the industry that they really don't.
There is no MMO on the planet that "costs pennies to run".
Having engineers to work on systems, artists to make new art, community reps, customer server, billing, web programmers/operators, store coders, QA, managers, office space, bandwidth/server costs, etc etc etc.
It costs a lot to run any MMO, but there are so many people on MMORPG who "know how it all works" and are so sure that everything is cheap and easy so why don't companies get it right, get it done faster, and give it to me for free.
If you have a team of 50 people in the game industry an average salary across the group of $50k would be normal, or even on the low side (QA tends to get less, coders tend to get more, content, artists, CS in the middle). Due to benefits such as health care and 401ks etc. the actual tally for a company could work out to be 65k per. That alone is 3.25 million dollars a year. This company definitely has more people than that as one running MMO tends to have that or more and they have a second game launched and had a team working on a third.
So how on Earth do you think companies are running MMOs for pennies?????
If you have a team of 50 people in the game industry an average salary across the group of $50k would be normal, or even on the low side (QA tends to get less, coders tend to get more, content, artists, CS in the middle). Due to benefits such as health care and 401ks etc. the actual tally for a company could work out to be 65k per. That alone is 3.25 million dollars a year. This company definitely has more people than that as one running MMO tends to have that or more and they have a second game launched and had a team working on a third.
So how on Earth do you think companies are running MMOs for pennies?????
Assuming Eve still has 300k active accounts means 54 million per year and that does not include sales from the ingame store, extra cash from plex or other revenue. If you assume the average salary at CCP is 75,000 per person, that covers 720 people to work at CCP. I dont believe they even have half that many people working there.
While I agree MMOs cost real money to make. It is also clear CCP has money to spare.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Ziegler CCP Atlanta is not even true CCP...
We're not?
Dammit, I missed a memo somewhere.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Maybe if CCP didn't sink so much money in the pointless Dust 514, they would have the money to develope a better game (WOD)
I said it in my blog before the launch of Dust 514 that publishing that game for a console would be a disaster.
Dust 514 had to be blended with EvE, that would have attracted more players to EvE who don't usually play the game because they don't like playing in outer space all the time (me included).
If you have a team of 50 people in the game industry an average salary across the group of $50k would be normal, or even on the low side (QA tends to get less, coders tend to get more, content, artists, CS in the middle). Due to benefits such as health care and 401ks etc. the actual tally for a company could work out to be 65k per. That alone is 3.25 million dollars a year. This company definitely has more people than that as one running MMO tends to have that or more and they have a second game launched and had a team working on a third.
So how on Earth do you think companies are running MMOs for pennies?????
Assuming Eve still has 300k active accounts means 54 million per year and that does not include sales from the ingame store, extra cash from plex or other revenue. If you assume the average salary at CCP is 75,000 per person, that covers 720 people to work at CCP. I dont believe they even have half that many people working there.
While I agree MMOs cost real money to make. It is also clear CCP has money to spare.
Gamers always underestimate the work force on a game development team and always overestimate the money coming in to the company.
You aren't accounting for taxes, credit card percentage taken, office space, server farm space, server maintenance cost, bandwidth cost, advertising costs, the fees taken out by anywhere else that it is sold (steam takes a minimum 30% of the costs of any players going through steam to buy/sub/buy items in the game), etc. etc..
That's my point. Gamers always talk about how they fully understand how these companies are bringing in bazillions of dollars while spending nickels to develop the title while actually fully not understanding the real cost of development or how companies work at all.
Originally posted by Ziegler CCP Atlanta is not even true CCP...
We're not?
Dammit, I missed a memo somewhere.
Don't worry you'll get it with your pink slip.
So cold, winter. So, so cold!
Nonetheless, touche'.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Comments
I dont know when you started to play eve but WIS announced at 2007 http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11409 promised a lot and 4 years later delivered nothing , only inside a room with an avatar can do nothing . And before 18-24 months it was released eve was a ghost ship / abondened by devs with full of bugs waiting to fixed.
CCP took to money from eve players and focused on dust514 and WOD and gave nothing back that period ( 2009-2011) than and than ''Greed is good '' happened and they pulled another ostrich and angered whole player base .Basicly CCP took money and gave back nothing for 2 years and angered players , it was not WIS alone (and probably it was last thing on list ) and i say this someone not interested with WIS .
Players was against CCP and all the moronic things they did, not just WIS ( although it was no purpose with that crappy implamantation i think ) even just store fronts could save WIS . You should ask CCP what happenedl to all promised things , dont blame players for that crap.
What players wanted working and bug free game ,if they want to make another game ok as long as they had been keep eve at working condition and i think nobody can argue against it . You should ask to CCP why they did this moronic thing and abondoned eve at that time .
I self identify as a monkey.
Doomed to failure from the start. We all know gamers in general have no clue what they want, they just shout about what they think they want. When they get it they disappear onto something else because they didnt like it.
Us gamers are arseholes !
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Ill go out on a limb and say this - You dont need as many Devs when you decide you are only making a cheap console cash in.
Like everything else CCP does now.
OUCH - But yeah, i cant say you're wrong !
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
CCP are make best mmorpg on market but they can't handle with any another project .
They should stick with EVE only!
I see this as the result of the upper management of CCP being more devs and designers rather than business people. Two cuts to same team in less than year pretty much screams that your resources are being spread too thin.
WoD and VR both need to be canned until Eve and (more importantly) Dust are on solid ground. Unless you're a research university, technology demos don't generate revenue, and that's all VR is at the moment. New titles several years from completion don't generate revenue. You need plenty of cash on hand to due either of these; attempting to do both in a company the size of CCP is, quite frankly, stupid.
I feel the genre could do with this. That is why it would make my top 5 anticipated.
Many mmorpgs don't do anything really different to produce different experiences.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Eve is the worst of projects you could ever get involved with, it is a maintenance death spiral with a very gradual slope.
Before all the Eve fans jump on me, what has the game been doing? Exactly. NOTHING. Oh it continues to make money BUT if you log in you soon see a player base of just a few thousand people. Many more pay BUT not enough to fund new development. Instead, all resources are being spend keeping the game alive, which is never quite enough to boost the game upwards.
Any business sim player will regonize the scenario, where you themepark, train empire is just bringing in enough money not to go bankrupt but you don't have any money to expand.
WOD has been in development limbo for how long now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr_KVNrxtRI the cloth simulation trailer is 3 years old now. It still looks amazing but without a game, what use is it? A new company can attract investors willing to gamble but CCP has shown exactly what they can do with a title... break even. All that needs to happen is for another company to make a space trading game that is just slightly better and CCP will be gone.
CCP needs to accept that Eve is a dead end. Yes it has a lot of players, yes it is making money but the harsh reality of business is that just breaking even isn't enough, you got to be able to invest into the future. To develop the next product when your current one expires. Your run a fryer, you got to make enough money not just to buy new fries but to replace the oil, the fryers themselves and eventually the building. If not, you are just delaying bankruptcy.
Eve has reached its peak. It won't attract more players with things like Dust because at its core, it is a spreadsheet with not very good graphics and there just aren't that many people intrested in playing it.
Everyone who wants to play Eve is playing it already. WOD could have been a new product for a different market but even if it were still to launch with such a long development time it is bound to feel archaic.
I don't think there's anything left of good old White Wolf. CCP gutted them to literally one man coordinating freelancers, printers, etc after that EVE Online monocle debacle lead to layoffs. Or so I last heard.
This is what kills me about so many gamers, thinking they know stuff about the industry that they really don't.
There is no MMO on the planet that "costs pennies to run".
Having engineers to work on systems, artists to make new art, community reps, customer server, billing, web programmers/operators, store coders, QA, managers, office space, bandwidth/server costs, etc etc etc.
It costs a lot to run any MMO, but there are so many people on MMORPG who "know how it all works" and are so sure that everything is cheap and easy so why don't companies get it right, get it done faster, and give it to me for free.
If you have a team of 50 people in the game industry an average salary across the group of $50k would be normal, or even on the low side (QA tends to get less, coders tend to get more, content, artists, CS in the middle). Due to benefits such as health care and 401ks etc. the actual tally for a company could work out to be 65k per. That alone is 3.25 million dollars a year. This company definitely has more people than that as one running MMO tends to have that or more and they have a second game launched and had a team working on a third.
So how on Earth do you think companies are running MMOs for pennies?????
Assuming Eve still has 300k active accounts means 54 million per year and that does not include sales from the ingame store, extra cash from plex or other revenue. If you assume the average salary at CCP is 75,000 per person, that covers 720 people to work at CCP. I dont believe they even have half that many people working there.
While I agree MMOs cost real money to make. It is also clear CCP has money to spare.
We're not?
Dammit, I missed a memo somewhere.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Don't worry you'll get it with your pink slip.
Maybe if CCP didn't sink so much money in the pointless Dust 514, they would have the money to develope a better game (WOD)
I said it in my blog before the launch of Dust 514 that publishing that game for a console would be a disaster.
Dust 514 had to be blended with EvE, that would have attracted more players to EvE who don't usually play the game because they don't like playing in outer space all the time (me included).
Lol
Gamers always underestimate the work force on a game development team and always overestimate the money coming in to the company.
You aren't accounting for taxes, credit card percentage taken, office space, server farm space, server maintenance cost, bandwidth cost, advertising costs, the fees taken out by anywhere else that it is sold (steam takes a minimum 30% of the costs of any players going through steam to buy/sub/buy items in the game), etc. etc..
That's my point. Gamers always talk about how they fully understand how these companies are bringing in bazillions of dollars while spending nickels to develop the title while actually fully not understanding the real cost of development or how companies work at all.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
So cold, winter. So, so cold!
Nonetheless, touche'.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Ahh, totally forgot about that. This sucks even more now