The Big Picture

[gropos]

If I were to ask the dev team individually what the most important thing going on right now, would I get a dozen answers or one? If it isn't one, maybe it would be a good topic for discussion among yourselves and ideally at least the advocate.

 

I've been giving this a lot of thought and would like to offer my considered opinion for a starting point of discussion:

 

Factually, Earth and Beyond as created by Westwood Studios and published by Electronic Arts was a commercial failure. 8,000 conspiracy theories aside, let's face that fact. The game never came close to the numbers of subscribers projected. There is a fantastic parallel in the TV world, the series Firefly, which coincidently also had a rabid and loyal following.

 

Why then, is anyone obsessed with recreating live? Why treat live as some sort of inviolate monument to perfection?

 

We, the players, have been given a gift. The concept, the mechanic, the basic play and most important, the friendships and community that we remember from when. That is what we missed. what we cherished. Not whether the dish dancers were at nav x or y and were level 5 or 6.

 

You, the devs, through your own hard work, and the support of the playing community, have been given a gift as well. That of freedom from the constraints that the original enb had. The ability to touch on topics or content that corporate would never approve. The ability to introduce change and content at whatever pace you choose, not the crumbs in live designed to keep the player base paying their 11.99 each month waiting for more. It would be good to remember that time sinks in MMOs are primarily designed to keep paying customers occupied. You aren't bound by that issue in the same way.

 

In my corporate life, I have been a CEO, a VP of Marketing, a VP of Operations, a Coach and a Mentor. I offer the thoughts above and someone who cares about the future of EnB and wants to help.

[Kingdud]

I will speak personally. The most important thing to me is making the game (more?) fun. Since I am not a programmer or content dev I can't fiddle with mobs or anything, but I am trying to get an offline market stood up. The current challenge is do we (as decs/server admins) want to take the risk of setting one up (enterprises have tools we do not to make these sorts of things safer). But that's internal discussion. I like the concept though.

Obviously there are some things we cannot change because we'd need the client code or to modify the client, two things we cannot do.

But you are right. E&b was a commercial failure. It was poorly managed and too little was done too late. The Internet spaceship game I think of as being successful is eve online. Hence why my idea for an offline market follows the logic of the eve market window.

Down the road I think it would be cool to go to an only-playermade/drop society where vendors would either sell only blueprints for items or would sell only items sold to them. Or, if we were really baller, tie the living market into the vendors themselves and have the vendors have level restrictions...

Sorry. I rabbit trailed. The ideas in the last paragraph are purely my own. I haven't brought them up to the other debs because without the offline market none of them work. Tl;dr, the ideas above I think might be fun. They give a mechanic for both traders and miners and builders. Combat is more or less fine IMO. Mobs are plentiful and easy to find.

I can't speak to raiding as I do not have a dev toon nor a 150.

I guess...in my head, the mechanics if the game drive the ability to have fun in it. Number tweaking is for fine detail balance. Mechanic changes are for long-lasting processes and methods of having fun. ~words~

[Kingdud]

My phone autocorrects devs to debs.

[rodsmith3510]

what model of phone is that.  I'd like a pervert phone too!   :D

[gropos]

By the way, the monument to live concept went out the window the second the new classes, sectors, items and events were added... and they are AWESOME.

[GenghisBob]

     "the crumbs in live designed to keep the player base paying their 11.99 each month waiting for more"

 

You're right, that is what keeps the player base around.  Isn't that what we want?  Something new and different and challenging every patch.  (not nerfs)

 

Whether we are kept around so we can pay more or play more, we still want evolving content (crumbs, if you prefer...).

Edited April 21, 2013 by GenghisBob

[Stanig[IS]]

Most important thing to me is advancing the story and finishing things that were left undone/mothballed from years past to that purpose.  Also fixing bugs.  mmmm bugs, very tasty with salt