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WoD meets EVE
- Thread starter Black
- Start date
set
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2013
- Messages
- 940
http://www.ccpgames.com/media/47392/ccp 6 month update september 23 2013.pdf
Being pushed back to 2016. Remember when this game was announced in 2006?
And of course, at any given moment, you can read tweets or whatever of some producer claiming to hold our horses- like when they fired 75% of the team after that financial crisis, then proceeded to rehire them all back three months later?
No concrete gameplay has ever been shown, or even hinted at. The game is vaporware of the worst kind. A shame White Wolf is chained so this shameful excuse of a developer.
I mean, don't get me wrong, a EVE meets White Wolf is a match made in heaven, if they can make the combat and intrigue scale right with pixels. But they aren't doing anything. Nothing. It's awful. In the time it's taken them to do nothing, I could have built an entire WoD MUD with all the necessary mechanics to be an excellent MMO. Shit, I'm tired of the deception and the mixed messages. I shouldn't even bump this thread, because I hate discussing this game. It's what I want in an MMO. It's what I want MMOs to be. I want them to be about intrigue, like EVE has, but I want them to be more than static space ships floating in the abyss. I want real time rolling and dodging, wheeling and dealing.
But it's not going to happen. And given CCP's business plans - EVE forever - be assured the WoD MMO, if it ever is released in our lifetimes, is not going to resmeble EVE at all. As it is, they refused to cannibalize their userbaes with Dust 514, even though that was honestly the most sensible decision (Dust 514 just doesn't make ANY sense, it was dreamed up by some CoD-loving marketer, I'm sure, because it was an idea that was never going to work, and clearly isn't working).
Here's all CCP needs to do to rake in millions and zillions of dollars:
1. One city. That's all you need to start out with. Put in the framework to scale this thing, but don't bother trying to come up with... procedural city generation shit like you've been wasting your breath on. It's pointless. MMOs suck when nobody is around, so don't make a bunch of empty space to diluate the population.
2. Populate this one city with shit to control. I'm talking hospitals, police stations, drug rings, shipping yards... plant your stick in the ground and it's yours. Pay people to watch over your stick and you can turn a profit on the land you control - in the form of completed or half-baked goods like blood packs, drugs, weapons, cashola, clothing, et cetera.
3. Human or vampire. That's all you start the game as, if it gets successful, figure out how to make mages and werewolves work. All players start as a human. There are NPC vampires players have to discover to be embraced. Players that elect not to become vampires can remain neutral, become ghouls, or join the hunters after discovering the hidden mechanics to become 'imbued'. Mechanics like these are fun and break the mold - there's no class selection screen, no race selection screen, you just log on and play. People spread rumors or secrets about how to join the ranks of particular clans and such. You can even invlidate people ruining the secrets by obfuscating the mechanics with a little randomness or peculiarity. Figure out a way to balance human vs vampire so going one or the other is a compelling choice.
Probably consider a day and night cycle. This is probably the hardest part, to be honest. I can't expect casuals liking the idea of not being able to walk aroudn in the sun in as a vampire... but if you provide players with enough shit to do indoors, it's not that big of a deal? Hellmoo did it.
4. Balance combat vs intrigue. You can be a sneaky sonofabitch, a gun toting maniac, a coy persuader... and all paths are equally viable for character progression. Character progression is all about earning experience to spend on skills, but after a point experience just dries up, and the way you progress after that varies upon whether you're human or vampire. Players can continue to further themselves by joining more powerful groups that hold more territory in this one city - this one city that everyone is involved in the politics of, this one city that unifies the players under a common banner of conflict and keeps stories central and interwoven - and by finding and amassing wealth. Takes a lot of bullets to kill an average vampire, after all. Crafting SHOULD be a major focus of this game, despite CCP's idea that it won't be - characters that don't specialize in combat need SOMETHING to do, and that something should be crafting. Researching more advanced things for their allies to construct, or constructing it themselves. Figuring out what groups to trade with to get the necessary parts and pieces to construct the necessary weapons, or research the necessary disciplines or paths, to further the players in your social cricle.
Make combat just one way of progressing your character, but also make combat fun. You needn't need full-on FPS action here, but you can provide a better experience than eve, or the typical hotbar MMO experience.
5. Build some PVE content. You don't need much. Make it finite too, stuff that exists to give players who aren't familiar with WOD a better understanding.
6. Make sure this all syncs up well. Make everything as responsive as possible.
7. Shard it. Forget one big universe. I know that's your thing, CCP, but an MMO that doesn't use space ships cannot support thousands of players in one instance. You CANNOT have 200 vampires in a single quadrant of play. That's insane. It's not really true to the WOD setting anyway. Make the shards reasonable, so that economies don't get too big, so all players can find a niche in the player economy. Maybe every shard is its own city? But that would complicate things, a little, but I could see it working, maybe allow players to travel between shards, but require them to do a majority of their actions in their home shard, venturing to other shards only for specific purposes? Okay, sorry, getting onto a tangent here, maybe it's not a good idea. The point is to keep player populations in cities relatively small.
There, that's all I can think about that needs doing. Sure, you need to build models for clothing, players, and you need to make particle effects... and that one big city that's supposed to hold everybody - but this doesn't seem impossible to me. This road map I have seems like something they could produce and yet... nothing. What's taken a decade to plan that they can't even begin to share with us? It's like they have no idea what to do or how to do it, when the pieces are all there, if you look at the older MMOs and EVE itself. Why did Dust 514 come out before this? Something that was sure to be CCP's magnum opus?
Being pushed back to 2016. Remember when this game was announced in 2006?
And of course, at any given moment, you can read tweets or whatever of some producer claiming to hold our horses- like when they fired 75% of the team after that financial crisis, then proceeded to rehire them all back three months later?
No concrete gameplay has ever been shown, or even hinted at. The game is vaporware of the worst kind. A shame White Wolf is chained so this shameful excuse of a developer.
I mean, don't get me wrong, a EVE meets White Wolf is a match made in heaven, if they can make the combat and intrigue scale right with pixels. But they aren't doing anything. Nothing. It's awful. In the time it's taken them to do nothing, I could have built an entire WoD MUD with all the necessary mechanics to be an excellent MMO. Shit, I'm tired of the deception and the mixed messages. I shouldn't even bump this thread, because I hate discussing this game. It's what I want in an MMO. It's what I want MMOs to be. I want them to be about intrigue, like EVE has, but I want them to be more than static space ships floating in the abyss. I want real time rolling and dodging, wheeling and dealing.
But it's not going to happen. And given CCP's business plans - EVE forever - be assured the WoD MMO, if it ever is released in our lifetimes, is not going to resmeble EVE at all. As it is, they refused to cannibalize their userbaes with Dust 514, even though that was honestly the most sensible decision (Dust 514 just doesn't make ANY sense, it was dreamed up by some CoD-loving marketer, I'm sure, because it was an idea that was never going to work, and clearly isn't working).
Here's all CCP needs to do to rake in millions and zillions of dollars:
1. One city. That's all you need to start out with. Put in the framework to scale this thing, but don't bother trying to come up with... procedural city generation shit like you've been wasting your breath on. It's pointless. MMOs suck when nobody is around, so don't make a bunch of empty space to diluate the population.
2. Populate this one city with shit to control. I'm talking hospitals, police stations, drug rings, shipping yards... plant your stick in the ground and it's yours. Pay people to watch over your stick and you can turn a profit on the land you control - in the form of completed or half-baked goods like blood packs, drugs, weapons, cashola, clothing, et cetera.
3. Human or vampire. That's all you start the game as, if it gets successful, figure out how to make mages and werewolves work. All players start as a human. There are NPC vampires players have to discover to be embraced. Players that elect not to become vampires can remain neutral, become ghouls, or join the hunters after discovering the hidden mechanics to become 'imbued'. Mechanics like these are fun and break the mold - there's no class selection screen, no race selection screen, you just log on and play. People spread rumors or secrets about how to join the ranks of particular clans and such. You can even invlidate people ruining the secrets by obfuscating the mechanics with a little randomness or peculiarity. Figure out a way to balance human vs vampire so going one or the other is a compelling choice.
Probably consider a day and night cycle. This is probably the hardest part, to be honest. I can't expect casuals liking the idea of not being able to walk aroudn in the sun in as a vampire... but if you provide players with enough shit to do indoors, it's not that big of a deal? Hellmoo did it.
4. Balance combat vs intrigue. You can be a sneaky sonofabitch, a gun toting maniac, a coy persuader... and all paths are equally viable for character progression. Character progression is all about earning experience to spend on skills, but after a point experience just dries up, and the way you progress after that varies upon whether you're human or vampire. Players can continue to further themselves by joining more powerful groups that hold more territory in this one city - this one city that everyone is involved in the politics of, this one city that unifies the players under a common banner of conflict and keeps stories central and interwoven - and by finding and amassing wealth. Takes a lot of bullets to kill an average vampire, after all. Crafting SHOULD be a major focus of this game, despite CCP's idea that it won't be - characters that don't specialize in combat need SOMETHING to do, and that something should be crafting. Researching more advanced things for their allies to construct, or constructing it themselves. Figuring out what groups to trade with to get the necessary parts and pieces to construct the necessary weapons, or research the necessary disciplines or paths, to further the players in your social cricle.
Make combat just one way of progressing your character, but also make combat fun. You needn't need full-on FPS action here, but you can provide a better experience than eve, or the typical hotbar MMO experience.
5. Build some PVE content. You don't need much. Make it finite too, stuff that exists to give players who aren't familiar with WOD a better understanding.
6. Make sure this all syncs up well. Make everything as responsive as possible.
7. Shard it. Forget one big universe. I know that's your thing, CCP, but an MMO that doesn't use space ships cannot support thousands of players in one instance. You CANNOT have 200 vampires in a single quadrant of play. That's insane. It's not really true to the WOD setting anyway. Make the shards reasonable, so that economies don't get too big, so all players can find a niche in the player economy. Maybe every shard is its own city? But that would complicate things, a little, but I could see it working, maybe allow players to travel between shards, but require them to do a majority of their actions in their home shard, venturing to other shards only for specific purposes? Okay, sorry, getting onto a tangent here, maybe it's not a good idea. The point is to keep player populations in cities relatively small.
There, that's all I can think about that needs doing. Sure, you need to build models for clothing, players, and you need to make particle effects... and that one big city that's supposed to hold everybody - but this doesn't seem impossible to me. This road map I have seems like something they could produce and yet... nothing. What's taken a decade to plan that they can't even begin to share with us? It's like they have no idea what to do or how to do it, when the pieces are all there, if you look at the older MMOs and EVE itself. Why did Dust 514 come out before this? Something that was sure to be CCP's magnum opus?
Excidium
P. banal
I gave up waiting for this game a while ago. My new "Just wait, it'll surely come out" vapourware is Eternal Crusade.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,395
Well, White Wolf made a deal with the devil and now they are paying the price. What is funny is that if they tried a kickstarter and done a decent enough PR with classic WoD, they could get a few millions kwans from vampire emos to make a decent cRPG and attract attention to the brand again, they wouldn't rank in the cash but I guess it is better that get involved in a vapourware MMO that is never going to be released and be entangled with (EVE milking machine also called CCP).
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 56,545
I like how i didn't notice this thread was necromancy, and i was confused of people speaking of a "TOR" killer.
Excidium
P. banal
The kickstarters are just pre-order system for the limited version of the new anniversary editions. And it's not by White Wolf because they practicaly don't exist anymore. It's by Onyx Path.
CCP should approach Obsidian and license WoD for them for cheap, so Obsidian could make another vampire game.
Ah who am I kidding, will never happen.
Ah who am I kidding, will never happen.
Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
Last I heard, White Wolf was selling booze at cons.
set
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2013
- Messages
- 940
Sorry, it's sort of necromancy with my post, but nobody posted about the September update, when they pushed this back all the way to 2016. That's a pretty big deal considering all the people I know who STILL talk about this game like it may actually exist at some point in our lifetimes.
I don't know CCP's thoughts, but I assume we will never see a single player White Wolf game because they hold the rights and although they could maybe get Obsidian or some other developer to produce a title that might make some money it's far more likely they would see it as a loss of some sort. If you have a very powerful, old IP in your coffers you sit on it and do nothing with it. That is the prerogative of any major studio, be it Lucas Arts, Nintendo or Acvitision. CCP does not develop offline games and probably never will. They would sooner sell off White Wolf than license the IP to another studio.
Horus
Arcane
Why did the White Wolf sold all their gaming rights to CCP? Isn't it more sensible to just sell them rights for the online games?
Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
White Wolf didn't sell the rights to them. CCP bought all of White Wolf wholesale.
set
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2013
- Messages
- 940
To be fair, I believe it was considered a beneficial merger at the time. They both seemed to think the other could provide what they needed to grow. In theory, they were right. I still believe the WoD MMO could be enormously successful and grow White Wolf's publishing line, just like a vampire MMO could grow CCP's profits. CCP has shown to be the only major company to show long-term linear growth for an MMO over a decade (that isn't Blizzard). The two companis together is a good recipe, but somewhere along the way somebody had a not-so-brilliant idea or two, and they've been mucking around too much instead of getting shit done. Probably a lot of corporate politics, which is why we will never have the full picture on why things have come out as they have for so long.
Echo Mirage
Arcane
How is White Wolf itself doing in all of this ?.
Dr Tomo
Learned
Lolz this game will never get released. It is also amusing as Hilmar wants to get this mmo developed to either replace or supplement Eve's income stream. But with how Dust 514 is turning out I am skeptical that they can get this out the door as they are unable to increase staff.
Xor
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2008
- Messages
- 9,345
Pretty sure they basically went out of business and now a different company is handling all their PnP stuff. Serves them right for making nWoD so shit.
And no, I will never get over Mage the Awakening.
CrazyDiamond
Novice
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2014
- Messages
- 34
I don't understand what's with developers working with WoD games that go wrong every time. Troika was disbanded after making that bugfest that was Bloodlines, and Nihilistic's last game was the Vita version of Black Ops. But maybe the problem here was Activision.
Reading that made me kind of sad because it will never happen.
Reading that made me kind of sad because it will never happen.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,395
Well White wolf was composed by alot of shortsighted people that didn't understood cRPGs at all and Activision were a bunch of dicks as always, that is what happened. Now the licence is on the hands of CCP, they are making enough money to keep them going but EVE players resisted their attempts of adding microtransactions. What that means is they really don't have money for WoD that is alot more expensive to make than a space MMO where everything is empty anyway.
CrazyDiamond
Novice
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2014
- Messages
- 34
It sucks they didn't get the money, but hey, at least there's a smaller chance WoD will be filled with microtransactions. I seriously hope they don't have to resort to that, or selling in-game cash.
set
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2013
- Messages
- 940
It's 2014. An online game without MTX isn't an online game at all. You can be sure dress-up will cost you extra. It's already been hinted at by those quarterly reports CCP puts out, they keep mentioning how MTX will be incorporated into WoD and how much money people will pay for e-fashion. Do you think they hired fashion designers to work on WODOnline for nothin'?
Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
PLEX are effectively selling in-game cash. The key difference is mostly that the rate of exchange for PLEX:in-game cash is heavily in favour of in-game cash being just too costly for real jewgold acquisition (unless you're an oil sheik or something).
CrazyDiamond
Novice
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2014
- Messages
- 34
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