It's Time - Yearly Expansion Cycle

We're never going to see another expansion like Apocrypha.

You see, CCP learned an important lesson from the Summer of Rage as discussed yesterday: you can't let current features lie fallow forever when they are in a dysfunctional or broken state. Thus since Incarna we've seen massive ship rebalancing on a scale never seen before, Crimewatch 2.0, probing rework, factional warfare redone, graphical updates, unified inventory, UI enhancements, ... the list goes on and on from big to small.

But these iterations take development cycles, and these cycles come from what used to be the pool of new development. Combine that with ~6 month development and hardening time and that means that brand new content comes in smaller, more discrete chunks. Thus why we see new ships more often since Incarna (Tier 3 Battlecruisers, ORE Frigate, Navy Battlecruisers) and new modules (Ancillary shield and armour mods, Micro jump drives, target breakers, etc), but not intensive/extensive new systems like wormholes, factional warfare, or even incursions.

Now CCP is aware that players want those big shiny features as well as the small stuff and iterations and that is what Rubicon is all about: delivering a large intensive/extensive feature over several expansions instead of one expansion so that the small features and iterations can be delivered alongside instead of letting the game get stale.

You've Seen This Before.

This is good, but it leads to the perception that each individual expansion is lackluster since the amount of new big and shiny content is lower and/or in smaller chunks. Out of this perception come comments like "this is not an expansion, its more like a patch". And in MMOs, as in everything else, perception can become reality in the minds of the masses.

To combat this, I suggest that its time CCP considers moving away from the 6 month expansion cycle to something that supports the reality of their two-pronged development of new content plus iteration.

My suggestion is a yearly "Expansion" each summer that gives players 8-9 months of development time of new features, and then during the year there are two point releases that gives iterations and smaller features, one point release in the fall that addresses any immediate concerns from the major expansions as well as normal iterations, and a point release in the late winter/early spring that has iterations and can lay groundwork for the next major expansion.

This would still allow players to get the same content over the same time-frame but would change perception that they are getting more in an expansion as well as maintain the feeling that CCP is continuing to do iterations on existing content.

* * * * *

I realize that the likelihood of CCP changing their entire development methodology structure based on my suggestion in a fansite blog post is low, but I felt the need to put it out there. Someday, when I rule the world, I'll make sure to address this issue personally.

So How Is Odyssey Doing?

Back in February I did a post in which I used Eve Offline's charts to evaluate if the Retribution expansion was doing well or not based on Peak Current Users numbers after two months in. I wrote: 

Based on the weekly averages of the peak logged in accounts, Eve has not been as busy since the launch and heydays of Incursions in early 2011. I feel that this is primarily attributed to the improvements in ship balancing done by Team Game of Drones which has allowed a rebirth of cheaper ship fleet doctrines that can compete better with higher end battlecruiser, Tech II cruiser, and Tech III cruiser setups. Coupled with the excitement of the new features like bounty hunting and new ships and UI enhancements, things look good for Eve.. right now.
Next summer's patch is crucial.

So how does Odyssey look in comparison?

 A large drop off in the averages that pretty much has negated all the gains that Retribution had made. This is a vast disappointment and indicative that the "features" in Odyssey were lacking in "awesomeness" to draw the players in and keep them around. And the features that were added were mainly iterations on existing content and still need more work, like the new exploration hacking minigame, for example, could use more depth and function.

Personally I thought Odyssey was a decent expansion but we appear to want a combination of iteration on existing features and large new content expansions. Odyssey 1.1 was a good step, but more is needed. The malaise in null sec especially needs to be addressed somehow too.

So How Is Retribution Doing?

EDIT: I've been informed in the comments that the new concurrent users numbers since DUST 514 players were introduced on Tranquility include the DUST 514 players, thus skewing any counts upwards. Without accurate DUST player counts to subtract from the numbers below, it is near impossible to get an accurate picture of how Eve is doing in the Retribution era. We will however, be able to see going forward how Eve+DUST are doing together.

NEW EDIT UPDATE: The PCU numbers do NOT include DUSTies as confirmed by CCP Fozzie on twitter. See here for details.

One of the best indicators of the health of an MMO is the concurrent user numbers, specifically the peak value of people logged in each day. More than subscriptions do, these numbers indicate the actually number of people playing the game, since people can stop playing yet their subscriptions have not run out, or they keep paying for a subscription but log in once a month for skill queue updates.

So, how is Eve doing? Has Retribution lived up to the hype of getting people to log in more?

One of my favourite sites to visit for this type of metric is EVE-Offline :: EVE-Online Status Monitor.

Its great, you can hover over any point on the line graphs and see the date and values. The bottom graph is the most instructive with each point representing the weekly average over Eve's entire existence. Let's take a closer look, shall we? I'll highlight some important dates for you.

Based on the weekly averages of the peak logged in accounts, Eve has not been as busy since the launch and heydays of Incursions in early 2011. I feel that this is primarily attributed to the improvements in ship balancing done by Team Game of Drones which has allowed a rebirth of cheaper ship fleet doctrines that can compete better with higher end battlecruiser, Tech II cruiser, and Tech III cruiser setups. Coupled with the excitement of the new features like bounty hunting and new ships and UI enhancements, things look good for Eve.. right now.

Next summer's patch is crucial.