CCP Falcon released a Dev Blog today on the future of Captain’s Quarters and Twitch Integration.
Captain’s Quarters
CCP has announced the removal of the Captain’s Quarters in the August release. You will no longer be able to walk around in your station cell and watch TV or go an look at your ship docked.
Included in the dev blog were metrics on the use of Captain’s Quarters. These showed that only around 10% of players ever used them when it was implemented. This has dwindled down to 3% today. Continuing maintenance of the Captain’s Quarters had a significant impact on the development process and was using 4-6 weeks of time annually from the art team. Originally the Captain’s Quarters was to be the first step on the journey to Walking in Stations. There are those who still indicate this should remain an end goal. Assuming Walking in Stations is in the future the technology used for Captain’s Quarters would have to be replaced to keep up with advances in the area anyway.
Twitch Integration
The EVE Online Client has long included an option to stream directly to Twitch. As of the September release, this will be discontinued. Most EVE streamers already use OBS or xSplit that offer far better customization. CCP would have a hard time keeping up with features needed to stream EVE and implementing them reasonably.
Surprise Comment on 64-bit Client
CCP Falcon indicated CCP has a desire to move to a 64-bit client. One of the blockers to this activity was some of the legacy middleware required to support the Captain’s Quarters. Removing them has a distinct benefit in moving that task forward.
Comments
Accurate metrics are critical to figuring out what is worth investing in within the structure of the game. These clearly indicate a benefit to removing little-used functionality that will allow the re-tasking of staff to more valuable projects. The Twitch change is being made in similar fashion. Why support code for feature/functionality that is better handled outside the client. We want a better game and we don’t want CCP wasting development resources on maintaining things in the game that doesn’t substantively enhance the experience.
