A popular argument from the playerbase, in favour of the battle recorder, is that video makers will be able to make better videos. With a functional program that can read battle recorded information, video makers will be able to focus on specific ships, pan about using an independent camera, etc.
Granted, a tool like that would certainly make for better videos of actual EVE battles, but would it make for a more exciting video? In some cases, sure, in most cases, probably not. Large EVE battles mostly look like bugs whizzing around a zapper. You have ships orbiting anchor ships, ships orbiting targets. EVE battles do not resemble Star Trek, Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica space fights. EVE battles look like flies buzzing about a corpse. With a battle recorder, video artists simply have the option of recording the pseudo-chaos from different angles, but it's still pseudo-chaos they're recording. They'll have no real options to massage the data. The battle recorder isn't going to make sense of a large scale fight, it's not going to bring order to the chaos. The skilled filmmaker can bring some sense of coherency to an EVE battle, but only to a point. EVE battles as we've all experienced them are not space dogfights.
There's also the time commitment that would be needed to create a fully-functioning battle recording system. For the number of people that are going to use it, is it worth CCP's time and effort? Not at all. There are better things CCP could do with their time. And what are player expectations of a battle recorder? I imagine that most proponents of the battle recorder are of the mind that trailer-quality battle videos will be the result. I beg to differ on that front. The battle recorder simply records orbiting mayhem. The video artist will still have to resort to staged battles to get their specific shots and action. It will be just as time consuming for video artists to construct trailer-quality battles with a battle recorder as it is for them to do so now.
We already have video artists creating great videos out of actual battles. A battle recording isn't going to make their videos leaps and bounds better. Only marginally so. About all a battle recorder is going to do is to save them time. I'm not sure throwing a bunch of resources at a battle recorder project, simply to save filmmakers a bit of time, is time well-spent for CCP.
What video artists really need is the Jessica engine.
Jessica is CCP's in-house tool for creating game trailers. Ian Chisholm was graciously allowed the use of Jessica when he created Clear Skies 3. Jessica allows the video artist/filmmaker to set-up and film the exact shots they require using all of the EVE Online assets available (ships, weapons, missiles, drones, etc.)
If video artists want to create the sorts of engaging stories they've been aching to tell, then the Jessica engine gives them the freedom to do just that. Now they can stage entire battles more easily, without the headache of trial and error and repetition galore within the game itself.
As it stands, if the goal is to just maintain records of battles, they can already be FRAPSed. That's the simplest form of battle recording. It exists. And is widely used.
If the goal is to give video artists better tools, then Jessica would be the far more engaging and useful option for those people. Far more malleable than a battle recorder. A battle recorder is a rock. You can view that rock from any angle, but there's little you can do to change the rock. Jessica is clay. The lump of clay can view from any angle, but it can also be shaped and formed into something more appealing to a filmmaker and an audience.
If CCP wants to give their players tools to create really engaging and exciting content, then it would be in their interests to polish Jessica for external use and then release it to the playerbase.
Player-created content. Hours of it per month. Created at no cost to CCP. An amazing level of marketing potential sits there, underutilized, in CCP headquarters. If they could get Jessica out into the wild, they'd see huge benefits from it. People love creating. Give them tools to create.
Hear hear.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant. Makes me thing of that valve movie maker program.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhy2n8Gh42w
Have you even watched the dredditMOT videos?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not everyone would benefit from battle recordings, but the talented video makers sure would.
Everyone would benefit more from Jessica.
DeleteNo. Yes, it would be neat. No, the purposes do not overlap.
DeleteThe point of the battle recorder is that we would get nicer videos of *shit that actually happens in-game*.
That's half of the fun of good Eve videos, the footage is actually from shit that really happened. If it's all staged, the whole point is gone. Staged footage is the opposite of the sandbox.
Apparently, getting good video of shit that actually happens is already possible. A battle recorder would give the dredditMOT filmmaker some added freedom (he can capture the blob from multiple angles), but it's not going to make his videos look much better than they already do.
DeleteNo, but it's going to allow him to actually play the game and then make good video of the action afterwards. As it stands, he's that one dude in fleet who has to remove the HUD and get good camera angles using the horrible camera tool Eve has, whilst also participating in fleet.
DeleteI have, in fact he's one of my inspirations. As a maker of shitty videos, i've watched a majority of, if not all cinematic style videos for the purpose of inspiration and because I love watching them. I will tell you right now that a battle recorder will help video makers, but Jessica engine would be SOOOO MUCH MORE USEFUL.
DeleteSure, people can make the arguement of staged content, but the reality is that 90% of all footage you see in videos is fleet warps, jump bridging, structure shoots, capitals cap chaining, and stuff under heavy TiDi. This is because frapsing cinematic footage is a PITA and for every minute of fraps the amount of useful footage you get is minimal. Would a battle recorder help this? Surely it would in the respect that the difficulty of getting the right angles would be cut down, but for a cinematic video, most of your shots would still be closeups and angles that could be just about any battle.
I'm not arguing that authenticity isn't important, but the fact is a battle with 200 drakes shooting 200 Tengus made into a cinematic video is going to look mostly the same since it will be mostly closeups. You can do stuff pulled away, but subcaps are hard as fuck to see so for the sake of cinematic videos its still fairly useless. Theres a reason that ships have squares on your overview. I don't think people realize how many shots are staged to some degree, and a closeup of 5 ships shooting some unknown target will look the same staged or not. I want to re-iterate, that I do think authenticity is cool and important, but with all things taken into account, as a video maker I would push to get access to the Jessica engine rather than say "NO JESSICA IS FAKE! WE WANT A BATTLE RECORDER!" and end up getting neither.
A battle recorder will have far more impact in the context of allowing FCs and players to re-analyze the battle to figure out what went wrong or what to do better.
While Jessica would be a kickass tool to obtain (and I'll certainly talk to CCP about this) the major difference is that staged content is staged content. It's not just about pretty spaceships, its about the fact that the video reflects a real battle with real consequences.
ReplyDeleteSurely you're aware of all the criticisms of EVE trailers and the fact that real EVE players know that things don't go down like that on the server? Without the degree of authenticity and dare I say the "I was there" factor that a battle recorder would provide, it'll continue to represent pure fiction instead of reflecting a scenario that players could actually step into by playing the game.
Despite it being a favorite of ours and something we want EVE's top programmers to continue to brainstorm solutions about, the technical barriers are fairly substantial, and its highly debatable whether a battle recorder alone is worth justifying a huge reconstruction of the way that our clients communicate with the server.
Jessica might be a good thing to tide us over, but if players just want to stage battles, they can do so on SiSi. Shit that looks cool but never actually happens in the context of the game isn't really optimal *marketing* material to begin with, in my opinion. EVE players (including prospects) typically are quick to call bullshit.
EVE players are already playing the game. Trailers aren't really geared towards them. They're geared towards people who aren't playing.
DeleteActual EVE battles as a form of marketing the game would be a terrible way to market the game.
Trailers and the staged battles they mostly consist of are a form of roleplay. We know they're staged, but we appreciate their aesthetics and their excitement, because even tho EVE battles don't actually play out like that, they do in our minds, and the way we talk about them afterwards.
And I'm well-aware of the technical barriers of creating a battle recorder (I know you're not). Which is another reason why CCP won't commit to the project anyhow.
Jessica is the better route to go, no matter. Players can visualize fights they way they want, and it will create a better marketing platform to those not yet playing.
I agree with a lot of your points, but there are some things to be added. The true issue of players complaining that the videos they see don't reflect actual gameplay stem far more from the primary reason for being that a sweet looking fight doesn't show things like the hours of waiting on a titan and days of blueball before the fight. The fact that even players like Prometheus Exanthal who make great PVP videos, only show the good fights and don't make videos showing the hundreds of time they just jumped a gate and got ganked/blobbed/falconed to get the footage they do. Authenticity of the actual battle is a part of the picture, but in the context of attracting and retaining new players, having footage obtained from actual battles isn't going to change the fact that new players signing up for the game will still see awesome space battles think thats what EVE is actually like, and then be disappointed by the barrier of entry and learning process required to get to those battles as they end up in some shitty highsec carebear corp and quit the game after they get ganked jumping into lowsec to get skillbooks.
DeleteAlso, staging simple shots on TQ or SiSi is a pain in the ass with multiple alts and knowing the shots you want already, forget about entire battles. The ship models are just really small so those kind of shots need to happen really close to each other, so you either need a huge fleet or need to be an amazing director with your actors having LOTS of patience, both very high barriers of entry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4OItPSisx0
This 5 minute video took over a month of having the right people on at the right times to get enough fraps footage to make and its all staged.
If filmmakers could get Jessica, I wouldn't just see it as a simple tide over, but something that would revolutionize EVE videos like Clear Skies was able to do. Does it matter that the SFM videos don't reflect actual TF2 gameplay? No, because its not used for that. Jessica would allow filmmakers to not just show battles, but to tell stories, make recruitmment videos, and things involving amazing levels of creativity. EVE is a gorgeous game, especially with the new V3 and the thought of CCP holding their own Saxxys and those videos sweeping across youtube, oh man...the marketing potential is tremendous.
Finally, regarding players wanting to show what happened in actual fights and battles it would allow them to fill in the gaps of their footage to create the videos they want. I'm sure many videomakers will deny this, but there are LOTS of times where the video you want to make is limited by 4-5 seconds in a scene that you don't have fraps for.
Would a battle recorder fix that? Yes, but considering we already have Jessica developed, I would rather push as hard as we could to get ahold of that than push for a feature that we are not only unlikely to get, but one that would take dev resources away from fixing actual gameplay.
tl:dr Who cares if the battles are real if the gameplay is still shit and why not go for low hanging fruit?
PS: Hands, if you could get us Jessica I would literally buy a plane ticket to wherever you live and suck your dick in real life. Thats how badass it would be.
As somebody that has done video editing and has been part a of video making community in the past with The Sir. Community ( http://sircommunity.com ) I Can tell you that a Eve Battle Recorder would see subscribers to Eve Online jump up a lot (how much I can not say but a bump is a bump). I Will take a moment to blow our trumpet about "The Sir. Community", it is in no doubt in my mind that sales of the old game Battlefield 2 was prolonged due to the "Battle Recorder" feature in the game. And that was also in part communicated to "The Sir. Community" by the developers that made the game [DICE]. Due to our videos and map modding, it was this that led to us making the maps and game trailers for the next release in the franchise "Battlefield 2142" and it was us that even made the DLC map "Wake Island 2142".
ReplyDeleteHaving a "Battle Recorder" gives the players the tools needed to make their own storeys. But not only that, It gives them the tools to document fleet fights that would otherwise be TiDi borefests. Don't get me wrong. "jessica" would be good for many folks. But "Battle Recorder" would do both jobs of scripted storeys and real fights.
So what you're saying is that if it doesn't do it all, you don't want it? You don't think pushing for access to Jessica would be positive for the EVE videomaking community in any meaningful context?
DeleteBecause the message I seem be taking away is that people would rather talk about the merits of having something that doesn't exist, than show interest in possibly gaining something that they could get.
If I were a CCP Dev reading this post, I would walk away with the impression that EVE video makers aren't interested in gaining access to Jessica because it doesn't do as much as a battle recorder.
PROTIP: The more you downplay the benefits of getting Jessica, the less likely you are to get it.
A lot of the rhetoric I see is pretty much players saying that they would rather ask CCP for 20 dollars than 10 dollars, when CCP only has 10 dollars to potentially give.
"A lot of the rhetoric I see is pretty much players saying that they would rather ask CCP for 20 dollars than 10 dollars, when CCP only has 10 dollars to potentially give."
DeleteQuote of the fucking month.
A tool many EVE players have heard of but may not fully understand is "Jessica." Jessica is an in-house tool developed by CCP [that] essentially is a mix between the EVE client and a 3-D design program. We use this to arrange the scene, animate the ship models and then export the animation frame by frame. Unfortunately this is but the tip of the iceberg of what Jessica is able to do, and therefore we're unable to release this tool to the community, something [that] is often asked for.
DeleteI agree with Wartzilla: a battle-recorder would make it much easier for the good video makers to transform actual happenings into compelling videos. Obviously, editing and careful view selection would be required to make sense of the chaotic orbiting, but at least it would be possible without having to dedicate one or more people to just filming duty (something small gangs in particular can't afford). FRAPSing can be put to use, but is horribly limited.
ReplyDeleteThe other aspect is that recorded battles would be a great tool for fight post-mortems, to identify mistakes.
And writing all this made me realize that there actually is no 'vs' here. A battle-recorder in the strictest sense would just be a feature to record all the actions on the battlefield. This recorded data could then very well be visualized using a Jessica-type engine, because in the end that is what Jessica does: replaying recorded movement instructions. Two birds with one stone (and a ricochet).
"The other aspect is that recorded battles would be a great tool for fight post-mortems, to identify mistakes."
DeleteThat's about the only thing a battle recorder would be useful for. That said, I still don't believe it is worth the development resources.
Two birds with one stone perhaps, but in terms of technical restrictions, what we can realistically get, and the fact that time spent developing a BR would be time spent not working on other aspects of the game?
DeleteVideomakers should be pushing fucking HARD to get Jessica. Noone will deny that a battle recorder is in many ways superior to Jessica, but we're talking about technology that doesn't even exist compared to something that is already programmed and ready to go.
Why should players push for Jessica over a BR? Because the key question isn't what you want, its what you can get. For the sake of getting rich, winning the lottery may be more appealing than getting a high paying job, but that doesn't mean that buying lottery tickets is a better decision than using the money to go to school and get an education.
True - if the choice is either one or the other, Jessica-type engine wins (or whatever else CCP is currently using), simply because without a way to visualize a battle recording, a battle recorder by itself is quite useless. And I do know that a BR requires more than just dumping events into a file.
DeleteBut I can also not let the naivete of "we don't need a BR, we have FRAPS" simply stand. We can make due with FRAPS, but that's it.
E-Sports Have to have a Battle Recorder of some type.
ReplyDeleteAs I thought more about this:
DeleteYou build Your battle recorder and you set it up like SC2 or Dota2, you give someone the 'match' ID # or such and they can take this a make it into a video. They make that video and commentate on it. Someone else comes along sees this and says "You know I think I can commentate on this better." they go and do this and all of the sudden Eve is gaining Good and Excellent commentators as people can get experience outside of being selected for AT or EO.
Benefit: Eve PvP gains appeal to both Carebears and people who haven't played Eve as well as a greater selection of commentators who can make Eve more accessible.
Now you have this system for recording battle lives and an easy way to add delay you can build a light weight client/flash player/etc system to enable commentators and spectators to pan around the battle field on their own, w/o the need of a full blown client and needing to be in system and on grid. With this you can reduce the overall(though not necessarily the spike) bandwidth needed for the AT and EO.
Benefit: Broadens Eve's appeal to potential players by having a system by which they can get a better look at whats going in high-level Eve play(non-meta game play that is) while enabling commentators that weren't picked by CCP to commentate on the matches and broaden the range of commentating styles and thus broadening the possible audience.
Having all sorts of prep time to commentate an existing battle is far different than commentating on a live match.
DeleteGiven a week, plus editing, I could probably do a good job of commentating a match. Could I do it well live? Probably not.
That is the point though its all about practice, whether its a replay or a live match you can practice your commentating on them, would everyone decide too? No, but those that do?
DeleteYou don't need a battle recorder to do that, though. Just take an existing match video, strip off the audio, and go to town with the practicing.
DeleteThis limits what would be shown, what could be talked about.
DeleteGood call. If the devs say we probably won't get this because its way to development resource heavy, the solution is to discuss alternatives that would take even more resources to develop. o\
DeleteYou mean discussing something they need if they ever want to really move into the E-Sports Space? Which, you know they are.
DeleteOne of the big advantages of a battle recorder is that you sometimes just don't know when you are going in to a battle you would like to record. I assume an eve-online client battle recorder would just be able to save all in-space content of your client.
ReplyDeleteWho always has fraps on when flying in space?
As much as I hate myself for doing it, I agree completely with you
ReplyDelete