Despite the superficial similarity, EVE is not a good comparison. Graphics are irrelevant, they're the easy part, although expensive time-and-resource-wise; and especially when you've got nothing to render but spaceships and a few gates and stations, changing engines isn't all that big of a deal. (CCP were of course quite cunning in limiting themselves that way.) Also, a submarines-in-space MMO with baked-in fluid mechanics and very little continuous/random player steering doesn't compare very well with the Cryptic engine's ability to track free player input in 3 dimensions across the internet. On the other hand, the baked-in nature of EVE's fluid mechanics is part of what enables it to handle massive battles - but then again, has EVE ever handled its massive battles to players' satisfaction (until TD, I guess)?
And in fact, it's notable that in the one area where CCP tried to genuinely innovate in EVE with their new engine - adding a ground-based element to gameplay - they've failed pretty spectacularly. And that's not just because space groignards - they'd have had far less trouble getting acceptance for their dream of a ground-based element in EVE, if the damn thing had worked out of the box, been more than one room with a door that never opens, and had some actual, functioning gameplay
Actually CCP has rewritten the Graphics System three times now, the Database System five times, and are currently in the middle of rewriting the ENTIRE Game Engine from scratch in a Modular Fashion, which is actually a very smart way to go about it because they also expand at the same time (usually on the aspect of the engine they're re-engineering in that 6-month period)
There is a careful balancing act going on, and while you can say that EVEs "Fluid" Movement is drastically different from Cryptic' Real-Time (which actually it isn't as different as you'd think) ... something to keep in mind is EVE does very comfortably support up to 255 players outside of reinforced nodes (like Jita) where-as STO only support 50 (usually less) before Instancing.
So realistically while sure STO is also on a Single Shard, because it heavily Instances it works far more like a normal Multiplayer Game in terms of Network demands and requirements.
In-fact Battlefield 3 / 4 likely have more complicated network code in that respect.
Also doesn't STO utilise LUA as it's scripting system, which upgrades seamlessly unlike Python which completely changed between v2.6.x and 3.x.x ... which is a good chunk of the actual game aspect.
I mean there are parallels to be had, but no I agree you can't really compare them because EVE is a far more challenging game to upgrade because it does have 10 years of upgrades, patches, hacks, expansions, tweaks... all of it has to be replicated in behaviour, made modular and all without losing an ounce of player data.
They're not the only company to do it either, currently Blizzard is doing he same thing with World of ********... heck the last time they upgraded the engine was Cataclysm and they were complete engine rewrites.
Now if Cryptic has decided to actually hardcode most of STO, sure I can see that being a bigger problem... but then really they have only themselves to blame there, in-fact I don't know many companies that hardcode much of their games anymore. You create modular engines with scripting components because otherwise if you want to expand it, update it or change anything major you don't have to scrub it and begin again.
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Actually CCP has rewritten the Graphics System three times now, the Database System five times, and are currently in the middle of rewriting the ENTIRE Game Engine from scratch in a Modular Fashion, which is actually a very smart way to go about it because they also expand at the same time (usually on the aspect of the engine they're re-engineering in that 6-month period)
There is a careful balancing act going on, and while you can say that EVEs "Fluid" Movement is drastically different from Cryptic' Real-Time (which actually it isn't as different as you'd think) ... something to keep in mind is EVE does very comfortably support up to 255 players outside of reinforced nodes (like Jita) where-as STO only support 50 (usually less) before Instancing.
So realistically while sure STO is also on a Single Shard, because it heavily Instances it works far more like a normal Multiplayer Game in terms of Network demands and requirements.
In-fact Battlefield 3 / 4 likely have more complicated network code in that respect.
Also doesn't STO utilise LUA as it's scripting system, which upgrades seamlessly unlike Python which completely changed between v2.6.x and 3.x.x ... which is a good chunk of the actual game aspect.
I mean there are parallels to be had, but no I agree you can't really compare them because EVE is a far more challenging game to upgrade because it does have 10 years of upgrades, patches, hacks, expansions, tweaks... all of it has to be replicated in behaviour, made modular and all without losing an ounce of player data.
They're not the only company to do it either, currently Blizzard is doing he same thing with World of ********... heck the last time they upgraded the engine was Cataclysm and they were complete engine rewrites.
Now if Cryptic has decided to actually hardcode most of STO, sure I can see that being a bigger problem... but then really they have only themselves to blame there, in-fact I don't know many companies that hardcode much of their games anymore. You create modular engines with scripting components because otherwise if you want to expand it, update it or change anything major you don't have to scrub it and begin again.
New rule: Unless you've worked on an MMO, do not dispense advice on how they operate.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP