You signed up for the game knowing that you would level up in real time, anytime, even when the game was off.

Not that you would have to be a game junkie and play for 16 hours a day to get any real progress in a sane amount of time.

Months, Jack.

All my gunneries from 4-5 are going to take 2 months, then I have to train Amarran Battleships and their accompanying weapon system to deal with the upcoming (proposed) nerf that will indirectly affect Gallente Blasterboats.

Which will take another 3 months.

I was thinking about taking some time off to let that 38 day long skill train, but blar. Can't now, it did always feel kind of like cheating, but do you really expect someone to play the game while skilling battleship 4 to 5? I don't, even when I am subscribed for that whole month.

That's not quite what I was talking about. The question wasn't if this is a sound economic or game balancing decision, but if it's a good thing to make a unique game less unique and more generic.

Unless I'm reading wrong, levels are still gained regardless of whether anyone plays the game; it's just that now people have to keep paying money to not play the game.

See above. Again as far as I can tell based on this conversation, the "hard work" you're talking about = "pay the Eve Online people fifteen dollars a month, then sit around for two months, then have a skill."

I'm probably explaining it wrong then.

My point is, people payed for a game. They set up an account, set up the skills they want, etc, etc, etc.
Then they cancel that account. Why? To gain levels! The thing you'd normally play the game for! At least, that's what I'm assuming.

Can you tell me people actually enjoy playing the game then? (Even if I'm NOT ignoring the fact that people are doing this mostly to alts)
If they set up an account JUST so they deactivate it so they gain more levels/skills/whatevers? (To possibly, but not really, gain an edge on more established players)

And I can see CCP also finding it hard to keep tally on their income for one.
People subscribe and unsubscribe to MMO's all the time, but if you see a month with a huge pike of those 5 and 10 note bills rolling in and then suddenly a few months of relatively nothing, I'd start scratching my head too and try to figure out a solution.

Now, it's a silly solution as they could have changed the leveling system or whatever, but still. They made a change to this to stop the inactive accounts that are accumulating skills without anybody actually playing, or checking in to the account.

Basically what I thought as well.
Seems fair to me. You ARE taking up server space, aren't you? CCP needs to pay their bills as well.


EDIT: As for the uniqueness...
Well, if people resort to not playing the game to gain skills in a game they are playing... well.
Unique? Yes.
Does it fulfill my ideas of an MMO? Nope, can't say that it does.

I like the idea of gaining skill points even when you can't play.
I mean... some people learn when they sleep, right? People just found a way to cheat the system.

You want to get rich while sleeping? Okay! Go for it, "we" provide the means for that.
And now "we"'ve introduced a catch.

It does not remove the uniqueness. You still level up when you're offline. Just not when you're not paying for your account.

EVE's a very unique and... "hostile?" game. In my humble, piratey opinion, albeit without enough rum at the moment to make it properly piratey, you'd have to play the game to understand.

There's an entire meme-level joke about EVE being the world's most expensive IRC client with a space-themed screensaver. "Spinning it in a station" being a given ship class's niche role after a rebalance, or playing "EVE offline" where you do what I'm doing currently, and only log in for 15 seconds a week to switch skills. It's really not a game you can play for months at a time, but rather something you do gradually, like it's skill system suggests you do. It's a great feeling to log back in to start playing with a new toy under your belt.

The thing is, I dont see where this would be such a huge problem. To make it worth cancelling, youd have to train a skill that takes several weeks to a month. But to get high enough to reach THAT skill, you need to train several other skills, that take from a half hour, to hours, or a couple days. And you need to log on to swap skills. And to do that, you need to buy a month, no less, of game time. Besides, most of these skills onlt offer you a 2%-5% increase in a specialized area of ability. Its hardly a level up.

I Used ghost training twice. Once for Caldari Battleships 5, which with decent implants and ALL of the learning skills trained to speed things up, still takes over a month. And for Battlecruisers 5, which is about 3 weeks, irc. And both of those times, I was frankly bored to tears with the game. You havent seen MMO repetition until youve played EVE. Seriously.

And I know the space-station chatrooms develop because in lawless space (where the profit and fun is), a situation often crops up where if you leave your hangar at all for several days, youre effing dead. And in debt. And in need of a new ship and implants, at that.

Once again, its just a bunch of players whining, and the ones unsubscribing are probably bored sick of the game anyway. Its probably not as bad as it sounds.

Until you find a new and shinier toy for which you don't have the skills yet and thus you fall back into the not-playing style of playing.

But I guess you're right. You should play it to understand it.
In which case I won't. I mean... buying a game to NOT play it for periods at a time still sounds silly to me.

But, I drop my case. Said what I wanted.

Well, judging from IQ's first post,
...this is a fair bit more severe than a few players being whiny and unsubscribing in a fit of rage.

I mean I dunno if this is as bad as it sounds, but "unsubscribing so fast that you crash the servers on the way out" sounds pretty bad to me.

What I'd like to know is if people are paying $15/month to gain as single skill, at what point and to what effect are they actually playing? I know jack all about EVE, but I imagine there'd be some pretty good gameplay somewhere to justify that kind of money sink.

Melfice: I totally agree that playing a game to not play it is kinda odd, however that's what eve is. It's a game where you don't play for periods of time so that you can play as you like later.

It is not a normal MMORPG, and isn't trying to fit into YOUR ideas of an mmorpg. In fact, it is trying very hard not to. There is nothing about Eve, other than the multi-player and RPG part, that is at all like any other MMORPG out there. You control your ship much differently, you use skills differently, you fight differently, and, hell, fighting doesn't even provide an ingame reward greater than any other random thing you could do. In fact, in most cases, you're better off NOT fighting, from what I understand.

Thinking of Eve in terms of an MMORPG like GW or WoW or RO or whatever else is pure folly. It is nothing like those games, and should not be judged by the same standards as those games.

It is MEANT to be played for 10-15 minutes at a time for months, and then sat down into for politicking or pirate fighting or pirating. Or, more often, mining. For money. So you can buy implants and ships and stuff. Only to be dropped again later.

That said--I don't see where paying for the time you sit around training is necessarily a bad thing, I just think that you're being unnecessarily harsh with your opinion as the game is not at all like the games you are comparing it to.

Your arguments are akin to saying Bioshock isn't worth playing because the combat isn't turn based.

You would be surprised, then.