Eve Online jumps the shark?
 

Too good for this world, Crowd Control Productions seem to actively discourage people from playing their game by a series of highly unwelcome changes and maybe the worst PR attempts since the age of dinosaurs.

Apparently people are now unsubscribing so fast that the company that handles billing have had a server breakdown. It's not so much the balance changes as the lies and treachery and treating their customers as moron moneybags, according to the general consensus of the gigantic forum "threadnaught".

Personally I don't think I can give the game any further commitment as I don't want it to be wasted if the game shuts down five years from now, which last year seemed unthinkable.

Hey, maybe you got some other site to link to?
Don't have an account there, so I can't read the update-news and whatnot.

I...don't see what's so bad about this or how it would cause people who are playing to unsubscribe in droves.

Is there something else I'm missing, maybe?

What I find most surprising is that people are actually unsubscribing instead of threatening to unsubscribe.

Sorry, I thought it was just read-only without an account. Here. You can imagine the comments there multiplied by 1000 to get a picture of the forum.

The thing is, people have spent literally years "ghost training" and they still don't have anywhere near where they need/want to be to pilot the cool ships and such.

Heck, I don't think anyone has even half the skills in the game yet, including people who have played from launch.

Well, there was a time I think one or two years back when the real veterans had run out of things they wanted to train, and had to fill in skills they had no use for just to train something.

But yeah, the game is vast; incomparably huge. It's a game that rewards patience and persistence and foresight - four months of grueling preparation can save you time over two years later - and a part of that immense, slow, interstellar-scaled grandeur used to be the fact that when you got bored with it you could take time off and when you came back there would be a little gift for you.

But not anymore. And some crazy people are applauding this move because it makes Eve a little more like every other game out there. I have no idea why they think that's a good thing.

I think they just realized how boring EVE generally is and this pushed them over the edge.

you have to realize that 95% of the skills in this game take days or weeks of time to gain levels, and there is no way to speed it up. you don't grind skills; you gain them in real time, and its no exaggeration to say that this little kick would slow down game advancement by a factor of dozens.

Yeah, gee. Why would this be a good thing.

Maybe because people might actually start PLAYING the game?
So that CCP can start making (more) money?
So that people can actually have the feeling that their opponents they are playing against were actually played by the person behind that opponent? Rather than, say, the game itself doing the hard work, and then the player simply taking over to reap the benefits?


Okay, considering the scale of the game, I can see why people would disagree, but seriously? You signed up for the game knowing this is how you level up.

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.

Still, as I said, there are people who think it's a good thing to make the game less unique. I've seen messages involving some variation of "There's no other game where you could level without playing, about time they fixed it" at least fifty times.

(Keep in mind that maybe 80% of the players seem to have difficulty understanding the difference between not playing and not being subscribed.)

From how I'm understanding it, the point is that people learned how to get around the money sink to make it worth it. Now that the money sink is mandatory, people are quitting because it isn't.

Actually, it's quite the opposite. The shinier your toys, the less likely you are to use them, unless they're specialist toys, but... I digress. Suffice to say I never fly my Deimos HAC anymore, because it's 4 times more expensive, uninsurable, and performs inferiorally to a Brutix BC except in agility and maneuver, which for a blasterboat is effectively worthless with a few exceptions.

That said, I understand why you think it's silly to play the game for a few months at a time and then quit for a few months at a time with intent to keep playing. Often however, you're not quitting for free skills, you're quitting because you can't stand playing EVE any longer or like me...

You're a pirate who's been a bad girl (Hoo have I been bad with my latest heist.) and needs a few months away from the game so people will stop trying to horribly murder you, but don't want to fall behind them in the interim.

I may need to kill them when I get back, you see?

Such interest as I might have had in EVE was killed when I was told that it is basically ruled by the people from Something Awful.

I think its a good idea to eliminate the ghost training, BUT also make it easier for people to train, thus removing the need for it. I have never liked internet idling as long as I can remember. As for the game itself, i'm not too interested in it.

I think I've accidentally ghost trained like once in my entire 2-3 year EVE experience. Generally speaking I don't like training and not having my account active because generally speaking I can use that time to make money that I'll need to buy the skill books and shiny new toys I'm training towards.

Like right now I really need to start doing level 4s again so I can get the cash for a Marauder which I am two skills and 50 days away from. In order to make said money I'll need both my accounts to do a one man mining op or to loot and salvage while I move onto the next mission. In short, people like me who hate player corps and have to pay for their toys generally have no use at all for ghost training. Its really not a big deal.

By the way I'm totally going to use that Marauder as a dedicated salvager. That baby is never ever seeing combat.

I've only started playing this month, so I might not know too much about it, but I like the fact that I don't have to log in for very long. School, work, and other things take up alot of my time, so its nice to know I'm progressing even if I can't log in everyday. Or every other day. So, meh.

Considering how big the universe is, it wouldn't be hard to avoid contact with them and play happily, even if they are one of the bigger Alliances. 's my impression anyways.

In EVE, running out in battleships with three friends, ambushing lone PCs, jamming their warp drives, demanding money from PCs making cargo runs, then killing them anyway is like the point of the game. Of course I also played years ago back towards release.

This basically just slows down the game even more. Weather it's fair or not is practically irrelevant - the game is just too tedious as it is and this is a step backwards.

I might give eve online a try someday, not sure though.

Turns out we can only speculate on the reason for the server malfunction as CCP flat out ignores the question. It could be mass unsubscriptions, or people were all too enthusiastic to resubscribe their lapsed accounts, or the Something Awful goons were up to shenanigans, or they did it themselves to stop people from rashly unsubscribing, or a total coincidence. . .

from what I heard from my Eve obsessed friend, the entire game is more or less player controled. This sounded awesome, until I got to thinking about it. I will compare this not just to MMOs, but to all RPGs. You level up to be able to accomplish what you want. So in theory gaining exp continually sounds ideal. Until you realize EVERYONE is, and in a game where your main competitors are getting exp just as fast as you are, well whats the point. No doubt you can tweak things to maximize your gain, but do you really think you can do it better then a 5 year vetern? A vetern that already has vastly more exp then you, and will always have more then you?

Rather then reward you for playing alot, working hard, and investing time into the game, it rewards you for getting the game earlier.

Note I am not saying grind is fun, its why I dont play MMOs. But they should make it so you gain exp slower when not online or something.

The thing about that is, the ships and weapons are set up in such as way that a relatively new character controlled by someone who knows what they are doing is a threat, even to a 5 year veteran. That new player CANNOT stand toe to toe against that veteran in whatever that veteran excels at with his chosen ship. But he can, with little training, get a ship that that veteran cannot even hit or damage significantly, lock him down and gank him.
Big hulking battleships cannot even hit the little ships, and they take at least 30 seconds to lock onto one (and if its an elite variety, longer) before he can even start shooting. A team of newbies in pratically worthless freighters can circle a battleship, cripple it with Electronic Warfare, seal off its escape by disabling its warp core, and slowly eat it away. Probably with no casualties. If if there was one, a frieghter takes a newbie 15 minutes to afford. A battleship? Maybe even weeks.
For every ship or style of combat, theres an ultimate counter. Nobody is safe, even from a player (that in other games would be no threat).

Also, there is one reason why a person would need to play. Money. It isnt easy to get. It takes time, consistant effort. Those skill training manuals often cost a lot of money, and so do the ships and equipment you are training to obtain. And since the market is entirely player based (no NPCs sell ANY useful items), and all useful items, or items used to produce goods are also player made, formed from player-mined minerals; the market always manages to balance itself out. Nothing is cheap, and getting it into dangerous space is even more expensive. Even pirating will only earn you a small portion of a killed player's equipment (you can steal what they dont carry with them), which may be worth nothing to you, or anyone else. Because even the cheap stuff can pack a punch. But there are, of course, ransoms.

I grew tired of it, because, in essence, you are doing the same thing from your first day playing, to the last day you play. Just in a bigger/better ship. I mean, exactly the same. Youre either staring at a rock for hours at end, mining; blowing up NPC ships for small profits; or producing goods by clicking a button and hauling crap around. You move your way up, but it ultimately doesnt get any more exciting, unlike other games. Which is why so many join a 0.0 space alliance and either pirate, or kill pirates.

I played it right after Earth and Beyond shut down, for over a year. Then I got tired of it, moved to WoW for three years. At some point in there, I tried EVE again, for a few months, and even fought in a lot of PvP. But I didnt have the time to invest in earning money to upkeep ships which were ultimately blown up, sooner or late. So I lost pretty much everything when the war turned the tide and I no longer had any reason to play any longer. This was over a year ago.

BTW, which alliance is mostly Something Awful goons?

Then according to that, a newbie can take out a vet, then why be a vet? I have all this exp, money, and equipment, and a noob could still kill me? I think new players should be able to catch up, not be able to kill anyone from the start

Now you're just grasping for argument straws there dude. I mean, come on.

The aptly named Goonswarm.

Now, a newbie might get lucky (and be very skilled in ship scanning) and pick a fight he can win against a veteran, but the veteran will have a stock of maybe a million times more money and hundreds of ships and what's more important, friends. It's entirely possible (in low sec space) for a group of players to lay siege on a station or a system and make it impossible for one player to get anywhere, or get any replacements for the ships or clones he loses whenever he tries to break out.

That's to say, the abilities of a group of players is always less than that of a bigger group of players, five years under their belt or no.

Kiiind of. I mean, if that particular veteran is solo, and in a poor soloing ship, maybe your frigate swarm could lock him down, and mayyybe kill him. I agree a frigate swarm is a great thing in the hands of a capable squadron of pilots, but it's not as great for "noobs" as people constantly claim it is. First off, no "veteran" pilot worth his salt flys alone. It's a common EVE pvp saying that "There is no solo pvp in EVE." it's pretty much true.

As for battleships not being able to hit frigates, well... Maybe my opinion is skewed because I fly gallente, but a flight of 5 t2 medium drones will obliterate a frigate about as quickly as they can catch it, and since they have microwarpdrives, that's pretty fast. If it's an interceptor, well, that's what a battleship carries a heavy neutralizer for. (A single cycle takes a frigate from full cap to zero, instantly from beyond web range.)

Then the drones catch up and... It's not pretty.

Ugh, you guys are throwing a fit over them taking away your ability to grind while you aren't paying to play the game? Che, I've just got one thing right here (and any of you Star Wars gamers should know about this):

November 15, 2005. Sony Online Entertainment. Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided.

New Game Enhancements.

THAT'S something to kick and squeal about.

Yeah, there are always exceptions to the rule. The worst case scenario is when you are fighting (alone or not) against a ship of equal size or capabilities and an interceptor comes and joins the fight against you.

Now If I remember correctly, you must target lock an opponent before you send drones against it, and its notoriously difficult to do so againsty frigs and interceptors. Especially if its packing some sensor countermeasures. Even there, you have a weakness.

My advantage was in my Caldari Drake battlecruiser. It has extra powerful shields in its own right. I then used my skills trained and lots of passive shield enhancements to boost the maximum HP and regeneration rate to beyond that of most battleships. For no active energy expense. I used missles and passive shielding and thus, did not ever need energy for anything.

Now that you mention Goonsquad, I fought against them. I was a member to a sovereign faction to BOB (I think that was it) who was in direct war with the goons. They gave us their borderlands on the edge of the war with the Goons (and their sovereign factions) to watch over, and attempt to profit in our own rights. The goons, if it gives you any comfort, relied on numbers more than skill. At the time, they had several times the population of BOB, and were still being pushed back.

I once was the last one left in a fight against two battleships (one Gallente, one Amarr) and a cruiser versus my Drake. They couldnt deplete my shields. They could lock me down, drain me, but the couldnt stop the missles or damage me. And I wouldnt let them run either. I destroyed the cruiser quickly, but couldnt completely take down the battleships. So I ended up popping all of their expensive tech 2 drones, instead. Collateral damage ftw.

Drones have a tendency of choosing new targets once one you have chosen for them have died, sometimes attacking anyone who's targeting you, as some support ships have discovered. . .

But anyway, targeting isn't entirely necessary with drones.

Yeah, Queen's right. I was one in a small gang with my Megathron-Class Battleship when we were blobbed by a goonswarm pet alliance (they weren't actually goonswarm, but they're part of "The Alliance" of people who don't want to get screwed by Red Alliance and Goons) and launched my drones before being immediately jammed by a Falcon for the entirety of the battle. (When you are ECM jammed, and the Falcon excels at this, you cannot lock anything, and thus cannot fight.)

I was too busy spamming warp and trying to get my pod during the massive lag of warping into a grid with 36 enemy combatants that I only found out afterward that my Wasp 2's had scored three kills on frigates I didn't even know where there.