In a bit of "extraspection"(yes, new word, I submitted it to Websters just now), I noticed that other high sec players don't see PVP the way it pretty much really is in Eve. They see different forms of gameplay as completely separate actions, and "PVP" is a term that is defined as one player, usually someone despicable, blowing up someone else, usually "minding their own business" in a transport or mining ship. I see them all as pretty much the same thing, PVP, and PVP always involves the loss of ISK.
The obvious form of ISK loss is an assploded ship. The ship is an asset, but it was likely bought with ISK, or made out of minerals/things with an ISK value.
When someone gets robbed, or scammed, whether it's for an item or a ship, a pyramid scheme, for a contract gone wrong or mis-typing a market sell/buy order, it's still a loss of ISK, and even in the market, it's still player vs player. It doesn't always involve blowing something up.
If someone bum rushes your incursion room and snakes your completion out from under you, or nija loots or salvages your mission, that's PVP, but more importantly, it's a loss of ISK.
Even in the heady world of miner bumping or another mining fleet out-mining the other players in the belt, forces them to move more often, and that too, is PVP. It's loss of ISK, loss of ore income.
There are a myriad of ways to PVP in Eve, and that's not at all saying that I condone assholery like straight up ganking or the scammers themselves, but in the end, it's still a loss of ISK, which makes it PVP.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
WTF is a "Hellcat"?
Having been playing Eve for a couple years now, and having at least a marginal interest in things mercenary and null . . enary, I've heard a number of mentionings of different "cats", and, I thought exactly what the title says. With a little bit of random clickery, I managed to get a little more info on it. So, just give me a second to adjust my ass in ye olde rocking chair, and I might be able to elucidate on that, or at least tell you about it, a little, maybe . . .
To start, we need to set the way back machine to Feb 2007. A female player started in Eve as a fairly hard core indy player doing market trading, mining, manufacturing, etc. After getting ganked by pirates in lowsec, she met another player (who had tried to save her during said gank) who soon turned pirate himself. After being regaled by his tales of piracy hijinks in lowsec, she decided that it t'was to be the yarrrr life for her too. Her current toon was not suited for such a direction, so she created a new toon, on a new account, and called her . . . wait for it . . . NANCY! No, just kidding, it was actually the birth of Mynxee.
While Mynxee was skilling up to be the mostest fiercest female piratey type in Eve, she played support and transport roles to her big sister. Later, the tables would turn and the big sister would be the transport and scout for Mynxee as she wreaked havoc in New Eden's lowsec. In Feb 2008, she founded the all woman, female only, pirate corporation called Hellcats(as well as the Hellfleet alliance) to foster and train other female players interested in the pirate's life in Eve. Due to a problem in getting and keeping female players interested in piracy, she eventually left to join Noir in Mar 2010. Hellcats officially closed in Oct of 2010. She also served a term as the chairman of CSM 5.
So, fuckin' YAWN already! HELLCATS?!?!? Yeah, so apparently, at some point, the Hellcats had a battleship doctrine that used Abaddons. As small gang pvpers, using mostly frigates and cruiser class ships (from what I've been able to see) that bit about Abaddons might be a little sketchy. At any rate, apparently, in late 2010, Pandemic Legion, in a pique of homage to the all-female corp and also to the TV show, started naming fleet ship doctrines with the suffix of "cat". Hellcats, Thundercats, Slowcats, Herocats (definitions of the last two cats differs), and yes, even, supposedly LOLcats, again, details of the last one are murky, and NO, it's not a picture of a cat with guns taped to its paws or something . . . I think.
What I want to do, and possibly should have done, was maybe send Seleene a quick message and see if he knows about the origins of the whole "cat" meme. Perhaps I shall, and get back with a quick edit when I get an answer. :)
To start, we need to set the way back machine to Feb 2007. A female player started in Eve as a fairly hard core indy player doing market trading, mining, manufacturing, etc. After getting ganked by pirates in lowsec, she met another player (who had tried to save her during said gank) who soon turned pirate himself. After being regaled by his tales of piracy hijinks in lowsec, she decided that it t'was to be the yarrrr life for her too. Her current toon was not suited for such a direction, so she created a new toon, on a new account, and called her . . . wait for it . . . NANCY! No, just kidding, it was actually the birth of Mynxee.
So, fuckin' YAWN already! HELLCATS?!?!? Yeah, so apparently, at some point, the Hellcats had a battleship doctrine that used Abaddons. As small gang pvpers, using mostly frigates and cruiser class ships (from what I've been able to see) that bit about Abaddons might be a little sketchy. At any rate, apparently, in late 2010, Pandemic Legion, in a pique of homage to the all-female corp and also to the TV show, started naming fleet ship doctrines with the suffix of "cat". Hellcats, Thundercats, Slowcats, Herocats (definitions of the last two cats differs), and yes, even, supposedly LOLcats, again, details of the last one are murky, and NO, it's not a picture of a cat with guns taped to its paws or something . . . I think.
What I want to do, and possibly should have done, was maybe send Seleene a quick message and see if he knows about the origins of the whole "cat" meme. Perhaps I shall, and get back with a quick edit when I get an answer. :)
Monday, November 12, 2012
PLEX for subscriptions? I sit corrected.
Earlier on, I talked about CCP considering allowing PLEX to be used to pay the way for fan events. Well, only being about, oh, nine and a half months LATE, it turns out CCP is already fine with players using PLEX for fan events. Specifically Fanfest 2012, where PLEX could be used for access passes of various style, plus fanfest events of many kinds, including a hoity toity dinner and a chance to get a behind-the-scenes tour of CCP itself.. What I should have said, is that PLEX is considered being allowed to pay for PLAYER created/run events, like Eve Vegas, or ones anywhere in the world that are quasi, or fully, CCP sanctioned.
On one hand, it's cool that CCP allows players to subsidize a fanfest event by working on the cost in-game. At the same time, it takes an in-game resource that was intended for subscriptions, and drives the price up because more uses for the PLEX increases the demand and increases inflation. increasing the PLEX prices to the point that players are no longer interested in, or no longer have the time to earn the isk to pay for the PLEX, means they will either pay for PLEX with real money, or stop playing Eve. People who heavily rely on PLEX for subscriptions, will opt for not playing anymore. Pretty much defeats the purpose of PLEX in the first place. PLEX for subscriptions should be a CCP priority. PLEX for extracurricular things should be a very distant second. If CCP stays greedy and allows PLEX for anything and everything, they'll eventually pay with subscription loss.
Accepting ISK, on the other hand, or partial PLEX and partial ISK for non-subscription things, means they still make extra money off the PLEX, they might be able to manage PLEX inflation, keep subscriptions and they would provide a big ISK sink for Eve.
EDIT: Also, just noticed, but PLEX are not $15 each, but $20 each. Not sure when the price went up, but it's been a while since I bought any with real cash. That's an extra 25% increase in the money CCP gets every time they spin a PLEX-for-something plan.
On one hand, it's cool that CCP allows players to subsidize a fanfest event by working on the cost in-game. At the same time, it takes an in-game resource that was intended for subscriptions, and drives the price up because more uses for the PLEX increases the demand and increases inflation. increasing the PLEX prices to the point that players are no longer interested in, or no longer have the time to earn the isk to pay for the PLEX, means they will either pay for PLEX with real money, or stop playing Eve. People who heavily rely on PLEX for subscriptions, will opt for not playing anymore. Pretty much defeats the purpose of PLEX in the first place. PLEX for subscriptions should be a CCP priority. PLEX for extracurricular things should be a very distant second. If CCP stays greedy and allows PLEX for anything and everything, they'll eventually pay with subscription loss.
Accepting ISK, on the other hand, or partial PLEX and partial ISK for non-subscription things, means they still make extra money off the PLEX, they might be able to manage PLEX inflation, keep subscriptions and they would provide a big ISK sink for Eve.
EDIT: Also, just noticed, but PLEX are not $15 each, but $20 each. Not sure when the price went up, but it's been a while since I bought any with real cash. That's an extra 25% increase in the money CCP gets every time they spin a PLEX-for-something plan.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Gevlon + FW + DUST = theory
Perhaps it might be time to don either a tin foil hat, or some kind of protection from people who are wearing said tinfoil hat. Your choice.
Gevlon posted a few thoughts over at his blog, back at the end of last month, that postulated another viewpoint on the whole Factional Warfare fiasco.
In a nutshell, here are the salient points . . .
- DUST 514 is basically a black hole for ISK. When a DUST bunny dies, if they're paying for better-than-default gear, the gear is lost and they need to buy more.
- the DUST players will be initially fighting on, and for, temperate planets in and around the FW systems
- FW players will be issuing contracts for the bunnies to take planets for them
- CCP possibly "planned" for the FW isk faucet patch in an ill conceived plan to flood the FW players with tons of ISK so that highly lucrative contracts could be issued to the bunnies, who would then in turn be able to spend their ISK windfalls on highly upgraded DUST gear for their toons, which would cause the console players to be massively enthused about DUST and continue playing it
- with so many FW farmers soaking up too much of the ISK faucet, CCP realized that much of the bunny-intended-ISK was ending up in the hands of players who wouldn't be interested in FW PI, and therefore pre-emptively patched, and "fixed" the FW isk fountain
Some of that might be slightly more paraphrased than the original, but that's the gist of it, as far as I can make out. Interesting hypothesis, but I'd feel better about his post if it appeared nearer the beginning of Apr. Having some experience with DUST, and Eve/CCP, I have some . . . "observations".
1. While it would not surprise me that CCP would come up with a financial plan as entirely fucked up as this, and with one of the devs publicly explaining that if you don't use a "legal" exploit when it's presented to you, you're an idiot, well, I have a hard time buying the idea that this was intentional on CCPs part. More likely, they relied on their frequently clueless economist instead of talking to the players, specifically, the goons who raped their stupid patch.
2. For anyone that has played DUST, it's a long fucking way from being ready to come out of the oven. The maps (only two right now) look like they were designed by a flunked out class from the Vermtek Community College FPS Level Design course of 1991. It takes 5 to 7 minutes for the game to even load, and one of the two levels is a pure sniper fest (they had more maps). The graphics quality needs to come up to par, keyboard and mouse functionality needs work, and the chat and group mechanics are about 1985 level. If CCP was planning to leave the FW isk tidal wave flowing until DUST was released, Eve's economy would have been pretty much permanently trashed.
3. While lots of DUST fans, including marketing types and many people who have never even played it, will get dreamy expressions and misty eyes while they talk about the millions of DUST players, you'd be lucky right now to find 30 people in local. Only closed beta, I know, but from only about 25 years of console and computer gaming, for a beta, it's a ghost town. Keep in mind that's over 400,000 beta keys that CCP gave out, not to mention you can get into the beta by buying the mercenary pack for 20 bucks. If that extrapolates to going live, it would take a long, long, long, long time for a likely small console community to burn through trillions of PI contract iskies. Those, would be some fucking rich dust bunnies! They could buy a ton of trick shit! (even though it would be a long time before they could actually USE it)
4. Having tons of isk in DUST is nice, but not necessary to get "good" gear. Like Eve, skill training allows marked improvement in performance and survivability, so better performance is not necessarily money dependent. Additionally, to get the "best" gear, that requires you buy the items with AUR. AUR = pay to win. Again, even with great gear, it requires prerequisite skill trees be fleshed out to use the gear. The skill training requires skill points, not isk.
5. It's not hard to make isk, and to fight without losing ANY isk or to build up isk, you just use default or "special offer" gear, both of which have unlimited quantities. Additionally, the bunny market is going to scale and fluctuate based on console isk flow, players that die a lot will get a bonus to the isk they get rewarded, and players that don't get killed a lot get slightly reduced isk rewards. As mentioned, you can buy all kinds of cool guns and tanks and suits, but if you don't have the skills to use them, the gear sits there until you amass the millions of SP it takes to use them. Also, if Eve players end up being the ones that get the BPs for making the bunny gear, there goes the isk sink.
Maybe the goblin was trolling, and I took the bait hook line and sinker. Maybe he's serious. I can't tell. It's an interesting theory, but I think it's fundamentally flawed because the supposed end point, the focus, of CCP's master plan, is a FPS that has a long way to go. Mind you, it's not like it would be the first time that CCP sends something off to fly before it can fly. I don't know what Sony would say about a still birth from CCP.
Gevlon posted a few thoughts over at his blog, back at the end of last month, that postulated another viewpoint on the whole Factional Warfare fiasco.
In a nutshell, here are the salient points . . .
- DUST 514 is basically a black hole for ISK. When a DUST bunny dies, if they're paying for better-than-default gear, the gear is lost and they need to buy more.
- the DUST players will be initially fighting on, and for, temperate planets in and around the FW systems
- FW players will be issuing contracts for the bunnies to take planets for them
- CCP possibly "planned" for the FW isk faucet patch in an ill conceived plan to flood the FW players with tons of ISK so that highly lucrative contracts could be issued to the bunnies, who would then in turn be able to spend their ISK windfalls on highly upgraded DUST gear for their toons, which would cause the console players to be massively enthused about DUST and continue playing it
- with so many FW farmers soaking up too much of the ISK faucet, CCP realized that much of the bunny-intended-ISK was ending up in the hands of players who wouldn't be interested in FW PI, and therefore pre-emptively patched, and "fixed" the FW isk fountain
Some of that might be slightly more paraphrased than the original, but that's the gist of it, as far as I can make out. Interesting hypothesis, but I'd feel better about his post if it appeared nearer the beginning of Apr. Having some experience with DUST, and Eve/CCP, I have some . . . "observations".
1. While it would not surprise me that CCP would come up with a financial plan as entirely fucked up as this, and with one of the devs publicly explaining that if you don't use a "legal" exploit when it's presented to you, you're an idiot, well, I have a hard time buying the idea that this was intentional on CCPs part. More likely, they relied on their frequently clueless economist instead of talking to the players, specifically, the goons who raped their stupid patch.
2. For anyone that has played DUST, it's a long fucking way from being ready to come out of the oven. The maps (only two right now) look like they were designed by a flunked out class from the Vermtek Community College FPS Level Design course of 1991. It takes 5 to 7 minutes for the game to even load, and one of the two levels is a pure sniper fest (they had more maps). The graphics quality needs to come up to par, keyboard and mouse functionality needs work, and the chat and group mechanics are about 1985 level. If CCP was planning to leave the FW isk tidal wave flowing until DUST was released, Eve's economy would have been pretty much permanently trashed.
3. While lots of DUST fans, including marketing types and many people who have never even played it, will get dreamy expressions and misty eyes while they talk about the millions of DUST players, you'd be lucky right now to find 30 people in local. Only closed beta, I know, but from only about 25 years of console and computer gaming, for a beta, it's a ghost town. Keep in mind that's over 400,000 beta keys that CCP gave out, not to mention you can get into the beta by buying the mercenary pack for 20 bucks. If that extrapolates to going live, it would take a long, long, long, long time for a likely small console community to burn through trillions of PI contract iskies. Those, would be some fucking rich dust bunnies! They could buy a ton of trick shit! (even though it would be a long time before they could actually USE it)
4. Having tons of isk in DUST is nice, but not necessary to get "good" gear. Like Eve, skill training allows marked improvement in performance and survivability, so better performance is not necessarily money dependent. Additionally, to get the "best" gear, that requires you buy the items with AUR. AUR = pay to win. Again, even with great gear, it requires prerequisite skill trees be fleshed out to use the gear. The skill training requires skill points, not isk.
5. It's not hard to make isk, and to fight without losing ANY isk or to build up isk, you just use default or "special offer" gear, both of which have unlimited quantities. Additionally, the bunny market is going to scale and fluctuate based on console isk flow, players that die a lot will get a bonus to the isk they get rewarded, and players that don't get killed a lot get slightly reduced isk rewards. As mentioned, you can buy all kinds of cool guns and tanks and suits, but if you don't have the skills to use them, the gear sits there until you amass the millions of SP it takes to use them. Also, if Eve players end up being the ones that get the BPs for making the bunny gear, there goes the isk sink.
Maybe the goblin was trolling, and I took the bait hook line and sinker. Maybe he's serious. I can't tell. It's an interesting theory, but I think it's fundamentally flawed because the supposed end point, the focus, of CCP's master plan, is a FPS that has a long way to go. Mind you, it's not like it would be the first time that CCP sends something off to fly before it can fly. I don't know what Sony would say about a still birth from CCP.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
The plaaaan . . .
At this point, and it's only about 2 years in, the most gratifying sound to come from Eve/Aura is "skill training completed" in that sultry little voice. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, at this point, she only speaks her mind about once a week, if I'm lucky.
At this point in world domination, all the toons have their high and low sec mining skills maxxed. All the core skills are at 4, with a number at 5 if they were needed as prerequisites for more advanced ones. All the individual racial frigate skills are 5, and most have cruiser and battleship skills at 5. Most of the toons can also fly an orca and a freighter, and 3 or 4 physical freighters are usually enough to handle mineral transport duties to and from the trade hubs. With racial destroyers and battlecruisers rumoured, I switched all the toons' training to get both of those up to level 5. Somewhere, sometime, somebody mentioned, I think, that anyone with BC or destroyer skills at 5 would get some kind of grandfathered bonus when the new racial boats and their skills skills come out. So, what the hell, I figured I'd train them up, just in the off chance that it saves some training time later.
All the toons can manufacture and do ME and PE research, and can build all the capital ship components. I was dabbling in orca production for a while and making about 200 to 250 million profit per boat, which was nice. Other observant players noticed the same trends though, and the market areas I was using were flooded with orcas, so my last one didn't sell. I managed to sell 6 or 7 of them though, so I was happy. I might get some more BPC packs for some orcas and try again, but prices are a little flaky right now and even the BPC packs have gone up a lot. My orca BPO is still in research and nowhere near ready to use yet. I have some freighter, dread and carrier BPC packs and intend to relocate to near a low sec system and make a few capitals for sale. I bought a number of capital construction BPOs and they are currently in research. A long haul at one month per upgrade point though. I bought a few compression BPOs for some T1 items, so I'll use those to hop the minerals into the low sec station I plan to use if it means too many freighter jumps. Multiple freighter pilots means I can make hay while the sun shines as an alt watches the system and gates. I'll permanently leave an alt from one of the accounts sitting in there in a T1 with a prototype cloak so I don't need to jump it in to scout.
All the toons are going to be aimed at carriers and dreads, wiht a couple also aimed at flying a rorqual. They will also be able to fly the standard fleet ships like drakes, canes and eventually tengus as well as their racial T3 ship. The downside of having long duration skills in que also provides the upside of not having to worry about loading skills every day. More short duration skills will be needed, obviously, when I start cross training the toons on other racial weapons and boats, but that is not until well into the new year.
While I wanted to, and still would like to, run the COSMOS that I started, and maybe even try some more incursion fleets, for now, I can generate a good steady income, plex the accounts, and keep the training plans full until I decide I'm ready to try WH space or null. In the near future though, time permitting, I'll start looking more closely at the requirements for some low sec cap production.
The trick with Eve, is time manipulation. Get as many revenue generating schemes running simultaneously as possible. PI + manufacturing + some mining (for more minerals for more ship production) is a good start at doubling or tripling the Eve time. Isk per hour will obviously vary, but it's still passive activity that is, or will, eventually generate income. Patient entry into the cap production will allow me to keep a suitable ISK buffer and not leave me with a bunch of caps that I can't get rid of.
At this point in world domination, all the toons have their high and low sec mining skills maxxed. All the core skills are at 4, with a number at 5 if they were needed as prerequisites for more advanced ones. All the individual racial frigate skills are 5, and most have cruiser and battleship skills at 5. Most of the toons can also fly an orca and a freighter, and 3 or 4 physical freighters are usually enough to handle mineral transport duties to and from the trade hubs. With racial destroyers and battlecruisers rumoured, I switched all the toons' training to get both of those up to level 5. Somewhere, sometime, somebody mentioned, I think, that anyone with BC or destroyer skills at 5 would get some kind of grandfathered bonus when the new racial boats and their skills skills come out. So, what the hell, I figured I'd train them up, just in the off chance that it saves some training time later.
All the toons can manufacture and do ME and PE research, and can build all the capital ship components. I was dabbling in orca production for a while and making about 200 to 250 million profit per boat, which was nice. Other observant players noticed the same trends though, and the market areas I was using were flooded with orcas, so my last one didn't sell. I managed to sell 6 or 7 of them though, so I was happy. I might get some more BPC packs for some orcas and try again, but prices are a little flaky right now and even the BPC packs have gone up a lot. My orca BPO is still in research and nowhere near ready to use yet. I have some freighter, dread and carrier BPC packs and intend to relocate to near a low sec system and make a few capitals for sale. I bought a number of capital construction BPOs and they are currently in research. A long haul at one month per upgrade point though. I bought a few compression BPOs for some T1 items, so I'll use those to hop the minerals into the low sec station I plan to use if it means too many freighter jumps. Multiple freighter pilots means I can make hay while the sun shines as an alt watches the system and gates. I'll permanently leave an alt from one of the accounts sitting in there in a T1 with a prototype cloak so I don't need to jump it in to scout.
All the toons are going to be aimed at carriers and dreads, wiht a couple also aimed at flying a rorqual. They will also be able to fly the standard fleet ships like drakes, canes and eventually tengus as well as their racial T3 ship. The downside of having long duration skills in que also provides the upside of not having to worry about loading skills every day. More short duration skills will be needed, obviously, when I start cross training the toons on other racial weapons and boats, but that is not until well into the new year.
While I wanted to, and still would like to, run the COSMOS that I started, and maybe even try some more incursion fleets, for now, I can generate a good steady income, plex the accounts, and keep the training plans full until I decide I'm ready to try WH space or null. In the near future though, time permitting, I'll start looking more closely at the requirements for some low sec cap production.
The trick with Eve, is time manipulation. Get as many revenue generating schemes running simultaneously as possible. PI + manufacturing + some mining (for more minerals for more ship production) is a good start at doubling or tripling the Eve time. Isk per hour will obviously vary, but it's still passive activity that is, or will, eventually generate income. Patient entry into the cap production will allow me to keep a suitable ISK buffer and not leave me with a bunch of caps that I can't get rid of.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
More CCP pay-to-win
When I did my last post on what I think/feel/believe is a pay-to-win scenario that already exists in Eve, I had it on a time delay for posting. In the mean time, one of the items I mentioned, the latest open tournament, has had some changes.
First, the entry fee of 20 PLEX was reduced to 10. Apparently this was in partial response to complaints from players that the entry fee was too high. If true, that's a step forward from CCP.
At the same time though, word from CCP was that there were anywhere from 60 to 80 teams who signed up for the tournament. That number depends on the quality of your rumour connection I guess, but a number in the 60's was apparently put forward directly by CCP. Amazingly, more than half the signed up teams bailed on the tourney before the bidding for spots would start, though. That's crazy, right?!?! Now, the conspiracists would proffer that there never were that many teams that signed up, and that the number of teams claimed by CCP was a very pathetic and douche bag attempt for CCP to try to get player groups to bid more PLEX for the 32 team spots. More PLEX bid means less PLEX in game, which means PLEX prices will rise (as they are doing), which means more PLEX will be bought to replace tournament PLEX and sold at higher prices. Can't really see who would benefit from all that PLEX selling, except of course CCP, oh, and the richer Eve players.
So, move ahead a bit to the point where the bidding is done, and they couldn't get enough teams to play in the tournament. Of the only 27 teams that actually bid for a spot in the tournament, only 3 teams bid 10 PLEX, and the top teams bid over 40. Of the 27 teams, 575 PLEX were bid. Once players found out that there weren't even enough teams that bid for spots, some wanted a complete refund and were ready to bail out. At that point CCP decided to give everyone back their extra PLEX, and so all 27 teams were in the tourney with a 10 PLEX bid. Hopefully, that's 300 PLEX that might end up back in the hands of players to help stave off more PLEX inflation.
More tin foil time though. It is rumoured that there was some behind the scenes shit going on with some CCP devs trying to entice certain players into the tournament. Now, with their denials about the whole T20 incident, and then their recant of the denials when the CCP dude admitted that he was a cheating fuck, but they still didn't a) fire him or b) re-instate the player's accounts that outed the mess, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an honest answer out of CCP if a couple of their devs WERE pulling strings. The whole "pro-Eve tournament" thing would be another potential cash cow if CCP could siphon off a bunch more PLEX. The tinfoilers would also be remiss if they didn't point out that 2 of the three 10 PLEX bidders also got a bye for the first round. How many OTHER alliances/groups (with perhaps tournament participation history) did CCP contact with possible enticements for the tournament? Were the two 10 PLEX bidders given a little nudge nudge wink wink and a bye if they decided to join the tourney?
Personally, I don't give a fuck about the tournament, or whether CCP has a couple devs doing shit in the shadows. I'm more concerned about how much more lag or bugs they'll inject, or how they're going to fuck up the UI. If CCP wanted ALL players involved, CCP could have accepted ISK for entry fees as well. After all, they've already been PAID for every PLEX that's in the game. Apparently though, they only want the "most dedicated teams to enter and compete to be champions". Uh, yeah, ok. Mainly though, the teams most willing and able to pay CCP with real cash to let them in the tournaments. Pay to win, much?
But wait! There's more! :)
In more pay-to-win news, CCP is thinking about accepting PLEX as a form of payment to attend fan events. Good for them, bad for players who buy PLEX with ISK, but then, like so many "programs" amd "offers", CCP is only interested in the players who can AFFORD to do that. PLEX is a cash cow to be milked. Fuck the fact that PLEX for ISK was implemented to HELP players pay for their subscriptions.
Additionally, according to David Reid (CCP's marketing dude), they were SO happy with the whole video-cards-for-PLEX thing, that they want to do it again. Now, why wouldn't CCP be happy when they can offload a hundred video cards (that cost them less than 200 bucks) for $300 worth of PLEX each?? Again, good for rich players who can bankroll that amount of ISK to PLEX at the drop of a hat and definitely good for CCP.
Last point, according to our very own Alekseyev Karde, you know, the CSM dude, the guy who represents players? Well, according to him and his buddies, any player that complains about the inability to use PLEX to pay for their subscription, (which is why it was instituted in the game) is a whiner. Nice. Good thing Alekseyev is thinking about ALL the players, or maybe he's only interested in a select subset of players, like the ones who have enough disposable income to pay for subscriptions and PLEX with real cash. Start at 20 minutes. That's some fairly elitist bullshit, but at least then he casually wonders what effects it will have on the people/plebes that he thinks are whiners. Yay player reps!
Tournaments, CCP convention tickets, video cards? My, my. So MANY uses for people who can afford to throw PLEX around. I guess the dumb-ass, whining players who actually use PLEX for what it was intended for will have to HTFU, or go play something else. Go pay-to-win! ;)
First, the entry fee of 20 PLEX was reduced to 10. Apparently this was in partial response to complaints from players that the entry fee was too high. If true, that's a step forward from CCP.
At the same time though, word from CCP was that there were anywhere from 60 to 80 teams who signed up for the tournament. That number depends on the quality of your rumour connection I guess, but a number in the 60's was apparently put forward directly by CCP. Amazingly, more than half the signed up teams bailed on the tourney before the bidding for spots would start, though. That's crazy, right?!?! Now, the conspiracists would proffer that there never were that many teams that signed up, and that the number of teams claimed by CCP was a very pathetic and douche bag attempt for CCP to try to get player groups to bid more PLEX for the 32 team spots. More PLEX bid means less PLEX in game, which means PLEX prices will rise (as they are doing), which means more PLEX will be bought to replace tournament PLEX and sold at higher prices. Can't really see who would benefit from all that PLEX selling, except of course CCP, oh, and the richer Eve players.
So, move ahead a bit to the point where the bidding is done, and they couldn't get enough teams to play in the tournament. Of the only 27 teams that actually bid for a spot in the tournament, only 3 teams bid 10 PLEX, and the top teams bid over 40. Of the 27 teams, 575 PLEX were bid. Once players found out that there weren't even enough teams that bid for spots, some wanted a complete refund and were ready to bail out. At that point CCP decided to give everyone back their extra PLEX, and so all 27 teams were in the tourney with a 10 PLEX bid. Hopefully, that's 300 PLEX that might end up back in the hands of players to help stave off more PLEX inflation.
More tin foil time though. It is rumoured that there was some behind the scenes shit going on with some CCP devs trying to entice certain players into the tournament. Now, with their denials about the whole T20 incident, and then their recant of the denials when the CCP dude admitted that he was a cheating fuck, but they still didn't a) fire him or b) re-instate the player's accounts that outed the mess, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an honest answer out of CCP if a couple of their devs WERE pulling strings. The whole "pro-Eve tournament" thing would be another potential cash cow if CCP could siphon off a bunch more PLEX. The tinfoilers would also be remiss if they didn't point out that 2 of the three 10 PLEX bidders also got a bye for the first round. How many OTHER alliances/groups (with perhaps tournament participation history) did CCP contact with possible enticements for the tournament? Were the two 10 PLEX bidders given a little nudge nudge wink wink and a bye if they decided to join the tourney?
Personally, I don't give a fuck about the tournament, or whether CCP has a couple devs doing shit in the shadows. I'm more concerned about how much more lag or bugs they'll inject, or how they're going to fuck up the UI. If CCP wanted ALL players involved, CCP could have accepted ISK for entry fees as well. After all, they've already been PAID for every PLEX that's in the game. Apparently though, they only want the "most dedicated teams to enter and compete to be champions". Uh, yeah, ok. Mainly though, the teams most willing and able to pay CCP with real cash to let them in the tournaments. Pay to win, much?
But wait! There's more! :)
In more pay-to-win news, CCP is thinking about accepting PLEX as a form of payment to attend fan events. Good for them, bad for players who buy PLEX with ISK, but then, like so many "programs" amd "offers", CCP is only interested in the players who can AFFORD to do that. PLEX is a cash cow to be milked. Fuck the fact that PLEX for ISK was implemented to HELP players pay for their subscriptions.
Additionally, according to David Reid (CCP's marketing dude), they were SO happy with the whole video-cards-for-PLEX thing, that they want to do it again. Now, why wouldn't CCP be happy when they can offload a hundred video cards (that cost them less than 200 bucks) for $300 worth of PLEX each?? Again, good for rich players who can bankroll that amount of ISK to PLEX at the drop of a hat and definitely good for CCP.
Last point, according to our very own Alekseyev Karde, you know, the CSM dude, the guy who represents players? Well, according to him and his buddies, any player that complains about the inability to use PLEX to pay for their subscription, (which is why it was instituted in the game) is a whiner. Nice. Good thing Alekseyev is thinking about ALL the players, or maybe he's only interested in a select subset of players, like the ones who have enough disposable income to pay for subscriptions and PLEX with real cash. Start at 20 minutes. That's some fairly elitist bullshit, but at least then he casually wonders what effects it will have on the people/plebes that he thinks are whiners. Yay player reps!
Tournaments, CCP convention tickets, video cards? My, my. So MANY uses for people who can afford to throw PLEX around. I guess the dumb-ass, whining players who actually use PLEX for what it was intended for will have to HTFU, or go play something else. Go pay-to-win! ;)
Monday, November 5, 2012
Any idea = awesome idea
In over 3 decades with the military, I ran into a lot of people that held firmly to that notion. Stapling your ego too close to the idea generator's exit tends to wipe too much ego off on it, and an idea isn't just an idea any more, it's something alive, some kind of progeny, and it tends to become personal. Critcise the idea, and the owner gets pissed. Of late, too many super-friends' teams at CCP seem to have this mentality.
My whole life has been spent fixing things, designing things, tweaking things, building things. I wish it weren't so (just for functionality and time sakes) but I have had plenty of "brilliant" ideas, that were completely fucking broken. As a result of my failures, I have learned to take intellectual punches, to the head, in stride. I can only be inside my own head, and as much as I might try to think laterally and get behind the eyes, or inside the ideas/head of another, it will still be biased to some extent by me, being me. For a long while now, when I have an idea, I go through a process where I examine the 5 "W's" (who, what, where , when and why) and then make sure I ask all the relevant people involved, as many questions as I can possibly think of. For any particular idea of mine to survive, I know, and accept that I might/definitely need to consult and accept the input of other people. I also know that there are also times when regardless of my best intentions, my idea is fucked from the word go, and no amount of life support will make it fly. For anyone truly interested in trying to fix or create or enhance something, the "idea" is the means to those ends, not the point of the exercise.
Too many times lately, it seems CCP has lost track of the forest for the trees. They get fixated on an idea, and don't think about or see the big picture. They say they do, and they'll post like they do, but when they push their idea to Tranquility, even though the players said "don't", they obviously didn't see the forest. They are the game developers after all, and we are "just" players.
One major FUBAR example, is that fucked up integrated abortion of an inventory. It fixed absolutely nothing that they claimed it was supposed to, wastes more screen space than the oirginal and it also injected a shitload of bugs, a number of which still exist. CCP didn't listen. They knew what they were doing. They had a "vision" that the players lacked and the old inventory is never coming back.
Another example is the nerf nuke on incursions. All that had to be done, all that was called to be done by the players, was to make players shoot ALL the rats. Had CCP actually bothered to TRY highsec incursions themselves, they would have seen that the "easy" money was drawing more and more players, which also was limiting individual payouts. Forget about the fact that it took more than 3 or 4 months of dedicated training plus more than a billion isk to fit a shiney ship to maximise incursion performance. CCP knew better though, their idea killed incursions. Then, they dialed everything back to where it could have been with a MODERATE and intelligent tweak, but the damage was done. I have(had) dozens of players on my incursion contact/notification list. Now, at most, I see maybe 25% of them online any more. The rest might just be playing alts, but seemingly, they quit. CCP knew what they were doing though. They had a plan.
Factional warfare? Wow. It was completely weak sauce before their "fix", and then afterwards, a handful of "just players" managed to totally rape the game for trillions of isk. Obviously, the myopic devs at CCP were completely unable to see a couple trees past the one their face was pressed against. Maybe their economist is a relative of Hilmar's and that's how he got the job. Maybe Hilmar owes him money and the job is a means of postponing the repayment. Or maybe, Hilamr needs to fire that idiot and put a few of the Goons on retainer every time one of his geniuses gets a bug up their ass to play with the economy. Maybe.
Then, still on FW, while they fucked incursions that took many months worth of training and a billion+ isk, they had the "foresight" to taker a brand new player, in a newby frigate, with NO GUNS, and orbit a button in space, shoot ZERO rats, and rake in multiple times the isk that even the most optimistic and lucky high sec incursion-bear could EVER hope to earn. Then, they left that cook for a while. Between the massive trillion isk exploit hole, and the trillions of isk and gear pumped into certain parts of the market, it'll be more than a year before the market stabilizes again. BUT, CCP had a plan. An idea. They had a vision, a bigger picture as the developer, than "just" a player has, or could have.
Don't get me wrong. Some parts of CCP DO, seemingly, actually listen to layer ideas. Some parts, absolutely do not, and will not. Lots of players calmly point out that "we (the players) are not software developers. Apparently, these people assume that anyone who can or does code, is somehow automatically awesome, or even competent at it. They also seem to assume that just because someone is hired into a position, that they can do the job well. In many areas of the real world, people used to be promoted to the limit of their competence, and then that's where they stopped. That's no longer the case, and I believe that is the problem with a goodly number of CCP's "ideas". As the game grows, matures and evolves, why would it not be possible that the game is larger than the ability of people at CCP to handle it or add to it intelligently? Time and again, you read of businesses or organizations that grow past the ability of the original people to manage it, and so they get help or step aside entirely. With the listed failings, I think the coders at CCP aren't skilled enough to look at the big picture and see what their changes are going to do any more. Eve is too big in scope for them to understand what their "fixes" will break. CCP lacks the vision, and I think, that they don't even HAVE a real, all encompassing vision, or certainly not one that they can execute. A couple big reasons for that, thinks I.
First, I think that DUST is just another version of the captains' quarters. DUST, Sony, console players. That's a big fucking deal. A big CCP deal. If you sit back and think about all the things that need to be interleaved between DUST and Eve, I think that there is a shitload of effort going into THAT task, and all short term, and only cursory, distracted shit that goes towards Eve. Half-assed and distracted efforts, will produce half-assed updates with badly broken mechanics and coding. We've had lots of that lately. Like anything in life, you pay a lot of attention to one thing, and other things are going to hit the floor. Spinning plates. It's like someone at CCP is looking over the "action room" and people are furiously coding the Eve-DUST marriage while in the background, like a bunch of angry, tired, hungry kids, the Eve players are saying "HEY! Where's some content?! Tweaks and number changes are fine, but where are the FIXES you've promised for years?!?" So Hilamr says, "Hey, you with the head! Write something and give it to those whiners before they realize that we're working NOT on Eve, again, and the shit hits the fan like last summer, again!" So, we get shit updates, poorly thought changes and no movement on long standing bugs, and especially no movement on long standing issues, like, oh, fucked POS operation and technetium. Tossing the barking dogs some scraps, does not a meal make.
Secondly, even though CCP has always claimed the opposite, I doubt many at CCP actually play Eve. Sure, they might be writing code for it on a daily basis (to varying degrees of competency) but that isn't playing Eve. There are far more players then there are staff at CCP (at least I am assuming that is so ;)). For any little gaggle of super-friends at CCP that specialize in CODING (not necessarily PLAYING) any particular area of Eve, there are hopefully/presumably thousands of players that do NOTHING BUT play that particular area. While coding a part of the game space might give a person a unique insight into the game operation, I highly doubt the coder will know how to PLAY WITH and DEAL WITH the game operation the same way a dedicated player will. How many examples of players managing to do things in-game that CCP never intended or thought they could/would do, can we think of? Dozens? Hundreds? I don't doubt in the least, that there are thousands of players that are far more expert in the game play of Eve than any CCP employee EVER will be. Only a complete moron, or an arrogant moron, would disregard the input of people that have valid and valuable input. While there will always be the players that whine about anything and ask for the impossible, just like in my areas of expertise, it's very easy to spot the people with comments that are intended to help and improve. If CCP, or people that work there, are too fucking stupid to be able to differentiate the two, well, that's another prime reason why they should be at the Reykjavik airport stabbing garbage in the ditches instead of writing code for Eve.
Comments from ex-CCP employees, are also an interesting addition to this topic because of the attitude of some of the CCP staff. Some of the coders don't like it when players suggest or tell them how to do their jobs. If they're doing a shitty job though, creating problems when their "work" is pushed to the players, then that's the coder's fault. If they were doing a good job, they wouldn't need to be told HOW to do their job. That's an ego problem. Another aspect of that, is even if it's a good idea, some devs would never implement it because it makes them look incompetent. "If YOUR job is to develope and code, why didn't YOU think of that idea instead of a player who's job it is to drive truck or work a cash register??" Any dev who thinks like that is obviously too immature for his/her own good, and apparently has enough of an ego to decide a dented ego is not worth the trade for a better product. Another skin bag for the trash detail, perhaps to learn some verisimilitude. The devs, and sometimes their CSM puppets like to talk about how complicated and intensive the developmental process is for an idea to progress through the various departments and out to the players. Well, regardless of what development process they're using, ANYTHING can be stopped. If the devs don't WANT to stop it, then they're morons. If they don't want to stop it because of the time and money wasted, too bad. The fix for that is LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS, and DON'T DEVELOPE BAD FUCKING IDEAS! If a bunch of CUSTOMERS give detailed and intelligent explanations for why they think something is fucked, only a moron, or a narcissist would ignore that. We've seen that lots of times though, right? Like the next clueless idea to take simple, obvious and clear target indicators and change them BACK to round ones. Round ones that USED to be in the game, but were REPLACED with the current square ones! I wonder how many idiots on THAT super-friends team were also involved in things like the incursion nerf and the unified fucking inventory?
CCP could expand the Eve sandbox. They could make it big enough to include space for their headquarters in one corner. They could work WITH the players to add improvements and features to the game instead of marching to the beat of their own drum, which might not be up to the task any more. They could LISTEN to the CUSTOMERS and if they involved them even HALF as much as a game like Minecraft, they'd have a lot more enthusiastic players, more NEW players and fewer bitter players. First though, they would need to do something very important. They would need to accept that some of their ideas are really fucking stupid.
My whole life has been spent fixing things, designing things, tweaking things, building things. I wish it weren't so (just for functionality and time sakes) but I have had plenty of "brilliant" ideas, that were completely fucking broken. As a result of my failures, I have learned to take intellectual punches, to the head, in stride. I can only be inside my own head, and as much as I might try to think laterally and get behind the eyes, or inside the ideas/head of another, it will still be biased to some extent by me, being me. For a long while now, when I have an idea, I go through a process where I examine the 5 "W's" (who, what, where , when and why) and then make sure I ask all the relevant people involved, as many questions as I can possibly think of. For any particular idea of mine to survive, I know, and accept that I might/definitely need to consult and accept the input of other people. I also know that there are also times when regardless of my best intentions, my idea is fucked from the word go, and no amount of life support will make it fly. For anyone truly interested in trying to fix or create or enhance something, the "idea" is the means to those ends, not the point of the exercise.
Too many times lately, it seems CCP has lost track of the forest for the trees. They get fixated on an idea, and don't think about or see the big picture. They say they do, and they'll post like they do, but when they push their idea to Tranquility, even though the players said "don't", they obviously didn't see the forest. They are the game developers after all, and we are "just" players.
One major FUBAR example, is that fucked up integrated abortion of an inventory. It fixed absolutely nothing that they claimed it was supposed to, wastes more screen space than the oirginal and it also injected a shitload of bugs, a number of which still exist. CCP didn't listen. They knew what they were doing. They had a "vision" that the players lacked and the old inventory is never coming back.
Another example is the nerf nuke on incursions. All that had to be done, all that was called to be done by the players, was to make players shoot ALL the rats. Had CCP actually bothered to TRY highsec incursions themselves, they would have seen that the "easy" money was drawing more and more players, which also was limiting individual payouts. Forget about the fact that it took more than 3 or 4 months of dedicated training plus more than a billion isk to fit a shiney ship to maximise incursion performance. CCP knew better though, their idea killed incursions. Then, they dialed everything back to where it could have been with a MODERATE and intelligent tweak, but the damage was done. I have(had) dozens of players on my incursion contact/notification list. Now, at most, I see maybe 25% of them online any more. The rest might just be playing alts, but seemingly, they quit. CCP knew what they were doing though. They had a plan.
Factional warfare? Wow. It was completely weak sauce before their "fix", and then afterwards, a handful of "just players" managed to totally rape the game for trillions of isk. Obviously, the myopic devs at CCP were completely unable to see a couple trees past the one their face was pressed against. Maybe their economist is a relative of Hilmar's and that's how he got the job. Maybe Hilmar owes him money and the job is a means of postponing the repayment. Or maybe, Hilamr needs to fire that idiot and put a few of the Goons on retainer every time one of his geniuses gets a bug up their ass to play with the economy. Maybe.
Then, still on FW, while they fucked incursions that took many months worth of training and a billion+ isk, they had the "foresight" to taker a brand new player, in a newby frigate, with NO GUNS, and orbit a button in space, shoot ZERO rats, and rake in multiple times the isk that even the most optimistic and lucky high sec incursion-bear could EVER hope to earn. Then, they left that cook for a while. Between the massive trillion isk exploit hole, and the trillions of isk and gear pumped into certain parts of the market, it'll be more than a year before the market stabilizes again. BUT, CCP had a plan. An idea. They had a vision, a bigger picture as the developer, than "just" a player has, or could have.
Don't get me wrong. Some parts of CCP DO, seemingly, actually listen to layer ideas. Some parts, absolutely do not, and will not. Lots of players calmly point out that "we (the players) are not software developers. Apparently, these people assume that anyone who can or does code, is somehow automatically awesome, or even competent at it. They also seem to assume that just because someone is hired into a position, that they can do the job well. In many areas of the real world, people used to be promoted to the limit of their competence, and then that's where they stopped. That's no longer the case, and I believe that is the problem with a goodly number of CCP's "ideas". As the game grows, matures and evolves, why would it not be possible that the game is larger than the ability of people at CCP to handle it or add to it intelligently? Time and again, you read of businesses or organizations that grow past the ability of the original people to manage it, and so they get help or step aside entirely. With the listed failings, I think the coders at CCP aren't skilled enough to look at the big picture and see what their changes are going to do any more. Eve is too big in scope for them to understand what their "fixes" will break. CCP lacks the vision, and I think, that they don't even HAVE a real, all encompassing vision, or certainly not one that they can execute. A couple big reasons for that, thinks I.
First, I think that DUST is just another version of the captains' quarters. DUST, Sony, console players. That's a big fucking deal. A big CCP deal. If you sit back and think about all the things that need to be interleaved between DUST and Eve, I think that there is a shitload of effort going into THAT task, and all short term, and only cursory, distracted shit that goes towards Eve. Half-assed and distracted efforts, will produce half-assed updates with badly broken mechanics and coding. We've had lots of that lately. Like anything in life, you pay a lot of attention to one thing, and other things are going to hit the floor. Spinning plates. It's like someone at CCP is looking over the "action room" and people are furiously coding the Eve-DUST marriage while in the background, like a bunch of angry, tired, hungry kids, the Eve players are saying "HEY! Where's some content?! Tweaks and number changes are fine, but where are the FIXES you've promised for years?!?" So Hilamr says, "Hey, you with the head! Write something and give it to those whiners before they realize that we're working NOT on Eve, again, and the shit hits the fan like last summer, again!" So, we get shit updates, poorly thought changes and no movement on long standing bugs, and especially no movement on long standing issues, like, oh, fucked POS operation and technetium. Tossing the barking dogs some scraps, does not a meal make.
Secondly, even though CCP has always claimed the opposite, I doubt many at CCP actually play Eve. Sure, they might be writing code for it on a daily basis (to varying degrees of competency) but that isn't playing Eve. There are far more players then there are staff at CCP (at least I am assuming that is so ;)). For any little gaggle of super-friends at CCP that specialize in CODING (not necessarily PLAYING) any particular area of Eve, there are hopefully/presumably thousands of players that do NOTHING BUT play that particular area. While coding a part of the game space might give a person a unique insight into the game operation, I highly doubt the coder will know how to PLAY WITH and DEAL WITH the game operation the same way a dedicated player will. How many examples of players managing to do things in-game that CCP never intended or thought they could/would do, can we think of? Dozens? Hundreds? I don't doubt in the least, that there are thousands of players that are far more expert in the game play of Eve than any CCP employee EVER will be. Only a complete moron, or an arrogant moron, would disregard the input of people that have valid and valuable input. While there will always be the players that whine about anything and ask for the impossible, just like in my areas of expertise, it's very easy to spot the people with comments that are intended to help and improve. If CCP, or people that work there, are too fucking stupid to be able to differentiate the two, well, that's another prime reason why they should be at the Reykjavik airport stabbing garbage in the ditches instead of writing code for Eve.
Comments from ex-CCP employees, are also an interesting addition to this topic because of the attitude of some of the CCP staff. Some of the coders don't like it when players suggest or tell them how to do their jobs. If they're doing a shitty job though, creating problems when their "work" is pushed to the players, then that's the coder's fault. If they were doing a good job, they wouldn't need to be told HOW to do their job. That's an ego problem. Another aspect of that, is even if it's a good idea, some devs would never implement it because it makes them look incompetent. "If YOUR job is to develope and code, why didn't YOU think of that idea instead of a player who's job it is to drive truck or work a cash register??" Any dev who thinks like that is obviously too immature for his/her own good, and apparently has enough of an ego to decide a dented ego is not worth the trade for a better product. Another skin bag for the trash detail, perhaps to learn some verisimilitude. The devs, and sometimes their CSM puppets like to talk about how complicated and intensive the developmental process is for an idea to progress through the various departments and out to the players. Well, regardless of what development process they're using, ANYTHING can be stopped. If the devs don't WANT to stop it, then they're morons. If they don't want to stop it because of the time and money wasted, too bad. The fix for that is LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS, and DON'T DEVELOPE BAD FUCKING IDEAS! If a bunch of CUSTOMERS give detailed and intelligent explanations for why they think something is fucked, only a moron, or a narcissist would ignore that. We've seen that lots of times though, right? Like the next clueless idea to take simple, obvious and clear target indicators and change them BACK to round ones. Round ones that USED to be in the game, but were REPLACED with the current square ones! I wonder how many idiots on THAT super-friends team were also involved in things like the incursion nerf and the unified fucking inventory?
CCP could expand the Eve sandbox. They could make it big enough to include space for their headquarters in one corner. They could work WITH the players to add improvements and features to the game instead of marching to the beat of their own drum, which might not be up to the task any more. They could LISTEN to the CUSTOMERS and if they involved them even HALF as much as a game like Minecraft, they'd have a lot more enthusiastic players, more NEW players and fewer bitter players. First though, they would need to do something very important. They would need to accept that some of their ideas are really fucking stupid.
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