EVE is in flames

Elader Arkon

Elader Arkon

Helped Tek test a thing
The like of which has never been seen before.

A lot of things have happened that brought this about, going back to a discussion in October of last year with a CSM meeting. Microtransactions (MT) were discussed in terms of possible PLEX for Neural Remapps (attribute reallocation). There was large community and CSM backlash and the topic was dropped, saying they'll never implement anything beyond truly vanity items if they implement a MT store.

Fast forward to the 15th. CCP released a devblog about 3rd Party apps. Essentially everyone offering any kind of service, free or not, outside the game would be required to pay a $99/year fee. This caused outrage amongst all the app developers and the community as a whole. After discussion with the CSM, CCP backed down during the Alliance Tournament and stated that it would be much, much smaller token charge. The reason I mention this here is what normally happens, and the community has grown to expect from the company.



Someone posted a quick rundown of events that led after the launch:

1. Incarna Launches riddled with hardware performance issues for some as well as exorbitantly priced Clothing/accessory.
2. People rage about prices, and performance.
3. Internal CCP newsletter leaks that strongly suggest non-vanity MT coming to eve.
4. People rage about leaked PDF. [see above, they had explicitly stated they wouldn't]
5. CCP Pann makes a thread apologizing for not responding earlier and puts forward that our chief complaint is the prices, which is no longer the case following the leaked PDF.
6. People overwhelmingly flood CCP Pann's thread with the question of whether non-vanity MT will be coming to eve. All CCP say on the point is they cannot answer. [This was considered disturbing by all involved]
7. In-game protests start aimed at disrupting the trade hubs and spreading word about their concerns. [Jita and Amarr, the two main trade hubs in the game have been locked down by players for hours now, even as I write this]
8. A out-of-character devblog with a by-line of CCP Zulu is posted. The devblog only addressed the PDF in saying that is not a verbatim indication of their plans but is more a discussion. The dev-blog also addresses the prices of the current items, but nothing about the concern of future MT items.
9. Protests/forum rage continues. [There are over 1000+ reply comments in under a hour, a record for the EVE Forums.]
10. An eve-radio show with several CSM members(current & past) goes through the issue. CSM members state the the CCP Zulu devblog is out of character and that they have been stonewalled as far as all the recent controversy has been concerned.
11. During the radio show the e-mail of hilmar's is released, which quickly ends any contemplation to CCP's intentions and stance. [If this proves to be truly from Hilmar, the impact on the community and the game as a whole for the future is simply staggering]
12. YOU ARE HERE. [To say this is the strongest community backlash I've ever seen out of an extremely passionate gaming community would be a severe understatement...]

Further Reading: (beware, most of the comments are raging forumites, and CCP hasn't been able/trying to keep up with keeping the boards clean at this time...)
CCP_Pann's Thread
One of the best responses to CCP_Pann
CCP_Zulu's Devblog
CCP CEO Hilmar's leaked company email (supposedly his, it may be an elaborate hoax, but all the signs point to it being legit)
Jita Protest footage
Amarr Protest footage

Ahh EVE. When it does something, it does it in a spectacular manner...
 
Yeah when something goes down in EVE it is always highly entertaining/fascinating to see unfold.
As of right now, the riots are in their second full day with no signs of stopping, and the forums are just as hot as they were a few days ago.

There has been confirmation from a CCP employee via twitter that Hilmar's email was real.

No official word has been spoken to even attempt to alleviate the playerbase since yesterday morning.

Apparently Hilmar is at a games development conference in Europe, I can only imagine the kind of questions might be floating his way if anyone there has the slightest idea of what's going down.

Jita remains a dangerous place for industrial/trade ships, and an average of 1100-1600 players in system at a time. Amar is just as locked down. Rens and Dodixie have had occasional outbursts and riots. Screens from the action in Jita incoming.
 
New conciliatory devblog. Main points are CCP is flying the CSM to Iceland for a meeting to discuss the events of the past week, and to fully address the concerns of the players face to face. And probably most importantly they have clarified that there are no plans and never have been plans for "gold ammo" in the MT shop (a term adopted by players to mean any gameplay affecting items).

General consensus this soon after is to adopt a 'wait and see' approach until after the CSM meetings. Meanwhile, riots continue because, well its really hard to stop riots in full swing and it is really, really fun.

Update: Probably the best explanation/summary yet of everything that's gone on over at Massively
 
Last edited:
Thanks to the hard work of the CSM (seriously this, along with PLEX should be adopted/stolen by more MMOs) things have now been cleared up, cleaned up, and verified with CCP, during the two days of the Emergency Summit.

Quote from the article:

We believe that the situation that has unfolded in the past week has been a perfect storm of CCP communication failures, poor planning and sheer bad luck. Most of these issues, when dealt with in isolation, were reasonably simple to discuss and resolve, but combined they transformed a series of errors into the most significant crisis the EVE community has yet experienced.
 
I honestly hate any microtransaction system where those who can pay get ahead. And I also think CCP are contradicting itself by allowing game time codes to be sold for isk. Love it or hate it, it's a pay to win game, though the 'pay' could cost a lot for a formidable ship replacement.

Also gameplay gets boring after a while if you're not a pvp junkie XD

As for me, I quit mainly because of pay2win and tired of doing the same'ol every day. Also didn't like having to play 2 accounts to get through missions faster, only to do it again and run against the clock in the same old grind every day. And no 0.0 was no fun for me.

I'd like to see them put up some actual fun stuff instead of trying to milk people some more.
 
silverleaf said:
I honestly hate any microtransaction system where those who can pay get ahead. And I also think CCP are contradicting itself by allowing game time codes to be sold for isk. Love it or hate it, it's a pay to win game, though the 'pay' could cost a lot for a formidable ship replacement.
Click to expand...
I think you have a misunderstanding of what a Pay 2 Win game is. P2W is called such because in order to be competative, you have to own an item(s) that can only come from a real money purchase. PLEX is not that for two vital reasons: 1.) PLEX is a tradeable commodity. That means, whoever wants one can get one at the going free market price.
2.) There is no real advantage given. Either you get game time, or (and this is important) somebody else gets the game time in exchange for whatever the current perceived value of 30 days time is. CCP does not hand you isk in exchange for money (which is what gold/isk sellers do), but rather integrates it into the already existing economy of the game.

And the amount of isk received via the market is hardly enough to even be considered 'advantage giving' much less 'pay 2 win'. Compared to the hundreds of billions many of the leaders and trade moguls have, 600mill (the going rate atm for 2 PLEX) is incredibly trivial to the point that some corporations (and probably an alliance or two) can afford to keep their members playing for free without putting a dent in their assets.

There are a ton of other ways to make that much (and/or more) isk in two months of game time (solo, it is easy to make much, much more and in a much larger variety of ways with a group):
-Anything PvE in nullsec.
-Exploration (a single good find can get you 400+mil, up to 1.2bil in wormhole space)
-lvl 4 mission running (this is what most people do to generate lots of isk fast)
-mining (hit or miss, null/WH space is best)
-Manufacturing/Trade (people have gone from their initial 10mil out of the tutorials and made over a billion in less than their first month playing)

PLEX is good for the 'oh I need a couple hundred mill real quick to do x', but definitely not an advantage (I would say overall it gives the buyer a disadvantage, but my time's running short atm to explain why)

silverleaf said:
Also gameplay gets boring after a while if you're not a pvp junkie XD
Click to expand...

That is personal preference. My lunch break is pretty much over, but suffice it to say I'm loving my time playing and I haven't shot at someone in a good five/six months (I have been shot at, but that tends to happen when you run blockades...)
 
Last edited:
heh that's true, but still the average player will be hard pressed to find 600m in a couple days. I seem to have little luck with corps mainly cos of timezone issues. When I play, it's nearly downtime. Having to adjust my time around downtime isn't fun either, cutting out one hour of my most convenient time.

Guess it's all down to personal taste in the end... prefer something a little more actiony and I'm not the only one who thinks PvE is a numbers game and click a button every 10 seconds.
 
I <3 the eve economy/market and have grown so used to it that I find all other MMO market systems I've tried to be incredibly aggravating to the point I can't understand how people actually enjoy 'playing the market' in them. I've made so much isk... only to turn around and lose almost all of it within a week to brutal market manipulation shenanigans (when I say people create empires via trade, that does mean defending their turf by ruthlessly driving all other competition away/out of business). But so far I've got probably 1.2-5 bill in assets, of which only about 200mill is liquid at any given time (and yes, to be anywhere near successful at the market does involve a ton of number crunching to find a profitable niche). I did drop down to 56mill recently thanks to the purchase and fitting of a couple battleships, hauler, retriever, and a hulk.

The thing I was going to say about PLEX being detrimental to the person selling it for isk is that it isn't sustainable for them in the long run if they don't know what they are doing. If they lose it, they have nothing to show for it but a 'well I guess I learned not to do that...' and a taste for the 'high life' of having a decently padded and liquid wallet and no way to get more without buying another (and that IMO is how CCP sells so many PLEX).

It can on the other hand be helpful I suppose, one can get a few BPOs with a couple PLEX and the minerals to get them off to a good start -but starting life on the markets with mid-range items would be the equivalent of a guy walking in off the street and suddenly taking over as manager of a five star restaurant -he's most likely going to be completely outclassed (though there is a chance he'll take to it like a duck to water...).

prefer something a little more actiony and I'm not the only one who thinks PvE is a numbers game and click a button every 10 seconds.
Click to expand...

As for needing to be more action-y, Dust514 should hopefully make that happen.

I do agree the combat system as a whole could definitely use some improvement, but as for how is a matter of debate. A lot of things could actually be made better just by properly scaling all the ships (most noticeably the carrier/supercarriers) and improving the combat animations -not an easy task considering the number of ships in the game. Another thing would be ship movement, and making it less click dependent and giving more control to the player.
 
yeah. I think a lot of people will move over to dust, and some who choose to remain in space (or hate consoles like me) will move to other games such as black prophecy (not really my taste too complex) and jumpgate evolution if that piece of vaporware actually releases.
 
I've got my hopes on the eventual release of Infinity. However, I don't see EVE going away anytime soon, and I have serious doubts that the 'mass unsubs' from the community over the whole MT/Incarna/leak miscommunication (and miscommunication is really what ultimately boiled down to) will even show up as a blip on the continued growth in subs of the game (it hasn't had a year that I can recall where the subscription rate has ever dropped below the year before).
EVE is such a niche game that it would take a very serious attempt in order to permanently sway the playerbase away, and who would aim for such a small (360k population) community when most newer MMOs are considered utter failures *cough*Warhammer Online*cough* if they average 300k?
 
Infinity will be awesome but i believe it's still vaporware. I followed that a few years and gave up all hope when I learnt after THAT long it's still in art, and now there has been nothing since the procedual generation engine. Even if it does see the light of day, it's going to be very far from now, and by then, hopefully other games would have caught up. New patches and stuff come slower with a small team too.
The sole dev killed the only hope I had when he (in my opinion foolishly) rejected the developer offer he got earlier.
 
yeah but you can only sell em for isk now (the characters) and that will incur a $20 fee I remember. As for selling them for $$, that's illegal in game and so don't talk about it here. Depending on where you live, could be illegal out of game too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top