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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2011, 10:58:39 pm

Title: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2011, 10:58:39 pm
EVE is burning to the ground. The Devs have been caught in a direct lie to the playerbase regarding the future direction of the game, and only keep digging their hole. CCP employees are engaged in leaking internal documents regarding the controversy. Others are desperately deleting the documents as they appear on the forums and banning anyone who posts them. The Threadnaught is closing on 250 pages in a little over 24 hours.

I have a bag of popcorn and a front-row seat to the end of the world.

It's glorious.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: CommanderDJ on June 24, 2011, 11:08:33 pm
EVE is burning to the ground. The Devs have been caught in a direct lie to the playerbase regarding the future direction of the game, and only keep digging their hole. CCP employees are engaged in leaking internal documents regarding the controversy. Others are desperately deleting the documents as they appear on the forums and banning anyone who posts them. The Threadnaught is closing on 250 pages in a little over 24 hours.

I have a bag of popcorn and a front-row seat to the end of the world.

It's glorious.

OMG that's hilarious. Links, sauce?
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2011, 11:17:30 pm
Greed Is Good, or why CCP is stupid. (http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/22/greed-is-good-purportedly-leaked-internal-bulletin-shows-ccps-refreshing-new-direction/) There was a clear line in the sand drawn earlier; vanity items for microtransactions only. Nothing else would be considered or done. They crossed it. This was an internal document; somebody leaked it.

Then CCP Hilmar, the CEO, tells everyone to ignore the upset players in a leaked email, we're doing great! Ignore the 15$k a month we just lost in unsubscribing players! (http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/25/ccp-hilmar-global-email-shows-the-reasoning-behind-ccp-zulu-devblog/) It was at first assumed a troll, until...CCP Navigator, a forum mod, started banning people for posting it because it's internal communication between or with GMs/Devs, thereby asserting it's authentic.

Literal ingame riots (http://kotaku.com/5815445/furious-over-microtransactions-eve-online-community-explodes-with-rioting). They even reprogrammed the NPC police to go rabid and kill anyone in the system.

EDIT: Let me add; I really did pop three bags of popcorn and sit down to read the threadnaught.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: General Battuta on June 24, 2011, 11:24:40 pm
Greed Is Good, or why CCP is stupid. (http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/22/greed-is-good-purportedly-leaked-internal-bulletin-shows-ccps-refreshing-new-direction/) There was a clear line in the sand drawn earlier; vanity items for microtransactions only. Nothing else would be considered or done. They crossed it. This was an internal document; somebody leaked it.

Then CCP Hilmar, the CEO, tells everyone to ignore the upset players in a leaked email, we're doing great! Ignore the 15$k a month we just lost in unsubscribing players! (http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/25/ccp-hilmar-global-email-shows-the-reasoning-behind-ccp-zulu-devblog/) It was at first assumed a troll, until...CCP Navigator, a forum mod, started banning people for posting it because it's internal communication between or with GMs/Devs, thereby asserting it's authentic.

Literal ingame riots (http://kotaku.com/5815445/furious-over-microtransactions-eve-online-community-explodes-with-rioting). They even reprogrammed the NPC police to go rabid and kill anyone in the system.

EDIT: Let me add; I really did pop three bags of popcorn and sit down to read the threadnaught.

I second this, the entire thing is ****ing hilarious. Capitalism is even backing up the discontent - PLEX prices are crashing.

However I gotta call BS on the NPC police thing, that was fake I think.

also i just got blown up in VFK
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2011, 11:26:56 pm
However I gotta call BS on the NPC police thing, that was fake I think.

Headed to Jita to find out.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 25, 2011, 12:12:59 am
Appears it was a fake.

Appears, because I can't get into Jita.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: General Battuta on June 25, 2011, 12:16:35 am
Yeah, Fortress Jita is capped at 2500, or so Goons say.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 25, 2011, 12:55:44 am
Best failure cascade ever.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: CommanderDJ on June 25, 2011, 02:18:06 am
Best failure cascade ever.

OMG, I read all those articles you linked and then a few more. This is utterly awesomely funny, and I don't even play EVE.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mongoose on June 25, 2011, 02:51:03 am
/me looks at friends who paid $7.50 for a laughing taunt :nervous:

Wow, though.  EvE is crazy enough on a normal day, but this is insane.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Kszyhu on June 25, 2011, 03:51:46 am
Just a word of clarification - you are buying those things with second currency made from PLEXes, which can be bought with in-game currency. So you, personally, don't have to pay 60$ dollars... just some ridiculous amount of ISK. Which is just insane, not 'pants-on-head' insane.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mikes on June 25, 2011, 06:33:51 am
Considering that passes as "normal" gameplay in Eve... aren't the developers just displaying some of that behavior that their whole game is designed around?

Anyone else think the irony is priceless ? ;)
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 25, 2011, 06:44:24 am
Just a word of clarification - you are buying those things with second currency made from PLEXes, which can be bought with in-game currency. So you, personally, don't have to pay 60$ dollars... just some ridiculous amount of ISK. Which is just insane, not 'pants-on-head' insane.

At the prices when it came out, a monocle was well over 2bil in Isk; nearly enough to purchase a supercapital hull outright or buy the building blocks of a permanent outpost.

Not pants, perhaps, but definitely underwear.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Kszyhu on June 25, 2011, 07:09:51 am
Are supercapitals that cheap? I've heard about 20-25bil ISK for one, 2 bil is enough for a fully fitted carrier. Anyway, right after deployment of the expansion I've thought that only a bunch of whiners were complaining, but after that poor attempt at damage control and that damned newsletter I'm not so sure.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 25, 2011, 07:16:18 am
Are supercapitals that cheap?

Just for the hull, yeah. Counting skills, fittings, and other costs, no.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 26, 2011, 12:07:21 am
I don't know whether to be terrified as an EVE player, or to laugh hysterically as someone who's a relatively casual carebear.

On one hand, people with enough money to hotdrop a carrier fleet on an Amarr Shuttle for kicks will leave the game. On the other hand, CCP is apparently being run by the lovechild of Hitler and Gordon Gekko.

Yeah, I just Godwin'd.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: AtomicClucker on June 26, 2011, 12:35:18 am
Insert HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Srsly, it's one thing to appeal to vanity, like some of WoWs vanity pets or mounts, but CCP is being pretty stupid.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Angelus on June 26, 2011, 06:16:53 am
I spend over 6 hours yesterday reading through various threads and news sites and i am amazed.
Despite my deep aversion towards MMOs, i found that EvE is somewhat entertaining.  :p
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Unknown Target on June 26, 2011, 06:39:10 am
I don't get it...the prices are way overblown. So what? It looks like useless vanity stuff? I mean, one of the big examples is the $60 monacle...why not just not buy the monacle?
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: The E on June 26, 2011, 06:42:29 am
The issue here isn't so much the ridiculous vanity items, the problem is a leaked internal memo that hints at plans to sell non-vanity (as in, gameplay affecting) items as well, which is seen as an attack on the player-run in-game economy.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 26, 2011, 07:22:08 am
And also an explicit reversal of promises made to the playerbase.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: achtung on June 26, 2011, 08:23:27 am
They will still keep on making money, and will throw off the hardcore (read annoying whiner) part of their playerbase. They may even clearing the Dust to start looking to the more casual audience... oh wait.

I don't play EvE, but I bet this will be the case.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 26, 2011, 09:31:31 am
And then they're left with a poorly designed, difficult to play, and generally uninteresting MMO. If you get rid of the Great Old Ones, the things that gave EVE direction and individuality, the glorious wtf of EVE drama, will inevitably suffer.

The last Great War will have been fought; the last grand spymaster scheme executed. The game would have to survive another two or three years before things would return to the way they were. And all you have is a ****ty game, a company that clearly doesn't understand their creation, and a badly damaged reputation to get you there.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Klaustrophobia on June 26, 2011, 11:38:31 am
EVE isn't the first game to go down this road.  while all the things you said are probably true, based on the past examples, the devs just DON'T CARE.  if people will shell out the cash for a ****ty game, they aren't gonna spend any effort to improve/fix it.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Flipside on June 26, 2011, 12:00:10 pm
The thing about Eve is the fact that, for years, CCP has been tailoring the game to benefit those with connections and organisational skills, compared to most MMO's it's incredibly complex and takes months upon months of work and learning to properly understand many of the game requirements/concepts. They made it so you need contacts with influence, whether you are running a POS or a mining station, you need to not only power that station, but also defend it, and that requires experienced players who have spent, quite literally, years training up the skills they needed, or someone with a good tactical mind. Even if noobs beat veterans, it was done on a equal playing field, it was simply logistics or planning that won the war, not privilege.

For CCP to suddenly turn around and start, from the dedicated players position, pissing on the years of work by suggesting that some people can be more equal than others is a complete reversal of what they have been pushing for years, where it's been about the community working together (or against each other) that makes the game, not individual characters or relative real-life funds.

In a way, CCP have made a rod for their own back, they've spent years pushing the 'be a small pawn in a vast universe' mentality, where corporations, not people, called the shots in the long term, and this can easily be seen as a reversal of position.

I'm not saying I either agree or disagree with the original intent of CCP towards Eve, it felt a little too impersonal for me, but to suddenly try to change course in such a radical manner so quickly comes across to me as an almost self-destructive move.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mikes on June 26, 2011, 01:52:57 pm
EVE isn't the first game to go down this road.  while all the things you said are probably true, based on the past examples, the devs just DON'T CARE.  if people will shell out the cash for a ****ty game, they aren't gonna spend any effort to improve/fix it.

Star Wars Galaxies NGE comes to mind... ask those Devs how pi**ing all over their (once completely loyal dedicated and happy) fanbase turned out ;)

You gotta understand that Eve's fanbase is not like normal MMO fanbases. This isn't a mainstream MMO that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Eve started out with less than 10.000 players... and slowly built up over decades to what they got now... by always staying true to a very specific niche market.

As someone with a marketing degree I can't help but /facepalm. It's classic, really. Badly thought out diversification leading to a neglected main product coupled with revenue gathering experiments... leading to pi**ed off customers...  which quickly leads to an imploding company if not handled with the utmost competence.

CCP is playing with fire right now. Next months gonna be interesting to watch. /popcorn ;)
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Hades on June 26, 2011, 02:01:30 pm
You gotta understand that Eve's fanbase is not like normal MMO fanbases. This isn't a mainstream MMO that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Eve started out with less than 10.000 players... and slowly built up over decades to what they got now... by always staying true to a very specific niche market.
Uh. Isn't EVE only around 8 years old now at this point? :nervous:
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mikes on June 26, 2011, 02:05:56 pm
You gotta understand that Eve's fanbase is not like normal MMO fanbases. This isn't a mainstream MMO that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Eve started out with less than 10.000 players... and slowly built up over decades to what they got now... by always staying true to a very specific niche market.
Uh. Isn't EVE only around 8 years old now at this point? :nervous:

Shoulda been years :) but the point remains the same...  most MMOs don't last 5 years and usually start with a large userbase at release and then decline.... Eve actually steadily increased their userbase year after year from a starting point with so few subscribers that most companies wouldn't even have bothered to continue the game.

Personally, the game hardly appeals to me. But I still respect how they perfectly catered to a very specific niche and built that niche up with longterm dedication that is pretty much unrivalled in the genre.

Well, so much for that...
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: LordMelvin on June 26, 2011, 02:49:48 pm
As someone who just reupped to eve a month ago to see how this patch went (the new turrets are nice. The station-side stuff is... meh. The microtransaction stuff is gah-get-it-away-from-me. the overall rollout appears to still have a lot pending for the .1 and further releases.) I have to say, eve still seems to be the same game I played back in the day, for good and ill. If this is leading to an SWG-NGE type thing... well, There's other spaceship games out there that are just as pretty even if they aren't as multiplayer...

EditToAdd: Also, this thread has the best title I've seen all week month year decade.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 26, 2011, 05:03:13 pm
EVE isn't the first game to go down this road.  while all the things you said are probably true, based on the past examples, the devs just DON'T CARE.  if people will shell out the cash for a ****ty game, they aren't gonna spend any effort to improve/fix it.

Star Wars Galaxies NGE comes to mind... ask those Devs how pi**ing all over their (once completely loyal dedicated and happy) fanbase turned out ;)

You gotta understand that Eve's fanbase is not like normal MMO fanbases. This isn't a mainstream MMO that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Eve started out with less than 10.000 players... and slowly built up over decades to what they got now... by always staying true to a very specific niche market.

As someone with a marketing degree I can't help but /facepalm. It's classic, really. Badly thought out diversification leading to a neglected main product coupled with revenue gathering experiments... leading to pi**ed off customers...  which quickly leads to an imploding company if not handled with the utmost competence.

CCP is playing with fire right now. Next months gonna be interesting to watch. /popcorn ;)

Basically this. The biggest mistake they could possibly make is trying to broaden the audience. It just won't work like that. The core players are the ones that run the game - if they leave, it's a huge power vacuum and a huge economic collapse. The economy of the game, for those of you who have never played or been interested in EVE, is 100% player-driven. Players mine the minerals, research the blueprints, manufacture the items and ships, transport goods between locations, sell and broker the goods, etc. 90% of the items in the game probably come from 10% of the players, as it takes a LONG time to train up the necessary skills to profitably mine/manufacture/haul/trade. That 10% is the part of the playerbase most likely to be pissed off by the inevitable changes to the game if the game devs sell out.

The **** has already hit the proverbial fan and CCP is going to need a lot more than just damage control to make things right. There are still massive protests going on and making it damn near impossible to do anything in the main trading hub systems of the game (think GTA after the Sol/DS node was cut off, mass economic collapse - same concept). They're supposedly flying the player-elected council members to Iceland for an emergency meeting - that's some serious money, so at least they realize how dire the situation is.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mikes on June 26, 2011, 06:12:04 pm
They're supposedly flying the player-elected council members to Iceland for an emergency meeting - that's some serious money, so at least they realize how dire the situation is.

And there they will propably ask them "how to sell the changes to the community" instead of actually asking them for input on how to fix anything. (Which would be easy: Server rollback and trash the idiot changes + promises for lots of new development effort, but I am very much sure they are never going to consider this... if they were still that sane they wouldn't have rolled that out in the first place heh.) ;)
 
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 26, 2011, 06:25:33 pm
They're supposedly flying the player-elected council members to Iceland for an emergency meeting - that's some serious money, so at least they realize how dire the situation is.

And there they will propably ask them "how to sell the changes to the community" instead of actually asking them for input on how to fix anything. (Which would be easy: Server rollback and trash the idiot changes + promises for lots of new development effort, but I am very much sure they are never going to consider this... if they were still that sane they wouldn't have rolled that out in the first place heh.) ;)

Yeah, since the meeting is under an NDA, they could technically say that the CSM agreed that the changes were good and the players wouldn't know. The protests haven't stopped, because some of the players realize exactly what you said - it's just more damage control. The rest just like smashing things up and causing havoc.

The fact that none of the devs have come forward just to answer a VERY simple yes or no question ("Will there ever be items for sale that affect gameplay?") is what's really worrying. The silence is essentially enough of an answer for most people. If CCP actually wants to fix this, they're gonna have to lift the NDA on the CSM meeting, set up a webcast for it, and just generally show a lot more transparency. The CSM wasn't even told about the microtransactions before the expansion hit, which kind of defeats the purpose of having the council in the first place. The rumors flying around that SOE is planning on some kind of partnership or ownership agreement with CCP aren't helping (because of SOE's game-destroying reputation).

It's all rather sad- I'd hate to quit playing EVE. I don't even have 100 mil skillpoints or any ships larger than a tech I battleship, but I like the community and the uniqueness of the experience. Fortunately, Black Prophecy is looking pretty promising (speaking of, if any of you reading this haven't heard of it or whatever, it's sort of like a mashup of EVE and Freespace; the combat is classic space-sim and your ships are nice an customizable - it's still in beta and sort of laggy, plus a bit unoptimized, but worth checking out).
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Mikes on June 26, 2011, 06:33:12 pm
Also gotta keep in mind... this anger doesn't come out of nowhere. Basically from what I read the community has already built up a lot of resentment over CCP using Eve as the cash cow to finance their new Projects (WOD and Dust) while cutting development down for their main game. Now they do finally have a major expansion release.... and/but content sucks/is broken/is worse than what it replaces (Captains Quarters) and on top of that CCP is adding an item store with outrageous prices to further milk the playerbase...

Easy to see how this does become the last straw for people. They don't even need to implement "buy to win" items to make this get even worse. Rather, the longer this goes on, "Buy to Win" items look more and more like a superfluous nail in the coffin.

P.S.: The latest entry in the drama: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/26/eve-evolved-the-day-that-eve-online-died/
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 26, 2011, 06:56:09 pm
Also gotta keep in mind... this anger doesn't come out of nowhere. Basically from what I read the community has already built up a lot of resentment over CCP using Eve as the cash cow to finance their new Projects (WOD and Dust) while cutting development down for their main game. Now they do finally have a major expansion release.... and/but content sucks/is broken/is worse than what it replaces (Captains Quarters) and on top of that CCP is adding an item store with outrageous prices to further milk the playerbase...

Easy to see how this does become the last straw for people. They don't even need to implement "buy to win" items to make this get even worse. Rather, the longer this goes on, "Buy to Win" items look more and more like a superfluous nail in the coffin.

P.S.: The latest entry in the drama: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/26/eve-evolved-the-day-that-eve-online-died/

Yeah, most of the veterans are saying that this whole fiasco was more of a symptom and not the problem itself - rather, the lack of communication and transparency was evidence that CCP stopped caring about the playerbase. How long have hybrid turrets been broken now? This is just the latest in a cascade of failures.

I've always wanted something like the CQ, but only coming out with one races' room and the various performance problems...that just reeks of unfinished and rushed to me. I messed around in it for a few minutes, and then I turned it off - now, when I log in, I get to stare at a wall just so that my laptop's poor GeForce 9500M won't melt itself trying to play a nearly-ten-year-old game. Not only is the CQ unfinished, but turning it off is a huge leap backward in functionality. You can't see your active ship, can't right-click on it to easily open its cargo/drone bay...whoever thought releasing CQ in its current state was a good idea is clearly out of their minds.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 26, 2011, 07:27:07 pm
Hate to double-post, but I saw a good post in one of the hundreds of unbridled-rage threads in the EVE forums that I thought was a great insight:

Quote
I'm not sure why people are surprised by any of this or would even think of calling for protesters to be banned. This is EXACTLY the way CCP has encouraged players to deal with each other in the game for years. EVE not only encourages players to band together and grief other players using the most destructive, onerous, and frustrating tactics possible, it practically forces players to operate in that fashion because nothing else works! In many subtle (and some not-so-subtle) ways, the devs have created an environment where banding together and imposing your will by whatever means necessary is the intuitive and instinctive way to play this game. It should surprise absolutely no one that the EVE community has now evolved (or mutated) into a state where we treat the developers in exactly the same fashion as they encourage us to treat each other.

You reap what you sow. And CCP has created a Frankenstein monster that will no longer blindly do as commanded. CCP talks a lot about bravery and creating new virtual worlds where players truly control their own destiny's. Well, CCP's response to this crisis is going to speak volumes about who they really are as a game company. And it will also reveal whether they really believe any of that fancy talk or whether it really is all just about the bucks.

It's true that the devs have always had a hands-off approach when it comes to in-game problems, encouraging players and corporations to look after themselves, so this post is pretty spot-on.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 27, 2011, 04:37:58 am
Yeah, since the meeting is under an NDA, they could technically say that the CSM agreed that the changes were good and the players wouldn't know.

The NDA doesn't extend that far, and considering the level of opposition from the CSM (Mittens has threatened to take the entire Swarm out of the game over this), such a claim would never be believed.

But then, I think that's part of the problem. CCP is living in their own little world. Everyone and their dog says blasters are broken; CCP continues to insist they work as advertized. They've displayed shocking ignorance of how wars are waged (c.f. Jump Bridges). We are beyond lack of transparency and communication; CCP is no longer viewing the same reality we are.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: Grizzly on June 27, 2011, 11:49:20 am
It sounds oddly like real world politics.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: General Battuta on June 27, 2011, 11:53:44 am
It sounds oddly like real world politics.

That is basically why EVE is interesting.
Title: Re: EvE talks to Snake, is burned in apple deals
Post by: redalbatross on June 27, 2011, 03:19:19 pm
It sounds oddly like real world politics.

That is basically why EVE is interesting.

Yeah, it actually draws some pretty amazing parallels to the real world. As it turns out, if you give players complete freedom to do basically anything they can think of...

...most of them will be jerks. Eve is pretty unique in that scamming, stealing, spying, ganking, and griefing is completely legal, for the most part. Almost everything is fair game, and people will go to absolutely incredible lengths to get ahead. Spend MONTHS on an alt infiltrating a rival corporation, gaining their trust, and then stealing billions and billions of ISK worth of their assets? Yep. DDoS attack a rival alliance's TS server so their fleet communication sucks and your fleet easily wipes the floor with them? Yep.

Even people that have never played EVE have probably heard of some of the legendary scams and corporate thefts. It's a wretched hive of scum and villainy where you can't trust anyone, and that's why most of us players like it. It's a unique community.

Unfortunately, CCP is also finding out that throwing rocks at the hive is a terrible, terrible idea.