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Yet Another EVE Online Scandal?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 25, 2007 08:01 PM
from the oi-vey dept.
from the oi-vey dept.
Ariastis writes "An open letter, posted by former EVE Players, levels some new and serious accusations against CCP, the makers of the EVE Online MMOG. In the letter, chat logs & event timelines, along with description of in-game events from CCP-Approved reporting users, describe how most of the big role-playing events are rigged to favor specific alliances & players by CCP. More disturbingly, these users also appear to have CCP employees 'on call', ready to step in on behalf of the favoured players and alliances within the game. CCP reaction is member-only, but a forum thread has been left open to discuss about it." It should be pointed out at the moment all of the evidence put forward is circumstantial; take with a grain of salt. The issue of corruption in EVE was addressed in our interview with Magnus Bergsson at GDC.
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EVE Online Answers Your Questions 249 comments
Last week at GDC I had the privilege of sitting down to speak with a representative from CCP, the folks who maintain EVE Online. The week before, we'd asked for questions to pass on. I had the chance to put them directly to Magnus Bergsson, CMO at CCP. He very directly tackles the recent scandal involving a CCP developer, the reason why EVE's hardcore gameplay is so appealing, the balance between casual and hardcore players, and some information on the future of the game. Read on for his answers to your questions in a transcript of the interview, as well as audio live from the GDC Expo floor.
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EVE Online Scandal Deliberate Frame-Job? 382 comments
Last Friday, we discussed serious allegations leveled against CCP by players of the game. The comments on the discussion were lively, and pointed. Perhaps a bit too pointed, as CCP's internal affairs investigation claims that a plot to smear the company with false accusations over the long holiday weekend was behind the flurry of online activity. "The objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. In this particular case, instead of receiving notification of a possible problem and sufficient time to examine and address it, we faced a coordinated and hostile attack executed on our forums, Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and other outlets at the beginning of a three-day weekend. We believe this speaks volumes of the intention of the person(s) responsible for orchestrating this scheme. Verification of this can be readily found on the forums of the people responsible--or at least could, the last time we looked." Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys points the finger at the Goon Fleet corporation, an organization based out of the Something Awful forums. As I noted in the original post, the evidence presented on both sides is challenging to verify independently. Take everything you read about these events with a grain of salt.
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Eve Online's New Chief Economist 52 comments
eldavojohn writes "Recently CCP, the folks behind the online game Eve Online, hired a real world economist to advise them on their in-game economy. Says the new hire, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, 'There's a lot of discussion in the game about inflation and that is my job, to find out if inflation is going on. This makes the consumers behave in a more natural way because they are competing against each other on multiple levels, not only on a tactical level in combat but for logistics and resources. That builds consumer behavior and patterns that you see in the real world.' Is this a serious step to keep Eve Online competitive in the virtual land of MMOs despite scandals, Ponzi schemes & scams?"
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geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard not to be, you work your guts out and can barely keep a corporation with 20 members moving in the same direction, while there are corps that have thousands of memebers and seem to be able to print money and ships and can gather fleets big enough to lag out your connection when they move through your system.
Of course that's the whole point of the game, it's not supposed to be fair. Eve is pure and simply a no holds bared economic simulator. The rules are few, and the strongest eat the weakest. People come in from other MMO's to play Eve with the expection that it is WOW in space. After a month or three they come to the realization that there are portions of the game they will never have access to, no matter how long they play and how much they grind, and that death can come for them at any time reguardless of how high they climb and how big of a ship they can field. Many never come to grips with it, so they start crying foul over just about everything.
A player steals your ore or rips you off in a comercial transaction, it's griefing. A big ship has enough fire power to wipe out a little ship, they scream nerf. The little ship can out manuever the guns of the big ship, too much nerfing. A corportion that number in the thousands systematically wipes out corps with members numbering in the hundreds...
...it's CCP favoratism.
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Funny)
That must make you Jeezus.
Interesting "coincidences" (Score:5, Insightful)
That odd dev promiting himself to director, demoting himself a couple of minutes later without communication.
All inquiries related to above incident being buried and blocked out.
Banning of members who inquired and asked "unpleasant" questions, over formalities
Evidence that CCP wants to push certain results - "outcome X is desirable. see to it" in the storyline.
Previous accounts of collusion and corruption.
Failure to punish above accounts as written in policy.
All those things are only coincidences. No, sir, I don't buy it.
Re:Interesting "coincidences" (Score:5, Informative)
The question remains, what do you plan to do against it?
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course that's the whole point of the game, it's not supposed to be fair.
How do you define fair? To me, fairness means everyone is judged by the same standards and plays by the same set of rules. Fairness should not mean that everyone should have the same outcome. I doubt that any new Eve player expected to be instantly given the "right" to as much in-game power as those people who have been playing longer and have more knowledge about the game. All we expected was that the rules of the game would be the same for everyone. However, when developers use the power that they have acquired outside of the game (by virtue of their being devs) to bend the rules in their favor, that upsets the rest of the player base--and rightly so.
It's funny (Score:5, Funny)
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been out of the loop for a bit so I'm not sure what the situation is, but if the goons manage to influence CCP, then they've accomplished something in game.
These big scandals are part of the fun.
Or in other words...
In Soviet Russia, EVE plays you!
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't make it any more "right", but would explain a lot of things. People are people, and most of all they're human. And thus prone to the temptations of power, and of abusing it.
Furthermore, CCP "hires" (or at least hired, dunno if that practice still exists) players to work as the first line troubleshooters, as aides for newbies, as listeners to whining when people get stuck between zones, etc. I wouldn't deem it impossible that some people took up this "helper" position for the sole purpose of furthering their corporation's goals, and those people do have a quite direct connection to the staff. I was one of those people (without the abuse. My corp was anything but a "0.0 capable" corp).
Re:Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
By their very nature they aren't "normal" players, no matter what they do. Even if they don't have access to superior equipment or funds, at the very least they have superior information. They are the first to know about new events, the first to know about new areas, new technology, tweaks in the physics and gameplay, changes in game balance and a thousand things more.
By the very nature of "insiders", they can't be "normal" players.
So the best way to "use" them is to make them kinda-sorta-NPCs. That's not as hard as it may sound. If you have a character, you simply switch corporation, if not, start a new one in there. Even if you don't announce it, word will get around that this is the "CCP corp", and people will react accordingly. Some will start to suck up to you. Some will start to fight you. Some will try to become your buddies to get some scraps from you. Some will try to prove that they're better than you and hunt you for your (allegedly superior) equipment.
I could well see this as a quite fun and entertaining way to drive plots. For both sides.
Thread (Score:1)
Re:Thread (Score:5, Informative)
As a long time eve player... (Score:4, Informative)
Grain of salt?? there are SCREENSHOTS to prove it.
So, why did a dev join a player corp, and when the CEO of the player corp petitions it
to find out WHY they did it, the petitions vanish?
Then, when they have no recourse, and no avenue of contacting CCP and they make it a PUBLIC question
they just start MASS BANNING players?
This is just inappropriate behavior from a company.
Every time these boneheads cheat/lie/and rush to ban players they lose money.
Another cover-up will take the place of this.
They will say 'nothing inappropriate occurred and ignore/ban anyone that questions it.
Re:As a long time eve player... (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if these people actually had lives. (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer: yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Or better yet, imagine if Ghengis Khan, Hitler, etc. had imaginary wargames like this to play with. Would they leave their basements either?
Apparently, yes, they would have eventually emerged from their basements. And they would have emerged mightier than before! From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"The stunning Prussian victory over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the game Kriegspiel, which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army.
Useful Historical Fact of the Day: If Hitler had played C&C, we would all by typing in German by now.
Re:The answer: yes (Score:5, Funny)
Germany: We will pwn j00
France: ZOMG ZERG *France has disconnected from server*
UK: You too can experience your finest hour with all herbal enlargement pills
Germany: UK is just an F'ing spambot, we'll invade Russia
Russia: No fair Germany, we had a deal!
Germany: WTF Russia is turtling!!!
Japan: All ur base in Asia r belong to us
USA: OMG Japan is so f***ing ninja! I was AFK
Russia: This sucks, I have a spambot and AFKer on my team
US: Don't worry I was macro building up my production while AFK
UK: Sorry about that spam, I was letting my little bro play
Russia: Bout F***ing time you showed up
Germany: Italy, are you going to do anything productive?!
Italy:*Italy has disconnected from the server* *Italy has joined the game* *Italy has joined the Allies*
Germany: We're screwed *Germany has disconnected from the server*
US: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
Japan: ZOMG we gotz nuked *Japan has disconnected from the server*
As a member of ISD (Score:5, Interesting)
Other one really happened on irc: That was the last I've seen of Raekhan.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Re:As a member of ISD (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, I don't get this game at all. I read several stories about EVE, and the interesting thing that they have in common is that
- Nobody seems to be having fun
- Everybody takes it way too seriously
.Makes sense when you know the game (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, training and getting your gear takes a long, long time. I'm dead serious when I say, after a year you can consider yourself ready to start (!) considering (!) playing with the "big boys". That year will be spent getting your gear, learning to pilot your ship, learning the market (mastering of which I'd easily allow as a substitute for a year of professional accounting) and so on.
Death hurts. Remember EQ? Yes, like that. You lose EVERYTHING. Well, ok, you lose your ship. Which isn't so much a deal while you're still equipped with ordinary junk you can pick up anywhere, since you can insure your ship for its full price. Hell, given the drop in ship prices, you can even make some money that way! Caveat: Your equipment ist lost anyway. And later in the game this hurts a TON more when the value of the ship is only a tiny fraction of what you paid for all the goodies you had in there.
Commitment is pretty high. We're not talking WoW "let's go and club some dungeon dragon, should take less than 5 hours" commitment. I've seen people gatecamp for 8 hours a shift. Yes, shift. Yes, as in working shifts. And gatecamping can be quite boring when nobody bothers to fly through. Yes, those people were sitting there at a gate and watch the gate. Yes, that's boring as hell. Yes, people do it. No, I have no idea what's interesting about it. But it "has" to be done if you want to "own" a sector.
Now those people get to see that all their work, their deaths, their commitment is for zip. I can see why they are upset about it...
Good to know another game I won't play... (Score:2)
Hell, ther are plenty of other excellent MMOGs out there, where the Developers don't cheat their customers.
Welcome on my "Games I will never play" list.
The interesting questions this brings up (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter rival group of players "B" that threatens the hegemony of "A". Game developer supports "A" by developing items in their favor and scripts outcomes to favor "A" in RP events that dispense virtual cash and equipment.
Rival group of players "B" uses kickbacks from and paraphernalia sales, earning the ire of the IRS in the process. [shatteredcrystal.com]
Although most of the purchases ingame are completely virtual (money, ships, etc), if "B" is being taxed for finances relating to virtual acquisitions, shouldn't they likewise be able to sue under US law for breach of services by the game developer that is clearly favoring "A" in the ongoing war?
EVE Internal affairs statement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EVE Internal affairs statement (Score:4, Interesting)
Trust is like virginity (Score:4, Interesting)
Now some slashdot readers are going to make the comments about "Pshaw, what if these people had lives?", immune to the irony of posting such a thing on slashdot. But I think it's actually an instructive lesson in human behaviors. People are the same the world over from the lowest shitkicker to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company: we're all just hairless apes dressing up our motives and actions in funny outfits, the same way we dress ourselves. We're all still hairless apes and our motives and actions are about who has the most banans and who's getting to fuck the pretty females. The difference between corruption and scandal in CCP and in, say, the Bush administration is that us gamers have a closer vantage point. Want to have a laugh? Read up on some of the inside histories of the Third Reich. (That laugh will by cynical.) You read about the interpersonal conflicts, dick-measuring, kool-aid drinking and self-delusion and it's no different.
To that other poster who commented that Hitler might not have come out of the basement if he had RPG's to play with, you could just as easily say "if only that fucking art school would have let him in!" Every boy needs a hobby and anti-semitism was Hitler's fallback career.
Makes EVE Online even *more* realistic? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is already one of the most realistic and die hard games around, including an awesome economy (where, by the way, I hope corruption also occurs). Unlike WoW where the economy is balanced by a magical "binding" system which doesn't allow cool stuff to be handed off to other players, and dieing to another player doesn't mean squat.
The problem is (Score:5, Interesting)
As an example I used to be an Immortal on a MUD. That's a developer, CSR, GM, whatever you want to call it in today's terms, on this MUD, Immortal was the name. In my case, I was essentially a senior GM in current terms. We logged in to the game same as players did, and had the same basic text interface. However where a player might have 50 or so commands we had like 200. They ran the full gamut of godlike abilities. I had a kill command that would kill whatever I specified, NPC, player, whatever. No checks for any kind of resistance, you just died. When in an area, you'd see a description (that an Immortal had written). I'd see that too, but prefixed with a number, which was the actual area number. I could go to any area simply by issuing a command with the right number, no matter where it was. I had a whole host of player editing commands, I could change anything on any player account. Any stat, any item, etc. They didn't even have to be logged in. Heck if I wanted I could tell the MUD to stop and entire section for debugging, all the MOBs would stop doing things, all scripts would cease.
Now that would mean that corruption on my scale was rather different than on a player scale. A player might work hard to infiltrate a rival guild to spy on them, I could just order the MUD to give me their chat logs. A player might steal money from their allies for their own gain, I could create as much money as I wanted, presuming I had anything to spend it on. A player might hatch an elaborate plot to sabotage rivals as they killed a powerful MOB, stealing the loot for themselves, I could simply create the item in my inventory.
That's the problem here. There is no real world analogue because such power can't be wielded in reality.
more step into the mainstream... (Score:2)
OK..Like a good boy, I read the friggin' article.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that it would take another 350 pages of that crap before any of it starts to make sense.
Ohhh...and now my brain hurts.
I wonder if the problem is (Score:2)
What else could you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an example: http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u162/grover282
This is simply to be expected in a game where developers play the game along with players, and further, where the company recruits its GMs from the playerbase.
Re:What else could you expect? (Score:4, Informative)
Then you have guys like the CEO whose corp was "infiltrated" by a CCP dev. He filed a petition to find out why a developer was a Director of his corporation. His petition was deleted. He filed another. It was also deleted.
BoB, on the other hand, can completely circumvent this whole system by simply chatting on MSN.
That shows with 100% clarity that we're not on a level playing field, and that this one alliance, which happens to be steamrolling over every other alliance in the game, has an unfair advantage.
It doesn't help that this Alliance has benefited from developer cheating before. It has been proven, and only after over 6 months of research and intense complaints from customers, did CCP finally admit to 1/10th of the allegations before they basically did absolutely nothing about it.
Yes, people are automatically looking for this kind of trouble. It doesn't help that CCP and BoB keep providing them with more fodder.
It's a shame (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep being tempted by this game. I like the premise. I did the trial, enjoyed the time. I even like the idea of all the schemes and betrayals that are EVE legends.
But every time I get close to signing up, there's some story of CCP employee misconduct affecting gameplay, and that just turns me right off the game.
I'd hoped they'd cleaned up their act, but it seems the answer is no.
CCP, you need transparency. You need to have clear rules for employees, and enforce them in a public manner. You have serious work to do to clean up your reputation.
It IS costing you money, without any question whatsoever.
Like my favorite MUD's admin said, (Score:2)
as a player I'm actually qualified to comment (Score:5, Informative)
What's the advantage of a multiplayer vs. single-player game? For starters, you think you have a continued universe to explore. Once you beat the storyline in games like Escape Velocity: Nova or Privateer, there seems to be little left to do in the galaxy. The attraction of an MMO is that the players are creating the storylines and you can keep playing for as long as it interests you.
The problem with that idea in general for MMO's is the grind. The gameplay elements that were once the interesting parts of the game become drudgery since you are obligated to keep grinding out those missions to get anywhere. When does sitting on a boat fishing become drudgery? When it ceases to become a passtime but a means to an end.
With EVE in particular death comes at a high price, you lose your ship and whatever was in it. That can represent a month or more of playtime. If you want to PVP against other players, you are putting your ship at risk. It's precisely like gambling and people praise and curse it for precisely those reasons. You'll never have the OMFG feel of barely making it out alive from a single player game unless you disable saving. Conversely, you'll never have the "I think I want to vomit" special feeling when you can reload from a save.
So what this means is that an EVE player has to have an occupation so as to collect his chips. The biggies are mining, ratting (hunting NPC's down in public areas), and missioning (where you have what is like an instanced dungeon except other players can still stumble across it.) These missions are quite fun at first, who doesn't enjoy blowing crap up on the computer? But there is little randomization within the missions so you know precisely what to expect. More difficult missions have the potential of destroying your ship. So, that kind of risk will make things interesting right? Yes and no. You can always try to warp out of a mission when you see you are in over your head. But at greater difficulties, the enemy will have scrambler frigates that zoom in and disable your warp drive. In other words, by the time you find out you're in over your head, there's nothing you can do about it.
So, how does this cause problems? You need to make your isk (in-game currency) to be a playah but it takes ages to earn it. The most lucrative areas of the game (lowsec and nosec) are heavily patrolled by player factions who have claimed ownership. NPC complexes in those areas can be regularly raided for massive isk payouts. Tribute collected from people travelling through the area can create a sizable passive income stream, not to mention the mining of rare minerals and such there. The wealthy factions can also buy blueprints for important equipment and ships in the game and make a fortune manufacturing them. The early scandals involved the CCP admins giving preferential treatment to the largest in-game faction, basically handing them the keys to an isk-printing factory. And even without that being the case, their concentration of capital would have allowed them to buy into the manufacturing racket anyways and thus further consolidate their financial position. Because warfare in EVE is a matter of attrition, he who has the most to attrit wins.
EVE has removed the leveling problem inherent in most MMORPG's, your skills train whether you are in the game or not. But because of the expense of your ships and how much you stand to lose when you are killed, you are left grinding for isk instead of xp.
When you get right down to it, the difference between a singleplayer Elite-clone and an MMORPG like EVE is that you have the gameplay process greatly extended. How long does it take you to get an uber ship in Privateer with all the fitti
Like a broken record (Score:1, Interesting)
I wonder if we will get such an arrogant response this time.
If someone was fired, they won't talk. (Score:3)
If so, there is no way they would give any details, for fear of a lawsuit by the now former employee.
Games are supposed to be fun. (Score:2)
Even the hardcore players, the "raiders" or whatever they're called, will quit because without the population base of casual players paying their subscription fees, the developers cannot afford to keep enough staff to turn out new content at a rate that keeps the hardcore interested. It's happening now in EQ2, it'll happen in EvE.
Just like life (Score:1)
There's no "fairness" clause on your birth certificate.
Relative terms (Score:2)
"Disturbing" is clearly a relative term.
Life would be a lot happier if most difficulties were this upsetting.
-FL
Is It BoB + CCP vs. Goons + Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
Then again.. if you go down this alley... you have to then ask yourself... what meta game am I playing? Isn't the whole MMOG scene fun?
More like... (Score:2)
Out of every 10 allegations made about misconduct, CCP ignores 9 and addresses the 1 least offensive one, then does nothing about it either.
I kinda pity BoB (Score:2)
This is not a new scandal (Score:1)
A reminder about EVE's game mechanics (Score:1)
In other games, it's really not such a big deal if a developer joins a guild, observes how the content and game mechanics play out, maybe drops a few quest hints. Some people in a guild getting +3 swords instead of +2 thanks to subtle handholding will not make or break a game for anyone. Something like a developer using dev tools to join a guild and making himself an officer for 20 minutes is hardly anything earth-shattering in a game like World of Warcraft; heck, the members of the guild might be honored about it.
In EVE it's rather different, because it's a living, breathing and mercilessly unforgiving player-run world. In which a corporation can put months of gametime, tens of thousands of player-hours, not to mention thousands of real world US dollars (in black market value), into capital ships or a refining/ outposts in a system, only to utterly and irrevocably lose it in combat the next day.
Gaining officer access to a corporation would mean the person is able to conveniently pin-point where the capital ship assembly docks belonging to the corporation in question are located, and whether they in the middle of manufacturing supercapitals: the joint effort of hundreds, or thousands of players. If a competing corporation knows where the capital ship assembly dock is located, then it's already 80% of the effort of destroying, or at least disrupting it, as the defenses in any single outpost are limited by the game mechanics. Intelligence like actually is really valuable in this game, and can affect the joint efforts and gameplay results for thousands of players.
Having a GM join a corporation that deals with manufacturing such expensive capital ships, making himself an officer, and leaving 20 minutes later for no reason or explanation at all, deleting petitions and refusing in-game communication about it, PLUS the demonstrated ability of the largest enemy corporation to buddy up with developers as directly and as to get neutral observers banned, mean the allegations of developer rigging and misconduct in this case are very, very serious indeed.
Passing valuable intelligence to competing corporations, not to mention the earlier, previously proven (and iffily handled) developer misconduct regarding the same enemy corporation (like bestowing them blueprints, as in the ability to limitlessly manufacture, powerful vessels) -- does actually significantly affect the gameplay for thousands of paying customers.
Don't generalise (Score:2, Informative)
Wether or not it is true is beyond me, I've been out of the game for about a year and not up to date anymore.
But even it is was to be true, don't make one bad thing turn this game into a horrible game. No matter what happened, Eve is still beautiful. It's player base is amazing, the developers works incredibly hard to improve and provide new content on a extremely regular basis, and the dynamics of the game (economy, PvP, etc) are just pure genuis.
I had to quit the game because I couldn't get anything done at college anymore, but even now I have sworn to begin again after my studies. Not because it's just a 'good game' like what you can call Starcraft or CS, but because it's a beautiful world in there, driven by magnificent people, either players or dev's. No matter what happened in this current affair.
Just wanted to notice that for the record, between all this bad karma
dont bother caring? (Score:3, Insightful)
im a longtime reader of
that said, i do believe there was some dev misconduct some time ago. but i do not believe ccp would be so asinine as to let it happen again. let me explain it in the context of EVE as a player:
a universal war broke out over the previous scandal in the game. both sides have used propaganda. this latest so-called-scandal is in fact part of the metagame. you all probably don't realize it, but in fact you are playing eve right now by participating in this thread, lol, the eve player base is exactly the kind that reads sites like slashdot. the accusations made have been put forth by one of the major alliances. they are compiled, not recent, and work to outrage the eve player base precisely in order to exact punitive repercussions on its warring enemy. and yes, those who are doing the accusing ARE the type who will see this as "winning" eve at all costs, even to the point of the company of CCP suffering. CCP are certainly not the best at communicating what they did and continue to do in order to prevent player/dev incest; however, that does not add up to them facilitating or denying wrongdoing when it happens. think of it: they are a small company, are levelled a malicious charge, and promptly get a thread over 60 pages in less than 24 hrs on their forums demanding answers, all the while maintaining their game servers and getting
sry for such a long post but i thought it might help your discussion to consider this whole thing in the above terms.
Things don't change (Score:2)
On the plus side, the servers can't handle all the players on there so thinning out the population with scandals every few months is probaly good for the game
Dodging the issue once again (Score:1)
Re:WHO CARES?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh.
It's all a matter of how you view it (Score:4, Insightful)
Say you restored a classic car from a rusted-out wreck and it's now a showpiece. You feel satisfaction. Some rich guy enters a car in the same show and you know he paid someone else to do all the work. Well, does that bust your balls? Some people might feel it takes nothing away from the experience of actually restoring the car and are not put out. Some people might be upset about losing the blue ribbon to someone who just bought his way into the competition. Now what if you find out the rich guy's uncle is also on the judging panel and that this influenced his win? You may enjoy your car but there's no way in hell you'd enter that contest again, right? Now imagine that you had to do all that restoration work in a garage owned by the car show and you cannot take it with you if you want to leave. That's how people feel trapped in the game and that's why they get far angrier than most people would think is appropriate given the situation. You don't have to be a car buff to understand why someone would be upset if some dick smashed up another guy's car. You'd have to be a frickin' Buddhist monk not to be upset if it were your car. And if you were a Buddhist monk, what are you doing with a nice car anyway?
I guess what it boils down to is that you're kind of fucked if your passtime can be in any way controlled by someone else. If you like playing D&D, you don't have to go with the latest rules if everyone agrees to stick with the old ones. You can agree to modify the rules in a friendly game of chess for that matter. But if you follow a professional sport and they start dicking with the rules and changing the game, not much you can do there. Same goes for multiplayer games. It's not like you can say "you know what, I don't think I want to install that patch."
Re:WHO CARES?! (Score:2)
Re:WHO CARES?! (Score:4, Interesting)
In the time between loosing nearly everything I had in EVE and discovering what was really going on I had worked hard to rebuild my EVE holdings back to where they had been before BoB showed up. Since I discovered what had happened I've stopped playing but I still keep the account ticking over and a passing interest.
Sure BoB kicked ass during the entire war, but EVE is hard game and a little advantage on such a big scale makes a difference.
Now I think its time to stop paying CCP
Re:Stupid question... (Score:1)
If you were in a poker game and you suddenly realized that you're the mark and you've lost the last 20 hands due to cheating, wouldn't you get up and leave? It's no different here. You gain nothing by playing against cheaters.
Re:Stupid question... (Score:2)
Sounds quite real to me.
Re:Stupid question... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I assume you mean to say is that what goes on in the game is not very important in the grand scheme of things, and to an extent, you're right
It's only natural that someone gets "pissed off," enough to go off on a strongly-worded, lengthy rant about a game they've invested hundreds of hours in when the people whose profession it is to keep the game running smoothly and on the level, they find out, have been actively assisting your in game rival's opponents in their cheating, actively thwarting your efforts to try to enjoy yourself by achieving the goals you've set for yourself in the game.
Sure, you can just stop playing, but if you've spent a lot of time playing the game, and if you generally enjoy it, why should that be your first option before expressing an apparently well-founded concern and complaint, hoping to see that concern escalated to the point where something is actually done to remedy it? No, things will never be perfect, but what could happen is that the game management decides to make the integrity of the game a priority and takes a zero tolerance approach to staff misconduct, with a high degree of transparency and openness in terms of letting customers know what is and has been done to thwart and punish corrupt staff members.
People will continue to complain, and yes, some of them will quit playing (as much as they might not want to) as long as these stories keep coming out, brought the the player base by other players who have been running their own investigations, or who have been failed by the official systems and policies of the company. In other words, until the staff gets so subtle and smart about their cheating that no strong evidence can be never be offered that it occurs, or until the company gets good enough about keeping its own house that it can catch the sloppier of offenders and come clean before it explodes into a PR spin/damage control fiasco (like the last scandal) then people will, justifiably, continue to complain.
Also, one thing to understand about EVE is that the stakes are a bit higher than they are in your typical FPS session or even MMO. In EVE, you can go from rags to riches and back to rags again in a virtual eye-blink. You can grind for months to afford a new, decked out battleship and then lose it 25 minutes into its maiden voyage if you're not careful (this is why there is a common adage to never fly anything you can't afford to lose). EVE is also a highly PvP oriented game, not just in terms of combat and territoriality but also in terms of economy. It's all about acquiring and controlling resources, and the best resources require thousands of man-hours of effort and painstaking coordination to obtain and secure. These resources are fiercely fought over and negotiated for by large corporations (much like real life). If your enemies are able to find a chink in your armor, or have a critical advantage at a critical moment, you can lose the fruits of all of those many hours of effort with relatively little to show for it, which magnifies dramatically the importance of good strategy and smart play, but also the consequences of cheating, mechanics abuse and staff favoritism.
If someone uses an aimbot in a FPS, the solution is pretty simple, you find another server or play with people you know are a bit more trustworthy. You don't really lose anything besides a few minutes of your time if you get fragged by a cheater. In a game like Word of Warcraft, a cheater might deny you your rightful fruits of victory (wh
Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
So's baseball. But somehow cheating there warrants congressional investigations.
(And no, I'm not saying congress should investigate EVE, I'm saying they had no business investigating baseball.)
Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
So what if EVE is just a game? It's a meaningless statement, tautology. After all, money is only money. Water is only water. Blood is only blood. You'd have a hard time proving that anything in this world has any intrinsic value. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The time a person invests in the game is relevant to estimations of value, however, because time is something virtually everyone values rather highly, since we only have so much of it. Beyond that though, I feel compelled to point out that EVE is not just a game. It's a community. It's an economy. It's a business. All in a very real sense (or as real as any of these abstract concepts can be.)
Given that, I know it's quite understandable why someone would be angry upon discovering that employees or representatives of the company (CCP) either promote cheating or treat it as a zero priority problem, because the player paid a subscription fee for a service that is supposed to be regulated by fair, consistent, and logical rules. However, I think there's a difference between getting angry and demanding a refund versus getting angry and becoming swept into the drama over a fantasy world, which (to me) is an unproportional response.
I can understand exaggerated responses because I've been guilty of having them. To me it's a signal that there's an addiction going on with the player. A serious one.
There's a fine line between passion and addiction and without knowing the details of a someone's personal life, it's virtually impossible to tell them apart. As long as these games have a social component and an interacting community, and on top of that a competitive economy, you should expect people to sometimes to be rather dramatic in their reaction to perceived (and real) wrongs committed against them. Add to that, the fact that people are more prone to theatrics and other outrageous behaviors when anonymous (or semi-anonymous). In that context I don't think the response is necessarily disproportionate for someone who really enjoys the game, cares a lot about it, and values the significant amount of time and money they've devoted to the game. Addiction does not necessarily have to enter into it, though I would grant that realistically, it often does.
What I think is most sad about MMOs is that often it seems to get to the point with people where they no longer play because they really, genuinely, truly love to play the game, but they do so merely out of habit or because they are chasing some unattainable goal (because by the time they achieve any goal, they are so fixated on a new goal, their joy may be diminished), almost like a crack addict chasing that pure, perfect high. Gaming addiction generally isn't as destructive or dangerous as many other addictions, of course, but I completely understand the point that for some people, it really can get out of hand. However, I don't really think it's relevant to this particular topic and I think people are, in general, a little too ready to dismiss gamers as being addicts with no lives whenever they express any great amount of enthusiasm (positive or negative) about their hobby.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with PvP-heavy MMORPGS, such as EvE, is, that whoever has the biggest balls can also get the biggest share of the cake. In EvE this means you get access to newer blueprints for new equipment before others get it (if they ever get it, that is). Of course, playing a game is more fun when you have all the goodies.
Now, you can't simply hack into the DB. First of all, someone at the company will notice it sooner or later, and it could well cost you your job. You can't even simply pump yourself a few billions of credits, because that would CERTAINLY start to surface, since the EvE economy is heavily player driven, and the influx of a lot of cash is even more noticable than in other MMORPGs. Not to mention that the the overall money available is quite closely monitored, you notice that even as a player without any access to any kind of logs.
So the only thing you can do, if you have the power to run events and want to cheat, is to rig said events.
Re:WHO CARES?! (Score:1, Troll)
No shit, power corrupts, be it politicians or admins.
Re:at least cancel your autorenewal (Score:2)
I'll go you one better: change from credit card billing, which automatically renews, to using GTC (Game Time Cards). There are several legitimate websites that sell them. The GTC doesn't automatically renew. You have to make a conscious decision to buy another one. Use 30-day GTCs. That way if CCP pisses you off, just delay buying your next GTC(s) a day, a week, or forever. Each day your account is inactive you're effectively fining CCP some money.
The expired account loses nothing. CCP has a diabolically clever way of luring you back into the game: they state that your character and skills, etc. will remain in the game for six months. Some people report that they have gone way more than six months and still found everything there when they returned. Why does CCP do this? Because if you lost everything you might not want to go back.
If you allow an account to expire, set a long training item first. The training is real time and will continue until that step has completed. This, too, works to CCP's benefit in most cases, as otherwise people who must leave the game temporarily would be discouraged at the loss of training and might not come back.
If you want to provide feedback, cancel your account before it expires, even if just five minutes before. All "cancel" does is suspend the account when your current time runs out, but it provides a feedback mechanism that lets you tell them why you're leaving. Since that is the moment of your action on the decision to leave and thus to affect their revenue, one has to think it has more weight than mere threats to leave in the forums or in petitions.
To those who say, "It's just a GAME," you have no idea what you're talking about. Nothing that involves the investment of significant time and effort is "just a game." Suppose we take away that nice new website you've built and say, "Hey, it's just some files!" Suppose you are a painter and we burn your paintings and say, "Hey, it's just canvas with paint on it!" Or we make your music collection disappear? EVE is not mere passive entertainment such as listening to music, watching a movie or watching a sporting event; it is an entertaining endeavor that requires significant learning, attention, time and effort. If it works the way it has been billed and the way we expect it to work, it is very good. If it's fraudulent, that destroys all or part of the value of the time and effort we put into it, and yes, we'll be pissed.