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EVE Online: Ghost Training Interview
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood recently caught up with EVE Online Senior Producer Torfi Frans to talk about the recent announcement that CCP would be removing Ghost Training from their game and some of the controversey that surrounded the announcement.
A lot of news has come out of CCP over the last little while. Not only did the company’s CEO come out and let fans know that while the Icelandic economy might be faltering CCP is still going strong, but the studio also announced the launch of a new major content update called Quantum Rise for EVE Online, a staged delivery update that will see the additions of the certification systems, the new Orca class capital ship and more.
While these announcements are all interesting and exciting in their own rights, the focal story for CCP’s EVE online over the last week has been the company’s decision to remove the Ghost Training feature from the game.
For those who might not be familiar with the feature, and what exactly its removal will mean, a quick recap may be in order:
EVE Online is a skill based game meaning that characters advance through the training and upgrading of skills over time. This training is real-time based, whether a player is logged in or not, their character continues to grow in the game’s universe. The time to train these skills varies and can actually take quite a while at the highest levels. Ghost Training made it possible to actually train skills with a dormant account. For example: You could set your long term skills to train, un-sub from the game, re-sub some time later and have your training completed when you came back.
The announcement alone got some players up in arms, but the problem was compounded when an apparent internal miscommunication led the game’s Senior Producer to refer to the Ghost Training feature as a long-standing bug while company documentation on the website described it as an intentional game feature.
Late last week, I was fortunate enough to have the chance to speak about the issue with Torfi Frans, the Senior Producer in question.
;)
The first question that I asked revolved around the original decision to cut the Ghost Training feature:
“When we originally programmed the training system, it was an oversight on our part not to put in the text to see whether the account was active or inactive back in 2003. We have patched a lot of issues since then and this particular issue wasn’t addressed because it wasn’t considered that serious… It never got bumped up our list of bugs because not too many people were making use of it. It wasn’t really on our radar.”
“A couple of weeks ago, we were doing some research on our database and running some queries as we do frequently… and we noted a big rise in [the use of the system]. So, what we were seeing was like a recurring pattern. People were using Ghost Training to advance their characters without paying a subscription. So, they were building fairly strong characters without paying a subscription. Which, to be honest, didn’t seem fair.”
“At the end of the day, it wasn’t fair and we decided to shut it down. We anticipated that people might be upset about it. We did not anticipate such a big uproar about it.”
Frans goes on to tell me about the confusion that led to the bug / not a bug fiasco:
“We announced it as a bug, which it was to a lot of us old devs, but as it turned out, our website listed it as a feature because we had outsourced the writing of our career guide to someone who was not knowledgeable about the code itself, years ago back in 2004… It was like a virus waiting to get out and nobody had really given it much thought until it was pointed out when the whole debate started.”
From here, I asked why this discrepancy wasn’t caught when the manual was originally submitted.
“It was a general oversight on our part,” Torfi admitted. He went on to remind me about the company’s origins as a smaller company. “Back in 2004,” he said, “we were a company of 40 doing what companies of 80 or 120 were doing… struggling to keep EVE alive. Back then, we had a lot of challenges, a lot of things we were doing and this slipped between the cracks. I’m not saying that this makes it right, but in the larger perspective, it’s just one of those things that happened.”
Next, I asked how many people were using the feature at the time of the announcement. The answer was 10,000. So, let’s do some arbitrary number crunching: 10,000 people out of the roughly 240,000 subscribers in the game means that in the end, about 4.16% (or 1/24 for you fraction buffs out there) of EVE’s player base were using the feature.
That being said, Torfi told me that the numbers were beginning to surge and that it was a “playstyle pattern that was becoming more frequent.”
;)
This whole story becomes a little bit more convoluted when you add in the fact that when EVE launched in China, the bug was actually patched out of the game. It seems that their partners in that region felt that the ability to advance without payment was a bit out of the ordinary. At the time of the Chinese launch, CCP did not see a large number of people making use of Ghost Training in their original market and so did not see a need to correct the problem.
“At the time,” Torfi explained, “we had not introduced EVE time codes. Everyone was using credit card subscriptions so it was more of an effort to un-subscribe and re-subscribe than it is today. That’s why it wasn’t such a common play style back then.”
I asked whether the company was concerned that some players would not re-subscribe to the game because of this decision:
“Probably some.” He answered and acknowledged. “Probably some who have become accustomed to it, and I realize that. Because if they’ve grown accustomed to it as a feature of the game and now we’re taking it out, but I genuinely hope that they’re going to come back. We’ve got an expansion coming out called Quantum Rising and we’ll be making an announcement at Fanfest regarding stuff that’s coming very soon in the future which hopefully will make our players come back in big numbers because we’re putting things into the game that a lot of people have been waiting for for a long time.” Don’t get too excited though folks, he was also quick to point out that walking in stations is still in the longer future but that an announcement regarding in-space gameplay would be coming at Fanfest (which MMORPG.com will be covering).
“Going back to your original question, do we feel that less people are going to come back? We don’t think so. We hope that we are going to counter the kind of negative impact that this change made by improving out game in general and making it cool from a gameplay perspective and putting cool stuff in it.”
Finally, I asked if there was anything else that we hadn’t touched on that he wanted to say:
“I truly hope that people still realize that we’re just gamers like them, trying to make a game and making a living off of it. It was not out of pure money, greed or lust that we did this. It was a balancing act and a fairness act toward us as a company moreso than the gamers, but I honestly can’t think of any other company that allows you to skill up your character when you’re not even paying for it.”
i for one am gald they took it out you should get something for nothing.
Well if I read the article correctly, they even state that they had this mentioned and stated as a feature in various documentation. So in my opinion if they take it out NOW after roughly 4 or 5 years of development, sort of comes across as "screwing" those who bought into that feature and utilized it. Also being it took them this long to realize it was a "bug" sort of also screams greed despite their best efforts in saying otherwise.
I agree that you shouldn't get something for nothing, but I also believe that when you offer something up as a feature and you take it away, you reap what you sow. You may only have 10,000 players doing that, but thats $150,000 a month no longer in your pocket, no longer feeding your developers and investors.
Assuming all of those pissed cancel.
Well if you must lose 4% of your playerbase, it might as well be the 4% that was inactive most of the time anyway!
If those 10,000 players had actually represented $150,000 a month in revenue, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The problem with that Clat is that 10% won't resub, then POSSIBLY on top of that you have people wont resub because their long skills have stopped, people will cancel alts because they cannot affort multiple accounts and people who are just overall pissed due to the way the situation was handled. I agree it is their game and they can do what they want, they are in it for the money. But to outright change your story multiple times was poor form. I have only played the game for over a year and signed up for the Power of Two last month with hopes of cultivating a miner/manufacturing alt to go with my mission runner. What I will do now if I continure playing is just train him the 6 months and transfer him overto my main. So although all these "hard core" players are saying get out we don't need you, what happens if that 10% turns into 25-30% or even 50% paying subs. There will be no game for them to act like they are the elite playerbase because develoment/maintance money will dwindle.
I was one of the people that used ghost training now and again. It was cool because when I got bored of the game, I could quit knowing that my character is still progressing. The point is, the thing that made me come back, was that I knew I had to start up my sub before the skill stopped training. I'd find myself resubbing and still not playing the game. It was this feature that made me come back. Anyway, I've not subbed back to the game because I found myself just subbing to change my skill, for about 7 months. My 2 rl friends were doing exactly the same, but they're still resubbing to ghost train.
Making sure you had a skill training was addictive. This move will help my mates stop doing this as well.
Anyway, It's not just the same 10000 people that do it like me. Lots of people do it for other reasons. People starting second accounts, training for capitals etc. The skills are like a month long. Your alts pretty much useless until you fly a capital. I can see their point of view, but they're idiots for not nipping it in the bud earlier and not have it touted as a feature. Like 5 years ago.
It's my opinion that the subs will slowdown a bit until walking stations expansion. The new expansions is pretty shit. Nothing there that makes me want to come back.
I think this was pretty poorly handled by CCP, however while I do see the point I believe that they'll end up losing more than they gain. I'd suspect that most of the accounts being ghost trained are 'alt' accounts rather than primary accounts - there is no point ghost training with your primary account since you then can't actually play the game, while ghost training an alt account means you can play with your main while you ghost train your alt until it does what you want it to do.
Out of this, I think there will more more alt accounts permanently expired than will become full active (ie. user paying for every month)
Also, aside from Capital skills, most skills will only be around 30 days of training, so it's not like you can leave an account for 6 months and get 6 months worth of training on it.
What bothers me is the lack of explaination as to how this will actually be implemented. If I have a character training a 30 days skill, then after 20 days my account expires (I forgot to buy a time code) for a couple of days, then when I finally get a time code and log in again, will my 20 days of training be lost, or saved? Will my skill still be training in the time between me applying the time code to my account and when I actually log back in to the game?
Bad implementation of this 'fix' could end up causing even more problems.
Another thing to add is the timing. People are a bit sensitive to money issues with the global economy nosediving. Most people can afford the sub, but it's more a case of, "WTF? My mortgage, fuel and food bills are going up and your shifting the goal posts so you can get MORE money? Feck you, you're not getting mine. /cancel". That's something they can control whereas the rest outgoings they can't. That's probably not what most people are saying, but the point is I think people are less tolerant to this kind of behaviour, whether they were right or wrong to do it, in this economic climate.
I can see the removal of ghost training as nothing as moronic and short sighted marketing behavior.
I can not remember any player ever complaining about be "out-advantaged" be this bug/feature. Sure some are agreeing with CCP's reasoning now, but as I see it the only advantage was over CCP's billing system and nothing else.
So if it is all about money it really bothers me why somebody would think that this change would put more in the coffers and not less. Unless you believe in an infinite amount of potential customers it should be obvious that your best customer is your old customer. Ghost training was providing a great incentive for players to return to the game after having had a break due to burnout/boredom. Now CCP has to instead to launch more 14 free days return offers to pull people back, but I just do not see that as a strong incentive as ghost training was. Of course they can also launch more marketing campaigns to pull in more people, but those cost money and as I said previously pulling in old customers are much easier than acquiring new ones for a game like EVE.
Also, people who where ghost training purposely would still have to resubscribe the account at some point or the ghost training would have been pointless. That would still provide some income. What Torfi seems not to realize (or purposely neglecting) is that for many players there will simply be little point to run a secondary account at all without ghost training. Not out of spite, but because it is the most economic sensible thing to do.
As such, I simply do not see at all how CCP and the playerbase is going to gain from this in the long run. Contrary, I see it as a short sighted move and destroying of a feature that showed that CCP was not money greedy bastards like the rest of them. Next time CCP claims to be "at level" with their player base you know they are talking out of their rear.
I don't understand the motivation behind what you are saying, and others aswell, that you will do.
At first you are subscribing to two accounts, the power of two is just that. It is two accounts for the price of one but payed 6 months in advance, compared to paying one monthly. With this change you will move your character to the first account because you won't pay for two accounts.
I don't get it. You was going with the power of two deal that get you two characters availble for training constantly. And with this change that would not affect you really, you are making it into a problem.
Why is that?
Btw, before I start writing some much longer comments in this thread,
Keep in mind that after over half a decade the game takes up a total of about 3 gigs on your hard drive, and the last ‘expansion’ Empyrean Age, was a 39mb patch. You read that correctly, 39mb. Not 390mb, not 3.9G, I wrote, and you read, 39mb.
This so called ‘expansion’ they’re talking about to divert your attention isn’t what anyone else in any other mmo would call an ‘expansion.’
Orphes,
First off Power of Two is not two accounts for the price of one. I am paying my $15 a month for my main account and took up to offer for a second account. For that account I pay an additional roughly $10 a month, it is not a second free account I pay a seperate amount of money for another character. I generally subscribe to 2 games at a time so Eve gave me the chance to keep a constant playing character and could take a break with one account to try new MMO if I chose to and not feel like I lost out on any training. I totally understand that is is CCPs perogative to do what they want with their game. But I banked on being able to train that second account while I tried out another MMO for a month and eventually came back. Now when I come back that character is exaclty where he was when I unsubscribed so in essence the reason I bought that second account is gone. Now before you people start ranting I know, I know ,you aren't paying you should not be advancing. Well when I paid that $71 for the Power of Two this was a game mechanic not a so called bug.that I planned on utilizing I am not calling CCP dishonest, liars, cheats ,thieves, I am simply saying this could have come to light before the Power of Two offer not one week after. If you do not think that is pure coincidence then I do not know what to tell you. Maybe I am a conspiracy theorist. And before anyone questions my financial status, of which I do not think anyone should be doing, I do very well and the two subscriptions are in no way a strain on me, I just chose to limit myself to that.
damage control.....spin it spin it.
bug , feature, outside group, not our fault, oops.
whatever - ppl wouldnt take advantage of it if the system wasn't inheritantly flawed.
They need to reduce the number of people playing. They are spending millions on new servers and trying to get it to work without lag, and they can't. So, more expenses and less profit.
Can't have large fleet battles., can't fix Jita, lot of the mission hubs lag out every time more people show up, nodes crashing.
No matter what they like to claim they can't get the game to work anywhere near what they or the customers would consider good. Too many people end up in the same areas make the game lag or crash nodes.
The game itself is huge, but the players don't spread out all over, they congregate in small areas, again, Jita,mission hubs,fleet battles. So the huge game area does not help much.
They can continue to spend more and more on servers and such, or reduce the amount of players to a level that they can handle.
They know very well this will cost them accounts, and they do not care:P They have pushed the game further than the tech can handle.
This will reduce the number of long time player's,the ones with many alt accounts. And also the ones with the high skills that can fly the big cap ships. There will be lot's of character transfer's and consolidating, which is what i think they are aiming at.
This is of course what i think is the aim:)
1. Reduce the number of long term (high skilled)players
2. Reduce the number of alt accounts
3. Reduce the continued expense of server updates
4. Reduce the amount of long term players paying with in-game isk
I'd see these reasons as unlikely
1. Why do that? If they are all paying, then that is good. why would they want to get rid of paying customers?
2. Again, each alt account is paying account. This would only reduce their income, so why would they be trying to reduce the number of alt accounts?
3. That expense isn't going to go away. Besides, the only significant problems with the servers are the ability to handle the load in Jita and a few other high population systems. They already have new hardware and software in place to help deal with these problems, so the expense has already been incurred.
4. It doesn't matter whether a play is funding their game with isk or a credit card, the end result is the same - if you use isk to buy a GTC, someone else must have paid CCP for the GTC.
Obviously they are wanting to get rid of the 'free loaders' that are taking advantage of ghost training (even though, as I previously posted, I think this will not end up making them more money), however aside from what they would deam an unfair advantage of gaining SP while the account is not active there is not negative effect on anything else.
Specifically, although the CCP blog in the subject mentioned server load, an inactive account has absolutelty no load on the server whether a skill is training or not. The database holds a record of which skill you are training and when you started it, then nothing at all will happen to it until the user logs in and the game client notifies the server that the skill has finished training, at which point the server updates the skill record in the database. It's actually more load on the server for them to enforce this change than it is to leave it alone.
I am quiting EvE over this.
Why? B/c I dont soly play EvE, I dont have the time to play it hardcore anymore and I have started to juggle my 3 accounts for the game, I also play WAR and DDO, so I cant have FIVE ACTIVE accounts for MMOs, So I juggle them. EvE "ghost training" made it posible for me to play for a month or so on one account skill train and play another and swap MMOs every other Month and keep on going full stride with my characters.
So this is a huge blow to me, and I have decided EvE "just is not worth it" anymore. So, all of my EvE accounts are going inactive. Ive decided to pick up FFXI into my rotation of MMOs instead, and just play X3: TC when I feel the need for some space action.
~HappyGaming
PS: I hate you CCP.
All other expansions had roughly the same size. Revelations was 40, trinity for classic only 60..
Compared to that, the 47 you have to download for Midas for a patch tq classic -> sisi classic is, well, pretty average.
Could it be that your argument fails on many levels?
p.s. evepremiumpatch64451-66185_test.exe is 160+
People like myself were not getting something for nothing. We PAID for that FEATURE for the last 5 years. Go re-read what CCP said. This was a FEATURE and we PAID for. Yes, I have grown very accustomed to getting what I have PAID for. Now that I will not get what I paid (or pay for) I will NOT resub my alt accounts.
It does not matter how CCP puts a spin on this. It WAS a feature, and they removed it. They will loose more customers then they can imagine in the end because I guarantee you if you read the quarterly reports on Eve's numbers reported by their own in game economist, you will see that the number of people that do this is closer to 30%-%40 range. This will hurt them BAD and they totally screwed this up.
People like myself were not getting something for nothing. We PAID for that FEATURE for the last 5 years. Go re-read what CCP said. This was a FEATURE and we PAID for. Yes, I have grown very accustomed to getting what I have PAID for. Now that I will not get what I paid (or pay for) I will NOT resub my alt accounts.
It does not matter how CCP puts a spin on this. It WAS a feature, and they removed it. They will loose more customers then they can imagine in the end because I guarantee you if you read the quarterly reports on Eve's numbers reported by their own in game economist, you will see that the number of people that do this is closer to 30%-%40 range. This will hurt them BAD and they totally screwed this up.
Yeah Im not sure where they got 4% at for this spin but its a lot more than that, and A LOT more people are not subbing up their alts or quitting all together.
That 4% as I have already stated is closer to 30%-40% range. If you look at the numbers that CCP has already provided in the past, they have told us the aprox numbers of alt accounts. That being said, this will hurt them in the end AND IT SHOULD. By their own admission, and to what I have been saying here on MMORPG and MANY other places about this, it was a FEATURE. A FEATURE that we were paying for, one that they were very proud of in the past and one that set them apart from other games.
Now that the economy has turned to crap around the world, they take it away from us. It does not matter how you try to spin it, or for whatever reason you would want to be loyal to CCP for taking away something that we are paing for. The game as a whole is smaller now and the value we were getting from it has been reduced. As I said before, they are going to loose several accounts from me.
Torfi from the www.mmorpg.com interview:
“I truly hope that people still realize that we’re just gamers like them, trying to make a game and making a living off of it. It was not out of pure money, greed or lust that we did this. It was a balancing act and a fairness act toward us as a company moreso than the gamers, but I honestly can’t think of any other company that allows you to skill up your character when you’re not even paying for it.”
Amazing that he’d give an interview like this.
Regardless of how he feels, given how much CCP offended some players, the smart move would have been just to stay quiet about it rather than throw more oil on the flames. If you don’t know how much some players have been offended, find the 49 page thread on page 2 of the Eve forum Information Portal, and then obviously read the 159 page threadnaught on the front page of the Eve forums Information Portal.
49 page original master thread.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896003
159 page new master thread that broke 150 in a week.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896318&page=159
Look at what he’s saying in the paragraph I quoted. He’s saying it wasn’t a money decision, BUT YES, it was a money decision. That’s what he said.
Some bonehead jerks at CCP thought that players were somehow getting away with something ‘free’ and that players should pay more.
Some of this is recap but,
[Edit: Correction by removing a paragraph while I look something up.]
The real issue is the following, and I can’t emphasize this enough or repeat it enough,
Fact: Most players in most mmos have multiple characters to enjoy different aspects of the game. Using multiple characters on ONE subscribed account is standard in the mmo industry.
Fact: Eve, unlike any other mmo, has a large population of players who subscribe to more than one account. Some use ghost training on the second, third, forth account to mitigate the outrageous cost this entails.
Why multiple accounts? In other games, one subscribed account is enough. You pay 15 dollars, and you can make whatever characters you like, and enjoy whatever aspects of the game you like.
Not true in Eve. In Eve, it takes so so so so long to train characters, years to reach any kind of plateau in personal advancement in skills, that a character has to be constantly training, and since only ONE character per Eve account can be skill training at one time, if you want the same flexibility and exploration that is standard in other games, the Eve player has to subscribe to multiple accounts.
Fact: Players in other mmos very rarely ever subscribe to more than one account, it’s just not necessary to enjoy everything the game has to offer. It’s big news when, in any other mmo, you see someone controlling more than one account at a time. In Eve more than one account is normal, usual, nothing special.
Fact: Players in Eve, ON AVERAGE, given that so many people subscribe to more than one account, and given that so many players pay for game time with GTCs which amount to 17.50/month, pay MORE for their gaming experience than players in other mmos. This is true with or without ghost training. Eliminating ghost training just tips the scale even farther in this direction.
There is no getting around those facts.
Also EXTREMELY interesting about the ghost training fiasco is that neither CCP nor the players are pointing out that players get ‘free’ expansions. I mean if I were a company man putting out free expansions, I’d certainly ask the players’ indulgence when charging them a little more in other areas. If I were a fanboy defending CCP, I’d certainly point that out. I suspect the reason this doesn’t come up is because somewhere , in the back of their minds, apparently CCP and players both understand that the ‘expansions’ aren’t what that implies in other games, not at all.
In Eve, you don’t pay for content the same way you do in other mmos. Eve only takes up 3 gigs on your hard drive after over 5 years of play. The last big expansion, Empyrean Age, only amounted to 39mbs. Yeah, that’s right, 39mb. The biggest expansion they had was the release of tech2 gear and ships, and those ships almost all had hulls which were duplicates of old tech1 hulls.
So, what do you pay for with Eve? You pay for a sandbox with spaceships.
If you really like spaceships, and you really like free-for-all pvp, then Eve is a unique game unlike most other mmo out there. That’s the only reason CCP gets away with this crap. If there was a competitor out there who could provide anything near equivalent, then CCP would have to treat its customers better.
That is the only way to explain why people put up with CCP.
CCP has less content, fewer features, less flexibility than other mmos out there, and yet people on average pay MORE for it than other mmos. That’s one reason Eve will never be a widely popular game. It will always be a niche game. Most players won’t put up with that.
Let me put it this way. The heart wants, what the heart wants. You often can’t help who you fall in love with. Same goes for gaming. Eve just makes some people happy, so they don’t really care what they pay and how CCP treats them. Still, someone who isn’t looking through the clouded eyes of the smitten, can see how flawed Eve is.
Ok, I write that to put ghost training into perspective.
Small picture. Ghost training is some ‘free’ thing, a bug, that CCP quite understandably ‘fixed’ so they could get paid for their hard work.
Big picture: CCP are a bunch of scam artists who have a great racket going. They have to work much LESS, and provide much LESS than other mmos, while charging their players MORE. Removing ghost training was just another move farther in that direction.
For the casual people browsing this, take note that CCP is Deleting, moving and locking threads made on this subject on the EvE-O forums.
Don't believe this BS-Spin.
DavidLemke
Other mmos DO let players advance while they’re not logged in and while they’re not even subscribed. It’s called rested xp.
This is not correct, most do not give actual experienmce rather they reduce the experience cost when you play the next time. For example your character cannot advance a level without being played. Additionally this exp bonus does NOT happen on suspended accounts.
DavidLemke
Fact: Most players in most mmos have multiple characters to enjoy different aspects of the game. Using multiple characters on ONE subscribed account is standard in the mmo industry.
Fact: Eve, unlike any other mmo, has a large population of players who subscribe to more than one account. Some use ghost training on the second, third, forth account to mitigate the outrageous cost this entails.
Might want to do a Fact: check. To USE more than one character live at a time you must have multiple accounts in any MMO. In fact I would dare say you do not play as much as you would have us believe becuase any hard core player I know, in fact 90% of the players I know have more than one account in EVERY MMO.
I would have bothers to quote more but the drivel continues. You do not need extended periods of time to play EVE unless you only play at power level and nothing else. Unlike the monty haul gaming style of other MMOs, EVE takes time to progress and that is part of the game, it is just that simple. If it wher easy EVE would lose a huge percentage of it's base, most of us there like the challenge, if you do not WoW is waiting.
I like the one where you say EVE players pay more than other MMO players, tell that to WoW and Everquest players when they also factor in the cost for expansions. Also correct me if I am wrong, can a WoW or Everquest player actually use in game curency to pay for the account?
CCP has less content, fewer features, less flexibility than other mmos out there, and yet people on average pay MORE for it than other mmos. That’s one reason Eve will never be a widely popular game. It will always be a niche game. Most players won’t put up with that.
This last part I had to quote becuase it is so outrageous. Eve has the largest gam,e world, is the only game with a truly advancing storyline, has more player dirven content than any other game EVER and lets a player do whatever they like in game. So much for no flexability.
Also take note that bitter players spin without providing any proof to back up their claims. *scnr*
I confess I never even knew about "ghost training" until this announcement. I've had two accounts for 5 years and paid every day of both of them. Silly me.
Now I'm wondering, if these supposed legions of 5-alt cheapskates cancel en masse... will I be able to get into Jita again?
People also got pissed off with ccp changing their game time cards options. They removed the 30 day one so they could jack up the price and hide it in a 60 day one. I like what ccp have done with eve, and their vision of the game, but man do they mess up big when it comes to dealing with the subscribers. The list that comes off the top of my head is,
-developer gives a corpmate bpo's i.e. dev cheats. The guy didn't even get the sack.
-remvoing 30 day gtc's
-jacking up prices
-removing ghost training feature
Yeah, they need to work on their customer relations. Not quite soe yet, but they're getting there.
I guess sacking the guy who actually makes the databse go round is a good option, rather than taking away his gaming rights.
It's their company and if they want to change the GTC they should in all reasonable views be able to dont you think?
What prices are you speaking about?
Ghost Training is a scam and if you dont pay for the game you shouldnt be able to train.
yes they need to work on their customer relations. I suggest that they have player reps..... Oh Wait? they do that already.
Fail!
Per Mopar63’s last post,
How could you make such false claims?
Example01:
Mopar63 “…any hard core player I know, in fact 90% of the players I know have more than one account in EVERY MMO.”
That’s just plain false. I don’t know how else to put it. That’s just false. Anybody, anywhere in gaming, without knowing anything about Eve in particular, knows that this is false.
Example02:
“Also correct me if I am wrong, can a WoW or Everquest player actually use in game currency to pay for the account?”
Interesting. Anybody, anywhere, can smell this must be a bit more complicated, but let’s explain it to them.
CCP uses part of their player base as gold farmers.
Here’s how the system works.
CCP makes available GTCs, game time cards, for 35 dollars per 60 days game time.
CCP makes a section of their official forum where players with game currency can match up with other players who have GTCs.
One player uses gold to buy the GTC and is happy because he might not have a credit card and might prefer to ‘work’ off the game time by gold farming.
The other player is happy because he paid 35 dollars and just got a bunch of game gold.
Is this really a big benefit to the players themselves?
Well, it’s nice and convenient for some people, and I’m happy for them, but look at the bottom line.
CCP gets 35 dollars per 60 days, that’s 17.50 per month, more than any other mmo, and far more than the cost of an mmo if you buy extended periods with a credit card.
Mopar63 and other players write about paying for game time with game gold because they’re so deep buried in denial that they start to believe that the game gold really gets them the game time as if no real money was involved.
News flash Mopar63. CCP uses GTCs and fosters currency trade because thereby in the end, it costs the players more money to play.
I still haven't figured out why CCP has such a large problem with this.
The amount of actual processing power it takes to advance the training on a character that isn't paying, isn't that much.
Some seem to think the person can login, play, or change their training while "Ghosting." When that's simply not the case. The person ghosts, for say 20 days, then they know their skill is about to be completed, so they RE-SUBSCRIBE for a month.. Change their training, and may or may not play for that month.
A lot of them it appears don't even play. So for EvE That should be a GREAT deal. If someone buys webhosting and doesn't use that webhosting, but pays. Or even takes a month off, comes back and pays, that's a good deal. Hardly any processing power, but still getting money.
They aren't DELETING accounts so talking about how much space they take up is irrelavent. Only the amount of power it takes to update the skill (One skill at a time anyways)
This is really a dumb excuse from CCP. They would make more money allowing it to continue, then stopping it. As most of the people will just stop playing Alts. While I doubt a lot of them will give up completely on EvE , I can see the Alt Number drop a lot. And while some people think this won't matter because CCP Wasn't getting money from them in anyways, they WERE getting money from them. Maybe not once a month, but definitely every time a skill was completed.
yeah i think the whole thing is a pile of Bs....anyone with any server/pc skills at all could see that this change doesnt affect performance in any way.
its called nickel and diming......this change in conjunction with the game card limitation are bad choices.
The method we use to reward people for making something that we enjoy is to give them money. If you don't want to compensate them for their hard work by giving them money then I have no choice but to argue that you are greedy and a scammer, as is any person who uses a product but doesn't feel the need to reward the one who provides the product.
i agree with most of that what was said in this topic. just to write my point of view .. this is just a long term billing strategy, doesnt matter how they are trying to hide it .. first step was canceling 30d and 90d GTC with introducing 60d which nearly doubled subs price .. then Power of 2 which ended week before the original announcement .. and of course announcing new expansion just few days earlier
i dont think its coincidence.
was ghost training fair ? as someone already mentioned, it was a feature, that means something i paid for by buying the game and paying for it ! everyone can do it, its their choice if they used it or not ...
another thing that is hard to believe .. none of dev red the player guide ever ? for 4 years not a single dev red the player guide ? oh common ... how that can be possible ?
to the profit question, also in the interview the dev is taking about getting players back to play .. but .. thats not an issue here .. the players that play iregulary are not stable income, thay play a month, then un-sub for two, etc. now they will consider if doubled price for account (if they want to skill char wile un-sub) its worth it .. i guess not .. or they will just not skill and keep playing without ghost training .. lets make it 50/50 so ccp its not loosing much
main income lost are alt accounts, i had two alt accounts and i know that ppl are training them because they need them .. lets say that in avarage you can have advanced alt in 6 months that means 3 months sub / 3 months un-sub (planning the skills to fit this isnt that easy though) .. after 6 months player WILL pay full time sub because he needs the alt and why not use it when its there, but its still an alt account so its played much less than main. some of you may say that thats not true, that alt accounts are often un-subed .. well they are not , 50/50 worst scenerio:) now most players will cancel their alt accounts because they are not worth the money or the doubled initial money investment (6 moths instead of 3)
i cant see how ccp thought about it, if they just guessed or have new guy that "had an idea" ..
Perhaps CCP need to look at why Ghost training was used. So many of the playerbase do not like to spend a month playing watching a 30 day skill tick over. If there were no 30+ day skills no one would use Ghost training period. CCP should drop all skills to 20 days max, i have a 30 mill char so yes it would affect me negatively but a healthier game is more important.
How long this game has been out they should of depreciated some of the skills (reducing their rank and time) by now to flatten out the skill base , instead new players face this treadmill they will never catch up. Just name one technology or new skill that after a few years is not common place. Each expansion as they introduce more skills figure out what the highest level 5 skills fully trained accross the player base and then reduce the training time on them for the new players.
I also find CCP Are the stingiest company in terms of skills (XP). SOE , DDO etc have all had bonus periods where a weekend or time line poeple who resubbed or were actively subbed get a bonus to XP or loot drops or something. CCP has not once that I know ever offered some accelerated skill training days to give current subscribers a reward or entice new poeple back.
I can only hope as STO, Jumpgate etc come out that CCP is further relegated to a niche MMO as they really dont give two hoots about the players as a whole.
First of all: I think the question is simpler than this. CCP advertised a feature, and people knew what Ghost Training means when they invested money in a 2nd or a 3rd account. Something they can't finance without this advertised feature. What about their investment and that deal? Noone could say they don't want to pay for the game, since they tend to pay for multiple accounts most of the time.
One for their main char, and at least one alt where they use Ghost Training. So noone speaks about people who don't pay for a game they play.
Secound: I have to note a few important things about why Ghost Training was important:
If we see it it isn't simple from a fairness or a cost vs value perspective.
Also why I think CCP should have known that it was an advertised feature and not a bug
I have to say not checking anything would look amateurish. And it happened now not in 2004. Right?
Third: I think most wouldn't mind removing ghost training if it would be done with proper timely warning, they wouldn't say it is a bugfix when they had every reason to know it was a feature, and they would try to balance out the change with either allowing training for all characters on your account and / or give working skill queues in same patch and / or reduce the time required to "max out a character" from like 24 years to "industry standard" of max 2-3 years so people doesn't need Ghost Training and / or there would be real content added to the game to provide fun for times when you train long skills, etc.
But as you see it isn't balanced with this way, but balanced with lies, offensive behavior, etc.
i dont care they took it out, and i dont care it was in the game.
I dont understand why they feel the need to change this though, nobody complained about it and it wasnt gamebreaking/gamechanging. TBH this is just a horrible change not because of the change itself, but because of the drama a change like this will cause.
ghost training is garbage. In what other game can you cancel your account and still level up? How is it fair for someone who doesn't pay to skill up ? Its not...the 10,000 people that are mad about this are not very reliable customers so F them.
whiner.
Wrong.
In Eve Online the average account age is like 7 months. That is, you pay for 7 months and nothing more. To have a maxed out character you would need several years. Something like 24 years!
This speaks about reliability of average customers.
About people who have multiple accounts and stay for far longer than 7 months are reliable customers with and without Ghost Training.
No, Eve is not a ‘content’ game.
I’m not saying that I measure the value of an expansion by size alone. I never even really cared much or took notice until lately when I saw how small the last ‘expansion’ was and started digging.
I am saying that you can puff up patch notes like you can puff up a resume, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that 39 megabytes of expansion, no matter what the notes say, doesn’t amount to much. The Empyrean Age notes LOOK like a heck of a lot, but they sure do NOT amount to much. How much ‘content’ can you really pack into 39mb? That’s the size of a few Youtube videos. Seriously, wtf. This is part of the denial you find in the Eve community.
The pve content of Eve is paper thin, shallow as a puddle.
You know why everyone in Eve is so familiar with missions like 'Worlds Collide" and "Recon" parts 1, 2, and 3, and Angel Extravaganza? Players have done those missions and the other few pve things to do, a gazillion times,. because there just isn't much around.
In a nutshell ... Ghost training did not deter anyone from playing, but it did bring in revenue on a cyclic basis. most of the ghost trainers I know have accounts running that they normally play, but periodically re-sub their ghost train character to bring up their skills ... OR they take turns playing one account, or the other. In the end this will cause a loss of revnue for CCP. They just lost money imo.
BTW ... I just canceled my account today.
Am I the only one who wants them to COMPLETELY revamp the current experience system. The game does not accurately protray the amount of time people play (which for some of us, is ALOT) in comparison to the trickle of experience given to the skills we gain.
CCP is making handfulls because they are artificially spreading their leveling system, and sure the hardcore 5 year old players would have to get use to fact that hardcore newbies could catch up in a year, but I don't think it's fair that the amount of experience should be DIRECTLY attributed to the amount I've payed CCP in subscriptions.
Maybe you guys should find a better way of making money in game.
That solves everything, I promise.
Wow some people must just choose to be ignorant. The main reason why CCP finally plugged this whole was because they were seeing a huge upswing in the amount of characters created and trained using ghost training for the SOLE purpose of selling those characters for isk. Until now the ghost training wasn't a problem, now it is so they fixed it. End of story.
Also, you claim that when buying 60 day GTC's it means that CCP is getting $17.50/month in sub money. That is patently false. First of all it costs them some small amount to print and distribute the GTC's if in physical form and secondly since they are being sold through a 3rd party retailer there is some markup in order for the retailer to make some profit, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to sell the GTC's in the first place.
Also comparing the monthly cost of paying with EVE GTC's vs paying any other MMO or EVE via credit card isn't really an accurate comparison either. An accurate comparison would be to compare GTC prices accross MMO's, in which case EVE GTC's are slightly more expensive than US timecodes (about $5) and slightly cheaper than EU timecodes (about $10) which likely stems from the fact that EVE doesn't have separate US/EU servers.
Also the part about there being less in EVE patches because they are so small is just plain assinine and idiotic. First of all the things that take up the most space in ANY game are art assets. Textures, shaders, etc. about 90% of any games data needs will be taken up by art assets, so unless they need to add some new model or other art asset into a patch all that's left over is code changes. Code is inherently pretty compact (especially if coded well) and as it is essentially all character data it can be compressed heavily, resulting in much smaller patch sizes. Oh but you didn't think the EVE patches were uncompressed....nah nobody's that stupid. Also the third thing you have to realize is the eve client is just a dumb client. Pretty much just art assets and some underlying code to go along with it. All the important stuff is handled on the server. So once again there's less stuff you need to be distributing with the client.
I expect with the ambulation expansion the size of the client will at least double, if not more. Also I imagine since the midas expansion will include the Orca model and some further trinity upgrades it will likely be over 100 mb at least for the premium version.
What is an "alt account?" I have nine accounts and they are co-equal. Maybe some people treat a second or third account as subordinate, but I use all of them. The alts are the other two chars on each account, which almost always get next to no training because to train those would necessitate pausing training on the principal char of the three that every account can have.
I believe they will lose far more than they gain by this change.
Most skills are not 30 days. Below the level of Capital skills, relatively few skills are even as long as 30 days. Most are minutes, hours, and some are days long. Objectives to fly certain ships and use certain fittings determine the course of most training, and it's unusual to have a 30-day training step conveniently available to train if for any reason you need to let an account expire.
To answer your question, if your account expires 20 days into training a 30-day step, your training will now be forcibly paused, and no, it will not automatically resume when you reactivate the account. You will have to log in and resume the training.
Since the training step is really only a completion date/time, this change requires CCP to cause the servers to do additional work to forcibly pause your training when your account expires. The natural way for this to work is the way it has been working for 5 years -- the completion date/time outside the game is set the instant you initiate the trainin step and nothing -- not servers being up or down, not you being online or offline, not even your account being active or expired -- affected the completion date/time. There was nothing being delivered for free by CCP to users making use of this feature. The training completion was bought and paid for at the time the step was begun. The wait until "completion" was a wait until an out-of-game date and time.
Unsubscribed training was a feature, in the game for 5+ years. It was documented and was referred to many times by CCP personnel in their own Forums. You have sufficient basis to know this, or to have read about it, that your claim that it is a scam is transparently disingenuous.
Since "training" in Eve involves no game play whatsoever after initiating a training step and is instead merely the calculation of a "completion" date and time outside the game, CCP was giving nothing away, providing no service for free, and in fact they used this feature as a strong incentive to get people to reactivate idle accounts. That incentive is now gone and reactivations will accordingly drop. The manner in which they handled it angered many more people, and so additional accounts are being dropped or not reactivated.
Does CCP pay you to be their apologist?
Actually it is zero. There is no processing whatsoever necessary for the unsubscribed training feature. Think of the training as a post-it note on the wall. The note says that after such-and-such date and time the training step will be usable by the subscriber. Only, of course, if he/she reactivates the account, but it's just a date/time after which the skill will be usable. It takes no more work for the servers than it would for you to have a post-it note stuck on your wall.
It would be very easy for CCP to have both unsubscribed training and a training queue. The obvious way, and one that would tend to fall out automatically from a simple and straightforward implementation, would be for the training queue to only work for active accounts. An expired account would "finish" the current training step but not start the next one in the queue. An active account would automatically start the next training step in the queue after the current one completes. That would also preserve the principle that inactive accounts get no attention from the servers while active ones do. Unsubscribed training imposes no server load whatsoever while a training queue would require that the server start up the next training step whether or not the user is online at the time.
i have a solution if you dont want to pay for a main and alt account.. Buy isk.. lol.. most places you can buy 1 billion for under $30USD. then buy 2x60 day GTC, one for main, and one for alt.. you now can play both, train both, and all for under the price of CCP's listed monthly cost.. sure it is against their rules... but if they can make and change rules and guidelines as they see fit, aswell already allowing for purchases with isk.. i say why not.
Like many im a multi account holder. I dont blame ccp for stopping something they feel no longer works for them. I fully understand , but the way they went about it was poor.
I do not blame them for the Ghost Training changes...i think the way they did it was poor.
I dont blame them for the GCT changes....i think the way they did it was poor.
I dont plame them for the power of 2 promotions right before and during these major game changes....i think the way they did it was poor.
I didn't blame them for 1 DEV cheating....i think the way they handled it was poor.
I didnt blame them for the carrier /mothership nerf announcement that killed the market..... the way they did it was poor.
What im getting at is Eve is a good game, the Devs are good people trying to make a good product....but ...and this is a big but....
They time after time after time rush into very poor PR announcements in a way that cause their playerbase to react with rage. They use blunt force trama in the way they approch sensitive subject maters that they know or should know will ignite their playerbase.
Now saying all that...what does a person like me do. I do not flail about on the forums like a headless troll. I send a messege to CCP in the only way i can ... with my wallet. If im happy i pay and if im not i just stop paying...its that simple.
i'm sorry, i got thru the first two paragraphs of the actual interview, pretty much saw nothing but outright lies and well, ccp will continue to get a single sub out of me for now and i honestly have no intentions of ever getting that back up to 4 or 5 or 6 accounts again.
soe lies like this. ccp lied like this to cover up bullshit like t20's antics and to hope and pray that nothing else would get exposed on anyone else.
seriously disappointing and to all the people agreeing to this change, or saying that it wasn't fair -- you had FIVE YEARS to voice your sentiments on this topic... yet you never did -- gbtw or just stfu -- it mattered NOTHING to any of you until it was removed and people were pissed because it was removed. go troll in your caves.
to be fair, i went back and read the interview, and to be honest, it's still a load of total crap.
just recently noticed it's use? so, since the dev states (again) that the devs play the game; then, they must NEVER visit the official forums, nor any of the forums in the corps/alliances in which they participate. the inactive training has been listed as a feature on the official site, which was referenced in many guides, mentioned in countless threads, used extensively by anyone training an alt over the years (since you can only train a single character on an account at a time), and the list goes on.
go lie to morons. the more i think about it, you must consider us to be morons to believe blatant untruths.
that one sub is looking less and less likely. respect is something soe has no clue of and as a result, quite a few people have no intention of even looking at another soe/station game.
i used to run multiple accounts. i used to recommend eve to friends and online-gaming-buddies.
now, when asked about it, i go back to dev cheating which was exposed and proved and admitted to, i mention all the dev cheating which has been alleged over the years but never had concrete/undeniable proof, i bring up lots of "oopsies" which always fell to the side people feel is full of ccp employees/friends, and i bring up the blatant disrespect which, over the years, is steadily reaching soe proportions.
most of the rest doesn't phase them, the soe comparison is something every last one of them understands and despises.
grats. do some more interviews and spread the fertilizer a bit more... we love it. honestly.
That's because expansions for other MMOs tend to be filled with a lot of Graphical content, audio files, etc (I don't play many others, but doesn't the last WoW expansion - and WAR - have a lengthy CGI movie intro as well??).
Eve tends to expand with new functionality, which is mostly code based and not dependant on new graphica and audio assests. Complied code is actually pretty small compared to the space required for graphic and audio assests, the ExeFile.exe file that runs Eve is only 500KB.
Also, by the nature of the dynamic content in Eve (ie. missions, etc) these are driven by the server side database, so I believe it is possible to add new missions without any client download being required (or at the very least, only some mission references being required - which would be very small).
I do feel you on the missions though, they did claim to have added hundreds of new missions, yet the same ones do seem to still come up fairly often.
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
The thing I don't get with all this, is that a continuous account paid for by the year costs about the same as the 60-day GTC's would for the ghost-training system.
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
4 x 60-day GTC's: $34.99 x 60 = $139.96
The yearly acocunt is cheaper, and, IMO, a lot easier to deal with. I guess I just don't see the problems others are. Yes, the miscommunications caused a lot of greif, but that is really about the only problem caused by this change.
Just some math here.
Let's say you add 100 missions.
We have 4 factions, and 4 pirate factions giving missions. (100/8=12.5)
We have five agent levels per faction. (12.5/5=2.5)
Of which one per faction might be a storyline. (2.5-1=1.5)
So, the usual missionrunner will get 1.5 new missions per added 100 missions.
And this is me assuming they distributed them evenly, which they did not. The average missionrunner will notice about 1-2 new missions.
Ever had the mission "buzz kill"? It's one of those new ones..
I love EVE and have been playing it for almost three years now. I play for fun and the excitement of flying my ship on missions or into battle or just doing things like marketing, mining, exploring and more.
I am very glad that CCP stopped ghost training as it was unfair against us steady subscribers that pay every month to play the game and advance our characters. I really love to play EVE and hopefully will continue to enjoy it for many more years. I think more and more "business men" in game were starting to use ghost training to to create characters to sell to other players. So it is good ghost training is gone.
Keep up the good work CCP :)
Yes the steady hard core subs are all thats gonna be left after this.
i'm not necessairly putting current company into this category but this game has always been dominated by an over opinionated veteran group with a smaller group of revolving door new players to shoot at , call newbs and blow up. This is one of the worst communties I have ever played in.
I daresay changes like this one, and the gtc changes will ensure cliques stay intact and the game is inaccessible to the casuals.....maybe thats what you want but personally I think its a big mistake if your intention is to maximize profits.
I think the argument that this is game breaking is pathetic when put up against all the other truly BS things taht have occured in the past.
I have been playing the game 'casually' for over 4 1/2 years now, and I have yet to feel like they are doing anything against me. As I've pointed out, paying for a year long subscription is just as economical as going through the GTC route part-time, so I just pay up on the subs. I have gone 2-3 weeks at a time without running the client, but I feel the time I do play is well worth my $10 something a month. You say that EvE is counter to a casual playstyle, however, the realtime skill trainging, IMO, is what makes it so great for a casual gamer. I never felt that my playstyle was letting me fall-behind my corpmates who played more regularly, though I do find I am a lot poorer ingame. In any other MMO, I would be at the equivalent of the 5-6 months point, after this 4 1/2 years of playing sporatically. In eve, I'm not far behing the guys who started 4 1/2 years with me. (I have had a lot of lapsed training time over the years -- Here's to a skill queue or same skill continuation!)
And CCP never said their intention was to maximize profits. It was a fairness issue. I commit my money to eve, regarldess of how little i sometimes get to play, and I am rewarded by the guys who Don't commit to the game in the same way being able to train to the same extent I can? That is unfair, and that has now been fixed.
I'm glad taht you enjoy the game and I'm not here to take that away from you......but the real time training system has its strengths and weaknesses.
At first I thought it was cool but then I got a little set back by the notion that my "efforts" in game will do nothing to improve my skills (other than of course implants).
Not everyone is going to sub by the year .... as a matter of fact few people do because even though its $9 cheaper (based on someone else's math on this thread) its quite a bit of cash up front for a video game.
My point is CCP is not enabling players to access their game....the GTC system, the RT skill system as it stands, and venom spewed by the Vets of this game and now this ghosting issue do nothing to empower players who are on the fence.
There are plenty of community members who don't want "that" player base anyway ....so it looks like their getting their own way.
When EQ /DAOC were the only 3d MMos on the market they could do whatever the hell they wanted and people would eat it up. As soon as the gen 2 games rolled out there was a mass exodus from their worlds to games that understood the short comings of the gen 1 titles.....CCP is going to get one rude wake up call.
They call themselves gamers but they are being more and more detached from their player base on what is already a mediorce game.
sandbox my ass.
after 4 years i dont think they can honestly claim it as an oversight any longer,i think they found away to boost their cash reserves and are going after it,but i think it may backfire on them in the long run and i think their 1/24th or 10000 is a little low ,anyhow my 2 cents worth good luck with this greedy move ccp
and on yearly subscription ;by month 14.95 usd
;by year 10.96 per month
thats 48.00 usd a year savings
Well that interveiw is a lot of nonsense. That feature/bug was being used by a lot more than 10,000 players. Everyone in my alliance has used it at one time or another, we took a survey to find that out.
This braindead manuver is going to cost them significantly in the number of 2nd and 3rd accounts people play.
We will continue to play with our mains but it is going to cost them about 300 accounts just from our alliance that won't get activated any more.
Their greed is going to kick them hard because they depend on those multiple accounts and there are going to be a lot less of them now.
While it is technically more than possible to implement both, they considered it as a game balance issue, since if their documentation refers to ghost training, it should be same type of training as others get, or one character would get more skills for same effort (because the account stays subscribed) even in long breaks, and it would be in essence buying in game advantages with money, something comparable to Micropayment solutions, and we can see how people reacted to that idea.
Minsc
Please check the following blog post: http://forum.enerla.net/blog.php?b=17
As you see before the new round of lies started I had similar ideas about the reasons, since speaking about "unintentional features" would be for character building plans that are based on ghost training and not the announced feature itself. I think with that explanation things would look far better. But with new explanations it turned from bad to worse. Most people seen this post linked to the old threads. When you link the post "Ghost Training Removed"
And about assets and code:
It would be nice to see new assets for luxury liners and other civilian ships. New kinds of stations and other structures in the missions. There is nothing to stop you from flying inside some huge stations, there is nothing to stop you from using new kinds of modules for missions. Like some cameras for making photos of individual buildings inside a bigger structure.
It would be nice not to wait months for orca. It would be nice if we would have some new kinds of missions. Missions that are best done in new kinds of ships, that could depend on new kinds of skills.
If we would have a choice of a few missions, and some missions would require exploration skills, hacking skills, etc. yet others would require manufacturing skills and the "extra runs" on the BPC would be extra rewards, etc.
As you see with classic graphic we hd mny different station models, with premium graphics, we don't have as much, since they aren't ready. So we have half finished patches here. And those half finished patches are called as expansions.
It would be nice to have skill queues implemented. If CCP admited that the learning skills idea became a problem and doesn't work as intented, they should change their system asap. They should also work on a way to reduce the training times.
I remember when they last tried to reduce the gap between old and new players by adjusting character creation rules and the starting SP amount became about 4 times higher. Yet, the problem is: Most new players stop when they see in the "endgame" their chances are reduced greatly by several years worth of disadvantage, and see how long it would take to fit a capital, and feel they are "equal party".
Having skill points now is an advantage over people who get the skills later, and the increasing gap is a problem in the game so it would be wise to add a system that makes skill training gradually faster with time. It would allow old players to keep most of their SP advantage without widening the gap. It would fix several problems and would make new players stay longer (they would see they have a chance in reasonable time).
Yet to fix any recognized problems it takes MONTHS to fix them once they are recognized the fix ins announced. Isn't it strange that removing ghost training took an amazing 2 days to "fix"?
Don't get me wrong. I think fixing ghost traing was fair, you can see it in the linked blog. But as you see things are getting different with each explanation they post.
The licence terms with and without Ghost Traing seems fair, changing a feature is fair, since they never promised to make it stay.
And I think the key point is: When I make a 2nd character I make it because I would like to play with that character, and if I would like to play with a character (even if I spend most of my game time on other, or consider another character far more important) so no point in making a plan that depends on ghost training.
Rubbish. Almost everyone I knew on Eve used it, as well as the moderators on the forum on several different accounts reassured ghost training would be kept in. What kind of bug is purposely kept in a game?! Not to mention that this "bug" was also mentioned on the character tutorial page on the eve website. Sure, mention a "bug" in a tutorial.
Also as for the balance issue, that’s utter nonsense. CCP allow the buying and selling of characters. So how is it unfair to ghost train, yet completely fair for someone to buy a 5 year old character for the price of a years subscription? Simple answer, removing ghost training gives CCP more money.
Plus, people say that the character farming was a big issue. Is this true? No, it's another load of balls from CCP. This is because characters would have to be sold via the trading bazaar, a CCP monitored part of the official forum. The players would be traded using isk, which would come from buying time codes for real money, and trading it to a player for in game isk. All in all, CCP never lost any money because they still recieved just as much subscription money as they would, people buying the timecodes were just using a middle man. Character farming, which was never a big issue in eve (the auto-miners were/are, and yet nothing has been done about them...), still gives CCP just as much subscription money if there wasn't any. Actually probably more due to the fact that the farmed characters still needed active subs to change skills.
To the people who say "you have to pay to play" you clearly haven’t thought about what your saying. Playing eve does not help your skill points to go up, so by removing ghost training, you effectively end up having to pay CCP to learn the long skills like battleship 5 etc. Imagine if Blizzard started charging players extra every time they wanted to raid. That’s the equivalent of removing ghost training in eve. You end up paying for skills. Sounds like an item store isn't far off....
And lets not forget that eve is certainly not cheap. Now with the price hike and removal of ghost traing, you will have to pay around $420 (2 years worth of subs) to get a decent amount of skill points. Yet, to become really good, you will have to pay for probably another 2 years worth of subs. Personally, I'd rather keep my money and get a game console and a plethora of games, all with free online play.
Since the price hike of the subscriptions, eve hasn't reached over 40,000 players in a long, long time. I think it's on it's way down, look at the figures http://eve.coldfront.net/status/tranquility .
lets not forget many mmos offer a rest system that helps in times when you can't be advance your character in game. The rest systems in most of the mmos i play continue to accure even if you're not subbing.
This is indeed a load of rubbish.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
no other company allow you to skill up without paying for it? No other company puts such a long time period to skill up either. The long training period is a way for the company to make money at the expense of the player, and should be illegal.
Actually, that $9 cheaper was my calculation, but that was not a direct comparison. That was a comparison to a full year of pre-paid subscription, to just under 8 months of GTC. (As 4 cards is what the average 'Ghost Trainer' that is complaining about this change would be buying anyways). To compare a full year, it is a LOT cheaper to do the annual sub:
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
6 x 60-day GTC: $34.99 x 6 = $209.94
That $78.54 savings a year would buy yourself a complete different NON online game. I really don't understand why more people DON'T use the annual sub. When I started, as soon as I realized I'd probably play it for at least another 6-8 months, it became more worth it to just pay for the whole year (as it would cost the same as 8 months individually). This got me the critical months 9-12 effectively for free, which, coincidentally, is the point where the game REALLY started to shine. I'm into my 4th annual subscription as we speak.
Maybe I'm a fanboi, I dunno. I do know that this particular group of online players are MORE helpful to noobs than I've seen in any other online community. This game is designed around teamwork, and gang-play, so if you are this broken up by losing the ability to train up alts (imaginary friends?), IMHO, you're doing it wrong.
Here you make a mistake: you don't even know how Ghost Training was working. Let me tell you: It just finished the skill level you started to train with an active subscribtion. So it was limited to 1 skill level. Nothing more, nothing less. Inthe case of short skills or anything you didn't start at last moment it was very short time, but even if you tried to maximize the benefits it was probably less than a month. If you want to read more about the importance of ghost training, click here.
If you would want to see why this change wasn't about a fairness, and how a "fairness patch" would work there are other stuff you can read.
Actually the costs for training a secondary character,
were increased by 46% to 134%
by the removal of "Ghost Training" and the earlier
Game Time Card Restructuring and Price Increase.
Now if such changes seem reasonable
to anyone from a customers perspective
all the other issues connected with this CMR and PR catastrophe aside,
I dare to challenge their rationality.
Some further comments:
Alts are more or less required in Eve,
unless you are just a few month into the game, a casual gamer or
not interested in PVP and by that ignoring 90% of the content.
In the highly competitive culture and environment that exists in EVE,
a secondary character is practically useless
unless it had a certain amount of training.
In my experience roughly 6 month are a good mark for non PVP alts.
Moreover the advancement and gameplay mechanisms of EVE,
are unique and cannot be judged from the point of view of the average MMORPG.
It takes literally years for a main pvp character to become competitive and reasonably flexible,
as far as his skills are concerned.
No action you can take ingame can speed up this learning process,
there is no grind for learning time or any other of those mechanism.
Its pure real life time that needs to be waited out.
Overview of Cost Calculation:
The costs to play the game with 60 GTC increased by
31% over the discontinued 90 day GTC.
17% over the discontinued 30 day GTC.
17% over the monthly subscription rate.
The cost for training an alternative character over a 6 month period increased by:
134% based on Game Time Cards.
100% based on a monthly subscription rate.
60% based on the 6 month subscription rate.
46% based on the 12 month subscription rate.
GTC Prices
discontinued 30 day GTC: $14.95
discontinued 90 day GTC: $39.95
current 60 day GTC: $34.95
Cost for a 6 month training cycle
Best Cases: Before "Ghost Training" Change
60 day GTC = 2 x $34.99 = $69.98
monthly subscription = 3 x $14.95 = $44.85
discontinued 30 day GTC = 3 x $14.95 = $44.85
Best Cases: After "Ghost Training" Change
60 day GTC = 3 x 34.99 = $104.97
monthly subscription = 6 x $14.95 = $89.7
6 month subscription = 1 x $71.7 = $71.7
12 month subscrition = 0.5 x $131.4 = $65.7
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
I believe I've educated myself on the topic and shown some proof to back it up. Can you say the same?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
The amount of money CCP makes off of all WhiteWolf products (including the CCG) is a fraction of what they bring in from EVE in a year. The WhiteWolf merger was more about getting access to the WoD IP and WhiteWolfs writing staff than it was about gaining a lot more profit, but the merger was mutually beneficial for both parties.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
Actually yes to both questions though i havent been active for along time. I quit when i noticed i was only logging in to start a new skill. That doesnt change the fact that you can still play as you skill up nor does it change the fact that early skills take very little time.
As far as trying to compare it to leveling games like AoC, etc. If i quit AoC one month after release then come back after an expansion raises the cap to level 100 do i come back at level 100 with gear to match? No.
Yes i know it only finishes the current skill being trained but as you noted skill times become quite long at advanced levels/skills. If people werent abusing this by starting a time intensive skill towards the end of a billing cycle then restarting at or near completion we wouldnt be having this convo would we?
Ok I may remember wrong. But when I checked the latest power off two, within the last month. It was initially 40€ for the first 6 months and then 70€ every 6 months. An alternative in the power of two with monthly sub was not there as far as I remember.
6 months fee subscribing monthly is 90€. 6 months prepaid is 70€. So effectively you got an oppertunity to get 2 accounts for the price of one.
CCP you successfully completed greed level 5
also look on eula
ccp can ban your if u post hate content on other web pages
Installing Implants is an in-game action that speeds up training. Also, training up the various Learning skills (done in real time like the others, but chosen by you to train first) speeds up training.
What I don't understand are the simultaneous claims that
(a) CCP is making this change to be greedy, and
(b) CCP will lose money on this change.
Surely both cannot be true? If CCP is greedy, you would expect them to make whichever change brings in more money.
Installing Implants is an in-game action that speeds up training. Also, training up the various Learning skills (done in real time like the others, but chosen by you to train first) speeds up training.
What I don't understand are the simultaneous claims that
(a) CCP is making this change to be greedy, and
(b) CCP will lose money on this change.
Surely both cannot be true? If CCP is greedy, you would expect them to make whichever change brings in more money.
Why? If they want to get more money, but they haven't thought about all important aspects of their decision and they lose more customers than in their "worst case scenario" and they get far less money from the fact people have to keep their accounts subscribed for the whole time that can be bad.
Probably CCP thought they will lose only some of the affected accounts, while players who had these accounts know they will also cancel their mains, when their corp and alliance loses members and becomes inactive some of their friends will leave with them. Or that while they weren't ghost training now, they done that before, or planned to do it in the future when they have to train longer skills so they aren't in the 4.16% and will still leave.
So they suspect CCP made a bad decision and even against their intentions they will lose money.
Why? If they want to get more money, but they haven't thought about all important aspects of their decision and they lose more customers than in their "worst case scenario" and they get far less money from the fact people have to keep their accounts subscribed for the whole time that can be bad.
Right, so in other words, CCP didn't think about all important aspects of their decision. But you did.
CCP actually, like, knows how much money they make, and how many accounts they have, and stuff. But we're just a lot smarter.
So, yes, it makes sense. They're greedy, but they'll lose money, because they don't pay attention to their company, unlike us.
Noone said this except you, but let me tell you a few things.
And yet you say they know it well. Don't you think that is strange?
Ohh and they said the amount of reaction they got surprised them. So in fact they tell you they excepted a smaller reaction. Yet you say their guesses were accurate and anything based on the size of backslash, information from the community, etc aren't.
Mind if I point out they are surprised by the reaction because they excepted something else, and that something else didn't happen?
They might lose money and they might avoid it. BUT if they are surprised by few things both about the reactions of surprisers, both about that their "bug" was a feature and an important selling point, and both about what the customers say about how this feature affected their game play, and the results caught them off guard enough to make sure their communication can't reduce problems, then I have to say: They were unable to predict the results of this change.
And if they didn't know what will happen, they can't know how that affects their income. The community who seen several incidents came to a conclusion: They admitedly want more money, but such incidents (where you get this kind of reaction) tend to cause a drop in subscribtions, since it is "fair to CCP" but doesn't give anything to players.
Personally, I think this kind of BS from CCP is increasing on a daily basis.
First they increased their prices on game time codes but tried to call it "streamlining". Err, that's just trying to treat your customers like dumb jerks. It was a PRICE INCREASE CCP. Don't try and paint it as anything else.
Then when people pointed it out to them they said it was for the new content they had added. Errr, BZZZZZT. The FREE UPGRADES you claim to give us are therefore NOT FREE UPGRADES. When you talk BS it is best to be good at it first because you angered a lot of people by this.
STREAMLINING MY BACKSIDE. FREE UPGRADES MY BACKSIDE.
Now ghost training has gone and they claim it is a bug! Get real CCP. You're not foolong anyone. You did the math and decided it was better to plug this money leak and take a hit on a few accounts rather than keep losing a months subs from 10,000 people coz when people ghost train they would be training something that lasts a long time.
STOP TREATING YOUR CUSTOMERS LIKE IDIOTS AND BE HONEST.
People won't like the changes, but to try and claim it is something other than what it clearly is, is highly insulting as well.
CCP, if you are all gamers, as you claim to be, then stop acting like politicians and accountants.
old devs are not working on eve-online they are working on world of darkness or are in CEO position for ccp office in atlanta/china/germany
TomB - he was in charge of game balance, he leaved and we got carrier nerf stupid speed rebalance none can handle well the nerfbat
Oveur - he was senior producer, and t0rfifrans is in that place like senior producer (t0rfifrans was 3D boss) and now wee got this crap
also failed to make a dev blog
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=904346
I’ve been an Eve player for 3 years, on and off, and of all the other MMOs I’ve played, Eve is the only one I’ve come back to so in my case, they must have something right.
I know quite a few people who have stopped playing for various reasons and come back to Eve sometime later. Almost without exception, none of them could even remember what skill they were training when they stopped playing and that having some additional skill when they did come back was of zero relevance to their return. They all came back just because they wanted to play Eve again, often to see what the latest expansion had to offer.
Ghost training was of little or no use to noob players. Noobs do not focus their skills enough to have any that would run for very long and also wouldn’t have the money to buy whatever fancy bit of kit that a 30-60 day skill training would offer.
The people who are complaining are the long established players who want to train a dread/jump freighter/cap ship alt on the cheap, with no intention of actually playing that character until it reached the desired skill goals, possibly even just for sale.
Do I feel sorry for them now that ghost training has been removed? Nope, not at all
Unlike every other game genre, you really need to be comfortable with a MMORPG's developers if you subscribe.
It's not enough if you feel a MMORPG is a fun and entertaining game, you have to be confident in the developers and be confident about what they will do. Running a MMORPG is providing a service to customers in addition to making a game.
It's like what is often seen with upcoming games where people getting all excited about the game features but don't pay any attention to the developers. MMORPG players need to consider both before handing over their money.
Your comparison is completely irrelevant as equipment in eve is neither cheap nor easy to get, and I made no reference to items. Plus you totally skirted around the issue that in eve there is a minimum investment you have to make to become a good player. Due to ghost training being removed this price has gone up to $600+ as well as the two years it will take to train those skills. This means that the time based training system in eve now has no advantages over the grinding system used in many other mmorpgs, such as WoW, as it would be faster and much cheaper for the player to use the generic exp system.
You say it is abusing ghost training by training long skills with it. It was made to be used like that! As an incentive for players to return as grinding doesn't allow the person to level up in any way. What CCP have done is nothing more than a cash grab.
I've been playing eve pretty much non stop for over a year, and everyone I knew used ghost training, and for the casual players it was the only reason they came back. The potential of flying a new bigger, badder ship was enough to draw them back in.
It's hard to believe that you've been playing for 3 years, never used it, and say it's of no use to noon players. Actually it's just as useful to them as anyone else
. Everyone I knew managed to get to a race's crusier 5 by the time their sub was going to run out, and so stuck it on that, and that's a 30+ day skill after 2 month's of sp's.
The long established players aren't moaning - they already have all the capital skills and alts with all the skills needed
. They're actually complaining about how CCP is dealing with this (many comments from veterans on the offical forum showing this). Whereas the new players, from a day old to a year, are complaining because it means the veteran players have had a great advantage over them, in real life terms, and the fact that making alts is now exceptionally expensive.
So as far as CCP claiming removing ghost training is to balance the game, thats nonsense. It just widens the gap considerably more, as the veteran players now have more sp's, isk and much better alts/alts in general.
As for selling alts, CCP actually allow this and have a part of the forum dedicated to it! Due to how the transfers work, CCP still make money on the alts and don't loose a dime. Now by removing ghost training they've shot themselves in the foot and ensured that there will be no more subs for alt accounts as everyone is going to merge any alts into their main accounts.
I ghost trained BS 5 as my last skill before I logged out to take a break. My character is now eligible for several higher end trains and capital ships. I just don't see myself coming back now. This was a nice feature because, like everyone else, I get bored after a while and go do something else. It's not that I wanted something for nothing, but seriously, some skills take up to 9 months to train in the high end. I don't see myself just sitting around waiting on that 9 month skill, I'm not that patient. I suppose if they were smart, they would have coded it so that you maybe trained slightly faster if you were actively playing the game (i said playing, not subscribed) to discourage ghost training except in those cases where you just need it...such as 3 month + skills, alt accounts, etc. Oh well, it was nice knowing you Eve, take care and have a good one!
I'm probably not coming back as well.
As someon people said, I trained BS V with "ghost training" as well and it made me come back to start training and progressing on other areas.
After the last time I stopped paying I was training Command Ships V (Probably done now, takes 1.5 months or something). I was thinking on playing for one month and leaving another V skill training, but I guess not.
' We’ve got an expansion coming out called Quantum Rising '
The ' SENIOR PRODUCER ' for Eve doesnt even know what he's in charge of producing.
Gamers making games my ass. A vain businessman who thinks pretending to be 'just like his client base' is a clever marketing ploy. Fail.
The only skill that take that long are level 5 of the capital ship skills, and it's not like you're sitting around waiting for the skill to train...you can still play the game normally while it's going.
Maybe it's a character flaw, but, I find that if I am training a long skill like that I tend to gravitate towards other skills. The old "hey, I can train XXXXXXX instead, and that'll be done in a week" scenario. I guess what I'm saying is that the ability to ghost train actually "encourages" me to finish those long trains and be qualified for much higher stuff, thus enriching the depth of the eve world. I can't recall how long BS 5 was for my guy, 3 months I think. But BS 5 is essential for anyone who's going to keep playing the game for a long period in my opinion. So if most people aren't getting to BS 5 and cap ships because they get impatient waiting those 3 months, what does that do to the game? Makes the elite more elite and everyone else is tooling around in a HAC or Stealth bomber because they couldn't stomach the wait. <shrugs> Granted, I love having those skills to 5 myself, but that's not everything the game has to offer. This is just my experience with it of course, but I have never talked to anyone who didn't agonize over those long trains and wish they were doing something else. The 9 month train was just an example of how far a train could really go, but realistically, there's a lot of 3-5 month skills involved once you get the basics out of the way.
I think CCP proved definitively what we players already know: you pay for skill training. The time factor is just an illusion; just a way of rationing out what your subscription fee pays for.
Given that ghost training was removed so CCP can make money off of skill training, why doesn't CCP go all the way and sell SP over their site for a set fee per SP? That way, people who want to start playing with new skills instead of waiting around for 90 days can get the SP they need right away. Plus, it will give CCP the extra revenue that they say they need in this tough Icelandic economy they talk about.
A small point I brought up earlier which was called into question, which I had to test myself because a few sources denied it,
Rested xp in some other games DOES continue while an account is inactive, I tested it.
Other mmos DO let players advance while they’re not logged in and while they’re not even subscribed. It’s called rested xp. Other mmos understand how players think. Other mmos use rested experience as a marketing tool. That rested xp gives people an incentive to log back in, gives more casual players a boost to give them the feeling they’re better keeping up with their more hardcore friends who play more often, and it has the illusion of being a ‘free’ gift, when we all know that nothing, nothing, nothing, is ‘free’ in the business world. It all goes into the bottom line calculations of overall cost and overall profit.
CCP is just plain dumb watching other companies use rested xp / ghost training to market those other games, while CCP throws it out the window.
maby if they would quit focusing on the lame ass PVP that drives many players away, and the blindingly boring misson system.
my playstyle they havent added any usefull game content my style is non-pvp
you get really bored getting war deced on your non-pvp guild which totally disrupts the enjoyment of the game for the whole guild
most people dont play eve as their primary game because of the uninspired and jaded developers dont support non-pvp play as a result the game population is reduced to mostly pvp guilds
and sence non subscribers cant post on their forums they think they are listening to their total community when actually its just a narrow pvp nitch
I like how serious the economy is but the free for all pvp is an oxymoron.
and yes when I canceled I set a long skill
heres a question now what is their excuse for not having queing now that training requires an active account?
Guess I won't get my Marauder level 5 then...Only reason why I subscribed to EVE was to train skills anyway. I never played the game except some missions now and then (not for fun, just because I needed the isk). I wasn't planning on going back anytime soon and this certainly doesn't make me want to go back more.
I'm a PvE guy and there just isn't much fun do to in EVE for me. Mining is boring and missions are not much better. Any game where you have to read a book or something to not fall asleep while playing needs to be changed.
I still might come back though, I've been away for a long time before, maybe when that walk inside stations feture is finally in the game.
Eve is primarily a PvP game. In fact, it is the only MMO that I've played that has global non-consensual PvP. As someone pointed out, even in high security Empire space, you can still be war-decced or ganked. If you want to play a game where there is absolutely no risk to your character, Eve is not for you.
Saying that, I am actually a carebear in Eve but avoiding getting killed and outmaneuvring gankers is part of the fun and excitement for me.
As for what to do, my main hasn't done a mission or mined in god knows how long! I'm too busy with invention, trading, trying to manipulate the markets, researching, looking after my POS, etc. etc. etc.
Some people come up with really off-the-wall ideas. There's a player run Texas hold'em channel and one person did an IPO and raised 15 Biillion ISK from investors to just play poker! Returns have been pretty good on that IPO as well! (details myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp)Most ingame IPOs and bond issues are done by manufacturing Corps but it shows that anything goes if you've got some imagination.
The biggest problem with Eve is that you have to think too much so it's nice to have another game where you can just mindlessly whack monsters, to give yourself a break.
P.S. Skill queues are being discussed in the Dev blogs, either an end to end queue or the ability to learn two skills at the same time, splitting SPs between them. When short skill runs out, long skill gets all the SPs.
The point you seem to be missing is that removing ghost training is making this guy think it's not worth coming back. ie. the game isn't enough on it's own to make him think it is worthwhile.
Well done Eve. Not.
Someone who doesn't really want to play the game and just wants to leech SPs on an inactive account until he can see what hew shiny thing he can get and then go off again, doesn't seem like a person who has much to offer the Eve Community and we're probably better off without him
Someone who doesn't really want to play the game and just wants to leech SPs on an inactive account until he can see what hew shiny thing he can get and then go off again, doesn't seem like a person who has much to offer the Eve Community and we're probably better off without him
What Eve community?
The point is the guy used to come back and pay CCP money. Now he isn't. He is not alone if this thread is anything to by and a lot of people who made use of this "bug" (my baskside) aren't coming back then that is less money for CCP. Believe it or not the game doesn't cost nothing to make.
Someone who doesn't really want to play the game and just wants to leech SPs on an inactive account until he can see what hew shiny thing he can get and then go off again, doesn't seem like a person who has much to offer the Eve Community and we're probably better off without him
Rich coming from a self confessed carebear...
What Eve community?
The point is the guy used to come back and pay CCP money. Now he isn't. He is not alone if this thread is anything to by and a lot of people who made use of this "bug" (my baskside) aren't coming back then that is less money for CCP. Believe it or not the game doesn't cost nothing to make.
No you're right it doesn't, but the fraction of the 10,000 reported ghost training user's that will actually quit is largly insignificant for the overall population. An MMO only needs about 60-70000 subscribers to be profitable, even if ccp were to lose the full 10,000 they're still in no danger of running out of money. And honestly the game can do without the alt armies some people have. it was getting rediculous.
It's more than 10,000 by a lot as most of the people I knew had around 2 alts or more, and they needed them. If zero sec taught me anything its the necessity of an alt. Due to the level of pvping in 0.0, you need an alt if you want an income as your main always has to be on the frontlines. Now making alts much more expensive people won't use them, and so it's going to screw the game up. A lot.
Plus doesn't remove the fact that now you are literally paying for a set amount of SP's a month. May as well just have a skill store on the website.
I look at it this way. I pay for my EVE accounts. If you're unwilling to play unless you mostly don't pay for your accounts, then buhbye. If some supposed army of your friends feels the same way and also leaves, then buhbye.
As for whether CCP will lose money - that's their business. Not ours.
That completely skips over the entire issue of ghost training and the fact that Eve now has put a huge price on leveling up, at least 4x that of any other MMORPG considering the time it takes to become a 'good' player. If it isn't the customers business to know how the company he is paying for a product is doing, then whose business is it??
CCP has increased the price of Eve significantly in the last few months and on both accounts, they never once actually admitted it was a price hike. Not to mention the fact that they down right lied to their customers not once, but twice, as well as admitting a startling amount of incompetince.
You can pay for Eve if you are willing to put money into the pockets of those kind of morally lacking people as well as paying an absurd amount of money for a game that doesn't come close to being as good as it's price would suggest.
I agree with you that CCP is making it more expensive to play EVE. Tranquility cannot grow forever and they don't want shards. Raising the rates buys them some time and helps fund new tech to allow growth.
I have about 150 million SPs worth of EVE training and I've paid for all of it. Others have paid less. I don't begrudge them their savings, but I don't consider it their right either.
If everybody who can't stand this change actually leaves, all it will mean is shorter login queues on weekends.
As for the amount of time it supposedly takes to be a "good" player - that's an illusion. You will never "catch up" to an active player who joined 2 years before you. There is always someone out there who can kick your butt in this game. And it's easy to enjoy EVE from the first day of play. I recently rolled a power of two alt and it was fun! Of course now that alt is training :) but I run missions with it every so often just for kicks.
I think it should be taken into account that Icelands economy has gone somewhat to hell, hence the price hike. However, even if the increase was to make the game better etc which I'm all for, especially after the recent software upgrades greatly reducing lag, the way CCP went about the price increase was deplorable, which is the main problem with many veteran players who don't really have an issue with the removal of GT.
Thing is, GT was origanaly a selling point of Eve, and reinforced by CCP reps and mention of it in the tutorial. To claim it was a bug was rediculous, as well as it makes the game very difficult for people with r/l commitments to play. I'm not trying to get into a 10 page argue-athon, but it was the players right to use GT as it was a feature of the game, not a bug. A fair amount of the guys I knew in Eve spent a lot of time abroad due to the military and so GT was perfect for them. Now, Eve is too akward to manage when you may not be at a pc for weeks at a time.
In terms of a good player, I mean one that is a valuable asset in PVP. Having been part of MaxDamage and knowing the ship layouts etc, it would take 2 years to aquire enough SP's to fly around 4 of the ships (including a mixture of weapons, ship class) recommended to the required fittings, as well as additional experience in pvping. Annoyingly so however, due to the price of now running alts, a lot of the older players have a great advantage that they already have good alts, whereas new players are pretty much screwed, unless money ($400+) isn't a concern.
People need to stop whining and crying about this.
Crying about not being able to train a character when not even paying for the game is pathetic. I laugh at anyone leaving for this, and wonder what game they expect to freeload off now?
EVE community along with the MMO community in general have grown into some of the biggest spoiled brat crybabies I have witnessed.
Get a grip kiddies, MMOs are just games.
Well done, I think you just proved you have not read a single reply on this post.
If a company, say BT, doubled it's price bill and claimed it was due to a fault in the system, but really it was the credit crunch, what would happen?
There would be an outcry from the customers. This is the same with EvE. Yes, MMORPG's are only games, but you are still a customer and are paying for a service. Therefore, you expect a certain quality of game in return. When either the quality goes down, or the price increases without the quality doing so, the customers/players are entitled to "whine and cry" as you put.
And the training is time related, not grind related. This means, as has been explained before, that you end up having to play for a minimum amount of time to become any good, which can then be seen as you now have to pay $400+ for two years to become any decent. That really isn't fair, and then mixed with the fact that CCP have lied about why they removed ghost training, many players are quitting due to CCP being a terrible company.
When large sums of money are involved, I'm sure anyone mature enough can see that you can't just take the attitude of "it's just a game" unless you want to be flushing cash down the toilet.
Normally I would agree with this line of reasoning and I basically still do but it's not hard to see why CCP may have miscalculated BADLY.
I could go on atleast three different reasons how CCP probably did their math wrong but I'll only focus on one because what's the point explaining everything.
In CCPs own words almost 20% of the player base engages in 0.0 space actively.
Also in their words the average number of accounts for these players is suspected to be 3.
By removing ghost training CCP is targeting (among other various targets) people with multiple accounts by asking them to pay full time.
The only reason habitual ghost trainers could justify paying for 3 accounts which would've been $45 in any other MMO is ghost training which had the potential to reduce their savings to $30 per month (if they were lucky to have the L5 skills to ghost train)
Thanks to the removal their savings are gone and prices went up 10-50% depending on how they ghost trained. Since cost went up dramatically people will consolidate their accounts by transferring. In the best case scenario the average number of accounts will be reduced from 3 to 2 because two accounts is necessary to play the 0.0 game.
So CCP will get a consistent $30 dollars a month.
This should come across as painfully stupid because noone can perfectly ghost train to the point they paid only $30 a month with 3 accounts. They most likely paid somewhere between $30 and $45 and even a loss of that marginal value in earnings in light of the recessions the world is going through is beyond dumb.
In reality CCP accountants had to expect most players would want to keep their third accounts which is a really large leap in logic if they actually played the game.
If CCP was a publically traded company and I was an investor I would demand someone from PR or accounting to get fired over this boondoggle.
I don't know how accurate a guage this is but since Ghost Training was removed, the price of GTCs has gone up to 550 Mill ISK, implying that demand is outstripping supply.
Now why would the demand and volume for GTCs have suddenly gone up? Go figure but as people have to buy those GTCs for RM before they can sell them, I'm sure CCP aren't complaining about the revenue from extra sales.
II think CCP will lose considerable accounts with the cancellation of ghost training. Some people need time to come up with the money to renew there account. Ghost training was a way to stay competitive on a budget.
I am sure I am like a lot of people playing eve, I do not like losing a few hours to missed training, let alone a few days or even weeks or a month. In any case there is a lot less to look forward to when you are able to renew your account since game play is brightened by the advancement of your skill training.
Iceland mentally of greed and lack of financial wisdom is well documented with the collapse of there banking system and now they think they can increase there revenues with removing incentives from the game.
I played 6 accounts for over 3 years and did not rely on this feature, however I am tired of CCP nerfing things and I cancelled my accounts.
And no leech, you can not have my 50 billion isk, it will make a nice coffin layer. Besides I earned it by working for it, not stealing or begging or ganking others.
So basically that entire interview can be summed up as "We don't want people progressing without paying us".
They want more money, which is what businesses do. Question is will they lose more money from doing this than they would have lost if they left it alone? Time will tell.
Believe it or not as one of those 0.0 players that had 3 accounts I had all 3 active all the time with the exception of when I was taking a break from the game. You don't have multiple accounts in 0.0 to ghost train you have multiple accounts in 0.0 to use them. If anything 0.0 alt accounts are more likely to be active and NOT training to keep clone costs down then to be training and not paying. All the multi-account friends I had with more then 2 accounts had all of them active all of the time.
Part of me thinks they'll do a 180 and restore the feature. That way, all the people who had dread V training will have to resub to set the skill timer again.
I am very glad that CCP removed ghost training from this fine game. I have been paying every month for more than 3 years and love to play the game and pay happily for subscription every month.
If you do not want to pay for playing the game then just leave and find yourself some F2P game to play. Lastly if you decide to stop playing EVE then please send all your ISK to me and contract all your assets to me ingame :)
CCP will be loosing money if GTC's isk value has increased. As players bought them to trade for isk, the higher the value, the less time codes needed, therefore less are bought. This leads to CCP making less money...
You cannot apply the "pay to play" idea to eve's progression system or ghost training .
You gain SP's over time, not by grinding. Therefore by removing ghost training you are now paying for skill points. Imagine if in WoW you had to pay extra to raid. Removing ghost training has effectivly done this as you have to pay more cash to reach end game content. Not to mention that you have to pay for a set amount of time (2 years roughly) to become any good in the eve universe.
And just chucking it in, me and my bro are quitting, have over 3 billion isk, not to mention crystal epsilon implants etc in storage. And they aren't going to anyone
When I subscribed, I usually subscribed for 4-6 months, then got tired of doing whatever I was doing, and GT'd a skill and took a few month break. Then, I came back, played for several more months and picked a new long train before breaking again. It seems some people have missed the point. The point is, after you get bored of whatever else you're distracted with (warhammer atm), you'd go back to eve for some fun and give the other game a break. Now there is just less of a reason to go back. Also, as an aside. The people who are attacking others and saying "stop crying" don't really sound like the eve players I know. Eve players, just like most of this thread, have always discussed things quite well in forums. So it sounds like the element of the community that I enjoyed may be dwindling a bit anyhow <shrugs>
Believe it or not as one of those 0.0 players that had 3 accounts I had all 3 active all the time with the exception of when I was taking a break from the game. You don't have multiple accounts in 0.0 to ghost train you have multiple accounts in 0.0 to use them. If anything 0.0 alt accounts are more likely to be active and NOT training to keep clone costs down then to be training and not paying. All the multi-account friends I had with more then 2 accounts had all of them active all of the time.
Well your friends are the exception rather than the rule. I don't know anyone in our alliance that actively keeps all their accounts active, while their probably are some, it is not common. Ghost training was very heavily used and we have been living in 0.0 for over two years . It is quite obvious that they are going to take a hit from this, just how much we will have to wait and see, but I certainly am not activating my 2nd account nor is my brother his 2nd and 3rd accounts, we will play with only one now.
I believe it, because from what I've observed from scrapheap and other forums a sizeable number of people didn't ghost train even with multiple accounts. But that only helps underscore the bad thinking on CCP.
Their accountants aren't acknowledging that those who did ghost train did so with an assessment that states 3 accounts is worth $35 not $45. Jacking up the price only targets the people who weren't all that interested in paying for their multiples on a full term basis.
CCP wasn't going to get anymore money from you. They are trying to affect the bottom line of those who tried to save money or didn't value their alts so highly. I want to see how subscription levels look from January to February.
If the growth percentage doesn't match their consistent growth pattern that's a strong indicator that ghost training removal hurt them. (though the way the economy is going and with the anticipation of two serious competitors for Eve's constituency from upcoming MMOs could undermine this point)
Yes but they were seeing a drastic upswing in characters that were being created and trained exclusively with ghost training, hence characters were being farmed to sell for isk, which means that the isk farmers were starting to abuse the mechanic and that's the most likely reason for them to stop it.
You've given them too much credit I think, but good point. One could say they did this to stop them, or one could say they did this to capitalize on their activities at the expense of the general player base. Either way you look at it the end result is the same, it hurts players in some form over something they've enjoyed for a really long time and appreciated as a feature to the Eve universe.
In another forum I made a similar point but someone else pointed out to me why this is wrong.
First off, isk farmers aren't ghost trainers. They need those characters to macro mine. THey'll always be active until they are banned. Besides if anything macro miners are going to use trial accounts because why pay for alts?
It is professional character sellers who would want to take advantage of ghost training (among other groups of people).
So CCP wants them to pay up and assumes since they are professionals they'll pay for they'll alts.
By removing ghost training CCP is increasing their cost of doing business. They'll push these increased costs on to the buyers. Buyers seeing character becoming more expensive, even though demand has relatively remained constant means less characters will be brought because not as many people can afford the new price hikes.
(FYI this scenario is equivalent to what Mazty was explaining in post 116 a page back. Only in that case CCP forced teh prices to go up because they made GTCs more expensive.)
As a result of less characters being brought CCP is probably losing out on the people who would've been buying those ghost accounts and using them as full tiume accounts.
CCP most likely would've been better off just letting ghost training being abused because they were already going to be sold off to people who would've turned them into full time accounts and (most importantly) they would've been sold in higher quantities than they are going to be now.
Now I say most likely. What could possibly exist that makes this scenario unlikely? That would be three factors. CCPs Ambulation project, their "Need for Speed" initiative and Quantum Rise expansion. Essentially each of these factors have to change the game in such a way that the demand for ghost trained accounts increases. Quantum Rise is most likely going to be like any other expansion and won't change demand for no more than a month.
Need for Speed is a multipart strategy that is proving incredibly hard for CCP to pull off. If they can reduce lag so large battles are feasible well the pay off will be really big.
AMbulation is a full blown wild card in my eyes. I have little understanding of other peoples' opinions with avatars to know if this will be a significant enough change in making Eve even more attractive.
Since they have the resources to know that the system is being abused, it also seems to me that they have the resources to pinpoint who is abusing the system most. A better change on their part if they wanted to nip account sellers would have been to target those accounts for negative action such as suspension. I would think that it wouldn't be that hard to put ghost training as a flag on the account. If they see someone abusing it exclusively, turn it off for 6 months as a penalty, then let it go back active. That would be a better solution than just pulling it from the game completely.
Ghost training used to draw me back when I quit before. Before, I'd be like I'm sick of this grind and go play FPS/Console for a bit. then some good long skill would pop and I'd return
Now I wont have that reason to return. Anyway I guess we'll see what the future holds. Havent been very happy with this game lately guess thats how it goes though.
CCP isn't interested in removing account sellers because they actually make money for CCP. CCP is now trying to squeeze out of them, along with some other people, more money.
No you're right it doesn't, but the fraction of the 10,000 reported ghost training user's that will actually quit is largly insignificant for the overall population. An MMO only needs about 60-70000 subscribers to be profitable, even if ccp were to lose the full 10,000 they're still in no danger of running out of money. And honestly the game can do without the alt armies some people have. it was getting rediculous.
Makes you wonder why Eve has the buddy program doesn't it.....
There's nothing wrong with having alts. In fact the game sort of demands it with the way skill training is set up, so your "alt armies" complaint is specious reasoning at best. Also, you're implying that these are active accounts which means they aren't ghost training.
Seems to me the only arguments people really have against ghost training are these:
1. "I don't use it so no one else should". ie. indignant jealousy.
2. "They're getting something for nothing". Which is specious at best because they still have to buy access to make use of anything trained in ghost mode. ie. it actually encourages people to come back.
3. The are blinded by their love of the game and feel it's their "duty" to defend anything CCP does. ie. misguided loyalty aka kissing their ass. It's not even an argument.
CCP had their reasons and that reason was money. The way that they went about it is poor in the extreme - two days notice is pitiful. They should have at least given people a months notice or allowed whatever they were ghost training to finish. And then to add insult to injury they tried to claim it was a bug. Which is just a flat out lie like their "streamlining" of prices which to anyone who isn't an idiot knows was simply a politicians way of saying "we've put the prices up but we have so little respect for our paying customers that we're going to call it anything but a price rise".
This is what has angered me the most about CCP - their lack of respect for the people who pay their wages.
Little poll for you to answer....
CCP are their own worst enemies on this matter. Its not the stopping of ghost training that has people quitting in droves but the manner on how they done it.
Fair enough CCP is a company and as such like to make money. They started this whole debaucle by introducing the 60day GTC's to 'streamline' the payment and removing the 30day and 90day GTC options, but they bumped up the price of the 60day GTC which was 16% a markup. Then adding insult to everyone they basically said 'adapt or die' buy time using credit cards.
Everyone did adapt to it, more people started ghost training acounts, CCP saw this and spat its dummy out saying its not fair, so put a stop to it.
Its not the reason why they stopped it, its the manner of how they did it by insulting the intelligence of the player community saying it was a 'bug', but was clearly stated on their website and in manuals it was a 'feature'. Now them saying they didn't know it was a feature is more lies, I can quote from the forums written by CCP employees as saying u can train inactive accounts.
Proof Proof2 Proof3
So more lies about u 'didn't know' it was listed as a feature even their own staff have said it was possible to train on inactive accounts.
As a company would you trust them? This interview just screams more lies to the community and i for 1 don't trust a company that doesn't know what the left hand is doing from its right.
when i quit 3-4 months ago I had started training Mini BS 5, I didnt realize that it would keep training, lol I could almost hop in a carrier today I guess
This is just the last straw for many people. This change and how it was handled will not go over well for the foreseeable future.
If I were to exclude the Ghost Training issue, this company still has a lot to correct.
1. Horrible customer service.
I have filed a couple petitions in the time that I was playing.
Every reply I ever got from a petition was dripping with condescension.
It was as if I was just a random stupid customer.
2. History of Dev's playing favorites and giving special items to their In-game friends.
If I had known about this before I started playing, I never would have started.
3. Last expansion consisted mostly of fluff spelling and grammatical fixes on item descriptions.
4. Hot topic forum threads get buried. Such as the t20 and the "ghost training" threads.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896318&page=170#5087
An example of customer service.
Hmm that gentleman's post seemed to have gone missing. He corrected it though.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896318&page=171#5124
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The rise in GTC prices for ISK is quite simple: the same people who are pissed about the unsubscribed training nerf and the lies and PR spin are the ones who bought GTCs for RL money and sold them in game. They are supplying fewer GTCs, so prices are rising. How do I know? Easy... I am one of those. When I lost a Raven Navy Issue with faction fittings (>1 billion ISK) in a mission due to some silly mistake or surprise, I resorted to selling GTCs in game to replace it. When I wanted to set up a large research POS (several hundred million ISK) with two Advanced Labs (150 mil ea) and six Mobile Labs (90 mil each) I broke down and sold GTCs in game to raise some of the ISK.
Since the unsubscribed training nerf and lies and PR spin I have not sold a single GTC in game. I have found that in a lot of aspects of life my reactions are somewhat representative, iow if this was how I reacted, it's likely that many others reacted the same way.
So GTC supply has shrunk while cash-strapped students and others still need to pay for game time with ISK, so prices have risen.
No, what's pathetic is utter failure to understand the issue but nonetheless mindlessly commenting on it.
It's about time someone said this. It's clear to me that most of the ppl commenting about "alts" and "char farming" are just making it up to sound like they know what they're talking about. I am a high sec player with nine accounts. I rarely got any benefit from unsubscribed training as I had the accounts to use them, not just to train them, and my computer can run all nine at the same time. All nine are "mains," not "alts." The alts are the other 18 chars in those accounts, the ones that get very little training because to train them would mean suspending training of the primary char in each account. I would gain little or nothing by consolidating my nine primary chars into three accounts because then I would be unable to play more than three at any one time.
So it's not just 0.0 multi-account holders who are likely to have all their accounts active all or most of the time. It's anyone who actually wants to run multiple accounts at the same time.
How have I used nine accounts? The first and foremost and most obvious thing is that I am my own mining fleet, with multiple high-end miners and haulers. I don't need to coordinate with corp or alliance members in various time zones and with various personal obligations just to mount a mining op. With maxed mining skills and command bonuses and the new Orca ship I can strip a belt in 1h 45m and net 50-70 mil ISK, which funds other things I do. This is a very efficient use of my game time.
Most of my primary chars are also trained in research and manufacturing. I can fill all the factory slots in an NPC station with manufacturing jobs. I can fill all the lab slots in my research POS witih research jobs.
I have at least six chars fully trained to fly Covert Ops ships with Covert Ops Cloaking Device II. I can insert them into 0.0 and watch six adjoining systems, feeding intel into a friendly alliance intel channel or guiding my alliance members safely through those systems.
When I have to purchase non-manufacturable, non-mineable supplies for my POSs, I can send haulers in six or eight different directions to make the purchases and haul back the supplies (the various POS supplies are never available in the same stations).
When flying a freighter around to take stuff to market I can be my own escort and my own webber to kick the freighter quickly into warp.
When running missions I used four ships: two faction battleships to do the heavy lifting, a salvage ship with six tractor beams and two salvagers to go in after the rats had been killed, efficiently gathering the loot and salvage, and a hauler for missions that have so much loot that a salvage ship can't carry it all.
I don't think it's possible to do PvP with more than one or two active ships, as it takes too long to maintain a watch on the char windows and to do things like target and operate weapons, but in PvE missions it's possible to run two combat ships. In mining I can easily run all nine, and in advanced mining one of them is just a passive command boost ship anyway.
So why am I pissed about the nerf of unsubscribed training? Because it was a nice, friendly feature that encouraged us to reactivate accounts if for any reason we let them lapse, and CCP lied to us and then spun it 3, 4, 5 different ways, finally letting the cat out of the bag in a dev post that it was done "for business reasons." Translation: money. OK, but anyone at CCP who made that decision in the expectation of getting more money obviously doesn't play the game and doesn't understand the dynamics of how players use the game features and reactivate sooner rather than later to get the benefit of that one training step that may have completed while the account was expired. It's going to reduce CCP's revenue, not increase it, so the whole thing is wacky from start to finish. The reasoning is wrong, the nerf was extremely user unfriendly, and the lies and PR spin were unacceptably offensive.
Instead of nine accounts subscribed almost all the time CCP will now get maybe 2-4 on average from me. They took the shine off my Eve experience and I find it distasteful to send money to a company that not only lies to me but is also stupidly self-destructive in their apparent motivation for the change.
But it gets worse... Quantum Rise nerfed missiles, and I find missions no longer practical, nor will I invest a year of training for battleships of other races to run missions again only to see them eventually nerfed, too. Enough is enough. Quantum Rise also brought a ninja change in how corp standings with factions are calculated based on members' standings. This resulted in an unexpected loss of faction standings in our POS corp, something that will cost 450 mil to hire a contractor to restore. Thanks but no thanks. We're not going to operate POSs anymore. I used to pay all the POS costs myself, for the whole alliance. Now I have almost no pressure to mine ice or generate ISK to buy expensive POS supplies, so it's practical to reduce the number of active accounts I pay for.
Thanks, CCP, for helping to break my addiction.
It has never been possible to train chars exclusively with unsubscribed training, so we're seeing yet another post by someone with an uninformed opinion, someone who doesn't play Eve or knows very little about it. Unsubscribed training only ever completed the current training step, after which reactivation of the account and logging in were necessary to start another step. And if you knew anything about this you would know how difficult it was to plan training so that each time the account was allowed to lapse there would be a fairly long training step active.
CCP said they noticed an increase in unsubbed training. They never said they researched it and found that it was being done for char farming. You're making that up. You're also confused about ISK farmers and char farmers, the former having been a reality for a long time but the latter only alluded to by people making guesses to sound like they know what they're talking about.
CCP seems to have failed to notice that an upswing in unsubscribed training could easily have been attributable to 1) the season, with ppl returning to school, and 2) the worldwide financial crisis with attendant layoffs and fears causing ppl to cut back on discretionary spending.
... 3) their own 'fault' by changing gtc's (making them more expensive).
well, anyways ... my last account expired today - gl to ccp to come up with a big enough incentive to return AND forget the behaviour they showed.
ps: i would have stuck to eve (most likely with less accounts, but nevertheless) if they would have made the change in a decent and appropriate manner ... not just plain stupid lying about the reasons for the change.