Profile: Mopar63
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You know with Fanfest coming up, an economic upgrade in the works as well as refinements to Faction War I am kind of suprised to see that this is the most talked about issue:

A long overdue and much needed change will be put in place with the Wednesday, 15 October 2008 patch. Ghost Training, the continuous skill gain on accounts in an inactive or expired state - will no longer function after Wednesday, 15 October 2008. This practice upsets the balance of the game, and capsuleers who actively put their time and energy into working on their characters will no longer be unfairly affected by those few who have not.
 

The jest of this is fairly simple. Until now a player could set a really long skill, say one that would take 90 days to run. stop payment on their account and then come back in time to run the game with the new skill fully trained.

Now before I even begin with the company side of this issue, how is this kind of setup fair by ANY stretch of the imagination to people that are actively paying and playing the game? We pay our monthly fees and play along and yet someone that decides they want to enjoy the ebenfits of play later can stop paying and still reap the benefit.

Or how about from the company point of view. Players are not paying because they do not like the long skill training but want to play when the skill is done so they drop the account until they get what they want and then start paying again. The game maker recieves no income or support for the account but is expected to let the account benefit from this in game?

I can honestly say I see less "whine" when I take the "wine" trail on the weekend with my wife. This is the most CHILDISH and STUPID, yes I said STUPID, out cry from a gaming community I have ever seen. Wait let me back that up a second, the majority of the community really does not care it is just a vocal child care group that is demanding on this.

The outcry for free gaming actually started a bit back when the gamers complained about game card prices from ingame purchases. Basically what a player could do is earn in game money and then use it to buy game cards to pay for accounts. This allowed people, the card sellers, to get ISK by pyaing real money, for the cards and was sanctioned by CCP.  CCP went a step further and let the game card sales use the same free market model that is used in the game, in other words the players through supply and demand and pure greed set the prices. CCP made only one change, it converted from various lengths of time on time cards to a single 60 day card.  This change caused the market to flucuate and the outcry was instantaneous, fix this CCP! Wait this is a free economy, yet we want regulation from the company and our freedom as well. Sorry folks cannot have both.

The truly sad part of this was all the gamers that threatened to quit playing if they could not get easier access to free gaming. Now think about that statement and the pure level of stupid that is needed to have that mentality. If you want free gaming there are tons of them but EVE has NEVER been a free game and yet now you want them to make it easier to be free for you?

Well now Ghost Training is the new cry for how dare CCP make us pay money. The truth of this entire argument however comes done to power gaming. Here is the issue, people want to have three or four accounts so they can power game and yet cannot afford this. So they use loop holes and the time card market to get the extra accounts without hurting their budget. Now the simple solution would seem to be cut back on your active accounts. I can understand two accounts but even that costs less than taking a date to dinner each month. If you cannot afford that then you do not need to be gaming.

How about even looking at this from another angle, these power gamers must have some fairly powerful systems if they two or three box or run multiple PC as once to run all these accounts at once, if you can afford all the hardware the game cost itself is MINOR at best.

Oh but wait other will say I do not run these all at the same time. Rather I want to train more than one character at a time to have different ones for different situations. Thats cool I understand that and the game does allow for up to three alts per account. Oh sure it does they cry but you can only have active training on one account ata time.

Wait a second is the same not true in the other major MMOs. I mean in WoW you cannot run the experience of two ALTS on the same account up at the same time can you? How about LOTRO can you have a Guardian getting experience while your ALT Minstrel does as well. of course not, so WHY should you get this in EVE?

In the end I feel this points to a much simplier problem. We are playing ROLE PLAYING GAMES and yet so many people want to find a way to WIN. They do not truly understand than an RP game is not able to be WON, it is to be experienced. They gloss over content and blast through missions with overkill firepower to rush to the magical end game win. In doing so they miss out on some great material and the feeling of accomplishment when they finish that TOUGH mission by the skin of their teeth. They do know the excitement of the first name module they can add to their ship or the thrill of really enjoying their first cruiser.  Stop looking for the win, RPGs are not about the end game but the journey, take your time and enjoy it.

As for those demanding change from CCP or they will quite, my advice is PLEASE DO! Get out of my RPG and my forum! Let me enjoy the game they way it was intended that within your narrow vision of free power gaming. Also BTW I do NOT want your stuff, I will eanr my own and have a balst getting their without your need to rush forward. I will happily pay my $15 a month to play EVE and if I need a second account I will pay for it with my cash as well. 

CCP has done more than any of the other pay games to give FREE service to it's players. It has never charged for an expansion and shows no signs of it in the near future. The game keeps growing and yet my bill does not, that sounds like a WIN in my book.

Go now Ghost trainers, walk into the light and forsake this mortal coil, go the way of the dead and let the living, and paying players live in peace.