Abyss sites just aren't worth it

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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Look you’ve all been here before, another “hurr new account posting prob troll” post. Hopefully anyone who feels that way doesn’t feel the need to continue reading and thus doesn’t need to reply.

Bottom Line Up Front: how the response to unforeseen circumstances can be more important than the circumstances themselves.

The Abyss. Seems to be a pretty controversial forum topic, but it’s also part of what drew me back to Eve. The premise is, fit a ship that’s just good enough to run a site just hard enough to be a challenge and require some planning, but be achievable if you put the effort in. I put the effort in. Dozens of hours over the last few weeks. I was excited to log in, I was excited to get my ship into the green.

The problem is, it’s all based around Just Enough Time. Today my internet connection (the best I can get where I live) had just enough of a problem to disconnect one account, leaving the other perfectly happy.
By the time I’d tried to relaunch, rebooted the client, failed to launch again, and rebooted my pc, there was no longer enough time left to finish my abyss site, and away goes my ship. Fair enough, but there was literally nothing I could do about this, so surely there’d be the ability to show this on the logs. Right?

Obviously a quick google search has proven that to be completely wrong. Bottom line is, reimbursement denied, better luck next time champ.
I get that Eve is a game about uncertainty, loss, and non-consensual PVP. But I feel as though losing a large investment of ship and pod to “random internet circumstance” means that the reward for taking on that risk must then be suitably high, right? But it’s not even. Abyss does not (on average) pay out enough isk per hour to beat out any of the other high end PvE content. My friends have been regularly topping my earnings running data sites, ghost sites, hell even just shooting at sleepers seems to get a better average return. So why does this content exist?

I’m now at the point where my sole earnings since coming back to Eve are -600M isk, and this was even though I was “being safe” and running lower level sites to practice for running for T4 and T5 filaments. I don’t feel any particular motivation to log in to work the loss off when I know if my internet has any further issues I’m out of isk and out of luck. I’m not on what I’d consider a ‘suitably’ bad connection either. 100MBit down, 40 up.

I’m not new to the game but I have been away for 4 years, and have never really been engaged enough to post on the forums. But now I’m older and crankier and I have to wonder how I justify forking out real money for a subscription, when the result of circumstances I could not change and had no warning about was in essence, “I’m sorry to hear that, please continue to play Eve”.

I love the idea of the abyss. I like the min-max nature of having just enough time to run content, but when there’s a risk of loss that isn’t able to be planned for, and then totally unable to appeal, I’ve just lost all my enthusiasm to continue giving it a go. I cannot in good faith recommend eve to any of the people I’ve talked to about it, because no matter what you do, you’re at the mercy of more or less random chance, and there’s not even an inkling that support will back you up. I feel as though when you’re an MMO that still charges a subscription for anything more than basic content, you then have to have a really good look at how you handle things people can’t control, and how you justify asking people to fork the money out.

I don’t want Eve to die, but look at the daily logins. It’s pretty easy to see they’re down (lower than lowest point at 2016!), people are angry with recent changes, and veteran players are unsubscribing. I thought to myself “hey I don’t want to see Eve die, so I’ll re-sub and give it a go, and see how I enjoy it”. My answer is simple, “I don’t enjoy it”. But it’s not even because I lost my ship. It’s because ship appeals aren’t trackable and thus can’t be verified. It’s because I could go to literally several dozen other games where I could have my internet drop out and get blown up, and none of those options cost 15 bucks a month.

I can’t help but feel that with even something as trivial as “we’re sorry that happened, here’s your one-time-only no-questions-asked reimbursement”, Eve would have at least one more happy player. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. I don’t personally see a point in risking a multi-billion isk ship on the chance of internet shenanigans, and thus I don’t see a whole lot of point in continuing to support inflexible policies.
I don’t expect CCP to no-questions-asked refund people’s ships whenever the internet has a problem, but surely the cost in “people who have lost motivation to keep playing” far outweighs “people who are trying to screw the devs over for the sake of fake internet money”. Am I too optimistic?

I’d like to hear from anyone else that’s frustrated at the current state of the game, and whether anything can be done to improve the ability of the devs to discern when someone’s had uncontrollable circumstances happen, and when someone’s just refusing to admit they messed up, and pulled the pin.

Maybe I’m not suited for the eve environment, maybe I never was. Maybe my concerns are invalid. But if they’re not, what can we do about them? How do we improve things? Eve occupies such a unique niche in “online game with looser rules” and I love that it exists, but feeling like nobody has your back when something unavoidable happens is just a straight up negative player experience. As I read in another similar post, even being blown up by pirates is better than this.

No you can’t have my stuff.

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CCP will generally reimburse if the issue is their fault but they have no control over and no responsibility for the internet connection between you and their infrastructure. If you have flaky internet - build an occasional disconnect into your business plan. If that makes the activity unprofitable, do something else.

Eve may not be the best choice if you experience frequent disconnects and like to shoot stuff that shoots back. Loss is real. The question is, can you earn enough to cover your losses and still make a reasonable profit?

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don’t blame the game, CCP, or “the value of abyssal sites” because you have internet disconnexion problems
If you play tennis with a broken tennis racket, would you blame tennis rules and your opponent when you miss the ball and loose the match?

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Of course ! There is nobody else I can complain of !

I would complain about my opponent, who unfairly plays with a non-broken tool, and about the tennis rules that do not take my own case into consideration.

And if they start they answer by “Dear sir”, I would answer “did you just assume my gender ?” because that would be a complete disrespect of my own snowflake !

It’s pretty obvious to anybody with a working brain that “adapt” means my opponent must adapt to me !!! That the rules of the tennis must be changed for me, cause if they don’t then they are obviously rigged !!!

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First off I agree CCP’s customer support can seem rather unsupportive at times. While I do appreciate that they get back to you, I have found their willingness to listen to be very hit or miss.

Perhaps it’s not meant to. You have all those other isk resources to help make sure “you don’t fly something you can’t afford to lose”. Just maybe CCP created the Abyss just to be a challenge, just as a test for people who don’t have the time (at that moment) or inclination to PvP just then. Something to log into the game and run in a short time frame. I agree it’s frustrating to lose a ship through no fault of your own and it certainly isn’t fun to know you’ve lost weeks of work due to the power company’s hiccup. Be honest with yourself though, you knew those were possibilities when you activated that filament. It’s what you agreed to when you entered.

However this part I quoted is where the issue lies. By looking at EvE as “isk per hour”, you’re missing the best part. I try to look at my EvE session with 2 simple criteria: 1) Did I have fun? and/or 2) Was I isk positive (for example hauling stuff out of wormholes to make isk is rarely “fun”, but still necessary). If I get a ‘yes’ to either of those questions, then my time was worth it. Even if the answer to both of those questions was ‘no’, does that one time mean I should leave the game? What about, “well there’s still tomorrow” attitude? How about taking the loss, learning from it, and putting yourself in a position where the same loss is completely inconsequential.

Perhaps you should only run the Abyss when you have one account running, do the other things to make isk so that you can afford the loss without issue and use your multiple accounts (as we all do) while doing those.

Last night I had a friend log in who I haven’t spoken to in a long time. We just hung out talking and getting caught up, didn’t make a single isk. One of my best EvE sessions in a long time…

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BTW I’m bursting in outrage at the sole idea that CCP did not consider people without a computer when designing their game !!

#compulesslivesmatter

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Running Abyss sites are fun when you challenge yourself.

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“Partaking in an F1 race driving my family car aren’t worth it”

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“painting competition is not worth it for blind people. CCP you screw up !!!”

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So maybe dont multi box when running abyss, that might help your connection a little.

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new account posting prob troll

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I totally get your frustration. Problem is this is a slippery slope, insofar as your reasoning could be applied to any loss from a disconnect. Disconnected in WH space and can’t get out? In the middle of PvP or at a PvE site?

These are all probably pretty common occurrences, and while Abyssal runs are a particularly egregious form of this problem, they’re really not all that different. If you reimbursed for loss due to disconnect in Abyssal sites, you’d kind of have to reimburse for every other disconnect-related loss.

I suppose CCP could do that if they want, but my guess is they don’t want.

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If they’re not worth it, then why are enough people running them to maintain the current price levels for abyssal loot?

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The title of the thread is bait.

Abyssals are fine and most certainly worth it.
OP is just salty he has a poor internet connection and lost a ship.

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I don’t run any of the Abyssal sites because of that reason. Also the odds of success with that content is set up to favor the house, not the client.

There’s lot’s of other content in-game that’s less costly with more favorable chance rate of success.

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So many people trolling this guy…

I don’t understand why there are so many trolls in this game’s forums. It is certainly an outlier when you take other games into consideration and compare their averages per post.

Being mean to other people on the Internet doesn’t make you awesome, and certainly won’t make your life any better. I don’t know your circumstances (and I don’t want to know), but you’re not improving your situation this way. I can guarantee you that.

As for the OP: sorry to hear it, man. This is a problem common to every MMO - you can lose your connection at the worst times -, and made worse in EvE because our losses can and often do sum up to millions or more of Isk, not to mention the time invested in the game that seem wasted.

Take a break from EvE. Come back whenever you feel like it. For me the disconnection issue is not as bad because I chose to burn frigates in PvP instead of focusing on the higher-end ships. I’ll fly a battleship or BC now and then to grind standings and stuff, but PvE is not appealing to me, so my time shooting rats is kept to the absolute minimum.

Best of luck out there.

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I see what you’re saying. Broadly I do agree, but even something as trivial as “all accounts get a ~50% reimbursement once” (or twice) per account would be a good policy IMO. Enough to have random internet problems mess you up, say hey that’s not the content for me, and then go do something else. Not enough to fully replace your ship, just a middleman “hey that’s a sad time, have a loss cut and better luck next time”.

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let me summarize:
OP wrote a title for his post which was" Abyss sites just aren’t worth it". Because due to troubles with his internet connexion he lost his ship.
And you don’t understand why we seem to disagree with him???
what’s the link between the value of abyssal sites (as the post title suggested) and internet connexion problems?
if OP had used a title like “CCP customer service is not very nice”, we could have discussed. But with such a title, sorry, no.

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OP, I don’t run Abyss sites for this reason. It only takes a single disconnect and BOOM. Death.

edit: also, don’t take your losses personally. My 600m cruiser got blown up a few days ago. Find something you enjoy, and the ISK will follow.

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FYI don’t waste your time with trying to get a reimbursement for any kind of disconnection or game failure related to abyss, they don’t care. Went the ticketing route after losing connection then having the game randomly crash on me, safe to say the support was laughable. I keep an up-time monitor on my computer and there was no connection loss to anything except EVE. Abyss can be very lucrative, but most people will lose more than they gain on average.

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