OK, I understand you are far from my understanding what eve is/was/should be that I won’t even try to explain what the game is all about.
Why would I need or want to track my activities if EVE is a sandbox?
If it’s a sanbox then there should be things to do that the devs don’t or wouldn’t expect me to do and if there aren’t then EVE isn’t a sandbox.
MMOs are not the only games that track the player activity, most of the games do and they provide rewards for it. So what are you trying to tell me that according to your understanding EVE shouldn’t do it because that would make it look like a GAME?
read the post above from @Tiffany_Tatum - she got the point
That person gets nothing, they think that because the game is a sandbox then the game shouldn’t track how many sandboxes they have done, or the things they have done inside the sandboxes!
Sandbox or not it’s a game and tracking player’s activities is what games do and EVE is no different in fact it probably tracks EVERYTHING we do, so there is no such thing as “what they don’t or wouldn’t expect me to do”, they already KNOW, we can’t hide anything from them, and the goal is not to spy on us but to help them improve the game, so they have the data, all they are trying to do is make some of it available to the players so they can too track their own activity and get rewarded for reaching certain milestones!
Now if you don’t want to know anything about it, then the easiest thing you can do is to never open the activity tracker!
If a game tracks a selection of 10 things in the game, it puts players on rails to do those 10 things instead of finding out their own kind of fun.
It turns a sandbox where players set their own goals into a linear experience where players are supposed to follow the exact paths the developers designed for them to take.
In a sandbox a player might come up with the goal to visit every system in the game. But if the game already presents a list of goals the player can choose from and this goal of visiting all systems isn’t one of the game’s goals, people would feel like this player is playing the game ‘wrong’.
Achievements and trackers put the free sandbox experience on rails and remove freedom to choose and play how you want to play.
If ccp feels the need to put a tracker back in, make it hidden and only show the “objective” when you almost or have achieved it.
That is not what I was saying.
I don’t think so. I think there are things we can do ( or are supposed to do in a Sanbox ) that the devs don’t care to track.
You seem to think that a video game is like a world like the book 1984 where everyone is tracked. I think not. And if it were so, how come they can’t catch the botters and RMTers?
Why thank you for the insult!
you think that because you play in a sandbox that those who created the sandbox wouldn’t care what you do in the sandbox??? Why wouldn’t they? Because they don’t care what players do in their own multiplayer game?!? You don’t seem to realize that being in the sandbox makes it easier for CCP to track what we do!!!
And this is why you know nothing about this issue. I have never heard of a company that doesn’t care what happens with the rooms, the dungeons, the rifts, etc sandboxes that has set up in its game! They all do, it provides them with feedback! The moment we log in the game starts tracking our activity, you may think that there is a corner or box that you can go that no one can see what you do but that’s not the case.
@Kortanil I disagree with you. I think you are wrong and I think you don’t know what you are talking about, sir.
Help me understand how having an in game activity tracker, with the sole purpose of showering you with gold stars and participation accolades helps CCP track what you are doing when:
When it’s clear that CCP is already doing that on the back end?
The in game activity tracker had no value and added no value to the game. It’s why they are getting rid of it.
Because it had no reward system attached to it.
Anything that we do in the game without some reward attached to it - loot, ISK, LPs, skins, standings, etc - adds no value to the game!
The only thing worse for free player choice in a sandbox game than a limited selection of tracked activities is if the game also rewards players for these grinds.
A sandbox game gives players tools:
- players have freedom to choose to play however they want
A game which gives a limited selection of ‘activities’:
- players are discouraged to play outside the limited selection
A game tracks and rewards a limited selection of activities:
- players are discouraged to play outside the limited selection
- players are also encouraged to grind pointless trackers for no other reason than a reward at the end of the task
I much prefer a game that gives players full freedom to play how they want instead of a game that tells players ‘if you want this unique yellow ship skin you need to jump 1000 gates’ or something similarly nonsensical.
I much prefer an EVE where reasons to mine, fight or haul is given by the economic or diplomatic player-ran economy instead of hard-coded values within CCP trackers and rewards.
The difference is small but essential.
For example players can decide to pay other players 1 million ISK for every jump their hauler makes while moving goods. This is an example of players choosing to interact in a player economy in a MMO sandbox game.
Likewise CCP can also decide to pay 1000 million ISK if you jump 1000 gates as reward for a tracker, but this is an example of pointless grinding because you could just as well do it in an offline game that isn’t an MMO with a player-ran economy.
The only reason you would want rewards for tasks is to flaunt to others how much you have been grinding, but do we really want EVE to turn into a game about grinding mindless repetitive tasks?
Until now EVE has had it’s share of grinding, but it has always been optional and can be ignored. Progression happens automatically and ISK grinding is something that drives us all but can be done however you like, unlike grinds in other games.
Many other games have all sorts of sub-grinds, often caused by tasks. Do 1 million of this activity, find 1000 of that other thing. Kill this boss repetitively with a 0.5% chance of earning this one thing you need for your character.
It’s been years since I played RuneScape as a kid and I loved that game’s gameplay, quests, trading, atmosphere and the dangers of the wilderness. But the game became more and more about grinding, grinding and more grinding to flaunt your achievements with the rewards you got for endless grinding. It’s not a direction I would like to see EVE take.
Tasks and rewards for tasks would turn EVE into a direction that encourages grinding pointless activities for no other reason than ‘the devs said so’.
Sure it did.
The reward? Knowing that you filled in another bubble and attached a line to it!
No other reward, known to mankind, and in the entire history of this world can compare to it.
But this can be said for everything else we do in this game - knowing that we mined some ore, that we destroyed a ship, that someone bought something from us, that the corp/faction standings went up or down, etc.
Apparently you have a general problem with how the GAMES work, and how everything in life works too because they all have some string we have to follow that has a bubble attached to its end!
Some of us actually can make that determination ourselves, and don’t need to be spammed with pop ups constantly saying we are totally awesome owning all space because our miner has done 1 more cycle, and 1 cycle + 1 more cycle is 2 cycles congratulations, you are the best miner Eve Online has ever seen.
Exactly, I agree with that.
Besides… I don’t need a pop-up to tell me how awesome I am, I know my level of awesomeness and it is 10 bordering on 11.
But I never said that we can’t! This part of your reply should have been directed towards those who keep saying they would be forced by the tracker to do this and that!
We both know this was not how the old activity tracker worked and certainly not how any similar trackers work.
It’s very disappointing that this tracker will be removed. Despite the fact that not everything worked there, I sometimes spent time looking at these statistics.
I was very sad that the gate jump counter did not work there. I wonder if it is possible to find these statistics somewhere? If anyone knows, please tell me.
In my opinion, this Activity Tracker should have been repaired and left in the game.
You can check your logfiles. I don’t delete them, so I can easily count all jumps.