An Open Letter to CCP from Current and Former CSM Members on the "Prospector Pack"

Newbros losing their ships because they are not enough prepared. People getting ganked because they are most likely doing mistakes.

Newbros dont leave the game because they dont have a Retriever, they leave because our only development for them was an overgloryfied NPE Hollywood Trailer, that spits them out after 15 minutes,
Into xyz Ship they bought in the store, they will lose hours later again.

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By using their credit card to get ahead. this is a real ā– ā– ā– ā–  arguement for making players that dont just pay and have things appear out of the ether.

These packs should NOT exist period.

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Out of all the ships they could pick- They chose a MINING BARGE…

Mining is the dullest, most boring form of gameplay in eve. And CCP in their wisdom thought THAT was a great way to get new players to stay?!

Offer new tutorial missions, fly as a ā€œcadetā€ for your chosen faction, complete missions against NPC’s, get rewarded with modules and ship hulls (which is already a thing for the training agents). Go beyond that, get ranks, upgrade to frigates/dessies, with fitted modules for completing major ā€œend bossā€ missions (like, great you found the terrorist hideout, now wipe out the base and you’ll be rewarded a Cormorant). At least that takes TIME, and EFFORT. Not a credit card swipe.

Go beyond that and have nullsec Alliance missions following the same path. Get bonus rewards for forming alliance fleets (50%+ ISK or something) get people out there running sites (not locked down by instanced gates or abyssal sites). Enemies roaming your space now have something to fight- Join the local NPC rats and kill the local null fleet. Get rewarded by the pirate faction etc.

There are SO MANY WAYS they could reward players here- And they chose the laziest option.

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Somewhere in Iceland a marketing person is crying in a corner going ā€œI knew we should have gone with the Gila packā€ā€¦

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CCP Swift;

This letter was posted 9 days ago. The Pack in question was part of an event that is over, and so the pack is no longer available. That you did not respond until now tells us literally everything we need to know. CCP stonewalled on this. You just waited for the pack to make all the money it could for you, and then you come here saying ā€˜we have removed the Prospector pack’.

Stop insulting us, Elise. We’re not nearly as stupid as you guys want us to be.

They didn’t. They got what they wanted, and once their sale finished up as it was always planned to, they sent Swift here to make nice and give the players little headpats so we’d feel placated. Because they believe we’re stupid enough to not notice.

Out of all the ships they could pick, they chose one that the recent changes place in high demand, that can only be used by accounts they are already getting money for (Omegas only. No alphas in barges, you know).

It wasn’t about getting new players to stay it was to suck down as much money as they could from them before they quit.

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Yet here you are…still. If you were actually PO’ed, you would leave. There was more REAL outrage and action during the Blackout than this…

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Already cancelled. I don’t have to pay to voice my anger, and I’m not gonna have to pay to write the much longer version of it on INN.

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I bet CCP Swift didn’t even write it - it probably came from the PR department.

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more likely the lore department , the same as when hilmar wrote the apology to the summer of rage

I mean how many retriever packs could they have sold? 30? Just have a GM char buy 30 retrievers off market and trash them. They could do it on stream, it’d be a big hit.

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Wow, dude…

PR give you this to copy/paste?
I am taking a bit of a break. I want to see this game continue another 19 years, but I just don’t see it with the current ā€œleadershipā€, I don’t have much hope. When I heard that CCP is treating the game like a game in sunset mode/milking customers until it dies completely, it reminded me of a few other games I rode out til the end.

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The packs are aimed at newbies. What, exactly, is any newbie in danger of ā€˜winning’…given most of the oldbies can’t even decide what ā€˜winning’ even means. Is there an imminent danger of some solo noob in a Retriever taking over the entire universe and threatening all the trillion ISK industrialists ? One would think so, judging by the fuss here.

The blog about it still says the sale of these packs would be until the 31st. It is only the 18th. (I understand time is meaningless these days)

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no the blog post specifically refers to the two packs that are currently up still

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Hmmm… Solid point. I would still suggest that they didn’t plan on stopping the pack on a Friday and not when the event was over.

I’m not saying that you have to accept it as good enough, but evidence points to the fact that they did cancel it early.

This is a great response. Thanks for all your hard work and dealing with these difficult situations.

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i think we can all agree things like this shouldn’t happen in the first place. and when we take them down we don’t say ā€œwe have removed the Prospector pack from secure.eveonline.com UNTIL this program is in placeā€. like come on you took it down, keep it down, don’t ever bring this back. and to make it worse its still up on other sales apps like Steam. As of right now its just down on eve stores to make players happy.

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I interpreted that as they have a plan to restructure the path to growth in EVE and they tipped their hand out of context.

For now it goes on the pile of ā€œFanFest sure has a lot of checks to cashā€

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i hope. i’ve lost of lot of optimism recently and its turned into wishful thinking and hope. i’m concerned for the future of the game and i want it be successful but this trend is dark

edit for clarity: I hope your interpretation is right, I hope ccp is reflecting on this and their plan to ā€œrestructure their path of growth.ā€

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What part of that was hope? I suspect they could very well be overdrafting the account, to continue the analagy.

He said we will have to wait to understand.

I better understand.