CCP's "Dark Patterns" surrounding New or Recurring Events need to change

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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Time and time again, when a new, or recurring, event is added to the game CCP extends the Event Track with new goals and rewards. This practice is harmful to the Health of the players, and thus to the EVE community as a whole.

Take the current Gallente Election event as an example. Up until today, 9th of April, you only needed to Collect 1000 Event Points, but got extended with an additional 500 points and new rewards.

Gallente Election Points/Rewards [Total, not incl. repeatables]:

  • Mining Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Security Missions Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Exploration Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Drone Fabricator Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Campaign Trail Track: 250 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Faction Warfare Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Homefront Track: 500 Event Points + 75 Political Favors + 1 Presidential Favor
  • Trading Track: 500 Event Points

Having spend the time to complete several tracks on many of my characters, I feel cheated when you, CCP, extends the overall event track with new goals and rewards and not taking into account the time and hard work someone may already have put into the game - in my case I’ve done enough to earn 1500 Points already or I wish as the last 500 got send into the Ether.

My experiences

[Mining] Say you’re mining with either a Pioneer (this in used in estimates), or Venture, with mediocre skills. It will take a long time to mine the 300k m³ that is required for completing all 5 stages of the track: 300k m³ divided by 540 m³/min = 555.56 Minutes = 9 Hours and 15 Minutes.
And it’s not helping that, atleast was the case in the beginning of the Event, 4 hours after DT (more or less) all of Gallente High-Sec was vacuumed of all Scordite - mostly by large fleets going from system to system. Meaning that for anyone trying to Solo harvest any grade of Scordite were/is next to impossible.

[Exploration] Data sites already has pretty tough competition and is even worse with Event Sites added on top of it. Although the loot from the Drone Iteration Caches were nothing to write home about - only slightly more than what you’d get from a regular Data Site. Although you’d only need to Hack 25 sites it would, unless you’re lucky, take several days to even find that many sites.

[Mission] Without a doubt the easiest track to complete. 25 Missions, with No competition and Level 1 missions is a breeze for anyone not a newly created character. Only difficulty would be to find a nice system with multiple Agents of same level and having to wait out the occasional 4H Decline Timer.

Adjusting for my experiences doing activities for the Event Track across 3 characters per account:
Mining: 9H 15M x 3 = 27H 45M
Exploration: 2-3 Days x 3 = 6-9 Days
Missions: 1-2 Days x 3 = 3-6 Days
In estimation a total [Min-Max] 10-16 Days of actual time spend doing activities.

Proposed solution

Event Tracks are true from Start to End. No more adding, or “hiding”, extensions to the track one week before it ends. If parts of the Rewards only unlocks for the final week of Event, that I have no issue with. However, no part of the Event Track/Rewards should ever be hidden from the Players and Collection of Points should also count towards the “locked” portion of the Event Track (Rewards unlocked as final week is unlocked).

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Just ignore that events.

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You had plenty of opportunity to plan ahead, CCP gave us advanced notice of a track extension every time they did one. I never understand why people complain about having more game…

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Right but the extra stuff is just for extra stuff, it’s not like they’ve made it so you need more points to get the shitty campaign bus, it’s entirely optional, I don’t get why that’s an issue.

edit: What I will say though is that the expiry dates on the boosters and cerebral accelerators is absolutely dog chod. April 23rd. I have a +12 in with 11 days left, that brings me to the 19th, 4 days to use them and I have biology 5. At least one expires and is useless to me.

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I agree 100% with your post…

There never use to be any Event ‘Extensions’… They’ve only done this recently for the past few events.. Also the points counter use to continue adding to the total amount after the ‘Grand Prize’ was claimed.. They’ve also just changed that recently for the past few events…

For example in this Event, if the actual ‘Grand Prize’ reward was the Campaign Bus, then the extended reward track should have prizes that pertain to and complement the ‘Grand Prize’.. For example a custom ship skin and module that’s made specifically for the Campaign Bus…

EDIT:

Also just wanted to add why I think they’re doing ‘Event Extensions’ now…

In the first week or two of the event, the log-in numbers are extremely high, then the log-in numbers drop as the event progresses… In order to get the log-in numbers back up, they implement ‘Extensions’ for the final week of the event…

Not to mention that also creates an excellent opportunity for them to sell more game packs… It’s all about monetization being acquired through longer periods of larger log-in numbers..

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When did they give that advanced notice?

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The first day of the event, in both the video they put out and the dev blog.

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“some surprises.”

is a very broad term and can mean anything. Nowhere does it say that the event track will be extended. If they really want to keep the “rewards” for final week hidden, they can do that by just displaying a “?” and have a text in-game on the Event that the rewards will be revealed on the first day of final week.

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I’m sorry that you can’t understand “extended reward track” to mean that:

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It was posted in the Launcher ads a couple of times…

3-19-2026

The final week escalates the event with some surprises.
The Gallente Election is underway! | EVE Online

4-9-2026

The reward track for supporting your selected candidate has been extended by 50%, from 1,000 to 1,500 points.
Gallente Election: More Action & Rewards | EVE Online

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Quit whining and go run some more level 1 missions for your second officer probe launcher per account.

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Nothing wrong with asking for complete transparency from the beginning.

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There is complete transparency though, no matter how many times CCP says it, you still blew past them saying it and are trying to blame them for your lack of attention.

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I disagree, respectfully… the extensions provide additional, incentive but not the major goodies. Also , one could front run the collection of Political Favors (just like mine Festival Ice during Winter Nexus) in anticipation.

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You know what I did? I completed 1000 track points before the extension. Then I completed a couple of challenges after that but did not claim the rewards. Once the track got extended I claimed the rewards and automatically I was up 100+ points on the extended track.

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