lol in what way are players gaining momentum to force a roll back?
I didnât say force a rollback, I said gathering momentum with the âintentionâ to roll back the mechanic. Here is the most prominent example, but it is popping up in a variety of places.
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A few years ago, a close relative was diagnosed with cancer, for which I had to provide care for many months. I use a separate e-mail for managing my many gaming accounts which I rarely check while totally inactive. Probably a year went by before Iâd have paid close enough attention to catch the extremely brief leadup to this change.
Sounds like something that could be avoided by playing in a corp with other actual humans who share the responsibility of management, instead of a corp consisting of multiple alts.
That being said, CCP failed from the start when they allowed citadels to become something solo players just threw out in space without much thought.
Citadels were never meant for solo play, instead they were supposed to be conflict drivers and cooperation efforts.
Encourage interaction between groups of players: Partly covered before, we want our new system to greatly favor player interactions via cooperative or competitive gameplay. This not only means structures should matter to be considered primary targets, but also promote public participation if needed.
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At long last we agree on something.
Perhaps we are simply entering a new age where the game industry ceases to hide the fact that people who play their games in depth simply donât have a life.
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We canât allow players who arenât even playing Eve to hold the game hostage.
Yes, I understand some of them are on relatively short breaks, and some of them have to deal with real life issues, but many of these players disappear for YEARS. And a significant portion of them may never return. So are we really going to say that we canât move forward with the game because we might screw over players who prepared for going on anextended break (possibly never to return) in a PvP-centric game with a harsh death mechanic by simply leaving all their crap in a destructible station?
Yes, I do feel sympathy for the guys who planned according to the rules at the time and will come back to their stuff gone. But we also canât stop trying to make the game better because it might screw over some players who might not ever even come back to the game.
We are not doing these guys a favor by taking their stuff.
So, I heard a guy saying that we were doing players a favor by taking their stuff. The asset grind is why they quit the game in the first place, and we were freeing them of this, blah, blah, blah. Sounded a lot like a technique of neutralization frequently used by criminals -specifically, deny the harm. Personally, I think whatâs happening to these guys is crappy, and it removes one of the hooks keeping them tied to the game (see the guys who try to bring closure to their relationship with Eve by divesting themselves of all assets and characters).
In fact, you know what this reminds me of? This reminds of all the cork suckers willing to let people die for the good of the economy. And the only reason I find this change acceptable is because this isnât real life and no one is going to die. Theyâre only going to lose âphysicalâ assets in a game where the most valuable assets (by far) are friends and player knowledge.
CCP could have implemented this change better.
Iâve heard people say that CCP should have grandfathered in the assets of people who were already on break. I tend to agree with them. However, Iâm pretty sure that this would have been easier said than done. You canât protect everyone by just manually triggering asset safety for all the assets in structures that hit the abandoned state in the first week. This would exclude the guys who have assets in structures that are currently being maintained, but get abandoned months or years from now. Moreover, it would protect the assets of active and recently active players that failed to deal with their crap. Thus, implementing a proper solution would have probably taken a fair amount of work.
Moreover, the dearth of loot would have removed a lot of the incentive for clearing out the vast quantities of structure spam that have built up over the years. Iâm speculating here, but I suspect that CCP looked at all the extra work they would have to do, and decided to throw active players a bone at the expense of players on break.
No going back now.
CCP probably should have instituted some grandfather mechanics, but they didnât, and no one is going to die. Moreover, in spite of this dickish implementation, I do think this change is good for the game. It deals with a long standing player complaint, and is a content driver. We could have taken a better route, but we most certainly shouldnât throw the car in reverse. It wouldnât benefit the game, nor would it unfork the players who have already lost their stuff.
CCP cannot reimburse the dropped loot.
If they do (officially or unofficially) adopt a policy of reimbursing players, they should do the same thing that they already do with disconnects -only restore the stuff that didnât drop. It could have economic ramifications, but more importantly, I guarantee you some players would exploit it to duplicate assets.
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They could have designed it so that only structures built after patch release fall under the new rules. Imagine coming back after a hiatus, only to find your stuff is totally gone. Happy customer ? Hardly.
Thank you to the few csm members and candidates who did voice their opinion in this thread. You take the risk of answering and being honest about your opinion. Appreciated.
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look Iâm not a bad guy but i think people should store their stuff in a npc base in case of hiatus , wen i left goons i left a dread and a 1 bil clone in a blood raider base in npc null , i did it because i thought it was safe
this is one of my IRL friends , he is small fish , he is happy , Iâm happy for him
i understand it suck to some guys , but then again private struts can die , npc ones cant
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Just logged back in, as I play on and off all the time. A station I own with like 20b+ in assets just got destroyed. (took me months and months) Although I did get a message saying the items went to asset safety, not sure whatâs going on. But kinda lame if itâs all gone.
You may be alright, itâs only Abandoned stations where it doesnât go to asset safety, stations killed in any other state will do as they always did.
I think I got a message saying stuff will become abbandoned in 2 days, and exactly 2 days after that I got wardecced it seems. So I guess itâs all gone. Kinda weird that I got an asset safety message then though.
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So Iâm a mean pirate ganker etc. etc., but the more I look at the circumstances here, the more I think that this change was really bad.
In EVE, itâs reasonable to assume that things will change. When you train a new skill, or get a new ship, you donât have any guarantees that patch changes wonât re-balance their effects/stats at some point. But at no point in EVEâs history has something been outright taken away without some kind of compensation.
Looking back at how citadels were introduced, nothing was ever mentioned about losing items in storage like this. There was a set of rules with regard to the relevant game mechanics, and if you understood and followed those rules, you could expect a given outcome.
The set of rules with regard to citadels was that upon destruction, assets would go into asset safety. Now, Iâm not arguing whether this set of rules was good to begin with (personally, I think it wasnât). Iâm just saying that thatâs what the rules were, and if players followed them, they could expect specific outcomes.
Players understood that if they left assets inside of citadels, they could recover them using various means upon the citadelsâ destruction. Simple as that. There was never a âbut weâre just experimenting here, so take these new mechanics with a grain of salt!â thrown in. It was just âmeet your new citadels, if they blow up, your stuff is safe.â
Players go on breaks all the time. Players who went on break while having some stuff stored in citadels were under the understanding that when they came back, they would still have access to their stuff in some manner, even if it could be inconvenient to recover it. And then CCP does this, which completely turns everything on its head.
Just notifying players with e-mails is not enough in this case. Some of these players are simply unable to react to the news, because theyâre sick, or deployed, or their house burned down, or whatever. It is unreasonable to punish them in this manner if they went on hiatus while following the rules of the game as they were back then.
I think CCP really â â â â â â up here, to the point that if people started suing them over this, they might (and should) start losing. What they should have done was apply asset safety to all assets that were stored in citadels before the patch went live, and the new rules would apply to all assets stored after.
Like I said, I love killing and ganking and looting and destruction, but I just donât see how this change is reasonable.
I think that none of us still truly understand the scope of what happened here. This is going to sink in slowly, and I totally envision CCP approving thousands of reimbursement petitions in the near future. Which in itself is scary, because weâre going to see some pretty horrible market inflation.
To add one important thing:
If CCP sets this as the new status quo, then going forward, all players have to assume that their in-game possessions are not safe under any circumstances. We have to assume that one day CCP might decide to delete NPC stations with everything inside, or take away our charactersâ skill points, or remove the money from our wallets. This would be unprecedented in the history of EVE. By effect, players will start to feel much less invested in the game, and will spend less money on it. Our of all changes that CCP can make, this is the one that might actually truly hurt the game, because CCP is telling us that nothing we do actually matters in the end, and they can and will take away our stuff at will. Yes, I know that the ToS state that CCP owns everything anyway, but there is still the silent agreement that they wonât just do that willy-nilly.
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Uh, no. To successfully sue CCP you would have to establish damages, and you did not lose anything except a vague âthis game is less fun for meâ.
A court might interpret a player spending money on subscriptions and PLEX under the understanding of current game rules, then going on a break, and coming back to a whole bunch of their stuff gone, differently.
Keyword is might, of course. Like I said, this is unprecedented. I canât think of any other similar situation. CCP states in their terms that they donât delete your stuff when you stop playing, right? This might not sit well with some judge.
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Why? Spending money on a subscription only entitles you to Omega status on your account for 30 days, and CCP provided the thing that was purchased. At absolute most you might be able to argue that the game has become completely unplayable and sue for a prorated share of your active subscription time based on your remaining paid days at the time of the change, but nobody is going to sue CCP over $10.
Also, remember that the premise of âyou own your stuff in EVEâ would make PvP destruction a criminal offense. You could sue someone every time they destroy your ship, sue anyone who scams you, etc. Establishing this premise would instantly end every single online game where items can be destroyed.
I canât think of any other similar situation.
Then youâre not thinking about it much. Forget the idea of âstuff being deletedâ because none of the âstuffâ in question is owned by the player. What youâre talking about is a major gameplay change that makes the game no longer enjoyable, and many games have had major changes over the years that have been unpopular with their players. And I doubt youâll find any cases of players successfully suing a game company because they donât like a change.
CCP states in their terms that they donât delete your stuff when you stop playing, right?
And they didnât. CCP did not close the account, delete the characters, etc. All that happened was that in-game objects were destroyed by other players, just like other players could destroy your station/MTU/etc while you are inactive.
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DISCLAIMER: I did not lose any stuff and am not directly or indirectly affected by this new measure. However, having given this careful thought I am convinced CCP did the very wrong thing.
The crux of the matter is simply this: the game publisher stated on numerous occasions that asset safety is a thing, no more, no less. In other words they made a PROMISE. All that happened in the game since those statements can safely be considered to be in consequence of those statements.
- Players who left valuable assets in player structures may not have been very wise according to some players but many of them did so in the belief based on CCPâS statements their assets were SAFE.
- There are many reasons why players can be on a hiatus, reasonable or foolish. None of those reasons are anyoneâs business, in fact they donât matter. Asset safety was not âguaranteed in a number of casesâ but in all cases.
Many of use feel uncomfortable with this new development.
- Apparently one cannot trust CCPâs statements.
- Apparently returning players - with or without lots of assets - who did not fuel their structures during absence should be punished with considerable losses.
- Some argue only 8 or so people lost really big amounts in these first days of pinata looting. Hence itâs âonly 8â players who are dramatically affected. Yes, what is 8 people on a total player base, right ? The ones who lost less than those 8 will nevertheless feel their loss too. They all got shanked.
- One twitch-show host stated an hour ago that the focus should be on current players (and thus create content for them) and not on potentially returning players (and thus turn their structures into free loot for active players i.e. content). While I could agree with the focus, two wrongs donât make a right. Assets of inactive players should not be âcontentâ, with the exception of abandoned structures.
- The age long complaint was about old towers and unused player stations, not about what was inside themâŚ
For me this is very much a matter of ethics and trustworthiness, however much twisting and turning of words and half baked excuses. Does a given word matter at all ? Do we, as players and customers, make a rookieâs mistake for believing the people who make the official promises ? How does this affect the companyâs image ? A given word should be binding, especially in a game where itâs easy to keep that word.
I do believe a rollback is in order, as there is no other obvious way to refund players who acted in good faith. If the rights of a part of the player base are trodden on, we should all feel very concerned and involved. The asset drop is the strangest move Iâve ever seen any game publisher make in decades.
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Agreed, but if itâs class-action, that $10 can quickly snowball to a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
Iâm not necessarily saying that such a lawsuit would turn out to be successful, just that I donât discount the possibility of it happening.
I did mention this in my post above. I know that CCP technically owns everything that happens in the game. However, because of how novel this is, itâs not unreasonable for new legal precedents to be set.
This isnât in the same category as something becoming not enjoyable. Players were playing the game under a specific set of rules, with specific guarantees. Then they go AWOL for a while, only to come back to their time investment being nullified because the rules changed, even though they never had a chance to consent or opt out.
Just because the players are utilizing legitimate in-game means to create all of this destruction doesnât mean that CCP is excused from all responsibility. After all, CCP are the ones who enabled the possibility of this happening.
You canât always get away with a by-the-letter technicality. They might not have deleted the assets, but the changes they implemented amounted to the same effect.
Also, your MTU example doesnât work here, because the rules specific to MTUs clearly stated that assets inside are not permanently safe. However, with regard to citadels, CCP did state that the assets will be safe.
I am trying to find some quotes, and to also find some official statements from CCP stating that you wonât lose your items if you stop playing/paying for a while, and then come back. Will paste them here once I do.
PS: I once again want to make it clear that I didnât lose anything from this change (nor has anyone I know). I am trying to approach this from an unbiased perspective that deals only with the merits of the change itself. Right now, it seems to me that this change was fundamentally unfair.
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But it isnât novel at all. Many games have had situations where, say, your character is built to use the interactions between two skills/items and that interaction changes in a way that makes your character no longer effective. And I am extremely skeptical that anyone has successfully taken legal action over it.
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Thatâs a terrible idea. This would be a catastrophic loss of flexibility for the developer, as any commentary at all would become permanently binding regardless of how the game evolves in the future. The only way to escape this would be to end all communication whatsoever with the players. Do you really want that to be how they handle things going forward?
The simple fact here is that CCPâs initial design concept involved 100% asset safety. The game changed in a way that made this no longer an ideal situation, and so they made appropriate changes to handle the new state of the game. And the health of the game for active players is always going to take priority over inactive players who may or may not ever return to the game.
This isnât an interaction or efficiency change. This is straight-up your stuff being gone after you come back to the game, even though you left with the understanding that your items would remain intact if stored in a specific manner (e.g. NPC stations, null-sec stations, citadels), and not in a manner which had a clear element of uncertainty attached to it (e.g. PoSes, anchored cans/structures, ships left in space, in the hands of other players).
This isnât like training for the Ishtar, and then the Ishtar being nerfed. Youâd still have the skill points and the ship that way.
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