Dev blog: New Alpha Training Option

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Maybe that is the point that programmers need to stand up and give the boss the :fu:t2:
Instead of a half baked fix you could stand up and say I want to do a proper job, which will take 4 hours. If they don’t like it tough love. Worst they can do is fire you. But if all programmers stood up for a better job the status que that exists now wouldn’t be there and we would probably have a lot less sort of finished goodies.

Edit: the issue doesn’t just exists in programming. I have seen it in every type of business. So I can relate. It would just be nice to see more people stand up to the :gorilla:s running stuff who think a mediocre job is example when a much better job could be done with more time. If I remember from my business classes and general reading, it comes from the short-sightedness of most businesses only seeing today and maybe tomorrow but lack the ability to see next week or next year - last I check we don’t have any omnipotent humans in the pool.

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If a quick fix is 2 hours and a proper job is 4 hours sure.
If a quick fix is 2 hours and a proper job 400 hours, expect to get laughed at, told to do the quick fix or get lost. Oh, and probably never get hired again due to the terrible recommendation you will get as someone who will ruin the company for the sake of perfection.

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Why is it that you talk about fixing things and most people agree with you.
While I go and say most of the fixes could happen with a proper rewrite/updating of the code so we can move away from the crazy POS Hentai Tentacle mess and all the programmers come out of their pocket protectors and get upset that I don’t understand how how their job is?

Maybe I should have my eyes checked because I don’t really see much difference in what we are asking for! Maybe it is my word choice(?).

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As far as programming goes. They can do anything. Make any mechanic they want. And they should make any mechanic they want.

I am also getting very tired with the spaghetti code excuses. They have already proven capable of handling spaghetti code with the citadel expansion.

It doesnt matter any ways. Spaghetti code is deal-with-able. Google maps works so well because google has an entire office building of dudes looking at pictures of street signs and typing in what they mean. Why hasnt CCP had 1 dev documenting code for the last 5 years?

Over there at CCP they literally devote 20 percent of their paid time to doing whatever they want. This is how we ended up with Valkyrie. Maybe that should change to “rewriting our spaghetti code se we can actually develop this game” for a year or so.

They have no viable excuses to say “We can’t.”

As far as plex prices go its generally better to have them down. Players want to play for “free” and CCP makes more money when we need more plex to fit out our officer velators. It also drives more players to use game mechanics to make isk, therefore strengthening the economy and putting more people in space. This drives up content in a meaningful way giving them and us a better game which retains more players and increases plex purchases and account subs. I don’t really see a whole lot of incentive to drive the price of plex up.

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Just as a real-life, related example (eg., not a ‘feed industry vs engineering’ debate):

I once ran a small software-based company. There was an ‘add-on’ package I could buy that would add new services. I checked it out, liked it, but saw many flaws and issues with the user interface/services. I arranged to buy the source code and the right to modify it.

The code was 340,000 lines long. It took me 2 months just to read it over, make notes, and feel I understood what all the code/variable/function interactions were. Then I started modifying. I tested everything I did on my separate test system. As soon as I would post it on the active server, 2 times out of 3 something unexpected would bug out. I would stay up for hours, sometimes days, debugging the problem (which generally only happened when several dozen people were doing different things with the code, not when I and one volunteer hammered on it).

By the time it was ‘fixed’, the code had just under 1.5 million lines, it had taken 6 months, many bugs, and tons of overtime on my part. I literally could have made notes myself on the things I liked about the original program and written it from scratch in half the time. Of course, at the start, spending 3 months to write some code I could buy for 800 bucks seemed silly. Oh hindsight, where are you when we need you? (This was a quite small code package btw, compared to today’s games)

Anyways, to make a long story longer: Yes, CCP should fix bugs and ‘legacy’ issues. Yes, they should update clunky old code. No, they shouldn’t use ‘legacy code’ as an easy excuse. Yes, legacy code is a horror, especially after the people who wrote it have left. No, you can’t tell in advance how long/hard it will be to re-code a legacy section and integrate it back with the rest of the code.

The general rule anywhere I have worked is: "Unless it is really, really broken, or you can show me in advance that it will make a profit, then don’t try fixing it.

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It’s because of the timeframe.

Take my personal example. The “correct” way to implement what they were asking for would take 2 months. The “patch” way of handling it took 2 hours. Rewriting the entire system would take a team of developers 2 years.

That’s the kind of time difference you deal with when you talk about a “fix” vs a “rewrite”. And when push comes to shove
 it’s a cost benefit question. Eventually we may reach the point where customers (us) are willing to have a two year pause on new features in order to let the CCP developers rewrite their code base. But I don’t think any of us are willing to accept that for something like the alpha skill training stuff when they have a useable workaround like the injectors without losing years of added features.

We were all pretty pissed at how much time for features was lost because of the walking in stations project. Would we be more okay with the same pause in development when the payoff isn’t even a crappy WIS implementation
 but instead would be
 the exact same game we have now except with behind the scenes code that is easier for their developers to work with?

Let’s face it
 we’d be pissed. And that’s why developers don’t get the opportunity to “do it right”
 because it takes too long for demanding customers
 like us.

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Also a fix moves the game on, a rewrite just takes the whole group working for however many months to get to exactly where you are right now without anything else progressing.

There’s a reason why full rewrites are rare.

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I think they should spend 20% of paid time figuring out how to deal with the legacy code instead of happy fun time.

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Ccp needs a culture shock.

They act like they are Google or Facebook or some elite silicone valley tech company.

News flash, you aren’t

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Okay. I am runny through my memory -

Are you familiar with Brain-in-Box? One CCP Dev took two years to rewrite the system that handles skills affecting ships. It is a much improved system but still has some hiccups. Hopefully the will have time later to make fixes.

When it comes to the POS tentacle code molesting the rest of the code base, the only thing I can think is close to 100% free is the graphics and Brain-in-a-Box.

The static hanger - removed as it took to much developer time to fix every patch. QA work.
CQ - removed as the code was old and fuggy. More QA work.
I have no issue with those going bye bye so more important stuff can be worked on.

My understanding from a lot of the stuff I have read and experience back when I played - Blizzard between expansions for their major titles would rewrite/recode entire sections of their backend over the course of development years because stuff they wanted to do wouldn’t work under the current system. So yes, it is doable and yes it takes time. Where is EVE code in relation?

When you break EVE down
The systems I am aware of are -
Server Code-
Client Code-
Graphics -
Brain-in-a-Box-
POS MONSTER-
Upwell stuff
And probably a bunch of small stuff we don’t see.

I would personally love to see one of the community members left sit down and write up a blog about where the code is at.
The CQ blog said that the CQ was one of the last pieces preventing them from moving to a 64bit client! What else is left?

So my question (as all we can do is guess and assume) what is the current state of th code? Will it be easier to update/fix/rework once the POS is gone? How much longer does CCP feel that we have to wait tell that molesting section of code is chopped up and BBQ’d?

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Am I missing something here -
Alpha injector will cost 20 Plex each, limited use one per day
310 days of training will require 310 Alpha injectors @ 20 plex each

When I went to school (admittedly that was over 40 years ago so math may have changed) 310 X 20 = 6200, not 5500.

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5500 plex is the cost to go omega for 330 days which costs less than buying 310 days of alpha injectors. It’s pretty much always better to go omega than to buy these things, unless you are buying one at a time as you get the isk and can’t save up for the 500 plex option.

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I pretty much quit when ‘pay to get ahead’ was introduced.

Year long skill plans are the only reason I still pay my annual sub.

Oh well, the game does belong to CCP so I suppose they can thrash it any way they want to.

Perhaps they should just target their advertising at really rich folk who are willing to pay to get ahead.

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They have been doing exactly that for a year or longer?

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According to the blog these new injectors can only be used on the Alpha skill set, which is capped at 5 mil SP. So a maximum of 100 injectors can be used to train Alpha skills, at a cost of 2,000 Plex.
Skills 5,000,001 mil to the new 20.5 mil limit need to be trained with either Omega time or Injectors.

So looking at this from a new players point of view - I can spend a few months training up Alpha skills for free (or pay roughly $100) to try out the game, then pay a premium price to train up additional skills to see if the game is worth continuing to play for free


My other query lies with - It has been stated these injectors will be available for purchase from the plex store via Account Management, at a price yet to be determined.

If the price is more than current Plex prices why would people buy them when it will be cheaper to just buy a plex bundle and purchase injectors via the New Eden Store.

If the price is below current Plex bundle prices, will it not open up an avenue for ALL players to purchase Alpha injectors cheaper than they could buy normal injectors in-game?

Can I use skill points from an Alpha Injector on Omega skills?

Yes and no. Alpha Injectors add skills to your unallocated pool where they stay until they are spent. As an Alpha you cannot apply those points to Omega skills, but, if you become Omega at some point with unallocated points in your pool they can be spent on any skill. The CSM was trying to find a way to abuse this but so far has not succeeded, please let us know if you do :blush:

Scenario - Omega with 25 mil SP - Purchase Alpha injectors cheaper than buying Plex bundle - Inject SP (becomes unallocated SP) - Apply SP to Omega account - Cheap SP.

Pretty sure that becomes a way this idea can be abused


Finally, this whole thing should be based on Extractors turned into Injectors - This keeps with CCP’s original promise of “Only SP already available in the game will be used for injectors”. Adding SP from nowhere devalues SP players have spent years training. Fixed price for extractors (CCP make money) - Player driven price for injectors (maintains value of ALL SP)

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Pretty sure the plan is to offer the “instant gratification” crowd something - Yes it is cheaper to buy an annual sub with Plex than it is to buy these injectors - It is also cheaper to just pay for a years sub than it is to buy enough plex for a years sub.

You can only use 100 of these new injectors before having to pay for Omega time, at which point if you wanted to train skills faster it is far cheaper to use normal injectors
 (dependant on how CCP prices Alpha Injectors via Account Management)

Get the pricing wrong they open up a whole new system for all players to train skills cheaper - Which will end up killing the injector market.

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exactly, you can play a few hours and pick up an injector, rather than play a whole bunch of hours and save up for a month of omega. Also they effectively replace training for alphas over 5m sp as the new alphas will be able to use up to 20mil SP, but can’t train outside the base alpha 5mil.

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You are forgetting the Alpha skill set is being expanded to 20 million SP which means the new injectors can be used on that whole range. Alpha’s just no longer train beyond 5 million SP.

Also please expand on your abuse scenario, remembering that you can only consume one a day, and can only use them while an alpha, meaning you aren’t getting any training. So
 all you are doing is replacing your training queue with an injector that is actually less than an optimised queue. Hence the difficulty of abusing it. (And why it doesn’t break the SP from nowhere part, since it’s the alpha version of a training queue)

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I didn’t forget anything, you might want to read my post


I would have thought my explanation was pretty complete. If these injectors are cheaper than buying them the current way (made from existing SP off other players) and anyone can use them to gain unallocated SP, any can gain 50K cheap SP per day. These aren’t like normal injectors, they seem to be fixed at delivering 50K SP when used, nothing has been mentioned about diminishing returns, only that they can be used if you upgrade to Omega.
If nothing else, that breaks the current extractor, injector market.

Not sure why it was left to the CSM to find exploits for CCP’s latest money grab and failed to see such an obvious one.
This of course as I said, all depends on how CCP price the injectors via account management - Too expensive they won’t sell - Too cheap, they become exploitable.

The fix is quite simple - Alpha injectors can’t be used once a character reaches 5 mil SP, the Alpha training limit.

Chainsaw Plankton, how many Alpha pilots do you know can make 60 to 80 mil in a few hours? Remembering, you are looking at players with less than 5 mil SP

According to the blog - Alpha injectors can not be applied to Omega skills without first paying for Omega