And really this isn’t me taking a snipe on people who enjoy a lot getting accounts or anything. People can do what they want.
The alt mechanic as implemented in EvE does create an out of game unfair playing field. So the winning that takes place being proliferated by someone forking out their money has an effect on the sandbox experience.
Well if Isk/hr is your goal, then I see how you see it that way.
But the actual effect can be attained through people in corps volunteering to do the boring work.
I think if the culture within corps was less “Oh it cost me X to set this up, so the sentry guy only gets less than an equal cut” and more “Boring jobs pay more” then it wouldnt be such a big deal.
But hey, its all about personal gain, so the same motivator that means “■■■■ jobs arent worth doing” also means “Do it all yourself, keep it all”
Why is that a problem ?
Well, isnt it right that Omegas should be able to leave a bigger footprint on the server they pay for?
2005 player me, 2019 player you. Both of us have trained Caldari. I have 200 mil you ave 5. We both jump into a frigate. How many skill points do you think is required to max out that frigate, and how many skill points do you think I am allowed to use on that frigate?
Sounds like new layer envy to me wanting all the toys now and not get how to actually play the game first.
Here is my take on this and I ll start from the very beginning, so take your coffee and enjoy the ride.
The greatest innovation of CCP game design wise was the creation of a sandbox narrative but also the different application of the individual unit (the player) and its role within the sandbox. Where am I getting with this? I ll demonstrate.
EvE doesn’t have many meanings. Its what it is as a game and ultimately it is(or was depending how you look at it) about groups colliding with one another directly or indirectly over a multiple of ‘incentives and interests’ that the developer provides through game play mechanisms. However, what and how you make of your time within EvE is what you shape the sandbox to be. This is something that most people forget about and think that EvE is what we make of it when everything we do within EvE shape each other’s experience. This posed a significant problem for CCP since they didn’t want to have a game that is affected from a player base that would be giving up on EvE very shortly and either not coming back altogether or coming back on selective intervals.
Thus, they created the SkillPoint system based not on leveling/grinding but on real time. This innovative design, despite its many problems that poses from a game development standpoint, offers for the setting of a continuous sandbox experience, a solution that made EvE the most unique MMO that was out there for many years. Why? Because SPs in real time training offered a natural curve that had to be completed and thus made people specialize.
Specialization in EvE online meant that people were forced to group up. And the more the challenge of the task in hand the more the grouping or commitment(quality) of the group would have to be. Simple example, if i don’t have an alt/account and I do mission running in a remote location, I am forced to give meaning to a hauler to bring me the stuff I need(since its harder to train for both things and hell I might not want to do it) . If I dont have an alt/account and I am lacking a logistic support pilot, I am forced to group. Let me also remind you that the HS tradehubs came to be because of the change of the travel system but also because they were L4 staging areas.
With the proliferation of alts, came enabling of smaller and niche groups and destroyed specialization and thus multiple playstyles that the sandbox could sustain but doesn’t. Whale players who suddenly had an edge. The above examples are one of the many where alts make the player base to be alienated but you must not forget that the changes in the PLEX system and the edge current alting mechanics grant, backfired on CCP as well. Right now there are whale players who are integral part of their alliances be it in PvE, resource harvesting or even PvP and go around enlarging their ISK wealth while paying their subs only via ISK because the proliferation is so big that we have SP farms and such.
The game didn’t become easier or safer(up for a debate but different post) the game just enabled smaller groups and individuals that were never destroyed by PvPers. Why? For two reasons. 1) Because there isn’t competition in EvE as there has never been enough growth of the game in terms of new members. 2) Its harder to destroy/win a group that has whales as suddenly you must recognize that the destruction you must place on them should be at least the potential of their SP farm.
This statement is one of the most interesting things I have come across in my EvE career. The fact that CCP at some point thought that the current iteration of SP injectors/alts would solve that problem is giving me great alarm. First of all I dont believe it. Second of all even if we are to believe that they thought that would solve the problem then game development wise it was probably the biggest blunder by CCP that makes me question the CEO. I ll explain why and I know written expression may look like it but I am not flaming right now, I am trying to be constructive.
If a pay to win mechanic such as the one we have now is easily available across new players then how come they didn’t know that it would be redundant since veterans could just do the same? Cause they did. And not only they did but also it led to newer players with the blunt introduction of an already challenging game to be unfair behind a paywall that at best would make it a level playing field in terms of game-play accessibility. And since the game is a PvP at macroscale(no matter what you think about it) , veterans enjoy something that ISK/real money can’t buy outright, which is network.
And bringing these pieces together we have the ultimate reason of why alts are an outright pay to win system that destroys the sandbox experience. From the moment new players enter a proliferated game where veterans can grow stronger through their network(big alliances and such) utilizing the edge that real money gives them and perpetually running in ISK, any new player that might want to even progress would have to fight for access or join them. And because CCP has not done a macro PvP update in ages(or meaningful way) it is natural for new people to join the herd and protect their RL investment into the game by joining these big already alliances. And since whale players concentrate, this proliferation, as any economic system, leads to so called ‘concentration of power/wealth’ or in a refined word: inequality. This pay to win mechanic is so abundantly clear that you have top alliances raising even the bar of what people they will accept. A prime example is how many more players easily can afford Titans and the loss of them.
To give you an analogy CCP is the Ivy League universities and it just gave its top of the line career advancing degrees for a hefty price. Guess who is gonna benefit? The small emerging middle class and definitely the old money. And the old money will recruit those coming second and the rest will have an even greater gap to compete with.
Now going away from the real life implications I am going to bring it back to EvE online and tell you that this game is about a design-fair sandbox experience. Or it should be, since me and a whaler’s euro/dollar/whatever value is the same for CCP for a month both time wise of what we receive but for what we pay. And if you can’t understand why people leave when they realize it isn’t so(due to the network and ingame political edge the old players receive). Then its no wonder why this game is losing traction.
The solution is simple and it stems from two applications that I can think of.
The first is for CCP to enlarge the ingame item count SIGNIFICANTLY. No just having triglavian ships added wont cut it. Because ships are balance depending and situational in the current EvE meta. Unless they change PvP in a macro scale/design alltogether. I am talking of adding more tiers in technology, more ammo types/products, more necessary resources needed for manufacturing and so on. Also it would be appreciative to enlarge the SP count as well.
The second is as discussed here by CCP Falcon as well
And where capital/supers I would add late game economy structures, PI and so on as well.
Why have I been quoted and tagged in this text wall?
@CCP_Falcon
So how would you feel about injectors being tier based on character age. I feel that sort of system would allow for new players to still inject and catch up a bit. While also helping returning players make up for lost time. A lot of people stop for real world reasons that they have no control over like going on tour in the armed forces.
I know a lot of peeps will just say no as they would like to see them gone completely.
But if they are here to stay I feel there is value in this suggestion and it may help make up the mind of someone thinking of returning.
Will it make CCP more money than the current system?
Depends on how the sp is tiered I would say and CCP would have the data to work that out properly.
If they do then it mustnt or thats how theyd make it work.
I get what your saying but that’s not necessarily true. It also depends on what their vision for the system was and there is always room for refinement etc.
Over the past year of playing I had noticed the said “sandbox narrative” as mentioned above does seem to be shifting with all the changes being made.
What could really effect the skill extracting farms would be how a character earns skill points.
If it was going to the method currently on trial “Skilling Spree” it seems Eve Online is moving away from the Sandbox MMO and turning more towards an RPG MMO as the Skilling Spree promotes Character progression that requires forced gameplay to increase skill points.
Their vision for the system is: make money.
Thats the only reason its set up like it us.
Yes they do things to make money but there is more to it than that.
And it does not mean they got it right either.
I would go into more detail but I’m tired melting and on my phone at work lol.
you have right - caps should be caps not f. ■■■■ ccp made them.
and should cost.
No they should not, but we understand as seasoned developers how insanely inefficient it is to try to combat that.
Edit this point really needs to be addressed.
Allowing people to run an insane amount of alts is highly abusive to the game, and detracts from the value and purpose of corporations (or what ever game they are accordingly to their game). You stating this publicly is encouraging this abusive behavior, and if i was your supervisor we’d be in my office talking about it.
From a senior designer’s position, we try to disencourage this behavior by making the content against multi-boxing. this at the moment is the most efficient way of dealing with it. It seems however that the UX designers at ccp do not really feedback much on this point and help the content designers fix content to resolve these issues. Something hilmar really needs to look into.
Skill extractors need to be removed from the game, period. This was a bad move. An attempt at greed that was covered up by “catch up” as its propaganda filled selling point.
You need to take a better position as a designer and start looking at reducing the requirements to access ships. This is a far better way of dealing with “catch up mechanics”.
Though any seasoned developer should know that.
The Injectors themselves are an ok option, but should be moved to real money values (out side of market).
Further more, they should significantly increase the sp from what they do, based on sp ranges themselves.
For example, Small will give 1m sp up to 50m, medium 5 m sp up to 100m, etc.
Play with the values accordingly, but it should be something like this, and should be a point of coming in the game and going to 50m sp for 500$ or so.
Why is it abusive behaviour?
As a designer with 18 years of experience, I confirm this statement.
They try to sell it like its a “catch up mechanic” But realistically, its only a catch up mechanic for what we call in the industry as “cash cows/whales”.
If they wanted better catch up options, they’d increase the SP value on injectors or simply just reduce the requirements for ships/modules in eve.
This is actually a very good question.
On a smaller scale lt will only really impact two or three unique players (the one who farms, and the one he kills or helps).
However, when your running 5 or 10 accounts your farming isk at a rate which is not natural. This has significant effects on the people around you, your corporation, your alliance, and coalition which in results effects other entities of said sizes.
why? Imagine your in a war, and your enemy while having the same active population as you, out produces you in isk because of 300 alts they have farming. Sure they could be killed, but ultimately that isk is consolidates somewhere, and the flow streams forward.
I know entities in eve that run off these mechanics, making 100-200b a month off such things. This is inflating the economy, shifting the tides of power, which is in return shifting the natural life/death cycle and ultimately the monopoly over eve that entities have.
The effects are very large scale, much more then you’d ever think. Even in some cases (like the above) 100b go’s to friendly or proxi entities.
Besides, why should someone be encouraged, or allowed to farm at rates which are against the native designed and targeted progression rates of a game.
To put this in perspective, since eve’s primary form of progression is ultimately isk (as sp progression is more passive) lets compare it to wow’s “XP” system.
If a person comes along and completes the recent expansions 10 levels in 30 minutes, What will happen? the answer, it will get hotfixed.
Why content has not been fixed in such as way to stop this from happening in eve is a mystery but likely is a result of hilmar sitting off in the corner try to find ways in making numbers look stable when they are far from it.