TL;DR
Before deciding anything, please read CSM Brisc Rubal shortly explains what PLEX is to CCP, ok?
CCP has no obligation to us, under TOS and EULA to fix things or add content. We get everything as is even when we plex or subscribe with cash. They do us favor when they do fix bugs or add content.
What I propose would add another, possibly quicker way, for us to ask CCP for and get game changes. The only ways we have now, The Forum and The Discord work slow for very rare and small cases only …if anything.
Now, instead of notoriously whining we get nothing, let’s use PLEX to buy extra CCP dev time in NES for implementing player requested bug fixes or new features, with highest priority (vote below).
If this was in place already, the quite a lot of sound and unrealized QoL requests (3300+) in this CCP started thread
would got realized by now. Instead CCP karkur’s bot just tirelessly inflates the backlog beyond any possibility of realization now.
In that thread I linked above, I’ve found at least four requests spread over 5 years period to implement copy to clipboard on item and character names displayed in Show info. Same for corpse names in contracts. I would pay PLEX to get it already done
How it could be executed:
We publicly request new features or bug fixes and vote - Yes/No (preferably in-game or on the forum or some other dedicated place accessible to registered players)
One vote per omega account - this should protect from vote rigging on alpha accounts (I am sorry, but ppl are just ppl )
Any request that passes specific turnover of total votes (say 1000?) and gets more Yes votes over No votes gets its manhour estimated by CCP Devs
Every manhour costs some PLEX and players can pool together and buy off that time estimate from NES with PLEX
When all estimated manhours for a request are sold out from NES, the bug fix or new feature request gets implemented with highest possible priority.
If manhours are not bought out until specific time (say a month), the request get cancelled and PLEX paid so far is returned to players. If the request’s author is desperate enough she can pay for the remaining manhours to save it from cancellation
Characters that pooled their PLEX for specific request get a mention in patch notes in an order corresponding to PLEX value contribution - from highest to lowest. I would avoid exposing PLEX values for security reasons
Manhours bought up from NES could be applied to ships along with ship skins for brag-rights as devmarks. Akin to killmarks. For example as skull icons (or bugs or lightbulbs). Devmarks could follow suit and aggregate like killmarks
Maybe PLEX paid in NES sale (or at least some of it?) would go directly to the dev assigned to the specific request? As an incentive?
I would also welcome, as an incentive to players, if CCP gave back some PLEX (1%) from every PLEX paid in NES for dev time, if player count rises after release of implemented request.
I would grant CCP Devs trust in their honest manhour estimation and their will to start implementing the requests paid for in full without undue delay Maybe I am naive, but still…
I would pay with PLEX in NES for Dev time so they implement bug fixes or new features requests with highest priority
CSM members could verify the legitimacy of manhour estimate and oversee the implementation priority commitment by CCP developers
Edit #2: the order in which requests paid in full for are started beeing worked on, could simply be decided by the moment of last manhour purchase.
Example:
Request A, total manhours cost 10000 PLEX, remaining manhours worth of 1000 PLEX. Last manhour gets bought out at Aug’1, 2023 11:11 AM UTC
Request B, total manhours cost 100000 PLEX, remaining manhours worth of 1000 PLEX. Last manhour gets bought out at Aug’1, 2023 11:12 AM UTC
Result, both request are accepted for implementation. Despite being worth less, Request A gets positioned before Request B in the implementation queue because it was paid for first.
Edit #3 - clarifications:
Point 1. - on The Player Requests
These players’ requests would be something totally aside from what CCP works on its own: like events, and expansions - these stay as they are now.
To make things legally possible for CCP, the Intellectual Property related to ideas and solutions provided would be automatically ceded to CCP free of charge at the moment of submissions, after reading and agreeing to the statement displayed with the above terms.
The development commissioned from CCP, by a group of players who voted in favor and later bought out manhours from NES, would be free to play for all but some of the implemented feature requests would be available for omega accounts only if the change applies to omega gameplay only. I thought that was obvious :sl`ight_smile: - notice what I wrote on incentives in points. 7, 8 and 9. Ad on top of that a kind of personal satisfaction of backing a player request making it into the game …almost like you were a part of the CCP Dev Team hehe …for all to see in Patchnotes
There is also very important thing about the format of requesting bug fixes and features.
It obviously can't be something drawn on the napkin in vague and ambiguous terms
For bug fixes - detailed description of the bug, repro steps, backed up with recordings, screens, client logs (if any), detailed description of expected behavior. Remember, bugs should be submitted to CCP Support first. If you believe your bug report lingers in limbo with no hope of fix or you know somebody else shared the bug description on the forum quite long ago now, then I think this is a legitimate case to finally fix it with the power of our money. CCP has no obligation to us, under TOS and EULA to fix things.
For new features - it must be laid out coherently in clear text and finest details. Include analysis of corner/border cases, game balance influence - positive or negative, player experience/retention enhancement. Concept art, UI mockups. You must show you know what you want and how to do it to fit in New Eden and put your effort in to make it to the top.
Point 4. - on Manhours in NES
As a reminder, a manhour (MH) is an hour of interrupted work by one person. Software development cost is estimated in MH so to fill up this hour with 5 minute gigs, 12 such gigs must be lumped together One MH has usually fixed cost varying from company to company.
Let’s see how much it would be in CCP? 1 PLEX converts to ~$0.04 (avg), not much, I know. According to this stat an hour of (any) work in Iceland’21 is priced at ~$49.44 (avg) so it would be 1236 PLEX for 1 MH. I bet CCP values the work of its developers higher so 1 CCP MH costs x10 more or 12360 PLEX
Those manhours needed to implement the request would be represented by special tokens put by CCP in NES to represent the CCP Dev time, thus CCP’s cost, to implement a specific, voted bugfix/feature request. One manhour could be represented by more than one token to allow for more flexible cost spread over backers. Especially if an estimated CCP dev manhour cost would be that high.
The number of tokens depends on estimated earlier, by CCP Devs manhours needed to implement the request and would vary from request to request. So each request would have its own tokens representation in NES. And two tokens associated with two different requests would be of different type and would not stack.
Those tokens would need to be treated like SP, ISK and boosters in Redeem items panel. Ie. they would not be transferable. See further Point. 6
Point 6. - on Cancelled manhours NES sale or Failed request development (yes, â– â– â– â– happens, be prepared)
This would get tricky to manage or maybe not, …it depends ofc.
Lets pick at Cancelled case first - this is simple:
NES deadline for manhours buy out not met → PLEX paid so far is returned to backers
Let’s stop here for a while. I though about it and I hope you noticed it too: CCP Dev’s already did some work on their part to reach this point - somebody had to commit their manhours to go through player request specification, then look at the code, consult with game director if it is aligned with EVE Online Big Picture and doesn’t break it, art for NES store manhours tokens sale cost time too. CCP does what it does to earn money not to pamper us. So… some PLEX sunk in NES should stay in CCP and those preparatory manhours should be equally deducted from PLEX paid so far and remaining amount returned.
Now to the more riskier part - Failed development as written earlier - â– â– â– â– happens:
manhours got underestimated → deadlines and costs got exceeded → development got aborted
And that’s it All manhours PLEX have already been burned through and there is nothing to release or return to backers. Maybe a month of a game time as a consolation prize? This is the only risk with my idea - so those requests should not be too ambitious …or else
The point of the little things topic, is for “little things” for them to work on in their own time, and if they are small enough that it wont take a whole team to do.
You are right. But notice the age and lenght of that QoL thread. It is 5 year with 3300+ posts and things like I mentioned in OP (or that recent station container fitting bug) are still waiting TBD, somwhere in the backlog. Or not if the poster hasn’t followed the CCP karkur’s guidalines. So despite being small they will probably sit there 4evah
The solution described in OP would give us an opportunity to prioritize that backlog with our hard assets and not just angry demands and get things done imho.
I understand the reluctance to pay for bug fixes or new features when we’ve already paid for omega time. …but under the TOS or EULA CCP has no obligation to us to fix bugs or release new content. It may be done occasionally at CCP sole discretion. (BTW according to TOS and EUAL we are obliged to re-read them from time to time )
So here you are …with an option to request the company properly to do stuff. When you contract a software solution from an IT company, both parties agree to some service terms for fixing bugs. But any new functionality requires additional payments. And that’s fair imho.
One of my suggestions in that thread got implemented. It was to add the ability to simulate a ship when the ship item was still packaged. The addition likely took all of a minute.
The easier it is to implement something, the faster it’ll get done.
I expect if you were to pay plex toward a bug fix or feature, all that would happen is people would get upset because it’s not happening fast enough. Most players have no concept of how much work it takes to implement their ideas.
Seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice I expect it would become a cluster.
Good point, I agree that not everything should get implemented no matter how much money are we willing to pay for it but not knowing the ccp’s big picture or technical feasibility of the idea.
But what with the sound ideas (plenty of them around) which fit neat into the gameplay - like that name into the clipboard copy or corpse names in contracts that seem trivial to implement but might never make it
Hard to say what the solution is, but its not to have a bot crawl that thread. It only receives a post a day on average. A CCP manager could take 5 minutes each day to read it and get a feel for what players request and decide what should be prioritized and implemented using their best judgement.
Indeed, it is insane that such idea even had to pop out. We are already paying the highest monthly fee from all MMOs, often multiple times because multiboxing and there are dozen of p2w and cosmetic stuff you can buy additionally too.
Yet there are multiple annoying bugs that CCP is refusing to fix, I found them in 2017 when I first started (and I doubt I am the first player who encountered and reported them), they are still there in July 2023 and this part of the forum is just trashbin that nobody reads and exists solely to make it seem like CCP care about them game, and that you as a mere player can help improve this game, but they are not and you can’t.
Still I voted yes, because if they actually start doing these things then I am willing to actually pay for this game. Technically I already pay with PLEX (that someone else has to buy right?), but I am not buying anything from store with cash (anymore). Because they don’t deserve. Unfortunately too many peoples doesn’t see it that way and so they can get away with this.
@Elinore_en_Divalone the main problem is in fact that players don’t care. Majority of them never came to forums and those that read and engage on forums are usually only reading threads in Communication Center. It is clear that same thread about some idea how to Ămprove game gets more views when posted first into general chat (and is later moved here with moderator and then it dies off) than the same idea that is posted directly here into the right category.
You can see it from how many peoples voted under your idea. Just 10 peoples total. Nobody really cares. Same in the Little QoL thread, there are barely any ideas that would gather more than 10 likes.
Maybe if more peoples engaged in these idea threads. More people to like them - but I don’t know how to achieve that. Another option could be to post ideas on reddit instead, I heard devs are reacting there and taking that channel more seriously than forums.
Just look at this thread If I was an EVE Online developer nobody even liked it, nobody cares. That is the fundamental issue of EVE, players are sheeps and no matter what CCP does they just swallow it and bleat with joy anyway.
CCP CEO did recently an interview for RPS on Project Awakening and hinted at possibility of letting third party content creators in and directly earn money for their contribution being used by players:
This might tie neatly with possibility of Carbon Engine SDK being released by CCP:
Idk how serious was that EVE Discord CCP answer
safely is to assume not very, but who knows…
There are already internal tools build and used by CCP ArtDevs allowing them use of Blender with EVE assets and endpoints. It was shortly presented at FF’23 by CCP Amino at the end of his segment (@01:00:08)
There is just one step from this being part of tha SDK mentioned earlier.
How does it fit into OP? Those tools could become part of preparing specification and presentation of idea being propised for implementation/integration into EVE Online and not just a wall of text.
This proces should require much work and dilligence from the party proposing a change and subbmitting it for voting. It should be as solid as possible from the beggining to assure best quality from this proposal.
“We live in a world where a large part of the experience is co-created by the people playing the game, but the business model is not a very inclusive setup.”
Who says this is a problem? And what happens if you begin to change this?
CCP CEO has a special ability to see problems where there are none imo. There is lots more to be said about his interview. Cant think of anything positive to say.
And thats a ME problem according to Hilmar apparantly.
If people hate me for something they’re assuming I’m going to do that I’m not doing. Not my problem; it’s their problem.”
I mean he thinks people dont like him because they think he is going to do things he will not. But people dont like him because of the things he has already done and the things he doesent do.
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