No. There’s a kind of brain virus going around and you have it. Take some time off from a “way of thinking” for a moment and actually think about things. Try it. You might de-zombify.
Spare us the hyperbolic nonsense. If anyone’s life was ruined by this change then they need to seek professional help for unhealthy attachment to video games.
So, like I said: anyone who doesn’t agree with you has a “brain virus” and isn’t thinking. Very reasonable of you.
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I think we all have seen who dictates the rules of the game after that blackout experiment. Better not bother them and their botting economy. Their assets will be perfectly safe as long as they fuel their citadels, even if someone destroys them.
There is nothing hyperbolic about having a strong sense of achievement that came from time and effort and in some cases $$$ (not necessarily much, but still). This is a situation in which you did not set yourself up to lose your assets as you would fielding a ship in battle where you know you could lose and you are entirely responsible for that loss (ie. merely undocking is a PVP liability)
Merin_Ryskin might be arguing this way (although I’m not making claims or speaking for another person) because in general, the direction this game has taken over the past 10-12 years is toward greater safety, with nerfs to risk and non-consensual PvP. As a “griefer” (although I’m actually not - just using this term for amusement), I understand the frustration. I’ve had to play through countless nerfs to wars, ganking, theft, scams, etc etc.
I’m one of the first in line to argue against making this game more safe (you probably remember me from the old forums). But I think that what’s at stake here is something different. Not implementing this change in this manner wouldn’t have been some kind of “boost” for the carebears at the expense of the pirates, and in its realized form, this change isn’t really a boost to pirates at the expense of carebears either.
There are no winners here, I think.
Not hyperbole, just tongue-in-cheek.
If you had lost what the op had lost, I’m sure you would just say to yourself, ‘oh well never mind it’s just a game’.
Uh, no. If your life is actually ruined because your imaginary internet spaceships exploded then you have major problems. Annoyance, sure. Disappointment, sure. But your life is ruined? Seek professional help.
This is a situation in which you did not set yourself up to lose your assets as you would fielding a ship in battle where you know you could lose and you are entirely responsible for that loss (ie. merely undocking is a PVP liability)
Sure you did. You decided to leave your assets at risk, either explicitly by seeing the news of the change and doing nothing or implicitly by deciding to stop following EVE news and accept whatever bad things might happen to your stuff in your absence.
Actually I would. Because in the end nothing in EVE means anything, and even if CCP shuts down the servers tomorrow I will still have my happy memories.
(Not that I would ever lose that much, because I’m not going to pay real life cash for PLEX just to make my wallet number as big as possible.)
CCP are the winners.
THAT was hyperbole, but you know what was meant. The meaning is clear - the argument is intact regardless of the minor hyperbole (which is illustrative and mostly in context of “EVE Life” anyway)
CCP promised asset safety when they introduced Upwell. This is a ■■■■■■■■ argument.
See:
I’m not going to accept any “you should have read the patch notes/dev blogs” argument. CCP should not design the game so that this is mandatory. It’s fine that someone logs in to find themselves unprepared for trigs dropping on them if they didn’t read patch notes because they didn’t lose ALL their assets - this isn’t functionally different from players suicide ganking them - but “no asset safety in abandoned structures in k-space” is totally different.
This is the part on which your argument hinges on, and it doesn’t reconcile. It ignores everything regarding social norms and contracts, business practices, laws, et cetera.
I can’t imagine a society in which parents send a child to school, and something happens by effect of the school staff, and the school defends itself by saying that it’s the parents’ responsibility to be consciously and explicitly monitoring the their child’s existence at all times, therefore they’re not culpable.
Extreme example? Yes; games aren’t as serious. But insofar as games are concerned, if we’re to accept that it’s our obligation to always stay on top of them and plan for every possibility and event that might happen, and if we don’t for any reason, then that means we don’t care and deserve what happens, then games like MMOs become not worth playing. And that’s why this change is so novel and unusual. I really can’t think of a single instance of it happening anywhere else, and I’ve played dozens of MMOs. And the reason it doesn’t happen is that there are very few benefits to be had from it by anyone.
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I don’t think they are the winners.
Anyone returning and finding their assets gone are unlikely to stay.
There’s also the issue of trust, not easy to repair damaged trust.
The argument isn’t intact at all, because the point of the argument is that a morally unacceptable level of harm has been inflicted on the people who lost their stuff. If it’s merely “meh, stuff explodes in EVE” then the argument for sympathy is far less compelling.
CCP promised asset safety when they introduced Upwell.
And anyone who isn’t an idiot knows that it was merely a statement of design intent at the time, not a legally binding promise forever. Asset safety was always subject to change at any time, just like anything else about EVE.
I’m not going to accept any “you should have read the patch notes/dev blogs” argument. CCP should not design the game so that this is mandatory.
Nonsense. The argument that EVE is the only game where reading the patch notes is mandatory is utter nonsense, and so is the idea that CCP should constrain their development options with the need to only make tiny adjustments that even people who don’t bother to keep up with the news can continue playing without any losses.
they didn’t lose ALL their assets
Neither did the OP, unless they were a complete idiot. I bet they still had some stuff somewhere that they can use to rebuild. And if not, they’ve already admitted to being addicted enough to spend thousands of dollars on RMTing ISK so they can just buy a new start.
No, it’s a basic reality of game development. Online games change all the time. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in major ways. The only way that EVE is different is that it’s one of the few games with permanent item loss, in other games you just get screwed over by a balance patch and all of your items might as well not exist because of how useless they are.
then games like MMOs become not worth playing.
Depends on your opinion. I’m still playing (and paying for) EVE despite CCP clearly demonstrating that this is their attitude.
Not necessarily true. Getting good loot is one motivating aspect for cleaning up old structures. Another was removing all timers. People still would have burned down structures knowing they could do it in one sitting.
That is not conventional, or even accepted, design methodology. Nerfs happen to overpowered items, but those items are not rendered useless, just balanced, because rendering them useless is bad business practice. Game devs don’t intentionally try to shoot themselves in the foot like that.
Like I said, I can’t think of a single time that this happened in another game in such a significant manner, and then the game went on to do well as a result. SWG experienced something similar to this when they nullified a lot of player progress and assets with their “NGE” update, and we all know what happened next. Can’t really think of any other instance. If you can, please share.
They’ve reimbursed for all other “loss” changes they implemented before, or had grandfather mechanics in place.
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There’s nothing nonsensical about a grandfather mechanic. This would allow a radical mechanics change to take place (ie. unconstrained design decision) without penalizing those who didn’t read the patch notes/dev blogs (initially) or who weren’t present when the changes took place even if they were aware but could not be present for reasons outside their control.
People still keep giving them money.
Just look at some of the above responses. For some reason, just because it is EVE, we are supposed to tolerate bad practices and just keep hoping for “improvements”.
In the end, CCP have full control over their own product. If they wanted, they could kill the game tomorrow and sell it. Do you think the playerbase of Wildstar deserved what they received? Didn’t they also invest a lot of time and money into the product?
Move on to other products, if this one has grown sour. If you are right about your assumptions that this was a bad move, CCP will notice this in the revenue. Assuming CCP is well managed, this should result in adjustments.
Keeping a badly managed ship afloat just “CaUsE iT’s EvE” does no one any favors.
That’s nice in theory. In reality it very often does completely break existing items/classes/etc.
Can’t really think of any other instance. If you can, please share.
I can’t, because EVE is one of the few games where something like this is even possible. I can’t even think of a successful MMO that even had EVE’s style of permanent item loss, player-constructed everything, etc. In the average MMO you would never lose all of your assets to a change because it’s impossible to lose anything for any reason.
Sure there is. Should I still be able to deploy minefields if I’ve been playing since 2003? I paid for those blueprints so I should be grandfathered in, right?
Not me anymore! 
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The OP had seven paid accounts. Was it too much for CCP to send out a mail with a clearly phrased warning? They send out so much advertisement for new skins, Plex sales, new content and whatnot. Is it really too much effort to send a clear warning about a change with such devastating impact?
It’s so much of a difference if you choose to risk your multi-billion alliance tournament special ship into Abyssal PvP and loose it in a glorious fight than losing it because you’ve missed to read some patch notes or Dev Blogs.
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