The Grand Heist - Now Live!

Ok, this essentially compacts your previous reply to my post, so I’ll just quote it instead.

I do feel I keep repeating myself here a lot over this but,

Have you ever heard of the Star Wars Galaxies MMO ?

It came out shortly before World of Warcraft and was one of your first, typical “throwing you out there” sandbox MMO.

It did so great for the first couple of years. I remember having a real blast, it was sandboxy, it was Star Wars, you didn’t at all feel like the hero at the beginning. anything you did ingame, no matter how small could have some form of impact on someone else or group, if you played smart and had given, no, IMAGINED, yourself a purpose, a goal. You had all the tools at your disposal to research into on your own and achieve them. The sheer sense of reward and long term accomplishment from your efforts were glorious.

Then the first Jedis were unlocked and appeared on each servers, and a lot of balance issues occurred, which led to a lot of moaning from the most vocal pvp playerbase. The problems wasn’t an insurmontable issue at base, and could’ve been fixed with the competent dev team they had at the time.

Yet something else came around that shocked the game’s foundation and obliterated it into something entirely different, simply for the sake of “larger audience sex appeal”, and eventually left it to go die in a corner a few years later.

As soon as World of Warcraft came out, SWG server playerbase began bleeding so heavily, Sony Online Entertainment ordered the Lucas dev team to do something that would fit the current market at the time and modernize SWG into something that could compete with WoW.

What the game got was a complete, and unwarranted overhaul of its core mechanics, and shafted down the playerbase’s throat without warning, litterally overnight, all for the sake of the larger audience, that was clearly going someplace else at the time.

Instead of sticking true, instead of taking an existing game’s strengths and making them stronger and massively advertise and bank on what made it so niche and special and LOVED by its playerbase, they went complete chicken, followed the CEO’s tantrum and overhauled the entire game, and to better advertise it as a simple, “choose your own class” WoW clone. Which effectively led to 80% of its servers shutdown some months down the line from mass player bleed, along with its effective “death” as a sandbox mmo.

Now, after all this, Im not saying this is exactly or even too comparable to what is happening to Eve, or more like, how they’re desperately trying to advertise it nowadays, but it simply reeks of the same panicmode method I witnessed in SWG, and I know for a fact that false-advertising for a game all of the sake of sex appealing to a larger audience, DOES NOT help retain long term followers, nor does it guarantee new ones will even stick around.

It’s like trying to hide your true character with simply soo much make-up and perfume, that in-doing so, will only attract short-term and undevoted relationships

Moral of the story:

Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for the rest of his life.

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We said all that back in 2007 when CCP shifted their goal to “get 300k subs”. You’re not saying anything new nor does it actually apply to eve.

All you’re really doing is spam raging and yelling about how the world is on fire but what you actually mean is that your part is on fire. In the mean time the world is doing just fine because it NEEDED that fire.

Stop attention whoring.

And how did they advertise at the time ?

The Butterfly Effect video promotion.

It was WORLDS appart from current marketing direction.

A couple of year later, we got to the 2011 peak.

So no, no attention whoring here, just stating the facts for what they are.

Dont like it? Feel free to look the other way.

Trying to go for the larger audience dumbdumbs into a complicated and emergent game, will not work, unless you fall in favor of the dumbdumbs and nerf what makes the game complex, emergent and sandbox.

Free isk anyone ?

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You guys keep using words like “VITAL” and “NEEDED.”

So, again, I ask:

Says who?

Thousands of players have now abandoned thousands of hours invested in the game. Their absence should be considered a terrible, embarrassing loss. So many friends…just gone, likely never to be seen again.

But it was vital! It was needed! And still nobody explains why.

Great that things look all evenly balanced and tidy on paper but it sure seems like the health of game was in a better state when it was populated.

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Yes, I played it til they screwed it over. I served on SOE’s version of the CSM as their Scout Correspondent, and I was the longest serving member of the program.

I know what happened there and I am not going to sit back idly by and let that happen here.

Fortunately, it isn’t. CCP is not changing anything fundamental in the game. This isn’t panic mode - the company is making money hand over fist, and they just came off their best year since the company was bought by PA, and possibly ever.

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If you were a forum dweller around 6 years ago you’d know many (me included over the Rorqual changes and moon mining) offered alternatives to what happened but CCP ignored everyone, including their precious CSM.
Yes there are difficulties with a single shard game but no more than any other game. Maybe if CCP hadn’t promoted min/max game play to the point they did the last 2 years could have been avoided.

Yes unfortunately most detractors of the last 5 or 6 years development were treated as nothing but static because CCP didn’t care enough to actually listen. They still don’t listen, they still don’t understand who plays Eve and why they play.
Look at proposed changes/additions to nulsec - New anoms specifically for capitals. Awesome news for the mega alliances with Super umbrellas, not so much for anyone else.

Well, do your job as well as you say then, and if they mange some form of hybrid, we’ll see what gives until the start of next year.

Signing off for another 6 months until then.

All the best,

Blimey. Not for the first time am I sitting here wondering why the CSM - and dear old Brisket in particular - bother with the whole affair when all they get is screaming accusations and near-incoherent ranting at every opportunity.

For those expressing concern over whether your voice will be heard by your CSM: engage with some respect and decency, you’ll get a lot more positive result.

For all the personal attacks on Brisc being a politician, you’d have thought that people might realise that having someone who is trained in negotiation, mediation and convincing arguing their case with CCP would be a good thing, not something to attempt to beat him over the head with.

Similarly, representation does not mean agreeing - or supporting - your opinion. For example: “Hi CCP, yeah there’s been generally positive response to the ISK giveaway, though the negative kickback I warned about has also shown its head. There are some highly vocal critics on both the official forums and reddit, you want to keep an eye on pushing these guys too far as they are already at the edge of rationality” represents your views to CCP just fine, in my book.

On the actual topic at hand, good to see hotfixes on the sites - haven’t had chance to find any yet, but good to know I’ll have a fighting chance of completing / dying to them when I do.

Interested to see how (seemingly) few appear to be floating about though - my initial thoughts were that this would be a short-term event with many keys dropping but it now feels more like a slow but steady feed of these keys is in the offing, until of course the sites get solved and the supply goes bananas. I hope that someone keeps an eye on this, as would be a shame to have all the reserves drained and drainable at will…

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I’m thinking the same thing while “not being a fan” of Goons nor politicians. So for me to agree with him the others have to be pretty moronic and idiotic.

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Ahhh yep, Brisc is indeed a pretty genuine guy as far as I can tell. I have plenty of disagreements with him - and more so with some of the nonsense from goons and The Meta Show in particular. Brisc also happens to have a lot of good opinions too (early and consistent charge against the red dot being a particular case in point).

Agree or otherwise, I don’t have a problem having discussions in good faith and with respect. We are, after all, adults playing a computer game for entertainment, not toddlers throwing toys out of our prams.

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You cannot blame the CSM or any of its members for the lack of ability of CCP to actually listen. They (CCP) always act as the smartest kid in school who is always sure they always knew the answer, so why would you ever disagree with them? They are always so sure of themselves that often they tend to brush off any advice the CSM or players offer. I applaud the CSM , especially Brisc and Mike, for their determination to keep rolling that stone up the mountain, even as a select group of obnoxious bystanders jeer at them. Keep rolling!

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I am old and my hearing is fading, I thought that they were cheering.

m

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So you’re saying ALL Alpha accounts should be banned for not paying subscription? That’d clear the decks nicely wouldn’t it. Think before you post please…

Also Brisc you really need to think bud. You basically stated that EVERYONE who unsubbed because of this bullcrap is not worth listening to… that’s several thousand players that you insulted in one sentence… many of whom have industry based mains (miners, ship builders, parts builders, reactions specialists). If you as a CSM rep do not represent those of us who have unsubbed because of CCP’s poor decision making… you definately don’t represent everyone and that attitutde is unworthy of the CSM.

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ex-players

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That is patently false. CCP has changed a lot of fundamental things about eve without regard for the consequences. They introduced structures with docking capabilities for shops that were never meant to be docked, and they di nothing to prevent issues arising from this disregard for basic design principles of eve. They changed production from a limited by slots system to infinite slots in the same structure although the GamE was not and is still not designed around that. They made it possible to have all industry in one system while Eve was designed around people moving between systems to create conflict point through logistics. They changed minging and rat farming with rorquals and supers in ways that were never intended to be possible and in the process ruined ratting and mining for everyone else. Markets were meant to be idk sinks to keep the economy stable and not faucet for players, but CCP ignored that basic and important design principle as well to accommodate for their illguided contemporary development madness. They made Eve free to play without bonuses for omega and instead started double charging omegas for cosmetics. They started to engage in Salami tactics to sell SP, ships, ammo and soon more for RL cash.

CCP changed lots of fundamental aspects in ways that ruined lots of good things about eve. Saying that CCP did not change fundamental aspects about eve is hilarious and toxically misrepresentative of the state of things.

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Plus, they introduced instanced PvE and instanced PvP. Also population caps in sites, micro-management against emergent gameplay, and even exploit rules if people don’t do with sites what the developers want them to do.

EDIT: Another one, making most income sources require active PvE or mining gameplay alienated PvP-oriented players.

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Well, to be fair the old static DED sites sorta had a population cap due to needing a key to get past the first room.

Everybody could use another key, the gate was not population hard locked. Also when a gate is unlocked, everybody can go in for a short period of time.

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True but the only way to get another key would be to leave a different site uncompleted. And yes, the gate was unlocked for a very short time after using a key. That basically put a cap on the amount of players entering…

Anyway, that’s why I originally said it ‘sorta had a population cap’.

I said “changing.” You’re ignoring the entire context of the conversation I was having with Verlyn to cherry pick that statement (and you still got it mostly wrong).

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