I do this all the time and there are complete toolsets and best practices to work with such code and refactor it over time. This is seriously just a lame excuse at this point. And it isn’t even an excuse CCP uses. I didn’t hear them cry about “legacy code” for years now (probably because they cleaned a lot of it up), but I hear it regularly from EVE players to justify things on behalf of CCP.
Stop doing that.
Indeed there are toolsets, and those who can use them, but they cost TIME and MONEY. You may not like it, but CCP is a business, and if they choose not to spend money on re-inventing a wonky wheel which sort-of works anyway it’s their decision.
And you’re not the only one round here who’s worked on dubious old code…
Yes they are a business, so why should we care how much time they spend behind the scenes on whatever they need to do to fix the product they sell? You just made another excuse for them.
If I go to the supermarket and buy some bread and it tastes like ■■■■, would you appreciate it when some fanboy customer comes along:
you: “You probably never worked with bread machines right? They get dirty over time and stuff starts to smell”
me: “It is perfectly possible to clean the bread machine, I’ve done that”
you: “Cleaning the bread machine costs TIME and MONEY. You may not like it, but the supermarket is a business…”
I declare Karak the winner of this debate.
I’m biased but I agree.
Did you even play any game other than EVE?
I registered only for this, this is too funny! 
The Blackout was dark and amazing
It’s not them doing something new to scorch the earth, it’s that these games, unchecked, inevitably distill into that behavior. Such a massive market opportunity wasted so often by building these games with open PvP instead of focusing features on incentives for cooperation.
When I started playing a few months ago I had no real idea what I was getting in to other than “deep”, “player driven” and “sandbox” so I did the most logical thing: I checked a bunch of guides and starter tutorials and the vast majority of those effectively told me to grind, do stuff that takes very little understanding or learning and train skills you will need “for later, down the road”. Just bore your way ahead till at some point, some how, you’re having fun.
So I mined and, as told by most folks, joined some “friendly” corp. Both the boring and low effort mining and the terrible non-effort, zero standard corp I had joined almost made me quit.
What saved me was asking questions in the Rookie help channel and running into people who told me that everything I had read and was told was utterly wrong. In particular one person took the time to chat and explain stuff where the overall answer was “people have no idea and most are lazy, if you follow what they do or tell you to do you’ll quit or become one of them”. With his help, mostly about helping me figure out what I would actually enjoy doing, I made a plan and so far that plan is working out. Once I tried different factions and play styles using alts on alpha accounts I had an idea of what I actually WANTED from the game.
With all that new knowledge I created a new account, went omega right away and even started training a second character on the same account using MCT. Now I’m invested to a point where I bought myself some presents in the form of injectors and even though I’m not playing too much at the moment due to the issues I KNOW I’m here to stay. I’m still clueless and ask the dumbest questions but I’m fine with that, if anything I know WHAT I am, WHERE I am and where I want to be going.
TL;DR if you figure out what EVE actually is and you put in the effort of trying to learn about where you want to go then, with some personalised tutoring, EVE is amazing to get in to. If you low-effort it and listen to generic and boring “advice” it’s going to suck. The tutorial certainly isn’t up to the task.
Nonsense. There is massive incentive for cooperation, as demonstrated by the nullsec alliances controlling all of the best space in the game through sheer cooperative logistics capability. What more do you want, for everyone to forget about trying to build their personal empires and instead all peacefully farm the same menial PvE tasks 23/7?
I also consider the alpha clone striclty as a new player only to be the free “trial” . A veteran player might do alot as alpha might even plex easely. A new player ,soloing can’t do much but fly around and keep dying to things whilst slowly figuring out stuff. I think new players should not ever jump into the hype of “u can plex as alpha in two months” but rather “here try the game and see if u wanna subscribe or not” .
I only agree that alpha is more a free trial and bothing more.
Everything else in the op is player failing to sandbox.
You play to build an empire and be part of an empire. Couldn’t be any simpler. All actions contribute be it for items or on a social level. The end. Not a game to grind for your purple sword which is the game letting you know your better than dude without. Omega skill increases ship variety and how expensive a ship you can fly, lesser skilled cheaper ship killing better skilled more expensive ship litters the kill boards.
Eve isn’t easy to get into, game mechanics are one hurdle, making your own reason to play is often the hardest new player hurdle however.
It’s not nonsense. Large, successful corps aren’t corporations as cooperatives, they are protection rackets. A new player doesn’t jump online and find many eager to help them while they too are hit with incentives to help someone else. Instead, it’s “if I want to accomplish anything, I’ll join a protective umbrella”. A prison gang isn’t a cooperative unit. A real world corporation is. You’re incentivized to help others profit by way of the easiest personal profits coming from joining an existing organization.
If you quit Amazon, Google employees don’t randomly kill you while you sell widgets door to door.
I’m sure you can spot the difference.
These games, which dig deeply into id, and lack of empathy, and in some cases sociopathy, result in the formation of gangs, which is what corps and alliances are. So what do you end up with? People who either like the idea of gangs or tolerate being in a world dominated by them. That’s a shrinking population. It leads to a game being niche. EVE found a way to be a successful niche, but it’s still extremely niche.
Great if that’s what you like, really. But let’s not pretend it’s not a massive market opportunity wasted. I’m sure if you put your imagination to work you could think of better cooperative gameplay ideas than “menial PvE tasks 23/7.”
Gangs = Tribes. It is semantics. There will always be players who want to play a tribal game, where you have your allies and your enemies. Not everybody wants to play a postmodern “nothing matters” game.
Oh really? How about you name some? Because without PvP EVE’s entire economy shuts down and the only thing left is combat PvE farming.
We could grow flowers on the planets and compete to see which alliance can make the prettiest garden.
Gangs aren’t tribes. This is a square vs. rectangle association. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
To answer to you both on the lack of imagination - There is no reason war for territory can’t remain a part of the game. At all. The question is whether players are driven to participate in those larger scale struggles or have some means of playing a cooperative role as it goes on around them, without being forced at too common a rate to participate. So, think of almost everything you do today as still what you would do, but with far greater protection against unaffiliated players being caught in combat.
“think of PvP, but without the PvP”
Wow. Stunning.