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That is quite rare yeah, I remember all the bankers that could not get a decent apology out of their mouths when we had to collectively bail them out cuz they hadn't been doing their jobs right despite multi-million dollar incomes.

The most I heard from them was something like this:"Ehm, yeah well, this could have been avoided maybe, but hey, everybody did it! It's not MY fault!".

Ealier this evening I had decided to let this account expire too due to, well, you all know what happened lately.

Thanks to Hilmar's dev blog I'm reconsidering again, as this might be a return to the old ways of CCP caring for EVE.

Thanks for writing this.

That may indeed be true and the new Starwars may very well be crap. But we will see. But at this time the big benefit that it has is that it not being developed by CCP. I will never even try their Vampire game nor Dust just because of how they have delt with EVE. I have in other games actively dissuaded people from trying EVE by simply describing how it currently is. I am more then happy head off and save people from more work in their leisure time.

Like you mentioned that only fun in EVE is PvP. The changes they have made creates way way way more work to have to try and maintain that PvP. When I am not at work and I have down time to play I have a choice. I can sit down with the following choices.

WoW:
1. Que for a Random Battleground go stomp some face of people who probably suck. But only for maybe an hour or so.
2. Head out for some world PvP griefing (available on PvP server, think Nullsec for the entire game.) Depending on what is found that day could be hours of fun or 15-30 minutes of boredom.
3. PvE raiding which is not for me. I consider this to be like work in EVE. Raids become and exercise in who is going to Fup this encounter this time.
4. See if friends are on or since I'm on a PvP server see if there are any good rated Battleground groups going. This can provide several hours of fun.
5. If just don't feel like messing with anything can run some quests (solo PvE) for cash or whatever.

EVE:
1. Login and Mine (PvE content stare at laser beams hitting non moving targets and then draging those piles to a hauler) hmmm this is more like work to me.
2. Run Level 4 missions (PvE shoot the exact same spawns over and over again) personally almost but not quite as boring as mining.
3. Run Sanctums (PvE shoot the same spawns over and over again) almost like the above however scanned out in 0.0 but from what I am told this used to be available in any upgraded system a year ago is no longer as available depending on true sec status. So that has become rarer but still a bore.
4. Run logistics for corp. Not fun have to drag stuff around empire or out to 0.0 Can be PvE or PvP but generally just work that needs to be done and can potentially take up hours with no entertainment.
5. Sov Warfare (PvP blob) generally sit in a large fleet and wait. and wait then hurry up and jump and wait and wait and then engage and then wait in lag. So much fun......... Requires 1-4 first to happen.
6. Roaming fleet. pretty much only potentially fun thing in this group. You may get something jucy today. Or may not. Lots of time invested to get blue balled by bot or logoffski's. Requires 1-4 first to happen.

So in WoW (other games may very by different amount of degrees) you have log in to maybe not as thrilling but more sustained entertainment and enjoyable fun. Where in the current EVE situation you have work work work work to MAYBE a couple times get a real and maybe more exciting thrill every now and the. It's personal preference but when I sit down and make that decision to click on the wow or the eve icon, odds are the EVE icon means work, the WoW icon means PvP within minutes. I will nearly always click the WoW button. The only exception is if I have friends on TS or vent requesting presence in EVE and well as the CEO mentioned their are less and less of those these days.

We will see where Starwars fits in to this picture possibly in December. But with CCP unable to fix things like warp tunnel and window closing bugs in 3 years, I don't see them being able to fix 3-4 years of constant mistakes in 2.5 months. But time will tell but they don't have much.

Z

PLEX is the most non-disruptive (because it is not inflationary / creating ISK out of thin air, though it does promote non-productive consumerism) pay-to-win feature added to Eve. ISK (some workarounds like moon mining & industry & research agents) and standings (especially) are the two time investment pieces of the game. PLEX lets you bypass the time investment at will. I'm pretty sure PLEX is very successful for you, especially with the non-inflationary, pro-free-market way of doing it.

Wonder if you could do the something similar for accelerated skill training. A month's worth of skill points for about the price of a PLEX. Or just make PLEX themselves redeemable for either month of game time or a month's worth of skill training (probably scaled to normalized attribute scores). It will make your PLEX business boom even more.

Don't need to add any more golden ships. Your named, faction, officer, etc.. ship components already serve to make 'golden ships' and ISK earned from PLEX can be used to buy it for those who don't have the time or obsession to build the social networks & infrastructure to build ISK machines of their own.

NEX is a joke right now. If you want it to succeed you need more products, better products, and lower prices, and if NEX is to be limited to vanity items to show off on a human avatar (vs ships), you need to have multilayer walk-in-stations and some way to attract and keep more idiot social type of gamers as apposed to the smart/achiever types. The influx of idiots will spend more money on PLEX and such also. Don't cater to idiots too much (especially dumbed down morally depraved americans). You'll push out your original niche audience.

The facebook games all succeed on pay-to-win. And they are pretty dumbed down also (incompatible with Eve, not for idiots). The vanity items are just supplemental income for them. PLEX is pay-to-win (when combined with named/officer/complex/faction gear, golden ships too). No need to deny it. It is very successful. And no need to cater for and flood your games with idiots either (they whine a lot and probably consume more GM time also). Don't change the game model to cater for idiots that will actually buy from your NEX. You'll have a disaster like the Combat upgrade in Star Wars Galaxies. PLEX does work though. Focus on that. PLEX-for-Skillpoints would be cool.

Why are you posting on these forums? Why are you playing Eve Online? You spout nothing but garbage and hate and yet, you're still here. Go away.

Hillmar's letter has stopped me from clicking the cancel button. I am sure you will pardon me for failing to get excited about anything until I see a message on my client saying a patch is ready to be downloaded.

As for Zulu, I still think he needs to walk the plank for his ****-poor customer interaction skills. Stick him in a closet and tell him to shut the hell up.

Thank you for this devblog. It returned part of the hope that this game is again going to be the most innovative MMO in the gaming world. For the other part, the content will make a huge difference. Time is not that relevant (although it plays a role), so even if you don't deliver all the promised content in one big expansion, iterating on key features and deploying them even after the original expansion deployment's date in a series of mini content patches works for me (and many others).



I'm especially glad that you've managed to see this.

Now there is an idea on progress. Because his current list of what their working is devoid of anything problem solving.

Z

Well said, and accepted. I've said it before and I'll say it again, CCP's honesty is one of the things I like most about them. They're definitely not the first ones to make a mistake like this, but they're one of the few willing to actually own up to it. Especially since a certain *other* publisher is handling their MT-related controversy to restricting forum access to fanboys and basically accusing dissenters of being pirates.

I do agree that Incarna has potential as an incentivized add-on, but it shouldn't come at the expense of anything in standard Eve. As has been said ad nauseum, "ship spinning" and the like is not only cool but also a far more efficient way of rapidly equipping and managing ships in a large hangar than CQ/Incarna.

It's refreshing to see a game companies exec write a letter like this to their players, admitting faults. I can appreciate that, and thank him for this effort. Now lets see if it gets followed up on, and see good things come in the future in Eve. One place they can start maybe is to repair the now dead faction war part of the game. It had great potential, but CCP just gave up on it. Just an idea.