EVE General Discussion

Eve was and is a sandbox style game. It's CCP job to make sure the sand stays clean, the box remains the proper size and the players behave themselves.

CCP always condoned metagaming, betrayals, smart players finding loopholes and underhanded tactics. They didn't approve of such things, they tolerated it as a price to pay for the sandbox game. They were always busy fine-tuning mechanics and bringing more fairness.

However, at some point in time CCP discovered that all that nasty, unfair and metagaming stuff made for good PR. A betrayal made blog story, and a pyramid scheme would make the news.

In an attempt to leverage this PR advantage, CCP put themselves in a position of public encouragement of bsuch behaviour instead of tolerating it. That was a stupid. If you are the public responsible and final arbiter of 'fairness' in a game, you should not advocate cheating. If you do, you get stupid stuff like the last Alliance Tournament. People will try to cheat to win, but if you at least appear not to tolerate it, then players will at least be careful about it, and not flaunt it openly like that botched AT final.

Just imagine what would happen with IRL sports games. In such games victoriesare bought and sold too, referees and players are bribed, rules are applied inconsistently, etc. etc. But in no case do you see chairman of such an organization actually encouraging players to find the maximum way to cheat, lie and metagame that the rules allow. That would be insanely stupid, even if the chairman is highly aware of what is going on. Because if they do, everyone will cheat openly, and the illusion of fairness will disappear. Fairness is not an issue for a game, but the illusion of fairness is.

CCP needs to project the illusion that they are doing their utmost to keep the sandbox fair and discourage cheating metagaming behaviour without actually changing the game so that you can't cheat anymore. That's the only way to keep the illusion going. Leave the PR to players who secretly leak fantastic stories.

Thank you for thread 24 on this very topic. Your opinion is highly valued and deserves to be singled out.

Also, I find all of this hilarious. I can't wait until the goonspiracy of August/September.

IRL Sports? Are you for real?

Well, the latter half of May and early June was simple stuff...like hulkageddon but nothing "outrageous."July is a period where all the non-conspiracy theorists will relax again and forget about everything. The tinfoilists will of course be strong, but they'll get shrugged off.

And then it happens. And the forums explode with outrage / hilarity. And I get to mock people for their outrage.

i dont think sandbox is the right term for it really, if you set some kids lose in a sandpit and one kills another the world isnt just going to go oh well, they were in a sandpit, kids will be kids.

Thats not me saying that there needs to be hand holding in eve either. Its just i dont think "sandbox" is really the correct term.

Post nuclear war earth box. He/She with the biggest gun makes the biggest steps, the weak fall under their boots sounds more like it lol


as for the whole goons thing of late? I dunno i guess if they wanted to play the RL style moral game they could have just kept saying "its broke" over and over. What they probably could have done, was made like 20b each just to make the point, i doubt that would have ruffled as many feathers and still broadcasted the issue clearly?

I do think they went too far and did give themselves (the 5 in question i mean) a somewhat advantage over others, including thier fellow goons (dont know if regular run of the mill goons do faction wars for example). They say they tried to tell CCP it was broken but that didnt work so they then had the option to demonstrate in a reasonable manner that it was broken but they elected to spend almost a month before it came undone. Why didnt they just show CCP with graphs/proof when CCP first tweaked things and call it a day there?

I think ultimately they were just blinded by greed and possibly the rush of finding a crack in the code they could run to thier benefit. I can also understand why people are opposed to the "exploit" term. CCP had apparently been told (i guess in writing) that the FW code was open to abuse. But i think to turn around and then use the issue they found for personal gain is, if not an exploit, at least abuse of a known bug even if CCP didnt jump all over it like a catalyst on a untanked hulk lol

if only ccp was as fast as a ganker who's on the ball they might have patched the hole huh?

i think that them (CCP) being shown that the code was in error was usefull. But at the same time i think the 5 masterminds went a little too far. They made a point then went above and beyond that which one could call "exploiting"

yeah but you Always do that come up with something new man, youre boring



Hey I remember this exact same argument coming from BoB

Sure, you're just following the anti-goon talking points. Got it.

Its not as much a sandbox nerf as it is a proof that this game is damn hard to do QA for. So many loopholes could be found in any system and sometimes CCP fail to plug them before release.
Is it wrong from CCP to make sure this doesn't wreck market prices and drive inflation even higher? I don't think so because i believe in a healthy EVE.

yo bro, your buddies said they knew the mechanic is broken. and they abused it.