Assembly Hall

A vote of no confidence in this OP. For serious.

My GM service experience has been absolutely fabulous. Well, it could be better naturally, if I could file petitions to get free isk and a few super caps in hisec stations.....

Says the person from the Alliance including players who are usingknown exploits in nullsec safe in the knowledge that the GMs will take 24 hours+ on a Sunday to even acknowledge the petition, and typically 2 or 3 days later before they actually get around to investigating. Which of course means the exploit is done and dusted, save for screenshots which at best show only corp and alliance tickers - not nearly enough to take enforcement action against those intentionally taking advantage of tardy GM systems and bad programming.

Sorry, Goonwarm players have been profiting handsomly from bad GM service, and CCP is happy for that to contine. That is part of why CCP need to outsource - they have had too long a history of certain alliances doing very well out of certain design flaws and GM service failures.

As for every company using the same streaming and processes, rubbish. Alchemic Dream were running GM services for Adventurine SA in the pvp game title Darkfall. They used que streaming like anyone else, but where active exploits were reported they promptly had an invisible GM appear and look to gather timely and impartial evidence of what was going on. EVE are currently running a GM service with repsonse timings and GM comments that are directly comparable to Blizzard's WoW GM responses, which is simply not good enough for a pvp game that includes looting from other players.

Remember this is a pay to play game. There are no excuses for CCP not to deliver timely and courteous GM services, 24/7. If they cannot do that, then they invite rampant exploiting, botting, and other forms of cheating. Guess what, they have not been able to attend to stuck ques inside 24 hours, and whole alliances have started exploiting when CCP isn't looking (not ours, we simply walked away from the bullshit that was going on in nullsec).

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Addendum: I left Darkfall some time ago to see what EVE was like now, in anticipation of DUST's launch. So my comments related to Darkfall were from when I did play, I do not know who is providing GM services now in that game or their quality/timeliness. But I am saying there are GM service companies out there who really do "get it" about pvp free for all loot games, and have provided GM services that are better than what I have encountered in EVE in the past months. PvP games live and die by the quality of thier GM services, which if too thinly stretched quickly lose control and exploits become rampant. GMs giving tacit approval for people to exploit in nullsec is simply not acceptable to me - nor should it be to other players, or to CCP.

I was talking to someone last night who said that he'd petitioned an in-space corp change. He'd engaged a wartarget in space and several people on grid immediately joined the corp and opened fire on him. The GM response was that that is acceptable.

I personally have a warning for doing the exact same thing a day after the dec scraping ban was lifted (you know, when the GMs said "anything goes" and then said "anything but that").

GM consistency in rule enforcement seems to be getting worse. I'm not looking to be rid of them, I just want the GMs to be more attentive.

So what are Goons exploiting now in the next Goons are cheating thread. GM's have always been helpful and quick with all my problems. Did I always get what I wanted not but It was handled very quickly. I had 2 of my accounts hacked on the same day. I lost a fair bit of isk from it but they were able to do the best they could and the reasons they gave about why they couldn't just give my stuff back after it was sold on the market made sense.

If your just going to whine about the GMs are bad cause they don't exactly what you tell them then maybe this game isn't for you.

Everyone's experience will vary, and it is pleasing that some have experienced good GM services.

Just so you know it's no accident, several of former alliance were BANNED FOR SELLING THE PLEX THEY BOUGHT OFF CCP. Sure CCP realised how completely dumb that was, and reinstated thier accounts and gave them each a 24 hour credit on the respective accounts' game time, but they were still banned out of the game at a critical time in our nullsec activity.

48 hours response is fine - if you are playing WoW. In nullsec in a full loot pvp game, initial response to exploiting/stuck should be 20 minutes. Not 48 hours. When CCP can't help in a timely manner things go from bad to worse fast in nullsec, and the losses that flow from bugs/exploits can often compound. Either CCP needs to act in a far more timely manner, or they need to give the GMs the policies and tools to fix the inevitable mess.

I know precisely how to always win in pvp in nullsec. Do what a couple of the super-rich alliances do, and simply clear away the evidence inside 24 hours. Will I share the details? No, of course not. Nor will I actually bother doing that - cheating to win is profitable, but not actually either fun or a worthy challenge. But there are those who can and will keep indulging in certain activities that are possible due to bad coding and GM response times that are simply too slow for a free for all full loot pvp game.

Sephiroth we ahve also had complaints appearing about obvious market price bots, that have been tracked by some players for months and repeatedly reported to the GMs. The lack of action from CCP has called into question whether CCP has the technical competence or the will to actually do anything about those bots, which are doing serious damage to the EVE in-game economy. I expressly make no comment on Goons links to market or tech, as I have no evidence of any mischief by them in relation to either - what I am talking about is something entirely different. The bots I have had drawn to my attention are, unsurprisingly, from NPC corporation toons - after all, you would have to be quite stupid to be running market manipulation bots on your main account.

There are ways to detect bots, both ingame and using client side software with permission given in the EULA. CCP has been actively working on botting, but to date the market manipulation bots seem to have been in the "too hard" basket for CCP, as would be a gate activation bot for nullsec area defence early warning. Full loot PvP games always bring out the most inventive in the player base - but the flip side of that is CCP need the best GMs they can possibly get to counter that inventiveness. As things stand, they seem to be losing. Given positive reports of GM services as well as negative, perhaps what they need is an outsourced company to assist their current team with updating their policies and improving their timeliness? Maybe an auto reporting of the location of the player with preferential attention giving to wormholes and nullsec for "exploit" or "stuck" ques?

Remember this is the CSM forum, it's not just kick the company or flame the posters - we should discuss what is good and not so good, and offer sensible suggestions on how to improve GM services for the good of all EvE players.

I like all the GM's I met...

I am unsure if this thread is real or a buffet for the many trolls in eve.

I would have to say that my experience with GM has been both good and bad. Can the service be better? Yes it can. I would much rather have the current GM putting out more of a effort in trying to help people.

The only complaint that I really have with the GM is that they have alts in major Null alliances. I feel that if people work for C C P or are a GM this they should be aloud into player alliance out of the sake of fairness. (Though I say that I remember one C C P DeV saying that war was not fair, then changed how the wardecs worked when it didn't benefit a certain major Alliance.)

Disclaimer: Never had to petition a GM as far as I remember.

While the OP sounds like they aren't raising any specific issues, and certainly have no evidence to warrant the removal of ALL THE GMs I believe some sort of process for recourse is probably necessary.

If you disagree with a GM decision or have received poor service from a GM is there a process in place for filing complaints about GMs? Do CCP make a point of investigating all these complaints and removing anyone not up to the task?

If the answer to all these is "Yes" then all is well. As someone who has worked in Customer Service you cannot get everything perfect or even plain right 100% of the time, and frankly the "I'm paying my hard earned US$" (which btw I'm not, I'm paying GB£) is a ridiculous one and it never washed with me. My attitude was always that regardless whether you spent £1 or £300 with my company you deserved good service, and in this case the players who use isk to buy plex deserve good service too.

As long as there is recourse to make complaints if you think the service is poor that is just what you'd get off any company.

Actually devs and GMs should play a game as intricate as EVE, or they will be hopelessly lost when they go to ask a question. That does not mean they should ever favour "their" team, indeed in some pvp games GMs have an entire corporation made only of employees. You can try to kill them all you want in those games, and they start as newbies to really understand.

And as to response times?

Yes. In a free for all pvp game, exploits / stuck assistace requests from nullsec need to be addressed promptly. If they cannot respond promptly due to staffing levels, then they need the ability to make good on the losses that flow from their inactivity.

Currently, if you know that no GM will apprear for 24~48 hours, and a player screencapture of actions is not acceptable as evidence of inapporpriate action, then they have green lighted rampant exploiting. That isn't ok.

Other pvp games do better than 20 minutes for exploit reports. No excuses CCP.

Oh and by "paying" I mean paying with money, not exploiting to earn PLEX and playing for free. The players who spend real money are the ones who pay the bills at CCP - there are ways to get PLEX for free, and free PLEX do not pay the rent.

You don't understand how PLEX works.


Except for rare occasions PLEX must be bought by someone. It doesn't just appear.

So even if you play via PLEX, someone paid your account cost with real money. So CCP has already been paid (in fact, PLEX gives them more money, since it costs a little more than a sub does).