Skill Discussions

Pretty much all incorrect. Let me point one error out.

Rather than EvE being classless it is full of classes. You jump in and out of classes everytime you jump into and out of specific ships. When you spend money and time on a product you have a right to expect the product you paid for and put effort into creating will have reasonable continuity of usefulness and not be arbitrarily modified into junk overnight without reasonable steps taken to compensate the consumer.

In tort law in most countries thats the stance the law takes. Obviously Im not suggesting suing over it but CCP has a really horrid track record when it comes to nerfs in regards to its players. Its pretty much pot luck whether the character you build today might suddeny be pointless tomorrow.

In those situations they should be reallocating wasted points.

The product you pay for is access to the game as it exists. No more, no less.
If you no longer wish to access the game, you are free to avail yourself of the exclusive remedy provided in the EULA. That is to say, stop paying your sub.



If you went to a lawyer, he'd point out that you do not own your character and have no legal interest in your character, so you cannot be harmed by CCPs actions to your character. Tort law in most countries is clear that you cannot sue someone over something they do to their own property if you do not have any legal interest in that property.


In every situation where CCP has created conditions where people could have wasted skillpoints, they have reimbursed those skillpoints. That is, Learning Skills and the BC/Destroyer corner case.

EULA are simply contacts between two parties, in terms of hierarchy they are the lowest, common or judge made law supersedes them and then legislation or statute law supersedes both.

The majority of EULA have invalid or unenforceable clauses because common and statute law override them however they are still included to deter lawsuits.

As I said earlier when you offer a service and in offering that service promise even in inference a specific outcome (12 months of 14.99 for a character that can churn out big effective long range torpedo spewing ships) but then suddenly decide to change that service to something useless (12 months of 14.99 for a character that shots short range low damage slow firing ships) you have potentially breached your contract and should compensate your customer by allowing them to choose a different service (reallocate).

I'm not a lawyer but I am qualified to work as a paralegal. Perhaps a legal person could pipe up but pretty sure I'm correct.

I suppose you could find a Judge who would rule that your character belongs to you. But then CCP would simply hand you a thumb drive with your character on it, and refuse to renew the contract (i.e. they would refund any outstanding sub you've paid and ban you).

So show me the case that renders the "you are paying for access to the game, not your stuff in the game" clause is unenforceable. There's no law or caselaw that renders EULAs, as a class, unenforceable.



You seem confused about the nature of the service CCP is providing. The EULA explicitly states what service that is. They do not imply anywhere that they will never nerf things for the good of the game (in fact, they say in the EULA that they may promulgate required updates to the software). If you've read something that's not there, I'll note that there's no penalty to you terminating your contract with CCP and suggest that you avail yourself of that option if any change is unacceptable.

CCP provided you access to the game for 12 months in exchange for 12 months of sub fee. That access is what you paid for, that access is what CCP promised, and that access is what you received.

If you would, please quote and link to the place where CCP promises skillpoint progression as you suggest they do, or somewhere where CCP says you own your character.

@RubyPorto

Whipping out a hypothetical man made thing such as "law" would be the lowest form of philosophical discourse.
That is the equivalent of adding the status quo as a solution to the status quo, with a detour.
If circular logic is your preference then please get a job in law enforcement, but leave the policing out of philosophical matters since dogma is the death of reason t.y.v.m.


Now as to the original post I think CCP is already seeing the light on this matter as they have lowered clone costs by 30% as a preliminary change in a step by step basis, underlying motivation being to eliminate their previous obviously flawed ways of massive changes.
In the end I hope to see clone costs eliminated and implants re-usable, maybe with a re-use restriction timer, that should eliminate the weight of unused skill-points to a larger extent.
CCP's failing has been admitted by CCP in the way of apologies, beyond this all there is the pragmatic reality that as a company admissions of guilt are just a legal suicide maneuver.
Companies have a basic moral obligation to deliver on a sold product, intentional failure to do as such would be a heinous breach of trust, unintentional or failure to deliver on the basis of design philosophy is not the same as promising a tangible object like a loaf of bread or a real life service like a customer service.
All there is left is a flaw in logic and a reasonable and rational basis for trust on the basis of mutual benefit within the boundaries of a psychopathic shareholder driven (fictional) entity created solely to evade accountability called "a corporation" making it's money off of keeping as many people happy with said product as the bottom line allows them.

When those changes take effect I think the effort to re-skill into more viable weapon-systems should be less debilitating and i.m.h.o. this is probably one of the main motivators for CCP to have started a more egalitarian weapon-system distribution (empires now all have some mesh of missile,turret and to a lesser extent drone boats) with a more rigid empire focus as clear balancing act (think BC, destroyer changes).

As for training P.I. when you are not sure about wether you'll use it, well that is an undertaking you "PRIORITIZE" over things you know you will be using for sure like ship skills.
Id say use the test server (SiSi) in the future hehe.
And as mentioned before the character bazaar is just a wonderfully pragmatic and progressive step to lessen the effect of unavoidable processes like "isk farming" as an out of game profession destroying the in-game habitat.

i wouldn't bother to argue with rubyporto. That guy lives on these forums to make nonsensical arguments.

You may want to read the thread and see who brought up an argument about the legalities of CCP changing the rules of its own game. I see no problem in attempting to correct someone's misapprehensions about basic concepts in tort law.

If CCP wanted to, they could allow you to reallocate SP when they changed something, just like they are able to not allow you to reallocate SP when they change something, and neither option exposes them to any liability. The OP claimed that one of those options does expose them to liability based on a flawed premise about what your subscription actually pays for.

The argument for why adding skill remaps to the game would be bad for the game (thus why CCP shouldn't allow them) has been well covered on page one, and every other thread about the subject, so I saw no need to rehash it.

That's a pretty novel theory as it might apply to EVE. First, you're not purchasing a product, which limits your legal options to start with. You are, in fact, subscribing to a service. CCP defines that service pretty darn narrowly as access to the game and not access to any damn thing you want within the game. Limiting in-game progression is a business decision on their part and unless you can prove injury it will stay their decision.

Basically, your objection would be limited to an implied warranty claim. There's absolutely no chance you can prove to a court's satisfaction that you meet the criteria UCC sets forth. Take a look at UCC 2 314; you aren't being denied anything in the ordinary purpose of goods (ie, access to an online game). The claim would be thrown out.



Actually, they only offer the opportunity to accumulate skill points, and that itself is contract-specific. CCP has no implied liability for lapses in skill point acquisition and there's actually nothing stopping them from freezing all progression where it is right now. Again, this is settled law.

As to whether you have any ownership of in-game items: that's perfectly clear. You don't. CCP owns all of it. That's exactly why they can stop you from RMT transactions; they legally own everything in the game and it isn't yours to sell except with their express consent (and in this case, through their designated marketplaces). This further weakens the claim of real damages: you don't "own" anything other than a subscription to a service that CCP is free to define as part of their offer.



Consider it done. Granted, this is from the perspective of the US legal system, but as you noted early on, tort law is actually pretty standard across national borders.

There's also a minor issue of jurisdiction, but that's muddy on internet services such as this one.

Edit: obviously this shouldn't be interpreted as specific legal advice. If you believe that the actions of CCP or its agents have breached a warranty, explicit or implied, please seek out and pay someone to formally disabuse you of the notion.

I think it would be nice to have at least a one time remap of a few million SP´s. With that you can fix any mistakes you made when you just started playing EVE. For example I trained in the beginning to fly Amarr ships simply because my character started out in Ammar space and the first ships I got from missions were Amarr ships. So the whole tutorial missions pushed me into the direction of Amarr skills. After having played a few months I decided to go for Caldari ships and all the skills that go with that, so all the armor skills and laser skills I did not really needed anymore, thats definitely a few mil SP´s that I would have liked to use for Caldari skills.