EVE General Discussion

unfortunately when CCP closes threads and redirects you to TWO irrelevant threads, and doesn't really seem to notice that they've missed the point. you can't help but feel like you have to repeat yourself to get your point across.
even more so when people post irrelevant things like "umad sum1 gt mre skrpns dn u?!" which really contributes nothing but people having to point out to them that we're discussing something entirely different.

either way due to eve vegas coming up i don't really see anything in this thread being massively productive until after the event has finished. which is fine.

although i hope ccp don't feel like i'm flat out attacking them. far from it, i love ccp and i love eve. it just boggles my mind that they thought not announcing a large giveaway of billions of isk of assets to an in game entity wouldn't be met with this kind of response. even more baffling is that they didn't announce it when it's meant to be a reward for blink's contribution to eve or whatever, i mean we don't hold the olympic events then not bother to televise the medal ceremony and spend hours finding our foreign friends and saying "ha we got x more medals than you!" etc.

for people who have created a game we all love (to hate in some people's cases) it's absurd that they could make this kind of error.

and on a separate note; i noticed there was a job on the ccp website a while ago looking for a data analyst. if they're worth their salt and given any input on the surveys i don't expect to see a single leading question on either of the surveys.

otherwise the list of criteria was clearly a "wishlist" rather than a list of "prerequisites" and i'd have bothered applying for the job myself. because ****, i ticked most of the boxes on the list.

Do we have an explanation yet for why it is that when anyone else is caught in RMT practises, they're immediately permabanned, but when CCP's chosen favourites Somer are found to be doing it, the response is to hold off a decision (and allow the RMT to continue in the meantime) whilst a lengthy consultation is conducted about whether Somer's chosen method of RMT is so bad after all?

I'd already decided to let this one remaining account lapse when this whole mess started but the more of this utter trainwreck unfolds before me the less inclined I feel to reverse that decision.

Other RMTers operate independently and cut CCP out of the market, denying them possible plex sales the people needing isk might have bought. By basing his RMT through gametime sales SOMER is giving CCP a cut of the profits on every transaction.

banned RMTer = sent someone some isk somehow and got $ in his paypal account (or something. I'm not an RMTer so how would I know)
Somer RMT = $ in CCP's wallet with every sale

What's going to happen is in a few months they'll release a EULA/TOS "clarification" to explicitly allow Somer's business model. Then they'll release a survey after this with no questions at all related to Somer's RMT, because if you disagree with them then you'll be in breach of EULA. The only survey questions will be like 'what cool things can CCP do with giveaways in the future' and have pretty much nothing related to the meat of the issue whatsoever.

I added one more month on both of my accounts when Guard made this thread because I was hoping for a resolution. THAT was my patience. My patience is certainly NOT waiting around for months only for CCP to eventually tell us to **** off anyway.

When you allow the party that is in the wrong to dictate the direction of the discussion and steer it, there is no way for them to be wrong.

On the other hand, when you allow the party that thinks the wrong party can do no right to steer the course of the discussion, there is no way for them to be right.

It is a balancing act, and not one easily done. It requires proper planning on the parts of all involved, and must lead to logical discussion. Passion rules reason, as we've seen in this thread: CCP doesn't believe they have done anything wrong (as evidenced by the fact they aren't talking about this until after the gathering in which people have a very large gripe over. It's, pure and simple, a conflict of interest. At least, it will appear that way to those who are against the entire thing to begin with. How do we fix this? Let me lay out my problems here.

During Monoclegate (before, really) the CSM was talked to about the NeX store, and selling things in-game. The concept of "golden ammo" was brought up, and the CSM rightfully said "hells to the **** no". CCPcan't be willing to break the game like that to make more money, because in the end they would have lost money from people being unwilling to play a game that was pure pay to win while they were still paying a subscription. One thing led to another, and by and large CCP did not come out of that looking clean:

- the Fearless newsletter;
- the leaked Hilmar letter ("very predictable feedback", "now is the time where we see what our customers do and base it on that, not on what they say");
- CCP Pann's threadnaught where she says she is, legitimately, buying time until they can come up with something they think we'd want to hear, and;
- at the end of it, the firing of CCP Pann and the community PR team for the forums, which was taken over by volunteers to save the company money.

The last part is only mentioned because the players were scapegoated by Hilmar over this matter, which was an absolute **** move on Hilmar's part, trying to play off the conscience and feelings of people in a game where consciences don't exist (I think they are part of mythology!).

During this time, they focused on side-issues: the price in the NeX ($1,000 designer Japanese jeans, if you all remember), the (confirmed real) leaked newsletter, and others. At the heart of the issue that went unanswered for over a week was one simple question, oftentimes repeated in bright, bold letters in large font: "Would items that directly impact the gamestate be introduced (i.e., "golden ammo")?"

Oh, and then the alts that weren't alts, but started posting during the entire debacle and then stopped posting after this shitstorm died.

What about t20? During that time CCP's response was to ban the person who leaked the issue because he violated the EULA, but not take action until the uproar became massive against the developer who had impacted the game in such a way!

Now this comes up. Instead of directly answering the questions, and put our fears to rest, CCP has said they are going to answer after an event that is at the very heart of the issue. They have hinted that they will work to find loopholes in the EULA, and maybe close them. At the end, the CSM will have a survey, and CCP might do one of those things where you take a customer satisfaction survey while logging in.

Oh, and just like Monoclegate? Answering side questions and not the main one, acting like it's worked before. Protip: it has not.

You know, one of those things that no one does, but some will claim they do to make it look valid? I hate to be the pessimist, but I have never really seen how they impact anything CCP does.

The CSM is, once again, cleaning up the pile of **** that CCP left in the yard. This happened after Monoclegate, too. Anytime CCP decides to do their own thing and ignore what the CSM says, or forgo their opinion altogether, and there is a large public backlash, the CSM will be called in to make us shut up.

That is why people don't trust the CSM. The CSM is just a voice that can be discarded for trial-and-error tactics. In his "apology", Hilmar admitted as much. It's not the fault of the CSM directly, but they have not put their foot down in the sense that makes CCP listen. If they did, Monoclegate wouldn't have happened, after all.

Mittens, for all his shortcomings (and believe me, they are many) had it right with Monoclegate: make it public so that CCP has to respond. Cause a shitstorm of epic proportions and they have to take you seriously. They can't sweep it under the rug. Trebor and this CSM are doing surveys when they should be saying, "No, this is wrong and it doesn't take a ******* survey to figure that out. Fix it."

It would seem that even CCP can't interpret their own EULA. As such, I wouldn't condone any punishment against people like EVE-GAMES. If they can't explain it simply to us, it's not fair to punish people who might not be able to understand it.

Hell, even with my knowledge of legalese I can't decipher it!

I'll try to spell this out for you.

As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, CCP is a company in the business of making money.

The only power I, as a consumer, truly have over this company is deciding whether or not to give them my money.

I assume someone who runs a "business" like yourself understands the need for customers.

Making threads and posts until my fingers bleed means nothing to CCP as long as they continue to charge my PayPal account.

I realize it may be futile at this point, but I have only one account to give.



And this will likely be my last post on this or any subject here.


Fly safe! o7

It's possible I suppose, but without actual hard data you and I won't really be able to say for sure.

I remember when Incarna came out and people were horrified at the $70 monocle price tag. People came out and said how basically every microtransaction store on the planet makes more money from lower prices, 5 people buying something for $1 instead of 2 people buying it at $2. CCP's response was that the monocle was their top selling item, so obviously it was a good idea. The possibility that they could have made more money without the ******** pricing simply didn't make sense to them no matter how often it was pointed out.

So even if you're right and Somer either doesn't make them any more money, or even actively cuts out people buying plex because of the "free 200m" they get with each GTC purchase, CCP might still only see "SOMER Blink top GTC seller, SOMER good"

No, that's just referred to as money laundering, or RICO.

NYT article about EVE Online:

It's from 2007 but it might as well have been written yesterday 2013 :-)

The New York Times :

"In a Virtual Universe, the Politics Turn Real"

"The kingdom is in crisis. After pledging to treat its citizens equally, the government stands accused of unfairly favoring one powerful, well-connected political faction. Many citizens have taken to open dissent, even revolt, and some are threatening to emigrate permanently."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/arts/07eve.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0