Player Features and Ideas Discussion

:CCP:

What part of "working as intended doesn't mean it's not still broken for some players" is so difficult to grasp?


I would assume the entire game is working per design. That doesn't mean that some things couldn't stand to be changed.

It might help to hear from CCP on this issue. To help this, I provide you this link:
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=621
more queue queue
reported by CCP Eris Discordia | 2009.02.04 11:16:46

And a relevant quote from the end:


Kinda speaks to this, I feel.

And the same detail applies to my suggested idea. By the time they could train one of the much referred to super long skills, they have achieved what you described above.
It doesn't matter if they can train the skill all in one queue, or bit by bit, they are already invested in the game, and unlikely to leave it over the queue being more convenient.



I was there back before the queue too, and I gotta tell you, the change to the queue did not make people log in to play more or less, based on what I saw.
People who could play, did play. People who could not play, updated their queue, and left, (it did not matter what was going on, if you did not have time).
Put another way, people did not start playing just because they logged in for the queue. Oh sure, some people on the odd occasion might have stuck around if they had a few minutes time, but for the most part, if they had enough time to play already, they did because the time was there.

Yes, that quote was from the unveiling of the queue. About 3 years ago.
As it is now, unless you are dealing with shorter skills, noone needs to log in daily. For example, I have an alt that doesn't need to show up for the queue till the 19th, that doesn't mean it won't get played till then.

What you might want to consider, is that some people may not be interested in logging in until they finish training for something.
These people want to be able to (X), and will only update the queue till this happens, since they feel they need (X) in order to have meaningful gameplay. The sooner they get (X), the sooner they play more than the queue game itself.

/Sound of a large trap snapping shut.

Did you honestly think I missed that? I even posted the link for you.

Yes, three years ago they were worried on that detail. After all, the queue was not implemented yet, who knew for certain how it would change things?

They now have this information. They now know from experience what the impact, or lack thereof, my idea will likely have. It is only taking their idea forward by a small step, considering the ideas they were already kicking around.

I thank you for pointing out that this was a concern based on a lack of information available to them at the time.

They can evaluate this now using that data, unlike when the queue was new.

*THEY* might not, but the 2 day rookie who thinks that "set and forget" three months of skills (or hell, a week, or a month), so they can be pro at something is what you have to consider. In essence, the skill system is the first taste of "your decisions matter" that a rookie will have in the game... and it's a lot easier on them than the other examples... getting can baited, going to lowsec/nullsec/w-space, joining an at-war player corp, undocking whilst under a dec, fitting ships for gank/mining yield/cap stability over tank (or any combination thereof), etc.

You are an entertaining fellow.

Ultimately, it must be understood that people logging in to update the queue aren't there to play at that time. This is not to say that people who log in to play won't update the queue, but those logged in wanting to play.
The queue is useful as an aspect that helps neutralize the real life advantage some players have in everyday life. If you have a job, and a family, you cannot log in as often as someone with no such responsibilities.
Players are put off when the playing field is not level. They are paying CCP for an enjoyable playing experience, and if they don't feel they are getting what they paid for, they leave.

24 hours here is relevant ONLY as the time period for one day. Their point, as I thought would have been obvious, was that noone should need to log in more often than once a day. They also learned the hard way people forced to log in for skills, would often ONLY log in for skills.
They had players logged in, flying in straight lines, or in orbit in high sec, assuming they weren't docked in stations. They were heavily AFK, and were online because they were waiting for the skill completed notifications, so they could start the next one training. The server was cluttered with players who had no interest in playing, but were doing something else while setting short skills.

It was not helping that people who actually did want to play, were often ignored by these AFK skillers. It can be very frustrating to look for groups when noone responds.

How do you get the AFK clutter off the server, which was mostly caused by smaller skills needing to be shuffled, and at the same time acknowledge they wanted to keep players who could not log in more than once a day?
Give them a queue, make it at least 24 hours long, (assuming they could log in at the same time most days), and they would also not clutter the servers with people who seemed antisocial in a MMO that encouraged group cooperation.

In other words, the queue also helped get the non players offline. People logging in would be there to play more often, and would find the other people online actually responded more often.

this demographic is getting bigger and bigger though...




I've personally had more than one absence of 3+ months (longest was 8-9 mos). You know what happens ... I see an ad for the game, or get a "hey come back" email, or run into one of my friends who plays ... and get sucked back in...

In the current system, Bob can set a skill for as long as it will take to train... be it one or three months (assuming a single skill).
Job/Military -> yeah, that is unfortunate ... though I don't see why "job" wouldn't also include "laptop to play EVE on" in one's carry-on (because, well, "hotel room" is boring; and company might be upset at going out drinking every night...).
Family issues --> depends here on the nature of the issue.
RL ISK --> I've been in corps where we've floated someone the ISK for a PLEX or two if things went south in RL (e.g. layoff, etc).
no PC --> well, EVEMon isn't gonna be telling him about the completion now, is it?

and then there's always "bum 30s of internets from a RL friend who plays to log in and set the skill"...




funny, because there was no crazy drop in the PCU count because "people were only AFKing to be able to set skills" after the queue was introduced... and with the exception of fresh-out-of-the-academy rookies, most players won't have very much in the way of queued short skills anyway (sans something like 2-3 days when moving from "all gallente" to "gallente + minnie" or equivalent.)

You seem to be forgetting that the 24h queue isn't "You can only train 24h of skills before you have to log in again", it's "You can log on any time starting 24h before your skill ends to toss another skill on".

The point of the queue isn't to make sure you're constantly training 24/7/365, the point of the queue is to give you some flexibility in when you need to log in to start the next skill.

Actually, the responses have been fairly level, not hostile. The reason you do see hostile responses sometimes, however, is because there are tons of people who post threads who just want what they want and don't really care about Eve itself. After a couple dozen "I have the fix for ____" threads by people who clearly don't actually understand much about Eve at all, people tend to get a bit fed up with it.

In specific, there are a lot of threads about skill training from people who just want training to be easier when the system works perfectly as-is; it gets old fast.