EVE General Discussion

They were. The problem is that CCP were fooled into thinking the mack needed an EHP buff. They were also fooled into thinking a tanked exhumer/barge was profitable to gank.

CCP uses the forums all the time, but their decisions aren't determined solely by them nor are their priorities. This doesn't mean forums can't greatly influence that decision making or raise issues to urgent priorities. More often it's a case of CCP deciding to tackle some issue or feature and using the existing forum discussions as a tool to gauge peoples reaction, argument for and against, get feedback and get ideas. Forum discussion also lets us to spread ideas among ourselves, which can then influence CCP through outside channels. It's a powerful tool for spreading your ideas, but ignoring other information sources and relying solely on forum noise would be a pretty dumb thing for CCP to do.

For example the clone system, both medical and jump, will be reworked at some point. CCP will be the one to determine the goals of that change, but even that will be partly based on the discussions people have had about those system and the means to achieve them will certainly be influenced by forum discussions about them. It's just unrealistic to expect a forum discussion to immediately lead to drastic changes to the game even if every player and every devs reading it agreed on an issue. There are hundreds of good ideas and thousands of bad ones being suggested and CCP can maybe tackle a few dozen of them per expansion.

A lot of ideas do get to be implemented even if the method isn't exactly what was suggested. Just from the top of my head Wormhole space as it is in the game today was requested many years before it was implemented. The skillqueue was debated for years on a constant basis before the pressure mounted enough for CCP to get around to adding it. Getting CCP to nerf nanofags was also a glorious moment in forum drama. Changing the mission agents system from the old complex/random one to a system close the the current one was suggested by many. I'm sure large number of the changes made to the game have been influenced by the forums in one form or another.

I think it pretty clear, that the forums have a great influence on how this game is being developed. It just doesn't mean CCP relies only on the forums to make design decisions or that every stupid idea that gets spammed over and over again is ever going to be implemented. Genuinely good ideas tend to get integrated to the game in some form sooner or later though.

The Device

It does stuff.

Worst then then the EHP buff is the ridiculous new Ore Cargo hold.

The Ore Thief career is extinct.

Funny how the ganking more or less vanished when it became unprofitable to do.

an example that is probably more along the lines of what OP is thinking about (a forum outcry that actually changed ccp's opinion on some issue) would be "free ccp abathur"

(also shows that ccp is not one monolithic entity and that whatever the players are asking for generally already has some supporters within ccp - but the forums can influence which faction inside the company gains the upper hand)

Lets see here, the Nano Nerf came about because of the players posting.

Supercarriers and Titan changes recently were due to the players posting complaints.


About 4 years ago they tried to put in a change to supers that got about 100 pages in 24 hours, the change was scrapped.


The dumping of Incarna was due largely to actions and forum efforts by players.


You see a long long time ago, the Devs used to be MUCH more active in and around the forums, they were regular posters and one could ask a question and actually get a Dev response within a few days.

With Nathan moving on and some of the older devs stepping back, as well as the size of the game increasing so much most of that is gone the way of the dodo, but yes, the forums do help give CCP ideas and let them know things that players want and or need.

I thought it was because your alliance sponsored a massive in-game event that demonstrated just how easy and cheap it was to gank barges with T1 destroyers?

you burned that candle to a stump, meight. that's why they buffed barges, forum whine was mostly ancillary.

You abuse it, you lose it. Miners should be thanking goons for their EHP boost.

Oh dear Lord.

Does the fact that it required a 3rd party to sponsor the event for it to become profitable for the people doing the ganking, give you any sort of clue you might apply to this discussion?

....

No? I'll give you a hint: People never ganked barges because it was profitable.