Yet Another EVE Online Scandal? 259
Ariastis writes "An open letter, posted by former EVE Players, levels some new and serious accusations against CCP, the makers of the EVE Online MMOG. In the letter, chat logs & event timelines, along with description of in-game events from CCP-Approved reporting users, describe how most of the big role-playing events are rigged to favor specific alliances & players by CCP. More disturbingly, these users also appear to have CCP employees 'on call', ready to step in on behalf of the favoured players and alliances within the game. CCP reaction is member-only, but a forum thread has been left open to discuss about it." It should be pointed out at the moment all of the evidence put forward is circumstantial; take with a grain of salt. The issue of corruption in EVE was addressed in our interview with Magnus Bergsson at GDC.
geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard not to be, you work your guts out and can barely keep a corporation with 20 members moving in the same direction, while there are corps that have thousands of memebers and seem to be able to print money and ships and can gather fleets big enough to lag out your connection when they move through your system.
Of course that's the whole point of the game, it's not supposed to be fair. Eve is pure and simply a no holds bared economic simulator. The rules are few, and the strongest eat the weakest. People come in from other MMO's to play Eve with the expection that it is WOW in space. After a month or three they come to the realization that there are portions of the game they will never have access to, no matter how long they play and how much they grind, and that death can come for them at any time reguardless of how high they climb and how big of a ship they can field. Many never come to grips with it, so they start crying foul over just about everything.
A player steals your ore or rips you off in a comercial transaction, it's griefing. A big ship has enough fire power to wipe out a little ship, they scream nerf. The little ship can out manuever the guns of the big ship, too much nerfing. A corportion that number in the thousands systematically wipes out corps with members numbering in the hundreds...
...it's CCP favoratism.
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Funny)
That must make you Jeezus.
Interesting "coincidences" (Score:5, Insightful)
That odd dev promiting himself to director, demoting himself a couple of minutes later without communication.
All inquiries related to above incident being buried and blocked out.
Banning of members who inquired and asked "unpleasant" questions, over formalities
Evidence that CCP wants to push certain results - "outcome X is desirable. see to it" in the storyline.
Previous accounts of collusion and corruption.
Failure to punish above accounts as written in policy.
All those things are only coincidences. No, sir, I don't buy it.
Re:Interesting "coincidences" (Score:5, Informative)
The question remains, what do you plan to do against it?
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You can't have your cake and eat it, yet here they are eating cake and advertising they still have some.
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But I won't tell before our new MMORPG is finished. Let me surprise you!
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Long storylines = bad idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
Solid reasoning so far, but I draw another conclusion from it:
When you cannot make your storyline play out as desired without cheating, you should not have long, preplanned storylines. At best, you can hav
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course that's the whole point of the game, it's not supposed to be fair.
How do you define fair? To me, fairness means everyone is judged by the same standards and plays by the same set of rules. Fairness should not mean that everyone should have the same outcome. I doubt that any new Eve player expected to be instantly given the "right" to as much in-game power as those people who have been playing longer and have more knowledge about the game. All we expected was that the rules of the game would be the same for everyone. However, when developers use the power that they have acquired outside of the game (by virtue of their being devs) to bend the rules in their favor, that upsets the rest of the player base--and rightly so.
It's funny (Score:5, Funny)
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been out of the loop for a bit so I'm not sure what the situation is, but if the goons manage to influence CCP, then they've accomplished something in game.
These big scandals are part of the fun.
Or in other words...
In Soviet Russia, EVE plays you!
Re:geez then why keep paying to play it?? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I still sometimes wonder what would happen if the people protesting the EVE scandal used the same amount of effort to protest scandals in the real world, such as the current scandal
Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't make it any more "right", but would explain a lot of things. People are people, and most of all they're human. And thus prone to the temptations of power, and of abusing it.
Furthermore, CCP "hires" (or at least hired, dunno if that practice still exists) players to work as the first line troubleshooters, as aides for newbies, as listeners to whining when people get stuck between zones, etc. I wouldn't deem it impossible that some people took up this "helper" position for the sole purpose of furthering their corporation's goals, and those people do have a quite direct connection to the staff. I was one of those people (without the abuse. My corp was anything but a "0.0 capable" corp).
Re:Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, that's how we did it back in the good ol' days of text based "MMORPGs". Anyone here played BT3030?
Re:Did it ever occur to anyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
By their very nature they aren't "normal" players, no matter what they do. Even if they don't have access to superior equipment or funds, at the very least they have superior information. They are the first to know about new events, the first to know about new areas, new technology, tweaks in the physics and gameplay, changes in game balance and a thousand things more.
By the very nature of "insiders", they can't be "normal" players.
So the best way to "use" them is to make them kinda-sorta-NPCs. That's not as hard as it may sound. If you have a character, you simply switch corporation, if not, start a new one in there. Even if you don't announce it, word will get around that this is the "CCP corp", and people will react accordingly. Some will start to suck up to you. Some will start to fight you. Some will try to become your buddies to get some scraps from you. Some will try to prove that they're better than you and hunt you for your (allegedly superior) equipment.
I could well see this as a quite fun and entertaining way to drive plots. For both sides.
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It's a matter of personal morals. I don't cheat in games, unless I can be absolutely sure that I don't hurt the experience of another person. In a single player game, who cares if you play it in God mode? You're only cheating yourself. In multiplayer, cheating is simply no option, since I will never have sufficient information to
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You have to have some level of neutrality and/or transparency among your administration or you end up with things like this were every little thing gets blown into a big old drama fest. If your policy is to simply fire anyone who plays AND GM's then it is pretty clear. You should also m
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But you can't just trust player reports. Too many would cry NERF whenever their pet strategy stops working and they don't have their I-win button at their fingertips
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That's how it works everywhere.
That may be the case (Score:2)
Really this is not asking much. It shouldn't be hard, and isn't unreasonable, for a
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In EvE, PvP is pretty much a necessity if you want to play the "big boys" game. Furthermore, the economy is nearly 100% player driven, i.e. if you want good gear, there is no way in hell you will get it from slaughtering an NPC. A player who can build it has to build it for you. This is exactly the opposite of WoW, where every player can hunt down
As a long time eve player... (Score:4, Informative)
Grain of salt?? there are SCREENSHOTS to prove it.
So, why did a dev join a player corp, and when the CEO of the player corp petitions it
to find out WHY they did it, the petitions vanish?
Then, when they have no recourse, and no avenue of contacting CCP and they make it a PUBLIC question
they just start MASS BANNING players?
This is just inappropriate behavior from a company.
Every time these boneheads cheat/lie/and rush to ban players they lose money.
Another cover-up will take the place of this.
They will say 'nothing inappropriate occurred and ignore/ban anyone that questions it.
Re:As a long time eve player... (Score:5, Funny)
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So, if nobody asked for this supposed bug to be looked into, why did they pick DS1
and the goons to look at?
It stinks to high heavens.
Look at their CEOs info (LucasWV) - he has a statement that reads:
Statement on dev misconduct:
for the record, Darkstar1 has 3 pos in game only and they have always worked fine and have never been petitioned by anyone in the corp for not working, the statement given by CCP is incorrect and simply not true as far as
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You are right, that happens.
However...
a) It happens ONLY (and ONLY) when you petition it
b) When that happens, GM/dev sends an evemail (or uses ot
Imagine if these people actually had lives. (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer: yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Or better yet, imagine if Ghengis Khan, Hitler, etc. had imaginary wargames like this to play with. Would they leave their basements either?
Apparently, yes, they would have eventually emerged from their basements. And they would have emerged mightier than before! From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"The stunning Prussian victory over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the game Kriegspiel, which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army.
Useful Historical Fact of the Day: If Hitler had played C&C, we would all by typing in German by now.
Re:The answer: yes (Score:5, Funny)
Germany: We will pwn j00
France: ZOMG ZERG *France has disconnected from server*
UK: You too can experience your finest hour with all herbal enlargement pills
Germany: UK is just an F'ing spambot, we'll invade Russia
Russia: No fair Germany, we had a deal!
Germany: WTF Russia is turtling!!!
Japan: All ur base in Asia r belong to us
USA: OMG Japan is so f***ing ninja! I was AFK
Russia: This sucks, I have a spambot and AFKer on my team
US: Don't worry I was macro building up my production while AFK
UK: Sorry about that spam, I was letting my little bro play
Russia: Bout F***ing time you showed up
Germany: Italy, are you going to do anything productive?!
Italy:*Italy has disconnected from the server* *Italy has joined the game* *Italy has joined the Allies*
Germany: We're screwed *Germany has disconnected from the server*
US: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
Japan: ZOMG we gotz nuked *Japan has disconnected from the server*
As a member of ISD (Score:5, Interesting)
Other one really happened on irc: That was the last I've seen of Raekhan.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
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Sharkbait story has no merit.
A statement from the CEO of Darkstar 1, the corp which owns the POS in question (taken from his in-game bio):
"for the record, Darkstar1 has 3 pos in game only and they have always worked fine and have never been petitioned by anyone in the corp for not working, the statement given by CCP is incorrect and simply not true as far as i can tell. I am certain that the developer joining our corp is above board and no malice intended but frankly the manner in which he did it in t
Re:As a member of ISD (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, I don't get this game at all. I read several stories about EVE, and the interesting thing that they have in common is that
- Nobody seems to be having fun
- Everybody takes it way too seriously
.Makes sense when you know the game (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, training and getting your gear takes a long, long time. I'm dead serious when I say, after a year you can consider yourself ready to start (!) considering (!) playing with the "big boys". That year will be spent getting your gear, learning to pilot your ship, learning the market (mastering of which I'd easily allow as a substitute for a year of professional accounting) and so on.
Death hurts. Remember EQ? Yes, like that. You lose EVERYTHING. Well, ok, you lose your ship. Which isn't so much a deal while you're still equipped with ordinary junk you can pick up anywhere, since you can insure your ship for its full price. Hell, given the drop in ship prices, you can even make some money that way! Caveat: Your equipment ist lost anyway. And later in the game this hurts a TON more when the value of the ship is only a tiny fraction of what you paid for all the goodies you had in there.
Commitment is pretty high. We're not talking WoW "let's go and club some dungeon dragon, should take less than 5 hours" commitment. I've seen people gatecamp for 8 hours a shift. Yes, shift. Yes, as in working shifts. And gatecamping can be quite boring when nobody bothers to fly through. Yes, those people were sitting there at a gate and watch the gate. Yes, that's boring as hell. Yes, people do it. No, I have no idea what's interesting about it. But it "has" to be done if you want to "own" a sector.
Now those people get to see that all their work, their deaths, their commitment is for zip. I can see why they are upset about it...
So in other words (Score:2)
I've just never understood this mentality with some games, particularly MMOs, that fucking over your players is a good thing. No, it's not.
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No.
Your actions affect a bunch of other nightguards in the building, and possibly some employees if you're getting out of your way (for which you'll get promptly bitchslapped).
I
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And I return to GP argument, it is *just* a fucking game. All your work/effort is worth nothing, ZIP, it is supposed to be entertaining and to let you spend hours of "fun". If it is frustrating you because of any sort of gameplay then just stop playing the darn thing and start playing another game of the same genre.
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I agree with your assessment of the players who bitch about this stuff constantly, but they would be bit
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1. A player (not a dev, not a GM, not a superior. A PLAYER) tells the reporter, who is sorta-kinda "working" for CCP to "get lost".
2. Reporter rejects.
3. Someone who has appearantly never been in the channel before logs into IRC and tells the reporter in no uncertain terms to get lost DAMN RIGHT NOW OR ELSE.
4. Reporter asks who the heck this person may be.
5. Reporter gets banned.
No appeal, no explanation. According to him, he wasn't pushing anyone, a
Good to know another game I won't play... (Score:2)
Hell, ther are plenty of other excellent MMOGs out there, where the Developers don't cheat their customers.
Welcome on my "Games I will never play" list.
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What constitutes as cardinal sins in such a scenario:
1. First and foremost, rigging an outcome that favors a group of players. Seriously,
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The interesting questions this brings up (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter rival group of players "B" that threatens the hegemony of "A". Game developer supports "A" by developing items in their favor and scripts outcomes to favor "A" in RP events that dispense virtual cash and equipment.
Rival group of players "B" uses kickbacks from and paraphernalia sales, earning the ire of the IRS in the process. [shatteredcrystal.com]
Although most of the purchases ingame are completely virtual (money, ships, etc), if "B" is being taxed for finances relating to virtual acquisitions, shouldn't they likewise be able to sue under US law for breach of services by the game developer that is clearly favoring "A" in the ongoing war?
EVE Internal affairs statement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EVE Internal affairs statement (Score:4, Interesting)
Trust is like virginity (Score:4, Interesting)
Now some slashdot readers are going to make the comments about "Pshaw, what if these people had lives?", immune to the irony of posting such a thing on slashdot. But I think it's actually an instructive lesson in human behaviors. People are the same the world over from the lowest shitkicker to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company: we're all just hairless apes dressing up our motives and actions in funny outfits, the same way we dress ourselves. We're all still hairless apes and our motives and actions are about who has the most banans and who's getting to fuck the pretty females. The difference between corruption and scandal in CCP and in, say, the Bush administration is that us gamers have a closer vantage point. Want to have a laugh? Read up on some of the inside histories of the Third Reich. (That laugh will by cynical.) You read about the interpersonal conflicts, dick-measuring, kool-aid drinking and self-delusion and it's no different.
To that other poster who commented that Hitler might not have come out of the basement if he had RPG's to play with, you could just as easily say "if only that fucking art school would have let him in!" Every boy needs a hobby and anti-semitism was Hitler's fallback career.
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Quite seriously, and far from CCP bashing, what can they do now? The can of worms met the opener and now they gotta mop up the mess. First of all, they have to post something to stop the rumor mill. This is the note you posted.
Next they'll start digging into the issue. Either they will find out that he actually had to access the POS this way to fix the issue, or that this was the easiest way to do it, or that he's a new guy with a lack of training who didn't know that
Makes EVE Online even *more* realistic? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is already one of the most realistic and die hard games around, including an awesome economy (where, by the way, I hope corruption also occurs). Unlike WoW where the economy is balanced by a magical "binding" system which doesn't allow cool stuff to be handed off to other players, and dieing to another player doesn't mean squat.
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The problem is (Score:5, Interesting)
As an example I used to be an Immortal on a MUD. That's a developer, CSR, GM, whatever you want to call it in today's terms, on this MUD, Immortal was the name. In my case, I was essentially a senior GM in current terms. We logged in to the game same as players did, and had the same basic text interface. However where a player might have 50 or so commands we had like 200. They ran the full gamut of godlike abilities. I had a kill command that would kill whatever I specified, NPC, player, whatever. No checks for any kind of resistance, you just died. When in an area, you'd see a description (that an Immortal had written). I'd see that too, but prefixed with a number, which was the actual area number. I could go to any area simply by issuing a command with the right number, no matter where it was. I had a whole host of player editing commands, I could change anything on any player account. Any stat, any item, etc. They didn't even have to be logged in. Heck if I wanted I could tell the MUD to stop and entire section for debugging, all the MOBs would stop doing things, all scripts would cease.
Now that would mean that corruption on my scale was rather different than on a player scale. A player might work hard to infiltrate a rival guild to spy on them, I could just order the MUD to give me their chat logs. A player might steal money from their allies for their own gain, I could create as much money as I wanted, presuming I had anything to spend it on. A player might hatch an elaborate plot to sabotage rivals as they killed a powerful MOB, stealing the loot for themselves, I could simply create the item in my inventory.
That's the problem here. There is no real world analogue because such power can't be wielded in reality.
more step into the mainstream... (Score:2)
As a bothunter/killer of another MMO (Score:2)
If it gets rid of the goldfarmers and such, so be it.
OK..Like a good boy, I read the friggin' article.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that it would take another 350 pages of that crap before any of it starts to make sense.
Ohhh...and now my brain hurts.
An explanation for people who don't play Eve (Score:2)
Basically it goes like this: there are three allegations. (1) Someone who works for CCP (the company that makes Eve) used his developer powers to spy on an in-game corporation. (2) Players have supposedly had the ability to mold the Eve storyline through in-game events. However, it is alleged that some (or all) of these in-game events were actually rigged. In other words, the players who spent months participating in the events, thinking they were making a different in the Eve world, wasted their time and w
Re:OK..Like a good boy, I read the friggin' articl (Score:2)
DUNE is a nice, simple light read.
I wonder if the problem is (Score:2)
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To watch, most certainly.
To play, most certainly not.
What else could you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an example: http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u162/grover282
This is simply to be expected in a game where developers play the game along with players, and further, where the company recruits its GMs from the playerbase.
If that were all.... (Score:2)
If the only issue was that some players were friendly with the developers, then I doubt anyone would be complaining. However, it has been proven that in the past at least one developer was cheating and giving himself some of the most valuable items in the game. If he and his corporation had not acquired those items by cheating, the balance of power in-game might be completely different today.
The damage was done but CCP assured people that this one a one-time incident and that it wouldn't happen again. Ho
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Imagine a tabletop group. With a GM who's been running it for years now. Of course, he has become friends with his players, even those he didn't know when the game started because some buddy brought his friend along (ya know, you needed a Cleric and nobody wanted to play one...).
In comes a new guy. Well, not really new, he's been here for a few months as well. The point is: Can he expect the GM to be fair? Or should he prepare hi
Re:What else could you expect? (Score:4, Informative)
Then you have guys like the CEO whose corp was "infiltrated" by a CCP dev. He filed a petition to find out why a developer was a Director of his corporation. His petition was deleted. He filed another. It was also deleted.
BoB, on the other hand, can completely circumvent this whole system by simply chatting on MSN.
That shows with 100% clarity that we're not on a level playing field, and that this one alliance, which happens to be steamrolling over every other alliance in the game, has an unfair advantage.
It doesn't help that this Alliance has benefited from developer cheating before. It has been proven, and only after over 6 months of research and intense complaints from customers, did CCP finally admit to 1/10th of the allegations before they basically did absolutely nothing about it.
Yes, people are automatically looking for this kind of trouble. It doesn't help that CCP and BoB keep providing them with more fodder.
It's a shame (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep being tempted by this game. I like the premise. I did the trial, enjoyed the time. I even like the idea of all the schemes and betrayals that are EVE legends.
But every time I get close to signing up, there's some story of CCP employee misconduct affecting gameplay, and that just turns me right off the game.
I'd hoped they'd cleaned up their act, but it seems the answer is no.
CCP, you need transparency. You need to have clear rules for employees, and enforce them in a public manner. You have serious work to do to clean up your reputation.
It IS costing you money, without any question whatsoever.
Like my favorite MUD's admin said, (Score:2)
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The only difference to a real dictatorship: You can quite easily get out if you don't like it.
as a player I'm actually qualified to comment (Score:5, Informative)
What's the advantage of a multiplayer vs. single-player game? For starters, you think you have a continued universe to explore. Once you beat the storyline in games like Escape Velocity: Nova or Privateer, there seems to be little left to do in the galaxy. The attraction of an MMO is that the players are creating the storylines and you can keep playing for as long as it interests you.
The problem with that idea in general for MMO's is the grind. The gameplay elements that were once the interesting parts of the game become drudgery since you are obligated to keep grinding out those missions to get anywhere. When does sitting on a boat fishing become drudgery? When it ceases to become a passtime but a means to an end.
With EVE in particular death comes at a high price, you lose your ship and whatever was in it. That can represent a month or more of playtime. If you want to PVP against other players, you are putting your ship at risk. It's precisely like gambling and people praise and curse it for precisely those reasons. You'll never have the OMFG feel of barely making it out alive from a single player game unless you disable saving. Conversely, you'll never have the "I think I want to vomit" special feeling when you can reload from a save.
So what this means is that an EVE player has to have an occupation so as to collect his chips. The biggies are mining, ratting (hunting NPC's down in public areas), and missioning (where you have what is like an instanced dungeon except other players can still stumble across it.) These missions are quite fun at first, who doesn't enjoy blowing crap up on the computer? But there is little randomization within the missions so you know precisely what to expect. More difficult missions have the potential of destroying your ship. So, that kind of risk will make things interesting right? Yes and no. You can always try to warp out of a mission when you see you are in over your head. But at greater difficulties, the enemy will have scrambler frigates that zoom in and disable your warp drive. In other words, by the time you find out you're in over your head, there's nothing you can do about it.
So, how does this cause problems? You need to make your isk (in-game currency) to be a playah but it takes ages to earn it. The most lucrative areas of the game (lowsec and nosec) are heavily patrolled by player factions who have claimed ownership. NPC complexes in those areas can be regularly raided for massive isk payouts. Tribute collected from people travelling through the area can create a sizable passive income stream, not to mention the mining of rare minerals and such there. The wealthy factions can also buy blueprints for important equipment and ships in the game and make a fortune manufacturing them. The early scandals involved the CCP admins giving preferential treatment to the largest in-game faction, basically handing them the keys to an isk-printing factory. And even without that being the case, their concentration of capital would have allowed them to buy into the manufacturing racket anyways and thus further consolidate their financial position. Because warfare in EVE is a matter of attrition, he who has the most to attrit wins.
EVE has removed the leveling problem inherent in most MMORPG's, your skills train whether you are in the game or not. But because of the expense of your ships and how much you stand to lose when you are killed, you are left grinding for isk instead of xp.
When you get right down to it, the difference between a singleplayer Elite-clone and an MMORPG like EVE is that you have the gameplay process greatly extended. How long does it take you to get an uber ship in Privateer with all the fitti
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I'll also note that, in the past, team human vs. team computer is usually how my friends and I play RTS games, formerly in Starcraft, but more recently in Age of Empires III.
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And made it much worse. It doesn't matter that you are good or have time, you still have to wait years to train stuff up. This is the most efficient addiction detector yet designed.
If someone was fired, they won't talk. (Score:3)
If so, there is no way they would give any details, for fear of a lawsuit by the now former employee.
Games are supposed to be fun. (Score:2)
Even the hardcore players, the "raiders" or whatever they're called, will quit because without the population base of casual players paying their subscription fees, the developers cannot afford to keep enough staff to turn out new content at a rate that keeps the hardcore interested. It's happening now in EQ2, it'll happen in EvE.
Relative terms (Score:2)
"Disturbing" is clearly a relative term.
Life would be a lot happier if most difficulties were this upsetting.
-FL
Is It BoB + CCP vs. Goons + Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
Then again.. if you go down this alley... you have to then ask yourself... what meta game am I playing? Isn't the whole MMOG scene fun?
More like... (Score:2)
Out of every 10 allegations made about misconduct, CCP ignores 9 and addresses the 1 least offensive one, then does nothing about it either.
I kinda pity BoB (Score:2)
dont bother caring? (Score:3, Insightful)
im a longtime reader of
that said, i do believe there was some dev misconduct some time ago. but i do not believe ccp would be so asinine as to let it happen again. let me explain it in the context of EVE as a player:
a universal war broke out over the previous scandal in the game. both sides have used propaganda. this latest so-called-scandal is in fact part of the metagame. you all probably don't realize it, but in fact you are playing eve right now by participating in this thread, lol, the eve player base is exactly the kind that reads sites like slashdot. the accusations made have been put forth by one of the major alliances. they are compiled, not recent, and work to outrage the eve player base precisely in order to exact punitive repercussions on its warring enemy. and yes, those who are doing the accusing ARE the type who will see this as "winning" eve at all costs, even to the point of the company of CCP suffering. CCP are certainly not the best at communicating what they did and continue to do in order to prevent player/dev incest; however, that does not add up to them facilitating or denying wrongdoing when it happens. think of it: they are a small company, are levelled a malicious charge, and promptly get a thread over 60 pages in less than 24 hrs on their forums demanding answers, all the while maintaining their game servers and getting
sry for such a long post but i thought it might help your discussion to consider this whole thing in the above terms.
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Duh.
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Yes, I'm aware that many MMORPGs resemble work rather than leisure, but... why the heck play it, then? If you enjoy to work, hell, go to work and work a few
It's all a matter of how you view it (Score:4, Insightful)
Say you restored a classic car from a rusted-out wreck and it's now a showpiece. You feel satisfaction. Some rich guy enters a car in the same show and you know he paid someone else to do all the work. Well, does that bust your balls? Some people might feel it takes nothing away from the experience of actually restoring the car and are not put out. Some people might be upset about losing the blue ribbon to someone who just bought his way into the competition. Now what if you find out the rich guy's uncle is also on the judging panel and that this influenced his win? You may enjoy your car but there's no way in hell you'd enter that contest again, right? Now imagine that you had to do all that restoration work in a garage owned by the car show and you cannot take it with you if you want to leave. That's how people feel trapped in the game and that's why they get far angrier than most people would think is appropriate given the situation. You don't have to be a car buff to understand why someone would be upset if some dick smashed up another guy's car. You'd have to be a frickin' Buddhist monk not to be upset if it were your car. And if you were a Buddhist monk, what are you doing with a nice car anyway?
I guess what it boils down to is that you're kind of fucked if your passtime can be in any way controlled by someone else. If you like playing D&D, you don't have to go with the latest rules if everyone agrees to stick with the old ones. You can agree to modify the rules in a friendly game of chess for that matter. But if you follow a professional sport and they start dicking with the rules and changing the game, not much you can do there. Same goes for multiplayer games. It's not like you can say "you know what, I don't think I want to install that patch."
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Re:WHO CARES?! (Score:4, Interesting)
In the time between loosing nearly everything I had in EVE and discovering what was really going on I had worked hard to rebuild my EVE holdings back to where they had been before BoB showed up. Since I discovered what had happened I've stopped playing but I still keep the account ticking over and a passing interest.
Sure BoB kicked ass during the entire war, but EVE is hard game and a little advantage on such a big scale makes a difference.
Now I think its time to stop paying CCP
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OMG...
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Since I can only come up with one good reason (that another group is about to acquire hegemony and the company wants to even things out by supporting an opposing group), and that's pretty much anything but the case here, the only conclusion I can come to is simply that it's not an "official" move by CCP but rather some developer working at CCP abusing his position. It's the only thing that makes sense, given the inform
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Because that player group also contains most of the CCP staff.
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Sounds quite real to me.
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It's not like they "should have known better", that trying to achive the goal they had was impossible. It's not like they tried to invent the better mousetr
Re:Stupid question... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I assume you mean to say is that what goes on in the game is not very important in the grand scheme of things, and to an extent, you're right
It's only natural that someone gets "pissed off," enough to go off on a strongly-worded, lengthy rant about a game they've invested hundreds of hours in when the people whose profession it is to keep the game running smoothly and on the level, they find out, have been actively assisting your in game rival's opponents in their cheating, actively thwarting your efforts to try to enjoy yourself by achieving the goals you've set for yourself in the game.
Sure, you can just stop playing, but if you've spent a lot of time playing the game, and if you generally enjoy it, why should that be your first option before expressing an apparently well-founded concern and complaint, hoping to see that concern escalated to the point where something is actually done to remedy it? No, things will never be perfect, but what could happen is that the game management decides to make the integrity of the game a priority and takes a zero tolerance approach to staff misconduct, with a high degree of transparency and openness in terms of letting customers know what is and has been done to thwart and punish corrupt staff members.
People will continue to complain, and yes, some of them will quit playing (as much as they might not want to) as long as these stories keep coming out, brought the the player base by other players who have been running their own investigations, or who have been failed by the official systems and policies of the company. In other words, until the staff gets so subtle and smart about their cheating that no strong evidence can be never be offered that it occurs, or until the company gets good enough about keeping its own house that it can catch the sloppier of offenders and come clean before it explodes into a PR spin/damage control fiasco (like the last scandal) then people will, justifiably, continue to complain.
Also, one thing to understand about EVE is that the stakes are a bit higher than they are in your typical FPS session or even MMO. In EVE, you can go from rags to riches and back to rags again in a virtual eye-blink. You can grind for months to afford a new, decked out battleship and then lose it 25 minutes into its maiden voyage if you're not careful (this is why there is a common adage to never fly anything you can't afford to lose). EVE is also a highly PvP oriented game, not just in terms of combat and territoriality but also in terms of economy. It's all about acquiring and controlling resources, and the best resources require thousands of man-hours of effort and painstaking coordination to obtain and secure. These resources are fiercely fought over and negotiated for by large corporations (much like real life). If your enemies are able to find a chink in your armor, or have a critical advantage at a critical moment, you can lose the fruits of all of those many hours of effort with relatively little to show for it, which magnifies dramatically the importance of good strategy and smart play, but also the consequences of cheating, mechanics abuse and staff favoritism.
If someone uses an aimbot in a FPS, the solution is pretty simple, you find another server or play with people you know are a bit more trustworthy. You don't really lose anything besides a few minutes of your time if you get fragged by a cheater. In a game like Word of Warcraft, a cheater might deny you your rightful fruits of victory (wh
Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
So's baseball. But somehow cheating there warrants congressional investigations.
(And no, I'm not saying congress should investigate EVE, I'm saying they had no business investigating baseball.)
Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
So what if EVE is just a game? It's a meaningless statement, tautology. After all, money is only money. Water is only water. Blood is only blood. You'd have a hard time proving that anything in this world has any intrinsic value. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The time a person invests in the game is relevant to estimations of value, however, because time is something virtually everyone values rather highly, since we only have so much of it. Beyond that though, I feel compelled to point out that EVE is not just a game. It's a community. It's an economy. It's a business. All in a very real sense (or as real as any of these abstract concepts can be.)
Given that, I know it's quite understandable why someone would be angry upon discovering that employees or representatives of the company (CCP) either promote cheating or treat it as a zero priority problem, because the player paid a subscription fee for a service that is supposed to be regulated by fair, consistent, and logical rules. However, I think there's a difference between getting angry and demanding a refund versus getting angry and becoming swept into the drama over a fantasy world, which (to me) is an unproportional response.
I can understand exaggerated responses because I've been guilty of having them. To me it's a signal that there's an addiction going on with the player. A serious one.
There's a fine line between passion and addiction and without knowing the details of a someone's personal life, it's virtually impossible to tell them apart. As long as these games have a social component and an interacting community, and on top of that a competitive economy, you should expect people to sometimes to be rather dramatic in their reaction to perceived (and real) wrongs committed against them. Add to that, the fact that people are more prone to theatrics and other outrageous behaviors when anonymous (or semi-anonymous). In that context I don't think the response is necessarily disproportionate for someone who really enjoys the game, cares a lot about it, and values the significant amount of time and money they've devoted to the game. Addiction does not necessarily have to enter into it, though I would grant that realistically, it often does.
What I think is most sad about MMOs is that often it seems to get to the point with people where they no longer play because they really, genuinely, truly love to play the game, but they do so merely out of habit or because they are chasing some unattainable goal (because by the time they achieve any goal, they are so fixated on a new goal, their joy may be diminished), almost like a crack addict chasing that pure, perfect high. Gaming addiction generally isn't as destructive or dangerous as many other addictions, of course, but I completely understand the point that for some people, it really can get out of hand. However, I don't really think it's relevant to this particular topic and I think people are, in general, a little too ready to dismiss gamers as being addicts with no lives whenever they express any great amount of enthusiasm (positive or negative) about their hobby.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with PvP-heavy MMORPGS, such as EvE, is, that whoever has the biggest balls can also get the biggest share of the cake. In EvE this means you get access to newer blueprints for new equipment before others get it (if they ever get it, that is). Of course, playing a game is more fun when you have all the goodies.
Now, you can't simply hack into the DB. First of all, someone at the company will notice it sooner or later, and it could well cost you your job. You can't even simply pump yourself a few billions of credits, because that would CERTAINLY start to surface, since the EvE economy is heavily player driven, and the influx of a lot of cash is even more noticable than in other MMORPGs. Not to mention that the the overall money available is quite closely monitored, you notice that even as a player without any access to any kind of logs.
So the only thing you can do, if you have the power to run events and want to cheat, is to rig said events.