[Poetic] Ciao 4 Niao
Ciao 4 Niao
I am leaving EVE Online.
Permanently? I'm not sure yet. I'm not going to give away my stuff quite yet. Actually, I've spent today consolidating everything. And selling it all off. Of the stuff I couldn't be bothered picking up, I contracted to friends. Pinky got himself a bomber and a Legion, for instance. So I'm sitting on 45B ISK and we'll see what happens. If by July 2014, I decide not to come back, I'll log in and give that money away to some person(s).
I'll evaluate the game expansion by expansion. I'll also evaluate CCP's continued march towards softening up this game.
I'll continue to log-in to each account until each lapses, update their skill queues. Most of my characters have pretty long skills now, so only having to log in every 30 or so days. One alt account expires on October 18th. Another on October 31st. And my Poe account, it's a media account and expires July 2014. (Unless CCP wants to pull the plug sooner, which hopefully they won't, but that's their decision.) At any rate, if they don't pull the plug on the Poe account, then my final decision on whether I return or not will be made in July. Enough time so that 45B ISK doesn't go to waste.
I joined this game in 2011 because it reminded me very much of old school Ultima Online. The wild west. Where players were free to prey on other players. Where trust was an essential part of the game. In the last year though, CCP Games has been "trammelizing" EVE. Making it much safer, spending development resources to protect idiots. I want a game where players have to protect themselves. A game that forces players to play smart. A game where players cannot rely on the developer to protect them from their own laziness and ignorance. But CCP has seen fit to create many mechanics that do the job players should be doing for themselves.
A favourite event of mine, Hulkageddon, didn't run this year. Because it's no longer worth the bother. It may never run again. Too many mechanics have changed, and the event would no longer be what it once used to be. And that's a damned shame. In creating their safer universe, CCP has killed off some emergent gameplay. Unfortunately, I don't think they really care.
And now we have the TOS changes. To be clear, I've no problem with penalizing players who use typography to trick other players. That's an old and valid rule. I cannot create a character called mynnnna and then try to scam people by pretending to be mynnna. That is perfectly fine. I've also no problem with penalizing players who try to pass themselves off as representatives of CCP Games. Some things do need to be out of bounds. These rules have been in the user agreements for a very long time. I have absolutely no problem with them.
What bothers me is the most recent TOS change, which now bans a certain specific type of dishonesty that was never illegal previously. CCP tells me that I'm not allowed to tell people that I'm mynnna's alt for reasons of scamming them out of items or money. CCP tells us that this has always been the case. That, though, is complete bullshit. (It bothers me too when a company just up and outright lies to its customers like that.)
Many players have made an in-game living doing exactly that, claiming they are the alts of other characters. I don't recall the particular player's name, but this one dude made a good living awoxing freighters. He'd locate one in space with good cargo, then he'd contact the corporation in question, asking for an immediate invite, claiming to be an alt of one of the members. If he was accepted into the corporation (and he often was, no questions asked), he would then awox himself a freighter. I find it very hard to believe, given all the many freighters that this particular dude destroyed, that nobody ever petitioned him. And if he had been petitioned (and there is a very high probability that he was, many times), and if GMs always adjudicated such situations with a ban, well he would have been banned long long ago. But he was never banned, because what he was doing was perfectly fine and legal. Up until a few days ago, that is.
I really don't want to play an EVE Online where lying and subterfuge is slowly removed from the game. If the players give in on this issue, then somewhere down the line CCP Games will take another inch. They've been doing it for the past year with highsec mechanics. Now they've moved on to "tightening" up their user agreements.
When is enough, enough? For me, this has been the final straw. I don't scam. I don't lie. I don't deceive. But neither do I want to play an EVE Online where that sort of gameplay is slowly whittled away.
I'll of course monitor the situation. I'm glad the CSM are on the case, they are putting adequate pressure on CCP. I'm glad the players are raising their voices on the issue. Will it be enough? I guess we'll all find out.
I'm also disappointed with the development of EVE Online. The last couple expansions have been pretty underwhelming on major features (ship rebalancing is not a major feature, it's number juggling.) I blame it on CCP's short development cycles and their unwillingness to stretch feature development across cycles. Thus we continually get features that fit into four to five month development windows, which means we continually get features that are light on actual features.
I enjoy the EVE community. I enjoy the meta-game. I enjoy PvP. But all of those are elements of the game that the players create. In terms of PvE, I'm really starting to think that CCP doesn't have a clue how to design fun gameplay. Mining? Missioning? Incursions? That hacking game? Can anybody honestly tell me that any of those are intellectually and/or viscerally engaging? Incursions might be engaging due to the community and Teamspeak, but in terms of game mechanics, are incursions at all challenging?
Let's take that hacking game. I honestly tried with this one. I skilled up my alt for a month and half, maxing her out in all that hacker and archaeology mumbo-jumbo. Then I went out to do it. I made it through five complexes (which amounts to about 25 of those minigames) before I wanted to stab an awl into my brain. Imagine if some indie company had created that hacking game for mobile phones, they'd be laughed out of the room, even if they tried to give it away for free. There's nothing challenging or engaging about the gameplay at all. And yet, because it's a part of EVE, we all celebrate it as something wonderful. And we ask that CCP give us more of that sort of thing. And yet, the game itself is a complete turd. We wouldn't waste a single moment on a game like that outside of EVE, so why do we celebrate it as a part of EVE?
(Consider that it took someone five months to code that game for EVE, yet a few guys were able to create a Valkyrie demo in a couple months, part-time. The mind boggles.)
So, yeah, another consideration in leaving is bad gameplay. As much as I love the EVE community and the player created content, I wouldn't have minded if the game had some engaging PvE. I never log in to EVE to PvE. EVE has nothing to offer me outside of player-created content. Which is mostly fine, but sometimes you just want to do something solo in a nice quiet constellation away from other players. Unfortunately EVE is not the game for that.
Then there's the failure of DUST 514. Don't let anyone fool you, DUST is dead ? a complete bomb. All DUST does now is bleed cash out of CCP Games. And CCP is far too stubborn to admit to that failure. They'll keep this game propped up for another year or two.
I suppose there's hope for Valkyrie, but I predict that game won't see the light of day until at least Winter 2014, and quite likely it will be delayed to 2015. What Valkyrie has going for it, that DUST 514 does not, are developers totally passionate and invested in the game and the platform. So Valkyrie has a chance. DUST on the other hand is in China because of the cheap labour, not because any of the local Shanghai employees are actually passionate about what they're developing.
I also found out one of the big reasons why Sreegs left CCP (and it wasn't just about the money.) CCP were unwilling to take the War on Bots as seriously as Sreegs wanted. He could have banned another 10K accounts, but CCP nixed those plans. CCP wants to walk a fine line, the appearance of being tough on botters, while still needing them for the bottom line. Banning 10K accounts would have been a substantial hit on that bottom line. EVE probably needs some amount of botting, to keep the economy in check (because real people don't want to mine), but it's a hypocritical stance, especially given their recent TOS changes. They have all these rules and they enforce them unevenly. Gotta keep the botters, but let's get rid of those nasty scammers.
Yeah, I'm feeling kinda of bitter. But oh well. It's an honest feeling.
So there's some tidying up to do. I have some more stuff to fetch and sell. Just trying to get all the ISK onto a single character. Then let accounts lapse and check in with EVE during expansion announcements. See if there's anything worth coming back to.
As for this blog. I have two unfinished interviews. One with CCP Manifest. He still has a few questions in his inbox. He may not be in the mood to answer them, which is fine. He's a busy guy. But I'll still release what I have. He's an interesting dude with an interesting job. I think you'll like the interview. Plus, I don't want him to feel like he wasted his time answering all the questions that he did, so I will get them out there to be read.
I also have another partial interview with the video production department. I only got about a sixth of all the questions I wanted to ask, answered. They were either busy or uninterested. It's cool either way. I never place expectations on the interview subjects. But the questions they did answer, there are some good ones. So I'll get that out too.
After that? I may still blog here, but about non-EVE stuff. Maybe some EVE stuff from time to time, especially when expansions are announced. Probably some more television and film reviews. Other games too. I may continue to be on Twitter, though definitely not as active.
Anyhow, to everyone. Cheers. It's been fun. I've enjoyed you all, even the haters. Maybe I'll have the privilege of playing EVE Online with you again some day in the future. We'll see. There are two expansions to convince me.
Take care. Fly safe.
o7
Source: Ciao 4 Niao
Einige Bedenken muss ich leider teilen ... : /