Originally by: SSgt Sniper

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Originally by: CCP t0rfifrans

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The bug that became a feature

On Monday, we released news that we are disabling äGhost Trainingô, the ability to train characters on inactive accounts. This resulted in strong reactions from the community as many people were routinely making use of it. We explained the matter in more detail and pointed out that this had been a bug in the original game code. Those of us who were involved in the process of making the decision and communicating it to the community did not realize this bug had been so accepted as a feature that it was listed as such in our own documentation on our own website.

How can we not know whatæs in our own documentation? Well, to be frank, it was a case of insufficient communication on our part between various teams û a regrettable mistake and hard lesson to learn at the expense of the trust youæve placed in us. Thereæs no way to spin it and we wonæt add insult to injury by trying to do so. It was a mistake on our part and for that we sincerely and humbly apologize.

Many would hope that in light of this we will decide not to cancel ghost training and keep it active as an option but weære cannot to do that. EVE is already one-of-a-kind in allowing players to progress their characters through offline skill training. We stand by our policy that if you want your character to progress in EVE, you should pay the subscription fee. The fact that so many people have been able to do so for several years was our own oversight. We know this change, and our misstep in telling you about it, has created some discontent and we hope that over time we can prove our committment to make EVE better than ever for you will be evident as you enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Torfi

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I realize the need to save corporate face in your apology and will choose to accept the intent of it. Thank you for that. I however believe you are making a mistake in your reasoning process- see I don't think people are abusing this intentionally but as a side effect of another business decision you made recently.

Removing the 30 day cards made it much harder for people to keep thier accounts all active on a budget, and I believe this is why so many accounts are currently inactive. I do not believe that the ghost train feature factors into most of these accountholders decision at all, rather an inability to afford keeping them all running at the now higher cost. Thus I believe your logic regarding what to do about it now is flawed.

If you persist on removing the ghost train feature, I can accept that- I never really cared about it's existance as much as the the poor way you were handling the removal decision. I hope you will consider these things:

1. Please bring back the 30day gtc. I feel this will actually fix a lot of the recent financial hit you've taken as some people will be able to have alts return to active state.

2. Push this change for 30 days. Basically give time for everyone struggling with thier own finances the time to figure out and adjust to this change in a manner that makes the best sense for them and for you.

3. Admit the financial hurt you are dealing with yourself- I swear, if you do this I will personally buy two etc and give them away as I do like the game (if not your handling of it from time to time) and would like to help, if only you'd just be honest about it.

4. As a give back to those still upset about this, either A. bring in skillqueue, or B. Allow slot 2 and slot 3 to train skills at a oh, let's say a 30% and 15% rate respectively.

I will be keeping an eye on things for a while before I make my final decision on reactivation as I have until May to decide either way. If you take some positive steps toward the community as atonement, I'll get back on board. If not, I'll shop around when the time comes.

Understand that at no point did I care about the feature's existance itself, just the poor handling of the subject.

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