Research'S'Me
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Posted - 2009.01.26 14:19:00 -
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Edited by: Research''S''Me on 26/01/2009 14:22:02 Is it just me or is CCP losing it's CCPishness. Lately a number of decisions have been made by CCP which are, at best, questionable. Examples :
Starbase Exploit & Alchemy More than enough has been said on this topic but the way CCP dealt with the problem is just odd. Very little information was shared with the players resulting in a torrent of wild accusations. If a player screws up and is banned the most prudent action would seem to make this public and thereby exonerating their fellow corp/alliance members. And then there's Alchemy, one of the solutions offered to stabilize the market after the apparently rather large spike in Dyspro based t2 material prices. The current Alchemy formulas are about as viable as a middle eastern peace treaty. And claiming it's pre-nerfed is idiotic since it takes about 10 minutes and a spreadsheet to understand the currently formulas are flawed.
Disabling Ghost Training Completely irrelevant for most people (look here) and it wouldn't have been that big a deal if it wasn't for the woefully inadequate explanation CCP provided to us. Let's run through their reasons for disabling ghost training :
"Now a single customer that doesn't log into the servers may not weigh heavily on our database infrastructure, just as a single snowflake isn't that heavy, hardly a measurable quantity. But it's hard not to notice an avalanche if it hits you. And that's that was starting to happen in our database." This must be nonsense. If inactive accounts training a single skill (people would have to reactivate to train another one) is honestly even a fraction of a percentage of the load on the database there's something horribly wrong with that system. Just fix it.
Players now have to pay a subscription for characters to have them progress Slightly half arsed logic if you ask me. People that are ghost training an account obviously aren't playing the account and can never do so until they reactive the account. The progression isn't materialized until they reactivate, and thus pay for, their account. I guess they're going on the assumption that people with inactive ghost training accounts will now pay for the accounts. Some might, most won't.
CCP noticed a surge in the trend and decided to fix the leak Proof? Numbers? I don't find it very likely that the number of people that "exploit" ghost training is high at all. Are you counting all accounts that have a skill running (so basically people that were doing a long skill and took a break or left) or people that actually consistently start a skill that's 30 days or longer, unsubscribe, and resubscribe that account when it's done?
Ghost Training was an unintended feature where unpaid accounts of EVE Online were able to continue training skills. While this allowed players to run multiple characters on a shoestring budget, in all effect, this was a bug. Well, that claim sort of holds up now that CCP has ninja-edited all relevant pages in on the site but this exact "bug" was used as a selling point before this.
Btw, I do ghost train. Sometimes EVE starts boring me, so I select a long skill, suspend my account and go do other things. Then at some point I'll come back *because* I know my account can fly or almost fly a new ship etc. I like the game so I'm not going to suspend any of my accounts but this change has reduced the odds of me coming back after a break. Now a single customer that doesn't reactivate his or her account may not weigh heavily on your income, just as a single snowflake isn't that heavy, hardly a measurable quantity. But it's hard not to notice an avalanche if it hits you. And that's what may happen to your userbase. |