Elo Behram
Tulsa Tube Bending
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2009.06.30 02:27:00 -
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Edited by: Elo Behram on 30/06/2009 02:28:22
WARNING: LOTS OF WORDS IN THIS POST. BEWARE OF HURF.
Let me preface this by saying I've never lost SP to a non-upgraded clone, although I've had some close calls, so this should be interpreted as a criticism rather than whining:
The clone/SP system is a terrible, bad, terribad, horrible, horribad, horriterribad, violates-the-first-thing-they-teach-you-in-game-design-courses mechanic that serves no purpose except to act as a disproportionately punishing "gotcha" for players that forget to click two buttons on the way out of the station.
Let's pretend that EVE introduced a new feature where you had to go through a start-up sequence every time you undocked, and if you forgot to activate a module during that sequence, it's non-functional until you re-dock or activate it in-flight (one by one due to the capacitor cost). Sure it might be more "atmospheric" and add more RP or world-building or whatever, but in practice it's nothing but frustration with no plausible positive effect on the gameplay experience.
But, you say, other things in EVE cause frustration too, like losing your Hulk or BPO-carrying shuttle to a suicide ganker in empire. We don't eliminate those things, why eliminate this? The answer is that those are actions taken by other players, which means that while you might be dissatisfied with the result, there's another player somewhere who is proportionately satsified and Having Fun, whereas the clone mechanic benefits no one in any way shape or form. The other player doesn't know you forgot to upgrade your clone, so they get no satisfaction out of it (as opposed to knowing you lost umpty billion isk in mods and cargo from the killmail).
The fact that you forgot to upgrade your clone makes your game experience frustrating while providing no tangible or intangible benefit to anyone. In addition, the penalty for a non-upgraded clone is sometimes weeks of training time. That's an entirely disproportionate mechanic for something so easily forgotten.
In conclusion, this is probably one of the least defensible game design decisions up there with POS mechanics and doomsdays, and the only muppets who could conceivably support it are those who blindly reject any and every possible change without any critical thought.
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