OOC Entry 106 - Sacrificed on the marketing altar

With this post I will do two things which I never did before: I will throw a serious j'accuse at CCP and at the same time defend a griefer. Even me - a currently inactive player - could not miss the perfect storm in the EVE community that was created by the Erotica 1 Bonus Room Affair. I was following the threads and blogs and comments with a rather blasé attitude, and then this happened:

Let me make one thing perfectly clear at this point. I have nothing but contempt for scammers and griefers who prey on the weak. The practices of Erotica 1 and his friends at Minerbumping are among the worst examples of in-game behaviour that can be found in EVE as far as I am concerned. Still, in this particular ruling of CCP I see nothing but a marketing lie and Erotica 1 became the convenient sacrifice to prop it up.
 

A Dangerous Hypocrisy 

When Ripard Teg wrote his blogpost, both the EVE community and third party media latched on to it and the reaction was largely negative with only a minority defending scamming and related practices as legitimate gameplay., The public image of EVE had taken a serious hit: Obviously this must be a game where sociopaths and sadists can freely engage in their despicable activities and are fully condoned by the game's creators. At a time when the influx of new players into EVE is as high as it hasn't been in a long time, CCP found itself at an impasse: Should they let this slip and stand vilified in the wider gaming media, or should they take action and possibly alienate a significant part of the playerbase by putting restrictions on the sandbox.

In the end they opted for a singularly double-faced approach. They declared to the playerbase that nothing will change (after all, real-life harassment has always been forbidden) but simultaneously kicked Erotica 1 from the game.

The problem with this is, that CCP is guilty of serious, and dangerous, hypocrisy here. While Erotica 1 has become a very prominent scammer and griefer that could be made an example of, many similar and even worse practices still go on. Goons will still scam people out of all their stuff with the false promise of a membership in their ranks. The New Order will still obsessively hunt and kill every "carebear" they can find, over and over again, openly declaring that they want them gone from the game. ALODs will still be published on websites, accompanied by articles that publicly ridicule the person who managed to lose an expensive and/or ill-fitted ship in a stupid way. The collecting and publishing of tears and rage continues at an unmitigated pace. Racial slurs and misogynistic trashtalk still persist both in-game and metagame communication.

EVE has not become any less infested with the likes of Erotica 1 or even worse griefers. As Erotica 1 states himself on reddit:

If I'm banned, then there are thousands of players, with clear evidence on the internet and within logs that should be as well for more aggregious(sic) activities.

Of course CCP can not, and will not, do that. They have made their bed (or sandbox) and now they have to sleep in it. That bed is infested with vermin, but they show all the world how they have removed one flea and now probably expect everyone to accept that as proof that everything is fine.

But that's a lie, and with this lie they pave the way for remaining griefers and scammers to reel in new victims who have been given a false sense of security. After all EVE is fine now that this "evil sadist" has been banned. CCP is taking action to defend the weak against such abuse.

Pardon me if I laugh bitterly at this.

The Gevlon Defense

What I really respect Gevlon Goblin for is putting his money where his mouth is -  Alekseyev Karrde on DOW Episode 71

What really should have happened here is a promotion of in-game retaliation. Gevlon Goblin - in my view - is a pretty crazy person, but he did something that hundreds, if not thousands, of others who complain about Goonswarm have not done: He tried to create trouble for them in highsec to a degree that they would be hurt by it. One can discuss the level of success he had with that endeavour, but he decided to look for an in-game (and metagame) solution for something he perceived as an in-game problem: The influence Goonswarm and their allies were having in highsec space.

All those people posting accusations and screaming for a ban (if not even a prison sentence) for Erotica 1 could - and should - have instead done just that. Warn everyone publicly and thereby restrict the pool of potential victims for that scammer. Harass the New Order with wardecs and counter suicide ganks. Infiltrate the organization of Erotica 1 and his friends to steal right back from them. In the past, I became aware of one stratagem where a griefer and troll was hit hard and life in his favorite hunting ground was made impossible for him: That was when Zedrik Cayne set up Socratic.

All those people with their righteous rage could have done similar things with Erotica 1.

Actually, if CCP wanted to mess with the sandbox to support the weak, then they should implement a way how victims can actually band together and make life more difficult for the perpetrators. What if all those mission runners who have perfect standings with the Caldari Navy could pool LP to gain a docking ban charter for known scammers and griefers, evicting those guys until they got their standings back up? Erotica 1 would have to move his assets out of Jita and could be attacked, not to mention having to look for a new hunting ground.

The whole problem here is not that there are people who will do their malicious best to exploit the uninformed, the naive, the gullible and the weak. The problem is, that there is very little the victims can do to fight back against someone who basically sits in a station and conducts all his nefarious business from there.

I would even dare to say that people like Erotica 1 would appreciate the challenge.

Instead, CCP opt for a publicity stunt at the cost of one particular player who I personally would call the most elaborate scammer and griefer, but certainly not the worst, and ultimately at the cost of more new players who get blindsided by that publicity stunt.

If I were to put it as outrageous hyperbole, I'd say CCP just scammed a lot of potential new players in ways that Erotica 1 could not have done better.

TRS - To Hell with the SOV system!

In the last few weeks there have been a number of discussions about old and new issues that all gravitate towards the same thing in the end: The sovereignty system sucks.

Whether it's supercapital proliferation, people not undocking, drone assist, blobbing, force projection, cloaky campers, the complaints about the new deployables or reduced nullsec ratting income, no matter which discussion you follow, in the end they all come down to the underlying issues with the sovereignty mechanics. You repeatedly hear statements like "We need massive fleets (or supers) to grind structures and defend timers" or "You just need the ratting income to pay sov/rental bills." or "Without large coalitions it is just impossible to maintain enough sov." The large and small alliances who form the sovereignty blocks out in nullsec all sound like prisoners of their own success.

Just listen to the last podside podcast for an example of that discussion taking place between some nullsec guys and some wormholers with CSM Mike Azariah thrown in for some extra spice.

The wormholers and Mike have no trouble with the issues that plague the nullsec players, but the nullsec crowd sounds like they have a serious problem.

I know they do, I have been there myself.

Lucky for me, in my line of work, I actually got paid for services with ISK. Because of that, I didn't have to have three ISK grinding alts like many others. Alts which would have forced me to grind even more ISK and become even more risk averse because I have to PLEX as many of them as I can or end up spending stupid amounts of money on subscriptions. That was what I saw all around me in sov nullsec, and every time I read or hear something from nullsec players, things sound like they haven't really changed. If anything, they have become even worse.

From renters who are forced to turn into nullbears - whether they want to or not - because they can't pay their bills otherwise, to Goons who have to grind structures in bombers, nobody sounds like they are really having fun playing. At least not like I see the people in lowsec having fun, or what I hear and read from people in WH-Space. All that remains for the line grunt of the nullsec crowd is the warm and fuzzy feeling they get from being part of something big that is visible on the sov map and that gets headlines because of massive fights.

When I first got to nullsec, Dominon was still really fresh. A lot of people were happy about the change because it seemed like a welcome break from the endless POS grind that it had been before. By now, everyone feels more like having woken up with a hangover on the day after a long party. There's still a horrible grind and now the damn thing you have to grind down also costs crazy amounts of ISK while it does exactly nothing. At least a POS can be useful for stuff,. A TCU, an SBU or an IHUB are just space clutter and ISK sinks.

I think the only way out of this valley of tears (yeah there are tears, lots of them) is to throw out the sov system completely.

Faction Warfare showed me possibilities how this can work so much better. Nullsec could be even better than that (there really is no need for IHUBs at all if you ask me.) So instead of the current sovereignty system I would propose the following:

• No more TCUs SBUs and all that bullshit. If you want to get your name on a system, you need to run the plexes there and clear them. Now PVE actually means something and you make ISK while you establish your claim, rather than having to pay for it, just like you get a reward in FW for doing the same. This way nobody can just put sov structures into systems they never come back to again. Space needs to be actually lived in and used. If other people rat out your plexes, your system can turn contested, again like in FW. A mechanic like the one used for incursions could be implemented there. Maybe even with a similarly escalating difficulty (and reward) for sites. Since you would need to prevent opponents from flipping the system this way, residents would have an actual reason to undock and defend their system against ninja ratters.
• Outposts should be destructible, and if a system becomes contested anybody can build one. As long as a system is controlled by one alliance, only they can build an outpost. At the point where a system is contested, an existing outpost would be the only thing that needs to be destroyed to make sov drop. If there is no outpost, whoever clears the next plex after the system has entered contested mode gains ownership of the system after a certain grace period (maybe 24 hours?) where the system is neutral and can still be recovered.
• Current IHUB upgrades should become station upgrades and/or outpost upgrades. If a system with only NPC stations switches ownership, the upgrades become inactive but they can be taken out of the station by anyone who is still docked there. If upgrades are installed in outposts, they can also be taken out and moved of course. Upgrades can only be installed by those who hold sovereignty in a system. Upgrades would also turn inactive in neutral systems.
• Cynojammers and jumpbridges can of course only be put in place by those who hold sov. Because a system can flip more easily and without the need to grind through lots of timers, they also become more vulnerable. Force projection and jumpfreighter logistics become less of a default.  
• Last but not least: Do away with CONCORD sov bills! What business does CONCORD have out there anyway? It's an agreement between the NPC Empires, not some nullsec property tax collecting agency. All the recent Rubicon lore implications actually would support such a move.

The way I see it, this would make the whole sov system much more simple and much cheaper with less unnecessary spreadsheet bureaucracy. It would reduce the need for alliances to expand their space beyond the level that they really need to cover the standard costs of playing EVE (i.e. losing ships and assets). With claimed territories becoming smaller, there would be room for more alliances out there. Coalitions can of course still be formed, but there would be more than just three of them and the diplomatic metagame will become more varied and diverse. There would also be more PVP with more varied opponents.

Taking over sov would no longer be something that can only be achieved by massive fleets or supercap blobs. Now the efforts of small groups of ninja ratters can have an effect too. Just like in WH-Space or in FW, such ratting fleets would also have to be prepared for PVP. That would be the well deserved end for the ridiculous levels of nullbearing and botting. Pure carebears can not survive in lowsec or WH-Space. They should not be able to survive in nullsec either. Because you don't need to grind ISK like crazy anymore just to pay for sov, all you earn can go directly into replacing ships and expanding your infrastructure. That also makes losing ships less of a problem, and the large alliance SRP systems would be less crucial as a means to get people to actually go out there and risk their ships.

By extension that would also solve the problem of cloaky camping. The main reason why cloaky campers are a problem is not because they can cyno in a fleet, but because their targets are not prepared for an attack. That is why - with the exception of farming corps who never make it very long - nobody in WH-Space or lowsec is really worried that much about being dropped. Sure, in WH-Space you can not drop a fleet of 500 guys with 20 capships on some ratters, but on the scale of their corps, they face a similar level of danger. In lowsec you can be dropped by fleets like that, and still nobody worries about cloaky campers. People do run sites in lowsec and WH Space, and they do mine, but they do it in an organized and well prepared way. Always ready to fight - or at least evade - intruders.

Sov warfare would become much less of a large scale mass brawl that crashes nodes. It would rather need a widespread effort by a larger number of smaller fleets to take over and then stabilize systems. Newbies can also still be meaningful in those fleets. Actually more so, because the value of smaller ships would be higher in such a system. With the exception of outposts, it would also mean the end of the stupid system of timers which delay progress and always favour one timezone over another if the warring parties do not happen to live in the same geographical region.

All of that would be a radical change, but so was Dominion. Especially, with the way how CCP are developing the meta-narrative since the Rubicon expansion, those changes would even be consistent with the backstory. Most importantly, it would reduce the amount of grind and make gameplay in nullsec more exciting and fun.

So why not do it?

OOC Entry 99 - A woman's touch?

Before some people reading what is to come in a way that results in defensive knee-jerk reactions, let me make a few things clear:

I am a woman and I am supporting women's emancipation and their right to be considered equal in any possible way. I am, however, not claiming that women are naturally better at anything. I do not count myself as a feminist because I feel that this ideology is often stereotyping men in a way that I consider unfair. I will use language in the following post that might sound like I am favouring a female perspective - whatever that may be - but that is all supposed to be understood within the context of gender identity how it is usually defined these days. None of it is intended to mean that women or men are better or worse at anything.

Ok, with that out of the way, I am going to look at Rubicon and what it tells us about CCPs new direction.

With CCP Seagull as senior producer, it looks like things have changed significantly from what we all know about the development history of EVE Online.

Here we have a person who is not intending to drop major "Jesus Features" with every expansion. Nor do we have someone who relegates herself to a program of just fixing things and polishing the game.

CCP Seagull is the first senior producer to ever present a long-term vision for where EVE-Online expansions should take the game eventually.

Rubicon is the first expansion that has been developed fully while she was at the helm. Odyssey came out when she already had the job, but much of the planning and conceptualization for it definitely happened before her term began. 

The name is very well chosen to reflect what is supposed to happen: The first step is taken on a journey that will fundamentally change the game world of New Eden. Other than all her predecessors, CCP Seagull plans to set a course for that change which will progress gradually but with a definitive end-goal in mind. At the end of this process - which could (and probably will) take years - you should find yourself in a very different New Eden.

Since this approach is so different from anything that came before, it makes me wonder whether that has anything to do with her gender.

Men - not because of their born-in qualities, but because of their upbringing - tend to favour short-term goals. They are very often encouraged to be "doers" and to compete for the fast achievement of easily quantifiable goals. Women often have a tendency to think more long-term.

That whole thing might have a basis in the way how procreation works.

On the most basic level, the goal of procreation for the man is getting the female pregnant. For the woman it means having the support and nourishment that is necessary to get through pregnancy and then to feed the child while it is still dependent on mother's milk. That requires a bit of a longer perspective.

Of course modern societies have made this very simplified relation much more complex, but in terms of development we are not so far away from a time when this was still how things worked. I would propose that we haven't quite overcome those behavioural patterns.

Even today, tasks like child-care and child-rearing are mostly seen as the responsibility of the woman. That is the case even in the most equal societies with the most blurred gender roles. Very often women themselves will voluntarily take that role. Sometimes they might even say men can't really do that properly, and that's why they have to do it.

I'm not saying men cannot be committed to their children, but it is not as deeply ingrained with them, or expected to the same degree, as it is with women.

Looking at things from that viewpoint, it almost seems like CCP Seagull is like the mother who has dedicated herself to raising her child over the coming years, and in the case at hand the child is EVE Online.

Working together with her, she has a number of men who are also committed to see this child flourish. As the Senior Producer she is in the best position to give those men clear short-term goals which they can achieve. Things like "Balance that Ship Class" or "Come up with Deployable Structures".

Following my proposed model of explanation here, this would play to the strengths of all those guys while freeing them from the burden of having to think of a overarching plan.

When I was with the military, my commanding officer had that theory: He said, that he thinks women are better strategic commanders and men are better tactical commanders. His basis for saying this was exactly the thing about perspectives I wrote about earlier in this post.

I disagreed with him because I rejected the gender stereotyping that came with it. However, the approach of CCP Seagull and her team seems to fit the theory when compared to previous years of CCP development.

Makes me wonder whether the man had a point.

It may of course be very far-fetched to see evidence for a general theory in something incidental like CCP changing their course of expansion development, but at least it does not contradict the premise.

In the end, whether this change in development philosophy is something that has anything to do with the fact that CCP Seagull is a woman is not necessarily that important. I am just sharing thoughts here, moonlighting as an armchair gender studies expert ;)

I do have to say that I like it very much, and it sounds exciting. As for now I am confident that if I ever join the ranks of active EVE players again, I will be playing a very different game.

For that I want to give CCP Seagull a hug from one geek-girl to another.

OOC Entry 88 - In Defense of CCP

As you have probably heard, the so called Fountain War saw a massive battle in the system Z9PP-H.

More than 2200 ships participated, and of course the immense amount of players congregating lead to serious overload for the node that ran the system. I don't want to go any further into the details of what happened, because Ali Aras already wrote about it and CCP Falcon explained what had happened as well.

What I want to address here is the reaction of what I hope is only a vocal minority of the players involved.

The TL;DR version is: Shut up you spoilt children!

To elaborate ...

I have been working as systems administrator and systems engineer for almost two decades, and I am also familiar with HPC cluster setups like the one CCP is using to run EVE. With their "Single Shard Universe" they have not made it easy for themselves to keep everything running as it ideally should.

Now we see two massive powers fighting, and CCP is doing what they can to make things work so all those people can have their great fleet battles. This time 'round CCP failed to prepare in advance. It's great of them to even do so in the first place. But well, sometimes even sysadmins have to have some time off and can't stay watching things all night long.

It looks like the whole thing happened at a time when most staff would be at home, relaxing, maybe sleeping, maybe out drinking. In short, they were doing what they are entitled to: Enjoying their free time.

Well, CCP even scrambles some technicians during off-duty hours to make it possible that some other people can have their personal brand of free time enjoyment. Those technicians, or someone who was instructing them, made a mistake and a fleet battle was cut short.

What results is the most uncalled for nerdrage imaginable. People are calling CCP everything under the sun. An individual calling himself Sion Kumitomo writes an open letter to CCP where he states that "incompetence is worse than malice."

Does this guy even know what he is saying there?

Riverini of EN24 goes ahead and quotes someone who he considers to "sum up pretty much what’s the word around the players [he (Riverini) has] talked to.

That mastermind of analytical thinking concludes that " CCP got greedy. It’s no coincidence that they decided to re-map the node as twitch.tv figures were peaking. They saw all those juicy potential subs." and that "they did it for themselves, not for the players."
 
Really?

Where does all that paranoia come from?

Of course CCP is a company that wants to have good publicity and make money, but they are also a rather small company and they operate with tight human resources. As someone who knows what that is like and what a complex system they are running there, I can see all the signs of a company who are prepared to go the extra mile to keep their customers happy and to make impressive events like massive fleet battles possible.

Is it really so difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt? What has CCP ever done to make all those people so incredibly angry at them?

My personal answer - despite all Incarna debacles, glitched expansion deployments and other slipups: Nothing!

What I see is exactly what I have come to hate with a vengeance throughout my years in the IT industry: Users behaving like spoilt little children who think that mommy only exists to fulfil their every wish and who throw a temper tantrum if mommy doesn't.

The sense of entitlement those people have honestly makes me sick, and my heartfelt support goes out to all the CCP people who run from their homes, their friends, their children, their loved ones to make it possible that some raging nerds with their bloated fleets can keep pressing F1 for the rest of the night.

Get real people. It's not some mission critical application that lives or resources depend on. It's a game which you pay as much for in a month as it would cost to go to a movie and have some popcorn and drinks with it. It's not the world.

Try to behave like adults.

I have to give credit to Poetic Stanziel here for remaining level headed.

People should take him as an example and not behave like the frothing-at-the-mouth CFC people in this thread.