yay! Now people can't have a bazillion accounts they're not paying for just so they can sell the characters later. Seems entirely logical to have skill training deactivated once a subscription is canceled. Cancel your account if you don't like it. :P
Unfortunately this should do little to impact character sales. Based on what I've seen in the forums, the people who create and train accounts for the sole purpose of selling them for ISK (or otherwise) will be effected maybe 2 or 3 months. Most of the training they do for these accounts is less then 30 days so there is limited value in turning off an account for any substantial period of time.
And the people that don't like EVE do cancel it for good, those people don't care one bit. It's the people that love EVE but come and go throughout the year that will be turned away by this change.
Not trying to debunk anyone here or start a flame war but I've seen a few people say that being able to train up a character while not having the account active was a feature the game was marketed on. If this is true then I would understand the grievance some of the long time EVE players would have.
But is it true, did CCP market this so called "ghost training" as a game feature and if so can someone point me to some hard proof of this?
Originally posted by jinxit Not trying to debunk anyone here or start a flame war but I've seen a few people say that being able to train up a character while not having the account active was a feature the game was marketed on. If this is true then I would understand the grievance some of the long time EVE players would have. But is it true, did CCP market this so called "ghost training" as a game feature and if so can someone point me to some hard proof of this?
Copying and pasting a response I made in the Eve forum section of this site.
Not trying to debunk anyone here or start a flame war but I've seen a few people say that being able to train up a character while not having the account active was a feature the game was marketed on. If this is true then I would understand the grievance some of the long time EVE players would have.
But is it true, did CCP market this so called "ghost training" as a game feature and if so can someone point me to some hard proof of this?
Copying and pasting a response I made in the Eve forum section of this site.
When a player mentioned it in the forum, the alteration was quickly made, and CCP stuck by the bull that Ghost Training is a bug. A five year bug. Which CCP have known about and activly kept in the game.
Credit crunch and Iceland going broke, seems to be a good timing to hike up cash.
What is wrong with asking someone to have an active account to train a skill. CCP has a good game and if they decide to introduce a New Gaming Experiance all the better.
" Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Those Who Would Threaten It " MAGA
Ech it ain't as simple as that. Due to the nature of the EvE levelling system, the ghost training was seen as a nice way to make up for being left to do bugger all for the long skills, as in 30+ days. Unlike WoW etc, where you can grind to level up quickly , you can't in Eve, and having to pay $16 for just one skill seems a bit of a scam, especially since it has never been a problem and CCP has lied twice about the reason for the change, claiming it was a bug when this is clearly not the case (see previous links).
Shame to be honest, I really enjoyed Eve, but after being lied too, I won't tolerate that. I and a good few of my friends are leaving because of this.
Ech it ain't as simple as that. Due to the nature of the EvE levelling system, the ghost training was seen as a nice way to make up for being left to do bugger all for the long skills, as in 30+ days. Unlike WoW etc, where you can grind to level up quickly , you can't in Eve, and having to pay $16 for just one skill seems a bit of a scam, especially since it has never been a problem and CCP has lied twice about the reason for the change, claiming it was a bug when this is clearly not the case (see previous links). Shame to be honest, I really enjoyed Eve, but after being lied too, I won't tolerate that. I and a good few of my friends are leaving because of this.
Hmm yea right we belive you
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
If they actually gave us skill queue, or at least promised it, I could abide this. This is just a braindead manuver by CCP and it is going to cost them a lot more than they will ever gain from it.
I think a lot of players just won't start playing again because of this. It is one of the dumbest moves by CCP in a long time.
To the poster above, you don't have to have a hard copy of this. It has been a long time feature of the game. It is kind of like taking one of your favorite features from the game you play, how would you like that?
Eve can adjust speed, and many other assorted things and players will grumble, but taking this away is just a really stupid thing, the discontent is loud and vocal on the loss of this feature.
Don't see this as bad, seems people wanted the game to do things for them without paying the monthly fee's, people abused how the system worked and now they finally did something about it.
I don't think they are being greedy, i think people are stingy, if you love the game you should pay for it period stop trying to manipulate the system.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
I think it is a good idea except for one thing... I and several people I have known that play have had billing issues that got them unexpectadly frozen out of their accounts for an extended period of time. I was the luckiest as I only had problems that lasted a couple of weeks, while my freinds have had some that lasted months.
A solution for this probably can't be just let the last skill being trained to run out because people would take advantage of this. Possibly, when it is a billing issue or some credit card/GTC Code problem that the skill points missed out should be "refunded" or option to pay a flat fee for the time missed to get the skill progression you missed out on.
If anybody is looking to go to the CSM please present this idea for discussion.
Originally posted by Sovrath Originally posted by britzban I don't not get why people think this is a bad idea. If your account is not active, you don't get to train. PERIOD.
I'd have to agree?!?!? If people aren't paying then why should they receive benefits for leveling up their character. In no other game do you lvl up anything when you have ceased to subscribe.
so u are agree to pay 59 days to get lvl up in a skill ?
Originally posted by Mazty I and a good few of my friends are leaving because of this.
Originally posted by CCP Atropos Me, I'm quitting.
I was like, "no wai dude" and they were like "uhuh" so I said "NO WAI" and they said "uhuh". I said "DO NOT WANT!" and now me and my 3.14159 accounts are quitting!
He posted that during the initial nano-whinage, but i had to think of this post when i read yours..
Originally posted by Ozmodan If they actually gave us skill queue, or at least promised it, I could abide this.
There was a post of ccp prismx that he wanted to poke game design, and code that feature if they give green light..can't give you the post now, though, eve-search is down atm.
To those of you who do not play Eve, it makes complete sense, is totally reasonable to say, “You must pay to play, you must pay to advance.” We’re all agreed on that.
That’s NOT the issue. .
The reason people are upset about this is because Eve wants to charge you a separate, full, continuous subscription for every character you play.
Whether you love WoW or hate it, most people played it, so I’ll use it as an example.
In WoW terms, lets say you have a dwarf warrior, a gnome rogue, and a human priest. If CCP, the makers of Eve, were running WoW, you’d pay a 45 dollar subscription fee if you wanted to be able to make any progress on the three, you’d pay 15, 15, 15 dollars to be able to play them. That sounds ludicrous, but it’s true.
Alts are fundamental to enjoying various aspects of mmorpgs. Most players in most mmorpgs have more than one character. Eve is very different from other games in many respects, but Eve is exactly like other games in that most players have more than one character.
Among mmorpgs, ONLY Eve, wants to charge you a separate 15 dollars per month for each progressing character.
This ghost training, making some progress while inactive, was one feature by which players could offset the ridiculous cost of having those extra characters.
A person who doesn’t pay Eve might ask, “Hey, Dave, Eve must be different than other mmorpgs in that one character can do just about anything and everything so there’s no need for more than one character right?” WRONG. Progress in Eve, despite the unique advancement mechanics, goes much slower than other games, NOT faster and more varied.
Example where you’d need two characters to explore different aspects of the game: You’re in a big end game coalition of alliances of corpoarations, but you want to try out Faction Warfare. One character can’t do both. You must, and many players do, have one character in an end game guild, while another to experience things like Faction Warfare.
A person who doesn’t pay Eve might then ask, “Um, nobody in any other mmorpg would ever tolerate paying 30 or 45 dollars in subscriptions per month for one game. What are people in Eve thinking?” Well, it’s far too complicated to explain in this short post, but… suffice it to say that Eve players are so desperate to play one of the only spaceship games in town, they bury themselves under blankets of denial.
Example: You can pay for a subscription using game gold. That’s right. Player X farms a bunch of gold (it’s called isk in the game). Player Y pays cash for a GTC, game time card, play time. Player Y sells the GTC to player X for the gold. All of this is done on the CCP website with CCPs blessing so CCP can regulate and take a cut of the transaction. So… the gold buying player is happy to get the gold. The gold selling character is happy to get his game time for ‘free’ when actually he’s really essentially being employed as a gold farmer by CCP. THIS and other bull*^% practices in Eve leave people in heavy denial thinking they’re not being cheated. I know, I know it sounds crazy if you’re not familiar with the system, and it IS crazy, but there you go.
Back to the topic.
Eve, unlike any other game gives you only ONE progressing character per account.
So, if you want more than one character per account, as almost all mmorpg players do… you have two choices.
Pay for multiple accounts to develop more than one character.
Or, buy a premade character from another player, and move that character into one of your main account slots. Of course, once it’s on your main account, that alt cannot progress, it’s done. No matter what, only ONE character can advance on any given account.
Ghost training is still lame in that obviously you can’t play the character while it’s inactive, but at least it made progressing a little cheaper if you were developing an alt.
Also, for anyone wondering if the training by clock, not xp, is free and easy, I can tell you that training takes a long, long time. CCP did not make clock training because it’s easy. CCP made it that way so that players skill up at the same SLOW SLOW rate whether they play 10 minutes a day, or whether they play 24/7 with three guys doing 8 hours shifts. CCP did it to string everyone along for a long long time in a long term eternal tick tock that never ends, so everyone is paying subscriptions forever.
So, if you don’t know Eve, crazy f’ed up Eve, that’s why people can be upset about something like not getting skills continued for a month or so between account activations.
For those of you who do play Eve and don’t understand why removing ghost training is a bad idea, well, you are lost. There isn’t much point in talking to you. Enough has been said here:
OH MY GOSH where to start. You cannot progress more than one charatcer at a time in ANY game. In WOW if you are not actively playing the character it cannot progress. Now I understand your reasoning but this lends to a misconception you cannot play EVE without progression. Sure you can it is easy. I have two alts, one is a miner. he has prgressed to the level I need for the mining I want him to do and so I am not worried about his skills at the moment. The seconad alt is a scientist and again the same I have progressed him with directed training to where I ened him and he is happily plugging along while I am now bringing up my combat pilot.
BTW all of this is happening on a SINGLE 15$ per month account. Sure if I need to train up skills on one character then I cannot do so on others but news flash, when you are grinding with one character in WOW then you cannot be doing with the other at the same time.
Sure EVE takes longer to advance, it is a long term game that is not about how quick you can get tot the end game but the journey along the way. EVE does not spoon feed you the direction you must take and is not monty hall play where you get everything fast. EVE is a game for a long term goal. With this in mind your entire arguement fails.
Finally the concept that you need more than one character to play EVE is PURELY false. Unlike other MMOs that lock you into a specific skill set EVE allows any character to do anything. I could have just as easily taken a bit more time and trained a single character to do all that I have three characters doing. The only reason I did not do that was a desire to explore other races in the game. However even now I spend most of my time on a single character.
Ghost training however had nothing to do with this. It has to do with power gamers that are better suited for quake than an MMO wanting to achieve the top with as little effort as possible. If you think you NEED a second account then more power to you, but a second accout still costs less for a month that a date. In fact three accounts cost less per month than a date. So fi the cost is to high try a novel idea, play a single account.
However the idea that you NEED multiple accounts or that you cannot have more than one viable character without multi accounts is pure BS.
To those of you who do not play Eve, it makes complete sense, is totally reasonable to say, “You must pay to play, you must pay to advance.” We’re all agreed on that. That’s NOT the issue. . The reason people are upset about this is because Eve wants to charge you a separate, full, continuous subscription for every character you play. Whether you love WoW or hate it, most people played it, so I’ll use it as an example. In WoW terms, lets say you have a dwarf warrior, a gnome rogue, and a human priest. If CCP, the makers of Eve, were running WoW, you’d pay a 45 dollar subscription fee if you wanted to be able to make any progress on the three, you’d pay 15, 15, 15 dollars to be able to play them. That sounds ludicrous, but it’s true. Alts are fundamental to enjoying various aspects of mmorpgs. Most players in most mmorpgs have more than one character. Eve is very different from other games in many respects, but Eve is exactly like other games in that most players have more than one character. Among mmorpgs, ONLY Eve, wants to charge you a separate 15 dollars per month for each progressing character. This ghost training, making some progress while inactive, was one feature by which players could offset the ridiculous cost of having those extra characters. A person who doesn’t pay Eve might ask, “Hey, Dave, Eve must be different than other mmorpgs in that one character can do just about anything and everything so there’s no need for more than one character right?” WRONG. Progress in Eve, despite the unique advancement mechanics, goes much slower than other games, NOT faster and more varied. Example where you’d need two characters to explore different aspects of the game: You’re in a big end game coalition of alliances of corpoarations, but you want to try out Faction Warfare. One character can’t do both. You must, and many players do, have one character in an end game guild, while another to experience things like Faction Warfare. A person who doesn’t pay Eve might then ask, “Um, nobody in any other mmorpg would ever tolerate paying 30 or 45 dollars in subscriptions per month for one game. What are people in Eve thinking?” Well, it’s far too complicated to explain in this short post, but… suffice it to say that Eve players are so desperate to play one of the only spaceship games in town, they bury themselves under blankets of denial. Example: You can pay for a subscription using game gold. That’s right. Player X farms a bunch of gold (it’s called isk in the game). Player Y pays cash for a GTC, game time card, play time. Player Y sells the GTC to player X for the gold. All of this is done on the CCP website with CCPs blessing so CCP can regulate and take a cut of the transaction. So… the gold buying player is happy to get the gold. The gold selling character is happy to get his game time for ‘free’ when actually he’s really essentially being employed as a gold farmer by CCP. THIS and other bull*^% practices in Eve leave people in heavy denial thinking they’re not being cheated. I know, I know it sounds crazy if you’re not familiar with the system, and it IS crazy, but there you go. Back to the topic. Eve, unlike any other game gives you only ONE progressing character per account. So, if you want more than one character per account, as almost all mmorpg players do… you have two choices. Pay for multiple accounts to develop more than one character. Or, buy a premade character from another player, and move that character into one of your main account slots. Of course, once it’s on your main account, that alt cannot progress, it’s done. No matter what, only ONE character can advance on any given account. Ghost training is still lame in that obviously you can’t play the character while it’s inactive, but at least it made progressing a little cheaper if you were developing an alt. Also, for anyone wondering if the training by clock, not xp, is free and easy, I can tell you that training takes a long, long time. CCP did not make clock training because it’s easy. CCP made it that way so that players skill up at the same SLOW SLOW rate whether they play 10 minutes a day, or whether they play 24/7 with three guys doing 8 hours shifts. CCP did it to string everyone along for a long long time in a long term eternal tick tock that never ends, so everyone is paying subscriptions forever. So, if you don’t know Eve, crazy f’ed up Eve, that’s why people can be upset about something like not getting skills continued for a month or so between account activations. For those of you who do play Eve and don’t understand why removing ghost training is a bad idea, well, you are lost. There isn’t much point in talking to you. Enough has been said here:
I'm sorry I'm confused about what your saying here, Eve has 3 character slots per account...so are you saying here for me to train up my other characters on that one account I have to pay extra? I never seen anything that says I have to pay extra to train up my other two characters on my account just that If another account you own that is not active will not progress any further, please explain what you mean.
OH MY GOSH where to start. You cannot progress more than one charatcer at a time in ANY game. In WOW if you are not actively playing the character it cannot progress. Now I understand your reasoning but this lends to a misconception you cannot play EVE without progression. Sure you can it is easy. I have two alts, one is a miner. he has prgressed to the level I need for the mining I want him to do and so I am not worried about his skills at the moment. The seconad alt is a scientist and again the same I have progressed him with directed training to where I ened him and he is happily plugging along while I am now bringing up my combat pilot. BTW all of this is happening on a SINGLE 15$ per month account. Sure if I need to train up skills on one character then I cannot do so on others but news flash, when you are grinding with one character in WOW then you cannot be doing with the other at the same time. Sure EVE takes longer to advance, it is a long term game that is not about how quick you can get tot the end game but the journey along the way. EVE does not spoon feed you the direction you must take and is not monty hall play where you get everything fast. EVE is a game for a long term goal. With this in mind your entire arguement fails. Finally the concept that you need more than one character to play EVE is PURELY false. Unlike other MMOs that lock you into a specific skill set EVE allows any character to do anything. I could have just as easily taken a bit more time and trained a single character to do all that I have three characters doing. The only reason I did not do that was a desire to explore other races in the game. However even now I spend most of my time on a single character. Ghost training however had nothing to do with this. It has to do with power gamers that are better suited for quake than an MMO wanting to achieve the top with as little effort as possible. If you think you NEED a second account then more power to you, but a second accout still costs less for a month that a date. In fact three accounts cost less per month than a date. So fi the cost is to high try a novel idea, play a single account. However the idea that you NEED multiple accounts or that you cannot have more than one viable character without multi accounts is pure BS.
Nothing worse than the ignorant commenting about a topic they know nothing about. Your comments clearly show a lack of understanding of how 2nd accounts are used in Eve. A miner almost needs a 2nd account as mining ships store about 10 minutes of mining at max, without an industrial hauler on a 2nd account you can almost forget making money as a miner. Many players have multiple accounts going on and off as they do training. It is a mjaor feature of this game now being removed. This is going to cost CCP a lot of 2nd and 3rd accounts, if not many primary accounts too.
Critically commenting on a topic you have no understanding of, especially a unique MMO like Eve almost meets the definition of a troll post.
Use a bigger font, please. I couldn't quite read your post from three streets away, on someone else's laptop's LCD. Shouting/writing louder/bigger doesn't make what you spout any more correct; if you can't get your point across without enlarging it, don't bother us with it.
That said: I do play EVE and I have no problems with this change. The only people this will affect are account traders and people who don't want to pay to improve their characters beyond the initial short-term skill progressions.
To the people who have real-life issues that impinge on their game time and the people who have account-lapse issues, I can only sympathise, as it's a valid concern on their parts; but those are problems that need addressed by CCP (and as quickly as possible) - specifically, a skill queue (that's been a feature request for as long as I can remember and one that I would definitely also like) could very well solve that problem (to some extent).
That path, however, has been well and truly beaten flat, already.
You can progress multiple characters on one account, exactly 3 characters by switching skill training between them.
But, to the topic. The main issue about this change is the fact that a 4 year feature got suddenly changed to 4 year bug. CCP made up some reasons for this change in blog that is not part of the news on mmorpg. Reasons like "ghost training" is loading their DB soooo heavy they have to cance it, and so on, you can read it yourself. Its full of lies. Thats the reason of ppl getting pissed of.
It was a feature that people could level when they weren't even subscribed? I've made as much use of this as anyone, I only play occasionally and I always leave a skill training that's going to take a month or two to train when I leave, and when I come back it's done. Even I don't think this was a fair 'feature'. I always felt like I was cheating in some way.
The only reason people claim this was 'advertised as a feature', was because someone in the documentation department added it to the player guide. And why wouldn't he, as that's is how the game worked. It was never a design decision to make it such, it just was.
It was never truely advertised, and all that WAS advertised about the progressive training scheme that Eve uses, is still true. Your skills still progress when offline, unlike any other MMO. THIS is the feature that was used to sell EvE as fundamentally different than other MMO's, and that it was more suitable to casual gaming. And this is all still true.
Aside from that, the 'whole community' isn't whining. There is a large part of the community that IS whining, but there is a HUGE silent majority that is just fine with the change. It never made sense to MOST of eve that it WOULD work this way, in fact, if you asked a handful of eve players before all this rabblerabble began, a large portion of the population wouldn't even know it DID do this.
Removing this will actually pave the way for a training queue system, (as it was the #1 reason for it NOT having a queue in the past), which will be of MUCH MORE use to a larger portion of the community than the 'ghost training' ever was.
well also seams that many who post here dont play eve and most of us that play eve for many years already got long skills trained like that, we will pay the character transfer or pay the alt accounts until are ready(my alts have @ 40m skillpoints) and new player will have to pay that long skill training dont know if any of your will have the patience to wait 5 months to train all learning skills at lvl 5 (learning skills= stats buff) or level up battleship lvl 5
i guess we dont see many n00bs in capitals any more
Comments
Unfortunately this should do little to impact character sales. Based on what I've seen in the forums, the people who create and train accounts for the sole purpose of selling them for ISK (or otherwise) will be effected maybe 2 or 3 months. Most of the training they do for these accounts is less then 30 days so there is limited value in turning off an account for any substantial period of time.
And the people that don't like EVE do cancel it for good, those people don't care one bit. It's the people that love EVE but come and go throughout the year that will be turned away by this change.
really, its not an issue. who like seve will play.
I used that feature once ina while, not too often, and I liked it, though, in fairness, it aint fair....
not pying, not playing..simple as that.
Not trying to debunk anyone here or start a flame war but I've seen a few people say that being able to train up a character while not having the account active was a feature the game was marketed on. If this is true then I would understand the grievance some of the long time EVE players would have.
But is it true, did CCP market this so called "ghost training" as a game feature and if so can someone point me to some hard proof of this?
Copying and pasting a response I made in the Eve forum section of this site.
CCP better
start editing
more than
their player guide.
Copying and pasting a response I made in the Eve forum section of this site.
CCP better
start editing
more than
their player guide.
Thank you mutantmagnet, now I understand. I honestly thought this ghost training thing was just a long standing bug.
It's never a good thing to have a feature you have gotten used to too be just taken away.
I'm an old SWG vet, myself and many others have been on the receiving end of such "updates" and "patches"
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0810/lie.jpg
http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g615.asp
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=430960&page=5#145
When a player mentioned it in the forum, the alteration was quickly made, and CCP stuck by the bull that Ghost Training is a bug. A five year bug. Which CCP have known about and activly kept in the game.
Credit crunch and Iceland going broke, seems to be a good timing to hike up cash.
Mazty on PSN
What is wrong with asking someone to have an active account to train a skill. CCP has a good game and if they decide to introduce a New Gaming Experiance all the better.
MAGA
Ech it ain't as simple as that. Due to the nature of the EvE levelling system, the ghost training was seen as a nice way to make up for being left to do bugger all for the long skills, as in 30+ days. Unlike WoW etc, where you can grind to level up quickly , you can't in Eve, and having to pay $16 for just one skill seems a bit of a scam, especially since it has never been a problem and CCP has lied twice about the reason for the change, claiming it was a bug when this is clearly not the case (see previous links).
Shame to be honest, I really enjoyed Eve, but after being lied too, I won't tolerate that. I and a good few of my friends are leaving because of this.
Mazty on PSN
Hmm yea right we belive you
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
If they actually gave us skill queue, or at least promised it, I could abide this. This is just a braindead manuver by CCP and it is going to cost them a lot more than they will ever gain from it.
I think a lot of players just won't start playing again because of this. It is one of the dumbest moves by CCP in a long time.
To the poster above, you don't have to have a hard copy of this. It has been a long time feature of the game. It is kind of like taking one of your favorite features from the game you play, how would you like that?
Eve can adjust speed, and many other assorted things and players will grumble, but taking this away is just a really stupid thing, the discontent is loud and vocal on the loss of this feature.
Don't see this as bad, seems people wanted the game to do things for them without paying the monthly fee's, people abused how the system worked and now they finally did something about it.
I don't think they are being greedy, i think people are stingy, if you love the game you should pay for it period stop trying to manipulate the system.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
I think it is a good idea except for one thing... I and several people I have known that play have had billing issues that got them unexpectadly frozen out of their accounts for an extended period of time. I was the luckiest as I only had problems that lasted a couple of weeks, while my freinds have had some that lasted months.
A solution for this probably can't be just let the last skill being trained to run out because people would take advantage of this. Possibly, when it is a billing issue or some credit card/GTC Code problem that the skill points missed out should be "refunded" or option to pay a flat fee for the time missed to get the skill progression you missed out on.
If anybody is looking to go to the CSM please present this idea for discussion.
I'd have to agree?!?!?
If people aren't paying then why should they receive benefits for leveling up their character. In no other game do you lvl up anything when you have ceased to subscribe.
so u are agree to pay 59 days to get lvl up in a skill ?
BestSigEver :P
He posted that during the initial nano-whinage, but i had to think of this post when i read yours..
There was a post of ccp prismx that he wanted to poke game design, and code that feature if they give green light..can't give you the post now, though, eve-search is down atm.
To those of you who do not play Eve, it makes complete sense, is totally reasonable to say, “You must pay to play, you must pay to advance.” We’re all agreed on that.
That’s NOT the issue. .
The reason people are upset about this is because Eve wants to charge you a separate, full, continuous subscription for every character you play.
Whether you love WoW or hate it, most people played it, so I’ll use it as an example.
In WoW terms, lets say you have a dwarf warrior, a gnome rogue, and a human priest. If CCP, the makers of Eve, were running WoW, you’d pay a 45 dollar subscription fee if you wanted to be able to make any progress on the three, you’d pay 15, 15, 15 dollars to be able to play them. That sounds ludicrous, but it’s true.
Alts are fundamental to enjoying various aspects of mmorpgs. Most players in most mmorpgs have more than one character. Eve is very different from other games in many respects, but Eve is exactly like other games in that most players have more than one character.
Among mmorpgs, ONLY Eve, wants to charge you a separate 15 dollars per month for each progressing character.
This ghost training, making some progress while inactive, was one feature by which players could offset the ridiculous cost of having those extra characters.
A person who doesn’t pay Eve might ask, “Hey, Dave, Eve must be different than other mmorpgs in that one character can do just about anything and everything so there’s no need for more than one character right?” WRONG. Progress in Eve, despite the unique advancement mechanics, goes much slower than other games, NOT faster and more varied.
Example where you’d need two characters to explore different aspects of the game: You’re in a big end game coalition of alliances of corpoarations, but you want to try out Faction Warfare. One character can’t do both. You must, and many players do, have one character in an end game guild, while another to experience things like Faction Warfare.
A person who doesn’t pay Eve might then ask, “Um, nobody in any other mmorpg would ever tolerate paying 30 or 45 dollars in subscriptions per month for one game. What are people in Eve thinking?” Well, it’s far too complicated to explain in this short post, but… suffice it to say that Eve players are so desperate to play one of the only spaceship games in town, they bury themselves under blankets of denial.
Example: You can pay for a subscription using game gold. That’s right. Player X farms a bunch of gold (it’s called isk in the game). Player Y pays cash for a GTC, game time card, play time. Player Y sells the GTC to player X for the gold. All of this is done on the CCP website with CCPs blessing so CCP can regulate and take a cut of the transaction. So… the gold buying player is happy to get the gold. The gold selling character is happy to get his game time for ‘free’ when actually he’s really essentially being employed as a gold farmer by CCP. THIS and other bull*^% practices in Eve leave people in heavy denial thinking they’re not being cheated. I know, I know it sounds crazy if you’re not familiar with the system, and it IS crazy, but there you go.
Back to the topic.
Eve, unlike any other game gives you only ONE progressing character per account.
So, if you want more than one character per account, as almost all mmorpg players do… you have two choices.
Pay for multiple accounts to develop more than one character.
Or, buy a premade character from another player, and move that character into one of your main account slots. Of course, once it’s on your main account, that alt cannot progress, it’s done. No matter what, only ONE character can advance on any given account.
Ghost training is still lame in that obviously you can’t play the character while it’s inactive, but at least it made progressing a little cheaper if you were developing an alt.
Also, for anyone wondering if the training by clock, not xp, is free and easy, I can tell you that training takes a long, long time. CCP did not make clock training because it’s easy. CCP made it that way so that players skill up at the same SLOW SLOW rate whether they play 10 minutes a day, or whether they play 24/7 with three guys doing 8 hours shifts. CCP did it to string everyone along for a long long time in a long term eternal tick tock that never ends, so everyone is paying subscriptions forever.
So, if you don’t know Eve, crazy f’ed up Eve, that’s why people can be upset about something like not getting skills continued for a month or so between account activations.
For those of you who do play Eve and don’t understand why removing ghost training is a bad idea, well, you are lost. There isn’t much point in talking to you. Enough has been said here:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896318&page=1
that if you don’t get it now you never will.
OH MY GOSH where to start. You cannot progress more than one charatcer at a time in ANY game. In WOW if you are not actively playing the character it cannot progress. Now I understand your reasoning but this lends to a misconception you cannot play EVE without progression. Sure you can it is easy. I have two alts, one is a miner. he has prgressed to the level I need for the mining I want him to do and so I am not worried about his skills at the moment. The seconad alt is a scientist and again the same I have progressed him with directed training to where I ened him and he is happily plugging along while I am now bringing up my combat pilot.
BTW all of this is happening on a SINGLE 15$ per month account. Sure if I need to train up skills on one character then I cannot do so on others but news flash, when you are grinding with one character in WOW then you cannot be doing with the other at the same time.
Sure EVE takes longer to advance, it is a long term game that is not about how quick you can get tot the end game but the journey along the way. EVE does not spoon feed you the direction you must take and is not monty hall play where you get everything fast. EVE is a game for a long term goal. With this in mind your entire arguement fails.
Finally the concept that you need more than one character to play EVE is PURELY false. Unlike other MMOs that lock you into a specific skill set EVE allows any character to do anything. I could have just as easily taken a bit more time and trained a single character to do all that I have three characters doing. The only reason I did not do that was a desire to explore other races in the game. However even now I spend most of my time on a single character.
Ghost training however had nothing to do with this. It has to do with power gamers that are better suited for quake than an MMO wanting to achieve the top with as little effort as possible. If you think you NEED a second account then more power to you, but a second accout still costs less for a month that a date. In fact three accounts cost less per month than a date. So fi the cost is to high try a novel idea, play a single account.
However the idea that you NEED multiple accounts or that you cannot have more than one viable character without multi accounts is pure BS.
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I have a soap box and I am not afraid to use it.
I'm sorry I'm confused about what your saying here, Eve has 3 character slots per account...so are you saying here for me to train up my other characters on that one account I have to pay extra? I never seen anything that says I have to pay extra to train up my other two characters on my account just that If another account you own that is not active will not progress any further, please explain what you mean.
this is ok and normal, CCP also need money ...
i think most of the whiners are account sellers etc.
btw: you cannot train more than one character at a time per account.
Nothing worse than the ignorant commenting about a topic they know nothing about. Your comments clearly show a lack of understanding of how 2nd accounts are used in Eve. A miner almost needs a 2nd account as mining ships store about 10 minutes of mining at max, without an industrial hauler on a 2nd account you can almost forget making money as a miner. Many players have multiple accounts going on and off as they do training. It is a mjaor feature of this game now being removed. This is going to cost CCP a lot of 2nd and 3rd accounts, if not many primary accounts too.
Critically commenting on a topic you have no understanding of, especially a unique MMO like Eve almost meets the definition of a troll post.
Use a bigger font, please. I couldn't quite read your post from three streets away, on someone else's laptop's LCD. Shouting/writing louder/bigger doesn't make what you spout any more correct; if you can't get your point across without enlarging it, don't bother us with it.
That said: I do play EVE and I have no problems with this change. The only people this will affect are account traders and people who don't want to pay to improve their characters beyond the initial short-term skill progressions.
To the people who have real-life issues that impinge on their game time and the people who have account-lapse issues, I can only sympathise, as it's a valid concern on their parts; but those are problems that need addressed by CCP (and as quickly as possible) - specifically, a skill queue (that's been a feature request for as long as I can remember and one that I would definitely also like) could very well solve that problem (to some extent).
That path, however, has been well and truly beaten flat, already.
Editted for the awesome grammars. *hic*
First of all DavidLemke is wrong
You can progress multiple characters on one account, exactly 3 characters by switching skill training between them.
But, to the topic. The main issue about this change is the fact that a 4 year feature got suddenly changed to 4 year bug. CCP made up some reasons for this change in blog that is not part of the news on mmorpg. Reasons like "ghost training" is loading their DB soooo heavy they have to cance it, and so on, you can read it yourself. Its full of lies. Thats the reason of ppl getting pissed of.
The only reason people claim this was 'advertised as a feature', was because someone in the documentation department added it to the player guide. And why wouldn't he, as that's is how the game worked. It was never a design decision to make it such, it just was.
It was never truely advertised, and all that WAS advertised about the progressive training scheme that Eve uses, is still true. Your skills still progress when offline, unlike any other MMO. THIS is the feature that was used to sell EvE as fundamentally different than other MMO's, and that it was more suitable to casual gaming. And this is all still true.
Aside from that, the 'whole community' isn't whining. There is a large part of the community that IS whining, but there is a HUGE silent majority that is just fine with the change. It never made sense to MOST of eve that it WOULD work this way, in fact, if you asked a handful of eve players before all this rabblerabble began, a large portion of the population wouldn't even know it DID do this.
Removing this will actually pave the way for a training queue system, (as it was the #1 reason for it NOT having a queue in the past), which will be of MUCH MORE use to a larger portion of the community than the 'ghost training' ever was.
CraziFuzzy
well also seams that many who post here dont play eve
and most of us that play eve for many years already got long skills trained like that, we will pay the character transfer or pay the alt accounts until are ready(my alts have @ 40m skillpoints)
and new player will have to pay that long skill training dont know if any of your will have the patience to wait 5 months to train all learning skills at lvl 5 (learning skills= stats buff) or level up battleship lvl 5
i guess we dont see many n00bs in capitals any more
BestSigEver :P
