i'm sorry, i got thru the first two paragraphs of the actual interview, pretty much saw nothing but outright lies and well, ccp will continue to get a single sub out of me for now and i honestly have no intentions of ever getting that back up to 4 or 5 or 6 accounts again.
soe lies like this. ccp lied like this to cover up bullshit like t20's antics and to hope and pray that nothing else would get exposed on anyone else.
seriously disappointing and to all the people agreeing to this change, or saying that it wasn't fair -- you had FIVE YEARS to voice your sentiments on this topic... yet you never did -- gbtw or just stfu -- it mattered NOTHING to any of you until it was removed and people were pissed because it was removed. go troll in your caves.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
to be fair, i went back and read the interview, and to be honest, it's still a load of total crap.
just recently noticed it's use? so, since the dev states (again) that the devs play the game; then, they must NEVER visit the official forums, nor any of the forums in the corps/alliances in which they participate. the inactive training has been listed as a feature on the official site, which was referenced in many guides, mentioned in countless threads, used extensively by anyone training an alt over the years (since you can only train a single character on an account at a time), and the list goes on.
go lie to morons. the more i think about it, you must consider us to be morons to believe blatant untruths.
that one sub is looking less and less likely. respect is something soe has no clue of and as a result, quite a few people have no intention of even looking at another soe/station game.
i used to run multiple accounts. i used to recommend eve to friends and online-gaming-buddies.
now, when asked about it, i go back to dev cheating which was exposed and proved and admitted to, i mention all the dev cheating which has been alleged over the years but never had concrete/undeniable proof, i bring up lots of "oopsies" which always fell to the side people feel is full of ccp employees/friends, and i bring up the blatant disrespect which, over the years, is steadily reaching soe proportions.
most of the rest doesn't phase them, the soe comparison is something every last one of them understands and despises.
grats. do some more interviews and spread the fertilizer a bit more... we love it. honestly.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
No, Eve is not a ‘content’ game. I’m not saying that I measure the value of an expansion by size alone. I never even really cared much or took notice until lately when I saw how small the last ‘expansion’ was and started digging. I am saying that you can puff up patch notes like you can puff up a resume, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that 39 megabytes of expansion, no matter what the notes say, doesn’t amount to much. The Empyrean Age notes LOOK like a heck of a lot, but they sure do NOT amount to much. How much ‘content’ can you really pack into 39mb? That’s the size of a few Youtube videos. Seriously, wtf. This is part of the denial you find in the Eve community. The pve content of Eve is paper thin, shallow as a puddle.
You know why everyone in Eve is so familiar with missions like 'Worlds Collide" and "Recon" parts 1, 2, and 3, and Angel Extravaganza? Players have done those missions and the other few pve things to do, a gazillion times,. because there just isn't much around.
That's because expansions for other MMOs tend to be filled with a lot of Graphical content, audio files, etc (I don't play many others, but doesn't the last WoW expansion - and WAR - have a lengthy CGI movie intro as well??).
Eve tends to expand with new functionality, which is mostly code based and not dependant on new graphica and audio assests. Complied code is actually pretty small compared to the space required for graphic and audio assests, the ExeFile.exe file that runs Eve is only 500KB.
Also, by the nature of the dynamic content in Eve (ie. missions, etc) these are driven by the server side database, so I believe it is possible to add new missions without any client download being required (or at the very least, only some mission references being required - which would be very small).
I do feel you on the missions though, they did claim to have added hundreds of new missions, yet the same ones do seem to still come up fairly often.
Wow some people must just choose to be ignorant. I completely agree with this statement. The main reason why CCP finally plugged this whole was because they were seeing a huge upswing in the amount of characters created and trained using ghost training for the SOLE purpose of selling those characters for isk. Until now the ghost training wasn't a problem, now it is so they fixed it. End of story. just out of curiousity... to start an account costs $20? to transfer a character costs $20? to pay for a 30 day gtc cost $15? exactly how much money was ccp losing from a character training for 4 months to be transferred to another account?
Also, you claim that when buying 60 day GTC's it means that CCP is getting $17.50/month in sub money. That is patently false. How about it is costing the customer $17.50 a month, whereas if you have a credit card you can pay about $15/month or get 3 months for less than $39? does that math work better for you? so who really cares how much ccp is making/not making, it's cheating the customer. First of all it costs them some small amount to print and distribute the GTC's if in physical form and secondly since they are being sold through a 3rd party retailer there is some markup in order for the retailer to make some profit, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to sell the GTC's in the first place. how much does ccp lose every time someone uses a credit card and either does the power of 2, or pays for 3-, 6-, or 12-months at a time? same principle yes? should they shut down all payment methods other than paying with a credit card or buying a gtc, both of which can only be 60 days for $35? why is it that other games who charge the same 1-, 3-, 6-, 12- monthly credit card rates as eve... why is it that those companies can sell 30 and 60 day GTCs for $15 and $30? don't those resellers and the gaming companies need to make profit as well? but ccp and their resellers, after all these years, suddenly can't?
Also comparing the monthly cost of paying with EVE GTC's vs paying any other MMO or EVE via credit card isn't really an accurate comparison either. An accurate comparison would be to compare GTC prices accross MMO's, in which case EVE GTC's are slightly more expensive than US timecodes (about $5) and slightly cheaper than EU timecodes (about $10) which likely stems from the fact that EVE doesn't have separate US/EU servers. slightly more? i can buy 30 day gtcs for other games and 60 day gtcs. so, if i'm paying $30 for another game's 60 day gtc, and i'm paying $35 for eve's? 16.666% more? that's quite a bit of markup.
Also the part about there being less in EVE patches because they are so small is just plain assinine and idiotic. First of all the things that take up the most space in ANY game are art assets. Textures, shaders, etc. about 90% of any games data needs will be taken up by art assets, so unless they need to add some new model or other art asset into a patch all that's left over is code changes. Code is inherently pretty compact (especially if coded well) and as it is essentially all character data it can be compressed heavily, resulting in much smaller patch sizes. Oh but you didn't think the EVE patches were uncompressed....nah nobody's that stupid. Also the third thing you have to realize is the eve client is just a dumb client. Pretty much just art assets and some underlying code to go along with it. All the important stuff is handled on the server. So once again there's less stuff you need to be distributing with the client. so um, what all great things are YOU playing with in the empyrean expansion? doing the faction warfare are you? how's that working out? oh... did you happen to be in an alliance and can't participate at all? too bad i guess. oh well, there's always all those wonderful new pve missions... you can do all sorts of groovy mining for npcs now! i'm sorry, the only thing we really have to look forward to in patches is new ships, new mods, new skills, and eventually the hopes of human avatars (and a chance to have what swg SHOULD have been... eventually... maybe...)
I expect with the ambulation expansion the size of the client will at least double, if not more. Also I imagine since the midas expansion will include the Orca model and some further trinity upgrades it will likely be over 100 mb at least for the premium version.
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The thing I don't get with all this, is that a continuous account paid for by the year costs about the same as the 60-day GTC's would for the ghost-training system.
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
4 x 60-day GTC's: $34.99 x 60 = $139.96
The yearly acocunt is cheaper, and, IMO, a lot easier to deal with. I guess I just don't see the problems others are. Yes, the miscommunications caused a lot of greif, but that is really about the only problem caused by this change.
I do feel you on the missions though, they did claim to have added hundreds of new missions, yet the same ones do seem to still come up fairly often.
Just some math here.
Let's say you add 100 missions.
We have 4 factions, and 4 pirate factions giving missions. (100/8=12.5) We have five agent levels per faction. (12.5/5=2.5) Of which one per faction might be a storyline. (2.5-1=1.5)
So, the usual missionrunner will get 1.5 new missions per added 100 missions.
And this is me assuming they distributed them evenly, which they did not. The average missionrunner will notice about 1-2 new missions.
Ever had the mission "buzz kill"? It's one of those new ones..
I love EVE and have been playing it for almost three years now. I play for fun and the excitement of flying my ship on missions or into battle or just doing things like marketing, mining, exploring and more.
I am very glad that CCP stopped ghost training as it was unfair against us steady subscribers that pay every month to play the game and advance our characters. I really love to play EVE and hopefully will continue to enjoy it for many more years. I think more and more "business men" in game were starting to use ghost training to to create characters to sell to other players. So it is good ghost training is gone.
Yes the steady hard core subs are all thats gonna be left after this.
i'm not necessairly putting current company into this category but this game has always been dominated by an over opinionated veteran group with a smaller group of revolving door new players to shoot at , call newbs and blow up. This is one of the worst communties I have ever played in.
I daresay changes like this one, and the gtc changes will ensure cliques stay intact and the game is inaccessible to the casuals.....maybe thats what you want but personally I think its a big mistake if your intention is to maximize profits.
I think the argument that this is game breaking is pathetic when put up against all the other truly BS things taht have occured in the past.
Yes the steady hard core subs are all thats gonna be left after this.
i'm not necessairly putting current company into this category but this game has always been dominated by an over opinionated veteran group with a smaller group of revolving door new players to shoot at , call newbs and blow up. This is one of the worst communties I have ever played in. I daresay changes like this one, and the gtc changes will ensure cliques stay intact and the game is inaccessible to the casuals.....maybe thats what you want but personally I think its a big mistake if your intention is to maximize profits.
I think the argument that this is game breaking is pathetic when put up against all the other truly BS things taht have occured in the past.
I have been playing the game 'casually' for over 4 1/2 years now, and I have yet to feel like they are doing anything against me. As I've pointed out, paying for a year long subscription is just as economical as going through the GTC route part-time, so I just pay up on the subs. I have gone 2-3 weeks at a time without running the client, but I feel the time I do play is well worth my $10 something a month. You say that EvE is counter to a casual playstyle, however, the realtime skill trainging, IMO, is what makes it so great for a casual gamer. I never felt that my playstyle was letting me fall-behind my corpmates who played more regularly, though I do find I am a lot poorer ingame. In any other MMO, I would be at the equivalent of the 5-6 months point, after this 4 1/2 years of playing sporatically. In eve, I'm not far behing the guys who started 4 1/2 years with me. (I have had a lot of lapsed training time over the years -- Here's to a skill queue or same skill continuation!)
And CCP never said their intention was to maximize profits. It was a fairness issue. I commit my money to eve, regarldess of how little i sometimes get to play, and I am rewarded by the guys who Don't commit to the game in the same way being able to train to the same extent I can? That is unfair, and that has now been fixed.
I'm glad taht you enjoy the game and I'm not here to take that away from you......but the real time training system has its strengths and weaknesses.
At first I thought it was cool but then I got a little set back by the notion that my "efforts" in game will do nothing to improve my skills (other than of course implants).
Not everyone is going to sub by the year .... as a matter of fact few people do because even though its $9 cheaper (based on someone else's math on this thread) its quite a bit of cash up front for a video game.
My point is CCP is not enabling players to access their game....the GTC system, the RT skill system as it stands, and venom spewed by the Vets of this game and now this ghosting issue do nothing to empower players who are on the fence.
There are plenty of community members who don't want "that" player base anyway ....so it looks like their getting their own way.
When EQ /DAOC were the only 3d MMos on the market they could do whatever the hell they wanted and people would eat it up. As soon as the gen 2 games rolled out there was a mass exodus from their worlds to games that understood the short comings of the gen 1 titles.....CCP is going to get one rude wake up call.
They call themselves gamers but they are being more and more detached from their player base on what is already a mediorce game.
after 4 years i dont think they can honestly claim it as an oversight any longer,i think they found away to boost their cash reserves and are going after it,but i think it may backfire on them in the long run and i think their 1/24th or 10000 is a little low ,anyhow my 2 cents worth good luck with this greedy move ccp
Well that interveiw is a lot of nonsense. That feature/bug was being used by a lot more than 10,000 players. Everyone in my alliance has used it at one time or another, we took a survey to find that out.
This braindead manuver is going to cost them significantly in the number of 2nd and 3rd accounts people play.
We will continue to play with our mains but it is going to cost them about 300 accounts just from our alliance that won't get activated any more.
Their greed is going to kick them hard because they depend on those multiple accounts and there are going to be a lot less of them now.
It would be very easy for CCP to have both unsubscribed training and a training queue.
While it is technically more than possible to implement both, they considered it as a game balance issue, since if their documentation refers to ghost training, it should be same type of training as others get, or one character would get more skills for same effort (because the account stays subscribed) even in long breaks, and it would be in essence buying in game advantages with money, something comparable to Micropayment solutions, and we can see how people reacted to that idea.
As you see before the new round of lies started I had similar ideas about the reasons, since speaking about "unintentional features" would be for character building plans that are based on ghost training and not the announced feature itself. I think with that explanation things would look far better. But with new explanations it turned from bad to worse. Most people seen this post linked to the old threads. When you link the post "Ghost Training Removed"
And about assets and code:
It would be nice to see new assets for luxury liners and other civilian ships. New kinds of stations and other structures in the missions. There is nothing to stop you from flying inside some huge stations, there is nothing to stop you from using new kinds of modules for missions. Like some cameras for making photos of individual buildings inside a bigger structure.
It would be nice not to wait months for orca. It would be nice if we would have some new kinds of missions. Missions that are best done in new kinds of ships, that could depend on new kinds of skills.
If we would have a choice of a few missions, and some missions would require exploration skills, hacking skills, etc. yet others would require manufacturing skills and the "extra runs" on the BPC would be extra rewards, etc.
As you see with classic graphic we hd mny different station models, with premium graphics, we don't have as much, since they aren't ready. So we have half finished patches here. And those half finished patches are called as expansions.
It would be nice to have skill queues implemented. If CCP admited that the learning skills idea became a problem and doesn't work as intented, they should change their system asap. They should also work on a way to reduce the training times.
I remember when they last tried to reduce the gap between old and new players by adjusting character creation rules and the starting SP amount became about 4 times higher. Yet, the problem is: Most new players stop when they see in the "endgame" their chances are reduced greatly by several years worth of disadvantage, and see how long it would take to fit a capital, and feel they are "equal party".
Having skill points now is an advantage over people who get the skills later, and the increasing gap is a problem in the game so it would be wise to add a system that makes skill training gradually faster with time. It would allow old players to keep most of their SP advantage without widening the gap. It would fix several problems and would make new players stay longer (they would see they have a chance in reasonable time).
Yet to fix any recognized problems it takes MONTHS to fix them once they are recognized the fix ins announced. Isn't it strange that removing ghost training took an amazing 2 days to "fix"?
Don't get me wrong. I think fixing ghost traing was fair, you can see it in the linked blog. But as you see things are getting different with each explanation they post.
The licence terms with and without Ghost Traing seems fair, changing a feature is fair, since they never promised to make it stay.
And I think the key point is: When I make a 2nd character I make it because I would like to play with that character, and if I would like to play with a character (even if I spend most of my game time on other, or consider another character far more important) so no point in making a plan that depends on ghost training.
We have patched a lot of issues since then and this particular issue wasn’t addressed because it wasn’t considered that serious… It never got bumped up our list of bugs because not too many people were making use of it. It wasn’t really on our radar.
Rubbish. Almost everyone I knew on Eve used it, as well as the moderators on the forum on several different accounts reassured ghost training would be kept in. What kind of bug is purposely kept in a game?! Not to mention that this "bug" was also mentioned on the character tutorial page on the eve website. Sure, mention a "bug" in a tutorial.
Also as for the balance issue, that’s utter nonsense. CCP allow the buying and selling of characters. So how is it unfair to ghost train, yet completely fair for someone to buy a 5 year old character for the price of a years subscription? Simple answer, removing ghost training gives CCP more money.
Plus, people say that the character farming was a big issue. Is this true? No, it's another load of balls from CCP. This is because characters would have to be sold via the trading bazaar, a CCP monitored part of the official forum. The players would be traded using isk, which would come from buying time codes for real money, and trading it to a player for in game isk. All in all, CCP never lost any money because they still recieved just as much subscription money as they would, people buying the timecodes were just using a middle man. Character farming, which was never a big issue in eve (the auto-miners were/are, and yet nothing has been done about them...), still gives CCP just as much subscription money if there wasn't any. Actually probably more due to the fact that the farmed characters still needed active subs to change skills.
To the people who say "you have to pay to play" you clearly haven’t thought about what your saying. Playing eve does not help your skill points to go up, so by removing ghost training, you effectively end up having to pay CCP to learn the long skills like battleship 5 etc. Imagine if Blizzard started charging players extra every time they wanted to raid. That’s the equivalent of removing ghost training in eve. You end up paying for skills. Sounds like an item store isn't far off....
And lets not forget that eve is certainly not cheap. Now with the price hike and removal of ghost traing, you will have to pay around $420 (2 years worth of subs) to get a decent amount of skill points. Yet, to become really good, you will have to pay for probably another 2 years worth of subs. Personally, I'd rather keep my money and get a game console and a plethora of games, all with free online play.
Since the price hike of the subscriptions, eve hasn't reached over 40,000 players in a long, long time. I think it's on it's way down, look at the figures http://eve.coldfront.net/status/tranquility .
lets not forget many mmos offer a rest system that helps in times when you can't be advance your character in game. The rest systems in most of the mmos i play continue to accure even if you're not subbing.
lets not forget many mmos offer a rest system that helps in times when you can't be advance your character in game. The rest systems in most of the mmos i play continue to accure even if you're not subbing.
This is indeed a load of rubbish.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
no other company allow you to skill up without paying for it? No other company puts such a long time period to skill up either. The long training period is a way for the company to make money at the expense of the player, and should be illegal.
Author of the Amazon kindle book, The Clan and the Crown
I'm glad taht you enjoy the game and I'm not here to take that away from you......but the real time training system has its strengths and weaknesses. At first I thought it was cool but then I got a little set back by the notion that my "efforts" in game will do nothing to improve my skills (other than of course implants). Not everyone is going to sub by the year .... as a matter of fact few people do because even though its $9 cheaper (based on someone else's math on this thread) its quite a bit of cash up front for a video game.
Actually, that $9 cheaper was my calculation, but that was not a direct comparison. That was a comparison to a full year of pre-paid subscription, to just under 8 months of GTC. (As 4 cards is what the average 'Ghost Trainer' that is complaining about this change would be buying anyways). To compare a full year, it is a LOT cheaper to do the annual sub:
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
6 x 60-day GTC: $34.99 x 6 = $209.94
That $78.54 savings a year would buy yourself a complete different NON online game. I really don't understand why more people DON'T use the annual sub. When I started, as soon as I realized I'd probably play it for at least another 6-8 months, it became more worth it to just pay for the whole year (as it would cost the same as 8 months individually). This got me the critical months 9-12 effectively for free, which, coincidentally, is the point where the game REALLY started to shine. I'm into my 4th annual subscription as we speak.
Maybe I'm a fanboi, I dunno. I do know that this particular group of online players are MORE helpful to noobs than I've seen in any other online community. This game is designed around teamwork, and gang-play, so if you are this broken up by losing the ability to train up alts (imaginary friends?), IMHO, you're doing it wrong.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Here you make a mistake: you don't even know how Ghost Training was working. Let me tell you: It just finished the skill level you started to train with an active subscribtion. So it was limited to 1 skill level. Nothing more, nothing less. Inthe case of short skills or anything you didn't start at last moment it was very short time, but even if you tried to maximize the benefits it was probably less than a month. If you want to read more about the importance of ghost training, click here.
If you would want to see why this change wasn't about a fairness, and how a "fairness patch" would work there are other stuff you can read.
Wow some people must just choose to be ignorant. I completely agree with this statement. The main reason why CCP finally plugged this whole was because they were seeing a huge upswing in the amount of characters created and trained using ghost training for the SOLE purpose of selling those characters for isk. Until now the ghost training wasn't a problem, now it is so they fixed it. End of story. just out of curiousity... to start an account costs $20? to transfer a character costs $20? to pay for a 30 day gtc cost $15? exactly how much money was ccp losing from a character training for 4 months to be transferred to another account? And how much do new accounts cost in other MMO's? Using WoW as an example and shatteredcrystal.com as the source it costs $20.99 for a US account code and $28.99 for a EU one. Character transfers $20 EVE and $25 WoW so their prices for this service are competetive with the industry and in some cases slightly cheaper. As for how much they are losing from a character trained for 4 months for transfer, well if the character is only subbed 2 of the 4 months then they are losing that 2 months subscription or around $30 if the CC payment price is used. The other costs incurred for transfer and new account are irrelevant because everyone who creates a new account or transfers a character has to pay those fees. Also, you claim that when buying 60 day GTC's it means that CCP is getting $17.50/month in sub money. That is patently false. How about it is costing the customer $17.50 a month, whereas if you have a credit card you can pay about $15/month or get 3 months for less than $39? does that math work better for you? so who really cares how much ccp is making/not making, it's cheating the customer. Then pay with a credit card FFS. Paying with gametime cards is always more expensive than paying with a credit card over time especially if you pay for multiple months at a time on CC. First of all it costs them some small amount to print and distribute the GTC's if in physical form and secondly since they are being sold through a 3rd party retailer there is some markup in order for the retailer to make some profit, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to sell the GTC's in the first place. how much does ccp lose every time someone uses a credit card and either does the power of 2, or pays for 3-, 6-, or 12-months at a time? same principle yes? should they shut down all payment methods other than paying with a credit card or buying a gtc, both of which can only be 60 days for $35? why is it that other games who charge the same 1-, 3-, 6-, 12- monthly credit card rates as eve... why is it that those companies can sell 30 and 60 day GTCs for $15 and $30? don't those resellers and the gaming companies need to make profit as well? but ccp and their resellers, after all these years, suddenly can't? They lose about $60 on a 1-year subscription, but for every person who pays a year in advance there are probably at least 100 people paying single-month subs. So in the long run they won't lose much. Plus in EVE like in every other MMO the discount for longer period subs is a reward for player loyalty. As for other companies selling GTC's for $15 and $30, that's the NA GTC prices, have you looked at the EU GTC prices, try $41.99 for a 60-day card. Very few MMO's even HAVE 30 day GTC's anymore. Most stick to the 60-day GTC's with different prices depending on whether it's a US or EU market. EVE has only 1 zone so the $35 is basically an average price between US and EU zones. Everyone has the option to pay by CC, hell most major banks and CC companies even have prepaid cards now that you can load up like a gift card and it works just like a normal CC. It's not CCP's job to choose what method you decide to subscribe to thier game.
Also comparing the monthly cost of paying with EVE GTC's vs paying any other MMO or EVE via credit card isn't really an accurate comparison either. An accurate comparison would be to compare GTC prices accross MMO's, in which case EVE GTC's are slightly more expensive than US timecodes (about $5) and slightly cheaper than EU timecodes (about $10) which likely stems from the fact that EVE doesn't have separate US/EU servers. slightly more? i can buy 30 day gtcs for other games and 60 day gtcs. so, if i'm paying $30 for another game's 60 day gtc, and i'm paying $35 for eve's? 16.666% more? that's quite a bit of markup. Actually from what I've seen about 75% of the other MMO's out there only offer 60-day timecards. And EVE's 60 day GTC is $7 cheaper than other MMO's EU prices which is 20% less, that's quite a bit of a discount. Also the part about there being less in EVE patches because they are so small is just plain assinine and idiotic. First of all the things that take up the most space in ANY game are art assets. Textures, shaders, etc. about 90% of any games data needs will be taken up by art assets, so unless they need to add some new model or other art asset into a patch all that's left over is code changes. Code is inherently pretty compact (especially if coded well) and as it is essentially all character data it can be compressed heavily, resulting in much smaller patch sizes. Oh but you didn't think the EVE patches were uncompressed....nah nobody's that stupid. Also the third thing you have to realize is the eve client is just a dumb client. Pretty much just art assets and some underlying code to go along with it. All the important stuff is handled on the server. So once again there's less stuff you need to be distributing with the client. so um, what all great things are YOU playing with in the empyrean expansion? doing the faction warfare are you? how's that working out? oh... did you happen to be in an alliance and can't participate at all? too bad i guess. oh well, there's always all those wonderful new pve missions... you can do all sorts of groovy mining for npcs now! i'm sorry, the only thing we really have to look forward to in patches is new ships, new mods, new skills, and eventually the hopes of human avatars (and a chance to have what swg SHOULD have been... eventually... maybe...) At the moment, none of them since my playtime is extremely limited atm due to being busy IRL, but once I get more time to play it will be there for me to use, as will the things being added in Quantum Rise. I tend to dabble in all aspects of the game so I don't care what they add in when because I can always get to it when I'm ready to. Personally I'd rather have new toys added to my sandbox then a couple new theme park rides, 10 more levels of grind and a tech2 carrot and stick to chase after. I expect with the ambulation expansion the size of the client will at least double, if not more. Also I imagine since the midas expansion will include the Orca model and some further trinity upgrades it will likely be over 100 mb at least for the premium version.
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
I believe I've educated myself on the topic and shown some proof to back it up. Can you say the same?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
The amount of money CCP makes off of all WhiteWolf products (including the CCG) is a fraction of what they bring in from EVE in a year. The WhiteWolf merger was more about getting access to the WoD IP and WhiteWolfs writing staff than it was about gaining a lot more profit, but the merger was mutually beneficial for both parties.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
Actually yes to both questions though i havent been active for along time. I quit when i noticed i was only logging in to start a new skill. That doesnt change the fact that you can still play as you skill up nor does it change the fact that early skills take very little time.
As far as trying to compare it to leveling games like AoC, etc. If i quit AoC one month after release then come back after an expansion raises the cap to level 100 do i come back at level 100 with gear to match? No.
Yes i know it only finishes the current skill being trained but as you noted skill times become quite long at advanced levels/skills. If people werent abusing this by starting a time intensive skill towards the end of a billing cycle then restarting at or near completion we wouldnt be having this convo would we?
Orphes, First off Power of Two is not two accounts for the price of one. I am paying my $15 a month for my main account and took up to offer for a second account. For that account I pay an additional roughly $10 a month, it is not a second free account I pay a seperate amount of money for another character. I generally subscribe to 2 games at a time so Eve gave me the chance to keep a constant playing character and could take a break with one account to try new MMO if I chose to and not feel like I lost out on any training. I totally understand that is is CCPs perogative to do what they want with their game. But I banked on being able to train that second account while I tried out another MMO for a month and eventually came back. Now when I come back that character is exaclty where he was when I unsubscribed so in essence the reason I bought that second account is gone. Now before you people start ranting I know, I know ,you aren't paying you should not be advancing. Well when I paid that $71 for the Power of Two this was a game mechanic not a so called bug.that I planned on utilizing I am not calling CCP dishonest, liars, cheats ,thieves, I am simply saying this could have come to light before the Power of Two offer not one week after. If you do not think that is pure coincidence then I do not know what to tell you. Maybe I am a conspiracy theorist. And before anyone questions my financial status, of which I do not think anyone should be doing, I do very well and the two subscriptions are in no way a strain on me, I just chose to limit myself to that.
Ok I may remember wrong. But when I checked the latest power off two, within the last month. It was initially 40€ for the first 6 months and then 70€ every 6 months. An alternative in the power of two with monthly sub was not there as far as I remember.
6 months fee subscribing monthly is 90€. 6 months prepaid is 70€. So effectively you got an oppertunity to get 2 accounts for the price of one.
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ccp can ban your if u post hate content on other web pages
Comments
i'm sorry, i got thru the first two paragraphs of the actual interview, pretty much saw nothing but outright lies and well, ccp will continue to get a single sub out of me for now and i honestly have no intentions of ever getting that back up to 4 or 5 or 6 accounts again.
soe lies like this. ccp lied like this to cover up bullshit like t20's antics and to hope and pray that nothing else would get exposed on anyone else.
seriously disappointing and to all the people agreeing to this change, or saying that it wasn't fair -- you had FIVE YEARS to voice your sentiments on this topic... yet you never did -- gbtw or just stfu -- it mattered NOTHING to any of you until it was removed and people were pissed because it was removed. go troll in your caves.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
to be fair, i went back and read the interview, and to be honest, it's still a load of total crap.
just recently noticed it's use? so, since the dev states (again) that the devs play the game; then, they must NEVER visit the official forums, nor any of the forums in the corps/alliances in which they participate. the inactive training has been listed as a feature on the official site, which was referenced in many guides, mentioned in countless threads, used extensively by anyone training an alt over the years (since you can only train a single character on an account at a time), and the list goes on.
go lie to morons. the more i think about it, you must consider us to be morons to believe blatant untruths.
that one sub is looking less and less likely. respect is something soe has no clue of and as a result, quite a few people have no intention of even looking at another soe/station game.
i used to run multiple accounts. i used to recommend eve to friends and online-gaming-buddies.
now, when asked about it, i go back to dev cheating which was exposed and proved and admitted to, i mention all the dev cheating which has been alleged over the years but never had concrete/undeniable proof, i bring up lots of "oopsies" which always fell to the side people feel is full of ccp employees/friends, and i bring up the blatant disrespect which, over the years, is steadily reaching soe proportions.
most of the rest doesn't phase them, the soe comparison is something every last one of them understands and despises.
grats. do some more interviews and spread the fertilizer a bit more... we love it. honestly.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
That's because expansions for other MMOs tend to be filled with a lot of Graphical content, audio files, etc (I don't play many others, but doesn't the last WoW expansion - and WAR - have a lengthy CGI movie intro as well??).
Eve tends to expand with new functionality, which is mostly code based and not dependant on new graphica and audio assests. Complied code is actually pretty small compared to the space required for graphic and audio assests, the ExeFile.exe file that runs Eve is only 500KB.
Also, by the nature of the dynamic content in Eve (ie. missions, etc) these are driven by the server side database, so I believe it is possible to add new missions without any client download being required (or at the very least, only some mission references being required - which would be very small).
I do feel you on the missions though, they did claim to have added hundreds of new missions, yet the same ones do seem to still come up fairly often.
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The thing I don't get with all this, is that a continuous account paid for by the year costs about the same as the 60-day GTC's would for the ghost-training system.
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
4 x 60-day GTC's: $34.99 x 60 = $139.96
The yearly acocunt is cheaper, and, IMO, a lot easier to deal with. I guess I just don't see the problems others are. Yes, the miscommunications caused a lot of greif, but that is really about the only problem caused by this change.
CraziFuzzy
Just some math here.
Let's say you add 100 missions.
We have 4 factions, and 4 pirate factions giving missions. (100/8=12.5)
We have five agent levels per faction. (12.5/5=2.5)
Of which one per faction might be a storyline. (2.5-1=1.5)
So, the usual missionrunner will get 1.5 new missions per added 100 missions.
And this is me assuming they distributed them evenly, which they did not. The average missionrunner will notice about 1-2 new missions.
Ever had the mission "buzz kill"? It's one of those new ones..
I love EVE and have been playing it for almost three years now. I play for fun and the excitement of flying my ship on missions or into battle or just doing things like marketing, mining, exploring and more.
I am very glad that CCP stopped ghost training as it was unfair against us steady subscribers that pay every month to play the game and advance our characters. I really love to play EVE and hopefully will continue to enjoy it for many more years. I think more and more "business men" in game were starting to use ghost training to to create characters to sell to other players. So it is good ghost training is gone.
Keep up the good work CCP
Yes the steady hard core subs are all thats gonna be left after this.
i'm not necessairly putting current company into this category but this game has always been dominated by an over opinionated veteran group with a smaller group of revolving door new players to shoot at , call newbs and blow up. This is one of the worst communties I have ever played in.
I daresay changes like this one, and the gtc changes will ensure cliques stay intact and the game is inaccessible to the casuals.....maybe thats what you want but personally I think its a big mistake if your intention is to maximize profits.
I think the argument that this is game breaking is pathetic when put up against all the other truly BS things taht have occured in the past.
I have been playing the game 'casually' for over 4 1/2 years now, and I have yet to feel like they are doing anything against me. As I've pointed out, paying for a year long subscription is just as economical as going through the GTC route part-time, so I just pay up on the subs. I have gone 2-3 weeks at a time without running the client, but I feel the time I do play is well worth my $10 something a month. You say that EvE is counter to a casual playstyle, however, the realtime skill trainging, IMO, is what makes it so great for a casual gamer. I never felt that my playstyle was letting me fall-behind my corpmates who played more regularly, though I do find I am a lot poorer ingame. In any other MMO, I would be at the equivalent of the 5-6 months point, after this 4 1/2 years of playing sporatically. In eve, I'm not far behing the guys who started 4 1/2 years with me. (I have had a lot of lapsed training time over the years -- Here's to a skill queue or same skill continuation!)
And CCP never said their intention was to maximize profits. It was a fairness issue. I commit my money to eve, regarldess of how little i sometimes get to play, and I am rewarded by the guys who Don't commit to the game in the same way being able to train to the same extent I can? That is unfair, and that has now been fixed.
CraziFuzzy
I'm glad taht you enjoy the game and I'm not here to take that away from you......but the real time training system has its strengths and weaknesses.
At first I thought it was cool but then I got a little set back by the notion that my "efforts" in game will do nothing to improve my skills (other than of course implants).
Not everyone is going to sub by the year .... as a matter of fact few people do because even though its $9 cheaper (based on someone else's math on this thread) its quite a bit of cash up front for a video game.
My point is CCP is not enabling players to access their game....the GTC system, the RT skill system as it stands, and venom spewed by the Vets of this game and now this ghosting issue do nothing to empower players who are on the fence.
There are plenty of community members who don't want "that" player base anyway ....so it looks like their getting their own way.
When EQ /DAOC were the only 3d MMos on the market they could do whatever the hell they wanted and people would eat it up. As soon as the gen 2 games rolled out there was a mass exodus from their worlds to games that understood the short comings of the gen 1 titles.....CCP is going to get one rude wake up call.
They call themselves gamers but they are being more and more detached from their player base on what is already a mediorce game.
sandbox my ass.
after 4 years i dont think they can honestly claim it as an oversight any longer,i think they found away to boost their cash reserves and are going after it,but i think it may backfire on them in the long run and i think their 1/24th or 10000 is a little low ,anyhow my 2 cents worth good luck with this greedy move ccp
and on yearly subscription ;by month 14.95 usd
;by year 10.96 per month
thats 48.00 usd a year savings
Well that interveiw is a lot of nonsense. That feature/bug was being used by a lot more than 10,000 players. Everyone in my alliance has used it at one time or another, we took a survey to find that out.
This braindead manuver is going to cost them significantly in the number of 2nd and 3rd accounts people play.
We will continue to play with our mains but it is going to cost them about 300 accounts just from our alliance that won't get activated any more.
Their greed is going to kick them hard because they depend on those multiple accounts and there are going to be a lot less of them now.
While it is technically more than possible to implement both, they considered it as a game balance issue, since if their documentation refers to ghost training, it should be same type of training as others get, or one character would get more skills for same effort (because the account stays subscribed) even in long breaks, and it would be in essence buying in game advantages with money, something comparable to Micropayment solutions, and we can see how people reacted to that idea.
Minsc
Please check the following blog post: http://forum.enerla.net/blog.php?b=17
As you see before the new round of lies started I had similar ideas about the reasons, since speaking about "unintentional features" would be for character building plans that are based on ghost training and not the announced feature itself. I think with that explanation things would look far better. But with new explanations it turned from bad to worse. Most people seen this post linked to the old threads. When you link the post "Ghost Training Removed"
And about assets and code:
It would be nice to see new assets for luxury liners and other civilian ships. New kinds of stations and other structures in the missions. There is nothing to stop you from flying inside some huge stations, there is nothing to stop you from using new kinds of modules for missions. Like some cameras for making photos of individual buildings inside a bigger structure.
It would be nice not to wait months for orca. It would be nice if we would have some new kinds of missions. Missions that are best done in new kinds of ships, that could depend on new kinds of skills.
If we would have a choice of a few missions, and some missions would require exploration skills, hacking skills, etc. yet others would require manufacturing skills and the "extra runs" on the BPC would be extra rewards, etc.
As you see with classic graphic we hd mny different station models, with premium graphics, we don't have as much, since they aren't ready. So we have half finished patches here. And those half finished patches are called as expansions.
It would be nice to have skill queues implemented. If CCP admited that the learning skills idea became a problem and doesn't work as intented, they should change their system asap. They should also work on a way to reduce the training times.
I remember when they last tried to reduce the gap between old and new players by adjusting character creation rules and the starting SP amount became about 4 times higher. Yet, the problem is: Most new players stop when they see in the "endgame" their chances are reduced greatly by several years worth of disadvantage, and see how long it would take to fit a capital, and feel they are "equal party".
Having skill points now is an advantage over people who get the skills later, and the increasing gap is a problem in the game so it would be wise to add a system that makes skill training gradually faster with time. It would allow old players to keep most of their SP advantage without widening the gap. It would fix several problems and would make new players stay longer (they would see they have a chance in reasonable time).
Yet to fix any recognized problems it takes MONTHS to fix them once they are recognized the fix ins announced. Isn't it strange that removing ghost training took an amazing 2 days to "fix"?
Don't get me wrong. I think fixing ghost traing was fair, you can see it in the linked blog. But as you see things are getting different with each explanation they post.
The licence terms with and without Ghost Traing seems fair, changing a feature is fair, since they never promised to make it stay.
And I think the key point is: When I make a 2nd character I make it because I would like to play with that character, and if I would like to play with a character (even if I spend most of my game time on other, or consider another character far more important) so no point in making a plan that depends on ghost training.
Check my home page for gaming related articles
Rubbish. Almost everyone I knew on Eve used it, as well as the moderators on the forum on several different accounts reassured ghost training would be kept in. What kind of bug is purposely kept in a game?! Not to mention that this "bug" was also mentioned on the character tutorial page on the eve website. Sure, mention a "bug" in a tutorial.
Also as for the balance issue, that’s utter nonsense. CCP allow the buying and selling of characters. So how is it unfair to ghost train, yet completely fair for someone to buy a 5 year old character for the price of a years subscription? Simple answer, removing ghost training gives CCP more money.
Plus, people say that the character farming was a big issue. Is this true? No, it's another load of balls from CCP. This is because characters would have to be sold via the trading bazaar, a CCP monitored part of the official forum. The players would be traded using isk, which would come from buying time codes for real money, and trading it to a player for in game isk. All in all, CCP never lost any money because they still recieved just as much subscription money as they would, people buying the timecodes were just using a middle man. Character farming, which was never a big issue in eve (the auto-miners were/are, and yet nothing has been done about them...), still gives CCP just as much subscription money if there wasn't any. Actually probably more due to the fact that the farmed characters still needed active subs to change skills.
To the people who say "you have to pay to play" you clearly haven’t thought about what your saying. Playing eve does not help your skill points to go up, so by removing ghost training, you effectively end up having to pay CCP to learn the long skills like battleship 5 etc. Imagine if Blizzard started charging players extra every time they wanted to raid. That’s the equivalent of removing ghost training in eve. You end up paying for skills. Sounds like an item store isn't far off....
And lets not forget that eve is certainly not cheap. Now with the price hike and removal of ghost traing, you will have to pay around $420 (2 years worth of subs) to get a decent amount of skill points. Yet, to become really good, you will have to pay for probably another 2 years worth of subs. Personally, I'd rather keep my money and get a game console and a plethora of games, all with free online play.
Since the price hike of the subscriptions, eve hasn't reached over 40,000 players in a long, long time. I think it's on it's way down, look at the figures http://eve.coldfront.net/status/tranquility .
Mazty on PSN
lets not forget many mmos offer a rest system that helps in times when you can't be advance your character in game. The rest systems in most of the mmos i play continue to accure even if you're not subbing.
This is indeed a load of rubbish.
Yes and every one of those games have a cap on how much "rest" you can accrue and none come close to taking months to max. They should have fixed or addressed this long ago and certainly could have handled it better at this late date. That doesnt change the fact it was ridiculous to allow chars to continue to advance without an active sub and fixing it was the correct thing to do.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
Mazty on PSN
no other company allow you to skill up without paying for it? No other company puts such a long time period to skill up either. The long training period is a way for the company to make money at the expense of the player, and should be illegal.
Author of the Amazon kindle book, The Clan and the Crown
Actually, that $9 cheaper was my calculation, but that was not a direct comparison. That was a comparison to a full year of pre-paid subscription, to just under 8 months of GTC. (As 4 cards is what the average 'Ghost Trainer' that is complaining about this change would be buying anyways). To compare a full year, it is a LOT cheaper to do the annual sub:
1 x twelve-month subscription: $131.40
6 x 60-day GTC: $34.99 x 6 = $209.94
That $78.54 savings a year would buy yourself a complete different NON online game. I really don't understand why more people DON'T use the annual sub. When I started, as soon as I realized I'd probably play it for at least another 6-8 months, it became more worth it to just pay for the whole year (as it would cost the same as 8 months individually). This got me the critical months 9-12 effectively for free, which, coincidentally, is the point where the game REALLY started to shine. I'm into my 4th annual subscription as we speak.
Maybe I'm a fanboi, I dunno. I do know that this particular group of online players are MORE helpful to noobs than I've seen in any other online community. This game is designed around teamwork, and gang-play, so if you are this broken up by losing the ability to train up alts (imaginary friends?), IMHO, you're doing it wrong.
CraziFuzzy
Here you make a mistake: you don't even know how Ghost Training was working. Let me tell you: It just finished the skill level you started to train with an active subscribtion. So it was limited to 1 skill level. Nothing more, nothing less. Inthe case of short skills or anything you didn't start at last moment it was very short time, but even if you tried to maximize the benefits it was probably less than a month. If you want to read more about the importance of ghost training, click here.
If you would want to see why this change wasn't about a fairness, and how a "fairness patch" would work there are other stuff you can read.
Check my home page for gaming related articles
Actually the costs for training a secondary character,
were increased by 46% to 134%
by the removal of "Ghost Training" and the earlier
Game Time Card Restructuring and Price Increase.
Now if such changes seem reasonable
to anyone from a customers perspective
all the other issues connected with this CMR and PR catastrophe aside,
I dare to challenge their rationality.
Some further comments:
Alts are more or less required in Eve,
unless you are just a few month into the game, a casual gamer or
not interested in PVP and by that ignoring 90% of the content.
In the highly competitive culture and environment that exists in EVE,
a secondary character is practically useless
unless it had a certain amount of training.
In my experience roughly 6 month are a good mark for non PVP alts.
Moreover the advancement and gameplay mechanisms of EVE,
are unique and cannot be judged from the point of view of the average MMORPG.
It takes literally years for a main pvp character to become competitive and reasonably flexible,
as far as his skills are concerned.
No action you can take ingame can speed up this learning process,
there is no grind for learning time or any other of those mechanism.
Its pure real life time that needs to be waited out.
Overview of Cost Calculation:
The costs to play the game with 60 GTC increased by
31% over the discontinued 90 day GTC.
17% over the discontinued 30 day GTC.
17% over the monthly subscription rate.
The cost for training an alternative character over a 6 month period increased by:
134% based on Game Time Cards.
100% based on a monthly subscription rate.
60% based on the 6 month subscription rate.
46% based on the 12 month subscription rate.
GTC Prices
discontinued 30 day GTC: $14.95
discontinued 90 day GTC: $39.95
current 60 day GTC: $34.95
Cost for a 6 month training cycle
Best Cases: Before "Ghost Training" Change
60 day GTC = 2 x $34.99 = $69.98
monthly subscription = 3 x $14.95 = $44.85
discontinued 30 day GTC = 3 x $14.95 = $44.85
Best Cases: After "Ghost Training" Change
60 day GTC = 3 x 34.99 = $104.97
monthly subscription = 6 x $14.95 = $89.7
6 month subscription = 1 x $71.7 = $71.7
12 month subscrition = 0.5 x $131.4 = $65.7
you know, maybe your initial statement isn't correct, maybe some people aren't intentionally ignorant and they're just ignorant because, well, they're just not educated on the topic?
I believe I've educated myself on the topic and shown some proof to back it up. Can you say the same?
edit: keep in mind, in the western markets, eve is in the top 10 MMOs for subs and they bought out white wolf... that means they're making money off the white wolf products and (because of this buyout/merger) making money off the eve online ccg. it's not like ccp is a one-trick-pony any longer. seriously.
The amount of money CCP makes off of all WhiteWolf products (including the CCG) is a fraction of what they bring in from EVE in a year. The WhiteWolf merger was more about getting access to the WoD IP and WhiteWolfs writing staff than it was about gaining a lot more profit, but the merger was mutually beneficial for both parties.
Quick question: Have you ever played EvE and do you know how the SP system works?
From your post I assume no to both questions. In WoW and almost every other mmorpg you can get to the top/end game content in a short amount of time. In eve it takes years. There is no way around that. You can be on every minute of every day and it'll take you the same amount of time as the guy who is on it several times a week. Because of this, ghost training seemed fair as it was a reward to the players for being part of such a time consuming training system. Now the cost of training has jumped up. No other mmorpg has you paying to reach the top levels, and with the removal of ghost training, that is what it is ensuring, that you have to cash out no less than $600 to become an all round good character. Imagine in AoC if you had to pay, on top of your sub, extra cash every other level to proceed to the next. Because of how eve works, that is now what it is doing.
Actually yes to both questions though i havent been active for along time. I quit when i noticed i was only logging in to start a new skill. That doesnt change the fact that you can still play as you skill up nor does it change the fact that early skills take very little time.
As far as trying to compare it to leveling games like AoC, etc. If i quit AoC one month after release then come back after an expansion raises the cap to level 100 do i come back at level 100 with gear to match? No.
Yes i know it only finishes the current skill being trained but as you noted skill times become quite long at advanced levels/skills. If people werent abusing this by starting a time intensive skill towards the end of a billing cycle then restarting at or near completion we wouldnt be having this convo would we?
Ok I may remember wrong. But when I checked the latest power off two, within the last month. It was initially 40€ for the first 6 months and then 70€ every 6 months. An alternative in the power of two with monthly sub was not there as far as I remember.
6 months fee subscribing monthly is 90€. 6 months prepaid is 70€. So effectively you got an oppertunity to get 2 accounts for the price of one.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
CCP you successfully completed greed level 5
also look on eula
ccp can ban your if u post hate content on other web pagesBestSigEver :P
