Unkillable Cat's Unpatriotic CCP Mockery Thread (aka WoD got cancelled)

[Hoaxmetal]

Sounds like they got too eager to expand their game base.

 

[catfood]

The CEO had members of the fiction writing team put the apology together - he was either so out of touch, so arrogant, that he couldn’t find the words himself

 

[Minttunator]

Ouch.
http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

That's a really interesting article! If anybody hasn't read it already, I heartily recommend taking a few minutes to go through it - it's quite a sombre look at the world of game development and MMO development in particular. A lot of the shit these ex-CCP employees describe goes on in other companies as well - I suppose that's part of the reason why most MMOs suck so horribly. Personally I'm still butthurt about WoD being cancelled but now I guess I can console myself by knowing it wouldn't have been good anyway.

 

[Excidium]

Hardly a surprise. Don't feel nothing because screenshots made it look like ass

 

[Night Goat]

I feel sorry for anyone competent who was with White Wolf/CCP for a long time. First they had to watch what was once the most successful tabletop RPG company destroyed by Full Retard decision-making, then they had to watch the same thing happen to the MMO.

 

[Ninjerk]

Ouch.
http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

That's a really interesting article! If anybody hasn't read it already, I heartily recommend taking a few minutes to go through it - it's quite a sombre look at the world of game development and MMO development in particular. A lot of the shit these ex-CCP employees describe goes on in other companies as well - I suppose that's part of the reason why most MMOs suck so horribly. Personally I'm still butthurt about WoD being cancelled but now I guess I can console myself by knowing it wouldn't have been good anyway.

It sounds like people that don't know shit about gaming became game designers because that's the hot thing to do (I feel like this has happened in film?).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It sounds like people that don't know shit about gaming became game designers because that's the hot thing to do (I feel like this has happened in film?).

"What game is the Citizen Kane of gaming?" Fuck that. The big question is: "What game designer is the Ed Wood of gaming?"

 

[Ninjerk]

Well, Orson Welles being a visionary aside, that's not really what I mean. I mean people with too much money getting into video games like Donald Trump got into the USFL (and ruined it) because it's something people with a lot of money do (often just to make more money, not because they give a shit about games).

 

[Kane]

“I wasn't laid off,” points out Blood at the end of our interview. “I left voluntarily, out of disappointment at what the industry is increasingly becoming.”

He has no intention of returning.

I TOLD YOU SO.

 

[Kane]

I suppose that's part of the reason why most MMOs suck so horribly.

Not just MMOs...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Update: CCP announced their financial figures for the first half of 2014. Considerable loss of money, mostly due to wrapping up old projects like WoD and that Walking in Stations crap. A big loss is a $3m tax cut in the US due to WoD being cancelled.

Subscription base is pretty much the same as last year, seems that people are waiting to see what happens next.

Two announced layoffs from the higher echelons of CCP: Both individuals were involved with the marketing aspects of EVE. They were offered other positions within CCP, they refused.

Besides the layoffs I've been hearing about people quitting on their own. Staff reduction is rapidly approaching 40% over a 2 year period. That's gotta hurt.

On another note, one of the richest EVE players, a guy who had been running a lottery "racket" alongside EVE, was finally permabanned after someone figured out that the guy had made over $3m in Real Life profit from his lottery. Estimates are placing 140 TRILLION ISK having been removed from the game in one fell swoop, though that's a highball guess.

Otherwise it's the same old story over at Can't Code Properly Games.

 

[Ninjerk]

Is the lottery legal where the guy lives?

 

[DefJam101]

Speaking of psychopaths online, a Rock Paper Shotgun article about just that:

Player stalked for 3 years for his ship.

Full article included below.
<REDACTED>

Disclaimer: The only connection I have with any of this is that I happen to have an EVE Online account. I am not connected to anyone involved in this, my perspective is effectively that of an outsider.

What they describe as "a hunt" is actually cyber-stalking. Note that how they acquire the information needed to track down his identity is never disclosed, for somewhat obvious reasons. The actions described above are the actions of obsessive-compulsive aspie psychopaths.

Hello, (former) EVE player of seven years here. This story is misleading, clickbait bullshit. I'll explain why:

In EVE every character has a personal contact list to which you can add any existing pilot in the universe, friend or foe, with or without their consent. When a pilot is on your contact list, you will always receive a small notification on your screen whenever that person logs in or out. Therefore, there is nothing any player can do to prevent you from knowing whether they are online or not, short of playing on a separate character, or on a separate account.

You can also add personalized notes to each contact so that, upon seeing one of these notifications, a short click will tell you if the pilot is a known cyno alt or known capital ship pilot, as well as the player's alliance affiliation and known base of operations, which includes both the solar system and the specific station from which the cyno alt undocks. Gathering all of this information is as simple as having a single allied player who isn't retarded anywhere in the same solar system as the enemy cyno alt / capital ship pilot any time the capital ship executes a jump.

Furthermore, you don't need to constantly monitor a player's activity to see whether they've played recently; you can see exactly how long it has been since any pilot on your contact list last logged into the game, whether that was five minutes ago or five years.

So why do people bother doing this? Well, when you spot a twenty-man fleet of Derp Alliance battlecruisers flying toward your home system five minutes after a Derp Alliance titan pilot, his cyno alt, and seven Derp Alliance mothership pilots all logged in at the same time, it's pretty safe to assume that the incoming fleet is a trap. At the very least, you'll know only to engage with nano ships (fast fuckers) or sniper ships, so that when the twenty-man Drake fleet explodes into a giant blob of heavy tackle, expensive battleships and remote-repairing carriers, they won't be able to stop you from running away.

On the flipside, when you're attacking a smaller corporation, you can check to see whether their known capital ship pilots are online. If they are, you're in danger of being hot dropped. If they aren't, you can be reasonably sure you won't end up in a capital ship fight. If their capital ship pilots start logging on the instant you engage, you know you're in trouble.

Literally every EVE player in any semi-serious PvP-oriented corporation uses this tactic to monitor the fleet activity of their enemies, because it's extremely easy, extremely convenient, and has no downside or cost provided the player already has a second account with an otherwise useless contact list. It gives you free, advanced warning whenever your opponents might be up to no good, and demands absolutely none of your attention unless you feel you might be in danger, or you're looking for juicy targets. There is no reason not to add all known, relevant capital ship pilots and cyno alts to your second account's contact list.

And yes, the majority of players in semi-serious PvP corporations will have second accounts, as the ability to scout jump gates and probe systems by yourself is perhaps the single most advantageous ability in the entire game, and is easily worth the cost of a second account, which can be paid for using in-game currency. Mining any decent moon is enough to pay for multiple accounts indefinitely, as is planetary development or clever trading, all of which is more or less automated and nearly trivial when you have an alternate account to scout / probe / check market data / move materials / whatever. Shit, kill a titan, as these guys did, and loot a single officer module from the wreck? Congrats, you just paid for two separate accounts for an entire year.

So, based on my years of playing EVE and knowing how the game actually works, here's what happened:

1) Some guy, we'll call him Joe, was looking at his star map when he noticed an off-station cyno field in a neighboring low security system. This can mean only two things: either someone just got hot dropped by capital ships, or someone is, for whatever reason, moving a supercapital through low security space. Since, presumably, the system was otherwise unpopulated, Joe knew it had to be the latter.

2) Joe entered the solar system, warped to the cyno field, right clicked the cyno field, saved the location as a bookmark named BIG SHIP JUMPED HERE, then wrote down the name of the character generating the cyno field. At this time he probably also hit his directional scanner, which told him exactly what type of ship had just jumped into the system, as the ship would not have disappeared from the game world so soon after logging out. The person writing the article neglected to mention this, as it sounds less dramatic.

3) When the titan doesn't log back in, Joe and his buddies consult their various private chat channels. These chat channels are full of old friends, many of whom probably now live in unrelated alliances on the opposite end of the galaxy. It's therefore almost certain that some of these old friends are members of an alliance that is currently at war with the mystery pilot's alliance, and who can identify that character as a Whatever Alliance cyno alt as well as possibly identifying the associated supercapital pilot.

4) Assuming Joe's old friends for whatever reason could not also identify the supercapital pilot, Joe now has the name of the cyno alt, the exact time the titan pilot last logged out of the game, the type of titan he's looking for, and the alliance affiliation of the titan pilot. After approximately five minutes spent searching this alliance's statistics on any EVE killboard on the internet and sorting by ship type, Joe now has a list of potential titan pilots.

5) Tabbing back into the game, Joe immediately eliminates every name on the list belonging to a player who is currently online. He then spends ten minutes typing the remaining names into EVE's contact finder as he makes bad internet spaceships jokes over teamspeak with his increasingly drunken friends. One by one, he compares the time of each pilot's last log out to the time of the mystery titan player who logged out. After ten minutes, he finds a character whose last log out matches the time exactly. This must be the titan pilot.

6) Joe returns to his private channel buddies and links the name of the titan pilot in question. His private channel buddies then tell him, oh, yeah, that guy's regular cyno alt is so-and-so.

7) Joe and his buddies add all of these names and their associated contact details to their contact lists, so they will be notified whenever any of them log on. When the first cyno ship logs off, they leave one player's alt behind in a cloaked covert ops frigate and go back to doing whatever they were doing before all this shit started.

8) An hour later, when the titan's regular cyno alt logs on, Joe and his friends take notice and use a locator agent (an NPC, not a player) to find out where this character bases from. At this point they send a recon cruiser down to the cyno alt's home system, find him dropping a cyno for a carrier, and add that carrier pilot to their contact lists. Later that night they see the cyno alt log on again, right before the carrier logs on. And again. And again. And again. And again. They now know that the carrier pilot is an alt of the cyno pilot, who is an alt of the titan pilot. At this point they can keep digging for more information by searching the carrier's name on the EVE forums, I guess, but they already know everything they'll ever need to know.

9) At this point, everyone has the carrier pilot, both cyno pilots and the titan pilot on their contact list, so they'll know when any of them are online and, given a few minutes, exactly where they are. A month passes. Everyone gets tired of talking about the mystery titan that never logged back on. They append WTF TITAN IN <INSERT SYSTEM HERE> to their contact notes and soon forget any of this ever happened except for when it occasionally comes up in conversation as yet another weird tale of internet spaceships.

10) Fast forward three years. These same dudes are out killing shit when Joe, who is scouting, notices some random cyno alt he doesn't recognize just logged in. He clicks the notification, sees WTF TITAN IN <INSERT SYSTEM HERE> and says, over teamspeak, holy shit no way it's that guy

11) "Twenty-three seven security" begins. However, in EVE this doesn't actually mean having people sit around twenty-three hours a day waiting for this titan pilot to log in. It means that everyone in the corp is told what's going on, and because everyone is told what's going on and knows the names of the pilots, it's completely trivial to have at least one person park an alt in a cloaked recon ship at the bookmark where the titan logged out three years ago. If your corp has members from varied timezones, you can have someone "watching" the system constantly, all day round, with zero effort.

12) The titan pilot logs on, everybody sees it at the same time, everybody yells in teamspeak and starts warping toward the nearest station to switch into a hictor and/or log on their capital ship alts. Recons and covert ops ships probe out the titan, hictors jump in and warp to the covert ops ships, capital ships cyno in on top of the titan and make it asplode.


All of this took approximately thirty minutes of detective work and preparation — an hour if we assume someone pointlessly searched the EVE forums to find the carrier pilot's other characters — followed by a few days of people idling their scout characters near where the titan logged out rather than idling them on the entry gates to their home system as they normally would.

Yes, EVE is about backstabbing, espionage, information warfare and all that. No, this does not mean EVE players actually stalk people.


Why did I bother typing this? It's 4AM. Fuck EVE.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thank you for the very detailed write-up. The only part of this "process" that I was not 100% sure of was how they determined the common identity of the Cyno Alt Pilot and the Titan Pilot (and the Carrier pilot for that matter). I should have known that RPS couldn't write a decent article once in their lifetimes and would skip vital bits of info, but that doesn't change my opinion which is the bolded part of your quote: Even though the tracking methods are trivial due to in-game mechanics, out-of-game mechanics were also involved, though a lot less than I had figured.

If anything, your post has reinforced my view that getting into capital ships in this game is a gigantic waste of time.

 

[set]

I think it's hypebole to say CCP can't code. They operate the largest server cluster next to google and keep up the most concurrent MMO ever. They've had some mismanagement but I would say their core code and core ideas are admirable.

 

[DefJam101]

I should have known that RPS couldn't write a decent article once in their lifetimes and would skip vital bits of info,

My guess is it's not entirely RPS' fault. If someone interviews you about your favorite videogame you're going to dress things up a bit to make the story sound more exciting than it really is. Telling an interviewer you "cloaked outside a popular deadspace complex, allowing you to jump in an allied black ops battleship and destroy an enemy plexer" sounds more interesting than "used your second monitor to park an AFK recon alt 20km from a deadspace gate, allowing you to uncloak and right click > drop cyno three hours later when a PvEr finally appeared on overlay"

If anything, your post has reinforced my view that getting into capital ships in this game is a gigantic waste of time.

On this, you are absolutely correct. Capital ships ruined the game.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Well I am going to chime in on top of everything that Unkillable Cat said about CCP. Wod was suppose to be a replacement of Eve as a income source as the higher echelons of management realized that a sand box game like Eve does have a expiration date like theme parks, just much later. The game is stagnating and granted I only played less then half a decade (during the siege of bob till recently) the writing was on the wall as CCP struggled to increase their income on Eve in order to make Wod a reality. I really enjoyed Eve and would have played Wod as the perma death mechanics would have kept the game alive longer, but at this point CCP is going for smaller projects since they can't afford to work on Wod any more.

Not sure when they were suppose to start investing in another mmo, but at this point (my guess 2012) it is too late and because they waited too long they just don't have the financial resources at this point or the talent to make it a reality unless the Icelandic government wants to chip in. If anything CCP is a business lesson of being lethargic and too late of trying to avoid hitting the iceberg and it is only a matter of time before they become insolvent.

 

[set]

EVE will be fine. They will eventually go full F2P. They will find a new model for the 'plex' system and restructure the game. It can still be very profitable.

Really, EVE is pretty light on resources and even on in-game actions - it would be relatively easy to eventually make it a SSO browser/mobile/pc hybrid game? Actually, I don't know what language the client is coded in, but in theory it could work out.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

IIRC, EVE Online was coded in Python. That may have changed in the 11 years since then.

I think it's hypebole to say CCP can't code.

Can't code PROPERLY. They can cook something up, sure, but it's just as likely to blow up in their face as it is to actually work.

The most recent example (Hyperion) was to revamp the Overview UI. It also "accidentally" deleted the Overview settings for everyone that launched the game on patch day.

EVE runs a very strong API. Around 6 months ago CCP introduced a new deployable structure that, when deployed next to a starbase that was processing moon resources, would steal a little of those resources. This means that the starbase owners would have to log in, look for the siphon unit and then blow it up. CCP promised that the API (which gives far too much information IMO) would 'lie' about the presence of the siphon unit and give falsified results. Guess what the API never did?

For the longest time, after every patch, a tickbox was available where "clear up downloaded data" was available. Actually ticking that box when wrapping up the patching process could screw up the installation, forcing a complete re-install. CCP's solution? Remove the tickbox.

The Boot.ini fiasco, remember that? During the Trinity deployment (2007) they (IIRC) stopped using a boot.ini file in the EVE folder to govern the game installment and went with a start.ini instead. That meant deleting the old and unwanted boot.ini file... except the patching process would delete the boot.ini found in the root of drive C:. You know, the vital system file Windows needs to function? Several hundred users lost the usage of their computers and had to format their drives and re-install EVERYTHING to fix that one.

Then there was that update back in 2004 where the servers were down for THREE DAYS without ANY explanation on behalf as to what happened.

I could go on, I'm certain other Codexers with EVE experience could add to the pile of fail.

 

[DefJam101]

EVE will be fine. They will eventually go full F2P. They will find a new model for the 'plex' system and restructure the game. It can still be very profitable.

I actually think they'd be better off resetting the game. Don't say, "We're resetting everything," of course, but call it EVE 2.0, make a bunch of balance changes, add some new features, touch up the engine (or switch engines), start everyone back at square one, and try not to make the same mistakes over again.

You'd piss a bunch of people off either way, but changing the economy to fit a standard F2P model would piss off folks who really understand the in-game economy. Rebooting the game would only piss off people who don't understand, and they're likely much easier to lure in with the promise of ~~new features~~.

Really, EVE is pretty light on resources and even on in-game actions - it would be relatively easy to eventually make it a SSO browser/mobile/pc hybrid game?

Unsure. They should certainly look into expanding the game's API functionality. You can already monitor your character's assets, skills, etc. from outside the game client... why not allow players to remotely alter their skill training, create contracts, or set buy/sell orders?

Actually, I don't know what language the client is coded in,

Python.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Really, EVE is pretty light on resources and even on in-game actions - it would be relatively easy to eventually make it a SSO browser/mobile/pc hybrid game? Actually, I don't know what language the client is coded in, but in theory it could work out.

Can you link me where it would say it is light on resources? Also, if you don't know what the language they programmed the game in, why would you say it is relatively easy?

EVE will be fine. They will eventually go full F2P. They will find a new model for the 'plex' system and restructure the game. It can still be very profitable.

I actually think they'd be better off resetting the game. Don't say, "We're resetting everything," of course, but call it EVE 2.0, make a bunch of balance changes, add some new features, touch up the engine (or switch engines), start everyone back at square one, and try not to make the same mistakes over again.

You'd piss a bunch of people off either way, but changing the economy to fit a standard F2P model would piss off folks who really understand the in-game economy. Rebooting the game would only piss off people who don't understand, and they're likely much easier to lure in with the promise of ~~new features~~.

In a game with no perma death character reset is the only solution in my opinion, but I get a feeling they are afraid to pull the plug. As there is uncertainty on the amount of players that would return if there was a character wipe and the effect it will have on what ever reputation they have left. I see a lot of the stagnation coming from the amount of high SP toons currently in the game and the introduction of titans/super carriers (not sure if this has changed). As for the economy it would be devastating to switch to a f2p economy as anyone who played Eve for more then a month would realize the economy is a bit more sophisticated then your average theme park. Also it would piss you off to as a pvper when you are paying for battleships that are hitting 200-300 mill or T3 market is cornered and etc as forming a cartel with other players is always difficult. With players limited in the amount of alts one person can have you are almost always guaranteed a small mark up, but with f2p you would have some wild market swings that is along the lines on T2 Battleships (marauders possibly black ops).

One thing CCP has right is that they try at least make serious attempts to combat botting as it has a noticeable effect on the economy and going f2p would exponentially make it worse. The next would be market bots which basically forces legit players to not only start using bots or lose, you can then make it easier to form cartels to make large market swings or corner the market which in the end screws the pvpers look at Navy Raven and etc. Eve's economy has been relatively stable over the years because of the fact it costs $$ or major amounts of isk so only a small fraction of the player base had over 8 alts (I was one of them). With f2p I can now make hundreds of alts and at no cost to me and it comes out of CCP's pockets as I would have an easier time manipulating the market (which is still simple) or bot and not get worried.

Then for the game to go f2p we also have to consider how CCP will make money. Cosmetics? When the only time you are ever out of your ship is walking around in your room? Hell they can't even price cosmetics appropriately ($200 monocle).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

EVE will not be reset under current management, because the following criteria would have to be met first:

# Have competent staff.
# Not be located in Iceland.
# Have a plan of how to start EVE 2.0.
# Have a plan of where to take EVE 2.0 once it's launched.
# Have a plan in general.

Currently CCP doesn't qualify on any of these.

What happens to CCP hinges completely on EVE: Valkyrie, the Oculus launch title. If it takes off CCP is off the hook in many ways. If it flops, CCP follows shortly after.

Oh, and remember when I said that the number of people I know that works at CCP went down from 20 to 6? They're down to 3 now. :-/

 

[Drakron]

EVE: Valkyrie will be another Dust 514, the writing is in the wall.

 

[Dr Tomo]

EVE will not be reset under current management, because the following criteria would have to be met first:

# Have competent staff.
# Not be located in Iceland.
# Have a plan of how to start EVE 2.0.
# Have a plan of where to take EVE 2.0 once it's launched.
# Have a plan in general.

Currently CCP doesn't qualify on any of these.

What happens to CCP hinges completely on EVE: Valkyrie, the Oculus launch title. If it takes off CCP is off the hook in many ways. If it flops, CCP follows shortly after.

Oh, and remember when I said that the number of people I know that works at CCP went down from 20 to 6? They're down to 3 now. :-/

Jesus this is what bugs me the most, some of the people at the Georgia studio talked about how CCP was basically a click. If you weren't Icelandic, then you were not cool and it was ridiculous how they alienated the people at the studio. Well I am not expecting them to do it, as a character reset would actually have me not resub unless they offered something in return. I honestly see them having a plan to be honest as the Dust and Dust for PC on top of the Valkyrie projects are basically smaller projects that they hope to increase their revenue stream so they can go for the main bread and butter of the wod mmo. Now if the dust for pc or Valkyrie is just cash flow positive then we will just see them enter insolvency slowly and painfully over the next decade.

But without seeing their financials you can tell what they are thinking based off the projects the studio is doing and the layoffs, nothing for sure but an idea. I am mostly curious to know how much cash they actually need to to finish the wod mmo as I honestly think mismanagement wasted a large portion of the budget early on and now they have to put the project on hold till one of their smaller ones hits the jack pot.

EVE: Valkyrie will be another Dust 514, the writing is in the wall.

How so? I haven't really kept up with CCP news after I face palmed on their ingenious idea to target Dust 514 on console players instead of the pc as they missed the boat on the popularity of f2p trend recently and the opportunity to double tap their current subscriber base.

 

[DefJam101]

I would absolutely resub if CCP reset the game but there's just no way the hordes of capitalspamming Goons and co. + whoever the other big blob alliance is at the moment (TEST? PL?) would agree to that. The major player alliances know the game is going to shit, they're tired of it, but they also want to keep their pixels. I bet even if you let them name the new hub systems or regions in the hypothetical EVE 2.0, or other cool shit like that, they'd still choose their fake internet spaceships over a better game.