CCP Rise Comments on Eve's New Player Experience

Earlier this week, CCP Rise posted some interesting ideas regarding the new player experience of Eve Online on both Reddit and the Eve forums. In these posts, he posts an answer regarding the amount of skill points that a new player to Eve would start with:

Q: 'Starting skills are a huge barrier, can we give a lot more to new players'
A: Yes. But this is not a simple change. You guys seem fairly agreed that the small amount of starting skills, combined with a high amount of 'must have' support and requirement skills, leads to some really icky barriers to participation for new players. We are inclined to agree and we are in the process of laying out a plan to address the problem. Nothing is set in stone yet but it seems likely that we will try and move new players towards starting with significantly more SP. Maybe between 1 and 2 million. It also seems likely that we will probably avoid any major skill reworks or skill removals. As this plan solidifies you will hear more from us.

Finally, CCP is actually looking at doing something about the NPE that makes sense. Here's why I'm in love with this idea, and I genuinely believe it will make an impact to retaining new players in Eve.

Skills in Eve are all trained in real time, and depending on who you ask, this is either the best way to handle progression in an MMO, or the worst. Each skill has 5 levels, with each level taking more and more skill points to obtain, and thus more time. As a new player coming into Eve, you are confronted with a lot of choice, and freedom to do any number of things. However, nearly everyone agrees that there are a core set of skills that are extremely important to train:

• CPU Management: Gives a bonus 5% CPU per level
• Power Grid Management: Gives a bonus 5% power grid per level
• Capacitor Management: 5% bonus capacitor capacity per level
• Capacitor Systems Operation: 5% reduction in capacitor recharge time per level

Then you need skills to suit what type of tank your ship has, either Shield Management, Shield Compensation and Shield Operation, or Hull Upgrades, Mechanics and Repair Systems. In this time, nothing exciting, like guns, missiles or drones have been even thought about.

Granted, these skill trains are reasonably short, but I know from personal experience, during this time most new players will quit the game because they don't see any pay off for the time spent training these 'must have' skills. To put it frankly, it's boring to have to wait for all of this to train when all you want to do is blow stuff up because you're new to the game and lack the patience that veteran Eve players have developed.

The figure that CCP Rise gives of 1 - 2 million skill points would cut off around 2 months of training time, allowing for people to more quickly jump into the action. New players would no longer have to only be "hero tackle", essentially ships that dive in to hold other ships and then die because they can't handle the damage output of the enemy. They don't need to have the skills trained to 5, giving them even more skill points to play with, to make mistakes with.

To wrap all of this up, I honestly hope that CCP goes ahead with some variation of this plan, because I can only see this working in favour of new players, without giving older players advantages. Ignore the people who are saying that because they had to train skills, new players should have to as well. Do it!

As always,

GAME ON!

How CCP Rekindled My Interest in Eve Online

I could be talking about how unhappy I am with Ubisoft for continuing to show how they don't care about releasing finished games that have had any form of QA, especially on the PC, with the release of Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4. I could also be talking about more Gamergate controversy. But I can't be bothered with all the negatives that have been bombarding my favorite hobby for the past few months. So instead, I'm going to talk about one company that I lost faith in turning my opinion around almost completely.

Eve is my second oldest gaming love. Starcraft would be my first, and that was another love recently rekindled with the amazing WCS finals at Blizzcon 2014, but we aren't talking about that. When I first saw Eve, it was at a friends house back in 2004, at a time when my PC was terrible and I didn't even have internet at home. He was mining in some little Caldari ship (I later learned it was actually the Ibis, the rookie ship for the Caldari), and was telling me that everything in the game was made by players, and every player was on the same server. At this point I had been playing Freespace: The Great War, and space games were a genre I loved.

It wasn't until late 2009 that I actually bought Eve. By this time, I had constructed my first real gaming PC and had bought an Xbox 360 for some console fun. I had played in a trial in 2006, but never subbed to the game because I was lost and confused about what to do in it. A few friends had come over to LAN (remember those?) and while the rest of us were updating or getting set up, one of the guys logged onto Eve to update skills. This prompted a conversation, and I ended up buying Eve at the end of the following week.

I stopped playing as much in 2013, mostly due to being burnt out on the community side of things, but also partly because I wasn't finding anything new and exciting between releases. You see, CCP used to have a six month dev cycle for Eve, meaning that twice a year an expansion was released. These expansions would generally have one or two major changes, balance fixes to both ships and in game career paths, and occasionally a new ship, module or structure. Some of the expansions were lauded as being amazing, while others lead to people shooting monuments in protest. In true CCP style, expansions were hit and miss, and the lack of changes that made any impacts to me burnt me out on the game.

Andie Nordgren (aka CCP Seagull)

So what's changed? First, a new executive producer for Eve Online, Andie Nordgren (CCP Seagull), was finally appointed. Seagull has gained the admiration of many old jaded bittervets by basically telling it like it is, without the spin that many came to expect from CCP. In fact, Seagull admitted that Eve had some very serious issues affecting the health of the game in an interview with CSM9 member Xander Phoena on his Crossing Zebras podcast. The honesty has been a refreshing change of tone from the previous "nothing is wrong, we're working on it," or the complete lack of comment that we usually got from CCP.

The other big change is a switch to a six week development cycle. Now instead of two large expansions each year, we get several smaller releases each year. The advantages of this style of development have become obvious. When something is ready to come out, it comes out with the next release, at a maximum of six weeks waiting time. Things no longer have to be rushed out for a release date, or pushed back as far if they can't make the deadline, so there are less broken features released.

A number of quality of life changes also made to the game have brought me back. The removal of the 24 hour skill queue limit has been the largest one for me. No longer do I feel like I have to log in to update skills, meaning that Eve has become less of a chore. The upcoming removal of clone costs has made me more inclined to put myself in situations where I might lose my pod once the change hits. The much needed UI changes have made information more accessible and easy to read. Another change that doesn't really affect me, but definitely has an effect for the new players is the removal of in corp aggression without consequence. Dubbed AWOXing by the players, this new change means that you can no longer shoot a corpmate without first dueling them, or else you end up with Concord destroying your ship. Alongside this change, you can now kick someone from your corp regardless of if they are docked or not. Where before you could only kick them if they were in a station, now it puts that action in a queue and they are removed at the next downtime.

All in all, CCP has changed it seems, and in my opinion that change is for the better. Some seem to be complaining that the removal of consequence free in-corp aggression and the removal of clone costs are CCP removing some of the harshness that Eve has become so famous for. While I love the harsh side of Eve, I fully understand why CCP is removing these things. AWOXing hurts new players and makes older corps and alliances more reluctant to recruit new faces. Clone costs were the very definition of a game mechanic that just exists to exist, not actually adding anything to the game beside a constant cost to gaining more skills or putting your pod at risk.

But the biggest thing to get me truly back to the game? This recent Eve trailer called "This is Eve". I'd recommend watching it in 1080p/60fps for the full effect.

I can't describe properly how much this actually represents what Eve is all about. Some of CCP's more recent trailers have shown someone flying a frigate like a fighter, as though the game is some sort of twitch based game. The "This is Eve" trailer shows what exactly makes Eve so unique and why it's player base is so loyal to the game. The player interactions. Eve is simply a means for thousands of people to build empires, partake in space politics, or even just be a guy flying with others.

Keep it up CCP. I love the new six week cycle, and can't praise CCP Seagull enough. But more than anything, keep making trailers that actually show people what Eve is all about: The people playing.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Eve Online: SOMERblink closes down

Wow this last week has been insane in Eve, and it's all revolved around one name: SOMERblink. If you are like me, you may have only been peripherally aware of SOMERblink. I knew of their existence, just like I knew that there were members of the community who didn't like them. I also knew from listening to the Crossing Zebras podcast that they were involved in some sort of controversy almost a year ago. So when my twitter started melting from people talking about the latest Somer scandal, I decided to write a bit of an overview of the entire situation, starting with the scandal a year ago. Buckle in, because this one is a long one. Let's delve into it.

To explain the issues, you need to know what SOMERblink was. Started four years ago by Somerset Mahm (also known as Somer), SOMERblink allowed for people to gamble with their isk (the in game currency for Eve Online). The form of gambling is a system called a micro lottery, which operates similar to a raffle. People buy a ticket (or tickets), into the raffle (or as SOMERblink called them, Blinks) for a chance to win a rare or expensive ship, game item, or a PLEX. These tickets are limited for each item, meaning that you can't buy a hundred tickets for something you want (although you can buy out all of the tickets if you are fast enough). If Somer had just kept it at that, they would have been perfectly fine. But before we get into what they changed, we need to look at some previous issues Somer had with the community in Eve.

The layout of a typical game of Blink.

A little under a year ago, Somer and CCP came under fire from players in Eve for a planned giveaway at Eve Vegas. CCP had planned to give away some extremely rare ships, including a one of a kind ship that had been given out as a prize for winning the Amarr Championship in 2003, the Gold Magnate. When that ship was later destroyed in 2004, there was no way for anyone to obtain a Gold Magnate. Of course when CCP announced that they were going to be giving two of these ships to Somer to use in the lotteries, players were outraged that a piece of Eve's history was going to be given to a website who would profit a huge amount for its lottery.

Later in 2013, a mail was leaked from a SOMERblink employee stating that each member of the staff at SOMERblink would be receiving an Scorpion Ishukone Watch from CCP. These ships, which cannot be built in the game, are used by CCP as prizes for community events and are estimated to be worth between 15 to 20 billion isk. At the moment there are a known 132 of these. CCP's reason for giving these rare ships out? As a thanks to "one of the most awesome community sites we have." This caused a lot of controversy among the community, mainly because this deal all happened behind closed doors implying that CCP wanted to keep this a secret for some reason. Even other Eve based gambling sites distanced themselves from SOMERblink, with Eve-Bet stating that they thought those ships should be reserved for "more deserving winners and not sites that can afford to purchase them off the market like everyone else."

The first way SOMERblink tried RMT.

Now we get into the part that Somer changed. While all the attention was on Somer and SOMERblink from these two events, FunkyBacon, an eve blogger who also hosts an Eve Radio show posted this blog post about SOMERblink. In it, he details a way that Somer had been making money by what was ostensibly selling isk. Like selling gold in WoW, selling isk for real money (RMT) is not allowed in by CCP as detailed in the EULA (specifically section B of Conduct). How was Somer able to do this? FunkyBacon used the image to the right to detail how this worked. SOMERblink had a link to a website called Markee Dragon who sell Eve game time codes that can be exchanged for PLEX - an in game item that can either be used to add 30 days of game time to the account, or traded on the in game market in exchange for isk. In return for directing traffic to their site, Markee Dragon give Somer a referral bonus. Somer then gives the player 200 million worth of credits to be used on his site (essentially giving the player 200 million isk, but only for gambling use).

NoizyGamer, another blogger who talks a lot about RMT and botting in MMOs, made a post that was extremely well researched and in depth on the whole situation. His research lead to a discussion with the Chief Operating Officer of Somers previous GTC reseller - Shattered Crystal. During the conversation, Noizy found out that Somer had been let go as an affiliate after a bidding war on the referral bonus percentage. Standard referral bonuses are 5%, but Shattered Crystal had to let Somer go after the bidding hit 8%, and with the volume of GTC that the link on the SOMERblink website had sold, Noizy estimates that Somer was making around $7500 a month with his incentive to buy from him, if he was indeed at 8%. Eventually, CCP were forced to make a change to the rules regarding selling time codes, and Somer had to stop offering the bonus credits.

Screenshot from NoizyGamer's blog. Find it here.

And that leads us to last weekend. A reddit post on /r/eve shows how SOMERblink have setup a new form of credits, called PLEX Credits. Members of the CSM are alerted to another possible RMT scheme by Somer, and FunkyBacon makes another post explaining what he understands is going on. The biggest part of all this? Somer claimed this had been "vetted and approved by CCP," which lead to concerns that CCP was again allowing some form of incentive from SOMERblink to buy from their affiliate link, rather than elsewhere. CCP Falcon, the community manager over at CCP, posted a thread on Evo-O acknowledging that they were aware of the situation and they were reviewing the proposal that Somer had provided to the sales team at CCP, along with the legal and information security teams.

The biggest question I've seen asked is this: How is this RMT? Once again, FunkyBacon provided us with an updated version of his previous diagram to show exactly how:

Seriously guys, go read FunkyBacon's blog. He's even a CSM member.

In this situation, the player clicks on the affiliate link on the SOMERblink website, taking them to Markee Dragon, where they buy PLEX as usual. Markee Dragon pay Somer the usual affiliate cut. Doing this gives your account on SOMERblink a PLEX credit. This credit is basically a token that SOMERblink use to guarantee that they will buy that PLEX back - at a higher than market price. That reddit thread that I linked earlier estimated the price that Somer would give was around 45 million isk more than market price in Eve (average PLEX price in Eve is currently around 780 to 790 million isk), so a total price of 830 million isk. The best part of this in my mind, is that as FunkyBacon pointed out in his blog post, if SOMERblink then use that PLEX in one of their lotteries, they bring in 936 million isk, meaning they profit a little over a 100 million isk. It truly is a brilliant scheme: Somer profits in both isk and real life cash.

Click here for large version. Thanks to Noizy again for this picture.

So the question has to be asked. If this was "vetted and approved by CCP," why did Somer shut down SOMERblink when CCP Falcon posted that they were investigating the situation? Noizy gives us some insight here in an update to the situation he posted the day after his initial post. Somer posted a link to an email chain between himself and the Vice President of Sales at CCP, Lisa Bell-Cabrera, and a copy of the proposal to her. Unfortunately, the email chain can no longer be accessed, but Noizy did get a screenshot of the proposal shown above. It's interesting to note that under the section marked Justification, Somer explicitly says that "Blink provides no extra isk or bonus Blink credit for buying through the link." However they are technically providing extra isk, by buying that PLEX at a higher price than a player could otherwise sell it. It's a bit :tinfoil:, but it's certainly possible that Somer intentionally worded the parts about buying the PLEX back vaguely so it seemed like there was no additional ISK being provided. In any case, the whole proposal reads like a shady sales pitch, and

And that leads us to where we are today. A rather sharply worded message was posted at the top of the SOMERblink website that read:

Hey friends,

Thanks for all the years of Blink that we've spent together. It's been a long four years-- some of it longer than others! Unfortunately, as of today, Blink is going to go on extended-- perhaps indefinite-- hiatus. CCP has gone back on everything they said several months ago, and the resulting environment is so hostile that it's not one we want to try to operate in, if CCP throws us under the bus.

If you have prizes waiting, they will be fulfilled. You can claim prizes as normal. Bonk tickets have been refunded to your account balance. We will begin refunding all account balances of people that have played in the last 6 months, starting with balances over 10 million ISK. As always, we're not in the business of stealing your money. It's been an absolute pleasure to meet many of you, through Blink, Eve, and our lotteries channel. Thank you for the experience.

CCP Falcon also posted the official response to the whole situation on the forums. In it, he details the fact that none of the ideas for promotions that Somer had provided were approved by the appropriate people "namely, the Legal Team," and that Somer had "no basis to assert that the live promotion was "approved by CCP"". In an interesting twist, Somer's characters were all banned permanently for violation of the EULA and Terms of Service, meaning they will have to start a fresh account to play Eve if they choose to come back.

If there is one positive I can find about the SOMERblink scandal, it's that they are paying back isk to players despite the fact that they could easily shift that over to other accounts and be space rich. Maybe it's because they are already space rich from all the earnings of Blink that they feel they should pay them back. In any case, its a small silver lining to what is otherwise a very rocky story. I can't help but think that if Somer had simply put some sort of advertising on the site to make money, none of this would have happened. They could have even still had the link to Markee Dragon to earn the affiliate cut from time code sales alongside the ad revenue. Instead, Somer got greedy, and had to try and come up with these schemes to earn fast money. Protip: If you have to be deliberately vague in a proposal, your proposal is probably shady.

If you haven't exhausted yourself on this topic, I'd highly recommend reading all the linked blog posts from NoizyGamer, FunkyBacon and the forum posts by CCP Falcon. They go into so much more depth than I can in a single post, and each one of them is a really good read.

So if you stuck around to the very end of this long winded post about the life and times of SOMERblink, congratulations. I'm off to go and shoot some rats for a while. As always,

GAME ON!