Why I heart CCP

Browsing Poetical Stanziel’s blog yesterday, I came across a post that intrigued me about an EVE personality leaving the game over some drama.

I nosed around and got the details, which is pretty much summed up on the girl’s blog about why she is leaving.

Like Poe, I really have nothing to add to the departure because I barely knew the girl, etc. (thou I’m always sad to see someone leave EVE)

But after reading her goodbye post (rant) I felt like I should speak up on the behalf of CCP whom she paints in a really bad light, specifically one CCPer in specific.

My experience with him has been nothing but awesome. A couple of years ago, I wanted to transfer a character of mine from one of my paid accounts to my media account. (Media accounts are given when people sign up for the fansites program) There was a problem with the transfer, it wasn’t going through because I was trying to transfer to the media account. I sent in a petition, and was told I needed to email Ned.

I sent him the email and explained the situation. I was utterly surprised by the quick response, which was awesome. He was on vacation at the time and gave me the date he would be back to take care of it. I mean really, he didn’t have to bother emailing me while on vacation, but he did. Once he was back, he did take care of it promptly. He even sent another email letting me know the issue was sorted. For free.

How fabulous was that?

It’s just one of the many instances I’ve experienced with CCP, where one of them will go out of their way to be of help.

I’ve had another experience recently with my media account, where it was approved for another year long free subscription (and really how f’n awesome is that?) but some how it wasn’t entered into the system correctly on their end. So on Saturday before last (I think it was), my subscription expired. Well, it was a Saturday I wanted to play right then lol, so I went ahead and just paid for my account while sending a mail to Thomas (the guy over the fansite stuff now) asking what happened. It was sorted out a couple of days after that, and I was even refunded my payment!

These are small things in the grand scheme of EVE, but I just wanted to say I’m very appreciative of their efforts, and I wanted to illustrate just how untrue this statement from that other blog is so untrue:

“CCP Games cares nothing for it’s fan sites and the smallest sentence or slightest misstep will cause them to turn their backs on you as well.”

From my experience, CCP Games goes out of their way to show you how much they care.

Thank you CCP for all that you do.

Tweak my FW please.

Like many other FW pilots, I also wish that CCP would give a glance to FW once more and tweak a few things.

The timer roll back suggestion would be a great one to start with. CCP should definitively have a look at that one, it’s a really great idea.

There are a couple of other things I’d suggest as well:

1. Downtime ‘plexing’

Pre-inferno, FW ‘plexes’ (plexes are military complexes in the war zone that can be ‘ran’ by being within a certain range of the ‘timer’ for a certain amount of time depending upon the size of the plex) were spawned predominantly after downtime. A star system could have anywhere from two or three and upward to fifteen or more spawned at one time. So whoever played after downtime got the jump on system control long before anyone in the opposite time zone has even awoken.

We complained to CCP and they listened. They made it so that certain types of plexes will spawn every half hour after they have been closed thru out the entire day. That made a huge difference, giving players in all time zones a chance to plex and help their militia’s obtain certain goals.

However, there is still quite a chunk of random plexes still being spawned right after downtime, which means whoever is on at that hour still gets the advantage, merely because of their time zone.

I think it would be a little more fair to get rid of the random spawned plexes at downtime, or have it so that more random plexes spawn throughout the day instead of just the ones every half hour after closing.

2. Shoot the compound

Okay, so anyone who has ever plexed in FW can testify how frightfully dull plexing can be 90% of the time. Most plexers will tell you that they are doing other things while ‘orbiting the button’, but I think that defeats the whole purpose of playing a game. I mean, if I’m playing a game but I have to be entertained by some outside source because the game I am playing is so fucking dull, then…..why am I doing this again?

If you’re out in the backwater systems (and honestly, 90% of FW is backwater), then you’re not likely to see any pvp action. So you’re just sitting there, being bored for X amount of time waiting for the timer to tick down.

Mind you, these plexes have to be run for overall system control, so that you make more LP, but it’s just…ugh. A lot of FW pilots loathe plexing for this reason.

So I think something should be done to make it remotely more interesting than watching paint dry.

Possible ideas to make it a little more entertaining:

* Add something of value to the plex that someone other than an FW pilot would be interested in. This could be in the form of rats, tags, ore, or candy. Whatever, just something that some other person would be like ‘hey I’m going in there!’ That would bring more people into low sec in general. If they ventured into the FW plexes that would give militia something else to shoot.

* Kill the timer itself. Earlier I mentioned you have to be in range of the ‘timer’ which is a little structure usually called things like ‘compounds’, ‘outposts’ and ‘stronghold’.

From an RP stance, this whole process makes no sense at all. (yes I’m a role player, deal with it) So you got these enemy out posts, some official evil Minmatar putting up a base in our system. All we have to do is find it, kill the one rat that will spawn (I imagine this poor rat to be some brave pilot who is there to defend his little station above all else!). You kill the rat, then….stare intently at the timer.

…watch the seconds tick by.

And wait some more….

Okay you’re done staring.

And THAT is what CAPTURES the site?

There should be shooting involved, I think. You should be required to rip that outpost to shreds.

Think about it. Can you just go sit by anything else in EVE for a certain amount of time and declare it yours by looking at it? Even miners have to shoot at the rocks.

So I think after you run the timer down there should be some sort of explosions involved, just saying.

3. Accelerate the timer. What if we could do something to shave off a couple of minutes off the timer? I know this is a little bit far-fetched, but what if there was some new fangled hacking skill that allowed a pilot to manipulate the timer to decrease a few minutes from it. Not a lot, but like, a medium plex takes twenty minutes to run. What if you had the hacking skill that allowed you to shave off three minutes? Or something along those lines.

Those are just a couple of changes I think could make plexing much more interesting. Okay well not interesting, but tolerable? lol.

Also, theres a couple of ideas from Susan Black’s blog that I really love, especially this bit:

“Warzone Control should be about much more than just making ISK. It should impact….well….the control a militia has of the warzone. (lol)”
“First, what about tying station lockout with warzone control? Perhaps, by degrees instead of an on/off switch. For example, at Warzone Control 4 & 5, it would be the same as now –hostiles would be completely locked out. At Warzone Control 3, hostiles could dock, and perhaps use fitting services, but not much more. At WC 2, hostiles could also use medical and repair services. At WC 1, hostiles would have unrestricted access.”
“In other words, there would be a strategic benefit to gaining higher warzone control levels beyond making more LP.”

Yes, yes, yes, and more yes. That is a superb idea. There absolutely should be more to warzone control than LP and I really love the idea of various docking consequences for various levels.