“It was never intended.” “It was never the intent.” We’ve been seeing this a lot this year from the CCP devs.
It’s become the go to easy explanation for any change, especially on mechanics that have existed in game for years and years.
I’m not against CCP making changes to the game. Changes happen. Changes are required. But be honest about the changes with the players. Give the complete and full reasons for the changes. Don’t couch them in simplicity. The playerbase isn’t stupid. Once you start avoiding real answers in favour of the simple answer, you start to lose your playerbase, their trust in you, their respect of you.
It’s certainly the case that some changes are made due to the fact that some unintended consequences have evolved around certain mechanics. But if CCP keeps using “it was never intended” as an excuse for every change, then it becomes awfully hollow, and eventually has little meaning, even in instances where it is likely true.
Take T3 ejection. As has been pointed out by Rhavas and Tiger Ears, ejecting to avoid skill point loss was an intended design decision. It was stated as an outright tactic in a 2009 devblog. In a devblog, which means before the feature was actually introduced into the game, not after the fact (which is usually when players discover unintended “emergent” mechanics.) CCP knew from the get-go that skill point loss could be avoided via ejection, and they were fine with that, and told players about it immediately.
So, then to have CCP pretend that ejection to avoid skill point loss was never intended functionality. Well, that’s just downright ignorance. CCP may have forgotten about the devblog in question, but if a player could dig it up, CCP could have as well. (And the excuse that CCP was not good at documenting back in 2009. I’m not sure why I care about CCP’s poor business practices three years ago. Don’t stack one excuse on top of another.)
The real reason for this change to strategic cruiser functionality — not being able to eject while aggressing — is entirely due to changes to quell Orca/Carrier scooping. That’s fine. But CCP needed to state that outright, be forthright about it. Not try to decouple T3 ejection from the Orca/Carrier mechanic change.
We’ve seen the “it was never intended” excuse trotted out through most changes to crime and aggression mechanics. Can flipping? Never intended. Third-party repping? Never intended. Boomeranging from CONCORD? Never intended. Killing miners with single Catalysts? Never intended.
Sure, some of these things may have not been intended, when first released. But they certainly became accepted practices, since CCP never deemed them worthy enough to fix, and to let them exist in game for years.
So, rather than go to the “it was never intended” well over and over again, why not just give the the more complete truth? A full, well-reasoned explanation, always the best policy, moreso than simply trying to pull the wool over our eyes. With respect to the T3 ejection change: “The recent changes to ejection mechanics will hopefully put a stop to Orca/Carrier scooping. These ejection mechanic changes will also have the effect of not allowing you to eject from T3 cruisers to avoid skillpoint loss. We realize that this will be unpopular, but for the time being, this is how it will have to be. It’s too time-consuming to decouple T3 ejection from every other type of ejection. That said, we’re not unhappy with the notion of forcing skillpoint loss on T3 pilots who are destroyed in battle.” And to calm anger, the following could be added as well: “As always, we welcome ideas and suggestions on how to stop Orca/Carrier scooping, while keeping T3 ejection intact. We can’t guarantee that we’ll ever revert back to the old mechanic, but if a viable suggestion is offered, who knows.“
Anyhow. I’m fine with changes happening. Just not cool with the easy excuse being trotted out to explain away every change.
You can read more of Poetic Stanziel’s opinions at his Poetic Discourse blog.
iam not sure what this wall of text is about.
they had an issue with t3 cruiser when they released them andwerent able to handle it and declared it as a feature. and now they change it declaring it was an issue. so what? everyone knew it.
well if you cannot eject anymore what is so hard to undocument some lines for the event of the ship beeing destroyed and replace the function that choose at which skill you loose and what amount of sp with a return value of null ?
and then its balanced again. no eject no sp loss
It's also an indirect nerf to T3 fleets. Major null alliances can no longer throw T3 gangs at enemy fleets, because every one those loses means their pilots will be less effective in the next battle. CCP has talked for a while about how OP T3s are, so this isnt a surprise.
You obviously did not participate in too much null sec Tech 3 fights…They are like this: primary gets pointed(or enemy fleet bubbled)+webbed+painted and in like 15 secs is dead or if catching reps target is changed…So in null sec is pretty rare that you eject from a tech3, either from lack of time or from too much trust in your logi pilots (or bravery….you name it)..Rarely you can warp out and then back in (if not catched by enemy ceptors and killed by the support fleet).
who really has time to eject is WH dwellers or low sec gankers/pirates..due to not that much DPS applied therefore more time to react upon break the points on you and escape..
Author make it sound like this was a bad thing
yet another worthless article by the man himself , so they fixed a problem ,which everyone knew was a problem, but your issue is that they did not admit it was a problem at the time. Is there really nothing else you could be looking into like the new patch perhaps , or is that just crazy talk and we must dwell on the most unimportant crap?
for once i agree, this is a pointless whine article from a guy who just seems to have a bee in his bonet about CCP..
Graphomania RELOADED.
CCP has a history of this. They removed ghost training saying it was never intended, but forgot to remove the website page that had touted it as a feature.
Evenews24 commenters: Negative Nelly Nation
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE WORKING AS INTENDED(TM)
Its funny just last Friday at the live event in New Caldari a play acted Caldari Navy Raven was somehow scooped by a CAPITOL just before it started into sructure… I suppose after today it wouldn't be possible? Then again those same CAP ships did do sideways unaligned warps so our bumping them to prevent their CCP play actors from leaving the scene didn't work
The things CCP must do to maintain balance while introducing new features and policing illicit activity would be a real wall of text. Add to this a player base that on average probably did not exactly flunk out of school in the 8th grade, content that has both depth and flexibility and a game which overall gives players nearly unheard-of free agency and you get what we have today.
There are things to fix, like corp management. Some of them have needed fixing for a while, like player owned stations. Some will be very hard TO fix due to their penetration into the fabric of the game at large such as Titans and moon mining.
In the meantime, the game's still fun and there are still GFs to be had. See you in space and mind the little red box (scratch that… circle).
Make ships take on the flags of the pilots, pilot ejects ship and pod have the same flags, scoop a ship with flags your ship get its flags added to yours.
You were about to get concorded so you eject your orca buddy scoops it up and then looses his orca.
Naturally give a warning for criminal action when in hi sec
The other spot this was a problem is in FW people were ejecting right before getting popped so the othere team wouldnt get LP or kill mail. So change kill mail so that anytime anything is destroyed a KM and loss mail are generated for the owner and last hit issuing LP or bounty as required
Popped some guys GSFC in a WH and want to know what it was worth now you can know.
Intended or not I think t3's need the consequence vrs their effectiveness. Another solution to the orca carrier problem would be giving US the ability to lock our ships. You can't scoop what you don't own.
then everyone would have a ship floating in space…. this isnt Parking-Lot Online…..
As far as i am concerned. when they say it was never intended, they really mean we didn't understand our own game and we screwed up. More to the point, CCP has to be the most unprofessional organization that runs a major game release. The only reason they get away with it is because the game is good enough to offer people something that no one else apparently can do.
It is hoped that one day CCP will understand this, and act in a responsible and professional manner. They will understand the results of their changes to the game, and we will no longer have some one jumping on the batphone to have CCP change a game mechanic that has an negative impact on their organization.
You're obviously not a programmer. These sorts of things can happen, and happen all the time. If EVE was Microsoft, and cold afford a multi-million-dollar QA department, maybe there'd be 10% more polish on the game. But there'd still be bugs and unintended consequences. Its just the nature of millions of lines of code spread across multiple technologies being run on god-knows-what hardware over the internet.
And for Cthulhu's sake, I hope CCP never gets any more "professional" than they already are. Look at what happened to Blizzard, Mythic, Maxis, and even iD. They make lowest-common-denominator bullshit because some beancounter believes it will grow the bottom line. CCP, because of its culture, makes games THEY want to play, which (go figure) are actually fun us dregs to play as well!
I've never heard on any game developer that listens to its player base as much as CCP does. Nor have I ever heard of one assembling a CSM-esque council and actually spending money on bringing them to the developers to have discussions about what the players want/what's best for them.
All I have heard actually is non-stop bitching about how CCP doesn't listen/care/make a good game/make the game I want/etc.
Whatever faults some may find in CCP, at least they're still bothering to try to please the player base as a whole and focus attention on their game rather than focus solely on what new game they can make that will be the flavor of E3 (Bethesda).
I approve of this long abused scoop issue, war dec cowards and PL will now have to LTP.
The only people who eject from T3 ships just before they blow up are cowards imo. Gain the benefit, pay the cost, pay the price.
Some of your FC's did…quite often actually…
tldr tell a story about t3 cruisers while crying CCP fix the dec exploit AMIRIGHT??
ccp isn't diplomatic
I really like this new patch. After playing the game for years, it has almost created itself (in my mind) all over again. I am experiencing 'new' ships in a way with t1 cruisers and frigs and thoroughly enjoying the new layout and sounds! (not going to lie, i looked to see if i was warp scrambled the first time i jumped through a gate)
The game in a way, was brought back to life for me today, Thanks CCP. There will always be haters stuck on some nonsense. You will get around to it eventually…you always do
Driving my Mastodon on a run and the first ten or so times my cap went below 30% I almost had a heart attack. Serious low-sec adrenaline jump. Gotta find the option for that one and kill it.
I enjoyed this update, UI changes, mechanics changes, and the ships. For their continuing support for a game you continue to play (but complain about because it doesn't suit you perfectly) you should be more thankful like myself. I have played games that have had potential but because of the devs' passiveness to just let them be, they never bloomed.
I fly a T3 ship, a Proteus to be exact. And let me tell you what, if you are going to fly an expensive cruiser that has special potential that others don't, training a day or so to regain one lost skill to level 4 doesn't seem like that much of a sacrifice.
The author is only complaining about being lied to.
You got him wrong. its not about "its bad that i have to loose SP" its about telling that "if You eject you wont loose SP" and after 3 years telling " it was bug, we repaired that"
Never intended and database issue = stuff incompetency.
Ok ejecting from tech 3 should be allowed due to the fact that the agressors can steal the ship if they are competent enough to stop firing also the orca switch maneuver which has been pulled on my corp mates is a valid tactic of deception you think your engaging something when suddenly your engaging another. The thing CCP need to do is take down expenses across the board to promote conflict within markets and in pvp the ……little guy can't keep up with the larger groups like the CFC…..dumbing down the game is not going to expand the player base it's going to shrink it. Do something there was a article perviously written addressing all the issues that need to be fixed in the game I agree fully with those statements……dumbing down the game isn't the answer