CCP: Lose your ship to a ninja? Here's your ship back.
Carebear loses a CNR to aggro extension from a ninja. Carebear admits that he saw the aggro timer and undocked anyway, but still petitions his loss. A senior GM gives him his ship back.
Since aggro extension has been a valid mechanic for some time, I petitioned to see if it was now considered an exploit.
This has come to my attention:
http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/2010/08/eve-exchange-of-views-with-ccp.html
A missionrunner undocked with aggro from a ninja salvager, lost his CNR, petitioned it, and got it back. Is extending aggro now considered an exploit? Will my future targets now be reimbursed after I kill them? It is very important for me to know if carebears are getting unequal treatment: It may well determine the future of my subscription.
Hi,
At this point in time we will not take any action against anyone using this. Please be aware however that we reserve the right to change our policy on this in the future should we deem it necessary.
Best regards,
GM Kaliastra
The EVE Online Customer Support Team
Hey there,
I do appreciate your swift response, but it does not answer my question. Is it now policy to reimburse ships lost due to ignorance? Will my targets have their losses replaced by GMs?
Hi, senior GM Spiral here.
We are currently not taking action against anyone doing this at the current time although this is not an advertised nor supported feature. We at CCP do reserve the right to adjust this policy at any given time in the future should the situation warrant it.
Customer Support does consider this something that may be reimbursed for pending an investigation into the situation of a given incident.
If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this then please do not hesitate to ask.
Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team
So the summary is that CCP is giving ships back to players for losses that are not due to exploits.
On the Stabbed Up blog, "Reasoned Discourse" has broken out, and the author in question has started deleting all but the sympathetic comments. As an aside, note that we have not and will never squash comments from those who disagree with us, provided those comments are on-topic and don't break any laws in our jurisdiction.
CCP: If I wanted to play a game where my actions in PvP had no consequences, I would go play WoW. If aggro extension is an exploit, then call it such and fix it. If it's not an exploit, then don't coddle players who fall victim to it. If in this case the ninja had lost his ship due to combat derived from aggro extension, I have trouble believing that you would have been so sympathetic. I play this game because actions are meaningful. If you remove the meaning, I will take the money from my subscriptions and go do something better with my time.
Related links: Crime and Punishment Thread - Likely to be locked. Note plenty of carebears calling it an exploit, which CCP has explicitly denied. Also note the "tears" accusation, which is true. When one sees that his successes are being invalidated and his failures are being allowed to stand, there will be tears. Why should I risk ships that won't be reimbursed to kill ships that will be replaced by a GM?
By way of my own insignificant protest, I will not be ninja salvaging/ganking until either aggro extension is called an exploit or I receive assurances from CCP that my victims won't get their mistakes reversed by CCP. I'll still work my infiltration alts and wardecs, but I have no motivation to continue my primary profession when it's so likely that the work will mean nothing.
Carebear GM doing things he shouldn't be doing, by the looks of it. Should be called out on it though, might lead to a fix / carebears being told that they're whining too much. In any case, tears abound, so woohoo. :)
He didn't say it was an exploit; but he didn't say it wasn't an exploit either. Canned GM responses with a touch of manual typing. He did say it is unintended functionality, though, meaning it's a bug.
Seems reasonable to me -- I'm confused that you seem upset by it. If you don't kill the target when he gains aggression, and then the aggression wears off, sounds like it's your fault for being slow rather than the game's fault for having "no consequences".
Though, as I've said before, the more missioners you kill the more money I make. Keep it up.
Paul, I love you man but you're asking too much of a dysfunctional organization. CCP won't ever make assurances about what their GMs will or won't do in individual cases; you've set up an ultimatum that's impossible of satisfaction. And they can't get out the other way because exploits have to be FIXED and they don't have anybody scheduled to be working on the game for at least 18 months.
Just play, have fun, enjoy the 'splodey, and don't worry about whether it respawns when you're not looking. Dumb fucks will just lose it again anyway.
They don't even have to fix it. Just like aggro-free neutral RRing of POS towers, all it would take is a forum post declaring it an exploit and calling it petitionable. Do that, and I would be all in favor of reimbursing folks who lose ships to it.
But one of two wrong things is going on here. Either it's an exploit and they haven't ever declared it, or it's not an exploit, and freebies are being handed to people who should have known better.
As for not caring and enjoying the splodey: Again, if I wanted consequence-free PvP, I would go play WoW. As it is, it's even worse: There are risks for us, but no risks for the people who get aggressive and then put more on the table than they wanted to. It's a stacked game, and we don't have to play it.
I suspect they may have a threshold for this sort of tactic. If it was done only once or twice, perhaps there would be no issue, but extending aggro to eight times the standard limit seems just perhaps a bit over-the-top. But then, I live out in nullsec, so YMMV.
I agree that it's a weird mechanic, but it's a mechanic that has existed in some form for years. If they were to call it an exploit that would be one thing, but as it is now I have to wonder how many of my kills have been reimbursed, since this is just the first time someone has blogged their freebie. Most of my ship losses have been due to stupidity. A few have been due to my ignorance of game mechanics. I've had zero reimbursement, which is as it should be. How many carebears has this GM reimbursed that we never heard about?
I don't think there is, or should be, a 'threshold' for the tactic. That would be like saying that is ok to lock someone down with ECM for a cycle or two, but not for many cycles.
The mechanic is in the game, has been a known tactic for long time and there has never been any indication from CCP that this was considered anything but valid.
I expect the GM will likely get a quiet word in regard to this and no more will be done or said either way.
I will find Paul, fail fit a BS and then shout in local about how nobody had better touch my salvage until I am done with the mission because the last time someone did that it made me really mad ... see if I can't cure this "no griefing" illness that has afflicted him.
You going to quit ninja harassment of mission runners? You want tears? You got them...I'm crying...
I have to agree with Paul that this is stupid - CCP please be consistent, is this an exploit or not?
On the other hand, this is the first time I've ever heard of a ship being returned via petition, so I feel this is a pretty likely a one-time deal.
Finally, I agree with Marlenus - issuing a CCP an ultimatum is about as effective as trying to get blood from a stone.
It's not so much an ultimatum as it is an option to accept futility. If hisec PvP Eve is going to become Warcraft in Space, then I might as well go play a game that lets the aggressor respawn, too.
Look, I agree with you it's stupid, but this is *the only time* I've ever heard of this happening. When this happens over and over, I'll agree with you Eve has turned into WoW in space.
One time does not a policy make.
That's kinda my point. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face based one one set of fucked-up GM responses, plus worry about what might have happened invisibly in a bunch of other cases.
But if you step back and think about about it, what usually happens when somebody petitions a ship loss? "Our logs, they show nothing..."
I don't think the carebears getting their ships back is as big a problem as you think. Certainly not big enough to stop blowing them up over.
And besides, if they are dumb enough to get blown up, some of them are going to be dumb enough not to petition, not to know how to phrase the petition, et cetera.
TL/DR; C-bear sees agro getting extended for 45 additional minutes, assumes (incorrectly) that this is wrong, undocks, and dies. Petitions GM who responds in 3 minutes. 3 fucking minutes. T.H.R.E.E... This is what pisses me off and why I don't think he should have gotten his ship back. Had he submitted the petition at minute 16, the GM would have had it resolved by minute 20. Choice and Consequence fail.
I don't give a rats about the mechanic that was used / exploited to make it possible. I don't understand it and living permanently in W-Sapce it won't ever effect me so I'm not going to weigh in on the matter except to say that I agree with you Paul; the lack of input from CCP is very poor especially given that this is an issue that has polarized pretty well the entire Eve-O community. CCP; Get off the fence - for fuck sack!
And here I recently left a comment saying I'd keep reading until you guys turned into carebears. 0.o
I Kid, I Kid!
My understanding: It's a bug. CCP can't be arsed to devote Dev time to fix it. It's waaaaaay down the list, next to "clean out the mop closet". GM's aren't allowed to "set policy", which is why the answer given was so frustratingly convoluted. GMs can, at discretion, reimburse items. Result: Nothing is declared, everybody loses; except the lucky carebear who got his ship back.
This is consistent with any large company with too many moving parts to track all at once. Also, red tape. Reels and Reels of Bright, Red Tape.
Whether or not you wish to continue to play in this environment is entirely up to you. Good travels, friend.
paritybit... whoa, the GM never said this was unintended functionality. The GM only said this is "not an advertised or supported feature", which, IMHO, means nothing. Can anyone point me to the master list of advertised and supported features?? And to state that unintended functionality means it's a bug? That's a correlation I simply don't buy.
Chubs, the GM made two statements which make me believe it's a bug. First he says: "We are currently not taking action against anyone doing this at the current time although this is not an advertised nor supported feature."
Read the whole statement, not just the last half. The fist half says that they aren't taking any action against anyone who is doing this; the second half is the reasoning about why they could, at some point, change their mind about taking action against someone extending aggro.
Then he says this: "Customer Support does consider this something that may be reimbursed for pending an investigation into the situation of a given incident." Clearly this means that the customer support staff thinks its a bug -- they're offering reimbursement for it.
Also, I work in software engineering. For simplicity, lets say that I write software that lets you search a list with specific criteria and get back the items in the list you want. If my software doesn't show malformed items from the list, is that a bug (it's broken, I don't see everything that matches my criteria) or unintended functionality (the items are useless, why would you want to see them)? The difference is in your perspective.
Do i see ninja tears?
To be fair, Paul mentioned that:
--
Also note the “tears” accusation, which is true. When one sees that his successes are being invalidated and his failures are being allowed to stand, there will be tears. Why should I risk ships that won’t be reimbursed to kill ships that will be replaced by a GM?
--
-CCP is no more dysfunctional than any other company in this industry (I should know I work in a similar industry in the same capacity as a GM (think online homework)).
-The aggro timer extension technique needs to be documented or changed (maybe it is documented, I don't know). But mission runners (all players) need to do their fsking homework before shooting at a looter.
-The care bear should not have undocked when he knew he was still flagged (fuck, he should have the sense not to shoot at ninja looters).
-CCP was within their right to reimburse him, as I would have upon hearing him bitch that much (I told you I'm in the same line of work, customers are money and money is good), but I don't think he should ever be reimbursed under these circumstances ever again.
-Reading tears (be they ninja or carebear) is alway awesome. Thank you, both. HA!
honestly ,
If Ignorance and stupidity are enough to get lost stuff back?
I have my first Years worth of eve to petition... excuse me ... this might take a while.
Hey what do you know.. stupidity and Ignorance ISN'T enough to get your stuff back...
I whole heartedly expect that if this even happened it was indeed a case of
GM **** should GTFO the GM Que cause he doesn't know what he is talking about.
not an advertised nor supported feature. To me I think this is almost saying that it is an exploit but they can't say it is and that it is not intended to be used the way you believe it should/can be.
You've killed how many?
And one of them gets a ship back and this is how upset you get?
Maybe you should stop playing if you can't handle one thing that goes against the way you believe the game should be.
Talk about mollhills
Talk about mollhills.
Yeah this is just bullshit
He gets his ship back cuz hes ignorant and his only loss was his modules.
and now all the bears are going on about how agression timers are bugged. Ive heard bears say that salvaging should trigger agro, freaking garbage if ya ask me.
yeah sorry officer i didn't know speeding was illegal...i can have my car back plz?
I agree CCP should just call it an exploit and/or fix it. Clearly they think of it as a bug of sorts if they are giving stuff back for it.
however, I don't see how this effects the nija as much as you seem to. Simply stop using this trick to extend agro and then they won't get their ship back. How many of your kills are actually from this trick? Mine are all from the normal 15 min timer (as I didn't know you could extend it by shooting wrecks).