Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Conflict of Interest (jester's trek)

"One of the very smart things CCP Seagull is doing" ~Jester
Read it again, Jester. Seagull isn't 'doing' this at all. She simply made a smartass remark to the CSM member who implyed the dumb question: how can CCP deny their ability to track account holder identity. The answer you quoted out of context has CCP saying they don't find it "challenging" as much as "we're not focused on that".
Quoted out of context because in the actual context of the minutes was: "it's complicated, dumbass, so i'm better off feeling uncomfortable with the illusion" not your spin of "i feel uncomfortable with the illusion"
Ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer is all.

Why is it complicated? Before PLEX, i assume most players used (and still use) one credit card or paypal account to pay for all their characters over all their accounts. So in that sense i'm sure CCP found it less "challenging" if they ever bothered outside of RMT dept. Plex is so popular nowadays it's probably "challenging" enough for CCP to not bother even when they focus on things that would make doing so helpful...except, who's going to track the numbers? Would you rather the team focused on dealing with RMT to switch to silly demographic stats for their own sake?
oh, i'm sure those that like to roleplay spies probably won't care if CCP employees snooped on true account holders...those folks probably use different paypal/CC accounts anyways. That's a non-issue. If CCP used that as an argument against tracking true account holders i'd find it funny they assume a statistically significant portion of eve put that much effort into skullduggery metagaming.
Personally, i think griefers (that includes all risk averse pvpers) are about as lazy as CCP when it comes to making things less complicated for themselves. Ergo Sum, most players use one CC/paypal to deal with all their subscriptions/plex purchases; For CCP's part i doubt they bother with this outside RMT.

I'll bet you anything CCP Seagull lied through her teeth and they're all snug as a bug in a rug and blind as bats when it comes to how much the PVPers are guilty of risk aversion.
That's the truth behind the illusion of "HTFU" - A bunch of pvpers getting together are about as risk averse as a bunch of random carebears in a random constellation of high sec.
"Whiteboard" my ass! *spit* The Blackboard should have been whipped off and replaced with "average mmog customer" who enjoys the element of real risk in a game on one side with "griefers/carebears" who abhor risk on the other.
But, no, CCP is more comfortable with the illusion than actually making (for once) decent code to track shit like players behind all the accounts. Seriously? You think CCP has ever tracked shit like that beyond chasing RMT?

The irony is that CCP has bought the lies PVP suckholes tell them day in day out: that carebears are whiny beeches and need PVPers who personify risk itself. In truth, it's a bit more boring and mundane:
  • The vast majority of customers who consider themselves carebears are usually smart enough to quietly take their wallet and leave a game where condescending elitist prick PVPers laud about how n00b friendly they all are and pat themselves on the back publically; 
  • The vast majority of customers who consider themselves PVPers are actually dumb enough to believe they're not risk averse by their very nature. dumb enough to think everyone should think like them, play like them. dumb enough to think saying "pvp is the core of [insert MMOG here]" is a saying unique to their game.
So, my question to Jester is this: What exactly do you think CCP is more comfortable with? (1) doing some extra coding then the requisite hard number crunching to track shit like player numbers, or (2) 'feeling' "uncomfortable" with maintaining this popular illusion that participation in the status quo (of multiple subscriptions per player and alliance-centric pvp - aka "The Right side of the Whiteboard") equates to ... profit!

Got a secret for you: it's neither your game nor is is CCP's game - It's a game built upon knee-jerk reactions to circumstance and there's NEVER going to be a vision because CCP employees enjoy the ego boost from PVP fanbois too much. There's your "conflict of interest"

*disclaimer: This writer fully believes in the Bartle Types so i biased towards believing that MMOGs need a balance between Killers, Socializers, Explorers and Achievers - and that there's a general lack of understanding between them all even when they implicitly depend on each other.
This writer has never been in favor of removing risk for anyone in this game...unfortunately has unsubbed because CCP's pathetic corporate coding makes the risk to corp espionage (theft and intel) is so low to make it laughably easy for risk averse griefers to run amok even among those entities that try to make CCP's pathetic social engine mechanics work.
This writer remembers Ubiqua Seraph fondly and considers the "great theft" to not be so noble an endeavour as the spin likes to claim.(A bunch of griefers bored silly and who decided on their own to wreck a popular roleplaying entity simply because they could get away so easily with so little consequences and be lauded so publically after they try to lie about how difficult it all was.)
This writer believes the "average MMOG player" doesn't give a shit about what CCP does or doesn't do as long as they can play a game that harkens to the best Sci-Fi "elite", "privateer" and other sandbox ideals of inherent real risk...these players don't "ragequit" (that's for the risk averse griefers/carebears) they simply take their wallet silently elsewhere not deigning to reply to condescension from the "HTFU" fanbois