Wednesday 4 August 2010

Eve: Stupid, stupid, stupid

I guess I was tired last night. Or my brain had melted in the London heat. Or something.

A ninja pops up in my mission. Piddly little mission called Duo of Death.

I usually just wait out ninjas. Stop shooting, keep an eye on my ship to make sure it doesn't die, and read a book. One battleship left. So I wait.

Having salvaged the wreck (which does not agress me) he then stole from the wreck and for some stupid, stupid reason I reflexively opened fire on that blinky red target. From eye to finger without passing brain along the way.

OK, I reacted well. I didn't pause to finish off my last ship I legged it home and docked. 15 minutes timer. OK, no big deal, I read my book for a while.

About 40 minutes later I came back. Strange, still 8 minutes on the timer. OK, I know better than to rush out with a timer on, I stayed in dock and read forums. It kept jumping back to 9 minutes whenever it hit 7 minutes. Odd.

After about 20 minutes of this I decided to risk a quick sortie to the mission. In my lovely Caldari Navy Raven with faction shield booster.

You know what happened, right? I mean I know what happened and I would have known what happened next even if I didn't know what happened next.

A Tengu. Waiting. At my acceleration gate.

I gave it a shot once I realised I was warp scrambled and discovered the awesome might of the low signature radius, one of the best pvp stats in the game. With 7 cruise missiles, close to maxxed missile skills and 5 Warrior IIs on him I wasn't more than scratching him. I think at best I got him down to 97% shield left.

He opened a chat window and offered a ransom for 150 million. I paid. I didn't trust him but I paid because it would have been a bargain to escape at that price. Naturally he didn't honour the ransom. I managed to get my pod clear with my expensive internal jewelry collection.

I petitioned it. I accept that Eve is a pvp game I accept that I played into his hands etc. I petioned it because I do not accept that a 15 minute aggression timer can last over an hour with me "re-aggressing" by being afk, docked, doing nothing.

It was a couple of hours after this that I realised how deeply Eve has got its hooks into me. The thought of quitting had crossed my mind then I realised I'm simply not going to care about what happens in a different game. Warsong Gulch? Grind to 80 and run some raids on some jack-in-the-box boss who pops up again a week after you kill him for you to have another go?

I liquidated an investment and replaced the CNR. Did I mention I was fairly rich? I also discovered that Dread Guristas XL Shield Boosters have the same stats as Caldari Navy XL Shield Boosters except price - they're 20 mill cheaper. I saved some money putting the ship together getting most of the fittings on overnight Buy Orders and the ship itself on a Want to Buy contract.

The guy who ganked me had finished my mission for me and left the mission completion item on a contract to me for 1 isk (this time I checked for traps very carefully).

When I got home tonight I had a message from a GM. Standard cut n paste "Eve is a pvp game" blah blah blah. Told him I love pvp but a FIFTEEN MINUTE timer lasting over an hour is a bug. Because, fifteen minute timers should last, you know, fifteen minutes. Otherwise they'd be called something else.

It doesn't matter whether they throw me a bone on the petition. I'm in. I'm hooked. CNR 2 ready to go. And once I get my Curse some high sec ganker is going to find life in Eve deeply unpleasant.

15 comments:

  1. "Naturally he didn't honour the ransom."

    As a full-time pirate, that kind of discourtesy really frosts my thrusters. Come out to Metropolis sometime. The Bastards will be glad to ransom you and honor it properly. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't mean to disparage pirates. Low sec pirates are generally a fun-loving and upright bunch.

    I meant "naturally" in the sense of he's a high sec griefer and tear farmer. Those guys don't honour ransoms because scarfing a ransom is an opportunity for tears.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I meant that the discourtesy shown to you by the high-sec pirate frosted my thrusters. Of course I would never dream of coming to your blog and calling you discourteous.

    I can see that my first comment was somewhat ambiguous. Sorry about that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. D'oh! And this is why I'm too much of a wimp for EVE really, despite my little market and PI piddling. :D

    And I guess the "try ransoming me" line in my bio won't do me much good either. (Unless I move to nullsec and I can't afford that yet. Like I'd even consider it. ;))

    ReplyDelete
  5. Aggro timers can be extended by any hostile action against any item which is flagged as being owned by you. Ninjas are masters of this art and will shoot at your wrecks in your mission to extend the time you have aggro to them for, AFAIK its not a bug but working as intended. (see this post: http://podlogs.com/ninjahijinx/2010/08/03/tutorial-trio-the-mystical-art-of-aggro-extension/)

    The best option when a ninja steals from you is to ignore them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This post highlights one of the issues I had with EvE. Oddly, not the part where you lost your ship + the ransom. While that sucks, it's also part of what makes the game meaningful.

    No. It's the waiting an hour part while reading a book that really bugs me. Anytime players are forced into a position where they have to remain idle for prolonged periods of time strikes me the wrong way. In this case, there are two idle players. You and the pirate.

    Ironically, it's actually the severe consequences of the impact PvP (the part I like) that teach players that the best defense is remaining idle in a station and "waiting it out".

    ReplyDelete
  7. That is some interesting tactics at work with game mechanic. Allot more unpredictable than Warsong Glutch. But given the mechanic at work I can see how your timer kept getting reset every time the pirate looted a wreck of a ship from your mission or did it slowly while returning to wait.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think he was probably warp scrambling the wrecks or something like that rather than shooting them, it was resetting every two minutes.

    Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm pursuing the matter via petition. As I said if I get nothing back I'll cope but as there are very clear issues of unintentional functionality I'm hoping they'll at least toss me a few isk.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I cannot imagine wanting to gank someone so badly that I'd chill out in an instance for an hour hoping they will stick their head back in. That's just not the kind of gamplay I'd have the patience for. Nice that you had enough cash on hand to recover.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Having the ability to replace it was a real help.

    I'd like them to get this fixed and may raise it with the CSM. What I feel is that someone else shooting stuff should not extend MY aggresion timer and that timers that can be indefinitely extended need a name change. An overview of the performance of these game mechanics is due, in researching the issue I found that several people have reported being killed under an aggression timer which didn't show on their screen and was well over 15 minutes.

    See if the CSM can get this looked at.

    I'll wait until after my petitioning is done, they've just escalated it for me. While I'm not happy about the way I lost this ship I have to say the courtesy, game knowledge and professionalism of the customer service guys I'm speaking to is really good.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Sorry about your losing the CNR to a poor game mechanism but it's great to see you buying a new one and getting right back out there.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Wow! All I can say is shame on CCP for resolving his petition that way. You never should have received compensation for a valid tactic. You don't seem to understand how the game works. You seem to have it backwards. The timer wasn't resetting because of you. The aggro timer restarts for each instance of the ninja's aggression! So of course the ninja would restart it if he kept looting/shooting cans. Wouldn't you want it this way if you were the loot owner?? The timer gives you 15 minutes of valid kill time for each instance of aggression. If it didn't restart then ninjas would just wait to steal all your loot at 14:59. You fail to realize that the timer provides the loot owner with reasonable recourse. If you don't want to get shot... then don't shoot!

    ReplyDelete
  13. @Percival Chubsworth,

    I can't speak for Stabs, but the mechanic as implemented is not at all the way I would like it to work. If someone loots my wreck, I get aggression rights, not them. If I shoot them, they get to shoot back, fair enough. But I'm the one with the option.

    However, by continuing to agress wrecks, they keep open their option to shoot at me, not vice-versa. That seems like a bit of a problem.

    Granted, it's a plan that could backfire, should I gather up 20 of my best friends, with some heavy neuts and a logistics cruiser or something.

    But really, I can't say as where I think the mechanic is "the way things ought to work".

    ReplyDelete
  14. At first - i'm not a pirate, pirate has honour I don't, pirate can honour ransom as it is part of his income, I can do what pleases me.
    At second - extending aggro timer is intended game mechanic, go study a bit, read couple of forums or i dunno what.
    at third - your tears published on this blog fueled my ships for half a year already, keep them comming
    EVE is a sandbox with landmines - get used to it or go play Hello Kitty or back to WoW

    ReplyDelete
  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete