Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Help or HTFU?

I saw a post on the Eve Online Players group Facebook page. Someone was moaning that their support ticket had not been answered in 13 days. OK nothing newsworthy there. Until he said later in the replies what it was for.

Basically he'd petitioned that he'd come back after a few years away (four apparently) and all of his stuffz (tm) was in null sec and he wanted CCP to move it for him!


At first I laughed. Then I thought of the Permaband track HTFU. Then I thought about it more.

Whilst the natural Eve reaction is to say "tough", don't we also need more players in game? What if this guy gets his petition rejected and then just unsubs again. The natural reaction for Eve players will be again something like "If that makes him unsub then we didn't want him in game anyway." However we need players, 10 hard-core Eve players in five years just won't cut it!

So here is the question. How lenient should the GMs be with regard to things like this? Someone who has been away from the game for years, his stuffz has been sat deep in null in a station that may have changed hands a dozen times during his break. He's tried to sell it but no one is buying. What are the options?


Help Him
Whilst not really explainable in the mechanics of the "sci fi simulator" the GMs could move his stuffz over to high-sec and let him continue where he left off. You can Roleplay InterBus or someone did it but its still space-magic. However he might continuing playing for years. 

**** Him
This is what most people would expect the petition to say. We'll not exactly that. Eve Online is a game of choices and consequences. He left all his stuff deep in null when he unsubbed. However he might not fancy restarting from scratch and just unsub and leave again. An opportunity missed?

I don't know myself. At first I was "Ha! No way you'll get that!". However now I'm of the opinion that there could be merit in special cases like this for GMs to make a special exception (ie been away four years).


What do you think?

8 comments:

  1. My first thinking is "Ask other players to help".

    It is strange but i promise you. If he asks for help, he will got someone to move it. Probably at a price, but still.

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  2. It comes down to a willingness to actually play the game instead of having things handed to you.

    What about joining up with the current owner, who may in fact have a program available for egress? Heck they even may be fun to fly with! Are any of the player driven freight org's available to assist?

    I'll bet real money that the devs were hoping, in that 13 day interim, that the player would be able to figure it out, engage in playing the game, and relocate to wherever they want to be!

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  3. Like Diana, my first thought was that the player should get help from other players. More accurately, enlist help from them. We all know that ISK is an effective motivator for many in EVE and the player you describe should attempt to make use of that motivation. Contacting the owners of the outpost to find out max shipping volumes from that location and putting some worthwhile contracts to a major trade hub up costs him nothing until they are accepted. At that point he will either receive his stuff or the collateral for it.

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  4. I agree, GMs need to stay away from this type of assistance, and simply point him to the communities that would be more than willing to help him out.

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  5. Yer I seen that post and thought that guy was a troll because surely he wasn't serious.

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  6. You know CCP allows people to shift ships from NS to LS/HS via support tickets, right?

    The aim is to support returning players by allowing them to bring a ship's worth of cargo to LS, where they can dock/undock freely.

    I don't support moving all his stuff, but moving some stuff is already allowed.

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    Replies
    1. ^this
      If you haven't played in a while and are stuck in a nullsec station, CCP allows you to pick a ship, and they will transport you to the nearest high sec exit.

      However, this only happens if you're in Null sec on a toon, and only the active ship is taken with.

      So if you have all of your stuff in a certain station that you won't be able to dock in after, you mgiht have a problem and should do your utmost best to make a few friends that could help out.

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  7. I know it has been done before. Had several mates come back and do it. Don't really agree with it myself though.

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