EVE Online 2017: We are the Alphas, the Omegas and the Gankers.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > EVE Online 2017: We are the Alphas, the Omegas and the Gankers.

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Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

I see Seraph is hilariously trying to rewrite history to include his role in WWB planning etc. and getting hilariously assmad when people call him out on it.

# ? May 28, 2017 10:40

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# ? May 30, 2024 13:49

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

i hate a lot of people for no reason other than they're are posting and attitude

it's okay to be stupid, just don't pretend you're not

# ? May 28, 2017 11:52

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

1001 Arabian dicks posted:

it's okay to be stupid, just don't pretend you're not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ

# ? May 28, 2017 11:55

nex: Jul 23, 2001; Ã¸Ã¦Ã¥Â¨Ã¦Ã¸Ã¥Ã¸; Grimey Drawer

Unfunny Poster posted:

I see Seraph is hilariously trying to rewrite history to include his role in WWB planning etc. and getting hilariously assmad when people call him out on it.

yea its pretty funny and even funnier when you remember CO2 leadership was manipulated by him. i dunno whats worse.

# ? May 28, 2017 13:43

Papal Mainframe: May 3, 2017

I rather enjoy Seraph's desperate scrabbling for relevance. Watching him try so hard is hilarious.

It literally took me one encounter with him via kugu to understand why everyone can't stand him. I've never met someone who so readily oozes "douchebag" through the internet.

# ? May 28, 2017 15:44

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

so a friend of mine has made 700b worth of sp since november's ghost training.

that's pretty neat, gj on your game ccp

# ? May 28, 2017 15:54

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

i mean, that's just counting one guy casually adding 20 alts into ghost training a month

there are people who (allegedly) have thousands of these guys ghost training making roughly 1.6b a month in SP

how is no one freaking out about this

it's FREE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR NOTHING

# ? May 28, 2017 15:55

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

1001 Arabian dicks posted:

i mean, that's just counting one guy casually adding 20 alts into ghost training a month

there are people who (allegedly) have thousands of these guys ghost training making roughly 1.6b a month in SP

how is no one freaking out about this

it's FREE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR NOTHING

I'm beginning to think that CCP is actually unable to fix it. At least, not easily.

I don't know for absolute certain, but a LOT of evidence is piling up to suggest that the code that handles subscriptions with omegas and new plex is extremely difficult to understand and/or separated and sequestered from the rest of the codebase. The ghost training thing, the abject refusal to allow subscription data via API, not even being able to see when your sub runs out on the character select screen -- it points to a single point of failure.

The sad thing is that it "fixes" itself. Eventually, enough people get on the free ghost training ride that the supply of injectors exceeds the demand, and the margin between extractors and injectors (aka the revenue from the skill points alone) starts falling off a cliff. The problem starts to accelerate when ghost trainers, realizing that their profits are dropping, make EVEN MORE ghost training alts. The revenue asymptotically approaches zero. This causes fewer skill extractors to be purchased, which costs CCP revenue IRL. This last part is the most alarming thing -- the fact that CCP not only hasn't fixed it, or even said anything about it, but doesn't seem to get the impact to their bottom line.

e: i grammar gud

Gwyneth Palpate fucked around with this message at 16:25 on May 28, 2017

# ? May 28, 2017 16:12

Papal Mainframe: May 3, 2017

Jesus Christ, 700b is a disgusting amount of money to me.

Edit: previous post basically answered my question.

# ? May 28, 2017 16:16

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

CCP not only hasn't fixed it, or even said anything about it

This is the real scary thing, it was bug reported in late december of last year. I was in an autism group where we tried to break injectors, specifically the mini skill injectors and we succeeded in doing that, but when we found this we bug reported it because it was absolutely insane.

i know people like boson dubstep probably have literal hundreds of accounts ghost training, i'm not even that active and i could have over a hundred doing it now if i cared

there have been tens of billions of SP injected into the game JUST from people I know and can document with absolute certainty, and I know a ton of other people have been abusing this without telling anyone that they are.

i think eve just died.

# ? May 28, 2017 16:21

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

What is ghost training?

# ? May 28, 2017 16:25

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

Ynglaur posted:

What is ghost training?

you can train skills without being subscribed as long as you have a queue going and you don't log in while alpha

it's literally that simple

# ? May 28, 2017 16:26

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

nex posted:

CO2 leadership was manipulated by him

I feel that there's no way that could be true. He is so ham fisted in his attempts to metagame. Look at all the times he tried to turn BRAVE against CFC, then tried to get Horde to try and fight against PL etc. He's not very good at being a metagame type of person whatsoever.

Papal Mainframe posted:

I rather enjoy Seraph's desperate scrabbling for relevance. Watching him try so hard is hilarious.

It literally took me one encounter with him via kugu to understand why everyone can't stand him. I've never met someone who so readily oozes "douchebag" through the internet.

Recently on the Kugu discord I tried to help him with his poor English Grammar, seeing as he's a non-native speaker. He started freaking out over the corrections I pointed out he needed to be made and got super pissy because "you were being disrespectful" in some hilariously petty way. He's so incapable of getting criticism for anything he does it's hilarious.

Mekchu fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 28, 2017

# ? May 28, 2017 16:32

PookBear: Nov 1, 2008

Unfunny Poster posted:

I feel that there's no way that could be true. He is so ham fisted in his attempts to metagame. Look at all the times he tried to turn BRAVE against CFC, then tried to get Horde to try and fight against PL etc. He's not very good at being a metagame type of person whatsoever.

Recently on the Kugu discord I tried to help him with his poor English Grammar, seeing as he's a non-native speaker. He started freaking out over the corrections I pointed out he needed to be made and got super pissy because "you were being disrespectful" in some hilariously petty way. He's so incapable of getting criticism for anything he does it's hilarious.

counterpoint: gigx is really stupid

# ? May 28, 2017 16:38

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

1001 Arabian dicks posted:

you can train skills without being subscribed as long as you have a queue going and you don't log in while alpha

it's literally that simple

So you subscribe for one month, setup a year-long queue, and then login when you want to cash out?

# ? May 28, 2017 17:02

working mom: Jul 8, 2015

Ynglaur posted:

So you subscribe for one month, setup a year-long queue, and then login when you want to cash out?

Yup

# ? May 28, 2017 17:04

PookBear: Nov 1, 2008

its probably some hilariously retarded oversight like if your omega expires while logged in it breaks and the training never stops

# ? May 28, 2017 17:04

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

Reverand maynard posted:

its probably some hilariously retarded oversight like if your omega expires while logged in it breaks and the training never stops

most likely what's happening is that the game does all the stuff that downgrades you to alpha when you log in

so not logging in means the check never happens

# ? May 28, 2017 17:10

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

what if it's super simple and they fix it tomorrow cause they read reddit

lol too late there are people out there with hundreds of billions and probably people out there with several trillion for free

thanks ccp

# ? May 28, 2017 17:12

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

it's actually pretty simple to fix

during downtime:

code:

for player in players
    if player.getSubscription().getExpiryDateTime() < clock.getCurrentDateTime()
       player.getSkillQueue().truncateQueue()
    endif
endfor

# ? May 28, 2017 17:18

DisgracelandUSA: Aug 11, 2011; Yeah, I gets down with the homies

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

it's actually pretty simple to fix

during downtime:

code:

for player in players
    if player.getSubscription().getExpiryDateTime() < clock.getCurrentDateTime()       
       player.getSkillQueue().truncateQueue()
    endif
endfor

Big assumption there that truncateQueue is an atomic operation. You're not really thinking about determining which character is training, and executing that operation on that character (can you have MCT on alpha accounts? If so, make it more complicated). As well, what does truncateQueue do? Removes all skills from the queue? That's a lovely customer experience and would result in calls to CS. If it modifies the skill queue at all, which is still lovely customer experience, you'll need to iterate through every skill, determine if it's an alpha skill, determine if it is able to be trained by the character's race and determine if it is at a trainable level before removing. And then write. If it finished during downtime, I'd be surprised, and the run time would naturally increase over time, necessitating more hardware to execute that backfill, which costs real money.

As it turns out, creating a subscription timer service the scales is a pretty gnarly engineering feat, as it needs to be asynchronous and alarming on an as-needed basis, rather than triggered by some customer interaction.

I agree, they've functionally wrecked the value of SP, while simultaneously hyper-saturated the amount of SP in the game and shot themselves in the foot revenue-wise at the same time, but I'm sympathetic towards the engineering challenges required in solving this. Because it's :ccp:

I'm not really surprised there was a design flaw or two.

# ? May 28, 2017 17:35

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

DisgracelandUSA posted:

Big assumption there that truncateQueue is an atomic operation. You're not really thinking about determining which character is training, and executing that operation on that character (can you have MCT on alpha accounts? If so, make it more complicated). As well, what does truncateQueue do? Removes all skills from the queue? That's a lovely customer experience and would result in calls to CS. If it modifies the skill queue at all, which is still lovely customer experience, you'll need to iterate through every skill, determine if it's an alpha skill, determine if it is able to be trained by the character's race and determine if it is at a trainable level before removing. And then write. If it finished during downtime, I'd be surprised, and the run time would naturally increase over time, necessitating more hardware to execute that backfill, which costs real money.

As it turns out, creating a subscription timer service the scales is a pretty gnarly engineering feat, as it needs to be asynchronous and alarming on an as-needed basis, rather than triggered by some customer interaction.

I agree, they've functionally wrecked the value of SP, while simultaneously hyper-saturated the amount of SP in the game and shot themselves in the foot revenue-wise at the same time, but I'm sympathetic towards the engineering challenges required in solving this. Because it's I'm not really surprised there was a design flaw or two.

It's downtime -- it doesn't have to be an atomic operation. No one is logged in.

Also, they clearly already have the code written to truncate your queue -- it happens when you log in for the first time since your subscription ran out.

# ? May 28, 2017 17:37

vyst: Aug 25, 2009

Nerds.gif

# ? May 28, 2017 17:50

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

vyst posted:

Nerds.gif

y-you too

# ? May 28, 2017 17:52

DisgracelandUSA: Aug 11, 2011; Yeah, I gets down with the homies

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

It's downtime -- it doesn't have to be an atomic operation. No one is logged in.

Also, they clearly already have the code written to truncate your queue -- it happens when you log in for the first time since your subscription ran out.

I misused the word atomic there. I meant more 'instantaneous and not-requiring-any-logic processing.' Although atomicity would probably be nice as well. You'd probably also need to validate the skill queue afterwards to make sure it doesn't get in some hosed up state, as I'm willing to bet most of the validation on skill queues is done as the player is adding and removing skills from the queue. And the scaling problem wont go away (but you could maybe just lock the batch update at a certain amount of time and pick up where you left off the next day).

Also, this assumes that the database is open to a large numbers of reads and writes during downtime, and isn't busy doing other things.

# ? May 28, 2017 18:06

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

too late game dead uninstall now

# ? May 28, 2017 18:21

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

man i wish i got a multi trillion isk handout from ccp

# ? May 28, 2017 18:22

Gwyneth Palpate: Jun 7, 2010; Do you want your breadcrumbs highlighted?

~SMcD

DisgracelandUSA posted:

I misused the word atomic there. I meant more 'instantaneous and not-requiring-any-logic processing.' Although atomicity would probably be nice as well. You'd probably also need to validate the skill queue afterwards to make sure it doesn't get in some hosed up state, as I'm willing to bet most of the validation on skill queues is done as the player is adding and removing skills from the queue. And the scaling problem wont go away (but you could maybe just lock the batch update at a certain amount of time and pick up where you left off the next day).

Also, this assumes that the database is open to a large numbers of reads and writes during downtime, and isn't busy doing other things.

The very point of having a downtime is so you can perform processes on your poo poo that need to occur without a parallel process interfering. A downtime script will typically not multitask at all. If you could do all the poo poo you needed to do with users logged in, you wouldn't need to kick them off.

And, in case you missed it, the code that performs the skill queue truncating already exists, on TQ, and is executed while the server is accepting connections. They don't have to code anything new on that front. So not only would it re-use existing code, but the code would be executing in a much, much safer environment. The only downside would be a longer downtime.

# ? May 28, 2017 18:32

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

who cares if you accidentally boop someones' skill queue when they turn alpha, if the side effect is stopping ghost training it's a perfectly acceptable trade

# ? May 28, 2017 18:59

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

this is a disaster of catastrophic proportions, i'm pretty sure ccp gave the most autistic eve players significantly more wealth than the early investors of guidance systems.

# ? May 28, 2017 19:03

DisgracelandUSA: Aug 11, 2011; Yeah, I gets down with the homies

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

I'm beginning to think that CCP is actually unable to fix it. At least, not easily.

I don't know for absolute certain, but a LOT of evidence is piling up to suggest that the code that handles subscriptions with omegas and new plex is extremely difficult to understand and/or separated and sequestered from the rest of the codebase. The ghost training thing, the abject refusal to allow subscription data via API, not even being able to see when your sub runs out on the character select screen -- it points to a single point of failure.

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

it's actually pretty simple to fix

during downtime:

code:

for player in players
    if player.getSubscription().getExpiryDateTime() < clock.getCurrentDateTime()
       player.getSkillQueue().truncateQueue()
    endif
endfor

Gwyneth Palpate posted:

The very point of having a downtime is so you can perform processes on your poo poo that need to occur without a parallel process interfering. A downtime script will typically not multitask at all. If you could do all the poo poo you needed to do with users logged in, you wouldn't need to kick them off.

And, in case you missed it, the code that performs the skill queue truncating already exists, on TQ, and is executed while the server is accepting connections. They don't have to code anything new on that front. So not only would it re-use existing code, but the code would be executing in a much, much safer environment. The only downside would be a longer downtime.

You can't say all three of these things at once. I'm pointing valid concerns on how that batch update script would work and how, while it would be a fix, it wouldn't be an easy fix, and it would extend downtime, regardless of whether it can finish, providing an even shittier customer experience, especially for eastern Russia / East Asia. It doesn't matter how safe the environment is either, if you're going to perform a batch update to literally every account in the game, every downtime, ho boy you better be sure that your script doesn't gently caress anything up at all, ever, even in the event of failure or early termination.

# ? May 28, 2017 19:19

1001 Arabian dicks: Sep 16, 2013; EVE ONLINE IS MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY BECAUSE IM A FRIENDLESS SEMILITERATE LOSER WHO WILL PEDANTICALLY DEMAND PROOF FOR BASIC THINGS LIKE GRAVITY OR THE EXISTENCE OF SELF. ASK ME ABOUT CHEATING AT TARKOV BECAUSE, WELL, SEE ABOVE

just have the ccp devs start logging into every alpha training account 1 at a time with dev hacks, problem solved

# ? May 28, 2017 19:35

DisgracelandUSA: Aug 11, 2011; Yeah, I gets down with the homies

If it takes 20ms per account, and there are 100k accounts, it would take 30 minutes to do a batch update on every account. And as more accounts are made, that number goes up. 20ms sounds low for that operation, and 100k accounts sounds low as well. You'd have to implement a system that allows you to quickly disregard large segments of accounts based on account status, MCT status, etc. The second you're calling another service over the wire, that 20ms per account quickly becomes laughable.

# ? May 28, 2017 20:00

Tibalt: May 14, 2017; What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

What's the general opinion of Pandemic Horde?

# ? May 28, 2017 20:11

vyst: Aug 25, 2009

Tibalt posted:

What's the general opinion of Pandemic Horde?

They are an eve guild

# ? May 28, 2017 20:12

Papal Mainframe: May 3, 2017

Unfunny Poster posted:

Recently on the Kugu discord I tried to help him with his poor English Grammar, seeing as he's a non-native speaker. He started freaking out over the corrections I pointed out he needed to be made and got super pissy because "you were being disrespectful" in some hilariously petty way. He's so incapable of getting criticism for anything he does it's hilarious.

Ah you must be Talladar. Yeah I was there when that happened. Thanks for furthering my conviction he is a grade A mental case.

# ? May 28, 2017 20:27

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

DisgracelandUSA posted:

If it takes 20ms per account, and there are 100k accounts, it would take 30 minutes to do a batch update on every account. And as more accounts are made, that number goes up. 20ms sounds low for that operation, and 100k accounts sounds low as well. You'd have to implement a system that allows you to quickly disregard large segments of accounts based on account status, MCT status, etc. The second you're calling another service over the wire, that 20ms per account quickly becomes laughable.

Hmmmm, this does make me think: before they went F2P, it was a lot of people's experience that when you unsubbed you could get 1-3 days of skill training for free afterwards. One way to explain that would be if they really were doing batch updates like that, but divided up into manageable chunks of the playerbase. Your training wouldn't stop until your number got called. But if that were true it makes the current ghost training business even more nonsensical.

I dunno, it's really weird that they demonstrably had a way to turn off skill training before, but it can't be adapted to work on the alpha training. I feel like the only explanation that fits is that the guys responsible for rewriting the skill stuff for alphas are now off working on a different game so CCP is stalling until they have time to fix this.

# ? May 28, 2017 20:35