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CCP Releases First CSM “Caucuses”

By
Dyvinex Ssasen
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0

CCP Games—in a widely criticized move—elected to try a new process for CSM voting this year. The sudden change shocked many capsuleers causing outrage across New Eden, with the current CSM remaining silent on the issue thus far. Without preamble, CCP Dopamine made the announcement on the EVE forums early this morning: “New, Improved Voting Method Implemented Effective Immediately.”

Starting this morning we are happy to announce the first CSM voting Caucuses in EVE Online history. Rather than an online ballot, pilots will now navigate in-game to specific systems in game to cast their vote for their chosen CSM members.

The process is rather simple. Pilots will need to fly to a designated caucusing system in New Eden where nodes representing their preferred CSM candidate will spawn. Each node is out of D-scan range from the others. The node grid will be restricted to Battleships only, excluding Blops. This is to make counting them easier and ensure all players have an even chance of attending the caucuses. Once warped to the node, a player’s ship is warp scrambled and they must loot a large cargo container containing exactly one Scientist commodity per player and slow boat it 75km to a drop off point where the scientist will be counted by volunteer staff—with help from a new app commissioned to aid staff—as a vote for the representing node’s candidate. 

This process may seem limiting to some, but it ensures that only dedicated, real players vote for candidates they are sure are right for the CSM. There is no restriction on the number of alts a pilot may caucus vote with, but they must be in a non-Blops battleship to caucus vote. 

The extended donwntime today may have surprised players, but we are confident they will understand as the first nodes spawned. The first location is in Delve. We have chosen Delve for the first to vote region after careful consideration, but all regions will have a chance at being caucusing locations should the trial of this system prove effective this year. 

Best of luck, capsuleers, and be sure you all choose the candidate right for you before warping to a node. The first are awaiting caucus-eers now in Y-OMTZ.

The thread has already garnered hundreds of angry responses from users, with many crying foul on the unprecedented change. Most complaints are leveled at the difficulty of caucusing and choice of location. Many users claim this is a clear sign of bias toward the Imperium or Nullsec dominated CSM. Zkill is showing a steady feed of t1 battleships dying to gatecamps at entry systems to Delve, while many more have vowed not to vote in protest. Despite the largely negative backlash, some users are praising this as an anti-botting move or one “taking votes from the hands of rich players” accused of stacking votes with “multitudes of alts”, since only players in-game can vote in this new process. Only time will tell how the new Capsuleer Caucuses will affect voting.

CCP Aborts Attempts to Support Planned Platforms after DDOS Event

By
Erutor
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2

Image: Reddit thread showing Jonathan Sarge photo of C-64 and unattributed image of a TRS-80 running EVE Online

“Do I smell ageism,” an angry player asked, “or is that just Mentholatum in my nose?” 

CCP is under fire for alleged ageism after sources reveal they have terminated plans to support several classic gaming platforms. As part of the “Fight or Flight” Quadrant, CCP is aborting attempts to support the following platforms, despite their apparent popularity within the EVE Online community: Compaq Portable, Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80, TI-99/4A, Magnavox Odyssey, and Atari 7800.

“I’ve spent countless hours keeping my Compaq Portable in good shape for EVE Online,” one enthusiast explained. “I quit playing when they ruined the game with T2 ships in the Castor release, but someone told me official support for the Compaq Portable was coming Soontm, and probably in the same update as the Low-Sec gate to Stain. That kept me engaged with the community all this time. I don’t know what game I’ll choose now. I heard rumors that Metro Exodus and Hunt The Wumpus might be coming to my preferred platform. Either way, I guess CCP doesn’t want my money.”

Heartbroken players are sharing pictures of their favorite platforms running EVE Online one last time before the patch goes live in a grassroots effort to persuade CCP to rethink their plan. There has thus far been no response from CCP, despite broad support within the EVE Online community, as evidenced by several “F for respect” and “7o” salutes, and at least one planned cyno vigil.

“It’s not about ageism or platform bias,” an insider clarified. “Last week, EVE Online experienced a major DDOS event as a result of an effort by a technician in the hosting center to connect to EVE Online from their Commodore 64. The C-64 obviously doesn’t have excellent support for the new transparent CCP Logo displayed when initiating the launcher, so the technician wrote a BASIC program to initiate the connection using an undocumented API. Unfortunately, a misplaced GOTO command resulted in an infinite loop. This event triggered a serious conversation about platform support, and whether it is fair to the broader user base to include undocumented features for the benefit of officially unsupported platforms.”
“I’m not buying their argument,” an Apple II aficionado grumbled, “is EVE Online really so much more complex than Elite, which runs just fine on my machine? CCP managed to delete boot.ini on supported platforms, but somehow they want to shift the blame for the DDOS to those of us who identify as retro platform gamers? Let’s face it, CCP’s new overlords don’t care about our community; Pearl Abyss only wants young gamers dumb enough to buy all the latest hardware. I’m going to go check out Dual Universe; Högni Gylfason went there from CCP, and he is over 40 – maybe he will be more interested in equal rights for older gamers.”

Inner Hell Announces Successful Eviction of Tranquility Server

By
Mark Resurrectus
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0

Bolstered by the recent successful eviction of Mouth Trumpet Cavalry, a press statement issued today by the leadership of known wormhole landlords Inner Hell announced another successful eviction, this time of the EVE Online “Tranquility” server, known colloquially as “TQ”. The press briefing, which was delivered to the offices of EVE Onion News tied to a brick and launched, presumably from a 720mm Artillery Cannon, describes the “…heroic actions of our brave pilots against the threat of the EVE servers Блять.”

A representative of Inner Hell, clad only in jogging pants and a red headband, and sweating profusely, appeared before the media today in a televised briefing. After taking seventeen entire minutes to compose himself and finish six beers, the spokesman―whose name could not be understood—ranted at length about how the assembled press could “kiss my dummy thick ass.” He then went on to call the Tranquility server a “bitch”, loudly and repeatedly, for an additional fourteen straight minutes while occasionally interjecting insults directed at the server’s mother, grandmother, and country of origin. 

The remainder of the press conference consisted of the representative firing a live automatic rifle into the sky and laughing wildly. While leaving the stage, the representative notably stumbled, dropped a CCP-branded bag spilling over with €500 notes, threw a handful at the front row of reporters, punched a member of event security, jumped into an Ikitursa and flew away.

When asked for comment about the incident, CCP released the following statement:

CCP Games does not explicitly promote the eviction carried out by Inner Hell against the Tranquility server. The server is a vital resource that provides an important function for many players—specifically, the ability to play the game. The suggestion that we would ever purposefully allow members of a capsuleer organization into our offices in order to wheel the server out the door in order to toss it into the sea because we don’t want to deal with the ongoing PR nightmare of having our primary game server offline’d indefinitely by a recently banned and foaming-at-the-mouth troglodyte with a bot network is obviously ludicrous and, in our personal opinion, truly laughable. 

The Tranquility server could not be reached for comment, but sources close to the server indicate that it has moved into a C2 pulsar in order to reorganize and take stock of its remaining assets.

Wormholers(btw) Report Old-New Wormhole Sounds More Reliable at Keeping You Awake After Eighth Hour of Sitting Cloaked on Hole — A Retrospective

By
moose
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0

“I’m on sixth Redbull sure but I think hole is moving toward me,” he said.

The poor Russkie was working on his twelfth hour of hole control. Rather than engaging in mind-numbing red-triangle-shooting like the rest of wormhole space, his corp preferred to make its ISK by bashing the structures of groups who had long since gone dormant. Since the goodies contained within were guaranteed to drop, they stood to make anywhere from 20b to 60b for an eviction of this size. All that stood between him and his loot was a mere 96 hours of boredom.

“I see people make complain about wormhole sound. But is not so bad. Very help for long hours cloaked on hole for doorway stop.”

Initially, there were some complaints about the changes the art team made to the wormhole animations and audio indicators. Some had said that it made it harder to hear reductions in available mass. Others had criticized the changes for forcing players to mute their audio altogether, to avoid having to listen to the din.

“It sounded like a soundscape for The Shining,” remarked a less enthused player.

After several months of torture, CCP finally got around to patching the audio back to something like the old standard of 2018. It seems that our Russkie friend will have to go back to relying on cocaine and Red Bull.

On the Issue of Women in EVE Online

By
sophia s
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6

Editor’s note: This article was originally published October 2018

It is a well established fact that women represent only 4% of EVE’s player population. There’s no real one accepted reason why this is, though a few have been put forth. One CCP Dev who will remain anonymous said they believe it is because the object of agency within EVE Online is a ship, and not a person. One ex-CSM member believes that it is because the social structures of the game have evolved over time to exclude women. Another theory that is not easily attributable, is that women generally prefer to avoid the deceitful, underhanded gameplay of EVE Online. Whatever the reason, the number of women in EVE is quite low.

Most of the time the conversation centers around trying to increase this number. This is the wrong question. We really should be asking ourselves how we can lower this number. I say 4% is much too high! With a peak concurrent user count of about 50 thousand, that means two thousand of them will be women. This is entirely unacceptable.

EVE is a boys-only club. Everyone knows that although the sign “you must have a Y chromosome to ride” isn’t actually printed anywhere, it’s still there. Some women just didn’t get the memo, and joined anyways. While it’s probably against the law to actually disallow women from playing EVE, there are still actions that CCP can take to prevent women from playing EVE. There are also actions that the player base can take.

CCP can—and should—make sure that their advertising campaigns only target male gamers. There should never be any women featured, ever, in their advertising. Guys should be talking about guy things in CCP’s ads. Only focus on fighting and PVP, the kind of 80’s action movie stuff that appeals only to the manliest of testosterone powered men. I am not saying that a woman cannot enjoy this too, but CCP cannot achieve their no-women goal with just advertising alone.

CCP should make sure that the game remains hostile to women. The first thing they should do is keep the character creator focused on the Barbie Doll ideal. This is actually pretty common to the industry, so it’s not really that hard for them. Make sure that the male fantasy plays out in every female character created. Breast sizes should start at C-cup and then go into the absurd and obscene. Gravity should also never affect breasts; that would ruin the fantasy. Necklines should always be revealing. Female characters should also be constrained to high heels only. Everyone knows that women only wear high heels all the time, even to bed.  Especially to bed. Whatever CCP does, they have to make sure that the male players with female characters can continue to fantasize.

While CCP is making sure that the female characters fulfil every man’s fantasy, they should also continue to make sure the New Player Experience voiceovers continue to use the male pronoun, regardless of what characters the players create, since we all know the kind of player CCP wants behind the screen: male. The voice over isn’t talking to the character, it’s talking to the player.

Speaking of players, they don’t get to slide either. Every time a player hears a female voice in mumble or discord, they should immediately make a disruptively huge deal about it. The correct response is always: “go make me a sandwich” or a solicitation for pictures of the girl’s breasts. Remember, players, females are just objects for men to enjoy.

Players can go one step further. Reikoku, the infamous T20 corporation, once had a full ban on female players. For some inexplicable reason they lifted this ban. Player groups can and should openly declare the treehouse rule: “No Girls Allowed.” If players make the game hostile to women, we can ensure that EVE remains free of anyone whose reproductive organs don’t dangle.

After all, women do not actually contribute anything to EVE Online. They don’t contribute anything to the game play. I can think of no argument to the contrary. Though some women have certainly proven to be good diplomats, fleet commanders, sky marshals, or leaders, in every case there was a man that could have done the job better.

EVE Online doesn’t need women players. They are icky. And gross. If players and CCP work together, they can drive the percentage of female EVE players down to zero.

Advanced Artwork Classes Repeatedly Interrupted by Exploding Rorquals

By
claevyan
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0

On 11 January 2020, a Rorqual interrupted an Eve University class taking place in the Kalevala Expanse, shouting obscenities in local chat before setting itself ablaze in protest. Students immediately ran to the Rorqual’s aid, attempting to use any kinetic, explosive, electromagnetic, or thermal devices they could find to extinguish the blaze and save the poor whale. Unfortunately, the Rorqual perished at the scene before emergency responders could even arrive. The flames from the Rorqual’s self immolation hit an internal fuel tank, causing a massive explosion and scattering remains all over the ore belt. This marks the fourth such occurrence since the new year began. “She didn’t even appear to panic, it was insane!” explained one of the students present, “she just sat there and burned.” Eve University now faces calls from terrified parents requesting that they suspend teaching all Advanced Artwork courses immediately. 

Per sources familiar with the event, the class began “normal” with no apparent issues. “We did what we always do,” claimed the source, “we entered a wormhole with a Null security static, then popped out in the middle of majestic space.” He described how the students staged on a blackops class battleship, while their scout found the perfect subjects for them to photograph. They moved about several times, finally landing in an ore belt to snap a few shots of the purple sunlight reflecting off large rocks of ore. It was the perfect lighting, a wonderful angle…and that’s when the Rorqual appeared. “Who would’ve thought an advanced photography class would end like that?”

The classes have an average of forty to fifty pilots, with the only prerequisite being training to use a covert cloaking device. This apparently allows for optimal positioning and ensures that student ship models are not in the way of the pictures they take.  When asked why they use a wormhole, students responded “It helps get us out deep into the void, man.” These students explained that they occasionally spend hours rolling the connection before finding the perfect spot for some photos. While it can take a lot of time, the majority agree the dedication is worth it. However, for the last several weeks, things have not gone as wonderfully as hoped. 

 Some of the newer students reportedly felt violent shaking in their limbs for several minutes during and after these events. A few freshman students even admitted to getting “the shakes” just thinking about the memory of exploding Rorquals. Not everyone seems to have been so affected however. When questioned, one senior student said “Naw, I didn’t get no shakes this time. I’ve seen it before, you know? I just wish these protestors would give it a rest and let me take some good screen shots of space once in awhile.” 

In a public address, the University has announced that it will immediately suspend all art classes pending an investigation. Eve University also announced the immediate suspension (with pay) for several as-of-yet unnamed guest lecturers while the investigation takes place. Trusted sources within the University have confirmed that Bomber’s Bar part-time professors were lecturing the classes just before every protest began, however no link to the professors and the actions of the protestors has yet been found. The University has requested that all future inquiries into this and related events be directed to their Pilot Relations office. 

Any students present during these events are offered trauma counseling with local Therapists through Eve Universities’ student mental health program.

BUMS!

By
Erutor
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1

CCP’s decision to allow developers to play EVE seems to have generated yet another unexpected change in New Eden. “I was sitting there looking at my corpse in space after an embarrassing PvE loss thanks to falling asleep at my keyboard, and I had an epiphany,” the developer reported, “why am I wasting my time with something only a bot could enjoy? What if I didn’t shoot triangles? What if I give up on training my cat to rat? What if nobody botted?”

And, with that, New Eden is on course to enter a new era. As of the next major update, no new ISK* will be created in New Eden. The economy is now closed. CONCORD will no longer generate ISK to pay bounties. Non-Capsuleer corporations will no longer generate ISK to purchase commodities on the open market, nor for mission rewards.

Instead, every Omega-licensed capsuleer will now receive a monthly Basic Universal Minimum Stipend (BUMS) distributed evenly among all capsuleers, coming from 40% of all taxes and fees collected across New Eden. 20% of taxes and fees will be allocated to CONCORD to pay bounties in High Security space, 10% will be distributed evenly among corporations holding structures, and 30% will be distributed evenly to registered Non-Capsuleer corporations without regard for their standings or the perceived legitimacy of their organizations.

“I hate the idea that my taxes will go to Blood Raider corporate coffers,” said Amarrian sympathizer Dosanglos Bedrinkin, “but this is better than allowing bot-aspirants to drive rampant inflation. Something has to change. This will also ensure better distribution of mission running activities, as more popular Non-Capsuleer corporations will likely run out of income before the month is over.”

Recognizing the tendency to hoard ISK in a closed economy, all registered financial institutions will now collect a monthly tax, seizing 5% of the balance held by each player to augment the BUMS pool. Those players and corporations with an ISK balance in the 90% percentile of all balances will see an additional 10% of their ISK transferred to the pool.

Finally, to prevent hoarding unassailable wealth in non-capsuleer stations, and to encourage assets to be stored in Upwell structures, each Omega-licensed capsuleer will be limited to a maximum of 100B estimated ISK value stored in stations. Alpha-licensed capsuleers are limited to 2B estimated ISK value in stations. To facilitate this transition, and in an effort to “Clean Up New Eden,” all assets in stations will be transferred to the redemption queue, and organized into stacks consisting of the smaller of 1 item or 1B ISK estimated value. With the increased quantity of assets stored in Upwell structures, asset safety has been permanently disabled.

Launch date for the transition to the Basic Universal Minimum Stipend is highly dependent upon the amount of time it takes to move all assets into the redemption queue. Initial estimates place this process at approximately 38 years, during which all servers will be offline.

* CCP retains the right to generate ISK to facilitate in-game purchase of PLEX by authorized non-capsuleer corporations.
Cat ratting created by cropping https://www.flickr.com/photos/16725630@N00/393522910/ in compliance with license.

Triglavians Ramp Up Their War Efforts as They Access the Net in New Eden

By
Dyvinex Ssasen
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0

The Triglavians have redoubled their efforts of invading New Eden systems amidst reports of further breaches into various planet and system-wide communications networks. A CONCORD spokesperson stated these latest hacks seemed not to be in line with previous ones such as the CONCORD Billboard hacks across High Security Space. This time they seemed to be gleaning more personal user data—the “browsing history” of common citizens—as well as some site owners tracing spikes in various site traffic to possible Triglavian sources. 

CONCORD was unwilling to speculate on the intent behind this, though many civilian and corporate analysts have said they believe it is possible the Triglavians were attempting to learn more about average life and culture in New Eden. “They must not have liked what they found though,” one hosting server representative told us. “Shortly after we started seeing the breeches, many servers that our clients use for fanart and fan fiction hosting were attacked and shut down.” 

CONCORD will not confirm the cyber attacks were of Triglavian origin; though the timing suggests it might have been. Interviewing citizens throughout the constellation, we encountered some individuals who confirmed websites that they knew hosted content known as “shipping”, as well as smut art and fanfiction. Triglavians, Simo Reshar Fitness characters, and other underground material we can’t delve into were all shut down in the attacks.

Shortly before publishing this breaking story, a new message was broadcast by the Triglavian Collective on billboards across New Eden. The new message states that Zorya Triglav “Will not suffer such degeneracy as we have witnessed” and that “it shall be extirpated along with all who corrupt The Flow.”

Capsuleer Personally Attacked by CCP Games Using Your Year In Eve Video, Calls for Boycott

By
claevyan
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7

Mister Monsieur, Eve Online Capsuleer and self styled “Jita Market Maestro” has called for a boycott against the developers of Eve Online, CCP Games, after receiving an unsolicited email containing a personalized video that he calls “a personal attack” on his “moral character”. Mister Monsieur has taken to Facebook as well, calling on all similarly attacked capsuleers to speak out against the “deliberate act of cyberbullying condoned by the larger EVE Online community”. In an online interview with Mr. Mister Monsieur where he reviewed the video, commenting on each section and its pointed attack against him and his play style. 

The first 8 seconds of the video show a Gila undocking from an Amarr station in a section of space Mister Monsieur has “never been!”. He continued by explaining: “Sure, I have dozens of Gila’s in market orders, but I have never flown one. Nor have I have ever been to Amarr! I haven’t even left Jita in 3 years!”

Then the welcome message of the video appeared:

    HELLO 

    Mister Monsieur

    you and your 0 alts have been

    up to a lot in EVE this year

This set him off again. “Who has time for Alts?! I’m too busy with playing the game to have alts, and here they are rubbing it in that I don’t pay them for multiple accounts! It’s money grubbing guilt tripping at its worst, I tell you!”

Next came the travel stats. Even though they were displayed on the side of a Bowhead, this did little to assuage the anger in Mister Monsieur: “Of course I made 0 jumps” he exclaimed, exasperation evident in his voice. “Yes, I only warped around a dozen times! Sure I only ever visited 1 system, it’s called J I T A. It’s where I live!”

The market transactions section seemed to be the only part of the video that didn’t completely apoplexy my guest: 

    You made 919,012 market transactions

    Your most traded item was

    PYERITE

    500,000,000,000 units

Yet even here, he found fault. “Where does it tell you that I am the top 1% of traders in Jita? Nowhere!”

The skill points section was a wash at only 300,000 SP gained. “Once you max out your Alpha ‘toon, you cannot get more skill points. They are back to guilt tripping again” Mister Monsieur said dismissively, not even looking at the screen. He did however tense up and become extremely rigid the next moment when the message flashed across the side of a Munnin:
    Based on your             You had

    ACTIVITY             Success with

    this year            PVP

The howl of rage emitted from Mister Monsieur caused me to instinctively grab my headset and thrust it at arms length from my ears. As the noise abated, I returned to hear him fitfully recounting the last time he undocked from Jita IV-4 to move trade goods between stations.

“I’m a market trader. I buy and sell. I only lost one ship, it was a Myrmidon, not a hauler! Who cargo scans a Myrmidon these days? I just wanted to fill the station-only buy order at planet VII. One Thousand skill injectors. Who wouldn’t? The mark-up was insane! Even if the minimum purchase amount was set at 1000, it was like printing ISK! I had to move them all at once. But can you blame me? And they got the pod too! Who pods in hi-sec? It was my special training clone, with the implants I couldn’t get without going Omega again. I hate this game. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it…”.

I watched as the video continued its montage of uncaring statistics. He had blapped zero ships, he had no frequent targets, his nemesis was someone no one had ever heard of, and he had been podded only once. 

By the time the on screen Gila warped off in a shower of bright fireworks my guest was sobbing quietly, unable to respond to further questions or offer additional comment.

CCP Identifies and Resolves Root Cause of All Bugs in December Update

By
Erutor
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0

“It was difficult to admit the truth,” the engineering manager acknowledged, “but there it was, staring us in the face.”

It is no secret that CCP has been wrestling with code quality since shortly after the turn of the millenium. Facing a legacy of spaghetti code, CCP developers have struggled mightily to deliver new features to meet both player and executive demand. From deleting boot.ini (2007) to game-breaking exploits allowing infinite damage (2014), to a bug that prevents capsuleers with corporation roles from opening their wallet (2019), defects have ranged from the bemusing to the absolutely mind-boggling.

“At first, we thought we could manage publicity long enough to resolve all our legacy code issues,” the engineering manager admitted. Public relations started with traditional responses, such as “can’t reproduce,” then escalated to “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature,” and finally settled into “POS code.”

Then, in 2019, the ultimate breakthrough.

“This absolutely guarantees we will never again encounter a new bug in EVE Online,” the manager announced as they concluded an internal meeting. For a moment, the room was silent. Then, chaos erupted, as developers lept from their seats, exchanged high-fives, and one normally quiet lass erupted with “YEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEE!”

The solution, and its rationale are blindingly clear, once stated simply:
“There is a clear relationship between the amount of code we write, and the number of defects we create or expose in existing code. Thus, the optimal solution is to write no new code. To achieve this end, effective 2019.12.16, Developers may now play [EVE]. We are entirely confident that no productive work will occur from this day forward, and thus no new defects will be created or exposed.”

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