CCP declares war on Traders

[Comstar]

CCP closing down trading fourms - Effective immediately.

CCP Wrangler

   Posted - 2007.08.21 12:24:00 - [1] - Quote
With the contract system and market in game we have decided to close down the trading forums. They were created as a solution to a problem which is now resolved with the contracts system and it is now time to take all trading back in game. These forums have been locked for new threads but you will be able to finish the current trades. The market forums (Sell Orders, Want Ads and Trades, trades and more trades) will be completely removed on Monday two weeks from now, 2007.09.03, giving everyone enough time to finish existing trades. We have also added the Character and Timecode Bazaar forum, which is for selling characters and timecodes only.

Since we now have the CCG website with forums we will be closing down the CCG forums, they will however remain in as read only forums as a form of archive. Instead you will be able to use the CCG website forums to discuss the CCG.

There may be some issues with replying to existing threads in the trade forums, this is caused by caching and should be cleared up in a while.

Wrangler
Community Manager
EVE Online

For a game built on building, trading and selling, this is inconceivable. The in game contract system us ugly to use, a typical CCP crappy UI, and can't do nearly all the things you CAN look and buy for in the fourm.

[Raging Turtle]

Bizarre.  They'll just move to scrapheap or somewhere else, though.

[Trouble]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Why in their right mind would they do that? The contract system still blows and the market forum is the lifeline for any high end trader. It's also the most posted in forum of any that Eve has so it's obviously in high demand. For what purpose would they shut down the most popular forum?

[Comstar]

between (first)
2007.08.21 12:24:00
and
2007.08.21 18:03:00 (latest)

there have been 359 posts

[Trouble]

If they have any respect at all for their customers I can't see this going through. If this goes through I will lose all respect for them and declare war back on them.

[TheDreamr]

Bonus side effect - it's now a lot less obvious CCP endorse the buying and selling of characters, which I can only imagine was a serious pain in the ass for them if they had people buying gimped out characters to *start* the game with and all the associated problems that brings.

[Trouble]

It's not less obvious. They're creating a new forum specifically for trading characters and time cards.

[Kamen]

It's not less obvious. They're creating a new forum specifically for trading characters and time cards.

Posts for timecodes and characters on the regular trade forum have been getting locked since the Character and Timecode Bazaar forum opened months ago.  It's not being created, it's done and operating.

And yeah, the deletion in two weeks of the three trade related forums leaving the timecode and character forum isn't exactly going to be downplaying or making it less obvious that EO endorses trading characters and timecodes for isk.  Indeed, it actually highlights it as being the only thing CCP endorses trading on their forums.  I have no clue why anyone would think these moves downplay it.

[Trouble]

Woops I misread something.

[Arthur_Parker]

From: kieron
To: isdleads@isd.eve-online.com
Cc: Wrangler
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 8:33 PM
Subject: Status of the ISD Team

Please forward to your teams.

The Interstellar Services Department has been an extremely valued part of CCP Games and the entire EVE Community from the very beginning. Volunteers have spent countless hours serving the player base and have been an essential factor in the continuing success of EVE Online. We wouldn’t be where we are without you. A number of the volunteers made contributions to EVE as early as Beta 2, even before the official announcement of the ISD team, while others have joined as recently as the early summer. Regardless of the time spent in the program, all have touched the EVE Community in a positive manner and brought credit upon themselves and CCP.

As EVE has changed and grown, so has the need to periodically evaluate the structure supporting EVE. Roles and responsibilities change. Teams are created, expand, contract and are sometimes absorbed into other teams. Duties morph as the needs of the Community and Dev Team change. It has been a long time since the ISD team has undergone an in-depth review and the evaluation of the roles of each team has been a difficult process. None of the following decisions were easily made.

The Bug Hunter team will continue to assist the Quality Assurance team to maintain the high quality of EVE Online and will eventually receive more tools to help in this effort. In the future, the team will likely have a role in the efforts to translate EVE into the native languages spoken by our Community. A high quality game that is more accessible to new and veteran players is the end result.

The STAR team will strengthen its involvement in assisting new players. It will continue to assist with the Help channels, but moderation will no longer be a responsibility or a primary focus. Tools will be implemented to assist and automate Help channel moderation while STAR increases its attention to performing Meet & Greets.

With the launch of EVE TV and a need to support this effort, the Interstellar Correspondents will continue to perform their roles as New Eden’s reporters, but with the additional responsibilities of assisting and following up on items broadcast by the EVE TV crew.

It is never easy to make hard decisions with the team you started out with or created, something that Wrangler and I both faced with CRC and AURORA respectively. It is painful to say and see, but we can no longer support these two teams in their current forms. This is why there has been a long delay, something which we must apologize for. Such a decision cannot be rushed, and we needed to investigate all possible alternatives before making a determination.

These steps are not being taken as a result of the misconduct on the part of members of these two teams or a failure to fulfill the duties asked of the volunteers, rather an examination and evaluation of the processes and procedures by which these teams act and interact with the community.

In the coming weeks, AURORA will be put on hold and forum moderation will move in-house. The moderation team will eventually be replaced by an expanded Community Group with a number of additional responsibilities, including keeping the EVE Community informed of news, changes, etc., event facilitation and continued support of the volunteer team. Two Community Representatives will be hired in the immediate future with more following later. The Community Group will be supported by more tools, changes to the forum moderation policy and assistance from other Dev teams.

AURORA will not continue in its current form. The team and its focus will undergo further evaluation and restructuring with an eye towards assistance with game fiction, out-of-game-role-playing and enabling factional warfare which will be more akin to their original vision. We would ask the event staff to stay on and complete their current arcs before the wind-down, but no new events or arcs will be created.

Current volunteers from the CRC and AURORA teams are encouraged to transfer to their choice of the other teams. If you wish to follow this course of action, please contact the appropriate team leads for consideration. Those who no longer wish to remain in the ISD program will be given three months of game time on their play accounts. Regardless of the choice made, Company Store credits earned will be honored.

The recruitment freeze is no longer in place, accounts will be created for those who have been accepted into the IC, STAR and BH teams and paperwork has been received. Applicants for AURORA and CRC will be reviewed by these three teams for potential acceptance.

It has been my great honor and privilege to be associated with the ISD team for the past five years. The dedication and professionalism of this team of people, who have devoted their spare time to helping develop and support our game world, never ceases to amaze me. I want to thank each one of you on behalf of all of CCP for all of your efforts.

Best regards,
Charles 'kieron' Dane
Director of Community Relations - EVE Online

The trader forum change might just be a side effect of the above quote.  This email is from K's site, I don't know if it's real or not.

[neep]

Looks like they are trying to tackle the 'amateurism' criticism they got during the recent PR debacles by moving the event and moderating departments in house and out of the hands of volunteers.

[Simond]

welp, so much for Admiral Charmander or whatever his name was. 

Edit: Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Hmm...I wonder how motivated the ISD bods are at keeping CAOD 'clean' at the moment?

[Trouble]

DevBlog basically saying the same thing as the above:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=495

The Interstellar Services Department (ISD) team is a volunteer organization with a long history with EVE Online. Started back in the early beta days, the ISD teams have been providing vital assistance to the EVE Development team with duties including forum moderation, live events, quality assurance, new player greeting with help channel moderation and most recently, reporting of in-game events. I can honestly say I feel that a large portion of EVE Online’s success has been a result of the efforts of this fine group of players.

There have been a number of changes to ISD in the past five years. The program has grown from a core of 8 people to a height of nearly 300. Some of the staff have moved on from the volunteer team to positions within the gaming industry, a number of whom are now advancing within the ranks of CCP Games and holding positions such as our present Community Manager, Game Masters, Quality Assurance, Game Developers, Operations and IT, and Programmers. I myself started out as a volunteer with the Aurora Project before eventually being employed by CCP.

While there are good times to be had within the volunteer program, it is not all fun and games. Volunteers have often had to endure criticism and were sometimes wrongly accused of issues they had no part in, but took it in stride and came back for more.

Times change. EVE has grown from a small player base to the current community of over 200,000 players and to the record of nearly 35k concurrent users on 24 June. CCP has expanded from around 35 staff at launch to today’s 230, from one studio in Reykjavik to three studios in Iceland, the US and China. As these things have changed, so has our need to periodically evaluate the tasks performed by the volunteers. It was such an evaluation that prompted the creation of the Interstellar Correspondents team out of the Aurora Project, and another that has brought us to this dev blog.

A number of changes are being made to the volunteer teams. The Interstellar Correspondents will be working more closely with the staff of EVE TV, continuing and expanding their role as New Eden’s news reporters. STAR will strengthen the focus of their efforts on greeting new players and assisting them in their early days as rookie pod pilots. The Bug Hunter team will continue to assist the QA team and most likely have a role in efforts to localize the EVE client into the native languages spoken by the EVE community. The Forum Moderation and the Events teams will be placed on hiatus as we take time to evaluate processes and procedures for the betterment of the EVE Community’s play experience. Members of the Forum Moderation and Event teams will be given the opportunity to transition to the other three teams while new tools and roles are investigated, implemented and we evaluate other alternatives for forum and event support.

As EVE has grown, so does the need to support the EVE community. As part of an internal structure change, the Community team has expanded into its own group affiliated with the Publishing division of CCP and their responsibilities will increase as the team eventually triples in size.

We hope that the EVE community will understand and support us through these changes, recognizing the overall goal is to support our players in the best manner possible. We hope you’ll join us in thanking our volunteers for all they’ve contributed over the years and continue to share your thoughts with us about things you’d like to see in the game and on our website.

Sincerely,
kieron
Director of Community Relations - EVE Online

[Trouble]

Why can't they just have an unmoderated or lightly moderate trade forum? That's what I don't get.

[JoeTF]

Soooooooo, how are we going to trade say COSMOS items?

[eldaec]

This is just a forum, right?

I guess they figure players wouldn't be able to create a forum on their own.

After all, forums are highly technical, you couldn't expect anyone other than a professional to run one.....

[Trouble]

Yeah except forums created by anyone but CCP won't be linked to your actual character, ensuring your identity.

[Megrim]

If you are worried about 'secure trading' i hardly think this will be a problem. People will work out new ways easily enough, as evidenced by the existance of online trading long since prior to EVE forums (does that make sense?). It's still incredibly boneheaded though, but this is CCP we are talking about.

[Simond]

Soooooooo, how are we going to trade say COSMOS items?

Hey Joe - can you do me a favour? Can you ask the higher-ups in BoB if getting all the freebies from from Aurora events & repeated benefit of the doubt from ISD on the forums was worth forcing CCP to eventually kill off their volunteer programmes (and the trade forums as a side-effect) due to ongoing corruption scandals?

Thanks.

[Kamen]

And after a firestorm of carebear outrage the important part of the decision is reversed.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=580077

Yesterday, we published a news item announcing the closure of the EVE Market channels in two weeks time, as well as immediately turning the EVE: The Second Genesis CCG forums into a read-only archive.

This announcement and the removal of the ability to create new posts in the Market channels were both premature. While the Market forums will eventually be closed, this action will not be taken until the in-game market and contract systems have been made more robust and useful.

The return of the ability to create new posts in the Market forum channels should return during Wednesday's normal maintenance period. The CCG forum channels will remain in their read-only archival state.

kieron
Director of Community Relations, EVE Online

[Simond]

CCP making a poorly thought out, kneejerk reaction and then reversing it when their customers point out how incredibly stupid it is?

Inconceivable!

[Yegolev]

Hehe, this game is so close to being awesome but CCP keeps fucking with it.

[Der Helm]

I am just glad that they DO listen to their customers.

[Ironwood]

Turns out, that's because most of the high level customers are Devs.

 

[Kamen]

I also am glad they have the stones to reverse themselves instead of digging in their heels and standing by a moronic decision.

My concern is that somebody with decision making authority at CCP had Kieron issue this idiotic proclamation in the first place.  Are the people making game impacting decisions even familiar with the state of their own game?  Weren't they aware that the contract system simply wasn't up to doing the job yet?  Is there nobody at CCP that would step up and stop somebody from stepping on their crank before they announced and implemented something this dumb?

This decision shouldn't have had to been reversed because anybody proposing it should have been laughed out of the fucking building for suggesting it.  The contract system still needs a massive amount of work before they should even consider closing the Sell Order forum down.  The decision maker should have known this.

[JoeTF]

Simond:
BoB never received anything from Aurora - you're mixing up scandals in your delusions. And for ISD? Please remind me which side of TGW is launching treadnaughts? Also, weren't a lot of personal information leaked from ISD on goon-friendly forum? (information about BOB members requested by members of GF, to be specific)
REally, in this case it should be you who ought to be asking the questions

Kamen:
 I wonder, how contract system should look like to replace the forums?

[ajax34i]

Are the people making game impacting decisions even familiar with the state of their own game?  Weren't they aware that the contract system simply wasn't up to doing the job yet?  Is there nobody at CCP that would step up and stop somebody from stepping on their crank before they announced and implemented something this dumb?

I was gonna comment that convenience and ease of use were never an EVE strong point; the devs fix bugs, balance combat, fight lag, and push out new tiers of gear, and that's about it.

But anyway, they used to be more subtle about how they controlled what the players do.  Now they just hit whatever with a huge nerf bat, and you better use the shitty thing they put in place that they want you to use.  They used to go for quality, now they don't.  Been a trend for a while.

[Kamen]

Kamen:
 I wonder, how contract system should look like to replace the forums?

It's a good start, and a huge improvement over the old escrow system, but it needs a lot of work before they can close the sell order forum down.  Things I would like to see improved/added:

1) All contracts currently don't show the end time accurately.
2) The ability to add a sniper rule to the auction doesn't exist.
3) Many items still aren't in the database for either the market or the contract system.
4) Bid increments are currently a mandatory 10% minimum increase.  The minimum bid increment should be set by the auction creator, or at least lowered.
5) Although you can view contracts in other regions you have to go to that region to bid/buy it.  I understand why they are doing it, but I think it's adding to the Jita problem.
6) People offering services such as research facilities, alliance creation, corp creation, etc need to be allowed to continue posting somewhere.
7) It costs too much IMO.  I don't mind paying some fees and taxes on sales but losing the refundable deposit if your contract doesn't get filled is painful for high end items and is another reason people weren't using it much for billion and up items.
8] I'd like to be able to set up searches to review completed sales and auctions in order to determine a rough value on items I don't deal with.

There's probably more, but I need some coffee.

[Arthur_Parker]

Simond:
BoB never received anything from Aurora - you're mixing up scandals in your delusions. And for ISD? Please remind me which side of TGW is launching treadnaughts? Also, weren't a lot of personal information leaked from ISD on goon-friendly forum? (information about BOB members requested by members of GF, to be specific)
REally, in this case it should be you who ought to be asking the questions

Kamen:
 I wonder, how contract system should look like to replace the forums?

No really, let's not go there.  K's site has all of it including logs and if his site is goon friendly now ,that's just because when he hacked the goonfleet forums (paid for by a BoB member) he found no CCP devs unlike BoB's forums.

[Endie]

Simond:
BoB never received anything from Aurora - you're mixing up scandals in your delusions.

Nice troll, but it doesn't work as well as it used to: we're pretty sanguine about the whole CCP scandal thing in GF these days, and tinfoilism tends to just be joking.  After all, we got titans nerfed, the const sov changes were very positive for us, the corrupt ties between devs and BoB have been scaled way back, the deeply compromised Aurora and ISD volunteer organisations with their close ties to our enemies are going, and we're steadily, relentlessly winning our war.  That's all going to make it all a bit harder to summon forth the threadnaught.