New Recruitment Program Can of Something

CCP have announced that they will be changing the recruitment rewards program:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/pbk30q/new-recruitment-program-kicks-off-on-july-11

The basic concept of the recruitment program is that if you introduce a player to EVE who subsequently subscribes, you can get paid a kickback from CCP.  You identify the players you recruit by having them click on a personalised recruitment URL.  (You will often see them on EVE Blogs, YouTube Channels, Twitch Streams etc.)  The program has changed over time, but the most recent rewards have been either 30 days of game time or 500 PLEX (currently worth around 1.6B ISK).  The person who subscribes at some point after clicking on your link also gets some additional rewards, which I think are Skill points at the moment.

I don’t recall using the system myself – but I believe people have used the system when creating their own alts, and I’ve heard plenty of comments over the years to suggest it is gamed by SP Farmers / Botters.

I wouldn’t have thought much about this change, but I noticed CCP said they were “super excited”, and that they had given very little notice of the change.  It made me wonder if they were trying to hype up something they anticipated a crap storm over, or maybe it was done to try and minimise the gaming of the old system.  I headed off to look at the related forum thread to see if there was anything interesting to read:

https://forums.eveonline.com/t/dev-blog-new-recruitment-program-kicks-off-on-july-11/87784

The commentary in the thread (at least so far) wasn’t too overwhelming.  There were remarks about how the old system was gamed, that the suggested rewards sounded underwhelming, and that it was not clear what happened after the initial 40 referrals were done in the new system, which could impact some people.  For that last point, it was said some individuals generated substantially more than 40 referrals (such as I guess EVE famous content creators), and would it make such people less inclined to recruit in future?

It is interesting to consider just what is classified as recruitment, and how much wealth some players generated via this mechanism.

Elsewhere in the forum topic there was the expected “I can not in good conscience recommend EVE” / “You must fix ‘A B C’ before I can recommend EVE” posts, and then the obvious trolling replies.

One particular troll stood out for an interesting name:

https://forums.eveonline.com/u/The_Dunning_Kruger

The definition (that they helpfully linked too):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

“..a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.”

Given the quality of their trolling, this was a great name if they meant it as a self-deprecating jibe.

Also interesting was this:

These were other forum users who habitually liked The_Dunning_Kruger’s posts, and the main users he liked the posts of.  It looks like an obvious circle jerk.  I assumed they might have all been from a flock of Trolls (what do you call a group of trolls?), but only one of the other ones regularly troll posted.  A couple actually posted a high volume of inane nothingness which you would assume a troll would hate.  I’m not sure of the end goal – collecting forum badges?

There is just so much going on in EVE that you wouldn’t know about..

Broken Eggs

The July 2018 release is scheduled for Tuesday. Reading through the patch notes..

https://www.eveonline.com/article/pbgg7h/patch-notes-for-july-2018-release

.. and I noticed this:

“The standings penalty for podkilling a player in an NPC corp has been reduced significantly”

My immediate thought was why was CCP was making it less costly to pod players in NPC corps!?  Then I realised the penalty reduction was for NPC Corp standings, and nothing to do with Security that I had mindlessly thought.  I wasn’t aware, but if you pod a player in an NPC corp when you are not free to do so, you took a massive standings penalty against that NPC corp.  I can see it impacting the White Knights just as much as the Griefers in game, so probably a worthwhile change to I assume a very old mechanic.

I also noticed this:

“In high/low security space, scooping an unanchored structure that does not belong to your own corp is now considered a suspect act. It will require you to set your safety accordingly, and will trigger a suspect timer.”

What!?  So that was how so many people stole unanchoring structures, because whomever scooped it first was protected by the EVE security system.  What a horrible design choice.  Glad they are changing it.  (Even if I wasn’t aware of it in the first place.)

Last – there is a CCP developer video about the release.  I think it was one of their more professional and well done ones.

Oh, how long have they been signing off with “Fly Free” instead of “Fly Safe”?

Back

And I am back online.

It took 15 days of disruption and outages to move from ADSL2 to FTTC (Fibre to the Curb) Internet. In the end my feedback (complaining) got to the right person at my ISP, who gave the issue to the right technicians, who within a couple hours had fixed something behind the scenes and we had the new Internet access finally working.

It was a frustrating experience – primarily due to an offshore helpdesk. They were quick to answer the phone, relatively easy to understand, and well scripted – but completely hopeless once you strayed from that script.

Anyway, to celebrate I purchased the three basic Precursor ship skillbooks for Frigate, Cruiser and Battleship, and the three basic Precursor skillbooks for small, medium and large weapons.  338M ISK later..

I then ran into an unexpected nuisance. I had filled my Training queue with more than 600 days of training. Soon into adding these new skills I was told I had hit the maximum number of entries in the Training Queue – 50. I had to go delete lots of my long-term training picks to fit in the 24 entries related to getting these new skills all to rank IV.

Hunting Partner

My father has given up on Duck Hunting and has not been out the last couple seasons. While his hunting retirement relates to health issues, it occurred without an announcement. I had to piece things together from his rude disinterest and disparaging comments when I discussed going hunting with him.

It has had an impact on our relationship. My father is a selfish cantankerous man with anxiety issues and a penchant for insular views that he rudely pushes. He has greatly influenced the person I am today – through a long list of actions and behaviours of his that I’ve sworn never to mimic. Hunting was the way we stayed connected. I put up with him more than I might naturally be inclined, and he wasn’t quite as abrasive around me. Without hunting I am sure I would have had an estranged relationship with him from my teenage years.

I have been hurt by the change in him – but as I think I might have already mentioned – someone did offer the explanation that he might be grieving over the loss of his hunting. Others suggest his increase hostility and more erratic behaviour might be the beginnings of dementia.

Now, after 35 odd years of almost always hunting with my father, I am having to hunt on my own.

Hunting on your own is a lot harder. Two people can scout more locations, keep each other motivated, keep each other alert on the long drives, share resources, work together in the field, discuss the decisions that must be made, and see the highs and lows and be part of each other’s stories. Two people is also a lot safer.

Hunting solo you need to be better prepared, more aware of your limitations, keep yourself motivated, and understand those special moments – a brilliant Sunrise, and beautiful double taken over decoys, won’t ever be truly shared.

…

Yes, there is an obvious EVE analogy in there. I’m clearing out some recent half-finished posts from my blog notes that I figure I won’t ever finish, but there seemed enough of this one to post anyway.

Turning ugly

This WordPress site was created back in January 2011. In August 2012 I spent $60 to remove ads and allow some custom changes to the theme for 12 months. I spent the same in 2013 and 2014. In 2015 the cost went up to $78 a year to achieve the same thing. I paid that, then again in 2016 and 2017. This year WordPress has moved to site plans. To remove ads and keep the same customisation choices will now cost $120.

I can’t justify spending that much for my own vanity – just to have things looking a little neater.

I’ll see what I can do – but if you are one of the few regular visitors here, I apologise that things are likely to shortly turn ugly.

My internet access woes continue. It has been two weeks today. I received a FTTC Network Connection Device for the house. It is meant to connect over my old Copper phone line to and power a FTTdp device in the phone pit down the street. The connection behind the FTTdp is Fibre. Unfortunately, the NCD hasn’t been able to establish an initial connection. Someone is scheduled to come and look at the issue today. Meanwhile we still have no phone, and unreliable and very slow Internet.

I did risk undocking the other day and managed to get to Jita. Hazard a guess as to what I was doing? Yes, that’s right – picking up a few ship skins.