Disappointment in EVE's reimbursment policy

Ander·

First I'd like to say that CCP is actually the only MMO I've played where they actually return items lost due to bugs and other issues, this does however not mean that CCP can't improve even more.

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Ever had one of those days whenever you undock you seem to lose a ship?
Well, I had. Recently I made a study about how PVP:ers get neglected while NPC:ers seem to get their ship reimbursed everytime.

I petitioned a GM and explicity told him to watch how I lost ships due to serverside lag. (Note I had no packetloss)
Headed into enemy territory and jumped in waiting to get ganked.

Ship 1:
Thorax - aligned to belt and clicking warp when attacked and not scrambled.
Result: Warping... warping... warping... yet never entering high speed though the armor and shield seems to be calculating damage just fine.

Ship 2:
Taranis - mwd running heading to station to dock.
Result: 0m from station, docking... no? Dead ship

Ship 3:
Ares - aligned to star, click warp.
Result: Warping? Well.. sure said warping for 30 seconds..

Ship 4:
Thorax - aligned to star yet again, click warp.
Result: Hell no. Warping is for wussies according to eve-server.

GM's answer in short: "there's some serverside lag" - "We have high load on the server right now." "We cant reimburse you since the server only has high load but isnt flagged as critical" - "The new server upgrades will hopefully solve these problems".

So the GM acknowledge there's issues with the server. High load and so on.

Next thing I do is head down for NPC:ing. First I headed into a complex during the same time of day with an equal amount of players online with my battleship.
I file the exact same complaint once I lost a ship.

While NPC:ing ...
Ship 1:
Megathron - aligned to star taking heavy damage at an asteroidfield.
Result: Warping... warping forever it seems yet never jumping into speed.
GM response: "Thank you for your mail and I´m sorry for this late reply.
I´m sorry to hear about your inconvenience. I´ve replaced your ship to your current location"

Ship 2:
Megathron - ganked by rats in complex
Result: Never warped out yet the speed-bar said "Warping" for good over 30 seconds.
GM response: "Thank you for support. Ship reimbursed. "

Ship 3:
Enyo - same issue as above.
Result: Guess
GM response: "I'm sorry for the late reply.

Ship reimbursed."

My conclusion being that EVE does NOT reimburse ships in PVP battle unless their logs show that there has been a clear fault. However, NPC'ers and non PVP:ers have a MUCH MUCH higher frequency of reimburse accepts.
In this test I've had 100% succesrate over the past months to recieve my ships back while doing non PVP. However, once I've been involved in PVP the succesrate crept to 0% even though the events, lag and issues have been the same.

CCP - please stop neglecting PVP:ers, we lose ships to bugs and lag too you know!
The answers I've recieved in return from you have been along the lines of "we cant reimburse everyone since then it would mean many people might exploit this".

CCP, in my opinion it doesnt matter if you're a PVP:er or an NPC:er. Both playertype lose as much or gain as much by getting reimbursed.
Both player-types still lose the items that were dropped into the "deathcan", NPC'ers have much better chances of going back in a small ship to try get the stuff back while PVP:ers often get looted right-away.

Please look over your reimbursment policies and make a harmonized system for both PVP:ers and NPC:ers, as it is now. Clearly your methods today on deciding if a reimbursment claim will be accepted differ between PVP and NPC:ing!

Note: GM's arent quoted by exact words or phrases, but the result.

5 Comments

Lyticus·

Agreed, I once lost an apoc to npcs and not being able to warp, got it back easily, then the other day I lost a Vengeance to two other frigs (I was dampened and nossed, but had a cap booster so I was tanking them easily while backup arrived) but then suddenly I couldnt activate any modules and I just had to sit there and watch my ship die.

Hippo117·

They refused to replace my moa when i lost it to a drone BS because the servers showed no signs of lag, when i had he exact same situations as you...

Ander·

Were you warpscrambled? Were you aligned to a star?
Had you been in combat with non-NPC's recently?

Xenios Alfar·

I lost my armageddon to eve-client freezing up just as i was licking warp. i was ligned and 6bs's jumped into me. and me being outlaw you can imagine.

thelung187·

Completely agree, the only ship I recall that I ever got returned was a taranis lost during the Titan event, which was a complete and utter clusterfuck anyways. Excellent post though, this definitely should be posted on the eve forums.

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