An Open Letter to CCP from Current and Former CSM Members on the "Prospector Pack"

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Regina_Rockbound

Exactly. That’s why this pack is good for everyone. New players can experiment for $10 or $20 - way less than when he decides to go Omega - older characters can always use the pack if they want to and CCP get to pay their employees for another month.
The alternative is the servers shutting down, no one wants that.

That’s not the alternative. We don’t have an issue with monetization in general, and much of the current monetization, whether it’s plex or cosmetics, is fine. I have an issue with the SP sales, but not as big of an issue as I do with them selling fitted ships.

They do not have to do this. Their financials are not that bad. They’re still bringing in $15+ million a quarter, and the trend is stable. That’s why PA bought them, they are a steady revenue producer. As noted before and as I’ve been saying forever, there is a lot of money being actively left on the table because CCP won’t focus on providing existing players with monetized things they want, rather than focusing all their energy on conversion rates of FTP to paid new players.

@Loki_Yamaguchi

The frustrating thing for me is that while this is a (tiny) issue, protests like these take away from when we actually do have a “crossing the red-line” issue such as the selling of gold ammo (as an easy example). If CCP offers +10% damage for gold ammo next July and the community rightfully freaks-out, are you going to write yet another open-letter? Wont that make this letter seem a wee bit petty and misplaced?

Open letters are big guns and they need to be used wisely…was this really that big of an issue all things considered?

Yes, this is that big of an issue. This issue is one small stutterstep removed from gold ammo. That’s why we went this route. Trust me, I wouldn’t have wasted my time on this if I thought this wasn’t that important. We have seen the trajectory of monetization, and they have crossed the line. We needed to hit hard and fast to make it clear they were going too far, if only to stop us from ever getting to gold ammo. That was where this was headed. If a retriever is okay, why not a skiff? Why not a caracal? Why not a Megathron? Why not a Naglfar? It doesn’t stop. And if you use a modified but-the-children argument, which is all “this is to benefit new players” really is, they can justify all kinds of game breaking stuff.

We would not be doing our jobs if we let this go, and given the overwhelming support for the letter compared to those who think what CCP is doing is fine, I think we made the right call.

[Cherry_Crush_MaFannyOot]

But you are legit saying you are fine with T2BPO, you are legit saying that aren’t you? That T2BPO are and were fine being introduced to this game?

Just to clarify.

[Mr_Epeen]

@Loki_Yamaguchi

open-letter

It’s been my experience, in real life as well as internet spaceships, that open letters are the bailiwick of narcissistic attention whores.

If you want to say something, then say it without all the hand waving “look at me” BS.

Mr Epeen

[Brisc_Rubal]

@Cherry_Crush_MaFannyOot

But you are legit saying you are fine with T2BPO, you are legit saying that aren’t you? That T2BPO are and were fine being introduced to this game?

Just to clarify.

If you are asking if I was okay with the T20 scandal? Of course not. If you are asking if I was okay with CCP people in big alliances giving benefits to those alliances at the expense of other players? Of course not. Did I like the lottery system they had to give these out? Not really, I think they could have come up with something a bit better.

If you are asking if T2BPOs should be in the game at all? I don’t see what is insanely awful about that. Be that as it may, those things have been in the game so long that there is literally no reason to complain about them anymore and there is no way they could be removed. You might as well argue they should remove anomalies or moon mining.

@Mr_Epeen

It’s been my experience, in real life as well as internet spaceships, that open letters are the bailiwick of narcissistic attention whores.

Then you don’t have much experience, because these are common ways to generate public pressure on the letter’s recipient, and I’ve done these as part of my job successfully dozens of times, and have seen thousands of other examples of where they work.

Now will the two of you please stop derailing the thread with non-germane nonsense?

[Loki_Yamaguchi]

Ok I see your point but still respectfully disagree with it because as you put it, this was just a “small stutterstep” and we’re still pretty far away from a gold ammo situation (I bloody hope).

If and when CCP puts us in a DEFCON 5 gold ammo situation, I’ll back you 100% but until then I must remain one of those voices in the minority that doesn’t really have any issues with this.

Thanks your you time and efforts to make EVE great.

/o

ps. no need to reply to this unless you really want to

[Regina_Rockbound]

@Brisc_Rubal

That’s not the alternative. We don’t have an issue with monetization in general, and much of the current monetization, whether it’s plex or cosmetics, is fine. I have an issue with the SP sales, but not as big of an issue as I do with them selling fitted ships.

I think the hysteria over this pack doesn’t match the potential effects on the game which, in my opinion, are negligible.
I can understand the slippery-slope argument but it’s not like anyone is putting a gun to anyone’s head. It doesn’t pop up in-game in an annoying way, it’s just there for anyone who has $$ to spend.
Monetization isn’t an obligation on the player.

So many players claim to love EVE yet they bark as soon as CCP makes a penny. Gimme a break.

As for the argument that packs like these would disrupt the “player-driven” Market, well, it would be true if there actually were a player-driven Market, which isn’t the reality of on-line games. Everything can be manipulated by developers, even a game’s market.

And as to P2W, one may be ablento get a ship, it doesn’t mean he knows how to fly it.

[Regina_Rockbound]

@Mr_Epeen

open letters are the bailiwick of narcissistic attention whores.

roflmfao

[Suki_Vokkonen]

@Brisc_Rubal Isn’t it the only way players can get the Mining Barge skillbook now? Maybe we have to expect new packs for the exhumers, and the Gallente and Minmatar industrial ships…

[Riddich_Falcon]

CCP doesn’t care about new players in this instance… they want whales to multibox retrievers. And they are giving them an easy way to do it. Forgive me if it’s already been said there is too many replies to read but if there was another reason than that for it then there would be a ton more packs out for the other major professions.

Anyway. Signed.

[Kikusaku]

I support this message.

I saw this sale and all I could do was say WTF

[Arrendis]

@Erik_Rebar

Out of thin air? Then when you kill a rat the Isk you get has to come from a player?
And as someone said before they can just source the ship form the nearest market to the player.

Yes, sourcing it that way would be conjuring the ISK out of thin air.

Rat bounties conjure ISK in exchange for PvE gameplay.

@Erik_Rebar

Plex and Sp injectors: CCP already ‘crossed the line’. Eve is already P2W. All your indignation came too late, years too late.

That presumes the indignation didn’t accompany those, too. It did, and CCP responded to it by saying ‘well, we won’t sell SP’. Then ‘we won’t sell actual ships’. Then ‘we won’t sell fitted ships’.

Each time, assurances were given, promises made. And each time, those promises have been broken.

Are you really saying that players shouldn’t continue to try to hold CCP to their word? That as soon as one offense happened, everyone should just give up, bend over, and ‘try to enjoy it’, as a certain Mr. Regan might put it?

Do you give that sort of advice to people trying to curb abuses and excesses outside of a computer game, too? ‘This thing you dislike happened even though you fought to prevent it, so you no longer have any grounds to ■■■■■ about other things you don’t like’?

[Arrendis]

@Cherry_Crush_MaFannyOot

1800 as a potential customer, CCP will know rougthly how many of these players have previously made a cash purchase of skins, I’m gonna say 200 of em

Then you’re a fool, and horribly low-balling. 200 SKINs out of 1800 players? More like 3600 SKINs, low-end.

@Cherry_Crush_MaFannyOot

I’m gonna optimistic and give you another 100 coz ALLIANCE SKIN! so you are left with 300 people to custom tailor a skin for,

So, let’s say you have 300 people who are willing to buy Alliance SKINs for $20 each. Personally, I fly Augorors, Basilisks, Exequorors, Guardians, Oneiroi, Ospreys, Scimitars, Scythes, Nidhoggurs, Lifs, Archons, Apostles, Minokawa, my Hel, Scaplels, Kirin, 4 different interdictors, HICs, at least 4 different HAC hulls, at least 3 types of T3C (not a fan of the Proteus, really)…

So, off the top of my head, that’s 31 SKINs I’d need to pick up. Would I spend the $620 all at once? No… but I’ll spend it. On one character. I’ve got 185 SKINs on just the one alt I can be bothered looking at. All of them either I paid for with cash, or I used ISK to buy them… from someone who bought them with cash. So CCP got paid, either way.

So, 300 of those? $186,000? On just 1 Alt each?

Yeah, I can totally see why CCP wouldn’t want to waste time on that kind of chump change.

$14,944,586.72 That’s roughly what EVE’s entire IP (including Gunjack, EVE Echoes, any licensing deals, etc etc) raked in last quarter, according to the Pearl Abyss Investor Earnings Call for Q42021.

If 10,000 players between the 4 biggest alliances were to all buy $20 Alliance SKINs for each of 10 hulls they fly, that right there is $2,000,000. 1 SKIN, bumping the EVE IP’s profits by almost 15%.

Make it 20,000 players between those 4 (not even difficult) for each of 20 hulls, and it’s a 60% boost. Spread it out among the next few quarters for each of 30 hulls, and you get reasonably sustained income that accounts for a very noticeable chunk of the IP’s revenue… off of one SKIN.

[Carmanah]

/signed.

Call it a slippery slope, call it a sacred cow, call it whatever. In my opinion what this is is a market taste test and if enough people nibble on what CCP is selling everyone here should be able to see the writing on the wall: it won’t be the last, and it won’t be the least of the examples we all look back on.

[Loki_Yamaguchi]

@Riddich_Falcon

they want whales to multibox retrievers

Yes, because that’s the endgame for whales…Retrievers…

[Flamespar]

I remember the good old days when all we had to worry about was an expensive monocle with zero gameplay benefit.

It seems like it was the lesser evil now …

[Cilla_Cybin]

@Regina_Rockbound

I can understand the slippery-slope argument but it’s not like anyone is putting a gun to anyone’s head. It doesn’t pop up in-game in an annoying way, it’s just there for anyone who has $$ to spend.

The slippery slope is not the monetization of fitted ships in itself, but the fact that the entire game rests on skills that include ship fittings. Packs that include fitted ships dis-incentivize learning those skills.

[Mr_Epeen]

@Cilla_Cybin

The slippery slope is not the monetization of fitted ships in itself, but the fact that the entire game rests on skills that include ship fittings. Packs that include fitted ships dis-incentivize learning those skills

If by learning you mean buying injectors and loading up the skills, then sure. But if you are going to use the slippery slope argument, that ship has sailed.

You can inject the skills for a Retriever faster than it takes to install the pack.

Mr Epeen

[Prospektor_Schipplock]

./signed