You are also paying with your time as well. If I obtain a skin after 4 hours of playing I could have also, in theory, spent those hours working and use the money for that to buy that skin (probably several).
Isn’t opportunity cost lovely? 
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Opportunity cost is cool and all but in EVE, it rarely take into account value of your played time like if you are actually enjoying yourself while doing the hours. If you actually are having a good time while grinding rats for example, how much $ per hours is that compared to working directly for RL $?
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Opportunity cost is definitely a factor in the labor-leisure trade off. So much so, that it is possible that as your pay rises you’ll actually work less.
As for playing the game it depends on the individuals valuation of “grinding”. If I like grinding, then yes, I might be just fine playing for 4-5 hours and then using the ISK to buy stuff in game vs. working and using the RL income to obtain ISK and other items for use in game.
Link that please.
I miss read the article. Estimate was at ~390000 subscribers in 2015 (no clue where I got the 150000 number from)
But here is the article that breaks down how the estimate was reached since ccp does not release subscriber numbers directly afaik. So it was extrapolated by the number of votes for CSM and the % of the player base who voted (numbers they do, or at least did release)
http://massivelyop.com/2015/04/19/eve-evolved-how-many-subscriptions-does-eve-have/
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Yeah, not 140,000
Makes a pretty significant difference in the made up calculations.
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Abstaining = not voting.
Or: staying home on election night.
The other alternative is to post about it on the forums, but nobody cares about forum noise until it stops making money or things start catching fire.
Not paying a sub is abstaining too.
Yup, so don’t buy it and send a signal…or more accurately don’t send a signal–i.e. you don’t want it, not at that price.
That’s a pretty ridiculous assertion to be making. The Skin costs CCP extra to make in the form of art and dev time, and the profits from Skins subsidize other development and help keep the game going.
To put it another way: This wouldn’t exist for you to be making ridiculous assertions about if CCP couldn’t sell it, because it wouldn’t be worth the time required to create it or the tech behind it.
Your claim is no less ridiculous. As far as I know creating wormhole space or the very complicated T3 cruiser system was no less hard to achieve for CCP, yet they did not start charging extra for that. Same goes for Dominion sov, which was a herculean task to pull through from the previous sov system or the introduction of the new T3D system. All things that required a lot of coding effort. Granted, those are actual gameplay relevant things in contrast to skins, but effort is certainly not a valid argument for the extra cost of these items. Next try?
They should make ships and modules you can only get in the NEX 
which is precisely why they didn’t charge extra for any of those things. the development was funded by subscriptions because gameplay relevant things affect every single person who plays. a cosmetic item that only really affects the people who use them, is payed for by the people who use them.
(even if you don’t personally play in wormholes, or fly t3’s the very fact that they exist does have an impact on gameplay)
That is not true either. I see the skins ingame, they even impact my graphics performance (be it negligible or not) I see them in the market. They affect me in the same way W-space does: I see it, I occasionally interact with it and otherwise I leave it alone.
But this was not about how things impact me or others, it was about the coding effort that goes into one functionality or another. And in that regard, the skin system was no less or more effort to program than other things CCP has done before, and keeps doing if you think about the citadel system.
That’s actually exactly the difference. They’re gameplay things, the sort of stuff that Skins subsidize. That’s exactly why SKINs exist, because it doesn’t cost more to do these than they make from them. That’s what “subsidize” means.
Charging extra for gameplay in a subscription MMO is sorta questionable but not without precedent either (WoW expansions for one), but purely cosmetic items being sold additionally are another thing entirely and quite normal in games for the last 10+ years now.
So thanks for poking a gaping hole in your own argument for me. Nice one there.
Also all of this gets more into personal preference than absolutely like “should” and “should not”. You are, as always, free not to play a game that’s going in a direction you don’t like.
Maybe an analogy would help you understand.
lets say you’ve checked into a swanky hotel, one that offers concierge service for an additional charge.
now not everyone needs a concierge, not everyone wants a concierge, and so for those who don’t want or need one, they simply don’t pay for one. this allows the hotel to offer the service to those who want it, make a little bit of extra money from their higher end clients. while still catering to those who don’t want to spend that extra money on a service they don’t need.
what you are demanding is that concierge service should be included, free of charge, on every room. because you did pay for the room after all, so obviously you deserve all of the extra services that the hotel has free of charge right? and you somehow think that this demand should be met without any increase on the price of the rooms.
you pay a sub for a swanky game, one that offers cosmetic skins for an additional charge.
now not everyone needs a skin, not everyone wants a skin, and so for those who dont want or need it they simply don’t pay for it. This allows ccp to offer cosmetic items to those who want them, and make a little bit of extra money from the “whales”. while still catering to the average player who doesn’t want to spend that extra money for something they don’t need.
Wow…
Okay, so CCP makes a base product: the server and the game in general. On top of it they add in some cosmetic aspects that cost additional money from the player if they want them. You are not required to purchase these. It is a voluntary transaction that makes both parties better off. You however are upset because you do not want to pay for the skin and instead want it with your initial purchase. On top of this you use a foolish cost based argument that the price is unfair. The problem with this is that price is not determined solely by costs. Price is determined by supply and demand, and as a result cost is but one factor in determining price. The other factor is demand or consumer preferences.
For example,what is the incremental change in costs to CCP to “make an additional 500 PLEX”? Very, very little.* The actual costs are probably less than $1, maybe even less than $0.25. But yet 500 PLEX sell for $19.95. Is CCP ripping people off considering how low the costs are? No. Because those same 500 PLEX also represents a subscription which is $14.95/month. So they are going to sell it for at least that much (setting aside additional bulk discounts). Because if they sell it for less everyone will switch to PLEX. Further, given that PLEX allow for more benefits than just accessing the game it costs a bit more.
In fact, the cost of keeping the servers running is probably less than $14.95/month. Setting aside development costs for new content for the moment, CCP probably should not charge a price at marginal cost because of all of the capital investment…including human capital investment. That is going to need a stream of income to compensate. Further, it also sends a signal to other investors in terms of what they can expect as a return on their investment as well.
So this notion that all we need to do is look at the costs is the argument the economically ignorant.
Or to see it more simply, suppose I want to make 12 oz. cups coffee and sell them. Suppose I set up the most lavish coffee shop that has all sorts of really spiffy things in it. And further suppose that my incremental cost for an additional cup of coffee (see the note below) is $50 because of my lavish coffee shop…should I expect people to pay that price? When they balk and say, “What that is a ridiculous price!” Should I tell them they are being ridiculous since my costs are so high due to my lavish coffee shop? No. Just because I was foolish and incurred those costs does not mean I am entitled to charge any price and actually have customers pay it.
*The notion of incremental change to costs given an incremental change in output is known as marginal cost in economics. And one result is that in a competitive market prices will equal marginal cost. However, economist and Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase wrote an article in 1946 that argued that prices equal to marginal cost are not always the best price. Coase argued that a price above marginal cost conveys additional information about the value of the capital invested in the product to make the good available in the first place.
You’re speaking to people who grew up with “base product” meaning “whole product”, not “product we cut down so we could sell the rest of it for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in 10000 pieces instead of putting the pieces out in the game world for people to just find.”
I seem to remember describing how everything in the game affects gameplay, including cosmetics. Kinda hard to quantify on a spreadsheet, though.
Really? When were skins introduced? The base product did not come with skins. Skins have been added so nothing has been cut down.
The color scheme on your ship is means nothing to anyone really but you, but if you want to continue to believe something different that is fine.
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You can buy skins for ISK so I don’t see why people are complaining. Skins (and other cosmetics) have always been prestige items in other MMOs. They’re entirely optional, and in Eve’s case, purchasable with ingame ISK. No-one’s locked out.
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correct me if i am wrong isn’t whole idea of skins for ships a cash grab…literally
further more no one is forcing you to buy it nor does it benefit user further than vanity buff,
so what is a problem here?
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