If your post hadn’t been blatently wrong I wouldn’t have done a FTFY.
Try reading my post before you dismiss it so blithely, you may learn something.
Solstice
Freeloader Omegas don’t spend any money with CCP.
This is why they’re interesting in a thread about growing CCP’s income.
Two basic principles:
- If people want something enough they’ll pay for it. And people who take the time to earn billions of ISK definitely want to play EVE.
- If people (specifically, those who sell PLEX for ISK) are currently paying regularly for something they value, they are reasonably close to their maximum expenditure for what they’re getting.
Deny either one and you can pretend things are different. You really really want the first to be false - but of course it’s not /lol.
They people who couldn’t get past the difference in retail price if a subscription and a player-month worth of PLEX were actually closer to reality than you 
They are not freeloading, FFS.
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It’s a Balos/Salvos/Veers type, always right, never wrong; and god forbid you try to break their bubble with facts.
I’m not sure if it’s wilful ignorance, tactical stupidity or just someone who is incredibly arrogant, despite their ignorance.
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Freeloading Omegas are playing CCP’s game, but they’re not paying CCP to do so.
They’re certainly leeching off somebody.
Not really. They are exchanging virtual currency with another player for game time. CCP provides a channel by which two players can engage in a mutually agreeable transaction via PLEX - one player gets game time and one gets ISK. They do this so to make sure the real-world money of this RMT trade ends up in their bank accounts, and they even have managed to tack on a premium over the normal cost of a subscription.
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Pedro
This thread has been in a loop for a while, but your post is rational and polite, so here’s an answer
You’ve shared the narrative that makes the Freeloading Omegas feel good. But what it really describes is them optimizing their play, given the game as CCP provides it today.
Of course they can’t be criticized for playing well …
… but still, they don’t pay CCP for doing so:
- The thread has “forced” me, somewhat reluctantly, into using “Freeloaders”. It’s accurate, but a few more rational, polite posts early on and I’d have looked for something a little softer. If it had been even less polite I’d have gone with something closer to “parasite”
- It’s very likely CCP really is leaving money on the table, though maybe not a huge amount. I think it’s a safe claim that most Freeloading Omegas would pay a modest amount in RL money (say 15-20 Euro per player-month) to play EVE
- That would not directly affect the propensity of PLEX-for-ISK sellers to exchange RL money for in-game “stuff”. i.e. if CCP could figure out a way to make this work IRL (the details might be complicated), this group would happily spend the same amount of RL money for the same “EVE stuff”
BTW the new owners will already have people looking at this kind of thing (revenue, profit, costs, pricing strategy, “cash cow” or growth through improvement etc etc). Nothing players say here will change that.
It is still not freeloading. You are Salvos, aren’t you?
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I don’t see how CCP is leaving money on the table. Players can still buy subscriptions but PLEX was an innovative way at the time to capture back some of the non-sanctioned RMT profits by allowing players to trade game time for ISK, but not real cash for ISK. So much so that others in the industry mimicked it, including Blizzard, to capture some of the cash being exchanged in the illicit currency markets.
I’ll concede that I don’t have any insight into CCP’s financials, nor can I know how history would have played out if they never implemented sanctioned RMT, but I don’t see how CCP they could have done it any other way and still claim their game a sandbox. You can say there is some “complicated” way, but if CCP just started selling ISK directly to players, there would be rioting and mass unsubscriptions, even today when the player base is used to being aggressively milked.
From a game design view, I agree the game would be more ‘pure’ if it was only monetized by subscription, and capped at one login at a time for that matter. But if you are going to allow players to buy in-game power legally to undermine the cheaters, then allowing them to trade power for someone paying their game time seems the least intrusive to the sanctity of your game to me.
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The “money on the table” assertion is based n looking at the game from a different perspective than “playing the game well”.
I haven’t said they’re stealing for example, because clearly they aren’t. They’re playing the game well, and this allows them to do so withoutout paying CCP anything.
But there’s another perspective: what are the current players willing to pay in order to play EVE?
It’s very difficult to get a complete and precise answer to that (this is why I linked wikipedia: “differential pricing” above). But parts of it are easy to answer. One part is:
- PLEX for ISK sellers are happy to spend the RL cash they uses to buy PLEX from CCP. That amount won’t change if other players pay more
- And the one from my post above: ISK for PLEX sellers don’t pay CCP any real life cash, but would be prepared to do so if CCP can figure out a practical way to charge them. i.e. there’s “money on the table”
Clearly there’s also “money on the table” with Alphas, but:
- EVE players as a group seem to have a reasonably accurate view of that
- One of the weaknesses of the EVE forums is that it’s impractical to have a useful discussions about new player retention. In principle it would be interesting, but in practice they never are.
BTW I ran a test on the topic of retention (the “self destruct device” thread had two objectives). “Denial due to survivor bias” ganked “rational discussion” yet again
Your whole idea relies on people being willing to pay the extra money to be able to get omega with PLEX. Most will just quit if CCP added that charge.
There is no extra money being left uncollected. There are time rich, but RL-money poor players who use their time to grind ISK and then get omega with PLEX. This allows those who are time-poor, but RL-money rich players to skip the grind for ISK by using RL-money to purchase PLEX and sell that on the market. Most of those who use PLEX for omega do it because they don’t have the funds for it, or they don’t want to use their money for it. Adding an extra cost will drive those players from the game, leading to less players, less PLEX being bought with ISK and to less PLEX being sold by CCP.
Some will quit. But how many?
Not 100%. Not 0%. And if you ask any individual they’ll claim 100% 
CCP might have data.
CCP would have to quantify this to figure out of they would get more money or not.
The interesting question (relative to the quote above) is “what proportion should we use instead of “Most””? You can’t know it’s more than 50%. I can’t know if it’s small enough that there would be a net gain for CCP.
TBH I think the opportunity for an interesting discussion here to estimate the likely behavior of ISK-for-PLEX buyers has been lost 
If there ever was such an opportunity - this kind if thing has never been a strength of the EVE forums.
The reason people use PLEX for omega-time : They can play the game without paying real money.
You want to add a real money charge to allow people to use PLEX for omega
End result: Less players and less PLEX being used and bought. CCP loses money.
That is the logical result of your idea.
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Wander
The first two lines are correct.
This is an assertion:
You can’t prove CCP will lose money, but nor can I prove they’ll earn more money.
He/she definitely isn’t Salvos. Most likely a He, though. Definitely someone who sees himself on a high horse, but without the usual issues exposing some deeper feelings of powerlessness or, like Salvos, weapons grade autism. This one is a bit different, yet just as ignorant as the rest.
In any case, though, is he just the next random guy who refuses to learn and rather lives in a world where Ignorance is Strength and his pseudo individuality (see: redefining words and, even worse, trying making it look like he doesn’t) trumps everything else. The only difference to others is that this one does not actually explode in rage fits, but the rest is pretty much the same.
He doesn’t even give his character a face, which makes him even less credible than he already is … thanks to his own posts. Still evaluating the personality behind.
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If people use PLEX for omega because they don’t want to use real money or cannot use real money for omega and you force them to have to spend money for it, the end result would be less players using PLEX for omega. That is pretty logical result for the change.
If PLEX is used less, it will also be bought less from CCP, which will result in less money for CCP. Also pretty logical conclusion.
Thank you for at least admitting that your idea “might” not work.
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This is a strong assumption. Yet the thread is clearly about “growing CCP’s income” (read the title).
You need to think it through.
This is false. Don’t do that again.
Or else what?
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That is you admitting that your idea might not work. What I said is not false.
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Are unfamiliar with the primary meaning of the word “prove”?
I hope it hasn’t gone the way of “unique” while my back was turned. It’s always a shame when illiterates remove useful words from the language