CCP and the Cash-Money-Milking

Communications Center General Discussion
1

Hello CCP
after the Expert Systems have been announced and now introduced, and the 40 € package for 1.5 mil SP rolled out, I saw much outrage on Rededit, also here, also in ingame chat. Much of what was mentioned there is, unfortunately true.

But also i understand, what many don’t want or fail to understand, that you are a company that needs to make money. Hardware must be paid, salaries must be paid, rented rooms be paid, janitors be paid, and so on. Any company, also the one I am working for and that pays my salary, only survives about making money.

But then why do you fail to bring in a money marked search, looked for, wanted for, by lot of players? I am speaking of the SKIN market.
Lot of skins like “Blue Tiger”, “Krusual”, “Nefantar”, “Ghostbird”, “Serpentis”, many more, were discontinued and removed from PLEX Store even before I started to play the game.
Some were still there but in the beginning I failed to unterstand that PLEX store principle and that digital items, that needed no warehouse to store, no fabrication plant to be created, could or would be removed.

So I pledge for:
Bring in those skin lines. I am waiting now since more than 2 years for certain skin lines.
What I will NOT do is:

  • putting money into the game for Expert Systems. I am Omega and my training speed is more then suffice
  • putting money into for direct skill package. Again I am Omega and my training speed is suffice. Anyway paying 3.5 times the amount for less SP gain then I get with my monthly omega (+ training implants) I considere as ridiculous. I have a family to support, a bank credit for a house to pay off, and don’t earn riches with my job.
  • buying skins from the player market … please, this is RIDICOLOUS, seeing a skin once worth 55 Plex now being sold for 3 Billion ISK (equals 1100 Plex) . It is impossible for me to even make that much ISK in one month (remember: job, familiy, and so only being a casual gamer)

But : I have a certain budget available of around 500 € per year for hobby expenses. Be it gaming, be it model ships, be it something else. And i would INSTANTLY putting money into the game for buying of complete skin lines for my chars … complete Blue Tiger skin line for my caldari char, complete Serpentis skin line for my gallente char, and so on.

Then … if you CCP want to grab cash do it with something reasonable. Bring in the Skin lines. Maybe have one fixed/new skin line per faction as general available for many month (like that beige-yellow Zendo-skin from Caldari) but then also a second skin in some monthly rotation (e.g. March+April: Blue Tiger, Mai + June: Ghostbird, July + August: Raata Sunset, September + October: Lai Dai, and so on)

By this give also new players, newbros, give returning players, a change to aquire skins for their ships.

If you fear to overload the player marked … make those skin lines bound and automatic activated for a char when redeeming them. So also the market in general should not be influenced that much.

Best regards
Fleur Lovejoy …

6 Likes
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Not a terrible idea, thanks for the post appreciated. o7 capsuleer.

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The increasing trend for monetization/microtransactions worry me.

PLEX was good. It was a measure against RMT. It was essentially a way for players to come to the arrangement of: “I’ll trade you some of my time at work for some of your time in the game. I’ll help pay your sub at a mark up if you help pay for my ships.” And CCP made a few extra bucks off each sub paid this way.

MCT was probably okay although I’ve never used it (I just paused my main to train PI alts, was no problem).

SKINs and cosmetics are okay but a lot of the styles coming out really don’t feel like they fit in the game (bright colors and stuff).

But all this newer stuff with injectors and buying SP from CCP? No, this is going in a bad direction. It’s already had a hugely negative impact on the game.

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In the business world, this is known as CCP experiencing a lot of vertical pressure to increase their cash flow. That pressure, by effect, will be transmitted by CCP management directly to the customers’ udders.

Basically, they’ve been screwing up their game for the past decade, and recent measures to reverse its decline aren’t working quickly enough (if at all, sadly), and they need money right now. The problem is that they’re not working as hard to secure new players as they are to create new revenue streams, so I’m not entirely sure who’s going to buy these “expert systems” from them.

I used to effortlessly recruit 2-3 players a month into this game, but since I started playing again about a year ago, I haven’t been able to convince even one individual to give EVE a shot. Outside of these and Reddit’s fanboy forums, this is known as “that P2W meme space game” that everyone is waiting for to die.

CCP always relied on their game selling itself by word of mouth, and now that it doesn’t anymore, they have no clue how to present and market it to potential customers.

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If people would stop buying all this ■■■■, PA would stop selling it.

/thread

Mr Epeen :sunglasses:

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:laughing: It’s SO freakin ridiculous it makes me laugh out loud. Whoever buys skins for billions, I have a bridge to sell in the Sahara.

That’s pretty sad state of affairs.

If they would just start by fixing long-standing issues and then make the game more fun ( better, longer missions, asteroids belts with actually asteroids in them, get rid of those mining NPC’s, better, more accessible PvP modules so people don’t have to wait a year to give a good fight, and I mean fight! not an execution, more systems, more ships with movable parts…

1 Like
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While those things would help with long-term retention and player satisfaction, they aren’t factors that get people’s feet in the door and get them to stay long enough to get attached to the game.

In order to do that, they have to rework the new player experience in a way that accomplishes two goals:

  1. Makes the initial learning process intuitive and progressive in a way that doesn’t discourage new players from logging in way before any other factors like PvP and corporate recruitment become a consideration.
  2. Creates a sense of iterative progression and achievement (for example, by having players start out in a frigate, and throughout the duration of the tutorial having them progress to a cruiser, with very tangible displays of increased skills and power, such as by having them initially lose a fight to a particular tutorial NPC, and then having them come back in a stronger ship and winning).

What do new players get instead? Massive flashing messages everywhere telling them “SPEED UP YOUR TRAINING - BUY NOW!”

They’re really putting the cart before the horse by trying to get players to invest large sums of money into the game before even getting attached to it. And I kind of get it; their boardroom meetings between each other and their PA handlers probably consist of shouting the word “money” at each other in various forms of intonation and inflection.

But there won’t be any money until they get people playing their game again, and talking about their game again, which won’t happen until they stop ramming ill-thought micro-transactions and mobile clicker game-like meta login events down our throats, instead of expanding the game’s content and features.

This game thrives on conflict and novelty, even if players generally forum-whinge about anything that upsets the status quo. That’s why the player count actually picked up during the Triglavian invasion.

6 Likes
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I agree :100: and especially with this:

and this:

Without those two CCP might as well put the key under the mat.

PS: Also, asteroid belts are supposed to have ASTEROIDS in them or they not “asteroid belts” but spawn points for pirate NPC’s and there’s already a lot of those everywhere in the game.
That business of waiting until the next downtime is over to get asteroids is more than ridiculous.

9

Is this 1.6m SP a one-time purchase like those packs? Or is it infinite? Is there any penalty like the skill injectors have if you’re over 5m SP, 50m SP, etc?

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I always thought that advanced tutorials, like the SOE epic arc would be good for new players. The SOE epic arc gives you a better feel for missions after you finish the career agents and by the end you need a 100 dps ship but you get to determine how to get that 100 dps,

They could make something similar for industry, where you buy a frigate BPO, research it, copy it, build it, and maybe even learn how to make a T2 version (based on skill requirements). They could even discuss finding a good market to sell it.

They could also add a PVP centered one where you have a series of gated arenas and the idea would be do get in and get a kill.

By making this one time, or maybe every 3 month, it may be less enticing for veterans to abuse.

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I recall seeing some advertisement for some space game having some upgrade that lets you leave the ship on the surface of planets and stuff. But then they also have buggies that shoot. I don’t recall the name though.

I think the meme for Eve has always been “spreadsheet game”. But they have been running this like a browser game.

Whatever the case, things sure are not like they were 10 years ago. The absolute best moment I ever had in any video game was in Eve. 10 years ago.
And that was it.

And the situation that brought about that day has never been repeated, nor has CCP shown any desire to do so. The devs behind it are gone as well. So are most of the people I flew with.

Nice skins though.

4 Likes
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Even if it is infinite, it is not the cheapest way of obtaining 1.5Million Skill Points.

Ie the RAF / Purchase $5 Plex / Sell 4x Master-of-Arms then convert Plex to Isk. currently shows 20USD spent to obtain 4x Large Skill Injectors.

(downside to the above is time required to setup 4 new raf accounts and adding to game client along with logging into each one to buy plex etc like trading to the main pilot where the plan of injecting 1.6M SP if under when 50million)

…
The Store Training Boost Bundle does look like the go if a player holds over 50 million SP on their pilot.

1 Like
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I have found, time and again, that there are hidden conditions to the use of things like this, purchased from the EVE Store. It’s all rather shady.
Does anyone know, is this restricted to Omega? Do you have to have already used a certain number of SP?

14

expert systems and the like, are meant for alpha’s to get a taste of what’s to come in EVE. They will get “practice” skillpoints to use Omega toys like barges and such. That way if they know after doing the expert systems, they want to go into mining, they can become omega and train up into the barges.

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At this point CCP would be in error to end plan milk farm. The milk plant has been built & all the bullocks are pissing blood from bolts delovered to the brain.

Focus on extracting as much cash from bots & multiboxers. End new content delivery, it is expensive & not increasxing subscriptions as bots don’t care about how shiny a rat looks.

End poverty patching, other things will kill eve before the economy is completely killed.

I am ok with ships for dollar but it should be limited to AT ships for the super whales. This will have zero damage to the economy as long as $ price is very high. This will pay off the considerible development debt of previous at tournaments.

Co owner of CCP giving his view, 50 more years of eve at least.

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They closed my thread that discussed it, for some reason.

It is pretty strange they did not sell them yet in my opinion.

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AT ships for cash is a no brainer, it literally has no effect to 99.99999% of players. They are not even avaliable anymore either so it has zero effect on suppliers.

As long as the $ price is very high ie, at least $1500 per hull then they will have no effect on pvp meta.

I know ccp has abandoned its plex debt but selling at ships for plex would likely eliminate its debts.

The same could be said for T2BPO that were initially trade for the internet equivalent of sexual favours.

This is not a monetisation slippery slope at ships & t2bpo is a great way for ccp to cash in without harming the players.

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Definitely better than making paid expansions which would cost much more money and work, with unknown consequences.

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CCP doesn’t care about you, all they care about are bots and whales.

Expert systems are meant to make it faster for bots to be profitable after one of CCPs quarterly ban waves.

CCP wants bots because they don’t require attention like you do but they still buy a subscription through plex. This has the intended effect of making plex prices sky-high so whales’ cash goes farther making it more enticing for them to buy isk with money.

That’s it, that’s their entire business model. Leave space for the bots. Milk the Whales the bots attract. Save face and tell the player-base lies.

wE cAnT bAn BoTs ToO fAsT oR tHeYlL aDaPt

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Agreed with your points, but let me explore this:

CCP is its own ‘executioner’ when it comes to PLEX market, since they keep pushing stuff to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. e.g. abyss T6. The price for seem CCP Convict face when guy made 1.5b and told him “np I usually do 40b in one week?! (not sure if week or month)” .

So EVE market is not healthy 'cuz CCP sees a problem and fix it the worst way possible. Their idea of grabbing as much money as they can from newbies before they leave or start plexing their accs is not working and CCP tries to fix it giving vets more ez way to print ISK (WH and Abyss) while keeping they new guy in ratting/mining.

It amazes me they did not nerf L4’s to the ground yet. I guess they cannot take the hit of the amount of people who is going to leave.

So yeah, they need to make money, but they keep fking it up, not players fault really. Their mentality of SKILL WALL the new guys and grab cash only goes so far…