Oh I can chose between poor or lazy? How generous.
I’m the one who points out that there is a clear track-record of games getting worse because of the bad incentives this pay2win mechanics set.
There was a time the community opposed this things. Now it’s full of people like you who defend this stuff, which just ensures that it will get progressively worse.
I have no illusion that threads like this will change anything about the current situation. My very small hope is that by actually pointing this stuff out it will not get even worse. Because there are still two levels to go you know.
Yes, I think it’s cheating
No I think that is fair.
No, I’m of the opinion that the game could be easily changed to fix that by allowing new players to catch up with in-game mechanics. But there is ZERO incentive to do that because the current way to “catch up” is to drop a couple thousand bucks and you all defend this as being completely ok.
Really? You sound more like only the rich kids are allowed to catch up. If you happen to be poor, sorry, no way to grind your way to 200mil SP
It is actually pretty telling that you project on me that I feel threatened. It just doesn’t make sense to you otherwise right?
I’m advocating for new players to be able to catch up without having to swipe the credit card. Unlike you apparently.
They are as active as ever. The MMO companies just got better at filtering the chat.
PLEX did nothing to fix that. It just made cheating with RL money an actual game mechanic instead of just being cheating. People who buy gold from gold seller do get banned, today and back then.
No, I’m just advocating for common sense and practicality. Not blue-skying undefined imaginary game systems where new players can magically “catch up” to folks who’ve spent 10 years in the game.
The common sense is, CCP needs operating cash. And because they’ve focused on a “player based economy”, they’ve shut themselves out of 90% of the microtransactions that drive other games: gear, mounts/vehicles/ships, account unlocks and upgrades. They’ve got basically 3 revenue streams: Subs, Plex, and the few cash shop items they’ve managed to come up with (skins, injectors, etc.) And most of that stuff you’d also call P2W. And the subs are P2W. And multi-accounts are P2W. And buying other people’s already-developed accounts is P2W.
Basically just about anything CCP can drive sales with (besides cosmetics), somebody somewhere will label P2W. And imagine “a world where all things would be available without it”. Without actually having any clue how that could be achieved and still keep the lights on.
As for new players being able to catch up, yeah they can. It’s called grind for ISK and trade your ISK for PLEX, injectors, ships, whatever you need. And CCP even put in Abyssals and other ways for new players to start grinding ISK from Day 1 if they’re up to the challenge.
Sure, I can imagine a fairy-tale world where everyone had access to everything of equal quality and coolness all the time, regardless of their time or cash constraints.
The funniest thing is seeing him compose a reply, reconsidering, composing a reply, reconsidering over and over for quite some time. Hilarious and entertaining beyond anything you would find on TV, Hulu, Netflix,…
While I may disagree with his take on this, Karak is at least engaging in meaningful dialogue about an issue that concerns him and which he thinks reflects badly on the state of the game.
That’s pretty much what forums are all about, and it beats the hell out of the folks who do nothing but drop snark and disparaging comments all the time. (Not saying that’s all you’re doing here but plenty do.)
As for the replying on and off stuff, I believe it shows “replying” while they’re typing, and then it goes away any time they pause. So it flickering on and off means the person is actually thinking and researching as opposed to just tossing off a rant.
Yeah that is possible. I have my doubts they would say otherwise if this is all just piles of money on top and the whole game development and maintenance could be easily covered with the subscription.
Yeah is that a problem? I hope it isn’t.
Clearly you are fine with rather strong forms of Pay2Win most other gamers would outright reject, while you loudly defend them as necessary. You are clearly a Pay2Win enjoyer, and that is fine, but not everyone is, I’m clearly not if that wasn’t obvious.
I have him blocked, as he has proven multiple times in the past to not be capable of having a honest discussion about anything without immediately getting personal or just outright intellectually dishonest. He can silently cry in his corner for what I care.
I know, people will see me do the exact same thing as I look things up.
The thing is that he posts a generality, has no clue on how to support it with data and or facts and then just keeps posting nonsense that does not help anyone not even himself leaving him stuck in a world where “companies bad”, “posters bad” which isn’t a good thing for him and “the community”. Even with no one posting nasty snarky replies like me.
Blocking me is better than having to explain how “the (imaginary) people” are thinking “GTC/PLEX is cheating”. There is “the community” and “you”, those are different entities although you are just like me part of the community. I understand you want to block people who do not agree with you as this is what people these days like to do and feel very good in echo chambers.
I love the last line in your paragraph showing your character. It wasn’t called for but it’s what you do when you get people that oppose your views.
Sorry but ad hominems won’t win this debate for you. I’m a long time gamer, been gaming since before most gamers were born. I’m mostly F2P but occasionally I will send in cash to whichever game dev I think has been doing a good job lately. Vote with your dollars and all that.
I’ve had many posts talking about the need for CCP and EVE to basically stop time-and-sub gating the game and to add in “play for catch-up” methods. And they added them, from Plex to Alpha to Injectors to greatly increased ISK earning potential… even for Alphas. They’ve haven’t done ‘great’ but they’ve done ‘okay’. And as stated, EVE has much bigger more fundamental problems to resolve than some pay for advantage perks.
Um, sorry, no. CCPs financials have been published and gone over many times. No, the subs don’t cover it. And the subs were on an extremely dire downturn in 2016 until CCP started getting desperate and adding Alpha (which IIRC you also disapprove of), Injectors, and various new packages to the mix.
Basically, the majority of the things you disapprove of are half the reason CCP is still financially viable. That’s not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking like you’re doing, that’s reality. Some people have more time, some people have more cash, and games that allow those people to exchange with each other do better (all other things being equal, such as fan base or niche or market. No use comparing EVE to FFXIV or LoL or whatever.)
You haven’t even given a single notion about how players would magically catch up without it, you’ve dismissed people who can play for way more hours as “fair”, and you keep trying to phrase the debate in terms where you enjoy a moral superiority and people who disagree with you are baddies.
I’ve pointed out that the current system allows new players to exchange their play time for any of the things they need to catch up (PLEX, injectors or whatever), and you twist that into “only the rich kids are allowed to catch up”.
When it comes to intellectual dishonesty, you’re a very black kettle to be dissing the pot over there.
But I find it rather funny that you actually feel insulted when I say you are a pay2win enjoyer and then immediately defend yourself as “mostly F2P”. Why did you just do that?
Because I thought there is nothing wrong with this game mechanics, so why do you feel attacked if I imply that you enjoy and use them. Clearly you defend their existence, so it’s not a stretch to assume you also use them.
So how is that an insult?
I grant that it is absolutely possible that this is the case. I’m still very skeptical about it. EVE is their cash cow that finances the whole company and not just EVE development and maintenance.
Because there was clearly a time where there was more development done on the game previous to even the cash shop. And there where more players in the game, which means higher server costs.
I think it is rather more likely that they grew the company and the costs are in other areas that are not EVE and don’t produce any revenue on their own, rather than EVE suddenly getting so much more expensive to run. I don’t have anything to prove this, I can’t really argue that point, It’s just my current opinion I’m absolutely willing to change.
I’m don’t really care about CCP’s financial situation, that is honestly their problem. I simply voice my opinion as a player about the state of the game. I have voiced my opinion at every point where more monetization got introduced and I saw for the last 17 years how the frog was boiled.
I find the game today rather unrecognizable. But it is as it is, and I can have the opinion that this is bad and it could be better otherwise at the same time to not expecting it to ever happen. My only hope by pointing out that we are already at a 7/10 on the P2W scale is to hopefully finally stop this from progressing any further and make it even worse.
But since I fight this for over a decade without success, I don’t have much hope left honestly. Still, it’s a good game and worth trying.
Why should they work in them if adding new monetization vectors makes them more money? Clearly this angle was financially rewarded over the last decade and completely defended by the player base.
I would argue the Pay2Win mechanics are exactly the reason why the game is in the state it is in. There is simply no incentive for CCP to change anything in that regard
Yeah because it’s completely unrealistic to grind and catch up, which you know if you played EVE for that long. The expectation is that they pay for it, which is probably turning away new players on a daily basis, as soon as they discover this.
In what sense am I intellectually dishonest. Maybe I’m a little retarded at times, but that’s not on purpose
There is no catching up, there will always be a gap between people who invest time and effort and those who cant or wont. Combat proficiency cant be achieved by spinning ships in the station, it has to be acquired in the field by fighting and learning from your own mistakes and sometimes from mistakes of others. Any system that allows bringing that gap is broken or in some cases deliberately designed to be broken
Yeah but that is not the gap we are talking about here. We talk about resources like ISK or SP.
Getting gud at game mechanics isn’t something that is gated by years of knowledge. Depending on what you want to do in EVE it’s pretty simple to learn and “catch up” within days in that regard.
However, try to catch up with my 270mil SP by grinding, good luck. Even by swiping your credit card that would probably be an insane bill.
OK, i watched the video. Interesting breakdown and I don’t totally disagree with his reasoning.
I do heartily disagree that EVE is a 7 on that scale. More like a 3’ish.
1: very little is available in the NES that can’t be acquired in-game and that’s almost exclusivly Skins and cosmetic fluff.
2: while SP accrual is essentially never-ending, the amount of SP that directly enhances your current activities has a hard cap. For example, if I’m flying a Melediction (as i often do), then only around 20m of my combat alts 150m SP is actually being ‘used’. The fact I have HIC V and Logistics Cruisers V and all command boost skills to V matters not a bit. There are very few “universal” skills in eve. We generally refer to those as The Magic 14 and we can throw in the relevant Sensor Compensation skill for whatever hull you’re in.
So, you can pay for ‘early game advantage’, but that will only go so far and, as I mention in point 4 below, isn’t a guarantee of success.
3: i dislike the videos placement of PLEX type products so high on the list. As an anti RMT measure, PLEX is a roaring success. There will always be people prepared to pay for in game resources, better that money goes to CCP than into the pockets of some shady parasite.
4: the matter of player skill and game knowledge doesn’t really feature on this videos list of factors. Sure, someone can credit card warrior their way into a Titan on day 1. Without the in game knowledge too take advantage of having such a ship it’s just a hilarious lossmail in waiting. This has actually happened.
Suitonia, now known as CCP Kestrel, proved that player skill matters when he took a barely trained alpha alt out and got kills on opponents with vastly higher SP and in ‘better’ ships.
5: Bigger isn’t always better. A bigger ship won’t always beat a smaller one in EVE. If the Battleship is being piloted by a credit card warrior newb and the frigate is being handled by a veteran player, my moneys on the frigate.
Ultimately, there is almost nothing in game, including subscription time, that can’t be earned in game given sufficient time and a rather bloody minded determination.
Honestly for me, if Eve didn’t have this feature I wouldn’t have played it. I started in 2022? Maybe 2021? Somewhere in there. No way was I gonna be able to farm the isk to ever catch up to anyone who had played for 15 years. By spending real money on skill injectors and isk, I was able to bypass all the ridiculous skills that take months to learn but provide no excitement ( Jump Drive Calibration V for the win).
Being 20 years behind a game that already has such an incredible knowledge and experience gap is a daunting proposition. I will always have more money than I do time or willingness to shoot rats for isk, so for me the Pay2Win feature of eve that some people hate is actually one of its best features.
I started in 2014, before skill injectors and the only way to get Advanced Weapons Upgrades V was the slow way.
Thankfully, I met a group of folk who found ways for me to be useful in our small gang roams without a mountain of ISK or SP. For my first year, i rarely flew anything bigger than a destroyer and mostly flew Maulus and Griffins.
Different people have different definitions of P2W. Mine is: if there is something you 100% need, or that gives a huge advantage that is only available for cash, that’s P2W. My basic yardstick is Gold Ammo in World of Tanks.
Just a note for any confusion: quite a few years back “premium ammo” (which had more ammo penetration than regular ammo) in World of Tanks was only available for the game cash currency (gold coins). Hence “gold ammo”. It was an expensive way to get in some extra damage.
They removed that restriction years ago - premium ammo in WoT is available for the in-game currency (silver), and everybody and their dog shoots it. It’s not much different than EVE T2 ammo now.
The reason why they are so high is because they allow a player to sink unlimited RL money into the game and absolutely buy every resource that you would otherwise have to wait or grind for.
I makes absolutely sense to place it so high. The excuse that it somehow a good thing because it battles RMT is just extremely weak, as from the player perspective it firmly cements RMT in the game, just that the gold is sold by the game developers. It doesn’t fix anything at.
