Objective means the scale depends on the observed item rather than the oberserver, The scale being a selection of criterions, that selection is subjective, so the scale is subjective.
The point is, that the scale proposed by Josh is based on things that we all agree with (the presence of paying mechanism).
It could be a scale based on the effect on the customer, on the money grabed by the company, on the legal issues, etc.
There is a discussion about game mechanisms, and some are “felt” bad. You then need to gather people subjective opinions on that topic to have a limited field to investigate.
In the end, you need to be able to characterize the issue with criterions that anybody would agree with ( meaning could apply with the same result), therefore you will produce a formal definition by rationalizing people’s feeling into factual criterions.
That’s called science : define a field, and then you can start researching that field.
Sure…my whole point was that it predates Eve, and with MMOs it is used to increase stats. Passive camping, by people who don’t even realise that’s what they are doing.
Objective as in unbiased. Which this scale is not. It doesn’t even make sense - what’s the difference between boosting and paying for more power? The points made relate to generic games, but these rarely apply to Eve directly. As the OP mentions, there are other problems when applying this generic take into a game like eve: what is a win state, it is functionally impossible to compete against the deepest in-game pockets, etc etc.
It’s why this conversation is just so boring, and pointless: because the general points made are only so relevant when applied to Eve, and the concrete points made about Eve offer far more nuance than parroting Hayes’ points about Diablo Immortal or whatever.
As mentioned before on multiple occasion: Allowing to circumvent grind or game play to be skipped with money devalues the game experience in various ways and even more than that, incentivizes the game developers to not model game mechanics towards fun but towards more monetary gains, which more often than not makes the game play worse.
You know exactly what I mean. It’s not like this is some novel point. It was even explained in the video what bad effects this can have and we have seen it in EVE over the years.
The constant defending of this ever growing Pay2Win schemes by the community is what I mainly speak out against. This has let to over a decade of ever expanding monetization to a point where the whole game now looks like a ■■■■■■■ store front rather than a space game.
If there was a clear stance against this things and pressure on CCP to not make this even worse, rather than defending them like they don’t matter, EVE would look completely different in my opinion.
So what is your motivation to defend this Pay2Win mechanics and signal to CCP that it is ok to add more of them by pushing back when someone points them out and downplaying them as having zero impact on the game?
That’s just pure nonsense. Not everyone has 10 hours a day to mine. Not everyone wants to spend 10 hours a day mining. Why shouldn’t those who don’t have or want the grind time be able to pay to make up the difference ? They are paying for this…so what’s the problem ? The whole P2W thing is an invented ‘problem’ hyped up by those who simply don’t understand the equation of money vs time.
I already explained multiple time what the problem is. Why are you people ask this question over and over and then just ignore the answer.
It devalues the game. That is my opinion. If you don’t see it that way, fine. I see it that way.
I understand what you are saying. I simply value the integrity of the game in the sense that it revolves around what people earn by playing the game more than general accessibility for people who want to only play certain parts and skip the rest with a credit card.
Again that is my opinion. I think people being able to skip the grind with a credit card devalues the game.
I know you have a completely different opinion, and I at least consider and understand where you are coming from, which is not something I see when it comes to you regarding what my reasons are. You always complete gloss over that and don’t even think about it.
YES IT IS NOT FFS !!!
None claimed it was !
Why are you so found of beating a dead horse, your uninhibited necrophile ?
He answers all of those. Maybe you should watch the video instead of asking me ?
He literally says what are the mechanisms that can be added to add frustration, and that you pay to remove.
Well that’s the idea of a matching criterion : it applies, or not.
Uh oh, looks like Anderson is having a tantrum again.
People have multiple times already pointed out that even without PLEX the game would have the same amount of P2W in the form of RMT, with the only difference that the money then goes to people who make the game worse instead of better.
Defending PLEX as a mechanic therefore makes much sense for people who aren’t staring themselves blind at what they think is evil P2W.
I don’t see money as a justification for less game time, not for this game or any other.
I certainly don’t see microtransactions justifiable as a strategy to amass enough finances to embark on other projects. They weren’t a necessity in the past, they shouldn’t be now.
Microtransactions are driven by the “greed is good” credo. Vendors present their credo to us under a different guise: For us it becomes the credo of “convenience” and uses the “unmet needs” argument. And the rest is social engineering and now also preconditioning (the “habit”). But the danger of breaking the game and let seep in unfair advantages for cash is certainly there. We may not be able to close the door, but we can certainly try to not let it open more.
So, let’s not use the “unmet need” and “convenience” credo as our battle cry and do the dirty work for them. It’s going to cost us, and make us look less wise than we should be, lol.
OK, we are getting somewhere here. But lets try to analyse what the problem you have is, and whether it’s the same as the problem that exists in the actual game…
Like what, exactly? If you want to add isk to your account through Plex, you needs to carry out some market activities, right? How is this functionally different (in terms of game mechanics) to someone that is making the same amount of isk through different market trades? Buying Plex to sell for isk only circumvents mindless grinding if that is what you do to make isk. It 100% matches exactly what you can do in-game to make equivalent amounts of isk relatively quickly if you choose to learn.
Yes, it can remove a lot of learning and intricate gameplay to replace it with a credit card swipe. I am not a fan of this activity - but saying that “I am not a fan” is very different from claiming that this breaks or is bad for the game in some way.
As previously mentioned, this has been part of the game for well over 15 years, since before either of us started playing the game I would imagine, so to claim that allowing the purchase of Plex for real money has somehow damaged the game is… a stretch. So, we need to look elsewhere.
What has grown in terms of Pay2Win in Eve lately? Going to need actual examples here, not just a blithe assertion.
There have been widespread protests about the mining barges sold for real money, so much so that CCP introduced an entire new gameplay system (Evermarks / Paragon) to address player concerns.
How? You’re gonna have to explain your thinking here, otherwise you are just saying ‘internet man said so’ but in more words. Which is your right, but it’s a nonsense claim if you look at actual Eve Online the game.
All the latest content has been fun, aimed at groups to take part, and very lucrative - look at Pochven, Faction Warfare, etc. FW in particular has taken graet pains to make the content accessible to new players. This is exactly the opposite of what you would expect from a company that is set up to prioritise selling of isk over gameplay. In contrast, it is the older content (missions, anomalies etc) that is the most boring, grindiest content in the game - exactly the content that CCP is (by looking at their actions) trying to phase out.
Not to any kind of level of detail that is satisfactory. It is just ‘internet man says bad’ writ large so far. Unless you mean Hayes - in which case, no he does not answer any of the Eve-specific questions because it is not an Eve-specific video. It is largely about the lowest common denominator grindfest types of MMO game, as I said in my original comment. None of the mechanisms referenced in that video can be directly applied to Eve unless you are stretching the definitions of stuff pretty damn hard.
Don’t yuck my yum, please and thank you.
There’s no denying there’s been a growth of micro (and macro) transactions in gaming over the last 20 years. I’m sorry, but out of literally every game I have installed on my computer, Eve has probably the lightest, least game-impacting microtransaction model. I would expect it to be so, too - it is, after all, a subscription game where I should hope that the subs cover everything (however they’re paid for).
Similarly, let’s not just have random bandwagon-jumping slagging of stuff ‘because internet man said so’. Let’s have a sensible conversation about where monetisation encroaches into Eve, where we find evidence of bad game design and what can be changed for the better instead of this low effort nonsense based on a YT video that is largely irrelevant to the game we are talking about.
Yes indeed that one is incontrovertably true. You can in fact pay real money for skins in Eve Online.
I have heard far more complaints from the player base that CCP are giving those skins away for free (or making them available more than once) than I have complaints about the skins being available for sale in the first place, but yes. That one I will give you.
There’s some element of ‘early game skip’ in the sale of direct SP. By my reckoning its about 2 months direct training, plus the boosters, for like 100 euro - terrible deal for new starters, my guess is that these are mostly used by high SP folks wanting to add a ship at short notice. At least, that’s when I’ve used those packs.
But ‘early game’ as Hayes states from like Wow or whatever doesn’t really apply to Eve in the same way - many of the first ships you fly remain relevant no matter how many SP you have, or what else you spend your time doing. Fast tackle, ventures, t1 explo are all still in my hangars and I have something in the region of 500m SP across all the various accounts I have.
The other interesting direct cash item is the weekend pass - I’m pretty sure that came from a player suggestion! Whether it was or was not, it is a pretty solid example of CCP’s player-focused monetisation. It’s almost tailor-made for people with unsubbed alts that can be brought back online for a special op, as well as getting people back in to the game. I’m keeping an eye on the Expert Systems though, as these could, if allowed to get silly, be combined with this fleet pack to cause chaos in a bad way.
Otherwise, all you come down to is cosmetics (see above) and isk from Plex. And isk from Plex really doesn’t have the kind of impact you think it does. A4E has around 9tn traded out of Jita 4-4 during March, which is where most of the directly sold stuff gets traded I would guess. This is a pretty small amount compared to the other major isk faucets in the game.
But this is not the issue.
Josh gives a list of criterions to evaluate the level of P2W for a game.
Wether or not people complain about them is not the problem. The game being a P2W or not is not a problem in itself. The idea is rather, so have a common scale about what you accept, to know in advance if a game is for you or not. To know what we talk about instead of a dichotomy of P2W / not P2W.
Yes that why I listed accelerators, or even injectors, as a cashshop P2W.
But even then the plex system is one : you can buy ISK with money.
It does. When there is “progression”, there is “skipping”.
If SP where not wanted by people, CCP would not sell extractors… or SP as they do now.
AND the need to multibox toons for some activities.
Having activities where #pilots = power is a money power creep.
Good luck killing freighter in HS with 1 toon.
Good luck using your orca/rorqual/FAX with one toon.
Is the paying client (besides the initial subscription) getting better results compared to the one who does not pay ? Yes. If the “better” is limited by the game, it’s the criterion 6 ; if it’s not limited, it’s criterion 7.
This word, I don’t think it means what you think it means
I do not know what OP’s reason was for using that video, other than showing a more or less structured approach by an internet person to the p2w criteria just to have a more general discussion going. Discussions about the minutiae of that approach are just that. General discussions on the phenomenon of p2w and microtransactions are useful for assessing our EvE related situation. The CSM has been keeping a close eye on it ever since 2011, long before “internet man” made his video, and for good reason. Like you said:
Plex in its original format, a means to get game time via ingame currency with the “help” of someone who bought plex with cash, there was little that one could have against that as it benefited all involved. With plex getting embedded more deeply into the NES it is more difficult to assess if those benefits remain balanced.
Cosmetics for cash can be shrugged off as fairly irrelevant to whoever is not ship spinning. With skill points, even if limited to starters, it’s already interfering with normal gameplay and progression. With hulls it interferes with what players are supposed to build and provide. With boosters that have stats unobtainable in the game for ISK, that’s definitely a wakeup for more to come, and other things that will be tried to make the old line become irrelevant.
Why does it not devalue the game that some people have more time to grind than others ?
You always gloss over the time differential. The question you never answer is why…if it is unfair for people to open their wallet and thus skip the grind…it is not EQUALLY unfair for some people to actually have more time to grind that others. You rattle on about those who are cash rich…yet hypocritically don’t care about those who are time rich.
Some people simply have more time to play the game than others. They are ‘time rich’, and effectively have an unfair advantage over those who are not. Why don’t those who rile against ‘P2W’ ever notice that unfairness before they rattle on about how unfair it is that anyone can ‘skip the grind’ by opening their wallet ?
It makes eminent sense that those who are ‘time poor’ be able to catch up…and its not like they are doing so for free. Why on earth is this a ‘problem’ ?
Josh Strife Hayes‘s scale could have been different and someone random on the forums could declare that it puts Eve on an 11/10 scale in a new thread and it would have impacted zero other people whether they played Eve Online or not.
Fun fact: replace the 7/10 of the title or 11/10 of the previous sentence with any number and the fact still holds true: it does not matter. People who were going to play, are. People who weren’t, aren’t.
If by that you mean that one can’t make a judgemental value about the game based on that scale and pretend it makes sense in a discussion, well pretty much.
So yes it’s a clickbait title from someone who is not interested in what Josh does, and only wants to promote is own angst toward CCP after he learnt he can’t become rich by selling NFTs.
Josh’s approach is interesting nonetheless.
The idea of this being a ‘scale’ is what I find problematic. If you watch the video, Hayes comes to the same conclusion. Its just a list of 9 things that you can consider p2w. It’s not a scale in any literal sense of the word, certainly not when applied to eve. It’s just a pointless exercise.
But not in even remotely the same way as, for example, grinding for level cap in Wow, or gearset grinding so you can go raiding. This just doesnt happen in Eve. So the whole point Hayes is making about pay to skip mechanics doesn’t truly translate.
You don’t NEED to. There are very few activities where you absolutely CANNOT do anything other than multibox - you can just as easily, and far more efficiently in the majority of cases, use another real person rather than multiboxing in all of those cases.
What you’re doing here is conflating Eve being a multiplayer focussed game that allows multiboxing with someone NEEDING to multibox to be competitive / have fun / whatever. Maybe that’s the case with the sweats you hang out with, but I’ve literally never found that to be the case. So - like I said several hours ago - you trying to fit some of Hayes’ categories doesn’t really work with Eve. This is why I hate these threads. Sigh.
Yes, it does. Go look up the MER. Le double sigh.
Are these boosters in game now? Finally we might have an actual issue that affects the game.
: define a field, and then you can start researching that field.
