I don’t think P2P was really the issue, Eve itself has been heavily P2P subscription based anyway. What is more concerning though is more like, PPP (Pay-Per-Play) along with Freemium model where you sell shiny powerups that change the entire game into some battle royale or space gacha game and ditch the sandbox into the ocean and believe they are innovative enough to catch the wave and find bigger fish.
The day Eve lost its niche and uniqueness in favour of perceived populism that is “let’s be like someone else and became the next hot thing” along with many same hot things, is when Eve became disposable asset by whoever owns it.
So what should eve be, P2P or Subscription based? Imo, it can’t be both.
For many years Eve supported CCP not only in its development of what was once a great game but many failed side ventures as well.
Why now is P2P the answer and what exactly do you see as P2P.
Is it selling skill points for real money, something CCP said would never happen - Oh wait, they already are.
Would selling ships be a thing - Shite, they’re doing that too.
How about $300 (I’m an Aussie so exchange rates suck) for a Black Ops pack, which despite its name is directed at newer pilots looking to shortcut training.
What happened that CCP could no longer make money just selling Subscriptions and Plex? Poor game design, worse upper management.
Half right, the stated plan was to deplete the excess stockpiles of ISK in the game, which so far has been a complete failure. Those with giant stockpiles of assets and trillions in isk have never had it better. While the average player is being priced out of the market for anything other than T1 BC and below.
That pack is most definitely aimed at older pilots, not at newer pilots. Older pilots get more value out of it than newer pilots, while newer pilots have better things to buy if they want to spend that amount of money.
The pack has skins for black ops battleships, direct SP and a cerebral accelerator. None of those options are any good for new players and are much more useful to players who already have 50M or 80M SP and can fly blops battleships.
New players wishing to shortcut training are better off buying PLEX and selling the PLEX on the market for injectors, as they don’t have the biology skill nor inector diminishing returns to make the cerebral accelerator and SP worth it.
Scarcity and high prices don’t annoy me. Making ISK is more challenging, yes. But that is a positive in my book as it forces you to play more actively or cleverly.
What annoys me a lot are constant changes, for the sake of changes. For example, CCP says it wants to see battleships used more for solos and small gangs, so it buffs them a lot. So far so good. But the next step is to make battleships way more expensive than what they used to be, which leads to them not being used.
One step forward, two steps back.
Another thing that really irritates me is the way CCP monetizes the game. The dialog on the first ship loss is an extreme case, but it is fundamentally the same for all the “offers” we see these days. I’ve always subscribed, even if I could plex easily: I understand CCP needs to make money. However, as things stand now, all these offers smell like “let’s try to milk the guys who don’t know any better”.
Lastly, leaving aside the “Eve is d…” meme, we urgently need more players. Eve is a lot of things, but also and maybe mostly a social game. The current universe seems empty and stale. The numbers and activity levels are really, really bad.
So “newer” pilots, many of whom have injected their way into blops.
I’m not sure you understand how SP and cerebral accelerators work AND if you read the blurb about the blops pack, it specifically suggests using some of the “free SP” to train biology before using the accelerator.
As an “older player” I’ve been flying blops for years, have absolutely no interest in spending real money on “bling” (skins) and less interest in paying for SP or dual character training.
I think you’re missing the fact that skill injectors are relatively much better for newer players, as they haven’t hit the SP diminishing returns yet. That means that rather than activating a cerebral accelerator as new player, you’re getting more SP if you sell that cerebral accelerator to a veteran player, buy injectors with the SP and inject.
One expert cerebral accelerator is worth about 1.7 large skill injectors at current market prices.
One expert cerebral accelerator gives 432k SP (with biology level 5 and Omega).
1.7 large skill injectors give a newbie 850k SP (if they have less than 5M total SP).
Injectors are a much better choice for newbies. Once you get above 50M or 80M SP you want to use cerebral accelerators instead, as the skill injectors give much less SP at that point.
Why would a vet want to buy a cerebral accelerator you mean? Because it’s the best SP for your ISK at that point into the game. Not every veteran is still in need of more SP for their playstyle, but if you do want more SP it’s a better option than injectors.
Sooo. As my post was about the Black Ops package, just how many players with less than 5 mil SP do you imagine will want to train into a blops. 50 to 80 mil SP are the target audience for the $300 package. Newer players, not noobs .
I guess the miscommunication is how we use the word ‘newer players’. My idea of ‘newer players’ is players who are new to the game. Players with SP ranging from 0 to 15M SP. Players who have been in EVE for days, weeks or maybe months at most.
Players above 50M SP have been with the game for years already, if they haven’t injected it all.
The target audience of that pack is players above 50M SP. If that’s also what you were saying we agree. I just wouldn’t call those players ‘newer players’.
Sadly with CCP hell bent on breaking every boundry they set regarding SP there are many “new” players with 30 to 50 mil SP and less than a year in game.
Those who are willing to spend real dollars to get into specific ship classes are CCP target audience. Who better than those who used injectors to get to where they are now to target their money grab marketing?
But what inflation!?!?!?!?!? The CPI shows no inflation!
Seriously though,
If anything it is generally the opposite. Prices for things like ships have moved up, not down. And now making ISK has if anything gotten harder. So the relative price is even higher.
And you cannot have an ecosystem with nothing alive in it.
This. You cannot sequester the effects like this to just “older richer players”. In fact, they’ll be the ones least impacted by this since they already have resources. This is just true in general. Those who have stuff do better than those who don’t. And older, richer players not only have stuff, they also have lots of experience and human capital so that they can more quickly adapt to changes relative to new players.
If you really want to do something to the older, richer players. Just go take their stuff. Delete the stuff in their hangars. Empty their wallets, and so forth. Of course, what is the problem with this? You are treating these players in the exact same fashion you treat people who RTM then go buy stuff and fill up their wallets. You are treating them as if they are cheaters vs. players who have spent thousands of hours building up that wealth. Most of them, I am going to go out on a limb here, won’t like it.
