It worked amazingly well. People were shell-shocked, and totally entrapped by the experience. The game was color-coded really well, so you weren’t even confused about what you should be shooting. Obviously these players died within seconds, but when they re-spawned and started learning the game properly, they were hooked.
Imagine how excited players would be if EVE dropped you straight into a scripted (i.e. you wouldn’t instantly blow up) pseudo fleet battle between NPCs, instead of Aura telling you to wake up, sleepy-head.
I bet half of all new players Alt+F4 when they can’t figure out why there’s no UI on their screen in the first 10 seconds, and never come back. Most players aren’t that stupid; it’s perfectly fine to start the game with a health bar and some weapon icons.
lol I’m not criticising the approach, it’s one that worked for me with Eve.
The current NPE is not something that would tempt me to start Eve; I generally skip such things and prefer to explore possibilities referring to OOG resources when I get stumped.
But that’s just me, I completely understand that others prefer to learn games through the provided tutorials.
Risking free stuff is arguably not taking a risk. Assuming we say that the risk is losing your stuff, then losing stuff you work for or stuff you don’t work for would be equally painful and this solution does nothing to address that.
If people, new or old, are of the mentality that hoarding wealth is good, then they’re not going to stop because some of their wealth came from thin air.
Changing your core game concept is risky and there is a danger of taking Eve from a pretty good niche game with a small but loyal fanbase to a bad mainstream game with no loyal fanbase. The gamble could pay off, but it’s not a risk I would take.
Just to put some perspective on our differences, I’ll mention Mike and the magic school bus. I have nothing but respect for Mike and what he does, but what he does is not something I would want to do. On occasion, I would come across a player who had lost everything by carrying it all in a single transport or the like. I could give them isk, or free ships, but I didn’t feel like that really drove home the lesson they should learn. Instead, I would fleet up and offer them a very modest craft if necessary to run a few missions and build up that bank account. I would continue this until they’d earned enough money to stand on their own. I prefer to enable people to do things themselves instead of solving their problems for them.
Without the threat of meaningful loss, there’s no real danger, and what we’re encouraging is recklessness, so the way I see it free money is either going to be hoarded like all other money because it’s in the nature of the player to do so, encourage players to develop bad habits that will hurt when they graduate into ships their UBI can’t cover, or simply kick the can down the road a little where instead of not taking risks with anything other than a corvette, it’s not risking anything other than a frigate, cruiser, or whatever other freebie they’re getting their mitts on.
In no case can I see UBI as a solution to players not taking risks. I don’t see it as closing the gap between the very rich and the very poor by any appreciable degree unless it’s implemented in the extreme.
UBI is a concept squarely aimed at allowing people to simply survive in the absence of gainful employment and I don’t think it is going to solve any of the problems in Eve that people are suggesting it might since survival is guaranteed here.
Some folks disagree, and that’s fine with me. I’m not going to get sucked into another debate where people want to argue for the sake of arguing (not that anyone is, but the more I speak to a topic the higher the chance someone will). Maybe it’s a wonderful idea and I don’t understand human psychology as well as I think I might. For the moment, though, I remain unconvinced that free money will override the typical behaviors we already see regarding risk and the hoarding of wealth for the better.
Interesting idea. I can certainly see the merits (especially in the real world) and i was almost going to agree.
But…
Similar to how the skill queue changes that took away the necessity to log in everyday (ish) and resulted in less log ins, i foresee universal income taking away a need to undock and do stuff from certain players.
Rather than running a few exploration sites or other pve during your first few steps the best thing to do when you first join the game is to make a skill queue and then log off for a month.
'…By the time you come back you’ve got the sp and isk to do ‘proper pve’.’
The issue this idea is targeted at (poor players being able to replace losses) is better solved by connecting them with other players. Players that can teach and support them to become independent/self sustaining and how to avoid losses.
Universal income may simply cover the symptoms rather than solve the ‘problem.’
In before every whining alpha or idiot demands MOAR universal income.
In before whines about players with multiple accounts.
I like the raw capitalism of eve. You get out what you put in. It’s not real life so you don’t need to worry about stomping on the poors with your fat wallet.
And it’s a perfectly playable game without much isk. Isk =/= fun. And i have my doubts that lack of isk causes poor player retention.
I was ■■■■ at isk making when i was new. i was playing for almost a year before i reached 100mil in my wallet.
Meaningful losses must still be meaningful to even the poors.
However, the modus of existence in real life is vastly different to that of the EVE universe. We live life with the sole purpose of surviving and continuing to live/exist. To that end, a universal income might help certain people. In EVE, we play the game in order to be entertained and enjoy leisure time. To that end, a universal income also might help certain people. Except now, the goal isn’t to keep someone alive, but to keep them engaged with the game. Two different problems can utilize a similar solution.
Gifted money is still an asset. There’s an opportunity cost attached to spending it, risking it, and losing it. It’s not like this universal income idea would provide players with something that they can only use on that day, and then it would expire. If players want to, they could save up this income instead of spending it, or use it for any number of other reasons.
So saying that these players wouldn’t care about losing this 10M ISK doesn’t really make sense. That 10M ISK is no more or less valuable than 10M ISK acquired by any other means, in practice.
Universal income is paid out in regular installments, as opposed to a lump sum. The psychology of the recipient should change accordingly. The recipient automatically acquires a mindset of “I’m not that worried about losing this today, because tomorrow I’ll get it again” instead of going into hoarding mode. Generally, of course. I’m sure some people will still focus entirely on hoarding, and I don’t discount the possibility that you might be right, and that the universal income would be predominantly hoarded.
Though I will say this: new players tend to have a bigger expenditure to income ratio, because they need to buy skill books, insurance, etc., and it all stacks up, so I don’t think this money will stick around even if these players do try to hoard it.
The amount of money provided would be too small to suppress the drive to earn more of it.
Also, having to log in every day for whatever reason just because of FOMO is absolutely cancerous game design. What if I just spent 14 hours working, and all I want to do is sit in the darkness, drink fortified box wine, and cry? “Better not forget to log into EVE to refresh the training queue and claim your ship skin!”
■■■■ that noise.
I doubt that there would be more than just a handful of such players. Besides, such players wouldn’t stick around in EVE anyway, and shouldn’t be our focus in terms of player retention. If someone isn’t excited enough about the game to log in and play just because they earn a passive income, they’re not going to be any more excited in the absence of a passive income. They simply aren’t that into the game, that’s it. Which is fine, because taste is subjective.
Definitely not. Nicky was a good friend, and I cried as I held his banhammer-mangled body in my arms when he passed (from these forums).
There is always a ship anybody can afford to lose, which is the corvette, and so there isn’t any player in the entire Eve universe who can’t afford to lose something. Generally speaking, though, people won’t even risk these.
The perception is, rightfully, that the craft probably won’t survive an encounter. Increase this ship to a frigate, and it probably won’t survive either. Nor would a cruiser, battlecruiser, or battleship be likely to survive if it met with an opposing force, especially not when piloted by someone inexperienced.
I find it hard to believe that an amount of isk within the realm of consideration is going to meaningfully change the new player’s perspective. Banking the money seems like the rational choice, or investing it into some ship with which to make even more money.
What you would like players to do with the money is exactly what I tried to convince them to do. Even if I offer to replace a ship, getting people to go out on a yeet fleet was difficult and I had to argue against conventional wisdom from the community at large.
I would love it if we could change peoples’ minds and make them do more interesting things. I think that changing that behavior will require something other than money to achieve. It’s a different attitude that is required because people can already do interesting things with very little if they want to. They don’t, though, if they feel that doing interesting things that cost them ships is ‘losing’ and risk averse wealth generation is ‘winning’.
That is what players I interacted with seemed to think, and I don’t see UBI as something that would teach them differently. Without that reform, I don’t think behaviors are likely to change and the UBI is likely to get spent on a barge or PvE mission boat that is perceived and purported to be a wiser investment.
The goal is noble, as presented. To get players involved and to encourage them to participate in the game’s competitive aspects, if I read correctly. If only people would actually use the resources as intended it would be wonderful. I can’t prove that they wouldn’t, but I would feel safe in placing a bet that they wouldn’t.
I’m not sure that new players are cognizant of power scaling. To us it’s a stacked encounter, but to a new player, it’s just a bunch of laser beams hitting their ship, and the ship exploding. My hope is that a universal income might at least keep them going when that happens, almost as if it would make them think “okay, let’s try this again, I still have one life left!”
I do agree with this, and it mirrors my experience training new players very well. This might be the best argument against a universal income so far, or at least an argument that questions its usefulness.
Games, especially older games, get around this problem by not giving players a choice in the matter. You move your character around in Pokemon or some other such game, and you’ll get regular encounters. Maybe you can escape one or two, but there are usually cooldown mechanics involved, and at some point you’ll have to fight.
We’re starting to see CCP implement similar mechanics in EVE, such as all the new roaming NPCs and Trigs. Maybe the answer is the growth of such mechanics, accompanied by the safety net of a universal income, or another similar game mechanic. That would probably be better than either options on its own, and especially better than a lack of both, which is how EVE has operated for the majority of its existence.
I think that the FW system needs to be drastically expanded upon, maybe to such an extent that it becomes a mandatory feature, like for example choosing a faction in WoW, and being perpetually at war with the other faction(s). A universal income might make more sense then, since players would be forced into loss-inducing situations more often.
What I meant to say was “Players who sub to Omega”. I would imagine your lengthy but well thought out reply might have been tailored somewhat differently if I had chosen my words more carefully
I think this is more of an NPE/Activity Tracker/Absence-of-Career-Guide issue (Career Agents most definitely don’t count as career guidance, they’re trash). Without input from other players or 3rd party resources, it is not clear which activities are readily accessible and profitable (and hopefully fun/not too risky at the same time). The NPE also doesn’t make clear what players can do to rebuild their worth from scrap. Think about it: in the NPE you are constantly being provided new ships, but at no point are you taught what to do if you lost all those ships. If a newbie amasses stockpiles of ISK and ships from the NPE and loses everything they feel helpless because they haven’t learned how to rise up from their Corvette alone doing non-tutorial content, and it doesn’t help that Corvettes aren’t well suited for use outside of tutorial content anyway. I’ve give Corvette commentary on an earlier post in this thread that I will not restate here. (Players have the option of rerunning the NPE, though most newbies I’ve talked to haven’t even considered that possibility… not that I would recommend it anyway.)
I also fault the NPE for not covering Project Discovery, which most players I talk to don’t know about (including long-time players). Newbies are shocked to learn that they can net 29.7m/hr (when you’re good at it) + level-up rewards (2x SKINs per box at L25 onward) + milestone rewards with no SP/fit requirements, no liability, no need to undock even, and that it can be done anywhere at any time (ie. no time commitment to get into or out of), and that it is multitaskable with other activities. Project Discovery is a great way for newbies to stock up on several fully fitted frigs/dessys or even a fully fitted cruiser after only one hour of contribution to real-life science when starting out until they learn of better ways to generate revenue (and simultaneously have fun).
There’s a fine line separating the carebears from the crybears. The crybears can cry themselves to sleep or leave the game, whatever. The carebears, however, deserve their niche. Newbies start off as carebears until they learn to fend for themselves, and many players choose to remain carebears because it suits their play style. As long as they are not crying for unreasonable entitlements and suggesting the universe would collapse unto itself if they aren’t addressed (dying for 17 years now), there’s nothing wrong with carebears.
OP is neither a carebear nor a crybear (she is very much a vicious PVP vet), and OP didn’t begin this thread on the premise with a long whine that EVE is dying because UBI doesn’t exist, etc etc etc, OP began with the premise that a relatively negligible contribution by most standards can make a huge difference for those starting out. Unlike the real world economy, other players don’t have to be taxed to pay for the UBI, so that “why should we pay for their laziness/ignorance?” argument doesn’t even apply here. It literally hurts no one. (For reasons fleshed out earlier, inflation isn’t even a concern.) OP’s suggestion is not unreasonable.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In EVE, loss is part of the learning process. The opportunity to lose a ship is the opportunity to learn, but if you aren’t willing to risk losing the few ships you have/can afford, then you aren’t willing to risk learning the game. A UBI on the order of 1m/day provides a frigate with which players are willing to risk burning. I should also point out that loss is good for the economy by adding more consumers. Furthermore, getting accustomed to loss means that players won’t cry so hard whenever they lose their next ship. Loss = opportunity in many senses of the word.
This is an interesting perspective which I can very much appreciate
Consider yourself fortunate. I’ve personally acquainted myself with, and have encountered from a distance (in game and on forums), a considerable number of players who have felt this way, or that they weren’t willing to risk losing what little they had relative to how hard they believed they’d have to work to recoup their losses. So many players have told me they don’t want to undock their cruiser because if they lose it they’re looking at 10 hours of HS mining to recover the loss. The nice thing with a frigate-fitted level of UBI is that it has the opportunity for a snowball effect. Frigate quickly empowers a dessy, and that quickly empowers a cruiser, etc, within a day.
Newbies frequently make the mistake of going all in and putting all their wealth into one or too-few ships and losing it all at once; by the time they learn their lesson, many rage quit the game. Well, UBI has the potential of giving them another opportunity to snowball their success while skipping HS Venture mining. This is particularly valuable to casual players that have only two hours here and there to play the game - when they play the game, they don’t want to spend their time scraping pennies to recoup losses, they want to learn and enjoy. A cheap T1-fitted T1 frigate isn’t asking for much.
Frigate-level UBI doesn’t change this. Players still get pissed off when they lose their Nergals, Gilas, Golems, Thanatoses, and even cheaper ships like Typhoons, Harbingers, Vexors, and I’ve known seeeeeeeeeeeeveral newbies who get upset when they lose their Coraxes as well. The burn will very much be real. A frigate’s worth of compensation is hardly sufficient consolation or compensation for the such losses. Not even insurance payouts (neither free nor platinum) console such losses (though - unlike Frigate-level UBI - they do enable purchases of fully fitted ships one-size smaller with regards to T1 hulls)
WHERE IS THAT IMAGE!!? @Pix_Severus I think you have it (did you make it?)… you know the one I’m talking about… EVE NPE vs WoW NPE
This is a game, not real life. No one needs isk to meet their basic necessities (such as food, water, shelter).
Eve offers much better economic mobility than real life does. No one is effectively prevented from going to space college because they don’t have the time or money. No one is getting ■■■■■■ over by greedy executives outsourcing jobs to Minmatar reeducation camps in domain. There is no oligarchy subverting democracy so that they can maximize their wealth extraction. If you are making crap money in Eve, you have all the power to change that.
This would create a huge isk faucet, and would absolutely require a tax of some sort to pay for it (like the one you mentioned). Yes, one trillion isk might seem small when compared to the economic activity of the largest bloc in the game, but it would also negate the 13 smallest isk sinks in the game (which total to 1.009 trillion).
What are the chances that newbros spend that 10 mil wisely, and what are the chances that it gets turned into loot drops?
Extra income could conceivably help newbros to play catch up with the vets (i.e. industrialists would be able to invest more into their operations, and PvE’ers could buy a small injector every 2 weeks).
Giving players a free paycheck will just encourage them to not work… oh fuuuuu… I’m so space rich, I’ve become a Space Republican. For real though, I just can’t see such a paltry amount of isk discouraging players from going out and trying to make more money. In fact, it might even encourage them to take bigger risks because they know that they have a guaranteed safety net.
Thank you!!! I’ve only been in Eve since July and I have hated this term ever since I first read it. I have no idea why certain players feel the need to name call like this but there it is. I’m not keen on ‘gankers’ either for the same reason although that one isn’t quite so bad. Players have different styles of play, doesn’t make them wrong or right - just different is all.
I’d actually like to thank the OP for this discussion. I’m still very much a new player and will confess to being a very cautious one so I admit I’m not one for taking many risks with my ships etc., mainly because I prefer to play as solo as possible due to certain social problems I have that I won’t bore you with.
When I first posted in this forum I had not encountered any PVP combat and wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it if and when I did. That has changed and I have been jumped on by other players twice now. Both times it didn’t really bother me to be honest. It’s part of the game. Admittedly it’s the part I avoid as much as possible because I simply detest any form of PVP combat (especially when (in my cases) it was by ships I didn’t even know were there as they didn’t show up on the overview (cloaked?) and it was two of them against my wee venture). Anyway, the point is, apart from the initial annoyance, it was not a huge problem to me.
I experienced only small losses, I realise that. Replacing the gear was no issue for me. But that may not be the case for others. So, although I personally don’t feel I need it as I have made a nice amount of ISK already by myself, I think the OP’s idea is a good one, especially for new players. Forgive me as my memory isn’t great and I don’t have time to re-read the thread, but was the idea for only a certain amount of time? In other words, players would get this regular amount permanently or just for an initial period?
I ask as I wonder how effective it would be longer term once players have become established and, effectively, no longer need it.
This was already addressed above. It comes down to there being no reason why a similar solution can’t address two completely different problems (i.e. keeping people alive and healthy in real life, and keeping players interested and engaged in a game). If it works (and I am saying if, because I don’t know if it would, but merely exploring the idea), then why not use it?
You’re kidding me, right? There absolutely is a practical limit to how much money a regular player can make, with the exception of extremely gifted (and rare) traders, scammers, etc., unless you have old wealth, or are a member of the insider club with connections, composed of powerful alliance leaders and such.
We already had a few people try to make the argument that anyone can be rich in EVE, but you can’t judge a system based only on the upper limits of its potential. “Anyone can be a millionaire” isn’t the same thing as “more than a handful are going to be millionaires.”
Remember, wealth is relative. You can only be rich because someone else won’t be, and if everyone is rich, then no one is.
A practical limit must, by definition, apply to everyone!
You can’t apply a general thing onto a specific thing, the regular player, like this.
In EVE there is no practical limit to how rich you can get. You’re talking about personal limits, not practical limits. You’re talking about personal practical limits, which aren’t general practical limits. You’re mixing the two, as evidenced by the quote above.
Most people are indeed mediocre and, on average … well … average … but that doesn’t change that there’s a potential which doesn’t depend on the player being aware of it. Every human brain is capable of rewiring into “smarter networks”. It’s for the same reason why physics considers “potential energy” a thing.
The fact that most people are losers doesn’t change anything about their potential …
… despite losers often being completely incapable of learning how not to be losers …
… but that’s an entirely different matter!
What you’re talking about is the personal limit of each players’ abilities, willingness…es? lol … smarts and wits.
Giving everyone money won’t actually change any of this at all.
Is there a list of supposed benefits mentioned anywhere in this thread? The initial post isn’t actually trying to support its own point.
“Poor players” are simply doing it wrong. Giving them ten million ISK will change exactly nothing because their problem isn’t money, it’s brains.
It won’t make people smarter …
… they won’t know better what to do with the money …
… and they’ll just be deprived of the experience of having to work for it.
“Having to work for something” beats “Participation Trophies” by far … and you know it.
One builds the character while the other ruins it.
That’s especially bad in a game where you’re supposed to be working for your ISK …
… instead of feeling entitled to everything, like it’s now.
If you need ISK you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps! When i started playing in 2008 EvE was way harder, I worked hard for my riches. You newer players dont know how easy you have it! Stop being lazy the ISK is out there just grab it!
Now some asshole will jump in and say “ok boomer”, but he’s still right!,
because having to work for something is ultimately much better than not having to work for it!
When he can do it, so can you!
You just need to believe in yourself instead of assuming you should have it handed to you!
