And again: you can have an advantage and not win.
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The advantage (for seller) is getting a lot of ISKs. Buyer doesn’t get any in-game advantage. Advantage out of the game - saving cash doesn’t matter to the f2p or p2w definitions.
Like a broken record. 
Is that what you understood ? What on earth did you even read ? What part of “Play free does not equate to do everything for free” did you NOT understand ? Could it be that you consider the game a P2W from an alpha’s standpoint ? That would even be more ridiculous - in fact it’s how this thread started.
Yes Because Advantage doesn’t equal Win 
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Again, this is such a strange take. That is explicitly not what the Alpha accounts were about - it was changing the old 14-day trial (full access but 14 days only) into an open-ended trial with restrictions. The monetisation strategy remained the same: subscriptions and whatever else we can get away with through the store.
At no point did I say Eve was not a pay to win game. I’m saying it’s the gentlest, most balanced form of pay to win that I can think of, and is therefore not really a bad thing that it is this way.
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Right. If your goal is to have lots of ISK, sure. Good on that person. Even better for CCP. If that person feels good about having lots of ISK, and is happy when he opens his wallet, good. Is that an advantage ? On a psychological level, sure. On a game level ? Hmm, not yet, unless he knows what to do with the money. Maybe the guy you take it up for bought some plex with cash in the past, sold them for isk, and became a trader because he had some good insights in the eve economy - and now prides himself in having a fat wallet, not having to pay to play anymore, but knows deep down it doesn’t matter. I.o.w. the ISK is meaningless but for the person - it does not matter for anyone else.
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Not really. The levels of anger and frustration in the community are very high, and not only because of the changes made to the game, also because of the attempts to change the business model - as I’m confident any CSM member would confirm if they were allowed to. Part of that anger and frustration is translated in a PCU which now has dropped to 2006 levels - and that is due to omegas not logging in, as we can safely assume that the number of alpha visitors coming and going is more or less a constant.
I got an Alpha account skilled up for flying a 400 DPS, 78K EHP Gnosis all within a week. That’s only marginally less than the 500 DPS, 90K EHP Gnosis my level V Omega account has had for months. The Alpha account is hardly being cheated…given that its getting it for free.
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The only one I see frothing at the mouth here is you.
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“Obsession” 
I said I can ignore you, doesn’t mean I am.
You seem to have trouble with English. Is it your second language?
I don’t have to lose something if you’re gaining something by calling EVE pay to win, we’re not in a competition.
In fact, if we get two clear definitions about what we think is pay to win where you call EVE P2W and I don’t and understand eachothers viewpoints, we’d both be winning.
I care strongly about games being ‘my definition of P2W’, because I do not play games that try to encourage me to keep spending more and more on microtransactions in order to compete. P2W changes the goaps of a game that then isn’t about outplaying and outsmarting other players, but about outpaying them.
That is not a type of game I like, as I would miss the outplaying and outsmarting, while I’m not at all willing to get into a match of outpaying others to win a game.
I stay away from pay to win games for that reason.
If EVE would be a pay to win game (according to my definition), I wouldn’t be playing it. Which is a shame, because I like the current non-pay-to-win EVE.
No, like I said, P2W is for me a big reason to not play a game.
This is why it’s so strange for me to see people call EVE a pay to win game 'because it’s free and you can pay for a subscription’. Sure, if that makes a game P2W for you and calling EVE P2W for that reason helps you somehow, good for you.
But that definition is irrelevant for me.
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There is literally NOTHING an alpha can buy to get beyond the 20M SP hard cap. It excludes all types of gameplay that would require anything beyond that point - which is the bulk of the game. That is all the proof one could ever wish for that the game has retained its original business model. Of course, they could decide to change it in one blow, but they can’t without losing their subs. That is also the reason why the community watches any development on training queues and attributes/implants like hawks… Did they include some clever opportunities to get alphas perhaps drawn in a bit deeper and hopefully more interested in the game ? Sure. Did they provide a manual that says “if you add up all the costs you just made, you’d be better off sub’ing” ? Nope. Caveat emptor, not only in Jita, but everywhere in real life, mate.
That would explain a lot. I mean, to think that “Advantage” means “Win” you must have a serious deficience in the English language.
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Gave you a “like” for having enough self-control and wisdom for not posting. I’d like you as my mentor 
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EVE has no win condition, therefore it cannot be pay-to-win.
/thread
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tried that, went past his head 
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Right on that boat. PTW games are not as clear cut and there is a spectrum.
I define “absolute advantage” is where a player will pay $$$ to gain something that gives them unmatched power unless others throw in their $$$ to level the playing ground. The qoute from @Gerard_Amatin sums it up nicely. To put a situation to this. Say in Dota 2 Valve releases a hero that is super OP but it costs 60$ USD. This hero defeats all other hero’s no matter the skill of everyone else. That is PTW in my book. That is an absolute advantage I am talking about. I am now encouraged to buy this hero to level the playing field.
Hearthstone offers really powerful cards behind $$$. I would need to buy these cards to even have the slightest chance of defeating the person. This is an absolute advantage.
EVE I can kill a 200mil SP player or a marshal with the right ships/people/tactics I can kill people with NetWorth of trillions. There is no absolute advantage here. Skill/type of game/circumstances of the game all play into if a game is pay to win or not. Each game is unique and has it’s own set of issues and problems. That’s why I don’t do blanket statements. I hope I cleared up what absolute advantage to me is.
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Kellian logic: if you can’t “win” an argument make a hodgepodge of completely unrelated stuff (core business model vs. opportunistic monetisation), shove it under someone’s nose, call him a crackhead and tell him to eat what you just concocted. For the rest of us it’s simply called “squirming like a devil in a vat of holy water”.
It seems you don’t know what you can do with SP over 20M ? And that you need a sub to cross that line ? Doesn’t look good on you, not good at all.
But of course, Lucas. We as a community cannot prevent any changes if the publisher is dead set on them. The last three years have proven that ad nauseam. However, there are dire consequences to not giving in to customer demand, a drop in business (as in $$$) (google it) and evidenced by the dramatic drop in the PCU. If anything, certain changes to the game are the signal to … just … leave … with … regret. Which is happening.
The only thing we can ever hope for is an honest dialogue with the people making and selling the game, directly or indirectly via the CSM. I admit, hopes are not high.
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@Vokan_Narkar And if you want to talk about “attacks”, I was attacked first by Lucas Kell when he called me a “random Fortinite player” so quit it with the victim act.