If you allow things to be bought with real money, then you cannot do anything about this without stopping real money being involved. And if you run a business it is insane to limit the amount of money your customers can spend.
However, as Im neither the head of a big Alliance, nor a member in a competing Alliance, how am I affected by someone having ten times my number of accounts? And how many should I be allowed?
Not exactly. This position seems to be a bad one. Why?
First of all, you make more money by having more customers, its simple business and the reason why games like wow, guild wars etc have reached 10 million sub’d accounts (or more) in peak, while ccp could only dream of such.
from a design perspective eve took a suicidal position on catering to only a few, rich customers (best way to put it) much like star citizen is, and both are doomed to <= 3m subscribed accounts in a best case scenario.
With little population its important not to alienate your player base, not only does it hurt your income, it also hurts the longevity of your game, as population sizes and game longevity are directly tied to each other just as income rates and population are tied.
CCP is not “limiting” their income by removing “extractors” (keeping injectors), no, instead they are killing off population and ultimately the games longevity for a “quick buck”.
Its important to understand these choices are made by hilmar to ultimately keep corporate numbers in an realm where they can be manipulated (which he does) to show the company is doing better then it really is (which we will boil down to +/- 5% growth or loss on a year; ie simi-stable with the right forms of manipulation to the metrics like the recent “steam account” nonsense that passed us a few months ago in which 98% of the population online was new accounts, created by vet players and used by hilmar to make the game look like its growing for the end result of making the statement to the public “eve is not dying see these growth numbers here” all the while hiding the fact that they were alts).
There is a very sinister level of manipulation going here for numbers. Removing extracts will help the game be in a more healthier state, but they will not help ccp look healthier as a company. For this reason they will not likely be removed.
Besides even if you push all that aside and just say remove extractors you have many other options for income that are efficient on ccp as a studio, Like ship skins. removing extractors will do nothing for the game but help it. ccp has other options for income.
You will use that isk to acquire overly geared ships, buy masses of ships for people, effect people by giving them isk, or create stations that will benefit them… just a few examples of how that isk has economic viscosity that can shift around quickly.
The reason why they are more successful is due to them not allowing those millions to have multiple accounts? Sorry, they are successful for other reasons. If anything, you should have kept this point until AFTER you had explained why you think its bad.
If a niche game has only a few players, it makes business sense to make as much money out of them as possible.
I dont see multiple accounts being the reason for lack of players, if anything it is caused by a lack of mass-appeal.
And giving isk and ships to, lets say, new players is bad because…?
And how many accounts should a person be limited to?
No, they are more successful because they cater to casuals. They have more room to allow for these things to happen because the people that do these things have less impact. So it does not matter to them if they do or do not have them. On top of that they actively create content and design it in a way to combat it, ccp does not.
and the best way to do that is to change up the “niche” aspect to cater to more casuals, not exploit and abuse and ultimately throw what you have out the door for 2-3 years of increased profits (generally speaking)
I have seen situation where an ally spawned 15 people on an engagement of 5v5 and rofl stomped the enemy team with multiboxing (the same person is probably still down in test space).
Right, so Im not sure why you brought that up. Different games, with different target audiences.
Whats the purpose of doing that if you destroy the niche market you were enjoying?
Sounds like the enemy team didnt do its risk management properly.
It removes a lot of the drive for the game, to progress in it and to explore and experience it (the submersion of the game). It also works against the intended progression rate of the game which can cause player stress on the development team to create content, though because eve is a sandbox in this situation that is less of a concern to a degree (it will take some time before they are flying supers, but it is possible for them to get fed to it… Ask goons they’ll tell you all about buying injectors and a titan for your new alt).
Limit is not the correct word here, because players have means which they can get around “limits”, like vpns. Granted eve’s client runs unique ID’s and that could potentially fight it.
The content should be designed in a way that multiboxing is extremely difficult if not impossible. For example, multiboxing is easy to do in mining because there is really no danger aspects to it for afking. Make a perma tank, and minimize or afk while the beams mine.
an easy fix to this is to make the actual mining process itself take 5-10 seconds to fill the hull, and make the “finding the ore” in asteroids (say asteroids are not named anything but asteroids, and they spawn only 1 type of mineral in them then you’d have to “scan” them to find what you need to mine). then add a danger mechanic to it like explosions or something.
This will require more interaction from the player, making it hard or harder to control multiple toons, or even dangerous to do so.
So you would also be against Fleeting up with a noob to boost them through a mission chain, or like in those other MMOs you mention, a hard for their level dungeon?
So I should only have one account, thats what you are saying? And the extra character slots, they should be removed too then, yes?
Im still not seeing an explaination for how multiple characters damages the game, the market or the player experience.
You gave an example of where your friend apparently used it, even though you are against it.
I assume you just use one account with one character on it, yes?
This is a bit of a tricky question actually.
Designers should never work against grouping. Social interaction is the purpose of mmo’s, and should be fully encourage. To the contrary, i would add “bonus’s” for doing things in groups, and out right remove “share reward” on missions in place of everyone getting the same reward plus the bonus per member in fleet (up to a cap based on the content. For example, up to squad cap for regular missions/arcs and up to win caps for incursions).
That being said, the mission they are doing should be designed in a way that a new player does not have the skills to pilot a ship in the higher level content. An option to make this possible is perhaps adding something like “if you lose yourship, you forfit half or all of the mission rewards”. this way carrying becomes unproductive if they do not do it themselves.
No, I use all three characters for different reasons.
Imo, it would be better if we only have one toon, but that will hurt the business model of eve, though those aspects have little impact (persumably) on ccp’s income and could stand to be redesigned.
Imo i’d advocate for the game to be completely free but the sub to allow all characters to train at once. Im not a fan of the whole “omega clone” nonsense. This only is there because a totally free game in its current state would result in huge amounts of multiboxing miners (again because the dev team will not fundamentally fight afking/danger aspects of mining which is why barges are not part of the alpha clone experience).
Sorry but then I have to ask; why is it ok for you and not for me?
Which is really the bottom line regardless of how we feel.
Business is about squeezing people until the money comes out. The fact they are people is utterly irrelevant, and a massive inconvenience to business.
That sounds utterly awful, sorry.
It basically takes out the middle ground I enjoy and (to use WOT as an analogy) leaves you with the two-tier dichotomy of Tier 1-2 people who never stick with it and leave after a week and Tier 10 whales with twenty made up money only tanks filled with golden bullets.
I like being Tier 5. Never the best,never the worst, and only using the Golden Ammo and Tanks I get in game or with free giveaways. But able to buy as many hangars as I like to store said tanks in.
I would pretty much leave EvE if I had to choose one account to keep. They are all made for doing various Tier 5 activities.
Which is why I ask why its ok for you and not for me?
Having three toons, and having three toons online are not the same thing. In the latter scenario, you earn more per hour then i do, which results in problems with the previously mentioned reasons.
I dont agree with your way of wording this. Some of us dont need to resort to bad business practices, and just focus on good customer service and a superior product. If you have to result to these steps, you maybe should re investigate your ability to manage a business.
If we go to the math aspects of this, these positions are absolutely and unequivocally ludicrous.
Lets say we have 25k players (about eve’s cap online) that pay 50k a year, the potential annual income of that is 1,250,000,000 (1.25b)
and we have 10,000,000 that pay the industry average (lets round to make it easy) of 300 a year. That is 3,000,000,000 (3b). Kinda makes you feel stupid that your position is earning 1/3rd of what my position is, dont it?
Lets look at it another way.
Population facilitate content. The more content, the more retention (as people are less likely to get bored of the product, in the case, eve). More population means a healthier game, and subsequently more income.
Further more, catering to the casuals does not always invalidate the whale attention, but catering to whales always invalidates casuals.
Example,
You can cater to the whales by having injectors for them to inject to cap a toon quickly. However, if you extract you can only cater to the whales, and a subsequent abuse comes from it.
It is ok for you to have multiple accounts. It is not good for you to be able to use them at the same time.
True, but they still fulfil the requirements of allowing one person to do things they wouldnt otherwise on a single character. Market manipulation and skill farms are both still perfectly viable.
And I dont agree with how you are interperting this. It is my opinion on business is that the organisation which makes the most money is regarded as the most successful, and by nature this leaves no room for people, just the market. This is certainly my experience in the real world, so I dont really see why EvE should be any different.
However, we both agree that it is a business decision primarily, for better or worse. Which seemed to have eluded Falcon when he expressed his thoughts on the subject.
Im only editing the quote there due to space.
You seem to be equating removal of multiple accounts with an increase of potential custom.
Im writing this on quite a small phone, so its entirely possible I missed it, but how did you come to this equivalencey?
I dont agree that you have to have multiple accounts to play casually, but its pretty handy or even essential of you want to play any role other than just PvP combat with an aim of “competing”, as some people around here call it.
Right… I get that…
Thats the part I dont get.
Im not a whale, I can afford extractors in isk and I use free SPs Ive got from event s as well as my home grown ones to sell Billy’s brain occassionally for liquid capital. Whats wrong with that?
That is not true.
The only benefit having multiple characters on the same account has (out side of making more money for eve) is the ability to play them in different corporations.
You can do everything you can do on two toons, on one. You cannot however, do everything you can do on two toons on different accounts then you can one; As the obvious who accounts can run at the same time.
First, That is not the only definition for success. Also Popularity is success, however it does not matter how you define it in this case, as more people = more money, always.
Falcon, Like Hilmar should be terminated, and promptly offered a job more at their capability… say at mcdonalds?
since characters are not limited to one ship, or one type, you can simply just change ship on a single toon that trains everything. T here is benefit for training all your skills on one toon, and that is you dont have to retrain the core/defensive skills again.
the advantage of doing two toons is you can place them in different corps, potentially far away, or even hostile to each other for the purpose of various types of content (malicious or not).
This mechanic was designed by those who will constantly throw money in the game to obtain monitary value via in-game currency. It was designed to soak money, nothing else.
You can have twice the market orders, invention slots, manufacturing slots etc on two character over one.,
Again, not disagreeing with that per se (though there are ALWAYS outliers) but this is once more you saying that there is a correlation between removing Multiple accounts and increasing population. How do you arrive at this?
Fixed that.
Marketting folk who price these things and come up with them are not gamers.
For more training time yes. This is a fair point. Imo, something that needs to be changed.
Natively we are a social species. We grow up socializing around the dinner table, or with friends. It’s the nature of our society. The truth is the mega entities do exist for the purpose of safety, but the truth is that is a smaller reason of why they are so large.
The drop of quality through alt spam and larger corporate entities results in less interaction, so then the soul seeks out what is missing or lost, that social experience. this is why smaller corporations tend to be more successful and live longer.
Look at it this way. what is the likely hood if you staying in a corporation with 50 people online that are all named Player a, player b, player c, Or some obvious naming convention? Or even if the names are different and they do not speak or interact?
You’ll leave, Most people do. Even if the benefits out weigh this, its only a matter of time. Removing the spam, and reducing the size of corporations will result in a “era of reestablishment” where corporations build, build with people, find each other, and through it purpose. That purpose will bring about the age of social interaction, which impacts retention rates, and even income.
Oh Im not sure this conversation will be productive form here in, sorry.
https://evewho.com/corp/The+McCandless+Clan
And I dont suppose I can convince you that a good percent of them are other people?
I doubt that, even if they are it still does not matter as i pointed out. Its all about interaction, and alt spam only encourages interaction with yourself. I mean, i know a lot of teens are into self play, but this is an mmo… and i like to play with others. wink wink
I think youll find I interact with many people. I just dont feel the need to do it with my family.
This is why society is having so many issues these days. We need more of this (all content aside).
On to the topic…
I hope you understand my position.