A player can roll a new Alpha character on an Omega acc, or just create an Alpha account.
With a corvette or the 1st free venture and gear, and a free hauler from tutorial and career agents, a player can grind the necessary standings doing distro missions in no time flat for the 0 tax reprocessing ability. Without spending a dime, that same player can go mining, and then turn ore into minerals without ever spending a single dime in ISK…or in RL cash actually.
See #3, would of thought a CSM member would not fail this hard.
Your answer is invalid, you lose.
Because either you are playing the game or you are not.
If you are not playing the game then your time here means nothing.
Same with are you acquiring minerals or not. If not?..
If you do not care to elaborate if you are able,
Then your answer is invalid and you lose.
I didn’t read the whole thread… I’ll just give the basic answer.
When people say that “minerals aren’t free” what they are talking about is how you should determine how to price what you make from those minerals.
Simply put… if the minerals used to make a ship cost 5m isk… the price you charge should never be less than 5m isk. Because if you mine the minerals you can sell them for 5m instead of making a ship that you’d then sell for 4m.
The “cost” of the minerals you mine is the price you can sell them for. Using them is giving up the chance to sell the minerals… which is the same as spending isk to buy the minerals.
If you can only sell the ship made from 5m isk worth of minerals for 4m… you made 5m from mining than lost 1m from manufacturing. You netted 4m isk… but your choice to manufacture actually caused a loss. If you sell the ship for 6m isk… you made 1m in profit from manufacturing (and 5m from mining).
Now is “mining” by itself free? Sorta. There is an opportunity cost when you mine in that you could spend your time doing something else. The time investment is real. But it is as “free” as any other activity in eve that creates items or isk without input materials. It’s “free” in the same sense of the “free” vacation you get when you go let someone try to sell a time share to you… you’re giving up time.
If you are looking for an answer, then you definitely lose.
My ground rules stand.
heres a hint: I asked for Proof, and it actually exists…its as simple as this entire OP Post of mine is simple, it is you making it complicated.
The Proof you might be looking for though is much more simple…
Everything you have said so far is large portion of everything i have gone through myself in creating this Post and arguing the way i do on this topic.
as in Mkint, i will leave this alone for now…find me proof
There is still only 1 argument in favor of “free.” And that is if you use a political definition of the word rather than an economic one. Minerals are free as in anyone is free to to attempt to acquire them. However, that definition of the word “free” is abstract to the point of uselessness.
Really though, this entire conversation feels fundamentally useless. It’s about the definition of words, and was answered hundreds of years ago. Shoot, even Benjamin Franklin wrote on the subject as Poor Richard. Except his version wasn’t useless, because he went on to expound on value as well, how people spend time in ways that don’t confer value.
Usually in this conversation (this is not the first time this conversation has been had, not by a long shot) it’s an attempt at trying to justify having wasted time (waste being where an expenditure does not confer an acceptable amount of value.) That’s where I start to explain to the (invariably) rookie and the (invariably) rookie he’s arguing with that neither isk nor time are the only things that have value. And given that this is a video game, it’s stupid to pretend either of those have ANY value that matters.
But the whole quagmire of value vs cost has nothing to do with the question you asked. If the minerals cost you time, then they are not free. Period. Pretending words mean something other than what they mean suggests you are just a troll.
I have read each and every post up to this point 1 at a time.
I will never concede the term “Time” as you are either playing the game or you are not.
However,
Effort, the base cost for everything in EvE to include things not covered by game mechanics is the correct answer.
Wanda Fayne, you have provided a link that explains/answers the topic I am discussing, and serves to satisfy my only condition…show me PROOF.
Your 1 Billion ISK will be deposited in your account soon as i log into the game.
Remember everyone, its just a game, but its a World we players have built…Effort, without it EvE does not exist, we do not exist, see some of you at Vegas o7