But the point is that things aren’t equal because the game is about skill and competition, not passively placing bets and waiting to see what the RNG says. You can’t assume this bizarre nonexistent MTG game where both players are perfectly equal in skill, the decks they have created have a perfect 50/50 win rate against each other, and neither player has a winning strategy. After all, there’s a reason MTG has professional players and the same people winning major tournaments over and over again. If it was really a game of luck then this wouldn’t exist, just like you don’t see professional lottery winners.
Contrast this with EVE’s new gambling feature where there is zero skill or player agency involved. You buy your lottery ticket and wait to see who the RNG picks. IOW, textbook gambling.
Real money is not required to play or host. People looking to maximize their isk return on their Plex purchase will broker hyper-cubes into the market.
Real money is required at some point. Paying ISK to buy the cash shop item from someone who paid for it with real money does not negate the fact that it involves real money. Nor does it negate the fact that you can buy ISK for cash to continue gambling.
And, again, access to this illicit gambling is heavily restricted because of the need to keep CCP from identifying the participants and banning them. You can’t just click the “gamble now” button on the interface and start buying lottery tickets. That’s a massive increase in the number of people who are exposed to it and could fall into the trap.
It’s not the sole purpose CCP is monetizing their investment in the feature.
But why should monetization be a goal? If this is genuinely a change that is good for the game then why shouldn’t it just be a standard feature? It’s like having a balance patch that buffs underperforming ships but only if you pay an extra $9.99 in the F2P cash shop.
No, the only conclusion here is that monetization is the primary goal. And like all F2P cash shop games the goal is to get excessive spending from whales, not to have a token bit of side income as a bonus from normal game features. In some games the goal is to get whales to buy premium ammo and XP buffs, in some games it’s loot crates, in EVE it’s giving gambling addicts the ability to buy ISK for cash and then cashing in even more with the people paying for the guaranteed profit of running a lottery.
There’s obviously enough of it going on that CCP is entering that market.
Welcome to the wild and woolly world of business…
Anyone that uses third party RMT is stealing from CCP. It’s always better that a game publisher to profit from RMT than rather than letting some mafioso profit from it. Your gambling addicts are better off giving their credit card info to CCP.
Alternately, CCP is hoping to encourage more gambling and create a bigger market to exploit.
Welcome to the wild and woolly world of business…
“Business” =/= “self-destructive milking of the cash cow at the expense of quality or long-term success”.
It’s always better that a game publisher to profit from RMT than rather than letting some mafioso profit from it.
That depends on what is required to shut down the RMT. For example, would you be in favor of CCP selling ships in the F2P cash shop just because RMTers sell ships for cash? Where do you draw the line?
Your gambling addicts are better off giving their credit card info to CCP.
And they’re even better off being unable to gamble at all because they don’t have access to the third-party gambling activities. Making an official gambling system helps the people who are currently gambling, but only at the cost of massively increasing the number of people that are able to get involved with gambling.
Oh! You sweet, summer, child. Finding that line between destructive and not is where most businesses look for success.
That’s already happening. Cash → PLEX → isk → ship. This changes none of that.
The actual addicts are already gambling on third party sites. Your potential addicts will end up there too. Forcing addicts to hide their problem makes it harder for them to get help. I’ll say it again: if you’re worried about addicts in EVE, be a better space friend.
And by expanding the F2P cash shop in an attempt to profit from gambling addiction CCP is pushing towards the wrong side of that line.
That’s already happening. Cash → PLEX → isk → ship. This changes none of that.
No, it is not happening at all. Currently you can buy PLEX and then trade that PLEX for ships that have been produced by the normal industrial and economic systems. What I’m talking about is CCP directly offering ships from the F2P cash shop, no player industry required. This would certainly undercut the RMT sellers but are you in favor of CCP doing this?
Your potential addicts will end up there too.
Again, not necessarily. A third-party site has to be very restrictive and secretive about their operation because otherwise CCP will ban them as soon as they figure it out. That means it’s much harder for a potential addict to even know that gambling options exist and it’s harder for them to get started. That is not the same as a convenient interface button with one-click access to all the gambling they can afford.
I’ll say it again: if you’re worried about addicts in EVE, be a better space friend.
I am, by lobbying CCP to remove the gambling entirely.
I agree with most of your post, but just wanted to say… I’m pretty sure CCP banned SOME people involved with the various gambling empires that have come before. But not all of them. Like the EVE Poker peops didn’t get banned, I don’t think, they were just told to shut the site/service down. IWI was banned because of some bad behavior, not just because they were gambling kingpins.
Somerblink was a bit more before my time, but wasn’t there the whole Ishukone Watch Scorpion scandal where CCP gave out some gifts and then people had to go and try to make money off them rather than enjoy their nice CCP gifts?
Hey, I don’t care that much and this is my first post in this thread, I believe, BUT… I know why people engage in a bit of hyperbole in times like this. By reacting as if CCP had done (or suggested) something worse than what they really have done… they are trying to REALLY EMPHASIZE to CCP that they don’t want them going down that path.
IOW, treat a new raffle system like it’s flat out IRL gambling/random loot boxes and rail against it to make sure CCP gets the message that they don’t want them going down that path, and they see this as the first step on the slippery slope down that path.
I dunno, man… just because the CCP servers are in London doesn’t mean that in a post-brexit sitch CCP can just ignore EU gaming laws, they still have lots of customers in the EU either way, right? Also, I’m really not sure Brexit is going to happen. The vote was narrow, all this “we can’t have another vote” stuff for years now and not being able to negotiate terms favorable to the UK for years now with multiple PMs… this all reeks of it’s not gonna happen in the end, they’re gonna do another referendum, (some of) the people who have regretted voting leave in the years since then are gonna switch to stay, all the stayers are (for the most part) gonna stay on stay, and it’ll be a narrow vote the other direction the 2nd time. We’ll see!
Piddly little thing, but blue loot is what drops out of sleepers, deadspace loot is what you’re referring to by blue loot modules. It’s gonna confuse some people, so that’s why I’m bothering to reply on that. And yes, deadspace mod + gravid or unstable mutaplasmid = some awesome better-than-officer-mod abyssal mods. I’ve not tried those combos, though I have started playing around in the faction + gravid playground (rolled 10 mods the other day, got 4 good ones… 40%, I’ll take it!). Before this, I’d only been doing t2 + unstable mutating back in August 2018 when there was an abyssal event going on that gave you points (towards Leshak/Vedmak/Damavik skins, IIRC, maybe some skill accelerators, too?) for rolling some abyssal mods, didn’t have to be expensive ones.
<> Complaints <>
1: Hypernet Relay enables gambling addiction in a form which CCP condemned from 3rd parties in the past. There’s room for an argument that it’s a blatant cash grab and may encourage those with addictive personalities to spend real money on PLEX to fuel their Hypernet habit.
2: The corp section of the wallet should have the same overview chart function as the personal wallet section.
3: The market orders should be re-integrated into the market window. We’re now required to have two windows open when managing our orders instead of just the one we used in the past. Reverting this is just good sense, but allowing us to separate market window tabs into separate windows while having them all open/close simultaneously would be a good middle-ground for anyone who likes the new presentation.
<> Compliments <>
1: If CCP wants Somer Blink to come back, then at least this is a way to enforce that it’s available to everyone and RMT won’t be openly routed through 3rd parties.
2: New wallet summary is really nice. It keeps us number nerds from having to export to spreadsheets to get these categorized expenses. That said, could we get customized time frames instead of just the default rolling 30-day period?
