Monetization Survey

Communications Center General Discussion
1

Ugh, I might be opening a can of worms here, but CCP has been implementing some new monetization methods recently, and I’m curious as to how players feel about all of them. I am also extremely interested in any monetization ideas that aren’t P2W or anti-consumer. So, let the arguments begin!

Crap. I really wanted to make a secret ballot, but we had a guy vote with a bunch of alts in the last poll. So, I figured it was better to have more transparency in order to discourage fraud. So, full disclosure, people will be able to see how you voted. However, I ask that you please be honest about how you feel, and not worry about what anyone else thinks.

The poll consists of 14 questions, and should only take a few minutes to complete.

Do you support the following monetization methods:

Subscription / Multiple Character Training
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Plex
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Multiple Pilot Training Cetificate
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Skill Extractors
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Daily Skill Injectors
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Unallocated Skill Points
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Expert Systems
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Market Seeded Items (i.e. skill books)
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Player Made Items (i.e. Ships)
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Comsetics (Skins, Avatar Items, Character Resculpt Certificate)
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Character Rename Certificate
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Do you support items that affect game balance (i.e. skill extractors) being sold in the cash shop?
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Does the ability to also obtain items that affect game balance through the NES and/or in-game market improve your support for that item being sold in the cash shop?
  • Strongly Agree
  • Somewhat Agree
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disagree
  • Strongly Disagree
  • Undecided

0 voters

Do you support items that affect game balance being sold in the NES, but not the cash shop?
  • Strongly Approve
  • Somewhat Approve
  • Mixed Feelings
  • Somewhat Disapprove
  • Strongly Disapprove
  • Undecided

0 voters

Finally, do you have any suggestions for monetization methods (preferably of the non-P2W, consumer friendly variety)?

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How do skill extractors affect game balance?

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3

Alliance/Corp Skins would be awesome. If each alliance with x amount of members can create a skin that is applied to all ships I’d buy that. I also wish CCP would have a good merch store so I can buy some stuff there to support the game.

3 Likes
4

Oh no, the goyim are asking questions again.

Yes.

Stop making boring-ass skins and clothing. Maybe if CCP made some sparkly ship skins and Hello Kitty ripoff decals, and let my character have cat ears and anime hair, then they wouldn’t have to create pay-to-win boosters just to keep the Koreans from re-purposing their studio into a soju distillery.

No one cares about yet another shade of dark green for their ship.

And stop devaluing their own product with stupid-ass login queue trinket rewards just to have fake data to present at the boardroom meetings.

4 Likes
5

Ok, sorry about this, but I managed to get confused and stopped voting at player made ships…
Am I approving of them being monitorized?

Anyhow, I don’t like how CCP does this stuff, they only thing I will pay for is my subscriptions as it stands now. The rest of it is stuff I either don’t want or stuff that feel like cheating to me.
Some of it, like skill extractors I simply done know anything about, but buying skills in any form, or paying for an advantage is, at least to me, cheating.
As far as the clothing goes I don’t want any of it, it’s all mostly horrible, but it’s something, that if it were better I would buy.
The only other example of a game where you can buy stuff to pay the company making the game that I have direct experience with is Warframe. You can’t, as of the last time I played it, buy anything that changes how the game works, you can make it your self, or you can get it from other players. They make their money on cosmetics and they make a lot of money, their clothing, if you can call it that, and cosmetic stuff is wild, and very fun. It’s very different than what’s in Eve, but it works and I’ve bought it both for myself and for other people as gifts.
This new expert system thing is causing me a lot of concern, but for now I will wait and see. It’s also a licence to kill anyone even if they were born today, because now you never know who might be an expert.
Anyway, my votes up there are moot, they don’t cover my opinions on the subject and I got confused midway through.

Put it this way: paying to get advancement is not the kind of game I am willing to play. Simple as that.

2 Likes
6

In this survey, Approval means you are for monetization by that means, and disapproval means you’re against monetization by that means.

2 Likes
7

The question is asking if you approve of those things being monetized. So if you don’t approve, you’d select somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove. Based on your post, I’d imagine that you’d disapprove of a lot of the things up there.

Anyway, I’m anti-P2W, but I seem to be more accepting of certain things than the purists are. For example, many people consider plex to be P2W, but I don’t mind it:

  • It provides players who want to buy isk with an alternative to the the RMT’ers (which do significant damage to the game)
  • Player skill is still the biggest factor in determining outcomes
  • It allows players who can’t buy a sub to play as an omega (because of financial difficulty, unfavorable exchange rates, or limited payment options due to where you live).
  • It gives players a place to store wealth
  • It probably gives a bigger advantage to players who buy it with isk, than to the players who buy it with cash (PvE’ers and PvP’ers alike will use it to train alts and keep them omega)

Of course, none of this is to say that I don’t have my limits. For example, selling SP directly to players doesn’t have any upsides (aside from putting money in CCP’s pocket), is P2W, and it erodes faith in and goodwill towards CCP. Needless to say, I’m against that.

Regardless, thanks for you perspective.

On a side note, War Farm actually does sell prime warframes and weapons, as well as boosters that increase XP, money, and resource gains. But it’s also not a PvP-centric game, so it doesn’t concern me the same way selling items to players in Eve does. Of course, it’s not all roses over there, as I’d wager a guess that the grind was made as bad as it was in order to incentivize cash purchases.

They do certainly have some good cosmetics over there though.

8

Full benefits for subscribing people. I do not get why subscribers should pay extra for all the skins, for instance. The system should be as follows: Omegas have a number of skin slots included in their subscription (let’s say 5) and they can buy more slots if they want/need. Alphas should not have any skin slots included and have to buy the slots for extra money.
Same goes for this Expert crap. If you are Omega, you should have 1 or 2 slots for that included in your subscription and only Alphas should have to buy them at all.

That way, CCP’s monetization of these features would be fair for already subscribing people so that they do not have to pay more money for features if they are content with the included slot number, but can pay more if they want more slots.

9

I’d spend money for something that is fun or helps with a pain point.

I would approve of the magic 14 being sold to V for about $10, but only the magic 14 with the option for those who have already trained the skills to spend $10 and get the skill points refunded. This is simply a recognition that the magic 14 are skills that have been around since the start of the game, that the number of skills has greatly increased since then (for example exploration), and that there needs to be a better way for new players to get to usefulness without waiting it out.

I would also approve of the ability to spawn a shuttle instead of corvette/noob ship for a one time fee (say $10). The shuttle should, of course, not be reprocessable into loot.

Certain special edition items could be sold in the store. On the top of this list are fireworks and snowballs (which admittedly can have some use and tricking somebody into aggressing).

The ability for whomever takes control of a structure to apply a skin to it.

Better clothing and skins. Basically, can we optionally ditch the grimdark motiff, it hasn’t aged well.

Possibly the ability to access certain content, which comes with a cultural context. For example to use ships / start a character from a race that had modified pod technology to dump the pilots conciousness into a mech/gundam (basically modify your pod to be able to do this, but the mechs are still player made and the stats are not payt to win). Same for being able to direct a spacegoing cthuloid biological horror at my enemies. I want to make it clear that I absolutely won’t pay, and would be quitting the game level unhappy, if it was simply pay to play this new super race. I’m willing to pay, but it’s to play something with cultural context (mechs/great old ones) that might not completely fit into the EvE backstory.

Better looking P.I. icons. Perhaps even P.I. content. Again this might have to be a buy item to enable content. P.I. is a special case since it was meant to interface with Dust. I really wouldn’t mind paying $5 or $10 to unlock an additional level of P.I. where I could direct bombers and troops against other’s installations.

I might also pay to be able to break out a chess board during a mining op.

And just to reemphasise what other’s have said better looking skins and clothing. Didn’t a clothing designer work on these at some point? Oh and also better backgrounds. Everything seems to snapshots with ugly bulkheads in the background. My main would like his picture to be in a well appointed office with samerai swords behind him and a bottle of scotch on the bookshelf.

10

+1 for the cat ears and hello kitty skins, that’d be adorable and I’d totally buy a hello kitty skin for my Gila XD

11

Yes, I think CCP should add the ability to decorate your local mining belt with signs, statues, and various aesthetic effects. These should of course be destructible, but would allow for variety and content, and would allow for a more personal experience.

12

It’s both hilarious as depressing.

People are fine with stuff that they’re now used but had to adapt to earlier or they say they’re against it but use it anyway. They’re not fine with changes they have to adapt to now.

Like with the mineral and other changes where people go “these numbers are all wrong” instead of realising that they are the new right numbers, adapting to the new situation.

It’s exactly the same as with the current Corona issues and solutions to that: people hate new things and pretend it’s about freedom. Just like so many years ago when it became mandatory to use seatbelts, insure your car and this pesky thing called speed limits. “You can’t change this and limit my freedom” and other dumb, irrational and selfish reactions.

A sign of intelligence is the ability to adapt and learn new things but the more I play I come to realise that the “you have to be smart to play eve” is only partially true: a large percentage of players just copies others and does as they’re told, pretending to be one of the smart ones.

It’s the same here: CCP is a company which means they want and have to make profit, which clashes with the game Devs who want to make a cool game but they still have to accept and agree to the financial choices of the company. Not realising this means you’re childish, selfish and irrational.

If you use skill injectors, either to buy or to sell, then you agree to them being in the game, stating otherwise means you’re a hypocrite.

The world, and thus EVE, is full of whiny, shouty and irrational 5 year olds. It’s depressing.

1 Like
13

Quite surprised that almost 60% want to buy ships for $

14

People whine and cry a lot but when push comes to shove they’re really just happy little customers, ready to grab their (mom’s) wallet.

15

Speaking about yourself?

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16

… about other people’s interests but when it comes to theirs…

Fixed it for ya :grin:

1 Like
17

There was one question that confused me. I strongly approve player made ships, but I strongly disapprove the monetization of ships that are then no longer player-made, but spawned by the shop and competing with player industry.

How should we interpret that question?

18

A hello kitty skin for your Gila with holographic cat ears also projected above the “head” section of the hull. :cat:

1 Like
19

I care about that, and would likely stop zooming in if there were cat ears on ships. A shame, because EVE is such a pretty game.

20

Do you agree with CCP selling items that are currently player produced (which means such items compete with player industry)?

Also, I just stumbled upon this while browsing 9gag. Figured I’d leave it here.

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3 Likes