Well they are quite close to a slot machine. You put something in → rigged randomness → you win or lose.
I’ve been testing them long before their launch, so they are not new to me. I always thought they could be a great way for people to create new interesting fits, find new interesting ways to do things.
I thought. What I saw as a problem before launch was how their low drop rate, combines with their specific roll chances into something that either makes no sense at all (mostly economically speaking as the next best faction item will be cheaper and better) or is really just a toy for the richest of the rich. Now there is nothing generally wrong to have stuff for the richest of the rich, but specifically in the case of the PVP meta it would have been far better if they were realistically useable for all players.
I rolled several sets of hundreds of the same Mutaplasmids to get some basic ideas about RNG distribution. Once you do that for instance with the cheaper Decayed Mutaplasmids, you’ll find that due to their largely negative effect on fitting costs, they are not a good option compared to faction items. The goal to shake up the PVP meta has failed, unless you consider it a success that the ones who can already afford everything, can have a new more powerful toys which actually just further fixes the PVP meta, it doesn’t shake it up.
Amongst all that I didn’t realize the potential influence on credit card warriors. Now I think we all know the game is not intended to be won by real life money and that’s good. People who think buying the most expensive stuff weighs anywhere near as much as experience and wits will be punished by others. Good again. However, rolling Mutaplasmids does not require any of this.
People either realize like @erg_cz that this gamble is statistically not in their favor or they might be addictive personalities, get a lot of bad rolls, realize how much value they’ve lost and continue to buy PLEX in order to re-gain their losses.
The problem I see is purely this. If they weren’t items for the rich, I don’t think the problem would be anywhere as high. If you couldn’t at all trade them, but find them in amounts that somewhat correspond to LP, faction items and T2 production - even better.
The randomness plays a significant factor in this. If it would be so huge that it would jump maybe 5 or 10 meta levels (i.e. T2 web is meta 5, officer webs start at meta 11) then the gamble would be much more significant, thus allowing one to turn a 1m ISKs item into a 80b ISKs item like the Tobias’. That’s where it would be a real problem. I currently don’t know what the actual span of the randomness is, but if it stays somewhat close to the original item then the gamble is small and so will be the risk.
I’m not a clever man, so just put in your own two punchlines about this being farfetched and a pokemon reference, then do the same for a stretch and the Fantastic Four.
I really don’t think the plasmid mechanics are smart by any measure, but I wouldn’t categorize them as gambling either. As so many people already pointed out, the end result of the mutations are useless. Either the module becomes worse off, or you get a minor benefit that doesn’t institute a practical or meaningful change, or you get a great result that is likely too expensive/rare to field in anything other than a surefire victory in which case it is still a case of #2 - minor benefit that doesn’t institute a practical or meaningful change. And the likelihood of that one module’s enhanced performance being the one thing that effects the outcome of a fight? Practically nonexistent.
For these things to have a practical, non-rare effect on the game at large or even a series of pitched battles, they would have to be common. Something which they’re not going to be, and in a practical sense, are already prevented from ever being in the first place. And that’s the reason they will cite if it is ever admitted or revealed that this expansion was a critical failure - because for how irrelevant these mutations are for the game (in their current form), they might as well have never existed.
Now, how you square that with the implied premise of the OP saying these things are highly desired, I don’t know. They’re a novelty, sure. But so where the uniquely-skinned ships I used to collect in my hangar before CCP switched over to the current SKIN system.
I don’t think you can cite the ability to buy and sell PLEX as relevant to this, since that happens already with people trying to dive headfirst into things which they do not understand by purchasing skillpoints and expensive ships (cue famous audio from Youtube where a guy brags about buying a character and losing several capital ships like it was nothing). So I don’t think you can cite people making irrational choices as a part of the problem since that’s just something that happens everyday in EvE regardless.
I also don’t think you can cite incentive to profit, since besides the fact that it’s a core tenant of EvE in the first place, I don’t recall seeing people call market speculation illegal.
I also find it nonsensical to cite “having to work for pay” as a point about it being gambling. The fact that the entire process can be done by doing it yourself for an hour or two, or you just use in-game money you already had to facilitate it…like that’s the entirety of EvE. People who do T2 invention and production can be thought of as doing gambling rolls to create their products, and gambling on the idea there will be a need for them when they hit market. Ask people sinking billions of isk into jump freighter production if it’s a gamble at all.
My conclusion is that your assertion is entirely without merit, and I’d even go so far as to say it’s bizarre as well. I don’t see it being sufficiently different from other EvE mechanics to warrant this sort of discussion. And I also don’t see it being sufficiently similar to other, actual, established gambling instances to warrant this sort of discussion or consideration.
The current span is maybe 75% bad rolls, 2/3 of them almost unusable, 99%+ worse than the next best faction/item. I’d say in most cases this stems from the very high chance to brick the module on PG/CPU.
The interesting parts are the stats which normally don’t change between different Meta levels or don’t change much. For instance some capacitor related stats on Neuts and Noses.
Of course you shouldn’t be able to turn the T2 item into a better than Officer item. The best course of action would have been to leave the regular progression of the stats regarding the Meta levels alone and only have Mutaplasmids touch the things that are (almost) the same amgongst all meta levels of an item.
I would say that IF there was evidence of someone using RL money to buy isk, then using that isk to purchase Mutaplasmids in an attempt to gain more isk (through sales) to convert into PLEX, CCP would be treading on thin ice in some countries. I have no idea how Iceland interprets the gambling law, which is ultimately where this would be decided. However, I suspect CCP looked into this before treading down this path - at least they should have…
To answer the OP’s question, since you can’t gain any RL money (just more in-game value for your RL money), it’s not clear that most would consider this gambling.
“Gambling” is the wagering of or something of value (referred to as “the stakes”) on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.
now is it fall to that description?
out of context,
there should be added: “with every non perfect hit.” You don’t gamble when you strike perfect hit. Furthermore by mechanic you cannot crit hit then.
I disagree with that assertion. I think this whole gambling thing is on people’s minds due to the whole “loot crate” fiasco. In that, I have only one point of reference - loot crates from Mechwarrior Online. You had to buy keys of course, but you could unlock whole bunches of useful in-game items! But…and there’s always a but…you could also get those things cheaper through the normal purchasing process - buy additional mechbays, parts, etc. And many of those items were available through the in-game currency as well.
At no point were any of those items able to be sold out of your inventory to other players. There was never any RL money that could increase. Just useful things in your in-game inventory.
This is going to be a bad turn of phrase, but I’d bet that was targeted as gambling because the nature of it was as such - you had a worthless item, you had to use real money to buy a key, and there was a gamble your item would become very useful. All this without the ability to sell it off to other players for profit.
The mutations here are different in several significant ways. One, the original items are not worthless at all. Two, you never have to spend one real penny on a “key” of any sort, since in this case the key and the loot crate are one and the same. It’s simply another piece of loot that drops, and it mutates other pieces of loot that drop.
Yes, it’s what I pointed out long before the expansion went live. However, there is still the easy fix to increase droprates drastically, like ten-fold or even more. However, this alone would not make them practically useable, as you’d still face the challenge to re-think which stats they influence in what way. Be it unreasonable, but the fear of players who think that it would lead to loss of value in the Faction item market, needs to be taken into consideration. This means that the droprates for the different types must be understood in relation to Meta/T2/Faction items. Finally this comes back to the number of stats influenced. Personally I think it would be fine enough if Decayed Mutaplasmids didn’t give any effect strength boni, but just allowed minimal fiddling with PG/CPU.
The question is will they admit that they could have done it better?
I think you’ve answered that yourself. You assume that people who gamble premeditate on the practical use of their unlikely win in comparison to its cost/the chance to lose. If that was so, we wouldn’t have a problem with gambling anywhere.
Your SKIN collection is quite the opposite. Unless you paid unusual horrendous amounts of PLEX/ISK for them, they are unlikely to heavily go down in price in the long run. Speculating on the markets is of course taking a risk, but it is not the same as pressing one button to decide wether or not your item will raise or fall in value. Sure, the assumed worth of Mutaplasmids or mutated items is bound to market dynamics as well, but since the Unstable Mutaplasmids can in some cases yield results better than Officer mods, it is not unreasonable for people to believe that if they roll it, the profit is more or less guaranteed. Because items of a certain power are indeed in use. Alas, it seems most if not entirely limited to Unstable Mutaplasmids.
Just that this is not the same. Buying stuff for consumption, like Skillpoints or ships does not equal buying stuff in order to press one button on the slot machine and gamble with it.
I didn’t. I cite that there are people more likely to show addictive behaviour to pay2win mechanics. Buying and injecting skillpoints is not pay2win, because there is the counterweight of actual people who will kick your ass in your Officer AT ship if you don’t know what you’re doing. Sitting docked, paying money, pressing the gamble button has no such counterweight. People who fall into this, will think they are unlucky. People who get popped in their expensive ships, will realize that actions have consequences, because there are players to make sure of it.
RNG ≠ Players.
Market speculation isn’t gambling. The gambling bit is to press the button and instantaneously win or lose value. The fact that this value (if you want ISK for it) needs to be realized on the market via a sell would only be a counterweight if there were no profits to be made. As it stands, there are.
You are mixing things up now. Making an investment generally isn’t referred to as gambling, apart from colloquial language. It doesn’t pass the treshold of having a clear separation of loss/win at the end. If you produce you might not be able to immediately sell for the price you would like, but you still have the items.
For invention, the RNG-chances are public and that changes a lot, but much more importantly you need Skills to run inventions and they take time. Doing mutations entirely depends on your ability to click the mouse button as often as possible in any given time.
Well you put value in, click one button, win value or lose value immediately. It’s purely based on “RNG” (even though rigged RNG). It’s pretty similar to sitting in front of a slot machine. The limit is only the depths of your pocket. Sure, many people and thus players are reasonable enough to not fall for this. However we all know there are people who might and this is exactly why gambling is regulated in most countries. Luring people into a chance based game they will statistically lose under the promise of great win (which CCP does in regards of the use-value of Mutaplasmids, which is, as you yourself pointed out: sh*t), is enticing gambling behaviour.
The solution is simple:
In their advertisement for the Event, they should have just said: “We’re happy to introduce items that will not make any practical sense for you and it would be nice if you were stupid or addicted enough to waste your in-game or real-life money on it. Regrets 100% guaranteed”.
That’s all. Some honesty and problem solved. These false promises are not good for the unvary. As one CCP stated some time ago: the game should not lie to you. It doesn’t need to tell you everything, it does not take you by the hand, feed you success or anything like that. But: it should not lie to you.
The advertisement lies around Mutaplasmids are encouraging gambling behaviour amongst those unexperienced players who are in danger of falling into gambling.
The mechbays were useful. I made a rule about only opening loot crates that had one in them…I only won it once out of…35 crates I think.
Of course bays are only useful to a point, and that point differs from person to person. But generally I agree, there’s a lot of worthless junk in those crates.
I have no evidence and neither can I get any. I just see some likelyhood for how easy it is for people to go down this road. Maybe I’m wrong, it happens often enough
Iceland prohibits offering gambling services unless the profits go into non-profit causes. I’m sure CCP looked into it and they won’t be treading on thin ice. However, if we’re wrong, this might still get them into trouble, since it would not necessarily have to be decided according to Icelandish law. Any judge could decide it falls in their jurisdiction for some reason.
I agree that creating an item that is only in-game valueable is much less likely to induce gambling behaviour than say a price in real money would. However, prices in forms of material or immaterial goods are not uncommon and taken that for EVE players the game is super important, I’d say there are enough people who’d see an op item as real value. Sure, it’s somewhat irrational but real money gambling is too.
Not really. You have the original item and the Mutaplasmid as the input. CCP being one of the good companies, doesn’t sell items, players need to create them. While you don’t have to spend one real penny on a either the item or the Mutaplasmid, you don’t “have to” use Mutaplasmids at all. Thanks to the extremely low droprates however, it is fair to say that there may be people considering the effort to acquire those vs. the equivalent real life price of them. The scarcity makes it more likely for people to spend ISK and the RNG nature of it all makes it somewhat likely that people fall into gambling behaviour beyond their in-game wallets capability and start buying PLEX to gamble on.
Agreed. Honestly I think the RNG part of it needs to be thrown out and the entire system reconstituted as something else. I have an idea in my head that’s been bouncing around for a while. Maybe sometime I’ll shoot you an evemail about it, since you seem to really be interested in the mutations.
True, I suppose the analogy was flawed. The special ships were only priced at a few tens of millions above the normal variants, and I simply liked them. But I was trying to connect mutated modules as a novelty and a personal interest rather than a practical one. And that’s where I believe they are right now. It was said in the threads about this before it went live…very possibly by you yourself, what constitutes a desirable mutation differs from person to person, from ship to ship it was meant to be placed onto. Thus, any mutation, unless 100% positive, is niche. As a random thing to throw out, a webifier with additional web strength and a range penalty might be completely worthless to me, but valuable to someone else. Just as a particularly colorful Omen was appealing to me, but potentially worthless to others.
Kind of. As I hope I just outlined, there is very little in the way of “objectively practical” with mutated modules, so I wrote under the premise that someone would be trying to either use or sell the thing. The former being highly unlikely unless they had a very rare and unique fitting situation that an item thusly filled. Or the latter, being a tremendous hurdle to find and connect to such a person that was they themselves in that situation.
So yes, I dismissed it as not isk-worthy and left it at that. Given that we are talking about irrational behavior my prejudiced dismissal of that was premature. However, even if I take it for granted that someone might take and throw away large sums of money in such a fashion, I fail to see how they wouldn’t already be doing that via camping the Jita undock in a Tornado and nuking vulnerable haulers without even the pretense of scanning them first. Such a case would be infinitely more lucrative and still qualify as a gamble for thrills. Even if you never scooped loot, the chance at mouth-watering killmail would certainly parallel anything going on with the Abyss, no?
I am, as at least some version of it could really benefit the PVP meta. Totally agree on the RNG: it needs to go away and get replaced by something more EVEish. Feel free to hit me up or just create a thread here, as I’m sure many others are interested as well.
No, absolutely I got your point (I hope). For most people this will be clear if they have enough game experience or if they are rational enough to not fall for any kind of chance based scheme. It’s just that there are people out there who easily fall into gambling, some people are even addicted to it. Now, we could say it’s their own responsibility or we could say that the problem is not the opportunity, but those who fall for it - both is not really wrong. The game however, at least in my point of view, should not encourage such behaviour. It should and it very well does punish people who think they can pay2win, but we should avoid advertisements for expansions that suggest you could.
Because not everyone has such a well developed artistic way of thinking. Great idea. Let’s get people off the hook and put them into Alphanados
Okay, sure, why not. As much as I know full well that I am going to regret ever diving into this…I made a topic in player features and ideas. God help me now. What I would do with mutaplasmids
Try being a bit less pedantic, because not everyone is. I’ve given a definition of the word gambling and gamble above. As I’ve already mention, but you apparently don’t want to read it, can one see PvP as a gamble with your ship being the wager or just your honour and pride. It doesn’t need a dictionary to comprehend it.
The quote regarding turret damage being random then is from EVE Uni and I don’t care if you like it or not. It was meant to show you that turret damage has in fact a randomness to it. Missiles in comparison do not. I suggest you get good at EVE or at least learn to accept facts and be grateful when you learn something new and don’t act hurt and insulted when somebody provides you with the information you’re missing for a discussion you wish to participate in.
For the rest: it’s very unlikely for anybody get to the perfect hit condition which will result non random effect, but because we still can and should endeavor for it doesn’t mean it is gambling because we can change gambling mechanics for our advantage. I can’t go to the cassino, magically enchant dices, and cast 7 every time for purpose. With turret mechanism I can, in theory.
Now if mutaplasmids are gambling? We can wage money (RL or ingame) on an event with uncertain outcome (mutating is random) with intent of winning money or material goods (no money involved, but is mutated module material good? in EvE it is).
When you mutate a module, you always get a result.
You get your “moneys” worth.
Whether the resulting module is desirable on the market, is secondary/superfluous to that.
