You could buy aurum for cash
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While that may be an effect of PLEX, my guess is CCP wasnât trying to specifically help such players. After all, I use PLEX now to reduce âwife aggroâ.
I donât see how eliminating the middle step would change much.
Not going to happen. People buying PLEX for RL currency would drop relative to where it is now, and with people having plenty of ISKâŚyeahâŚnot going to happen.
Those days are simply gone.
The 2 types of plex would need to be independent from each other, meaning neither could be traded or converted for/to the other. they can both be brought with isk or real life money.
One plex for the purpose of game time only, and the other plex for apparel, skins, dual training and all the other services.
You could exchange a Plex for 3500 AUR as well.
But there were lots of people who didnât really know this, you (almost) always had spare Aurum afterwards and if you wanted to spend real money, buying Aurum directly was probably cheaper (at least I think so).
I could imagine that both types of Plex combined would be less attractive than the current version of it, just by the loss of flexibility.
We are not going back there.
I asked if CCP could comment on why helping poorer people get online was scrapped and I also asked if there is an article where CCP talks about why they scrapped helping poor people in regards to Plex.
There doesnât seem to be an answer which is bad business practice to change something integral without saying anything.
Yes, poorer people can have a limited game using alpha/ftp and I saw someone suggest that CCP could expand what ftp customers get.
I think adding value to Plex was a wrong move which has affected how many players are online and how many alt accounts people have.
I know some of you will say this has had no effect on login numbers. But youâre wrong. Any change to the way in which people can pay for eve will affect login numbers and it surprises me that some of you canât see it.
What youâre saying here makes me think your knowledge of business is lacking.
The example I gave should show you the car seller wasnât knowledgeable about customer needs and tried to add value to the car by putting on a personal number plate which that specific customer didnât want. Nobody should ever be content about missing a sale, to me that seems backwards.
Its important to have a good understanding of your customers needs if you are in business, without this sales will be lost. Do market research and listen to what the customer wants and then adapt your business.
Actually, I would say it the other way around. Sellers do not necessarily care about each individual customer, but about whether or not they are earning profits and obtaining sufficient profits. If that means they lose some segment of their potential customer market, but also increase their share in another segment and increase profitsâŚthat is what they will do. When a seller picks a product to sell that choice will entail satisfying some potential customers and not others.
You canât have a product that pleases everyone. If the product changes over time and you, as a past customer, are no longer pleased, but the firm is earning profits and successfulâŚwell, oh thatâs too bad, but that is life. Time for you to find a new seller that better matches your needs. That ability to take your business elsewhere vs. demanding the seller meet your needs. That is part of what makes the market process work. Your ability to walk away, and the seller has the ability to change his product.
In your example, the dude can buy a car elsewhere. Thatâs not really the case with PLEX. To fit your example to PLEX, there would be no other car to buy.
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Reasonable enough. There are plenty of space games just as there are plenty of cars. Remember Plex is just a method of buying subscription for eve. So really we are talking about gaining access to a specific game.
My example fits because value was added to the car with the personal number plate when it could have easily been sold alone, and there was a customer right there and then prepared to pay for it.
Well I feel alone on this point, and it seems that CCP will continue to miss sales.
As I mentioned, Plex was changed without issuing any statement as to why the goal was to no longer help poor people.
What you donât seem to get is that its wrong to abandon that without saying anything. If one caters for a certain type of customer then keeping them informed is good business practice.
How many other sandbox Space MMO where you can pay your subscription with in-game currency? Or is your example customer ok with changing his sport car idea to a sedan?
OK so u guys thinks its OK to change something in business without saying a single word about it. I understand.
Was that ever the goal? For profit firms are rarely interested in social engineering.
You are assuming that was the intended goal vs. providing an additional source of revenues and thus profits.
Pretty sure they announced most maybe all of these changes to PLEX. Dual training for example.
Hmm, seems a bit hard chatting with you teckos. I checked your link and it said nothing about abandoning helping poor folk play.
CCP actually marketed Plex as a way to help poor folk get eve online. Everyone was well informed regarding this. So my question still stands, why did CCP change Plex without stating why they no longer wish to help poor folk?
And is this a good business practice to change something without saying anything?
Itâs good business to say nothing if you expect the announcement to have a negative impact. Think of all the butthurt people who will surely whine because CCP is no helping the poor. Wonât somebody think of the poor who canât afford to play a subscription based MMO?
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Isnât it obvious? Alpha state is for the poor nowadays. CCP is slowly introducing all the classic F2P mechanics to EVE. It is salami tactics.
- free mode for the masses and the poor: Alpha state
- premium membership: Omega state
- microtransactions: granular PLEX
- vanity items: apparel, ship skins
- mechanic to speed up progress with cash: skill injectors
Coming next: Upgrade of Alpha state (in December).
It was in response to the claim of no announcement. And where exactly does CCP say they did this to help âthe poorâ?
There is no reason that CCP has made public.
Okay. You really believe that the drop in players and PCU is due to the fact that they were all low income? That there is some sort of amazing overlap between being low income and playing EVE? Based on what exactly. The best I can find on this idea is an imaginary conversation and imaginary capsuleer has in a Dev Blog.
the Dev Blog introducing the concept of PLEX does mention this, but as the Devâs personal feelings. The actual reasons though are given as,
Benefits to Players
- Lower barrier of entry for exchanging ETCs. Everybody can do it easily in-game
- ETCs now use a transparent and efficient market, our very own EVE market
- Fights price fixingâone of the single most complained about issues with the current secure exchange
- Opens up for a larger supply, lowering the ISK exchange rate in the long run as anyone can exchange their ETCs more easily
- Enables you to create corporate Contracts for your members in exchange for Pilot Licenses
- Empowers you to recruit new players on trial into your corporations with Pilot Licenses
- Allows you to give someone a âfree beerâ (I like this part)
- Cramps down on RMTs (Real Money Traders) style with a kill and a smile
- Itâs pure awesome
Benefits to EVE and CCP
- Cramps down on RMTs style with a kill and a smile
- More and better options for you means more of you and your friends are able to play EVE. That means more subscriptions for EVE, meaning more yardwarre and larger EVE expansions
- Provides a 30-day option while addressing our internal issues with the old 30-day ETCs
- Has the potential to increase monetary velocity (Velocity of money - Wikipedia)
But we are aware of the drawbacks here, such as:
- A larger supply and demand could also increase prices
- Potential immersion breaker, weâre sure you can look past it
- For safety reasons, the Pilot License canât leave a station, so you have to create it at the location you want to exchange it at
- The Pilot License canât enter any form of container
- Itâs pure evil
So yes, it may very well have let a subset of players into the game or kept them there. But that was not the primary reason based on what Iâm reading. Sounds more like a nice selling point that appeals to peopleâs better nature, but really has nothing to do with the real reason why PLEX were introduce and why additional uses were attached to them.
Quick response, i will read in detail after shower.
Eve online lead the way in catering for all walks of life with the introduction of plex. at the same time they fought against the RMT issue. this was announced with the reasoning I gave about helping poorer people access the game and helping stop players buy isk from illegal isk sellers.
I will find evidence of this later,
In my view eve was rewarded with higher concurrent login numbers which in itself is a major marketing USP.
I will at some point share my speculation on how the increasing isk price of plex has affected the game.
Iâve been playing Eve for a long time, I know some of you donât think this is anything special which I strongly disagree with. I have seen a lot, I have talked to lots of people, most importantly I have done practically everything there is to do in Eve for long periods of time. I know how thiings work. and I understand that changes to the game can have long term effects.
When plex was reasonably isk priced everyone was happy, many people could afford a few alts using plex now they canât. Again, I know some of you will never agree with this, but I think that had a serious effect on login numbers. The people who extensively used a few alts lost the desire to maintain their alts once plex isk prices rose. Plex value increased when CCP added all the other features to it, thats a fact.
Alpha just isnât the same man, come on, any real Eve player will tell you this.