Since you don’t have any statistics to back up your claim other than not being able to play as an Omega clone for free, I’m gonna call BS on everything you said.
The option to buy skill extractors from the market with ISK should not be available. Those should only be available to purchase with PLEX, along with dual character training, character resculpt’s and other items in the NES. That will still provide CCP with money.
Skill injectors, items from the NES and PLEX will still be available to purchase from the market so players can still make ISK.
Those who don’t want to pay for a subscription can just play as Alpha clone.
actually Cypherous pointed it out very well, it just seems your unable or unwilling to see the bigger picture…
if you make the calculations for SP-farming, you will see, that you come out with a (-) at the moment because of high plex-prices, but still Skillinjectors are coming to the market.
I´ll explain you why by using a math example (all used numbers are just made up and have nothing to do with reality)
PLEX-Price is 2.1b/500…Player X has 1 Account and earns around 3b a month…Income 3B - Cost 2.1B = +900m
He is happy that he can “play for free” but you can´t do much with 900m and so he thinks about a second Account to get more ISK.
That second char can remotly farm activity Y and earns him 2.2b a month, but unfortunatly the income of his first char dropped to 2.7b because he now has to spend some time to set up and control the second…Income (2.2+2.7) 4.9b - Cost (2x2.1) 4.2b = +700m
Now he thinks wtf I loose money, but wait, Account 2 as all set up to do Activity Y so he doesn´t need to skill anymore…I could sell the SP/month for (let´s say) 1.8b by buying some extractors for (let´s say) 1b
…Income (4.9+1.8) 6.7b - Cost (4.2+1) 5.2b = +1.5b
so from 900m to 1.5b it´s a + of 66.66% (reality looks nicer)
…and that my friend is the reason for the demand on Skillextractors…without “free” Omega, no demand for this setup.
Its basic common sense, i don’t need statistics, Omega time IS the highest consumer of PLEX, we both know this to be true
PLEX fuels the SP farms, PLEX fuels normal players playing the game, its the reason the PLEX cost ingame is so high, if you were to remove that PLEX sink you’re massively reducing the amount of PLEX needed and the value would drop, its basic supply and demand, without demand there is no value, if people are having to pay £10 a month just to then spend PLEX to sell SP it won’t be worth it in terms of profit so extractor values will drop, SP farms also account for MCT sales as its easier to manage 3 characters on one account than it is to manage 3 accounts, its also cheaper to buy a PLEX and 2 MCT’s than it is to PLEX 3 accounts, so for every farm using PLEX and MCT’s there would be around 1800 PLEX not being used anymore
Nowhere near the money though, seeing as PLEX enables SP farms in the first place, less people playing also means less demand for SP, MCT’s are mostly used for SP farms and training same account alts, demand will drop without the ability to pay for omega with PLEX, again this is common sense, and character re-sculpts aren’t going to make any noticeable amount of money, you can already see how few of these sell in jita from the market data so those aren’t even remotely worth considering as a revenue stream
Right, but like i said, less players means less demand, no omega time means less SP farms, you can do the basic math on this one yourself
Sure, they could, but alphas don’t generate revenue on their own, and considering a PLEX’d omega is worth about 60% more in cash than a subbed omega, well you can do the simple math on that one too
In the long run, Plex sales are needed. The subscription-only model of game play died 6 years ago and only a few dinosaurs are clinging to it, hoping that the whales with sunk cost issues will continue to fund their retirement. EVEs declining numbers are a clear indication of that. The only thing that stabilized the steady player bleed of EVE was Alpha state… you know, that thing that all the sub-only dinosaurs want to get rid of?
That said, the botting/farming issues of EVE - which CCP could solve but pretends they can’t, because too many vested interests in it - means that it is bad for EVE to have a Plex-only Omega option that is close to competitive with sub time. It also gives a bad path for Alphas… they feel they can ‘grind’ a Plex, and they don’t get in the habit of sending cash to CCP. EVE needs a ‘gateway drug’ to get people to take that first step into the world of sending cash to CCP.
I would support the notion of, for $2.99 (1/5 of a months sub) - you buy an Omega Enabler from the cash shop. That Enabler plus 400 Plex in the NES store gets you a month Omega. The Enabler is not tradeable or contractable.
If CCP feels it is necessary to keep Plex-only Omega option, then the NES cost of that should go to 600 Plex. That way for any rational person, the cash options (sub or Enabler) are far better, and you will be able to easily identify the botfarms and multiboxers because they will be the ones paying 600 Plex for an Omega license.
Alpha didn’t stabilized crap. Just made things worse.
Eve’s subscription model is not appealing anymore because CCP turned the game direction to the ground no matter the signals from players and when ■■■■ hits the fan they sold out.
Knowing the buyer and their games theres no way up for EvE now.
Nobody here has any statistics to back up their claims, especially you.
Wow, you’re really out of touch, Alpha accounts don’t bring in any money to CCP, thus they definitely aren’t keeping CCP or this game active.
By the way, over the past 6 yrs, all the various PLEX options and Alpha clone states added to the game haven’t stopped the decrease in player numbers. Yet back when this game was mostly subscription based, player numbers consistently grew.
Except even at 2.5bil the ISK cost is still more than doable for players, its not like people are buying PLEX with real cash to then use them to sub, so raising the cost of omega just means players have to buy more of them to get 30 days and that just means an even higher cost
Except that you won’t, because i’m neither of those and i would still easily pay 2.5bil for PLEX lol
HQ incursions pay out 180mil an hour so ISK isn’t exactly hard to get hold of these days even without botting or multiboxing, the only people struggling to buy PLEX are the people PLEX really isn’t aimed at
Sorry dinosaur, but you’re the one seriously out of touch here. First off, any game tends to grow when it is newer (back when EVE was sub-based), and die off as it gets older. Happened to Everquest, happened to WoW, happened to every sub-game ever. CCP put in the changes to stave off the declines in player numbers and revenue, not because their sub numbers were growing.
Second, Alpha players aren’t “don’t bring in any money to CCP” players. That is clueless. They are players who aren’t currently paying a sub or plexed this month. That doesn’t mean they didn’t pay for a sub 2 months ago, or won’t next month. It also doesn’t mean they aren’t buying Plex. They also provide a market for other players to hunt, trade to, make ISK off of, and sell Plex to… all of which does make money for CCP, directly from those Alphas. Alphas are ‘content’, something EVE is getting short of.
Here’s the first clue for you: Pearl Abyss runs a 5 year old free to play game with microtransactions. In 5 years, PA made enough money off their ‘alphas’ to buy out CCP for hundreds of millions of dollars.That’s how little money ‘alphas’ bring in when properly managed… enough to buy EVE in 5 years.
The problem is, CCP, as usual, did a half assed job. They opened the doors to Alphas, and then did absolutely nothing to monetize Alphas, to change their model to make money off F2P, or even to freshen up the tired, stale nature of EVE gameplay. They just opened the doors and said “Hey guys, come on in and buy a subscription!”. They are as out of touch with the modern MMO market as you are.
As for “Alpha hasn’t stopped the decrease in player numbers”, that decrease is due to EVE getting old and boring and not supporting a growth/development path for new players, not because of Plex or Alpha. Here’s some data for you and the equally uninformed @bucegi - charts I was pulling for another thread I am working on:
Notice the difference in player population before Alpha (red line) and after Alpha (green line). Yeah, that there, that is declining player numbers for years followed by ‘stabilized player numbers’ - which in fact have already started heading slightly down, again because CCP has done nothing whatsoever to make the game interesting to the F2P market beyond saying “Come in, be someone’s victim, oh, and buy a sub!”.
The ‘subs forevah!’ crowd, and CCP, need to pull their heads out of the sand and get with the current decade. The MMO market has changed… time to adapt or go extinct.
I beg to differ, growth stopped about a decade ago, you also seem to forget that selling game time for ISK existed back before PLEX was a thing, there was a GTC trading system way back in 2007 so the game has had a non-subscription method of playing the game for far longer than PLEX and the alpha state existed and while the PCU did drop in early 2014 it has been pretty stable since
Its funny how when PLEX was added in 2009 Patch Notes for Quantum Rise 1.0.5 | EVE Online that the PCU actually went up, where it continued to ride high until early 2014 where the first actual decline happened just before the Kronos expansion, alpha clones weren’t added until 2016 so those weren’t responsible and PLEX had already existed in the game since 2009 and were actually released at the same time as the highest 5 year period for peak users happened
But by all means state that PLEX didn’t stop a decline when it did infact cause us to have the most players online
These 2 quotes from one of your posts make no sense when used together. You say, for example, that extractors shouldn’t be on the market but available for the PLEX, but PLEX should be available on the market… So what will stop players to buy PLEX on the market to buy extractors? Thats what happens already anyway.
If there is any way to solve PLEX price inflation is to unlink (at least)extractors from PLEX price. Let them be available for cash only and we’ll see whether players that have 20+ accounts could afford 2.1b per account to continue plexing their fleets or not.
I’ve added some commentary to the picture to highlight the impact of demand and offer on the price.
This has little to do with bots or “super players” controlling the economy. Rather have many players stopped selling PLEX into the market since September 2018, which then started the price climb. This may have been caused by the previously falling PLEX price.
If anyone can remember it, we had a thread or two about the price of PLEX being “too low” back then. And as of January did the demand then increase and caused the price to shoot up.
So now we get the counter threads, where players complain about the price being “too high”.
Also note that just a few days ago did around 500,000 PLEX appear on the market, which immediately put a bump into the price climb and shows how quickly and actively things can change in EVE.
Always keep in mind when you buy PLEX that another player has been paying for it with real money just so that others can play for free. The price is controlled by demand and offer and players will only sell PLEX into the game, as well as buy PLEX, when they believe the price is right. The price of PLEX is not fixed but in control of the players.
OP, first off Plex is just fine where it is now, 2nd your friends don’t know anything about the market and apparently either do you! so I would suggest you brush up on your facts and economic skills before you make any more ridiculous posts, such as the one you made here! lastly CCP isn’t going to do anything because they already know what the market is doing and why it is doing it
I mentioned this in another thread, but that Sep.2018 happens to coincide with the beginning of the ‘expensive’ season for plex, plus the end of the string of Plex sales, super PLUS the announcement that PA was buying CCP.
As a long-time professional in RL financial markets, I can tell you that very few things trigger both speculation and hesitancy in ‘investing in long term assets’ (like Plex) more than when uncertainty enters the equation. Uncertain future makes people hold onto their real dollars, and start speculating in commodities.
I suspect it was these three things coming together that triggered a situation where it made little sense for the ‘plex hoarders’ to sell any Plex at the current price, and instead hang on to it until the price ‘peaks’. Which it hasn’t, so they are all still hanging on.
While there could be issues with CCP/Plex/player spending, this is actually fairly standard market behaviour. Normally, it would continue until some of the uncertainty is removed and people see the ‘trigger indicator’ that the price spiral is peaking… in this case, likely the next sale on Plex. Then people will rush to dump their Plex before the prices drop.
For now, I am not concerned at all about the direction of the Plex pricing in-game. I am far more concerned about CCP’s mismanagement of the IP.
Nothing you said in that wall of crap text even remotely proves how Alpha accounts make money for CCP. All you did was post a bunch of hypothetical BS. I don’t care if an Alpha account was subbed last month as an Omega or how you think they help the game by being targets for hunting, for trade, make ISK from, etc. All you’re trying to do is justify the ability to play this game for free.
The bottom line is that an Alpha account doesn’t make CCP any money.
Among other things, that decline mainly started after CCP added MT’s to the game. CCP continued to push more MT stuff which only spurred the decline even more. Eventually due to wanting to sell the company, CCP resorted to adding Alpha accounts so that the decline would stop and make the game numbers look good.
Don’t care about your analysis of Pearl Abyss, sure they excel in MT’s and for players to move up in those types of games it costs way more money than paying a monthly subscription. F2P games depend on MT’s to be profitable for the company. Eventually this game will be set up to where if you want to move up in ship class, pay MT. If you want to fit good equipment to your ship, pay MT. If you want to do a different career choice in-game, pay MT.
MT’s is all about ‘Nickel and Dime’ players to death. The only reason MT games work is thanks to people like you who think paying a sub is old and busted yet paying MT’s for every single step you take in a game is new and hotness.
As for Eve Online being old and boring, that’s your opinion which quite frankly sux. In fact, since you don’t like this game why are you even here? Either you run multiple alt accounts farming ISK in-game for PLEX or you’re just a cheapskate alpha account.
Doesn’t matter, the type of mentality you have is what’s killing this game.
but you are right !!!