As we talk about plex changes, don’t forget that we also had aurum… Yeah this old coin made only for the new eden store. Ccp had a good idea by making what happen now : You can buy stuff, cosmetics etc… with plex.
Ccp can have an impact on the market and make plex price decrease. How ? In the most simple way : Have you checked how many extractors for how many plex ? Extractors price increased… Ccp is making plex increasing :
10 extractors for 1400 plex 5 for 700. I don’t remember it was so expensiv with plex. Oh there is a discount now…
The bump of plex price is simple to understand, don’t speak about rorqual or anything you need to generate isk, but simply this :
Injectors was super asked by old players suddenly, because they where able to inject 3 times without any penalty skills. Over rich poeple with 80m sp more where not involved in skill injectors (despite maybe for an alt), but suddenly they had an opportunity to bump their old toon. Those over rich poeple spent a lot of isk, and sellers saw something simple : hey, if i put the price higher they still buy. And injectors price increased, and the plex followed. Nothing hard to understand.
Now… If we return to the basics, you lower the extractor price, it will be lower on the market, the marge will be reduced, the injector’s price will be reduced, plex price will decrease.
Oh double post, sorry but hey, I just wanted to add that : I use to stream a bit and I can’t count the number of poeple who arrived on my stream and said : Woooaaa, eve online, I always wanted to test this game but : is it worth starting now eve online after all this years ? Am I able to “compete” with all those old players ? My answer was : 1) yes, you have skills injectors, you can now play and create your character faster by the effort you put in the game 2) the game is in free to play mode so you can download and give a try now.
Remember this : plex was created to have 1 free month of game, until the plex became the way to inject skills too.
A new player will seek first to become omega, to don’t have any restrictions, to be able to cloak or something else, but then, he will spend a lot of time injecting. Higher the plex price is (to become omega), fewer you give an opportunity to test the game as it was always (before this omega and alpha thing). We need new players, we need new customers, ccp too.
CCP needs new paying customers. Extra freeloaders don’t directly drive income for CCP.
Indirectly, they consume PLEX that PLEX4cash buyers have purchased, but freeloaders don’t directly drive PLEX4cash purchases.
It’s relevant to factor in Skill Injection, but that’s a strange way to attract new customers: pay a lot of cash up-front so you can fully participate in the game. Given long enough you’ll get it back when you can afford to buy PLEX for ISK yourself.
This might be what CCP is trying to do, but if so it’s a reversal of the normal approach: “first hit’s free” .
I always took a 1 year sub. And I’ve made me a gift for my birthday, once : i’ve bought a plex and I sold it on the market. I was happy to have 1b at this time. Ok now, 2019, I buy a plex and i sell it on the market, I got 2 b, seriously ? New players are really happy when they reach their first billion. You need new customers who will pay ? Yeah they will pay, no worry. How much money poeple spent in a free to play game like apex ? For skins dude, only for skins… 20$ is not a small amount. If i want to buy (and i am an old customer) extractors now, I can’t buy them for 20$, I have to pay 40$ minimum. Result i won’t buy anything. You got the point ? -----> More it is expensiv less you sell but you earn a good amount, less it is expensiv more poeple will buy. Quantity over quality. If things are cheaper you will earn more, bcse you will have more clients. Ccp was the only mmorpg with a constent growing amount of players over the years… Well… I don’t know if it is the case now.
Ok now, be honest, It is written in capital letters : Eve online free to play. Dude, they come. They start to play. They have a goal to reach, right, able to plex able to inject. They will then want to buy skins and stuff. If they are struggled and stuck to become omega bcse plex price is too high, they won’t have a range to feel well in this game to then spent money on it. New players will just say hey, it is impossible, i stop playing.
So what do we have now ? Old players not returning and new players farming and seeking a goal to hard to reach, plex. We are loosing customers, give me a solution to have new paying customers, you have to see a bit more far than your nose maybe.
As I understand it (**), the income model for CCP that you describe would depend mainly on newish players paying up-front for Skill Injectors.
AFAIK this isn’t what most people see as “free to play”.
**
I might have missed something important though, because I’ve never looked closely at Skill Injection. For me there’s been no point: if expensive up-front skill injection is really what it takes to play EVE, I’ll never leave “Alpha status”.
When i came back to eve in 2014 with a fresh new toon, I took from another mmorpg 3 friends with me. One of my friend bought a plex, sold it and bought a faction frigates full of faction’s items. He took his iteron and was suicide ganked in high sec. We told him that we heard previously to don’t do that. (i was myself in an astero with a sister launcher in my cargo, autopilote mode, i was suicide ganked by a trasher, I never used the autopilote mode since). Then we had marmite collectiv perma wardec us because I’ve met a crazy guys who payed them to perma wardec us. I’ve opened back in the days a ticket for harrassement, problem was : i had to open it against the poeple who wardecked us, bcse the guy, crazy who did harrassement on me was hidding behind other people. I received advices to try to avoid my situation from ccp guys. THey told me : create another corp, let them financially bleed. 50 million for a 1 week war against a small corp like mine back in the days. Wardec mecanic was a desaster before the actual change. What happenend in my story was : my friends didn’t play with me anymore, we couldnt play in the same corporation. I am not speaking about a 1 or 2 or 3 weeks war, but months. I managed to join a null sec alliance with my noobie alone corp and they stopped declaring me wars. War dec system could easely turn into a griefing tool. Now you can choose to avoid this grief by having no structures. Clever answer from ccp.
Suicide gankers have no real back effect now. It is really easy to do it, too easy, and the reward is too high. I am not against the suicide gank mecanic but i would like to see more poeple in low sec farming to get back their security status to be able, really to come back in high sec.
They should instantly die and not being able to warp on their target and kill it, even with bad ss.
So you want to speak about game mecanic to attract poeple ? Well my friends stop playing, I am still here.
Answer is : yes it affects new players and the actual rewamp is really good. Of course eve is an hard world full of dangers. What dangers lives suicide gankers ? None.
oh and euh… I don’t know a lot of games where you meet poeple playing it for 15 years, I think we all here love this game, for a good reason because this game is great, and best part, we have clever devs who work hard to keep improoving it. Eve got everything to attract new players, despite the hidden price behind (plex price) that we are actually talking here.
I advice you to do what I did, starting from the beggining again. It will help you to remember this : as a new player, you have to learn a lot about how the game works. There is a lot of infos. Once you start to understand them you want to test everything. To be able to do that, now you can inject. Previously you had to wait, sometimes, years before being able to test everything.
Skill injector is the key, and deeply related to the plex.
But it also means they buy less plex overall, if I want something that costs 2 billion, how many plex do I need to buy, higher plex price = fewer plex I buy. It’s a question of where the two curves meet overall for where CCP wants plex prices.
The other issue is that it’s a cyclical system, plex price rises, people invest, buyers buy fewer plex, supply shrinks, plex price rises, so people invest again.
Around and around it goes until the demand side manages to drop faster than both of those factors drive it up.
So… natural pressure on plex is up.
Plenty ? I couldn’t say actually, how many. Idea is not making them “loosing” isks. As i said, I was happy to sell 1 plex for 1b. We are talking about common sens now. 2b is behind common sens.
You can also see this : lower isk for plex will push plex buyers to buy more plex if they have high isk needs.
For exemple the guy who need 2b in game will buy 1000 actual plex. Despite of 500. I can return your argument.
Sure, but the ship and others to go with those skills you will get more. And in some cases people have the skills and want the expensive ships without farming.
The skills are also a single time purchase.
