I logged in yesterday and found that CCP Games is offering straight-up ISK as a login reward. I am surprised to find no thread has been started on this topic.
I am sure the gesture was intended to do something positively for the game, but I feel those objectives could have been achieved by means other than ISK-for-login. I’m not an economist so I won’t begin to touch the economic side that other critics may have. I would instead like to call out that this is exactly the same dark pattern used in mobile games that reward you with in-game currency simply by opening their application daily in order to inflate DAU counts, which is not a metric available for Eve Online to the public. Perhaps I am very late to the party due to my 10-year hiatus as I have a problem with the daily login rewards in general, but I suspect that ship has long sailed.
It is a fair critique that BPC and filament login rewards are “ISK-for-login”, but one must note: that relies on the player driven market. ISK-for-login directly removes all player agency from the game – it is quite literally an ISK reward received before you even choose a character, a breach of the fourth wall. It does not feel good.
(In my mentioning of mobile game dark patterns above, I also realize Eve Echoes is indeed a mobile game, but at a very minimum I would have preferred such a login reward to have been limited to the mobile platform. If they even have daily login rewards, that is. I’m not an Eve Echoes player.)
Well, people have mostly been posting in the official thread, so that’s why most haven’t felt it necessary to start a new topic.
Now, for the matter of the free isk…
Some people are complaining that since paying players are being given isk, this is just another step on the P2W pipeline. Others are worried that it will contribute to inflation. I too have my concerns, but was trying to reserve judgement until I heard some analysis from economic experts.
My initial thoughts, however, is that they probably shouldn’t have given out the isk. It injects a large amount of isk into the economy, and it seems to me that there are other things that they could have done in order to help jumpstart economic activity. I mean, the tax break is probably a good start, but they could have also done stuff like have live events that temporarily boost resource abundance and/or yield.
It would get players logged on and in space,
players would still have to go out and earn it (i.e. SP farms can’t sit back and collect billions)
it would bring down manufacturer costs
it could help bring down the costs of consumer goods that are currently overpriced (assuming the correct resources are buffed)
and the temporary nature should prevent it from turning into unsustainable economic activity
I dunno. Based upon what I know about economics, this seems like the wrong way to go about things. However, I must admit that my knowledge of the subject is limited to what I’ve learned from youtube videos such as crash course economics. So, I’m not exactly Ben Bernanke over here. Moreover, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that CCP estimated how much isk would be injected into the economy, and concluded that it would be able to handle it without major issue. So, they decided to go with the large cash pay out -less work, and it would make a lot of players happy.
On the plus side, it should help out a lot of newbros. 235mil can make a big difference to younger players. Hopefully they know how to spend it wisely.
Then you probably didn’t read my OP where I talk about how the pretenses of not deploying a known industry dark pattern has been dropped, which is reflected in your reply since it remains unaddressed.
It is a known addiction pattern[0] leveraging human psychology and System 1[1] type thinking instead of relying on natural gameplay and the quality of content the game itself has to offer.
You’re not an Economist but you find it a problem with something you have little knowledge about You know little about Economics but just the thought of someone getting free isk disturbs you.
Let me put your mind at ease. That isk isn’t yours, it doesn’t come out of your taxes and NO, those people who are getting free isk aren’t on the dole, they don’t go to soup kitchens and they DO pay for their Omega.
Because it’s no big deal at all.
yep, it’s not like it’s billions of isk or anything.
It’s a reward for being Omega… Thank you, CCP
It’s only “dark” for whiners who have nothing to whine about.
I bet you’re not even a psychologist… let me guess, your knowledge of psychology is also “limited” right?
People get free stuff and the egotistical go boinkers
I’m getting the free isk and I’m not getting a battleship with it ( I already have 4 of them ) so I won’t be losing the battleship I’m not getting with the isk. It’ll just serve to pad my wallet with extra isk and that is all, it’s no big deal.
…which is precisely why I stayed away from economic topics.
I’m sorry to have given you that impression, and I’m pretty certain you cannot quote me on that anyway. I have no problem with handing people free ISK. I look forward to opening my wallet later and seeing a donation from you. Thank you in advance.
I’m not sure what I did to deserve being called a “whiner”. Could you please let me know what in my OP sounded like “whining”? I would like to improve my rhetorical ability.
I don’t believe I am being ego-driven here, apart from my above snark asking you to donate me your ISK. But I believed you worked hard to earn that kind of response.
CCP spent all this effort taking isk and materials out of the game with various scarcity measures. This caused many people to unsubscribe or at the very least be annoyed or not log in as much. CCP said even just the other day it was for the future heath of the game so obviously they felt it was worth the sacrifice.
Then after all that they decide throw away those efforts and just start giving isk as a login reward.
So if this is how it is then why bother doing all the changes to remove isk in the first place?
It can only be that they are making the game harder so that they can get you to spend money to make the game easier. Pushing all these packs came after scarcity and now these out of thin air isk login rewards for Omega. “We made the game harder but don’t worry if you pay us dollars we can give you ‘free’ isk”
I pay my Omega time regardless of whether they give free isk or not so that argument has no leg to stand on for players like me.
I think CCP-Rattati is in hot water these days Why with his “They’ll be back” comment. Will they be back? It doesn’t seem like it to me
They said it was to remove isk but was it really what was going on? I have always doubted their excuses for Scarcity and now their actions contradict their arguments.
CCP thought they had a hold on the players but the players have shown them that it was the other way around because without players there is no game.
The whole topic is centered on Economics. Why start such a topic if your knowledge of it is limited?
Then why the thread? You obviously don’t like the free-isk log-in reward because, what? Because log-in rewards is a bad practice? Only according to certain persons. To others, it’s perfectly fine.
You can’t start such a topic without thinking you’ll have some backlash, right? Otherwise, you’d be fooling yourself.
WtF are you even talking about? Don’t try to turn the tables on me, you started the thread, not me.
Bring it on. You think words hurt me or what? Far from it.
Support your arguments ( not that you have any valid ones in that OP ) or go home.
Bottom line for me in this thread is that you tried to make a big deal out of nothing. You were probably bored and wanted to start a thread about just anything. Now you’ll have to defend your view on something that doesn’t even matter in the grand scheme of things… Sucks for you
For those wanting to discuss the actual topic, skip down towards the end.
Please read my OP:
The crux of my argument is that I am against dark patterns in gaming. I also don’t like other things that are borne out of addiction (for example, the gambling of HyperNet), but I kept my thesis narrow and topical to current events.
[EDIT: I’ve even changed the title of this thread to be explicitly clear for you: This thread is not about economics, but about dark patterns in gaming. I hope no one remains confused.]
Go reread this thread in full. Myself and others were having a topical discussion until you barged in and began making assumptions about my motives, who I am, my intelligence, etc.
And I succeeded enough to get you to reply. If you are replying, it must be a pretty big deal for you to spend the time and energy to come here not once, but several times. I’m not going to keep engaging in this distrating side discussion about you and why you keep talking about me.
Back to the actual relevant topic at hand…
I agree. However, I believe there is a wealth of solutions out there that can better engage new players and help them be less impacted by scarcity. I’m not very imaginative, so a simpler solution would be to introduce something like a one-time-ever easy mission (similar to COSMOS missions) for all players who, upon their first omega subscription payment and completing the tutorial, gain access to this one mission by one agent. And the reward would be that nice lump sum.
You label that pattern “dark” just because you don’t like a gaming company put log-in rewards but if you open your mind for a second you’ll see that it isn’t dark at all. First of all it’s not something that takes advantage of players, it only widens the possibilities for the company to profit and if you were the one profiting you’d sing a different tune. Companies exist for profit and I’ve said before “woe the day Gaming became a billion-dollar industry”. Before, the companies were geared on the game being successful but now they’re more geared towards the company being successful and those are two different things that clash while the games sufferer for it.
Well, if you’re going to edit and change shiat as the thread progresses, by the time the thread is locked the title may be " Why I like turtles"
I read the thread, thank you very much. I’m not one of those bozos who comment without knowing what the thread is about but you seem to not even know what your thread is about, you’ve already changed the title twice.
I didn’t make any assumptions about your intelligence. I would never do that, I’m not that type of person.
Now if it feels that way to you then you have a problem with your intelligence, not me;
If that’s your strongest argument, go home and don’t waste my time.
Yes, this perception is also not great. It’s unfortunate that “dark patterns” tend to rely on subjective opinion, hence the need for CCP Games to walk a fine line. Unfortunately, the way in which this ISK was rolled out does not do favors.
As opposed to “cooked isk” ?
You know little about Economics but just the thought of someone getting free isk disturbs you.
Why with his “They’ll be back” comment. Will they be back? It doesn’t seem like it to me 