Eve Online and Pardus are MMOs whose time gating mechanics existed before it became the favored choice for „substitute gameplay“ of the Casinos masquerading as video games. At the time of their launches, the mechanics were viewed as gameplay constraints to make personal choices impactful (like in Pardus doing a FWE run vs skilling up with your 5,000 AP).
No different than „you don’t have infinite money“ being a limitation. Just like „not having infinite ISK“ is a gameplay constraint to make your personal choices impactful.
So many Eve gamers think of „ISK/hr“ it’s impossible not to think of ISK limitations as time gating. If you’re bothered by the „time gating“ of skill points I don’t see why you’re not-bothered by having limited ISK and being „time-gated“ because you’re not infinitely wealthy.
To equate them with trash phone game mechanics is just silly though: people are capable of nuance that you’re erasing for hyperbolic effect.
Yes, which is also a pay2win mechanic. You can’t explain away pay2win mechanics by pointing to other pay2win mechanics the game also has and then conclude that makes it less pay2win. That’s just silly.
Yes, but at that point it was not possible to circumvent that trickle with real world money. Now it is possible and they added several ways to do so. NOW it is pay2win, and NOW it resembles a regular time gate mechanic of a mobile game. It doesn’t matter what it used to be, CCP completely changed that and distorted that to turn whatever intention the mechanic used to have into a money printer for them.
It’s just sad to see how you make excuses for that. Do you like how they turned that unique skill training without grind into one you can either accelerate by insane grind or pay to skip ahead? Why are you defending this blatant pay2win mechanic by making this excuses?
It used to be possible, too. You could always buy characters. As far as I remember.
No. But that ship has sailed. Summer of Rage and all that. I was there.
I’m not making excuses and not defending the mechanic because I believe it’s not „pay to win“ in the common use of the word, and trying to label the game is a futile exercise. So what if you successfully label the game „pay to win“? Who cares. People play within the resource constraints they have. Real world time. In game ISK. Real world money. It’s always been this way, and people find tastes they like or get psychologically manipulated into paying for (Hypernet).
The whole debate is stupid and is reminiscent of lawyers trying to define what the meaning of the word „is“ is where the stakes are… recreational fun. It’s a dumb debate. Perfectly represents dumb mainstream gaming culture.
I took full advantage of that to make my first billions back when a single million was a lot of ISK. I often had five to ten characters doing nothing but sitting in a station for a year training all the base skills no one wanted to waste their time with.
Here’s the thing. I took advantage of the character bazaar because CCP decided trading characters would be a good source of income. Not because it would be good for the game.
It was actually terrible for the game and should never been implemented. Characters should have been account bound from the beginning. You make one, it’s yours forever. No trade. No sell.
The Character Bazaar was CCP dipping their toe into P2W for the first time. And they liked it. So they started making mechanics dependent on players digging into their wallets instead of mechanics good for the game. All the way up to taking over the RMT business instead of stamping down on it.
And now we have a forum full of P2W apologists pretending everything is just peachy with the game. Supporting CCP’s “Greed is good” strategy of game development.
What a bunch of chumps. You got the game you deserve.
Oh…but I can point out that this ‘also’, which is probably the biggest ‘skill injector’ in the entire game, always seems to get overlooked by anti-P2W people. Maybe because unlike using skill injectors, buying a character is visible in Employment History…and I guess anti-P2W people probably have friends who have that in their history so are far more reluctant to call it out
The P2W aspect of it does not bother me half as much as the concept that someone can buy kills they never actually took part in. Bought characters should be made to have a new name and have kills all cleared down. It’s one thing buying someone’s skills…its quite another buying all their victories etc.
As for P2W and PLEX…I’m one of an increasing number who simply can’t be bothered mining for hours when £10 can get me 1.2bn ISK. Bear in mind I joined a game where some people are already 20 years ahead. Why would I not want to use whatever means available to level the playing field ? There’s no way I could ever catch up just with grind.
Again, pointing to other pay2win mechanics doesn’t make the pay2win mechanic you try to defend with that not pay2win
Yes, but why lie about it and pretend it’s not pay2win?
Yeah feel free to not take part in it if you find the debate dumb.
What some of us say is that pretending this mechanics are not pay2win is just lying to yourselves. A decade of the community making excuses on behalf of CCP for making one of the most blatant pay2win games has only made matters worse and it turns a once awesome game bit by bit into a store front.
Feel free to ignore it and continue to look the other way, I’m fine with that. But you don’t look the other way, you come to this thread and actively make excuses.
Oh sure you can point it out, and so do we. We don’t overlook it, it’s one of the first pay2win mechanics this game ever had and we totally should point it out. The game would be better off without it.
Also
I like that label you just given us.
I guess that makes you the “pro-P2W” people
It doesn’t have to bother you to be pay2win. The important point is that you now acknowledge it is pay2win and that is progress. You are capable of learning
Yeah, I don’t look the other way because it could be way way worse. I’m not making excuses for it either. The status quo sucks, who cares if the label is „pay to win“ though. I don’t give a damn. You really don’t either. What we both care about is that the game is in a poor state, and this stupid label divides us for no reason.
That’s why I Wade in. Folks like you blind to stupid slogans like „pay to win“ can’t recognize an ally because of an artificial label. Arguing about the label is dumb. Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean there isn’t common ground between you and I.
You’re just too blind and in too deep to see we both hate the status quo, regardless of label. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t sad.
The important point is that I don’t care. I see a manufactured ‘problem’ that does not actually exist. No noob with £1 million to spend on Eve is ever going to catch up with the uneven playing field they log into…no matter how much ISK they spend. Thus nobody can ‘pay’ to win and you might as well argue over how much DPS a unicorn has.
Yes, and by pretending it is not pay2win you signal CCP that this is fine and it will get worse. We have over a decade of prove for that
Yeah I really don’t care it you don’t like that label. We could come up with something completely different to name this mechanics and it would develop the same stench after a while.
The fact is, every gamer immediately understands what pay2win means and it describes perfectly well in what state EVE is. I don’t care if you don’t like that, it’s just the reality of what EVE has become a long time ago.
Yeah, all of you people who make threads to make excuses about pay2win mechanics and vocally oppose anyone who would label the game pay2win don’t really care about any of this. Sure
Again, it literally doesn’t matter how effective this is. It’s pay2win because the game allows you to pay money to acquire things that are game relevant instead of acquiring them by playing the game. It’s as simple as that, it doesn’t matter if the impact of that is negligible, it damages immersion and dilutes in-game achievements all the same.
I’m not sure why you are so butthurt that I call this game pay2win. It literally is full of such mechanics. Maybe you should ask yourself why you have such a problem acknowledging that, and why you need to make excuses for CCP by getting offended if anyone calls eve pay2win.
This reminds me the carebears which convo me after I gank them (or in some cases when I die in rookie ship because of their killright as they think they got a revenge) and crying to me or trying to mock me.
They always start this with “I don’t care (that I lost my ship)”. But if they don’t care why are they typing all that crap in the first place?
I’m not sure the conversation you think you’re having in your head matches the actual conversation happening here. I don’t mean you’re unreasonable in the sense that you’re stubborn. I mean you are using your powerful faculties of reason to go deep into the imaginary.
First off, I have not defended CCP in any way. I’m not sure why you are so glued to this idea that anyone who has a shred of different thought “must” be exhibiting this behavior.
Second, you and I agree on the poor monetization scheme of the game. For some reason, my refusal to call it “pay to win” like actual “pay to win games” causes you to get very upset, since I’ve explained I’d give it some other category. A still category. And you responded that you just want to slap a “garbage pay2win” label and don’t give a about the nuance I mentioned. OK! For some reason, you then have to lash out pretend I’m the upset one instead.
Third, to me, both of these reflect that your behavior is reflecting not engaging and treating others like human beings with original thought, but you’d rather just scream out your deep passion for the one idea you want to harp on until the end of time because to you it’s the only one.
Reasonable people don’t conduct themselves in these 3 ways.
Nobody who simply ‘plays the game’ via grind has a hope in hell of ever catching up on the un-level playing field that is a game in which people already have a 20 years head start on you ! You rattle on as if you were protesting about some unfairness…yet that is the real elephant in the room that you have spent 500 posts evading.
Whilst I might have agreed that any P2W would have been unfair when Eve first started…it is totally reasonable to allow it now precisely because any noob now has to contend with people so far ahead and with alliances that have a ̶s̶t̶r̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶h̶o̶l̶d̶ hold on the entire universe.
And you think some noob in his Merlin buying 50 PLEX so he can get a Gnosis rather than mining for 4 hours is a threat to that ? Seriously ?
Nah…it’s a different kind of ‘I don’t care’. Its not the ’ I’m going to pretend you’ve had no impact’ sort of not caring’ It’s the ‘I’m going to carry on buying PLEX regardless’ sort of not caring.
category. And you responded that you just want to slap a “garbage pay2win” label and don’t give a