I’m a new player and I’d like to play PvE. One thing that keeps me away is that the struggle is not worth it when someone can actually go and pay and get billions of ISK.
What motivation you have when you play PvE, focusing on trading/economy?
Why do you care for other players wallets? Or Skills? Or Assets?
It’s a sandbox game, find your own goal. And give a flyin’ ■■■■ what others do or think or have.
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Hobby
To answer this and your other similar thread, who cares how much money others have. There are pve activites that you can do to make isk without buying plex
It’s a role-playing sandbox game, you make your own goals and meaning. Either you enjoy the ship and skill and number progression of flying a space truck or space excavator and the corresponding problem solving with regard to the logistics of goods and the simulated economy, or you don’t. The resulting ISK income of any activity is just some abstract measure of your efficiency, the improvement of which is also a progression, a problem to be solved.
If the role in this virtual world you would like to play is rich owner of blingy ships, which you regularly lose to dirt cheap Tornados before they repay themselves, then obviously your best option is buying ISK for real life currency.
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My motivation is spending all of the ISK I just bought for $4
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I like trying my luck in the abyss and fleeting up for the drifter invasion.
The problem here is that you’re framing your motivation in the game as “it’s only good if I know I’m winning in a comparison to some other person”. So, if you play for a few hours and earn 50 million ISK, and somebody else drops $4 (about 10 minutes work worth) and gets a billion, then you’re not ‘winning’.
EVE has a massive range of what players are capable of. Some players can spend $500/month on the game. Some can spend nothing. Some can earn 2 billion ISK per hour. Some can barely earn 5 million. Some can multibox 20 ships, others play their single Alpha account.
If your motivation depends on comparisons to other players, you’ve already lost and may as well move along. The only real motivation in EVE is picking an activity that interests and challenges you, and finding out how well you can do at that activity.
EVE has plenty of challenging tasks, and it’s ‘unique value proposition’ is the extra risk of trying to complete those tasks when some other player has decided it’s their task to stop you.
Succeeding at your task is your motivation; not getting crushed while doing it is your ‘win’.
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I get it. Wealth generation was a major draw for me too. The worst thing CCP did was shift the game into P2W /w being able to directly buy ISK.
It’s like they gave up on trying to enforce rules against buying it, and just went full on in the other direction instead.
Just like in real life though, some people log into a bank and see 8 or 9 digits and others are looking at 3. Maybe incentive is to climb to 4 next?
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I don’t compare myself to others.
If they want to spend money to skip the ISK-generation part of the game, good for them. Good for me too, as their payments are part of what keeps the game I enjoy online.
I don’t see PvE as a struggle, I do it for fun. Mine some ore, explore for sites, see if I can use this chain-lightning cruiser (Stormbringer) to get an escalation, then see if I can come up with a nice ship fit for another ship to run it.
I play EVE to have fun.
And if I make enough ISK while having fun to sustain my losses in PvP that my ISK goes up instead of down I can spend that ISK on getting more ships!
I found that limiting myself to not do certain activities like mining or ratting with a sub-optimal setup (compared to others) and only do my best income sources limited my gameplay and fun.
Who cares that whatever you do is not the best way to earn ISK?
My recommendation: stop comparing yourself with others and do whatever you enjoy in the game.
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What a radical concept, it’ll never catch on.
Explain this to me please, what is there to win by buying ISK? Let’s say I have disposable income to buy 100.000 Plex to turn into ISK, what do I win? I’m genuinely curious.
Besides maybe some very rare apparel you could flex in your portrait, I just can’t imagine what could be construed as winning that couldn’t be taken away by some person and a few of their friends or alts in Catalysts.
I guess you can fly and lose more expensive ships if you have more ISK, but as long as you have enough ISK to afford new ships you can have fun with any amount of ISK.
You just have to fly ships at a price tier you are confortable losing.
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My motivation is strange. EVE is already a part of my life, and I deal with it in the same way as the real life. Sometimes I don’t really wan’t to play, but i just opened it. I will dock in Jita4.4, chat with my friends and even read books.
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Well, sure. If I can blingy expensive ships and weapons with faster fire rates, higher damage ratios, better shield hp / recharge rate–that’s all pay to win man. Why? It gives you an advantage, a pretty significant one too since ISK buys everything in EvE (skill points and ships/hardware).
Check this player’s profile 
before replying to him. Cut some slack.
What are you winning though with those higher stats?
All I see is a more expensive lossmail waiting to happen.
You can have fun in that expensive ship, but I can have not much less fun in a much more cost-effective ship if I wanted.
You’re taking the literal meaning of ‘winning’ and trying to make the sentence work while ignoring its use as a metaphor. To entertain your line of thought, I could say that what you’re ‘winning’ are chances for endless engagements and fights—ones you’re more likely to win (even if only marginally).
And, that’s all I guess 
.
These are just pixels after all.
An advantage over what or who? Like, do I spend 3 billion to bling out a Gila to progress from T3 to T6 abyss? That’s more likely to be a loss than a win. Do I buy a hangar full of blingy Garmurs to climb the PVP learning curve in while having an advantage over the Tech I hulls who will dodge, counter or gang up on me? Same thing.