I just want you to know that majority of players commenting in eve forums are Grumpy Old men. 
you’re the youngest I encountered in this site.
1 Like
Take a look at it from different angle.
You say “expensive lossmail”. And yes, that’s true. But If you don’t care about it? You just go to Jita and get you another ship+fit. And you are having fun. And people talk about you flying blingy stuff and losing billions.
Compare it to not being able to do that? To wait for weeks/months until you farm enough ISK for some blingy ship and then… Not flying it due to not being ready to lose.
Another moment: if you are great pilot and do wonders in PVP then again there is a difference. Flying blingy stuff will invite people to hunt you (and know you). Flying cheap ships will not make people know you. Only handful of players will ever know your skills and talk about you (even if you manage to get into Alliance Championship Team and win, even then only handful of players will ever know you).
For me the difference is huge. It’s like in RL - money do not give you superpowers but the difference between having money and not having it - just huge.
That’s a given, we’re content with CCP enabling and facilitating the ISK-negative whale existence.
But that’s not what I imagine when people use the word P2W. It’s not mandatory. ISK doesn’t translate to player power in any meaningful way. Either you’re ISK positive in blingy ships and don’t need to purchase ISK for real money or you’re feeding them to gate camps and not doing much winning per se. You can skip the ISK grind, we don’t mind or feel obligated to in order to “compete” with you.
1 Like
Nah. The only reason I’d give money to Aiko would be if she was on my payroll as a maid scrubbing my minimg ships! Lol!
It takes a lot of polish to give them that mirror shine they all have! Even my Orca is like a mirror!
Well… First you need to set a term “competition” and only then you can talk about “winning”.
In my case the “competition” is ability to fly (and lose, yes) blingy stuff. Either you can do it faster and more active or you cannot.
Your cases are more “complex”. PVP in the game is very unbalanced in ISK/SP-aspect and heavily geared towards personal skills and pilot numbers. Pure ISK does not play big role in this situation, here i agree.
However there are cases where ISK will matter a lot. Imagine Alliance Tournament, where you have two teams: “rich” one and “poor” one. Having equal skills (SP+piloting) and fleet composition I’d predict that “rich” team will have a lot more chances to win, than “poor” team. Starting from ISK you have to pay to participate. 
Hey, we have an event, where we get rewards for logging in. And Alpha clones and Omega clones have two separate lines of rewards! And if someone cannot afford Omega, then he’s out of better rewards. Full stop. What better example is required? 
Aiko been scrubbing a lot of mining ships. Just park your mining ship at any Lonetrek, Forge or citadel systems. It will be thoroughly washed and cleaned.
That’s not pay-to-win though, it’s a subscription-based game with a free trial version.
These pay-to-win discussions never result in any meaningful conclusions because people have wildly different ideas of winning, of competing and even of the meaning of ‘pay-to-win’.
Instead I’ll focus on the thread’s question and suggest you focus on whatever motivates you.
Set your own goals. Some people like to build everything from scratch themselves in ironman mode (which I think is silly in EVE), while others like flying and losing expensive ships to make a name for themselves.
Personally I like spending only the ISK I earn on ships and spend real money only on a subscription, to feel both the income and spending side of EVE, but feel free to set your own limits and goals. Do whatever you think is fun!
If that means buying big PLEX packs to fly expensive ships feel free to do so! More loot for the rest of us!
2 Likes
I get a nice kick out of spending 0 real life money where I can. After all, the way you get money in this game is by flying massive spaceships in various tasks. Not exactly a job.
I don’t get it. You are sad that RMT is less profitable or what?
The OP is based on a flase premise and “missleading” at best. Here’s why:
To achieve a rate where 1 billion ISK costs less than $4 USD, you would need to purchase significantly larger PLEX packages or wait for market conditions to change favorably.
As of now, even with larger packages, the cost remains above $6 per billion ISK.
2 Likes
I focus on playing the game my way - and not what others tell me I should be doing.
3 Likes
Have you noticed how borked the CDXXII tracker is today?
That observation could have been shared with a single line, rather than making people read through an entire chatgpt essay.
Also it’s rather obvious that smaller packages have worse rates than bulk PLEX.
2 Likes
EDIT:
Respectfully, Gerard, I see your point about AI-generated content lacking ‘soul,’ but I use ChatGPT the same way others use spreadsheets, killboards, or doctrine sites—it’s a tool. I still vet, edit, and choose what I post. The ideas are mine, even if I use AI to sharpen the delivery. Are we really gatekeeping creativity based on how it’s crafted instead of what it’s saying? That seems like an arbitrary line to draw in a game built on player innovation.
Chatgpt allows writers with very little input to write a whole lot of text, thereby shifting the majority of the burden of the communication from the lazy writer to the reader who now has to read through a whole lot more text to get the same message.
I think it’s a shitty thing to do.
10 Likes
As for the subject title, I can’t remember when I’ve seen PLEX on-sale for more than 25-28% off - and this has never been on the $4.99 package nor the $12.49 package (from what I remember, anyway). The specials being in addition to the various discounts for buying in bulk.
Assuming your natural currency is in USD (and not say CDN or AUD), $5 will get you about 620m ISK (after fees), or about 496m ISK per $4 USD.
So, what’s my motivation? I’ll just work another 0.5 hours at my part-time gig if I find I really need to pickup a PLEX package. On-sale, of course.
2 Likes
I enjoy this.