Aren’t most if not all MMO’s by nature long games? They are designed to continually release content to keep the player base involved. Eve is only different in that it is a sandbox so instead of content they release tools and mechanics and features.
I’m ok with having lots of skills and having to train them, but if PLEX or skill injectors weren’t here and I literally had no choice but to…wait…for months and years to learn skills, then I’d be pissed.
Really? That’s what you are going with? You assume because I don’t agree with the game mechanic that I lack patience? Well I’m here, I’m playing just like you, which exhibits the same patience you have. The difference is I don’t like it but I’m PATIENT enough to stick with it. And because I don’t like it, I’m speaking up about it in the game’s discussion forums.
You are always welcome to leave.
And since you are not the brightest light in the sky, that “too long” skill training used to be the major selling point of EVE. So even after a decade of flying spaceships, you will have something new to try out and look forward to.
As a recent example, there were those 3 or 4 guys playing on Singularity. Nothing wrong here, over the years most pilots visit Singularity at some point.
Anyhow, they managed to get their hands on cheat-stix and created armies of alts to harass everyone with their 600 trillion, all level 5 characters pressing FONE with their titan blobbhhs.
That went on for a while and all they ever did was nuking every other sooper dooper that dared to visit the main pvp system. It was “glorious” for them, bragging about their purple, magic and input-broad-casted “armies” of 1 day old newblette characters.
It only took them 7 months to get bored with EVE, since they could do all at once and they were unkillable. Now that they have left, they will not pay any subscription fees anymore.
CCP gave simpler life forms like you the tools for PAY-2-WIN and the muchestestestestest accounts wins EVE.
EVE the place with remote control server versus player entities and stations. Make your destiny naow- make 3780257289056789465137854 accounts and win EVE today.
Oh here is a thought, CCP should work on the end credits you see when you win for life forms like you.
I think he is talking about the CCP sanctioned time code trading that existed on the old forums pre-PLEX.
Patience is really difficult for some folk; it makes them feel quite uncomfortable to wait for something they strongly desire.
It’s probably as uncomfortable for them as is haste for me.
We could possibly benefit from a mutual exchange of portions of these qualities, but EVE - thankfully - provides many opportunities for self-development through the provision of a number of activities designed to offer to the possessors of certain psychological profiles the means to explore and to try out the alternatives.
You can still make billions per month if you play in nulls and wh, i.e. if you are as hardcore as you claim. Try to figure out how much money you need to pour into the game to buy billions of isks monthly in legit way. If somebody wishes to do so - why not? There are a lot of busy people which can’t afford to put too much time into game. If not for PLEX they would leave long ago, but with PLEX they can play Eve as sort of session MMO, like WoT, where all their ships just magically respawn and repair, and they simply can click “To battle!” button again.
This means there will be more players in the game, what is good. Hardcore™ players can buy injectors and cap toons with isks as well, so it’s kinda stalemate… until it comes to actually using those assets, what can’t be substituted with any sane amount of real money poured into the game. You can buy yourself a fleet of titans and a claim in nulls - and lose it the next week as easy, as you can’t buy yourself a talent of a leader and a strategies, a cohort of loyal followers and a skills of PvP players, and Eve is the game where actual skills easily supersede a virtual skills of your opponent’s character.
PLEX gives people options, if anything else. Scores of experienced players still play Eve regularly because they can keep play it without paying for sub with real money for all their chars. If PLEX would be such an evil thing, then I suppose all those dudes would stop buying it, as they are basically giving more benefits to those pesky casuals who don’t want to live in the game! Yet, PLEX constantly rises in value, because everybody needs it. Go tell all those people they don’t.
There were GTCs and it worked alot like it does now.
I haven’t yet mentioned in here that PLEX are way too cheap:
PLEX are wwwaaaayyyy too cheap!
You my friend, are going to start a fire with many people. The fact that you may be right is another thing entirely.
I hope your whinging about the good old days never wins an argument within CCP.
The problem with an online game of this scale is that it’s almost impossible to pay for without either subscriptions or microtransactions or straight-up pay to win. The marginal costs have dropped massively, but the fixed costs keep going up.
CCP has toed a difficult line. They tried “micro”-transactions before they were cool. They were doing a kind of Joker-ish ahead of the curve thing. And people revolted. CCP got a black eye, and everything went back to normal. Ish.
Yeah, so AUR went away eventually.
But PLEX won’t go the same way for several different reasons:
PLEX caters to hardcore gamers who are very devoted to the game already. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a smart thing. Especially in an era where it looks like your subscriber numbers are dwindling, you have to keep those people on board. People who have played the game for a long time can afford PLEX through in-game endeavors. It’s a mechanic that helps guarantee survival for the business.
PLEX is a legal mechanism that keeps CCP easily safe from investigations by the SEC. Other gaming companies are experimenting with in-game currencies and micro-transactions. These companies are playing with a type of fire that CCP has already extinguished in tested legal cases. PLEX are not securities. And this is especially important right now because BitCoin and other *Coin currencies are being investigated by the SEC, and a recent statement indicates that a broad range of private, electronic currencies ARE, in fact, securities, and can be regulated and managed as such. PLEX does not suffer this problem.
One of the reasons for 2 is that it’s a one-way conversion. And this is why CCP is so dogmatic about not buying ISK. If it becomes a pattern that there is a real dollar-to-ISK exchange that reliably works in both directions, CCP will have to deal with the SEC on a regular basis. Which will suck for everyone. PLEX is a one-way ticket from real life money to either game time or ISK. The reverse is not true.
PLEX is the least invasive way that I’ve seen any company use to get people to pay for pretty things in a game where player skill counts a lot more than character skill points. I do think it was the right thing to do for CCP to make ship skins permanent. Otherwise no one would ever get a chance to kill the pretty ones. They’d all be docked up. Also, CCP has yet to release, and I don’t think ever will release, anything that can’t be acquired without a direct cash injection into their bank account.
In terms of pay to win, the only way to interpret any of their policies so far is that it’s possible to sell your game time to someone else in-game for in-game money. That’s it. None of that has changed. You invest a certain amount in the game, you reap some rewards. If you play casual, you have to pay. I don’t think this is a problem. And in fact, I think it’s a good move. It provides incentive for people to really engage.
Finally, PLEX maximizes the number of people able to play at any given time. It creates an equilibrium between those who can afford to pay and those who can afford to play. Casuals like me pay the bills so that grinders don’t have to. And that’s fine. That’s how it’s all supposed to work.
PLEX is the perfect mechanic for microtransactions, which is why CCP broke them up. So things have gotten a little pricey since then. What did you expect? Have you ever seen a stock split? Yeah. Things go up. It’s like the market for having a ■■■■-ton of stuff gives people erections.
If you think that microtransactions are a bad thing, take a look at how almost everyone else is implementing them. It’s bad. CCP is being somewhat careful about this (since they got bit once before), and this is not a bad deal. Money (PLEX) gets you pretty stuff. That’s it.
If you really want to get upset about pay-to-win, the only thing about EvE so far is that you can buy other people’s characters. That is a mistake, in my opinion. It wasn’t a problem that came from being able to inject skills. It was a problem from the beginning of that idea.
I don’t have a 10th point.
Griping about PLEX is like griping about a skill queue that stopped way back when you had to wake up at 3am to set a new one because there was no queue. I remember that. It was a garbage implementation. And not having PLEX was also garbage.
PLEX is quite possibly the one thing that will keep this game going for my next 20 years or so.
Remove it, and you are removing any possibility of EvE not going to total ■■■■.
Very nice post.
I LOVE EVE ONLINE!!!
sorry couldn’t contain myself there.
Yes indeed it was. Now I am much clearer on why CCP takes a harsh stance on RMT’ing, they do it to protect the game from legal non-sense that will drain their money and possibly cost us the entire game. Good looking out CCP.
Exactly. They have to be careful about this as it can lead to all sorts of strange and unintended consequences.
Well… Recently there was post on Reddit from one person who claims to be user of RTM for long time. History he gave shows rather unpleasant story for all claims that “CCP takes a harsh stance on RTM’ing”.
… RMT*
Welp that’s that then. Can’t compete with that kind of evidence.
If it wasn’t for PLEX I probably would have quit a long time ago. My gaming time I like to spend doing what I enjoy. One day I’ll salvage, another mine, another explore, not caring how much Isk I made. Grinding is boring in a game that doesn’t reward skill points for it. So why not make a profit from people like me who are willing to spend an extra $20 to fly a ship they really like. It’s not affecting your game experience in any way because having ISK is NOT a substitute for skill.
