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EVE Online Players Rage, Protest Over Microtransactions
Several readers have written with news of a controversy that's been slowly building in space-based MMO EVE Online. "It all began with the Incarna update, which added an item shop to the long-running sci-fi sandbox. Players began to voice their concerns over the bizarrely high prices of items in the shop, with one particular item reaching an insane $68 US. Before this hullabaloo had the chance to so much as come to a simmer, an internal newsletter from CCP was leaked to the internet. The document outlined the introduction of microtransactions into EVE and mentioned that at some point, ships, ammunition, and so forth may be available for purchase with real-world currency. This naturally sent players into even more of a frenzy." Reader Ogre332 points out additional coverage, but notes that many publications are missing the punchline: "Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do. The purported e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson was like gas on a fire, and a response to some concerns in the form of a dev blog was not well received at all. Players are protesting, and many claim to be canceling their accounts left and right."
Companies always want to milk the cow. Has it ever been any different in the history of man?
It's a stupid, boring-ass game anyways.
Rage? They are raging? Would you say this is "epic" rage over some sort of "fail"? Perhaps there are some "lols" involved in said epic fail rage?
The monacle being 68$ doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is talk about selling ships, items, and/or faction standings for real life money. Those are game changing items, and should be earned as part of the game.
Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do.
Players aren't a hivemind. Odds are the company that makes the game has a pretty good idea what the community as a whole wants, while a vocal minority is convinced that everyone else feels as they do.
Come on, once they started selling PLEX, you've been able to trade real life money for ships, items, etc. This will just make the relationship more obvious.
It wouldn't be hard. Just take the spreadsheet from Openoffice and you're already halfway there! Build some cheesy flash graphics on top of it and chances are it'll come out looking better than Eve does!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hence, the human centipad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Centipad
It is called PLEX.
I can go spend real $$ on PLEX on CCPs website. I then get a item in game that is called PLEX.
I can take said PLEX and sell it on the eve online market for ISK.
I can then take ISK and buy SHIPS, AMMO, etc.
** Nothing significant has changed **
How is CCP killing their game with their own little NGE not "news for nerds"?
Every MMO has overly broad TOS that entitles the GMs to do what they want, it dosn't exempt it from falling into gaming news when they chose to abuse it. For instance pretty much every subscription based MMO usually say something along the lines of "these are the rules, if you break them you will be banned and if you are banned we will not refund any subscription fees you have paid up till now (IE if you paid 6 months ahead, tough luck). Also we reserve the right to ban you for reasons not listed in the TOS, in the case of WoW their clause is listed as "(iii) Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game.". So more or less just about every MMO has a TOS clause that allows them to say, oh you paid 6 months in advance, thanks for the money, umm I don't like your shirt, you can't play. The fact that they have these rules isn't news, but were they to actually use the rights they gave themselves in the EULA, it would be newsworthy.
In general from what I have seen, quite a few quit games because of models that make what they do in game seem insignificant. In general all forms of MMORPGs are more or less the feeling that what you do is making your character stronger, and you get the constant feel of power rising. In general when you do all that work, play the game and work your character up for several months, then you find out that new players just tossed in $200 and instantly rose above your level, you lose that thrill, on top of that the new players, once the characters that they have surpassed quit, they lose the thrill themselves, there's no point working in game when they already bought everything they need, and thus have nothing to work towards. Basically some models like that turn a multi-year game into 1 month blast through type game. The effect goes double for PVP games, generally in games with PVP, the new wealthy players buy the expensive CS items to stomp all over the players who don't have them, but then get bored once the non cash players get fed up and quit.
The only thing online games offer over real life is the opportunity to be someone you are not. WoW is successful because people can be rich and famous without actually being rich or famous. Once you allow people with more money to have cooler items in-game, you are destroying the reason people play it.
That doesn't mean it won't be profitable, but I think it will certainly turn many people off.
Doesn't Lord of the Rings Online already have such a system? It became big and kind of died a little, but is still going strong. How is this different than EVE? People still play LOTRO. It seems that game though it is less built in gear than say WOW where it is everything. Is Eve more WOW like or did most people really leave LOTRO when it went free with pay for items?
http://saveie6.com/
Playing two sides of the field = nono.
You either make players pay every month - which means they expect balance.
Or you give players the ability to '1-up' their opponent by paying their way through it.
Doing both is silly, it just means that players will pay to win, and the others won't want to pay their monthly fee and enjoy the game less than the guy who bought his way in.
Doing it with just micropayments works, because if the players get tired of the heavy-users that's fine, they're not paying anything.
I think companies are taking advantage of the fact that some people have a tendency to hoard and collect trinkets/items. Micro-transactions are just a way for these companies to cash in on human behaviour. I think it's unethical.
I have one friend for example that only plays Team Fortress 2 on idle servers. He barely even plays the game, he just idles 24/7 to collect more and more items. I ask him why he even bothers to idle since he doesnt actually play the game, and he can't come up with an answer. He constantly tells me how much he hates the game and all the changes Valve has made by constantly adding more and more items, yet he continues to idle and collect more items. Is that even sane? That sounds like an addiction.
These companies know exactly what they're doing, and they're making insane profits, so they'll continue to do it.
Cash->PLEX->isk->items feeds the economy twice.
Cash->PLEX->AUR->items feeds nothing but CCP.
They're being sneaky about it because of the expectation of this very reaction.
This is not "Not News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters"...
If this were true, no one would have bothered to click the link on the main page to read the article, much less post comments on it. The more comments posted here, the more proof you have that it's news that matters to /. readers. BTW, you've just upvoted this topic to /.'s editors by contributing to the discussion. Expect more such articles in the future...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
But you've been able to trade it for things other players made. Other players made those ships and items (or ran the missions or complexes to get the items). In effect, you were buying game time for someone else in exchange for their in-game efforts.
Even when you did buy these things from other players, they didn't make it an "I win by credit card" situation. I say this as someone who has bought Plex and sold them for ISK.
EVE is the most cut-throatedly capitalist MMO I've come across. The philosophy of most games is focused around fair play, balance, and looking out for the little guy, but EVE has always been about "may the richest man win" and "money equals power".
At first, this philosophy was just confined to the game world, but I've found that game designers build their personal values into their games. Nobody should be surprised that EVE's developers turn out to be just as mercenary in real life as they expect their players to be in game.
There is an enormous difference, for many reasons.
The EVE economy is based on items being built by the players, for the players, using materials gathered by the players. PLEX is a sort of trade commodity, it is like diamonds - people want them because they are desirable, not because they are useful (in game at least). It has no effect on gameplay and is basically just a trade good on the market. Trading a PLEX has no other immediate ingame effect other than redistributing ISK among players, which is completely balanced in cost by the players themselves.
"Gold Spaceships" and AUR is completely different from this mechanic. Ships are seeded and directly tied to real money. Sure, you can buy a PLEX with ISK, but that is superficial - you are, in effect, just having somebody else pay real money for your spaceship. Sure you can fund a CNR (a special battleship) using ISK gained from a PLEX, but it is completely optional for that PLEX to be involved - with Gold Spaceships it would become MANDATORY to involve a PLEX. Also, since the ship is seeded, no tangible effort has been made to build or acquire the ship by anybody - not through missioning, grinding, building, whatever - the ship entirely come into being depending on real money.
Basically the entire EVE economy, which is the pride and I daresay center of the soul of EVE, can become entirely unhinged by AUR and Gold Stuff, since it is impossible for an industrial body in EVE to compete with people simply swiping their credit card for special premium superstuff.
More issues can be touched upon. Think for example the Alliance Tournament (a yearly competition with spaceships), what happens to the game if a team wins because they brought Gold Spaceships? Should all invest real money to be able to compete then?
P2W and microtransactions are reasonable depending on the gaming model. EVE is simply not built for it.
Yes. So?
There's something similar in the contract with my ISP. Should I be not angry if they change the terms to my disadvantage? And consider canceling the contract?
Just because someone agreed to a license contract doesn't mean that you can screw him over. Unless, of course, that's part of the license agreement. They have no recourse. No. Except of course terminating the contract, which is, if you reread the original posting, pretty much what they plan to do.
So what again was your point?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
: I've played the original EverQuest for over 11 years now
so you are kind of like a battered wife when it comes to taking abuse from game companies
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
That's kind of a bad example given that WoW's subscription numbers continued to steadily rise after the release of Burning Crusade. If "nearly everyone" was upset with the changes made back then, it certainly wasn't affecting Blizzard's bottom line.
The real issue is that this reeks of depseration for money on CCP's(the developer) part, as well as stupidity on how to get that money.
The expansion is bug ridden. They literally showed the players the door if you don't want the new features.
Basically there's a long list of problems. Everyone understood that the latest changes and expansion were pretty damn crap and there was bugs which came with an expansion like any expansion for any game. Everyone was grumbly/sad but didnt care. The main new addition to the game however was these vanity items like clothes and hats which they sell for $$. The players were concerned but didnt care too much.
Then an internal document leaked which showed they wanted to sell non-vanity things, which basically breaks the game. Nobody really knew for sure if the "internal document" was real or not. After a day or so of anger a mod let loose a vague comment which basically confirmed it as real by calling it a "newsletter" which caused a real shitstorm but they just continued to ignore the situation.
Finally they make an apology but basically say nothing and while they mention issues... they dont address the biggest issue at all. Which made the players that much more angry. Then they have a senior person write a dev blog quickly because the amount of rage and he basically said nothing at all... if not added fuel to the fire.
Rage goes on and then someone leaks CEO internal letter which basically says, ignore the customers. Customers rage more and they demand to know if they want to sell non-vanity items. Which they confirm so Mass unsubscribing and protests. Afterall you still have a month of gameplay at least after unsubscribing so there's protesting.
Needless to say, the threat to cancel one's account as a sign of disapproval for CCP's ideas has been a running gag for years as well ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
CCP is moving to become Zynga? Are they going to rename the game to EVEville or EVEwars too?
I could understand the screaming if it wasn't one old monopoly alliance screaming about possible new T2 BPOs.
As it is, it's just EVE selling overpriced skirts. Big deal.
Finding God in a Dog
Yeah, because ships and faction/officer items are not being sold for real money right now.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Eh, it's a little different this time. The angry people aren't the usual forum warriors, they're people like Ombey that have been major but quiet parts of the game.
Hey, way to stand up for your convictions by posting AC!
And how, exactly, does that counter my "entitled generation" comment? You imply that the changes that Blizzard made to WoW are not only wrong, but that the people that "had to work hours and hours to get some of these weapons" were cheated... they weren't available for sale when you earned them, so the time spent was worth it to you at that point, right? The fact that they are easily available now doesn't change the past. If you disagree with the changes, you can simply quit: After all, you already earned those weapons BEFORE the change...
But, you prove my point - you believe that, since you earned those weapons in the past, you're entitled to recompense now, after Blizzard made changes that are completely permitted under their TOS.
This is the exact definition of "entitlement".
However, in the interest of fairness and rational discourse, let's consider a hypothetical quesition:Suppose Blizzard did the reverse, and decided "Wow, that gear is 'way too easy to earn for its capabilities. Let's increase the difficulty, but those that have already earned it can keep it."
Would you, as a recipient of that gear before that change, think that you haven't earned it because all of the other people that want to get it now have a more difficult time? If one of those people said "Man, you had it too easy, I can't believe you got it so easily - that's not right.", would you agree, and remove it as a protest against Blizzard's unfairness?
Regards,
dj
There was already some low-level uproar about PLEX. It's the standard objection you see in all MMORPGs: Any system by which a person can use their real-world wealth to in-game advantage becomes unfair. With PLEX, the system was indirect and it's effectiveness was hindered, but even that was enough to upset some players. With the new system, there is no effort to hide what is going on: "Do you want to be able to win fights against other players? Pay us, we'll give you some super-ammo that should give you a decisive advantage. Unless they buy it too, of course. You'd better buy it, because they will."
No wonder they are trying to get more money out of it. As for real money letting you buy stuff, that has of course been possible already via PLEX. What's interesting and is probably the major motivation for this store is that it lets people use PLEX for something that doesn't renew someone's subscription. Without it PLEX are just early payments for subscriptions.
The newsletter has been taken a little out of context though, it was basically just one employee's opinion in a newsletter that was specifically meant for controversial topics (the disclaimer apparently said so, but was removed in the initial leak). Next there's the leaked e-mail. I've heard people mention it was editted (actual lines inserted) but I'm not sure if that is actually the case, given that multiple people had already confirmed its authenticity.
The real worry that players seem to have though, is that CCP has for days now not been willing to answer the simple question "Will MTs also be used for non-vanity items", that fact that they dodged that question even in their devblog has a lot of people worried that they did in fact plan to intoduce non-vanity items in the NeX.
The raging is pretty hilarious by the way. I was in Jita on an alt and it was fun to see 328492384 lasers shooting at the monument, local chat going crazy and there actually being a livestream of the whole thing with EVE-Radio on. EVE really has a 'special' community :D
...and there goes any excitement I had about renewing my sub once the expansion went live.
I suppose with the PLEX (and that damn "strategy guide") people were already able to buy stuff in-game for real life money, but this is just so damn... blatant. I don't know what else to say about it.
One by one I see games and series I love succumb to the lure of microtransactions and pay-to-win while I stand by telling myself that there will always be another game to take it's place.
I suppose I should just stop being so damn melodramatic and just accept that the hobby I fell in love with years ago just isn't the same anymore.
Maybe once I finish reveling in nostalgia I'll go read a book or something instead...
The difference, as has been pointed out before, is that the PLEXes you can sell for ISK have to be bought by other players who, in turn, generated those ISK by playing.
In other words, nothing is created or destroyed. It's only ISK changing hands, but neither coming from somewhere in the game nor going into some money sink.
That's what many people don't see in the MMO economics, that there is a HUGE difference between player/player and player/NPC trade. When players trade with each other, it does not affect the general MMO economy, or rather, nothing gets created. Both players somehow have to have acquired the goods and moneys in some way beforehand, the money and the goods just change position, but both stay within the system and neither vanish nor get generated.
In player/NPC trade (which the new system would constitute), either money is destroyed and some item gets generated (if the player buys something), or an item is destroyed while money gets generated (if he is selling). The NPC never "earned" the money he is spending, nor did he "produce" the goods he is selling. They get created the moment the player buys or sells something, out of nothing. This is actually what drives the inflation through the roof in most MMOs.
Most MMOs inflation stems from the loop of "Mob spawns, player kills mob, player loots item from mob, player sells item to NPC". What happens here is that the moment the mob drops an item, the potential for money generation is happening. Or, let's make it easier, let's say the mob drops money. In this case, the moment the mob spawns, the potential for inflation is born. The moment it gets killed, money is pouring into the system. Nobody ever spent that money to have it end up on that mob the player killed. It's generation from nothing. Likewise, if the player goes and repairs his tools or buys ammunition or whatever, this removes money from the system. It's destruction into nothing.
The inherent danger is that every time something gets created out of nothing, be it money or items, the threat of inflation lingers in the air. If I can get something for nothing (at least in-game nothing, since it's paid for with RL cash, which doesn't exist in the game), an item is created without in-game money changing hands.
An example:
P/P trade
Player A has 3000 moneys. Player B has an item he wishes to sell for 1500. They trade, and after the trade they both have 1500 moneys, and player A has one item more, Player B has one item less. Game-wise, nothing changed. The item is still in the game and together they have 3000 moneys, just like it was before.
P/NPC trade
Player A has 3000 moneys. Player B has an item he wishes to sell for 1500. Player A buys that item, but not from Player B, but from the in-game store for 5 USD. What happened now is that they still have 3000 moneys together, just that they now BOTH have that item. The item also just lost value since Player B will have to find another customer and probably has to sell it cheaper, cheap enough that people will rather buy for in game moneys than for the 5 USD. Worse, Player A could dump the item into an NPC (if available) and get, say, 1000 moneys for it, which would mean that now 4000 moneys are between the two players, we just created money out of nothing.
To spin the whole deal further, the economy of EvE depends highly on player/player trade, because many things of everyday use are player made. To make something, players will first of all have to mine ore, refine it, collect it to one place (no fed-ex mail system akin to other games in this one), build the components, assemble the components... All these people will now have to compete with the in-game RL money store. Hence prices will have to drop to the point where it becomes more interesting for someone to pay ISK instead of USD for their goods.
PLEXes didn't have this kind of impact because all they did was to exchange game time for real money, both things that do not affect in game economy (whether someone pays for his game time with credit card or buys a PLEX for USD doesn't matter, does it?). Since every other trade past this was player/player (trading PLEX for ISK was a player/player only transaction), the in-game economy didn't suffer from it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Confirming that you aren't able to grasp how the Eve economy works.
Discuss the difference between a cash->PLEX->isk->items transaction and a cash->PLEX->Aurum->items transaction, with particular emphasis on the player economy. Extra credit: What happens if the system ends up being like the first deployment of the Ishukone Scorpion (originally planned to require a player-built Scorpion in trade, but changed to just ship-for-Aurum after it was "too hard" to implement)
Also, discuss the impact of paying for faction standings on T2 production. Show your work.
Player/Player deals do not affect the game economy on a global scale, no money or items get generated or destroyed.
You have a point with the other examples, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
PLEX are only created for real money.
If you mean RMT, sure, there's some, and they fight it when possible. There's some RMT in every MMO.
If you mean PLEX, you've completely missed the point.
You can only find virtual riots on EVE.... I will miss that game...
Okay, so you really seem to not understand where things come from in Eve.
Basic lesson:
Just like the food you eat doesn't magically appear in the grocery store, items in Eve are made by players, commonly referred to as "industrialists".
The ship that you fly was built by another player, using minerals mined from asteroids or by reprocessing drops, and salvage gathered by yet another player, be it a new player salvaging where they can find ships or a mission runner salvaging in bulk. Depending on the tech level of the ship, there were also datacores from research agents, likely gained by yet another player who ground standings with a corporation to get access to those research agents, plus other salvage gained by other player corporations that operate in wormholes that they explored to find.
The people flying and blowing up ships are only the tip of the wedge. Logistics wins wars, in RL and in Eve.
Years ago, played EVE for about 7 months. Still get invites to activate my account for a few days and see all the great changes. Not likely. On the one hand like WoW, on the other hand like a spreadsheet. But overall like a million scam jobs all after you at once. EVE players were always up in arms about something.This sounds a bit more serious though. I think in the end micro transactions will mark the final decline of the MMO. Playing online with "friends" was once a novelty. Now it is more of a pain than anything else. Offline games have a lot more to offer me, I know that. Except for forums filled with outrage ... think I'll nip over and watch the lynch mobs.
Of course they're spamming chat, but they're doing more than that. They're currently bombarding a major trade station at Amarr VIII (Emperor Family Academy). It's at 0% armor and 0% structure, but still standing - the structure is invulnerable. In Jita, they're bombarding a statue near the major trade station at Jita IV - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant. It's kinda silly but the screenshots are impressive; so IMO is the thought that these guys are throwing billions of ISK in ships away in protest (as CONCORD takes them out one by one).
Finding God in a Dog
Okay, you, as an ice miner that grinds for isk, are benefiting from one side of the trade.
However, the isk that you spent to buy the PLEX doesn't vanish. It goes into another player's wallet. That player now spends it on ships and items built by the main driving force of Eve, the industrialists.
When buying items directly for Aurum, the industrialists are removed from the equation. They then quit the game - (margins are already mighty tight for production) and CCP is forced to provide more ships directly for cash. At a certain point, you *are* forced to use the microtransactions, because the industrialists have left.
Admittedly, as a player funding your playtime by ice mining, you'll likely quit then, thus further proving my point.
I've been playing continuously since August of 2003. I earn enough doing very little to pay for 3 accounts with ISK and I have a ton of experience in the game - market manipulation, industrial stuff, sciency stuff, sov warfare, solo hunting, massive capital fleet warfare etc etc.
My take on this is twofold:
1) Carebear tears will become a LOT more succulent
o/ --- this is Jim, a well-skilled player from 2005. Well, not REALLY. The real Jim sold the account on ebay to the new owner who has only played a trial account with a friend of his who has been in the game for about a year.
Jim just bought a Nyx (supercarrier hull costs roughly 15 billion ISK) with real money from CCP's Noble Exchange. He's kitted it out with some officer mods, lots of deadspace stuff and has a clone with expensive Slave implants - His friend told him that this setup is ungankable - he's close to invulnerable - can't even be warpscrambled amirite? All save the hull were bought with ISK from selling PLEX in the game. In total lets say he's got 24 BILLION between the ship and mods - . Lets say he bought 84 PLEX at $1469.58US (3 packs of 28 PLEX for $489.86 each pack) plus lets say conservatively (based on the Monacle price) $1000 for the hull. $2469.58 US Dollars for Jim's shiny supertoy.
Wanting to try out his new supertoy, Jim goes hunting belt rats in a .4 system. He kills a few cruiser rats, some battlecruiser rats and lots of frigate rats, all of whom die to his unending fleets of tech 2 drones. A few people pass through the system and time passes with the wrecks of the rats piling up.
o7 --- this is me. I pass through his system and check the directional scanner. I see a Nyx on scan with no POS. Only wrecks are bog-standard belt rats, not the deadspace variants, so he's not in an anomaly or mission. I zip through the belts in my Broadsword and quickly locate him. Landing within the range of my infinite point, I immediately engage, set my orbit and yell on teamspeak about the Nyx I just tackled.
Jim doesn't really know whats happening so he tries to warp away - the Nyx is invulnerable to warp jamming right? Not for the heavy interdictor's infinite point. He goes nowhere. Thinking he can quickly dispatch me he launches a bunch of fighter bombers. The fighter bombers impotently orbit my broadsword, missing each shot because my ship is so small - the fbs can't hit it and when they DO hit they do very little damage. I pop my cyno.
The system quickly fills with bad men in big ships. Jim's Nyx dies in about a minute and a half. Being the hero tackler I get a bunch of expensive mods for my trouble and go home a richer man.
Imagine how Jim feels. Oh, the sweet, sweet tears of the Carebear.
2) Shipbuilders just got screwed
o7 -- me again, this time on an industrial alt. I've spent a year in this alliance building my trust in them and theirs in me. Months of effort has gotten me a system with sov 5 and I've put up a well protected large pos. Weeks have passed while my Nyx was just a baby in the CSAA
I finally completed my first Nyx build in my system. This has rolled out and is now in a travel fit, but noone is buying. All my time and effort were wasted by CCP, who just *poof*ed a Nyx for Jim, as detailed above. My tears are not so succulent to my taste :(
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
CCP have stated they only care about player actions, and could care less about what we have to say or feel. That leaves only one possible response on my part - unsubscribe and protest hard as my remaining time counts down. I'll then be taking a holiday from Eve lasting six months or so to play other games. Then I'll check back on Eve, and if I see what I expect, I'll never ever return. The hell with you CCP! I won't stick around as you destroy the sandbox and shit all over your customers!
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The rage has continued for a few days now and it's no longer just about the unbelievable initial MT lineup that they put in. The focus has shifted almost completely to how CCP seems unable to handle the PR disaster, and how there appears to be a force as of yet unknown at the higher levels of the company that puts emphasis on maximizing revenue and screwing the playerbase over in the process. The senior producer is widely acknowledged as a nice guy and having a similar mindset to veteran players, but the devblog he posted reeks of committee writing and of the CEO in particular, according to some CSM members. This kind of strange behavior and obvious businesstype meddling, in addition to widely known inhouse problems like a serious lack of professionalism and poor quality of workmanship, has the players worried that CCP as a company is turning into a catastrophic trainwreck and the future and wellbeing of their beloved hobby is in danger.
Try blueprints for example. The avatar blueprint costs 67.5 billion (with a B) isk. That's about $169 and it goes directly to an NPC. Where's the outrage for that? Is that not high enough?
Add a 0 to the end of your $169 figure and you'll be closer to the truth
It's just a matter of time before they straight out sell skill points or a boost to skill point training speed.
As for the rage over this. Most people may not quite understand the culture of EVE. Though it has extremes in all directions, it has always been a great exception to every other MMO out there. Hell, even every other developer out there. If ever there was a company and an MMO with ambition, dedication, and respect for players, it was EVE. Regardless of what the reality of their changes are or will be, it is very easy to see how any changes toward the dark side can be perceived as a very real and very upsetting backstab. Especially for people who have spent many of the last eight years of EVE playing it, building corporations, building alliances, building communities. Like they began saying awhile ago "EVE IS REAL". And so are the feelings of betrayal and frustration.
It is not possible for a PLEX to exist in the game without a player plunking down ~$15.
Wrong. CCP can make all the PLEX it wants out of thin air, offer it for sale, and flood the market. And CCP can buy all the PLEX it wants and take it off the market with its magical ISK printing press. That's the fun of being a "Central Bank". One of the points of PLEX is providing a way to fiddle with the "money supply" without engaging in direct ISK transactions. Think of PLEX as a sort of Treasury Note, except it doesn't pay interest.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Yes, and the moment something is better in a PvP game, it will become the standard.
In fact, it's pretty much a canonical example of "News for Nerds".
"Stuff That Matters" is debatable, of course.
Yes, CCP could do that, at the cost of exactly this kind of uproar.
You may have noticed that the economist's reports have been fact-checked by the players each time they come out, often with a deeper understanding than those that have database access have?
How long did it take the players to figure out that technetium was going to be the bottleneck, and start strategic moves for tech moons?
The rage stems from the fact that CCP, which has historically been one of the most open and honest game developers on the planet, has been caught in what looks like a boldfaced lie. It started with the Aurum store opening with Incarna's release, then the last volume of Fearless, their internal newsletter, was leaked, then they did a crappy job at putting out that fire by making an empty apology and then making a long-awaited announcement that essentially told the playerbase nothing, and then Hilmar's email surfaced and we have yet to hear anything. CCP has stated that the Aurum store will be kept to vanity items only, but these leaked documents seem to directly contradict that. CCP has told us that Fearless was looking at the argument from an exaggerated point of view and didn't detail any actual specific plans, but they have yet since its leak actually definitively stated that the Aurum store will be kept to vanity items only.
There are three general models for reasonably-profitable MMO's out there: pay-to-play, pay-to-win, and pay-to-accessorize. Pay-to-play (P2P) means the players must explicitly give money to the game developer every month in order to maintain active account status, and is employed by most successful MMO's including World of Warcraft and EVE. Pay-to-win (P2W) means the players have the option to give the game developer extra money in exchange for in-game items that offer an advantage over other players, or at the very least they cause it to be a fast track to the same items that everybody can gain by playing the game themselves, and is employed by most free-to-play games such as Battlefield Heroes and APB. Pay-to-accessorize (P2A) means the players have the option to give the game developer extra money in exchange for in-game accessories and vanity items that don't actually offer an advantage in gameplay.
Free-to-play (F2P) usually comes about when a game does not have the appeal or simply isn't good enough to sustain enough monthly subscriptions to be profitable. APB was a good example of that. Their developer went out of business and the game was sold to a company that owns and maintains several F2P online games, and it is now sustained by a P2W model. Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, has been wildly successful in the P2P market. So successful, in fact, that it had probably tapped out the market and sales were dwindling because everybody owned it already, and it was a one-time purchase with no monthly fees. It has been converted to F2P and follows the P2A model with a microtransaction store that sells hats and other crap like that, and now Valve is making ridiculous amounts of money off it again.
The F2P model works for many games as there's not much difference between playing the game to earn items or paying real money to gain them more quickly. Don't write me off as some stupid fanboy when I say this, but EVE is different. Half of what makes EVE such an intriguing game is the market which is almost entirely player-driven. Every item you buy on the market -- be it a ship, a gun, ammunition, drones, whatever -- was built by a player from blueprints that were obtained by a player and minerals that were refined by a player from ore that was mined by a player. And that's not including the countless possibilities for traders to make money at every point along the way as they play the market and buy and sell these things before they actually become a final product, and even after. It's also not including the fact that most mining and production is done by groups of people with their own specializations that all help work towards the final product: miners mine in groups and drop their ore to a pilot in an industrial ship who transports it to a station and transfers it to a person with maxed refinery skills who then refines it and transfers them to people with good production skill who own copies of a blueprint owned by somebody with good blueprint research skills who then transfer the finally-finished product back to the industrial pilots to transfer them to a market where
D20, etc? Reember all the t3 stuff going on behind the scenes? Cheating by devs? etc a few years ago? People we soo angrrrry and then got over it. They all said they'd quit and didn't. Same thing. 2 or 3 people will quit, and everyone will continue to play on and forget. Eq2 players did it, WOW players did it. In fact the only time players actually manned up and quit was the NGE in Galaxies. in a month, no one will be talking about EVA again until the next crisis that won't really do anything.
CCP currently has over six hundred employees spread across three international offices who are developing three videos games. They made commitments to strategic partners. That all amounts to many deep promises to keep. The subscriptions from EVE Online pays for the development of all three games.
Incarna was designed to introduce the EVE to a new generation of potential EVE players. A bold new universe that would appeal to gamer whom want to see their character avatars and apparently would put real dollars to purchase pixel apparel for the prices that are greater than the tangible goods located in the in online merchandise shop. CCP upper management sought the professional opinions of game industry consultants outside of the player community and company.
So with the advice of such esteemed outsiders it seems that pixel Monocles for $68 dollars would sell and it understandable that the playerbase emo rages and mass cancel subscriptions now. Let them blew off some steam. No need to communicate. Eventually everyone will drink the cool aid and buy the designer pants that CCP owns on their servers
Betting the farms on pixel Monocles and pants like this ...
It's just crazy.
-Fiend-
http://www.vendetta-online.com/
I like the game world. There are surprising twists that are not obvious during the demo, including mission trees opened to you based on your in-game behavior. The game is developed by a four-person team who have made this their full-time gig. Cost is $10/month, after the free demo.
Personally, I wouldn't pay more than $50 for an imaginary monocle.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Even if they lose half their players, if they remaining half are spending 4x the money on the game it's a net win for the company. Just ask SOE. They can keep a game running with 100 subscribers left if those subscribers are willing to pay enough.
They are essentially using EVE to fund their other projects. I have unchecked "load station environment" and will not participate in the $68 "micro" transactions. I came to space to fly my Internet Spaceship, show off my epeen and blow shit up. Not ambulate my fat ass off and wear fancy clothes. I am a POD pilot in EVE. I do not plan on ever leaving my pod.
I'm quitting Eve. The first one who gives me 1 Tritanium can have all my stuff. I've set up a contract in-game -- search for "Tritanium".
The special mounts are cosmetic. There is nothing about them that you couldn't get with an in-game mount.
I don't hate the Captains Quarters per say, but this expansion has brought nothing new to the game that I couldn't have lived without and the developers continue to ignore flaws and bugs that the community has repeatedly requested be addressed. CCP's apparent intent to start selling standings and skill points for real money micro-transactions will, in my opinion, completely nullify the time and effort that older players have spent playing Eve. For me, it has taken me roughly four years of playing to get my character to his current capabilities. If they continue with their apparent plan of action, CCP will put into place a way for new players to surpass my skills when they create their account simply by paying a few bucks more. In my opinion, that's unacceptable.
As a result, I canceled the automatic renewal on both of my accounts last evening. I also have enough ISK to buy roughly three to four PLEX cards at current prices, so I could potentially extend my playtime out with that, if I so desire. If CCP decide to make changes that I feel address my concerns, I will be more than willing to re-subscribe. I don't want anyone's head on a platter or to crush the company into the ground. I've just decided they are going in a direction I don't like. I've sent them messages with the account cancelations explaining my position. They are a business first and foremost, and thus have always had the intention of turning a profit and I don't hold that against them. That being said, I don't think alienating a portion of your older and more established customer base in an effort to increase profit margins is a sound business plan.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
Did you read any of the rest of the discussions here, or just drop in to post in a hurry?
You can either read the several other discussions here where it's been explained to people that said that how there was a missing part to their understanding, or you can read the thread on the forums where that's very clearly explained.
The quick tl;dr: What the player buys with real world money is an in-game item called a PLEX, which is then put on the player market, so that other players can buy it with in-game currency. That in-game item is then used by the purchaser to extend their game time, thus removing it from circulation.
The buyer gets isk, the seller gets game time, and the market stays stable. Items purchased by the PLEX-seller are items that were produced by players, and that isk goes to those players - standard economics.
Problem is you can pay for anything in eve with real money anyway. The difference is that you buy it from game farming companies in China who typically blitz games with 'bot's, employ child labour exploitation or even slavery and are often money laundering fronts for much much worse organisations. If you can buy pretty much anything illegitimately then what's wrong with at least getting it from a clean source and help fund further in-game development?
Sidebar: check out any MMO type stuff that EA have their hands in. Anything most of the larger publishers put out is much like this.
...
Here's an example using Black Box / EA Canada's "Need For Speed: World"
They inflict largely unfinished software on users who then pay for the privilege of eternal beta testing, but ignore their community almost completely. The game's producers are no better than corporate shills, and the development team[s] operate in a total vacuum with no communication with their player base [and this is in fact their corporate policy].
They enforce a level cap to enable "demo" play to get users hooked, then they require real money continue playing.
They then rename the game to "free2play" but keep premium items which can place a brand-new player at the highest level of competition available only for cold, hard cash. Users who paid to get in before this receive no dispensation or thanks for funding the game's introduction [a.k.a. elsewhere in the universe as apha testing].
They create an in-game currency but then render it useless by making big-ticket items unavailable by that means, going so far as to remove the "free" [in-game cash] items and replace them with real-money only ones. They also insult users' intelligence by providing an "inventory" for performance items, but make the inventory one-way: you can't put things back once they're taken out, so performance items [the good ones of which are exceedingly rare unless you dump hundreds to thousands of dollars of real money in] are all single-use, unless you decide to "sell" them for even more insulting amounts of useless in-game currency.
There is no in-game economy; there is no trading between users; there isn't even trading for a user with themself.
While all this is going on, they set their real-cash prices at ridiculous levels [which are ridiculous but not as bad as EVE here], and make the most necessary or desireable items available only by a system of gambling that encourages "hardcore" users to pour up to a few thousand dollars into a game that's not really entered let alone left beta yet, so they can remain competitive with other paying users.
Performance affecting items have a next-to non-existent drop rate to all payers, paying or not. Free players can't compete beyond the lower levels [which are saturated with continual turnover of brand new players who all ragequit by level 20], and high-level paid players [paid or not] are frustrated by the lack of competition and the frequent saturation of the game by blatant cheaters.
Real cash items are one-upped every few weeks or a month by a new for-pay item that blows everything else out of the water, ruining all competition completely, over and over again, for all users.
Meanwhile fundamentally game-breaking bugs and missing basic features [and I mean really basic, like programmable controls or actual graphics options, which all PC games should have, period] are completely ignored by the producers and development team who instead focus on things like adding more useless items that have no more than cosmetic value since they can't be used for actual gaming competition by users.
This is the future of online gaming, nay, gaming in general, where publishers completely miss the point of things like respecting their community, where the "micro" in "microtransaction" leads to games costing users an order of magnitude or several greater [I know of people who have spent >$2,000 USD on NFSW] than an off-the-shelf single player franchise title that itself would cost several orders of magnitude greater to produce than the online game.
The publisher puts less effort in, less money in, shafts their userbase, then makes a crapload more money off it than a traditional title would likely make.
There are few industries other than gaming where customers and fans are so often willing to be bent over to take it up the proverbial backside whil
Gametime they can use to build up mutiple accounts, because in EvE multi-accounts are legal. Mutiple accounts mean more isk, which means more power in game.
You can also use them to straightout buy powerful characters.
So yes you are buying in game power with PLEX.
Always has been that way, nothing changing here.
Where else you think you get you fix? Why you gots to run you mouths off? Don't you know what happen to a ho who get uppity?
Y'all remember Busta McCrabbe, and how he got they fancy airs and graces cause he be a "Admiral"? He only be a Admiral cause I say he a Admiral! You know what bein' an Admiral mean? It mean he slap the rest of you bitches around so I don't have to get off this fine mink covered recliner and do it my own self.
Where he now? Where he at, after he say he want "more respect"? He an ensign now, giving the Vulcan Sex Grip to bumpy-heads over in the Ballsack Nebula.
You hos want that? You want I cut you off? You think you got a fleet at you back, you think you got friends? I own that fleet! I own those friends! You think you can get by on Gratuitous Space Battles by your own self? You think that keep the shakes away? They ain't even got no backstory!
Now, why you want to get me riled up like this? Why you have to get me so angry? You know I just wants to takes care of you. You know I loves all my stable, you know I good to you. Just you settle down, pay me what's mine, and I gets you a fine new blouse, purple rayon, nothing but the best for my hos. But you gots to earn it. You gots to earn it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In this case the rage is misplaced. It fails to take into account something we generally call implementation. Let's say I want to buy a Kinetic Armour Hardener. I go to the market and find the cheapest item. I right click the item and select "buy". I enter the number I want to buy and then get to choose between "buy with ISK" and "buy with credit card". If I do the latter, the database gives me the item from the market, credits the producer/seller with ISK and also credits CCP's bank account with real $. The only thing that didn't happen here is a deduction of ISK from the purchasers in-game bank balance.
So tell me what's the difference between doing that and my buying a PLEX, selling it on the market and then buying the item with the ISK? There is no difference whatsoever. The market hasn't been circumvented at all. Producers still profit from producing. The buyer still gets his item. CCP probably don't make a whole lot of extra $, because they're already making that from PLEX.
In conclusion I think this is just a huge fuss based on some erroneous assumptions about what CCP are actually going to do.
So lets go over how you can buy items in game currently.
You gain ISK, which are the in game currency doing missions or what have you as you would expect. You think use that ISK to purchase all other items that can be purchased.
OR
If you choose to do so, you can buy a PLEX, which is a certificate for 30 days of game time basically. You can legally bring that into the game and sell it on the open market for in game ISK, this isn't new. Its probably about a year old, but its not something people aren't used to at this point.
So ... what people are complaining about ... they are just too stupid to realize is already a legitimate part of the game. Its already trivial to buy game items for real world cash. I suck at the game, but like dicking around in it so thats how I get my stuff, then of course being a bad player I promptly get ganked by some griefer and lose it all if I don't get out fast enough.
EVE is about strategy, just having superior equipment doesn't give you even a little advantage against other players. Might help you beat down an NPC, but in my experience, EVE gives so many ways to fight that there is simply no way you can buy yourself into being protected from a better player.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Eve's economy is an interesting beast. They are one of the few companies who employ a full time PhD economist. In fact he publishes a quarterly report much like any publicly traded company does. CCP benefits from the sale of Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) using real-world cash, which are traded for in-game items. These items are sold for in-game currency and eventually exchanged with CCP for a 1 month game play extension. In other words CCP has been in the Real Money Trade (RMT) business for years. And a large part of the EVE universe make enough in-game currency each month (ISK) in order to play for "free", barring the cost of their time. Since the inception of Eve there's been a set hierarchy - the folks who have been playing the longest have the greatest advantage because item use is directly related to Skill Points (SP) invested and player skill. Obviously nobody can purchase skill, but neither could anyone purchase SP to gain an advantage, or more importantly to close the advantage gap with older players. RMT for better ships or SP would change all that. Because the sale of characters is allowed there is a secondary market and many players depend on "baking" a kind of character for many months and selling it for in-game currency as well. RMT for SP would also impact this market. Just as the "old guard" have no interest in CCP allowing the re-release of unique and limited supply items, neither do they wish for the introduction of any other mechanisms that could close economic or skill gaps. This is one of the reasons Goonswarm was so very reviled with their entry into the EVE universe - they tried to play nice and were ignored or mocked by older players, so the Goons invented tactics to counter the older player's play style, resulting in a huge upset in the balance of power and required game play. This is more of the same and although the source is CCP, the reaction is the same. Nobody wants change as long as they have an advantage over everyone else.
Tweaking the supply of high-demand in-game items attacks gold farmers directly *and* adds another revenue stream to the game. Why shouldn't the owner of an MMO take steps to reduce the siphoning of profits from their IP by gold farmers and simultaneoulsy exploit it themselves as a revenue source? It will no doubt alter the game in unfavorable directions for some fraction of their subscribers, and some fraction of these subscribers will be lost, but I'm certain that the addictive nature of the game will limit those kinds of losses. End result is more revenue from their IP, and reduced dissipation of potential profit by gold farmers, at the cost of some fraction of their subscriber base.
It's much more complicated than this, and right now a lot of players are too enrage over the poor implementation to see the big picture.
If you're easily bored by explanations, jump right to the last paragraph, if not, read the rest too.
A bit of a background is needed here to properly understand what's going on.
I won't bore you with much detail (as incredible as this sounds, this below is the short version).
Since many years ago, for the majority of the game's life actually, CCP (the game makers) attempted to curtail attempts of RMT ("Real Money Trading") - and mostly succeeded in reducing the frequency of it happening - by allowing players to sell GTC ("Game Time Cards") for ISK ("InterStellar Kredits", the in-game currency).
This meant some people were getting the ISK they wanted without having to buy from "goldfarmers" (so to speak), while some players could afford to "play for free" (not pay any real-life cash for their subscriptions). It didn't take long for CCP to introduce a secure trading method, which became the only allowed exchange option, with the game time automatically applied to the purchasing account (to prevent RMTers from buying GTCs and selling those for cash).
This became popular enough that nearly a quarter of the total active accounts were actually subscribed using this particular method. Or, in other words, they were seeing a more than 30% increase in subscription counts because of it.
About two and a half years ago, CCP decided to introduce a new way to trade GTCs, by allowing players to split a purchased 60-day GTC into two 30-day PLEX ("Pilot License EXtension") in-game items, which could be traded on the in-game free market.
What CCP didn't expect however was just how popular PLEX would become.
TOO popular, in fact.
It didn't take long for the player base to realize that investing ISK into PLEX could be viewed as a hedge against inflation, as a security blanket for the time they might not afford to pay real-life cash for a while, or even just as yet another good to be traded by the ultra-rich (in ISK) players.
Because of that, the demand to purchase PLEX was outstripping the need for PLEX to be used on the spot, so the price on the open market was a bit higher than what it would have been if it would only have been used as a subscription extension tool - and as such, the supply side (people purchasing it for cash to sell for ISK) obliged them, and increasing numbers of PLEX have been stockpiling in people's hangars.
The only data regarding this trend is quite old, from mid-August 2009 - a developer blog with some interesting graphs : http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=684
Players have speculated about just how many PLEX are now stockpiled, the most reserved estimates put a lower count of around 75,000 PLEX (real-life cash equivalent of around 1.3 million USD), with opinions split about the upper bound, but even 300,000 PLEX would not be difficult to believe (roughly 5.25 million USD), and some people claim it might be even higher.
Now, it should be pretty obvious as to why a company the size of CCP would be worried about "unclaimed" pre-paid subscriptions worth anything between 1 and 5 million dollars floating around inside their own game.
As they say, within this here lies the rub.
So they hatched a plan, this microtransaction deal.
It was by no means the first contingency plan, they tried various other methods first, anything from allowing people to use PLEX for other services that used to require a cash payment (like character transfers, for instance) up to holding donation drives for real-life aid, drives accepting both ISK and PLEX (to be converted by CCP into cash and donated on behalf of the player base to charity, without any tax breaks from it).
Obviously, that didn't work well enough, and the threat of financial liabilities growing ever larger in these uncertain economic times (and let's not forget, they're an Iceland-based softw
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
It is the whole point of the sandbox approach of players driving the storyline.
One player started a protest to sell his stock of surplus missiles. Others did it boost their e-peen, and some just because it was something different to do.