It's not available yet, but as far as I understand, the discussion with the CSM ended with "that's stupid, but I suppose if it's just for a little bit because you aren't ready yet everything won't melt down". The feedback from the CSM members seems to be that most of their issues raised were either ignored, their questions weren't even answered, or they were heavily pushed to take other positions.
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.
Well, there's some milking involved, assuming that the internal plans for game-changing items for real money come to fruition.
Eve is full PvP in a way that is different from almost every other MMO out there, and if an item or ship is better at its job than another, it will be used nearly to the exclusion of all others, and destroyed in great amounts as well.
Either the cash store ships/modules are better than the player-produced ones, and they'll be used instead of them, or they're equal or worse, and they won't be used in any noticeable amounts, no matter the size of the additional RL cost, because winning is what matters. CCP will see no return on their development cost, and they will be forced to improve the items until they are used. Carebears in hi-sec may buy one of the items, but they won't be destroyed, and thus there won't be any continuing demand.
Yes, Eve is full PvP, and items (except for the character items from the new cash shop and rigs/implants) have a chance to drop when a player's ship is destroyed. Even the rigs and implants that don't drop are destroyed when the ship is destroyed and the player is podkilled. This destruction is part of what drives Eve's huge economy.
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?
Eve already has a subscription. Some items are now available for RL cash in a way that bypasses the (extraordinarily deep and complex) player economy. Currently, those are vanity and decorative items only, though their one ship type for sale so far is now expected to be deployed into the game without requiring player-manufactured components. CCP has something of a history of putting half-finished features into place, then not fixing major issues for years.
The information that has the serious players raging is the leaked internal plan (voiced by the Lead Designer, no less) to expand the real-money transactions to items that *do* affect gameplay while bypassing the player economy, on top of the subscription cost.
That's the irony - Eve has always been all about the externalities and unintended consequences, though still within the game.
As a sandbox where people can do some very bad things, it shows quite well what people will do given free rein. They'll do the same thing here. The long-term players can see it, and this particular change breaks the sandbox.
Can't do F2P and still have offline training, though. Eve will have to be subscription +pay for items to still exist as Eve without a complete change in structure.
Perhaps this is why they're running off the older players now? Not so ideal to have a 100M+ SP character "modified" to fit into a new character skill design.
That's their prediction, yes. I'm sure that Joseph Gallo, fresh from 14 years at Citigroup, has all sorts of Powerpoint presentations that show exactly that when the VCs meet to discuss the RoI.
The question here is twofold:
1. Will the switch from devoted Eve players to casual gamers and ingame transactions actually provide this return, or will it actually be much less? Casual gamers may well be driven away by Eve before CCP can simplify it enough to hold them. CCP has repeatedly failed to execute on their big plans in the past.
2. Can Eve still be the "golden goose" that will fund the development of DUST and the WoD MMO as the subscriber base drops? They need to carry enough Eve subscribers for revenue through the upcoming hard times, or CCP Atlanta, Newcastle, and Shanghai are done for.
You're right. Their great experiment is in progress. The players that have been devoted to Eve for years are in the process of leaving now.
If they succeed, Eve/DUST may gain many casual players. Farmville has a huge number of players, and Zynga's making plenty of money. It won't be the Eve that mattered anymore, though.
Even if the experiment fails, the game will still be around. SWG was around for 6 years after the NGE. In fact, it was just announced a couple of days ago that it was finally having the plug pulled. Did you know it was still running?
The uproar isn't even in the same ballpark as last time. This is far bigger than t20, and more people that normally disagree with one another are united against this. Mittens says Goons are done if it happens, *and* PL is banning recruiting of Aurum users. Ex-BoB/IT players are against it, and even the Russians are upset.
This is bad for everyone but the casual player - the Farmville/F2P player that stays for an average of 7 months.
Eve is not a casual game. This change is trying to make it a casual game, and there are better casual games out there already. It's moving Eve from a niche where it has no competition (except possibly Perpetuum, and that has a way to go) into direct competition with the giants of the industry.
CCP is cool and all, and it's fun to laugh at Oveur's drunken antics and remember when the devs still played their game in 0.0. The basic idea of Eve is incredible . However, they're not actually that good at what they do or at executing those ideas, to be brutally honest. They will fail badly when put up against the big guys.
Honestly, most players would grumble, but be okay with, an increase in the subscription fee, as long as it came along with more focus on Eve instead of WoD and DUST.
However, when there is not a voice on the "pro" side of the equation that is part of the real game, be it serious PvP alliances or heavy-duty industrialists, it's pretty clear that there's a problem. The casual players often don't understand what's going on, but the serious ones really do. They often understand the implications better than CCP - note the tech moon changes, etc. The serious players are the ones that are canceling their subscriptions.
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.
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.
Yes, it looks like the VCs are running the place. The new CFO, Joseph Gallo, is a 14-year veteran and former managing director from Citicorp who left about the time of the global financial collapse. His LinkedIn profile claims that he's responsible for the strategic direction of the company.
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.
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.
How PLEX works with the economy has also been explained repeatedly. I can do so again if you really don't understand, and are not being intentionally obtuse to try to make your point.
Assuming that you really do know about how PLEX work, now contrast that with a system where items are sold for Aurum with no interaction with the player-run economy.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not available yet, but as far as I understand, the discussion with the CSM ended with "that's stupid, but I suppose if it's just for a little bit because you aren't ready yet everything won't melt down". The feedback from the CSM members seems to be that most of their issues raised were either ignored, their questions weren't even answered, or they were heavily pushed to take other positions.
According to TeaDaze, Hilmar even flew the CSM back to Iceland, wined and dined them, then tried to get them to support selling remaps for PLEX.
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.
That claim was by Zinfandel on the ATIX stream.
However, they're not delivering that. They're delivering "pay Aurum, receive Ishukone Scorpion".
Well, there's some milking involved, assuming that the internal plans for game-changing items for real money come to fruition.
Eve is full PvP in a way that is different from almost every other MMO out there, and if an item or ship is better at its job than another, it will be used nearly to the exclusion of all others, and destroyed in great amounts as well.
Either the cash store ships/modules are better than the player-produced ones, and they'll be used instead of them, or they're equal or worse, and they won't be used in any noticeable amounts, no matter the size of the additional RL cost, because winning is what matters. CCP will see no return on their development cost, and they will be forced to improve the items until they are used.
Carebears in hi-sec may buy one of the items, but they won't be destroyed, and thus there won't be any continuing demand.
Yes, Eve is full PvP, and items (except for the character items from the new cash shop and rigs/implants) have a chance to drop when a player's ship is destroyed.
Even the rigs and implants that don't drop are destroyed when the ship is destroyed and the player is podkilled.
This destruction is part of what drives Eve's huge economy.
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?
Eve already has a subscription. Some items are now available for RL cash in a way that bypasses the (extraordinarily deep and complex) player economy. Currently, those are vanity and decorative items only, though their one ship type for sale so far is now expected to be deployed into the game without requiring player-manufactured components. CCP has something of a history of putting half-finished features into place, then not fixing major issues for years.
The information that has the serious players raging is the leaked internal plan (voiced by the Lead Designer, no less) to expand the real-money transactions to items that *do* affect gameplay while bypassing the player economy, on top of the subscription cost.
In fact, it's pretty much a canonical example of "News for Nerds".
"Stuff That Matters" is debatable, of course.
That's the irony - Eve has always been all about the externalities and unintended consequences, though still within the game.
As a sandbox where people can do some very bad things, it shows quite well what people will do given free rein. They'll do the same thing here. The long-term players can see it, and this particular change breaks the sandbox.
Yes, and the moment something is better in a PvP game, it will become the standard.
Can't do F2P and still have offline training, though.
Eve will have to be subscription +pay for items to still exist as Eve without a complete change in structure.
Perhaps this is why they're running off the older players now? Not so ideal to have a 100M+ SP character "modified" to fit into a new character skill design.
That's their prediction, yes. I'm sure that Joseph Gallo, fresh from 14 years at Citigroup, has all sorts of Powerpoint presentations that show exactly that when the VCs meet to discuss the RoI.
The question here is twofold:
1. Will the switch from devoted Eve players to casual gamers and ingame transactions actually provide this return, or will it actually be much less? Casual gamers may well be driven away by Eve before CCP can simplify it enough to hold them. CCP has repeatedly failed to execute on their big plans in the past.
2. Can Eve still be the "golden goose" that will fund the development of DUST and the WoD MMO as the subscriber base drops? They need to carry enough Eve subscribers for revenue through the upcoming hard times, or CCP Atlanta, Newcastle, and Shanghai are done for.
You're right. Their great experiment is in progress. The players that have been devoted to Eve for years are in the process of leaving now.
If they succeed, Eve/DUST may gain many casual players. Farmville has a huge number of players, and Zynga's making plenty of money. It won't be the Eve that mattered anymore, though.
Even if the experiment fails, the game will still be around. SWG was around for 6 years after the NGE. In fact, it was just announced a couple of days ago that it was finally having the plug pulled. Did you know it was still running?
The uproar isn't even in the same ballpark as last time. This is far bigger than t20, and more people that normally disagree with one another are united against this. Mittens says Goons are done if it happens, *and* PL is banning recruiting of Aurum users. Ex-BoB/IT players are against it, and even the Russians are upset.
This is bad for everyone but the casual player - the Farmville/F2P player that stays for an average of 7 months.
Eve is not a casual game. This change is trying to make it a casual game, and there are better casual games out there already. It's moving Eve from a niche where it has no competition (except possibly Perpetuum, and that has a way to go) into direct competition with the giants of the industry.
CCP is cool and all, and it's fun to laugh at Oveur's drunken antics and remember when the devs still played their game in 0.0. The basic idea of Eve is incredible . However, they're not actually that good at what they do or at executing those ideas, to be brutally honest. They will fail badly when put up against the big guys.
Honestly, most players would grumble, but be okay with, an increase in the subscription fee, as long as it came along with more focus on Eve instead of WoD and DUST.
Well, sometimes they are, heh.
However, when there is not a voice on the "pro" side of the equation that is part of the real game, be it serious PvP alliances or heavy-duty industrialists, it's pretty clear that there's a problem.
The casual players often don't understand what's going on, but the serious ones really do. They often understand the implications better than CCP - note the tech moon changes, etc. The serious players are the ones that are canceling their subscriptions.
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.
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.
Well, PLEX was put in to legitimize the existing trade in GTC, and make the representation of game time an in-game item that was owned by CCP.
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.
Not about the monocle, it's just a silly overpriced bit of pixels. You know as well as I that the primary anger is about the leaked plans.
Also, Eve's a lot more than a space sim - it's more of a humanity sim.
Yes, it looks like the VCs are running the place. The new CFO, Joseph Gallo, is a 14-year veteran and former managing director from Citicorp who left about the time of the global financial collapse. His LinkedIn profile claims that he's responsible for the strategic direction of the company.
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.
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.
How PLEX works with the economy has also been explained repeatedly.
I can do so again if you really don't understand, and are not being intentionally obtuse to try to make your point.
Assuming that you really do know about how PLEX work, now contrast that with a system where items are sold for Aurum with no interaction with the player-run economy.