EVE General Discussion

This is really a question about your attitude to Micro Transactions. Personally I hate MT think it is something Eve can do without. I think it's fine for games where players have accepted the fact that you can pay more for extras, but Eve is a different animal to most other online games, and its players are here BECAUSE Eve is a different animal. For me, the trouble with MT is:

• 1 - I hate the fact that I have to pay extra to get full access to the content of a game I'm already paying for.
• 2 - It creates a diving line between the 'Haves' and the 'Have nots.' Players who can't afford the extras are alienated and like second rate customers.
• 3 - As far as I'm aware it makes no sense from an RPG point of view.
• 4 - It's would be an extra ball ache.
• 5 - It stinks of corporate greed over simply providing a great game made by people we can trust, because it's not just about milking a cash cow.
• 6 - It is completely set aside from the sandbox and the player driven economy, and so clashes with the philosophy of the game.

So, to get back to the original question. Would you prefer:

• 1- Have Aurum in the game as a means to paying extra for things like clothes, ship paint jobs, etc.
• 2 - Increase the subscription charge to cover extra content, as you understand that this new content needs payig for somehow.
• 3 - Neither as you feel that you are already entitled to new content at the price you are currently paying.

I'm personally voting 3. But if CCP explained itself well enough and convinced me that this extra content HAD to be financed somehow, then I would choose 2.

Interested to hear thoughts.

3

3... or 2.

I do not want to see higher subs as it is already an expensive game to play, considering that if you have a Capital you pretty-much will have an alt too.

I know that we kind of have P2W already with PLEX but I just do not like the whole Aurum / MT in EVE. I especially do not like the idea that you can buy benefits that you cannot acquire by other means (e.g The dreaded Faction-Towers-In-Nex prediction).

I don't feel I need purely cosmetic additions to play the full game. If people want to shell out money in some way for them, great, but I don't really care.

1 hour of RL work per character for a month of playtime is an expensive game?

I think the choice should be between option 1 and 2. Personally it doesn't matter to me which of those they pick. Though if they did pick 2 I would hope they actually spend the money on additional workforce to make the extra content and not just backlog real content and pocket the extra money.

Using the support of Plex for ISK because you don't want to grind ISK. The part not mentioned is, someone grinded the ISK and made a trade for your plex. With drop loot in Aurum nobody is grinding and all drops become only as rare as the size of your wallet. If you make ISK selling Dramiel BPC's and tommorow I can buy a drami on Aurum shop, you are pretty much screwed.

Having more people in EVE or a game CCP makes is the inevitable best answer but I can never bring myself to entice people in to EVE because I know most people don't belong here.

Absolutely not. Especially because this function is economically-meaningless next to the Plex/isk conversion that happens already when anything extra for isk comes into the game.


If this was the only option then sure, but it isn't, and its not even the best option. CCP have shown us that Eve itself is extremely profitable as is - its limits are simply that it doesn't make quite enough profit to fund the entirety of 2 entirely different games at the same time. Scale back the expenditure on non eve stuff (as they have) and the funding problem goes away. Concentrate on improving Eve properly and more subscriptions will be gained further increasing profits (and available development budget)



Well we ARE entitled to new content for the price we are paying because that is the agreement between CCP and its customer base. Our subs get us access to the game world + continuing expansion of the game client/world. If that agreement was ever to change then I suspect last autumn's unsubscription crisis would look like damp squib compared to the firestorm of fury that would mark the new eden armageddon.

But the important point here is that WE (as paying customers) should not be trying to rationalize micro transactions as a funding methodology to perniciously subdivide subscription-game content between $ haves and have nots. Its CCP's responsibility to balance their books and ensure they have appropriate budget to maintain and develop Eve Online to keep the user base enthused and numbers growing. The last few years finished in a fiasco because CCP management FAILED to understand basic business finance and overextended themselves while allowing their sole income source to be threatened by underfunding and mismanagement. The solution to this crisis is not rationalizing microtransactions and justifying a two-tier eve segregated by tawdry little $ paywalls, but to return to a climate of continual improvements for Eve Online that keep the eight year old game fresh and attractive for new and existing subscribers. This is not optional, its mandatory. Once CCP get subscriptions back on an upward trend and stop spending all the eve subs money on pointless rubbish then all these problems go away.

1, as long as everything RMT-related can also be bought and sold for ISK (or at least the "gold ammo" or whatever).

edit: I "prefer" 3, but I don't see 1 as being a significant detriment, or hurting me any. I see 2 as hurting me, somewhat.

If your objection is "buying power", players do that already with PLEX. If your objection is the RMTers looking different/special/whatever, grow up.

3.

You may have missed the developer recently talking about subscription MMO's running anywhere up to a 70% profit margin without other revenue schemes like added microtransactions. CCP wouldn't have had to polute EVE with the NeX if they hadn't tried to develop two other games rather than completing and releasing one additional game at a time.

Question then. On the argument you've just made would it be reasonable for a market trading jita alt to argue that he or she shouldn't be paying for enhanced ship graphics, engine trails, cyno animations and nebulas on the grounds that they don't actually undock to play the game?

Their game is entirely station bound and yet you see fit to say they should pay extra to customize the avatar that is the only thing they ever see.

Why shouldn't they suggest YOU pay extra for graphic tweaks to spaceships they never see?

You see the point. Segregating content to "vanity only" simply because YOU don't want to use it is a very dangerous route to go down.

Why shouldn't hisec dwellers start arguing that they don't want to pay for development of 0.0 sovereignty mechanics that they will likely never interact with?