EVE General Discussion

If he doesn't, I will. It's the industry I work in now. :)

-Liang

Ed: If it wasn't painfully obvious...

You know, EFT. Quoting isn't that hard. Just balance the tags, preview your post, and it'll no longer look like you're arguing against yourself.…and I didn't mention “training skills” to begin with, so why you even bring that up is beyond me. I was talking about training. You don't have to spend any time grinding regardless, so all your in-game time can be devoted to getting better at winning even if you don't pay. In fact, alt maintenance will quickly become as much of a time sink as the complete lack of grinding needed for the non-alted character. So the connection between paying and training is pretty insignificant; the connection between training and winning is weak; and the connection between paying and winning is nil.

Oh, and buying chars with RL money gets you banned.

…which doesn't matter because the advantages were still available without payment, and as for your scenario, restricting one side from getting those advantages this one time (for no particular reason) does not mean they do not exist or are impossible. The advantages you speak of can still be had without paying for them, thus no P2W.

Yes? You still haven't understood what I'm saying then, I take it, since you just repeated part of my argument. You didn't actually address the point I was making. It's nice to see that you're starting to agree though, although it would be even nicer if you understood why.

You already have the quote. Read it again, and this time, try to understand the point I'm making and respond to it.

…but none of the advantages of doing are restricted to those who pay. If anyone can get the same advantage without paying, then it's not P2W. In fact, considering the degradation in efficiency and effectiveness you get from controlling multiple characters in EVE, what you're doing is more akin to P2L.

The people who know how to fly their ships will have the advantage. In most cases, Corp A has just wasted all that money & would've gotten the same result had they flushed it down the pokies.

That's right. Bolded, underlined, and italicized the part that confirms that, just for anyone else confusing my posts with the EpicFailTroll guy's posts, or like yourself hallucinating.

Okay, I'll bite. What were you saying? What is your point?




But it's more efficient to fork out RL money, for reasons mentioned times and times again. Hence, P2W.

Because it would bypass the market. It would bypass industry. It would bypass logistics.

In most games, none of that would matter in the slightest. In EVE, those things are very important (self)balancing mechanics that restricts your access to all kinds of equipment. P2W can come in many forms, and while for your average bullet fest, +1 damage would be a standard way to create some quantum of “win”, in this game, there are many possible quanta that would give the payer an advantage over those who just go through the normal game mechanics.*

What I illustrated was simply a way of treating this ammo exactly the same as any other kind of ammo, but also making it available for a parallel currency (AUR) at the very source (the blueprint level). Another way would be to let players sell things for AUR, still treating the ammo exactly the same as any other kind of ammo, but making it available for the parallel currency at the other end of the production chain: just before you load it into your guns.


* It's for this reason that things like PLEX and the character bazaar are so interesting. It looks like they would let you skip game mechanics, but actually, they don't. All that ISK and all those SP have to be accumulated and allotted in accordance with the mechanics. If that didn't happen, they'd simply not be available for you to buy.

My point is that your argument basically reduces down to “numbers ≡ payment.” Every example you've provided has been one where larger numbers beat smaller numbers. Now, setting aside for a moment that this is not necessarily true, and just accepting the naïve assumption that numbers is an absolute advantage, the problem with this equivalence is that it's complete nonsense.

If numbers ≡ payment, then every multiplayer game would be P2W: a quake team with more numbers has obviously paid more; their advantage comes from payment.

Now, as you rightly point out (and which I've stated from the very beginning), this is clearly bunk. Quake is not P2W. Quake is a game where unbalanced teams will create an unbalanced game, and the unbalancing factor is the numbers, not the money people spent to play the game and stack their team.

Therefore, we should reject the notion that numbers ≡ payment.

Now, let's go back to EVE. What is it that wins in your precious scenarios? Numbers. Not payment. The advantage of numbers can be had without payment. You don't need alts to have numbers. Any advantage that one team brings to the table that they might have paid for in some way (alts, PLEXed blingships, high-skilled characters etc) can be had by the other team without the same expenditure of cash.

That doesn't make it P2W. It just makes it RL convenient for RL cash. We're back at the entertainment level. It's not P2W for the same reason as buying EVE on Steam or directly from CCP rather than slogging it all the way to the local Games store and dosing yourself with expensive dopamines to not punch the sales critters in the mouth is not P2W.

…not to mention that it's not necessarily more efficient to fork out RL money to begin with, as has been explained time and time again.

Take home, at that.

-Liang

Numbers in EvE are made up of alts, yes. Scout alts, offgrid booster alts, remote rep alts. Those accounts have to be funded.

You seek to link this assertion with other multiplayer games, in which you cannot reliably control more than one character, and in which, therefore, it does not happen, in order to imply that I think that numbers = payment for all multiplayer games, when I only say this is valid in EvE (the DAOC example had more to do with remote rep/booster alt, not numbers/fighting force)

This is only true in EvE, can you understand that?

You're the king of fallacies. Here is this one. "If A is true for B, and B belongs to X ensemble, then we should infer that A is true for all of X."
A being: "numbers= payment"
B being: " EvE"
X being: "Mmos"


As facts would stubbornly have it, numbers more often than not = win in EvE, and it's easier to have them with little to zero maintenance alts which provide bonuses, plus with easy to micro alts, than with RL people who can have conflicting schedules/interests.

It's also easier to fund them through RL money, for reasons mentioned times and times again.






What does it have to do with entertainment? Is convenience entertainment?

Convenience of paying with RL money, in this case, frees up game time to actually learn to get better at PvP rather than do isk-related stuff in order to fund your alts. Also more fun and allows for more freedom ingame, because more isk.

Which all betters your chances at winning. Hence, P2W.

I wager you are talking trading or a lucky officer spawn? Makes me wish I had the patience to trade, I get distracted much to easily.