These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE General Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Pay to win

First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
EpicFailTroll
Doomheim
#861 - 2012-07-21 21:19:39 UTC  |  Edited by: EpicFailTroll
TIppia wrote:
EpicFailTroll wrote:
We are talking about static scouts.
…which, if you want to scout properly, and don't want to miss things, will be a bit more involved than having a second client open. Hands-off scouts are spectacularly inefficient.



But that's not true. Any corp worth its salt has several "eyes" around, which just stay in key systems as a zero-input requiring intel source. A good way to proceed is to have corp leaders or officers each have one additional account with one of such "eyes" on it.
The login info can be shared, since those accounts only contain static scouts, very little risk involved. When some officers aren't online, their alt scout can be used by other officers. It's very efficient.

They provide shiptypes, direction, and can actually be played to provide tackle or scanning. That's why there are an alt preferred role: nothing happens most of the time, but when something does, you can jump to that client and actually play it.

Yet nobody would do it if this was their single client, much too boring

Of course, you need mobile alts, actually played. Those are different, since they do require constant, not punctual, input.



Do you see the complexity of the issue?
Mechael
Tribal Liberation Distribution and Retail
#862 - 2012-07-21 21:20:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Mechael
Ranger 1 wrote:
So let me get this straight.

You're saying that if I pay for another account with ISK, it is pay to win because because some nameless stranger somewhere at some point spent money to purchase the PLEX I used?

In fact, this stranger just paid for me to win.

Really?

REALLY!!?!

At what point did that begin to actually make sense to you?


At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.

EDIT: Or really, at the point where real money began to affect game balance period. But a basic admittance fee is understandable, anything else is not.

Whether or not you win the game matters not.  It's if you bought it.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#863 - 2012-07-21 21:20:18 UTC
EpicFailTroll wrote:


And that's why every corp worth its salt uses quite a few of them, cloaked at key gates from a distance. They thus provide shiptypes, direction, and are only prone to miss targets if you fail to switch to them when seeing or hearing stuff happening on their client.

Sometimes I think I should really use alts, it seems I've got a better clue than most people.


Any corp that uses them is the perfect place for my SB because their intel is always insainly bad. I have seen what these intel networks are like and in all of them I can score several kills before I even get picked up and its normally reported by an active player I just killed.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#864 - 2012-07-21 21:21:16 UTC
Mechael wrote:
Ranger 1 wrote:
So let me get this straight.

You're saying that if I pay for another account with ISK, it is pay to win because because some nameless stranger somewhere at some point spent money to purchase the PLEX I used?

In fact, this stranger just paid for me to win.

Really?

REALLY!!?!

At what point did that begin to actually make sense to you?


At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.


The real money was spent by someone else, not by me. How am I paying to win?

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#865 - 2012-07-21 21:21:59 UTC
Mechael wrote:


At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.


You honestly cannot see that someone who just spent isk is getting exactly the same advantage as someone paying real money for exactly the same thing?
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#866 - 2012-07-21 21:22:22 UTC
I take it your solution is to somehow try and enforce a "One account per person" rule.

How, exactly, would you propose to make that possible? Smile

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
EpicFailTroll
Doomheim
#867 - 2012-07-21 21:23:19 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
EpicFailTroll wrote:


And that's why every corp worth its salt uses quite a few of them, cloaked at key gates from a distance. They thus provide shiptypes, direction, and are only prone to miss targets if you fail to switch to them when seeing or hearing stuff happening on their client.

Sometimes I think I should really use alts, it seems I've got a better clue than most people.


Any corp that uses them is the perfect place for my SB because their intel is always insainly bad. I have seen what these intel networks are like and in all of them I can score several kills before I even get picked up and its normally reported by an active player I just killed.


Oh ok my bad people spend isk or money on static alts because they're useless and nobody knows how to make advantage of them, makes sense
Mechael
Tribal Liberation Distribution and Retail
#868 - 2012-07-21 21:23:59 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
Mechael wrote:


At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.


You honestly cannot see that someone who just spent isk is getting exactly the same advantage as someone paying real money for exactly the same thing?


They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage. They spend money, and then an item is place in their hangar which would not have been there had they not spent money. The person who did not spend money does not get an item placed into his hangar in such a manner because he did not spend money. He has to buy said item with ISK. The problem isn't that you can buy things with ISK, the problem is that you can buy things with real money.

Whether or not you win the game matters not.  It's if you bought it.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#869 - 2012-07-21 21:24:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Mechael wrote:
At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.
Good thing that real money never affected game balance to begin with.

Quote:
They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage.
Sure they are. That's the entire point: this game does not have P2W. It does not have “gold ammo” anything you get with cash will be exactly the same thing as everyone else have. The advantage you get from your bling pirate battleship is the exact same advantage as they get from their bling pirate battleship, because it's the exact same ship with the exact same modules and the exact same stats.
Skex Relbore
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#870 - 2012-07-21 21:25:58 UTC
Mechael wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
Mechael wrote:



Except the part where they get more of said advantage over you by spending real cash. No matter how much ISK you are making through solely in-game means, you could be making more if you bought PLEX in addition to it. And that's not even getting into how useful alts are for making in-game money. Alts which must be paid for, by someone, with real money. Alts which alter the balance of the game.


Alts which I have without spending any extra RL cash.


Someone did. And someone, almost always at least two people, benefited from doing it. Again ... benefiting in-game from someone spending real money on the game.


That's called pay to play not pay to win.

And is kind of the whole point of why Plex is not pay to win. Because someone paid CCP for a game subscription not for isk. that another person is willing to pay isk for that game subscription does not make it pay to win.

Pay to win is when you can spend real life money to purchase advantages that players who do not pay can't get through normal game play. Such as say premium tanks in WOT that give a bonus to how much money you make. Or special ammo that can only be purchased with RL currency that is more accurate or does more damage than the ammo available through normal game play.

Hell the very existence of plex breaks your premise that alts somehow make the game "Pay to win" because those accounts can be paid for with in the game currency acquired through normal universally available game mechanics.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#871 - 2012-07-21 21:26:10 UTC
EpicFailTroll wrote:


Oh ok my bad people spend isk or money on static alts because they're useless and nobody knows how to make advantage of them, makes sense


We are talking about IRC here.
EpicFailTroll
Doomheim
#872 - 2012-07-21 21:26:31 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
I take it your solution is to somehow try and enforce a "One account per person" rule.

How, exactly, would you propose to make that possible? Smile



How would that even be possible, do you want CCP to go bankrupt?

I merely wish for people to understand that alts are a huge source of revenue for CCP, because they provide invaluable convenience for solo and not-solo player that cannot be had so easily any other way, if at all.

Alts are therefore quite mandatory. And since they are linked to RL money, they are a form of P2W, in which you must partake if you wish to be on an even playfield as people not using them.

But they are really F2P
Mechael
Tribal Liberation Distribution and Retail
#873 - 2012-07-21 21:26:34 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
I take it your solution is to somehow try and enforce a "One account per person" rule.

How, exactly, would you propose to make that possible? Smile


Via good game design. There are a number of ways, and I don't claim to know them all. One example that's already been posted here, somewhere, is to make gameplay actually intensive. Nobody wants an alt account in a first person shooter, for example. If it took someone's full attention to run just one EVE online account, such that trying to run more than one account was actually less efficient, alts would not be an issue. In theory.

All it takes is a little innovation. Alts have been a problem since day one. Rather than fixing the problem, we got PLEX. And then later we got Aurum. The problem isn't being addressed, it's being compounded.

Whether or not you win the game matters not.  It's if you bought it.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#874 - 2012-07-21 21:27:34 UTC
Mechael wrote:


They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage. They spend money, and then an item is place in their hangar which would not have been there had they not spent money. The person who did not spend money does not get an item placed into his hangar in such a manner because he did not spend money. He has to buy said item with ISK. The problem isn't that you can buy things with ISK, the problem is that you can buy things with real money.


He spends money for a service

I spend no money for exactly the same service.


Where is the advantage?
EpicFailTroll
Doomheim
#875 - 2012-07-21 21:27:51 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
EpicFailTroll wrote:


Oh ok my bad people spend isk or money on static alts because they're useless and nobody knows how to make advantage of them, makes sense


We are talking about IRC here.


You're the only one doing so. I was merely referring to a corp using static scouts alts for its own personal intel.
Mechael
Tribal Liberation Distribution and Retail
#876 - 2012-07-21 21:28:50 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Mechael wrote:
At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.
Good thing that real money never affected game balance to begin with.

Quote:
They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage.
Sure they are. That's the entire point: this game does not have P2W. It does not have “gold ammo” anything you get with cash will be exactly the same thing as everyone else have. The advantage you get from your bling pirate battleship is the exact same advantage as they get from their bling pirate battleship, because it's the exact same ship with the exact same modules and the exact same stats.


So when someone buys an account with real money and starts playing the game, the balance of the game is not affected by the entry of a new player at all?

Whether or not you win the game matters not.  It's if you bought it.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#877 - 2012-07-21 21:29:43 UTC
Mechael wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
Mechael wrote:


At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.


You honestly cannot see that someone who just spent isk is getting exactly the same advantage as someone paying real money for exactly the same thing?


They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage. They spend money, and then an item is place in their hangar which would not have been there had they not spent money. The person who did not spend money does not get an item placed into his hangar in such a manner because he did not spend money. He has to buy said item with ISK. The problem isn't that you can buy things with ISK, the problem is that you can buy things with real money.


Player A has an account that he pays for with ISK to make ISK with and purchases a better battleship than you.
Player B has an account that he pays for with cash to make ISK with and purchases a better battleship than you.

Which one is paying to win exactly?

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#878 - 2012-07-21 21:30:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Mechael wrote:
So when someone buys an account with real money and starts playing the game, the balance of the game is not affected by the entry of a new player at all?
No more than if he starts the account without real money.

Anyway, no, the balance of the game is altered when the devs alter tha balance, not when people play it. If you'd want to go with that kind of definition of balance, then balance ceases to exist as a useful concept.
Mechael
Tribal Liberation Distribution and Retail
#879 - 2012-07-21 21:32:03 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
Mechael wrote:


They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage. They spend money, and then an item is place in their hangar which would not have been there had they not spent money. The person who did not spend money does not get an item placed into his hangar in such a manner because he did not spend money. He has to buy said item with ISK. The problem isn't that you can buy things with ISK, the problem is that you can buy things with real money.


He spends money for a service

I spend no money for exactly the same service.


Where is the advantage?


Now not only do you spend no money for exactly the same service, but you also spend real money in addition to ISK for even more of the service. Advantage.

You can spend real money on EVE to get stuff in-game. That is real money affecting the game balance. That is the problem.

Whether or not you win the game matters not.  It's if you bought it.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#880 - 2012-07-21 21:32:43 UTC
EpicFailTroll wrote:
baltec1 wrote:
EpicFailTroll wrote:


Oh ok my bad people spend isk or money on static alts because they're useless and nobody knows how to make advantage of them, makes sense


We are talking about IRC here.


You're the only one doing so. I was merely referring to a corp using static scouts alts for its own personal intel.


They use your system. Its so bad that my corp would wander through their space and never get reported.