Jita Park Speakers Corner

Such topics are rather difficult to encapsulate in a brief reply. They entail understanding some rather complex concepts about valuations, limits and constraints that can be pushed back compared to others which cannot be pushed.

I'll try to put some of it out here and hopefully some folks can see some of it...

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In EVE there are no artificial boundaries like in other games. Only a very real one - time.

In most games you pick a class - which limits what you can do and those limits are fixed.
You level up and gain a fixed set of skills or pick a few as you progress - others being unavailable.
Towards the top, you get advanced trees specific to your class but can only pick a few of the options, which close down others.
At end game - you go chasing equipment. Every time you get close, a new expansion comes out and you chase the gear farther along - carrot on a stick routine. Any time you cannot keep up with the chase, you will find your equipment "out-dated" and your ability to participate/compete severely limited or flat out destroyed.

EVE is quite different than these.

You have veteran players, that have played since beta days, climbing in ships that a new player can get within the first couple weeks of playing - not for "lulz" - but to actually use that ship to accomplish tasks they need to do.

Gear chasing? No - not in any real sense of the term. Leave the game for 2 years and come back - what you can climb into and fly is STILL valid and useful.

You have no limits on what you can train - there is no "class boundary" where you cannot gain skills that interest you nor abilities you must choose from that block off other options. 1 character can do all and be all things - if they had enough TIME.

The only constraint in this game is time - the time to learn this or that. The time to move here or dump stuff and buy fresh. The time to earn or fight. Time is the penalty for losing here - the rest is all measures of the time you spend in various areas of the game -- ISK "per hour" varies and changes the longer you play but the baseline cannot be bypassed.

ANYTHING that mitigates, lowers or removes this core limit needs to be looked at with a great deal of caution. There are no other limits to measure your success or failure with in this game and without some limit to push against, and succeed, the game will die.

This "time-limit" meters and limits all of us equally. This is not the case with other games that have many, many different limits so they also have many different places to hook MT that won't destroy their game. Equipment? Next expansion! Class-change or revamping skills? They all have artificial limits - so on and so forth.

Couple all that together with the economic model EVE is based upon and a great deal of havoc can be cause with seeming small shifts in the game.

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Look carefully at what is being asked for in such requests. Even the current PLEX model is based upon time - it is game time exchanged, by players - with other players, for in-game value that was obtained by the buyer -- over time.

How much time was invested by 1 side to provide value? That differs between players but the prices are set and accepted between those who PLAY this game. Not set and established by the game designers.

MT is designer to 1 player -- no others involved. There is no exchange that took time nor grants time. That is a short-circuit in the system that can prove harmful to the games health.

I think I'll just call it at this point...

Gonna repost from another thread:

#12 Posted: 2011.10.10 19:57
Interesting, why it is frowned upon if I spend my RL cash for PLEX and then a supercap fleet, but it's OK if some worthless unemployed scrub spends 18 hrs/day to obtain the same ?

In both cases we use our best out-of-game assets to gain ~in game advantage~, right ?

PS. Of course, the question remains: if everyone does it, how this can constitute an advantage ?

..insert pithy comment about your diminished mental capacity here..

I buy with RL$ someone else's time to use against you and I have an advantage. I get lots of other people's time and I collect it all in one spot, my spot using my RL $ and I win! You have one person's time in real linear Eve time if you are earning isks directly. I get "n" numbers of peoples time with RL $ in Eve time, I win with my RL$s.

Using your very space madness induced logic I must have a supercap fleet and own 0.0 because some other people do and we all are all spending the same time in Eve together.

You can't seem to seperate the difference between the "nex store stuff not contributing to the Eve ecconomy" issue and the "my RL fortune makes my life in Eve better than yours" argument. Very different conversations.

Also please explain to me how using RL cash to have 8 active accounts doesn't give me an advantage over you? I've pointed this out about a dozen times now and you never respond with a counter.

Or show me how the two equal corps at war but one has RL$ and wins argument is mitigated with your "all cost time in Eve the same" nonsense? The pile of "B" corpses in the "A" corp hangar will paint a very different tale.

Right now RL $ definitely can give me an advatage in Eve and you have to be daft not to see that. As long as the markets let me buy the results of other random strangers time with my RL $ I get an edge because the amount of ISKs I make in RL is way more an hour than you can make in game. I buy their time to let me beat you and as long as the folks I buy the "time" from have no interest in our conflict they sell me the way to beat you and you can't do enough in game to ever negate that advantage.

Let me try and explain it another way. You and I are competing in Eve. We have identical skills. You get all the resources you can make on your own with in game time. I have 10 x that number of resources using RL $. It doesn't matter that other folks traded their time for my RL $ because they don't care what happens to you. I buy an army of miners and builders to help me beat you and with the RL $ to isk/hr ratio the way it is I will have the upper hand. My time in Eve is 10 times more productive than yours because I pay 10 people to give me the results of their labors.

How about an even more practical example. Let's say in real life I have a giant trust fund of billions of dollars, who cares where it came from, I just was given it. You have a good paying job selling organic fertilizer. We all have the same amount of time to spend however I spend every minute of every day having fun and doing what I want, you have to spend your days shoveling while I sip umbrella drinks and groom my llamas. Who has more fun every day? RL $s are an Eve trust fund.

Enjoying your shoveling!!

I'm sure you can come up with some odd theory about what winning in Eve really means but I am willing to bet by most peoples standards it is about winning in combat, commanding space, making isks, controllling markets and freedom to spend your time in space doing what you enjoy most and there is no way that having more isks can't make all those things easier.

Issler

Confirming these things happen all the time and are clearly the norm among EVE Online players, thus the example is utterly relevant and appropriate to the discussion.

I think you just won this argument.

You don't get the point of my getting the point here!

I have seperated this out to two things. The affect of NEX stuff on the in game ecconomy. I agree and have stated it repeatedly that putting non-vanity items in Eve via the NEX store (unless they are player crafted) is a bad thing.

The other point I am making is that I can used real life currency in Eve today to gain an advantage over anyone that doesn't by converting my real life dollars to ISKs. Yes, this is good for the folks whose time I buy with my real time dollars. But in the end I can use real life dollars to have an advantage over someone that doesn't in Eve right now, today, by selling GTCs in game legally or having better stuff to support me outside the game.

So to be VERY clear.

CCP selling stuff I can actually use to have an advantage over someone else that has no player involvement (not player crafted but magically conjured by the next store) is bad for the Eve ecconomy and I don't support it.

To the question of whether this introduces a new "Buy an I win button" it doesn't. You can already buy and "I win" button with RL $s today in dozens of different ways.

These are two every different points that keep seem to be getting rammed together in this discussion. I get it and have been trying to unravel the to distinct facts in this discussion.

Part of the "golden ammo" in the next store is bad argument (the ecconomy being hurt part) is absolutely correct. Part, the "this means I could then buy an "I win" button with RL $s is wrong because that is in Eve today.

If you don't think I can buy and advantage with RL $ today then answer these questions:

1. If I have 10 active accounts and you only have one do I have an advantage?
2. If I am at war with you, we are equal in all other ways and we try as hard at winning and I have unlimited isks do I have an advantage?
3. If I have more isks than you to trade in the markets can I drive you out of a market?
4. If we both want to play Eve and I start by buying a fully trained up character can I do more in Eve than you immediatley?
5. If I can buy a better computer or more computers than you and afford better internet than you do I have an advantage?
6. Does a corp with an excellent voice server have an advantage over a corp that has to use Eve voice?

Issler

Yes, you can always pay real $ to get Isk and all that means. I don't find that objectionable at all.
This game is about space ships sure, but its also about free willing capitalism at its most extreme.

It is if/when real life $ disrupts the in game mechanics of industry, that it has an issue. Ships etc that appear from nowhere being made from nothing that are more than eye candy... someone in game needs to have put forth the effort to make it/earn it, or it will ruin the game.

For example, Don't ever sell hulls of ships directly from NeX, but paint jobs for your ship - fine, i could live with it.