Assembly Hall

Actually, I just checked. I pay $15/mo for my month to month subscription, and CCP sells 60 day timecodes for $35.

Are you saying that only CCP sells plex?

This is not true. Online merchants legally sell plex.

Do you know how much they get to keep and how much they have to pay to CCP to get the plex to sell?

Are you sure CCP has a flat rate that they charge all resellers of plex?

Regardless of the volume of their sales? Of course you don't know.

So you sit in front of your keyboard tapping in your opinion and pretend they are facts. Good luck with that.

I came to EVE from a retail box product in a game store chain. The product cost $14.99 US dollars. Out of that $14.99 CCP had to pay for production, shipping, and the retail merchants profit. If i had bought directly from EVE online they would have had all the costs i just listed eliminated and made MORE profit.

But in business the concept of loss leaders & discounts work, did CCP make MAXIMUM profits on that first sale? No they did not. They traded that short term profit for the chance to make a long term consumer out of a new customer. In my case it was a good investment on their part. I can't tell you how long i'll have to stay a subscriber even at the lowest annual rate for CCP to be fully reimbursed for the related costs to attract new players but i would guess they have a business MODEL that does.

Because that is the way successful businesses operate. They know their costs within a time frame and then project what sales goals over that time frame will get them to the profit point they have targeted.

I admit to sometimes being awful at how clearly i may say things, that quickly gets multiplied when someone is trying to protect their tearful leader. They attack a comment that is clearly factual because it put their icon in a poor light.

I believe the business model that best supports the long term viability of CCP is what should be advocated by players who voluntarily stepped up to accept elected titles to work on behalf of the "greater good of the greater player base" to do less is shortsighted destructiveness.

OK, so back to square 1 ...

CCP does not "lose" money on selling GTC as compared to a sub. <-- we all agree on this apparently.

GTC have an opportunity cost associated with them for CCP -- sell them to us poor slobs at $35 per, or sell them to e.g. shatteredcrystal for say $27,50 per (who then sell them to us at $35 per). NOW, we're assuming it's a "I sell to you, you sell to the players" relationship between CCP and Shattered Crystal et al., and not a "you're just getting a portal to our RNG, and we'll pay you $n per month based on how many GTC you sell"

Since neither of the parties (you, me, other posters) has access to the volume sold from one source or the other (or the sales model), we can assume that CCP makes up for the differences between direct sales (which they do) and selling through resellers via sheer volume sold at the other retail outlets. If they didn't, then they probably would encourage buying from them directly rather than through the likes of shattered crystal.

Box sets (like you bought) are simply another avenue for them to get people hooked so they start paying their $10 - $15 per month, and may seriously just be a break-even product, assuming a certain number of accounts sub that month...

I would like to see insurance voided if you are killed by Concord and a bit changed.

What insurance company in their right mind would pay for you to engage in criminal activity.

Essentially, this is what insurance for suicides is doing, financing your criminal activities further buy refunding part or all of your ship cost.

Another change I would like to see is the full or nearly full insurance for T2 mining barges, Haulers. The only drawback to this would be halfpay if you are killed in null sec space.

Temba Ronin brought in the fact that there are people using plex to play, and argued that it was losing CCP money. vOv

I'm thinking something should be done to remedy the alarming rate at which the high-sec economy is taking a dive, mainly on the T2 end. And not to mention, the PLEX market has become ridiculous. Not that it effects me, as I pay for my account on a year-to-year basis, but for some who are trying to pay for their gaming by PLEX, it's becoming difficult if not nigh-impossible.

Well, looks like this thread has gotten completely off topic and is probably unrecoverable.

So, with that in mind, Vile Rat, has this given you any pearls to work with or what?

CSM member Vile Rat you are offering to review ideas from players of EVE that might lead to what you called your vision “My vision: I want to see a legitimate career path for those who want to live in empire and enjoy Eve-online. I want to see empire activities iterated upon properly and I want there to be a plentiful array of entertainment options available for those who want to make their empire in empire, and not lowsec/nullsec.”.
I have given that some thought and would like to put forth the idea that players with significantly high standings with a particular empire be allowed to place a full blown POS that rivals the NPC stations in ANY system in Empire space that does not currently have a NPC station, a high sec corporate outpost. In the hyper-capitalistic market that is New Eden it seems that players and the micro-transactional economy they represent, must now directly compete with the NPC stations to take the next logical step.

Yes it should be expensive, no it should not be so much so that it is unprofitable.

The corporation/ alliance setting up the high sec outpost should be allowed to implement the system upgrade mechanics of Sov to make their system a more attractive place to tenants. Additionally the access to the outpost itself should be controlled by the corp/ alliance that placed it there, but the access to the system would remain unrestricted. Concord would of course have a very limited specific role in a player controlled high sec system that would be limited to the jump gates to curtail contraband and enemies to their empire and to strictly enforce no gate camping. The system internally would or could be extremely dangerous but transit thru it should remain safe. The controlling corp/ alliance would be responsible to react to control and define criminal activity in their system. These Empire corp controlled systems would of course be a prime target for the Sansha and they should make frequent attempts to capture the population.

PI and Moon mining are very similar, a high sec improvement would be to allow more then 1 entity to mine a moon as is currently possible in PI. Additionally moon mining needs to be implemented in sec systems greater then 0.3. To preserve and improve the reward for all those willing to risk low sec moon mining the occurrence of high value ore must be significantly increased and limited to low sec and null space. In the Dust514 implementation it would improve profitability if ground forces could capture PI and Moon Mining facilities intact and/ or have the ability to repair damaged facilities.

Some of my thoughts on enabling the creation of corporate empires in high sec Empire space.