EVE General Discussion

The worst part is when he has to send her back to get cleaned and repaired, he gets lonely in those times...

You can pay with ISK for anything you purchase from the NeX store. Aurum is merely a mechanism to allow more granularity, and provide a common interface for the items in DUST that "will" be cash only purchases.

Also, Jade and I have had polite dissagreements on this point before, so I will gently and breifly put this out there for consideration.

'If" CCP is in a position where they must increase revenue (for any one of a variety of reasons, but lets just chalk it up to the general state of the economy for discussion sake), in my opinion it is far better to allow the purchase of vanity items by those that want them than it is to raise subscription fee's for everyone.

I fully understand the argument that these things (in a perfect world) should be part of your basic subscription fee, however if it comes down to a choice between the two, I'll opt for voluntary payments over everyone footing a higher tab.

@ The people in this thread still arguing that CCP need extra income - you do need to realize that things have changed in a pretty serious way this year.

Allow me to explain with a friendly illustration!

CCP Games is a successful Professional father. He manages to pay the bills, and invest in the future education and upbringing of his only daughter "Eve". Eve is bright and original, lovely to talk to and manages to impress everyone as she's growing up with her quirky independence and feisty joie de vivre.

Then a few years ago CCP Games met a mascara-wearing floozy with fake breasts and a penchant for dressing up her twin Chihuahua muts in mink waistcoats. The name of the floozy was "World of Darkness" and almost immediately she started spending CCP's money. Hard working successful CCP soon found himself pressed for cash as World of Darkness wined and dined a succession of long-haired poetic emo types and slept late after drinking all his wine and eating his larder bare.

Then even worse! World of Darkness brought her unlovable adolescent son (from her first failed marrage) Dust 514 into the house. Playing loud industrial house music and snorting crystal meth at all hours of the night Dust repeatedly broke all the furniture and invited thieves and pimps to squat on the living room floor and set up their MT/NEX rackets in the front garden (because "everyone else is doing it!")

Between them World of Darkness and Dust came close to bankrupting poor old CCP Dad, and while the goth harlot tapped his bank account for investments into the experimental "work" of internationally-reknowned fashion artistes "monocle and $1000 jeans", the horrible teenage stepson was trying to corrupt poor little Eve into turning "convenience" MT tricks on the street corner for small change to fund his meth habit (because "daddy needs your help with the bills")

Those players who believe encouraging this situation is the right approach (by finding excuses for MT) are simply abusing poor Eve and betraying the hard working professional dad while overlooking the real cause of the crisis (an appalling girlfriend and her nasty teenage son).

So what happened this autumn is that some of CCP Dad's friends (the good player base) came round and talked things over (some with baseball bats). CCP woke up to the reality of the situation and threw World of Darkness out on her skanky backside and hurled her suitcases out on the street. Dust 514 promised to clean up his act and is now on best behavior and Eve can finally come out of her room again without being paraded in cheap tarty underwear for the MT meth addicts to ogle at. CCP dad tearfully apologies to Eve and promises never to get into bed with noxious slappers again in the future.

So.

The morale of this story is that the biggest challenge to CCP "Dad's" income was resolved when the slutty-sleeparound World of Darkness got booted out on the street. There is no longer any need to have Eve turn MT tricks to pay the rent. Sure Dust 514 is still living with us but he turns 16 next summer and will then need to get his own job and place and sink and swim on his own.

Eve will keep growing and everyone is happy.

The end.

(we don't need microtransactions in Eve. What we need is good management of the business combined with steady growth in subscriptions - improving the core game will achieve this goal)

a little bit fantasy... you don't buy the actual clothes you buy a BPC. The manufactoring costs are automatically added to clone costs. If the BPC runs out of license runs you need a new one and fall back to unlicensed clothes. THATS eve, not the crap we currently have (regarding nex).

the items are only affordable using isk because there is no demand. The prices collapsed after the aur was distributed. There are in the market FOREVER, nobody looses the stuff, if it gets boring it moves back to the market.

I imagine what CCP intended to do was to:
a) update the store in regular intervals (like every 2 weeks) with new stuff
b) limit the items, remove them from store after a while

however what happended is the worst case scenario for the original plan. a) was canceled because of WOD and b) can't be done without closing the store entirely.

That was a very entertaining story as always Jade, nicely done.

Of course it completely inaccurate, but entertaining none-the-less.

A couple of points:

1: The loans CCP took out to fund development of all of its projects did not go away. When a company lays off 20% of it's employee's it is a pretty good indicator that it is in need of funds, both to pay off past obligations and to improve it's prospects of getting future funding.

2: Contrary to popular belief, WOD has not been canceled. WOD development has been put on hold for the moment. There is a very large difference between the two.

3: The economy of DUST is going to require certain economic elements to be in place to interact with EVE. AURUM is not going away, nor is the option for Micro Transactions.

Although your story gives the impression that financially EVE should be just fine now , it's pretty easy to see that CCP could use an additional revenue stream (and better leverage the one that it has). They DO have other projects to work on, they WILL need to secure additional development funds via loans or other means, they MUST show increases in revenue to achieve this.

We know that when things are running right with EVE subscription numbers rise slowly but steadily. This is an excellent foundation to build on. However, now they have to play catch up... as well as build financial momentum to get back on track with future development goals. Slow and steady growth may very well not cut it.

I think it was a wise decision NOT to increase subscription fee's for everyone, as I have little doubt this option was considered at the time of the layoffs. I'd like to see it stay that way.

CCP's expenses have also increased dramatically over the years (along with it's payroll), and EVE is no longer the only project being financed by EVE subscriptions.

One look at their financial statement shows this quite clearly... so yes, my face is straight. So are my facts.

Edit: I'm pretty sure I also don't have to point out the current state of the world economy as well now do I?

The expenses the loans were taken out to cover have (or will be shortly) going away. The loans got paid back. Yes laying off 20% of the employees was a hard and heavy measure but the damage has now (hopefully) been paid for. But I think as the unsub crisis showed this summer/autumn, you do not solve a funding problem in your subscription game by nickel and diming your subscribers otherwise whatever extra cent you make on MT will be lost on the dollar subs just walking away.



What they have said is code for "we'll dress up some conceptual tech demos with the remaining dozen staff and if anybody offers to buy the IP we'll bite their hand off at the wrist to claw back some of the lucre we poured into that money pit."



If Dust 514 is a damp squib failure (as it may well be) you'll see another pensive missive from CCP executive department - that could happen. What might also happen is that Dust 514 doesn't set the world afire but sells a certain number of units but is eventually seen as a separate business that sinks or swims on its own. None of us yet know how Microtransactions in Dust will impact Eve or the degree to which Dust might make 0.0 sov warfare a souless pay to win fiasco that everyone stops caring about. Perhaps it just remains as a low-key PI griefing tool with people paying Aurum to hurt their enemies - I imagine there will be another scandal but I can't see Dust as being in any way shape or form a vital part of Eve's future survival.

I predict history will see it as a mad gamble that wasted a lot of cash but Eve eventually transcended and survived. The best I personally hope for from Dust is that once its crashed and burned and CCP have truly put MT greed frenzy behind them we might get to salvage some development work on PI version 2 (or 3) along with some more interesting orbital structures and techniques.



Well we've just seen them produce an expansion that kept their paying customers happy on a shoestring budget with scarcely 6-8 weeks of development time (after 2 years of nothing.) If they can produce decent feature rich expansions a few times a year they'll get back to stead subscription growth and as long as they can prevent the executives from investing in pointless nonsense for a few years I think they will be fine.

Frankly, I'm not sure they *do* have other projects to work on. World of Darkness was clearly years away from release and technology was utterly terrible really. They can't afford to launch another MMO because unless they keep their eyes on the ball with Eve they'll have no money left. Perhaps it might have been different if the technology was better, if they actually had a beta or something for WOD, if they hadn't wasted all that money but ... well, we all know what happened. As for DUST it'll finish its pre-production and it'll have to fund itself or sink like a stone. If it ever becomes apparent that Eve subscriptions are funding a MT-based console game at the detriment of a PC-based MMO then it'll be summer of rage II.



When times are hard a sensible leader makes business decisions to lay off the most expensive but least productive members of your team. We don't know for sure (yet) but I hope that Hilmar fired the Microtransactions in Eve people alongside the WOD project to find the savings.

But the bottom line is this. There are many many Eve subscribers who don't like MT in a subscription game and consider the hybrid model is morally-bankrupt and deeply disrespectful of the player base. This costs CCP money in people who don't resub and won't sell the benefits of this game to their friends.

I'm still in the personal position of watching carefully what CCP do on the MT in Eve issue. If I see an expansion of NeX or any kind of large scale roll out content behind MT paywalls then I'm most likely out of here in the long term. At the moment I'm paying my subs with PLEX and while Cruicible WAS a step in the right direction I'm still six months and a decent full expansion (with no MT/NEX content) away from being able to recommend my absent friends subscribe and play the game again.

People pushing this MT agenda are playing a dangerous game with Eve because it doesn't take much to push things into a spiral.

/me looks at WOD flouncing away down the street.
/me looks at Dust514 ready to be booted out of a nest.
/me looks at the average salaries in reykjavik (or indeed anywhere else in europe)



Yeah we got it, WOD and DUST were pretty huge mistakes and to get out from under that mess the "industry experts" argued for double charging the player base in subs + microtransactions. It didn't work. Whats the next plan?



You know the genius of Eve's PLEX system? It means you can lose your job / take a pay cut, and still keep in touch with your corpies in Eve by doing some missions and mining and paying your sub in plex. That maintains communities and keeps this game afloat by being something bigger than a simply cash syphon with themed spaceships.

Betray that system by putting content behind a $ paywall to create a fractured society of Eve haves and have nots being forcibly reminded of the global economic apocalypse outside is not a smart play when your hoping people are going to suspend their disbelief and play your spaceship game for the next few years.

Tempting though it is to take each point you made Jade and point out where your opinion doesn't jibe with the facts, I'm not going to get drawn into that this time. You get a bit too emotionally invested, and tend to insert your own prejudices and present them as fact.

I'm not going to tear into that, primarily because you sincerely believe what you are saying and on that basis alone it has merit (also, it's been done before and ignored in favor of restating your opinion in place of fact yet again).

I'll leave your wall of text intact, with simply the statement that your interpretation of CCP's future plans, and present financials, are more than a little dubious.

A couple of points though.



This is, of course, completely incorrect.

If I wish to buy any NeX items all I have to do is buy it directly with ISK (PLEX purchased with ISK converted to AURUM ). No one has been "forced" to buy from the NeX store first. Now on the secondary market your statements flirts with truth, except that nobody was "forced" to buy anything to begin with.

Before you tangent off into the "Well, the person whom you bought the PLEX from spent the money for you" argument, remember (yet again) that the person I buy a PLEX from with ISK has already gotten what they wanted from the transaction (my ISK) and that part of the process was concluded (to everyone's satisfaction) before the NeX store enters into the equation.



Again assumptions based on your personal prejudices. Neither WOD nor DUST were "huge mistakes". Allocation of more assets than was prudent was a mistake, as was how the release of Incarna was handled. Not the same thing, especially when you consider that DUST is alive, well, and about to hit beta testing.

And while the catch phrase "double charging the player base" is handy to throw around, it is also wildly inaccurate. I have several items from the Nex store, and I have not paid a penny beyond my normal subscription. This is the same reality that most people who have purchased NeX items live in. NeX items are an unnecessary luxury that I (and many others) chose to obtain, and it didn't cost me a penny to do so.

I respect your passion and conviction, but I will not be drawn in to discussing your opinions and prejudices as if they are facts, as they clearly are not.

Are you trolling?

NOBODY is forced to buy NeX items with dollars! The same way NOBODY is forced to buy
game time with dollars. In fact, NOBODY is forced to buy ANYTHING from the NeX store.

Premium rates???? LOL If you consider $15/month premium rates you have some serious
RL money issues, and probably should remove a luxury such as video gaming from your
monthly budget.

There is nothing in EVE you can't gain through gameplay, NeX items inluded. I'm sorry your
dad limits your use of his credit card, but perhaps you could just put in a little more effort in
game to earn some isk so you can buy PLEX and convert that into game time or NeX items.
There are lots of people without the RL money issues you seem to have that are putting
PLEX up for sale for you use.

Honestly though, I think you are just trolling. No one can be that thick.