EVE General Discussion

I'd say you have most of it covered.

Bear in mind that for the period from 2003 to about 2011 increased subscription numbers would have outpaced inflation, but some of the profit was burned on bad projects (vampires :forfuckssakeemoticon:) Since then their finances would have definitely suffered.

They could perhaps increase sub fees, especially if coupled with a discount system for multiple accounts. They really need advice on sensible microtransactions: I spent over 500 USD on planetside 2 and I couldn't for the life of me tell you how

Very few people will bother with these injector things, for example, because it's too much money in one go for anything tangible (I'd suspect).

Well factor in there are more players playing MMOs these days and more MMOs to choose from. There's also a lot of failed MMOs that survived by going F2P. So games to remain competitive have to have a lower subscription rate than they used to. Which is why you see more in-game shops and other services on offer.

Wouldn't mind betting that CCP make a tidy sum from the sale of PLEX and Aurum, although mainly PLEX.


So in relation to the game, what you are considering is kind of pointless.



Edit:

Quote taken from post #1606 from the Walking in Stations thread. Post #1607 moved here.

Without some inside information, this is all going to be highly speculative, but I might give you an alternate way of looking at things:

Eve costs X amount to maintain, expand, operate, etc. That includes all costs for people, equipment, etc. CCP KNOWS what that cost is, we don't. Now, as a company they have a few choices:

1. Do we bake all costs into, include a profit margin, and then divvy it up amongst the current player base as subscriptions?
2. Do we take a loss to be more competitive against other games out there and make profit off of the wanna be / harder core player base with gimmick strategies (PLEX, Skill Injectors, Muliple Accounts due to training limits, Citadels, etc. etc. etc.)?
3. Do we take this game and wring it for every ounce of profit we think it can make?

The odd thing is, the above list is not exhaustive nor is it exclusive. Aspects of ALL of those options can be in play or shift over time. It's what every company that is out there making money has to struggle with. There is no perfect formula.

However, with all that firmly in mind, what will kill Eve is lack of flexibility and stagnation. If they just keep pumping out more variants on the same theme, eventually, even a universe as diverse as Eve will fall into the dustbin of gaming history. You have to shake it up or try to, on a fairly regular basis.

Most MMO's start to look like each other, and this is a BAD thing. Eve is really different looking and that's good, but it's an MMO for thinking players. You have to have some ties into the infrastructure of the Universe even if you seek nothing but action. That infrastructure is complex and very dynamic but NOT dynamic enough to be attractive enough for the average MMO player. The playerbase is full of players that love the complexity of the dynamic. I've only been playing for about a month now, and I can see all that being true.

However, Eve will need a large expansion of universe shaking proportions soon. It will need to be something to drop into even the most experienced Eve players lap and make them go... "Whoa, I feel like I don't even know this game anymore, this is awesome!" That is what makes the excitement possible to catch on and spread... again, if that is CCP's goal.

Whatever their goal is, is what drives the economic decisions for price point and game development. They are intrinsically linked.

In general, subscription based MMOs are not viable. They are break even at best. That's why there are so few left.

If CCP hadn't pirated the RMT trade from the pirates that were previously selling ISK, I'm guessing we'd have been looking for a new space game years ago as EVE would have been another casualty of the "We started as a sub based game and we're going to stick with it, God dammit!" school of thought.

It's all about the PLEX, people,. That's the only thing keeping this game afloat.

Mr Epeen

In a nutshell...advertising.

You can't stick pop-ups, pop-unders, clickbait and redirects in an MMO like you can with your examples. The sub is the total income, not the hook .

Mr Epeen

When's that screenshot from? It doesn't appear to make a lot of sense to me, with 3 month sub being more expensive than 1 month. This looks like some kind of PR move to me.

Edit: Yeah, with "Cybernetic Avatar Items" and "Sansha Attire", this can't be from way back when.

I don't get this strange fascination with CCP's financials, but anyways....

Revenues from 10 years ago would be.

Revenue(t-10) = Subscriptions(t-10)*Price

Adjusting for inflation would give us:

Subscriptions(t-10)*Price*(1 + i)^10

The current revenues are given by:

Subscriptions(t)*Price

Since price is the same in both instances we can drop it giving us, Subscriptions(t-10)*(1 + i)^10 and Subscriptions(t) respectively. So long as the following condition holds revenues will be growing faster than inflation:

Subscriptions(t)/Subscriptions(t-10) > (1 + i)^10.

Or for a year-over-year comparison,

[Subscriptions(t)/Subscriptions(t-1)] - 1 > i.

Where i is the rate of inflation.

IMO, the problem with increasing the subscription fee is the same as with increasing ANY price: if you increase 20%, you get 20% fewer subscribers, instantly. They have to add value in order to add costs; most games do it in the form of "collector edition" boxes, expansions, DLC's, or microtransactions, where you're clearly getting extra stuff for the extra money paid.

The easiest for EVE would be microtransactions, but CCP is royally screwing it up with pretty much the entire NEX store, where the choices are few and too expensive. They only put sporadic effort into the "get rich quick" items, instead of putting some continuous effort into having a large variety of cheap items (and some expensive), and into upkeeping the NEX store so it looks like it's updated frequently.

Compare the NEX store with the SWTOR Cartel Market: they periodically release new packs / new outfits, the store front is a constant advertiser for each week's "deals", and the selection is huge, and mostly fluff. There is some borderline pay-to-win, such as increased inventory space or reduced (wait) timers on travel options, but nothing major. And hey are making a ton of money from sales volume, rather than pricing super-expensive stuff.

They're focusing on improving what's under the hood (Aria), and that's ok, but once they have the engine they should release 1000 cars, each with 1000 paint schemes, 80% dirt cheap, 20% lamborghinis or w/e.

The complexity and reason why I am asking it's because CCP operates mostly in ISK but their income is in foreign currencies. So when ISK goes down (and it plummeted) but income is in foreign currencies, a company may be earning more ISK with the same income in foreing currency. The exact variation will depend on the mix of currencies since CCP also spends currencies in their operation (running a server in the UK, having offices abroad).

As I said in my OP, the question is whether CCP is compensating loss of acquisition power, or compensating loss of income.

That is relevant to better estimate the chances that they implement F2P since that possibility is being enabled by CCP's latest actions, like supersize TQ3 as PCU goes down (more capacity for less players...?) or deliver a mean to obtain skills without paying a subscription.

Don't be confused by nominals.