EVE General Discussion

Just throwing my 2 cents into what is actually a rather interesting debate, here. Based completely off personal anecdotes, so take them as you will.

First of all, F2P works. Yes, I said it, it works. I've been in dozens of F2P games before and in all cases said companies have gotten filthy rich selling below - par games revolving around the idea of "If you pay us oodles of cash, you get to win the game". There's no end to people willing to throw money into a virtual world to become as awesome as they wished they were IRL. That's assuming the company eventually trends towards a P2W model, which in my experience most end up doing eventually. Just relying on a vanity item cash shop doesn't seem to bring in enough to be sustainable for most other F2Ps, if any at all. And there's always something to be said for corporate greed.

That being said, what kind of success is that? Sure, you'll probably get a larger number of players, and many of them are probably happy little cash cows for your company, always willing to splurge cash on the next lottery box (good grief) that comes along. So now your community's made up of the typical P2W MMO gamer who's more concerned about how much win he can buy instead of how well he can think and plan.

Short story - In one of the previous games I played there was a territory war system, guilds had 3 lanes to take to assault enemy castles. Perfect for flanking attacks, for sneak assaults on the fortress, so many possibilities! What happened? Every E-Leet guild in the game had only ever one strategy - Head down the middle and smash. Smash. Rawr. Used to have a guild master who spent up to five figures - I kid you not - pimping out his char. When it came down to crunch time these were his exact orders" Just form up your own parties to fight guys. Don't worry, I can take half of them myself. =D=D=D" That's the general level of intellectual capacity of a majority of F2P players that I've experienced. I suspect I'm half ******** myself for staying in such a community hoping I could effect some changes.

It's annoying to get owned by a harsh, unforgiving playerbase. It's downright infuriating to lose to an idiot whose only saving grace was daddy's OP wallet. I see a lot of people saying that the older players giving grief to newbies is a terrible thing. I'm not far from a newb myself, and I've run into my share of canflippers and whatnot. After brief conversations most of them turn out to be great chaps, some have offered advice, and I honestly like having them around to burn off the chaff. As long as you don't go into a silly nerdrage over losses you won't be treated as someone better out of the game than it , I've found.

So basically - Sure, EVE will get more players if it overhauls over to a F2P model. Their revenue streams will most likely skyrocket too if they allow P2W through the NeX store. And if that's your only definition of success, well, okay, good for you. Good for the company even, in a sense. I like to think most of us are still capable of appreciating the quality inherent in EVE currently, still appreciate the relatively far more intelligent - If often trolly - community, and are proud of being a part of something on a different level than most other MMOs out there.

Besides, I think CCP was doing well as a money - making entity even, until hubris settled in.

Please, do tell how a player paying with plex are able to get better modules than a non-plexing player.

Pay to win nope. Pay (a rather large amount of $€£ at that) to be as good as everyone else, yes.

Is this game breaking? Nope.

Since the game is still not operating on a Free-to-play/Freemium model, and that you cannot buy any more win than what's already in the game, it's not so much a matter of denial as a matter of fact.

No, EVE is not free-to-play since every last account is paid for.
No, EVE is not pay-to-win since you cannot buy more win than people are willing to sell to you, no matter how much $$$ you have.

…which is not what "Free to play” actually means. F2P means the business model isn't subscription, but auxiliary services. Thus, EVE is not F2P.

No, because as with the F2P case, that's not what P2W means. EVE is not pay-to-win because you cannot pay to win — you can only pay to get stuff that the game already offers without payment.

How?

It also hasn't been at 39K a lot in the past. You basically had a spike mid 2010 and again at the beginning of 2011. When you combine the release of recent AAA titles, expected fall-out and so forth from Incarna the game is on a slow climb back.

Edit: Looking at those graphs; it looks about what I expect and not at all dire.

Microtransactions were introduced before I started playing in late '08.

Subs dipped when Aurum was introduced with the Incarna Expansion. You are confusing the 2 scenarios.

Not really, no. EVE did not have any MT before the NeX was introduced — there was talk about it the preceding summer (2010) in the PLEX-for-remap débâcle, but the idea was shot in the face and dumped in a canyon until CCP hauled it out a year later in (yet another) failed version.
That's when MT was introduced. No. PLEX are not MT.

So what non-NeX MT is there in EVE?

:nods: I suspect he is just trying to troll you by playing stupid.



I've been pondering this for a few minutes. PLEX can provide ISK; which may give a player access to ships and modules the player has not yet earned through experience. These are still things available in-game; so I don't know if that is termed as pay to win. Yes, you can pay real world money to purchase something that is better than what you would normally have access to; but everyone has access to the same items through the game interface.

The one that has me scratching my head is the Character Bazaar. There cash allows you to buy an exceptional pilot. Again, it is available to everyone and you can even train to the same skill level. Plus, you won't have the player ability (necessarily) to fly such a pilot properly.

Hmmm. Yeah, I'm not convinced there is a pay to win component. I'd like to see an example raised by those who believe it is.