EVE General Discussion

I guess if you define having stuff as "winning".

They can't gain any tactical advantage by paying more RL iskies that I myself cannot gain from just spending in game iskies.

That's not pay to win.

no matter how much plex they buy, and how many ships they replace, it still won't change the fact that said player might not have proper skills trained to support the ships potential, thus leaving him to more fail and lost ships.
you are not getting anything superior that non-plexing players can't get, the only thing that you are getting is your items (which all other players can obtain and use just as good with the same skills as you trained) therefore, it's not pay to win.



they can afford to lose it, and replace it.
which brings us back to one of the most basic rules of eve: if you can't afford to lose it, don't fly it.
players who fly those ships, buying Plex or not, can usually afford to replace it. unless they are carebearing high-sec missioners that likes to pimp their vindicator out with officer fittings.

Hmm? I just reactivated a month three months ago. *checks* oh... it's a tier trial. Ryzom did the same, you get access up to a point, then you need to sub to go further, not really the free to pay model.

Unfortunately good free to play games are the exception, not the rule. Most F2P games are glorified shareware where you can only get so far before you have to start paying (because you run out of stuff to do and have to buy new expansions/missions/whatever), can only play a limited set of races/classes (hey, EVE is free, but you can only fly Amarr up to frigates and cruisers, but for only €5 you can also fly BC and for anothter €5 you can fly battleships and for $15 you can fly Caldari too!... You get the idea)

Doing F2P or even microtransactions "right" is very hard and the vast majority of games fails at it because greed takes the upper hand and the regular content suffers. One example: EverQuest 2 has a carpentry class that crafts furniture to put in people's houses (read, CQ) since Sony figured out they could make money selling furniture through the ingame shop the amount of interesting additions to the profession has been reduced to almost 0. While arguably this is just fluff it's still part of the "normal" gameplay and as such does affect players negatively.

So while most people don't much care about the CQ clothing (as it's totally outside "regular" EVE gameplay) an argument could be made that selling ship skins is affecting regular EVE gameplay and as such should be off limits for RMT selling, I'm sure a long argument could be formulated either way (and I'm sure there will be once we get to that stage)

Back on topic, EVE has the advantage that there is really not much content beyond what players provide, it's a lot easier to keep paying a sub when you still get the feeling that you are getting something for your money, unlike most other MMOs where you'll have run out of content to do 6 months before the next major update, making it sort of hard to justify paying the sub, quitting otoh means you most likely lose your guild, so starting again gets harder again especially if there's a monetary cost attached to starting again (need to find new guild + need to pay sub + need to buy expansion).

Being F2P removes or at least lowers this monetary barrier and makes it easier for people that have quit to get back into the game once an update has been released. Ultimately though I think it's just the game model for those kinds of games that is failing as people eventually will stop coming back for the next update, so the decline of those MMOs that are/went F2P might have slowed down but imho they're still declining, just slower.

It also gives everyone else pretty loot pinatas to shoot.

World of Tanks is a good game so I'm not complaining about the money I spent. *shrug*

WOT is a good game, doesn't take a away from the fact that Fremium is misleading and more expensive in the long run.

Tal

eve already is "free to play" as it is also "pay to win"

ever since game time has been traded for ISK and bought or sold with RL cash.

If you can pay with isk to play, when clearly that is a free to play model.

and since, if your set up is "better" and therefore more expensive, all the time, guys like me can use RL cash to buy isk (which is what we do when we buy and sell plex). it's also play to win.

sometimes, i wonder what game people are playing, it's called eve, but doesn't look or sound much like the game i've been playing for nearly a decade

hehehe... yeah the eve-online fourms

Bullshit. If being able to sell PLEX for ISK somehow stops EVE from being a "sandbox" (hint: it doesn't) then EVE stopped being a sandbox the very moment the first ISK seller appeared, back in 2003.