EVE General Discussion

Thorn Galen is trolling you. Stop falling for it.

Who cares, don't like it - don't allow plex to be bought in game for game time. This is like a toddler whining about someone doing something that only that toddler can do.

This is the exact reason why CCP is failing, they are putting Revenue infront of Creative discipline. Money before their product. When a company does a bad job, there are consequences. If the game was designed and setup properly it wouldn't simply be a case of "pay to win" like it is now. It's a matter of fact that anyone with a lot of money can pretty much buy their way through Eve Online and anyone who doesn't want to pay doesn't have to, but is fairly limited (by time) in what they can do with the game. Someone who is willing to buy plex with money can turn it into isk and then sink all that isk into whatever they want, the people who work for it have to mindlessly do boring dull things to make enough isk just to buy one. The greedy soul-less people that have hundreds of plex and fund their accounts with them have stolen them from other people who bought them, probably through ganking and only because CCP won't correct the major fundamental design flaws with their game - and so the problem will continue until they confront the issues.

actually, al PLEX's bought are still money to CCP, as all PLEX's on the amrket have been bought for 20$ or rough equivalent by SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE, all your doing buying a PLEX on the market is buying 30 days of game time from another player.

And what's wrong with that? CCP might herp the derp, but I'd still prefer the money went to them than some Bulgarian sheep -pimp

Nerf high sec incursions. Also bots.

Or you could go ask goons to suicide gank logi's in incursion sites. (i can only imagine the tears from people losing their pimped up faction/T2 BS's)

me lub dp's

I agree(d).

The problem is that this system seems to have the unintended side effect of making (rat) bot bannage a negative cashflow proposition for CCP, as long as the bot owners aren't tied up in non-PLEX RMT.

As far as CCP cashflow logic is concerned:

edit: tl;dr

mining bots deflate = less accounts, less plex for isk, less dollah for ccp
isk bots inflate = more accounts, more plex for isk, more dollah for ccp

Only intelligent post in this whole damn thread.

I would like to throw another variable into this discussion about the "cost of money" of isk.

CCP has made an agreement with Nexon (A MMO operator in Japan) so that Nexon will be providing billing and localization support to Japan-based players. The catch is that all players accessing from Japan will have to access EVE through Nexon's portal, and they will have to pay using "Nexon points" (Nexon's own virtual currency).

The concern I have here is that an entirely separate money supply governed by completely different rules may end up influencing isk's cost of money. One glaring problem is that Nexon points can be exchanged with other virtual commodities, and are not solely backed with cold hard cash. For example, a player in Nexon's other popular MMO "Maple Story" can sell in-game equipment for Nexon Points. I probably don't need to provide much more detail on how certain types of players will be very effective at racking up a lot of Nexon Points and potentially let that capital flow into the isk money supply. Perhaps CCP has already hedged against that risk, but I have not heard anything to that effect. All I am hearing (and official GM responses that have been received by Japanese players) is "don't worry." Famous last words, anyone?

Not only that, Nexon allows (well, they actually sell these rights) other advertisers the right to use Nexon Points as lures for their promotions, such as the common "sign up now and get 300 Nexon Points for free!." In fact, a very dedicated individual can go around a bunch of promotion sites, registering a bunch of throw-away e-mail addresses to create a bank of virtual currency, and convert those Nexon Points to whatever service provided by Nexon (including access to EVE-- I don't think it's confirmed whether people can directly buy PLEX with Nexon points).

Regardless of whether PLEX can or can not be bought with Nexon Points does not matter, because Nexon points can be gained without spending real money and without contributing to any economic activity within the EVE universe. I personally don't think there is any problem with players buying PLEX within EVE as they would have had to make ISK somehow through generating economic activity inside the sandbox. Nexon points, on the other hand, introduces an unknown factor in terms of economic activity that is external to EVE. How does CCP gain the benefit of that sort of external economic activity?

Perhaps someone who's smarter than myself can help me understand the business model here. It seems like CCP will just keep losing money (potentially) and PLEX values can deflate with people being able to play EVE using non-EVE virtual currency.