EVE General Discussion

I don't buy it. Right at the moment I suspect the NeX store is looking to CCP like a landmine in the office. Nobody wants to go near it in case it goes off - nobody really knows how to defuse or remove it. Right now they are trying to pretend it doesn't exist. It is such a horrible twisting corruption of Eve's lore, background, industrial basis and anything else you can think of that I strongly believe the majority of developers just wish it would go away and never return.



Well it was almost certainly development pushed by "industry experts" they hired that told the senior management that the subscription model "was dead" and MT were everything. I think the reality that without subscriptions CCP was actually "dead" (with the wake up call this summer) has changed everything.

To your detailed "reasons":

1. I'm sure they were telling themselves it was a test of MT commerce. This far more likely than any actual concrete planned intersection.

2. Well, that final form will likely never arrive - I take Hilmar at his word when he says NeX/Carna is on the backburner. So we're left with the abortive experiment and a horrible embarrassment in the NeX store.

I can agree with you on principle that all items in Eve should be destructable but we'll obviously continue to differ on whether its appropriate for anything to be sold through NeX.

On the pay to win argument - I see NeX as the thin end of the wedge that will inevitably lead to a pay-to-win / free-to-play Eve. The large scale deployment of NeX would certainly drive players away. I myself will likely quit the game in the medium term if NeX is expanded and that has a knock on effect on those players I play the game with. I'm by no means in a tiny minority there. A game like Eve flourishes when corp and alliance leaders have faith in the game and are encouraged to sell the enjoyment of playing to others. But for me there is no enjoyment to be had within a hybrid MT+Subscription model. Its just wrong and it feels like daylight robbery. So NeX expansion will lead (i think) to falling subs that bring financial pressure, that leads to more MT and more falling subs. The place this ends is CCP laying off 80% of its staff not 20% and putting Eve into FTW maintenance mode while making the remaining player base pay $ for core gamplay.

This isn't really unrealistic doomsaying - its what happens to subscription games that lose their subscribers and go the MT route.

I think arguments about CCP's financial "bottom line" regarding NeX are automatically void in the light of the $500,000 per month losses causes this summer by the NeXCarna fiasco. Everything has changed since the scaling down of WoD/Incarna and refocus on core Eve Online for the company. While developing and running Eve as a primary concern CCP doesn't have a need for additional revenue beyond the natural expansion of subscriptions as they improve the game and players proselytize to other potential players.

Sure things that improve profits for CCP are not *automatically* bad for the players. But thats a hellova long way from saying that schemes to improve profits are never bad. And some schemes to improve profits achieve exactly the opposite. As seen last summer.



I honestly believe that CCP senior management were gulled by the "industry professionals" they hired who told them they could extract a large additional profit by making Incarna a MT vanity display cabinet. The outcome of being hoodwinked in that way has been a significant drop in subscription income coupled with painful personnel cuts. Now CCP have realized that this MT business can be dangerous to their survival as a company and next time they want to improve profits the "hey lets improve the game and maybe our subs will increase" argument will find more traction in the boardroom.

Sometimes people are just bad at their job and the people CCP hired to advise them on MT the last couple of years were utterly horrible at theirs.

Well we have to hope. I'm just telling myself they are so terrified about the NeX landmine that they are afraid to put its name in a devblog at the moment even to announce its elimination.

But I guess its why its important for decent players to keep arguing the case against NeX on these forums just incase CCP monocle and CCP thousand dollar jeans are printing out posts to support a return to NeX corruption in the future.

Eve eh? Its the only game in the world where we have to fight forum wars to ensure the company doesn't :accidently: decapitate itself.

If you persist in hating on bitter vets and love CCP's new direction (which is entirely due to the actions of bitter vets) you are:

An Idiot.

...

Now that that's cleared up, as to ship skins. They, like all vanity items, should be buyable for ISK from NPC sell orders. EVE desperately needs more ISK sinks and this is a perfect one.

Aurum is garbage and should be removed from the game. Until CCP does that, they are just talking the talk.

So new art is just vanity and just ok to throw it in the cash bandwagon?


By the same logic, might as well release blank white ships without textures, them being sold seperately.


It's just vanity right? Doesn't affect the game experience.

The modeling and texturing work for the clothing is done in China (maybe even at CCP in Shanghai), so some very cheap labour at a guess. With the clothes themselves designed by Fiona Cribben, a fashion designer.

I've never really understood this school of thought. You're essentially saying, "I pay a regular subscription for this game just like everyone else, but I think I should be nickle-and-dimed for content that I'm already paying to access."

And that's completely ignoring the gameplay possibilities that putting this stuff I'm the regular production economy would create.