Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wow.

Even my once faithful friend, misunderstanding me.

That hurts. Alright. No, If they want this to end, I've verbally offered it. I'm not using artifical controls to silence anyone. I wouldn't like it if I was talking and they used a wiz-bit to shut me up.

Translation: 'I can't win. This little asshat is really annoying, but hell if I know what to do.'

You people remind me of the MUSH days, a lot. The Dominion, with their Jem'Hadar, the Klingons, the Ferengi.

We had nearly every empire represented on the MUSH. Do you know who had the hardest job? The UFP Wiz. Me. We had the most powerful ships, and could have annihilated everyone, because it's canon. Every single day I had to reign in our IC admirals.

OOC, you know why? We were the foil. The United Federation of Planets was the most powerful, by far. We lost only when I said we lost, and it was a lot, but it was enough to keep tinyplots going. Nearly everyone kept screaming at me, but we can win! Our ships are better, blah, blah, blah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9xN0Ol5vZQ

They were. But that's not the Federation. 'But we WON'T. CONSIDER THAT.'

You want to find someone that won't use their power? Good luck... That was my job. Run the most powerful empire and stop you people from winning.

But I won't.

I think the disconnect here is that you're treating this whole exercise as something that it's not, which is a roleplaying game full of people who are here to Role play. There is a forum section for that, and it's fairly active, but this isn't it. This is a game, and games have rules. None of the rules of Eve say that Gallente only Armor Tank, or that everyone can't train and fly every ship regardless of race. In the case of your MUSH you had rules independent of the game system, but Eve has few rules like that and almost all of them are related to exploits. You can't just put something into the game that can be abused and then just say "well no, don't use it like THAT", this isn't that kind of game.

General Discussion, where you originally posted this and where most of the verbal abuse occurred, is just that a general game related forum area. Everything from in-game grievances to rants against the devs get posted there and there is certainly no expectation that people are going to treat what's posted there as separate from a player's in-game activities, especially since precisely those activities are often the subject of posts there.

If someone crosses over into real-life threats, stalking, harassment, ect then CCP will step in and quite rightly so, but nothing here has come anywhere near that. Some people hurled around some personal insults, and a lot of other people critiqued or insulted your idea. None of this is particularly unexpected for these forums, or most other large Eve communities.

If you want an area that will play by your rules then you're either going to have to make it or find it, because this most assuredly isn't it.

Completely wrong in just about every way imaginable.

Every PLEX that is traded in game was purchased with real money by somebody. It is a fact that a PLEX is more expensive to buy than a sub, ergo it is reasonable to suggest that every PLEX which is purchased and subsequently activated adds more to the bottom line than a sub does.

PLEX is properly referred to as deferred income, it is money received in advance of a service or goods being delivered. In company accounts deferred income will appear as a liability. Once the goods or services are delivered, which in the case of PLEX means that it has been activated to pay for a sub, MCT etc, it becomes earned income and will appear as such in the accounts.

Someone sitting on 100 PLEX as an investment is bad for CCP's bottom line, because they're a liability; the same person selling 100 PLEX to players that use them to pay for gametime etc is good for CCP's bottom line, because they then become income.

TL;DR You're wrong, the more people that use PLEX to pay for their game time or purchase other services, the sooner CCP can count the PLEX sale as income instead of a liability.

Real simple for ya....

Every PLEX in game got there by somebody giving CCP $20. So if I go buy a PLEX on the market for ISK, somewhere somebody at some point in time gave CCP $20.

Here let's use example:

Bob wants ISK but doesn't want to grind for it so he pays CCP $20 and gets a PLEX.
Bob sells the PLEX and he gets a cool 1 billion ISK from Joe who bought the PLEX.
Joe thinks PLEX prices are going to go up, so he holds the PLEX and when the PLEX price hits 1.2 billion he sells it to Frank.
Frank needs game time, so instead of paying CCP he pays Joe 1.2 billion ISK and gets a PLEX and uses it to add 30 days to his account.

Now...did CCP lose money? No. Because Bob basically paid for Frank's subscription in exchange for ISK. CCP didn't get Frank's subscription dollars, but instead they got Bob's PLEX dollars.

So you are quite simply wrong.

This works because of something called opportunity cost. Bob values his time more than grinding for ISK. Frank on the other hand values his money in his wallet more than grinding isk. Everyone in this little process above is better off. CCP is better off, Bob is better off, Joe is better of and Frank is better off. Yay for capitalism making people better off.

You're fairly on point at this stage, although the time spent acquiring currency is not "free"; time having a subjective value.

This is where you go wrong,

The money paid for a PLEX that hasn't been activated is deferred income, an unactivated PLEX means that CCP owe the holder of the PLEX goods or services; it is for all intents and purposes a debt, debts are liabilities.

When a PLEX is exchanged for gametime etc, CCP cease to owe the holder of the PLEX anything, thus the money paid for it is no longer a liability or deferred income but income or revenue.

The upside of people activating PLEX for gametime etc, is that every PLEX that is activated decreases the potential amount of goods and services that CCP owe to their customers. PLEX being more expensive means that when it is activated it produces more income than the equivalent sub.

The downside is that the income from a PLEX is delayed until it is activated.

TL;DR you're still wrong. If you don't believe that to be the case speak to somebody familiar with accounting practices about what deferred income and liability are.

What does PLEX have to do with shield/armor tanked mining vessels?

Which is usually a good indicator a thread has outlived its usefulness.

So, if everyone suddenly stopped buying PLEX outside the game and did not pay for subscriptions, nor buy Aurum or even buy EVE shwag form their online store, you're telling me CCP would still turn a buck because of the in game economy?