EVE General Discussion

If it did nothing else, it taught CCP how the portion of EVE that don't come here to **** on each others cornflakes feels.

So how does it feel to be held hostage, CCP? Sucks don't it?

What if cyanide was called chocolate would you eat it then?

You are falling to the same mistake that most pro-Aurum people make.

Its not about pay-to-win really. Ever since Eve online was launched there was advantage in paying extra to get an additional account and double the skill coverage, then add things that you need extra accounts for if you want to play "solo" / cyno, scouts, leadership characters etc etc. If any pay-to-win is your bag then frankly forget the PLEX elephant in the room - and rail against multiple accounts instead (but seeing as how these get ccp to double, treble and quad their income per veteran player - good luck with that.)

That PLEX enables pay to win isn't the point. It puts extra ISK into the sandbox that is used to buy things from other players and thereby potentially enrich their game. It benefits even players who do not isk/convert PLEX because it enables RL cash poor players to play and thus ensure a vibrant server population for everyone.

Say one of my wartargets blows $100 on PLEX and starts coming at my corp with a multi-billion isk officer-fit Bhaalgorn of doom that he has bought and assembled with parts bought with isk from other players. On one level you could say "omg pay to win its not fair rage quit!" but on the other - its content, its fun, its a huge ass pinata that we get to hunt and kill and once we blow it to hell it'll pay our war bills for the next couple of months. We'll be putting the bits on the market, other players get to bid for and compete against and the point is the whole deal is integrated with the sandbox.

This is why PLEX is acceptable.

NEX/AURUM does the opposite really. It removes player-led content from the game, cheapening industrial options - makes customization and detailing an "optional/vanity" thing rather than an intrinsic and interconnected part of the game, and additionally makes people question the value of their subscription payment since it no longer covers all eve content any more (reducing server population as we've seen). Subdividing the eve playing population between MT haves and have nots and excluding content we've long expected from the subscription model is not helping eve online survive.

So instead of PLEX my wartarget blows $100 on a monocle and pair of pants. He's now got a facial customization that wasn't made by players, that can't be destroyed by players, that didn't take any kind of industry to build and doesn't enrich anyone's eve experience at all really. The mook still can't afford ships, he's unlikely to fight and basically bought the stupid thing to troll on forums. And the irony is he hasn't really made ANY extra income for ccp because the aurum spend has replaced the PLEX/isk spend for a zero sum on ccp's copy book with a huge negative on fun and entertainment for other players.

And this is why NEX/AURUM is not acceptable.

PLEX DOES NOT ADD ISK TO THE GAME.


This is what I don't get about all the aurum haters. First of all it was about "no pay to win" then, since PLEX enables pay to win in a form, it's about "no in-game affecting items without player driven actions" but since that isn't going to happen and already exists in the form of things like PI CCs it moves to "no items without player driven actions" which fails for the same reasons.


CCP have disconnected items in the NEX store as far as they can without removing them from the market and having them only appear in character customisation regardless of the characters location. If they had done that as well then all the haters would be going on about why can't we buy them for ISK from other players?


So what if someone "blows $100 on a monocle and pair of pants"? What difference does it make to anyone, except that person, what they do with a vanity item? Why shouldn't I be able to pay for something that changes the appearance of my avatar?


On the issue of clothing being player made from BPOs/BPCs, does nobody else have an issue with turning billion+ isk genetic creations into tailors and seamstresses?



Yes, I approve of the use of the NEX store for any and all vanity items and No, I do not approve of the use of the NEX store for anything that creates an in-game effecting items. So trade ship + Aurum for ship with different skin = ok. Trade Aurum for ship with different skin = bad.

I'm well aware of this.

Someone is still required to pay for that content which lowers the value of subscription payments in general.

edit:
PLEX is not content, it's just game time. There's a difference.

You mean micro-plex like quite a few of us said would be a much better idea than introducing a 3rd currency, back when CCP first announced their intent?
You mean micro-plex like CCP has said they will look into replacing Aurum with somewhere down the line?

As for removing NeX: Why?

It is there now so won't require much more dev time, plus it does neither harm nor good (albeit some bling-junkies use it) so it is on the whole a bad idea to remove it out of hand .. all we have to do is keep an eye on CCP in case they try to sneak some gold ammo onto the shelves.

Besides, I am hopeful that we shall one day be able to buy plastic surgery (Char. customizer) in the Nex .. Goddess knows there are some around here who could use some work done!

They can purchase it, via market, but the content cannot be generated without additional money being paid somewhere at some point.

That is a big difference. Especially since even if no-one is buying and listing the NEX item you want on the market you can still access it through grinding the isk, purchasing a PLEX (or more depending on item) and creating it yourself.

So, yes, you do have access to all the content with a normal subscription payment.

Unless you believe that no-one should use anything that they don't create themselves and I'm sure that that is a view you don't hold.

…except that some content still requires payments outside of the subscriptions to be made. So no matter how much you twist and turn, the game has content that the normal subscriptions don't give access to.

Simply untrue. We have absolutely no access to the industrial side of production behind these items. No players get to research bpos, access exploration content or get involved in business concepts involving this content. The only way this "content" enters the game is either by aurum giveaways or somebody needing to access the MT model for the virtual goods. This is new content that players cannot manufacture and thats poison to a player led economic sandbox game like Eve Online.

I agree, they need to just drop them.