EVE General Discussion

Just from the perspective of one who has played in many P2W games, there is a difference between EVE's PLEX/GTC system and a P2W model, which I personally define as:

P2W means that there your cash buys your items off the cash shop, which enhance your character's ability disproportionately and are not obtainable through normal in - game means

You could argue that ISK obtained through selling PLEX/GTC enhance your character's ability in the game, but personally I've found this to not be wholly true. It's not a P2Wing system per se since you need to spend that ISK on something first. And it's pretty obvious there's legions of people out there just lying in wait to exploit the hell out of rich but dumb people ( and yeah, I think those guys are cool too, all part of EVE ). Expounding further on said point, your ISK can buy you pimp ships, yes, but they're pimp ships that go boom - repeatedly - if you remain an idiot. From what little I understand you don't see much in the way of solo pwnmobiles in EVE compared to people who can tank an army with pimp gear that never drops, which is how most P2W games roll.

Second, the PLEX/GTC system only allows you to buy stuff that's readily available to other players through in - game means as well. From personal experience most P2W OP-ness comes from RL cash being able to buy character - enhancing stuff in the cash shop, that's not available to other players via in - game means.

Third, no matter how much ISK you buy via PLEXing, there's a limit to how far you can pimp out your ships and such. You can't just keep throwing money at one ship until it becomes a ridiculously OP piece of gear. Your purchased ISK doesn't scale proportionately to your OPness and drops off dramatically after a point, simply because there's no system like refining your gear, or ships rather in EVE.

Except the in-game item must exist within the game universe. CCP does not magically create it. If I purchased a PLEX and tried to sell it for 1,000,000,000,000,000.99 ISK; I would never get a single CISK for it. And even if I did; that came from another player who exchanged one virtual item for another.

I cannot just purchase a PLEX and have CCP transfer 500,000,000 ISK to my wallet.

So while it is a small transaction; I'm not comfortable calling it a micro-transaction under the sort of "MMO player dictionary". In all other cases I can think of the virtual items are spawned by the developer, outside of the game economy and injected into the game. And they can usually not be transferred to other players; although I will admit my experience with the heavy implementors of this (Korean / Asian style MMO) is fairly low.

Do you have an example where this is not the case? Where a $ value translates into an item that did exist in the game world before? E.g. I can pay the company $10 which means I get your Sword of Morning Glory +3 for myself?

There are not many MMOs which allow you to use an awesome piece of equipment, and then turn around and sell that item to another player. If you get an epic item it will usually be bind-on-acquire if not at least bind-on-equip. That doesn't happen in EVE except for implants and rigs.

EVE doesn't follow the same rules as all the other MMOs.

Err no they are not...

Anyway nothing wrong with FtP model.. But it will not work for "nieche"/ or how it is spelled Game such as EVE is ..
It can work for plenty games but not for "one universe" (one shard) game where every action somehow influence the whole.

If the argument is changed so that people aren't conflating micro transactions and item stores and spawned items, the discussion might get somewhere.

What is it that people hate the most? The spawning of items in game that bypasses the player driven economy? The purchase of influence with real world money instead of real world time? The availability of items that are better than items previously available?

Would removing one or more aspects of the NeX resolve the complaints that people have with the feature?

What other game has a player driven economy like EVE's? Why do you want to needlessly cramp any discussion of MT vs P2W vs F2P by binding the discussion of the topic in EVE to concepts that simply do not apply in the context of this game?

What if, as an example, the Noble Exchange was to be remodelled to fit into the idiom of EVE: NeX becomes an NPC corporation with stations and an LP store. Aurum then becomes NeX LP, with the NeX selling the same kinds of stuff that other LP stores sell: implants, BPCs or items in exchange for other items (in the same style as the Caldari LP stores offering Raven Navy Issue in return for a Raven plus other stuff plus LP plus ISK)?

Separating the concepts can have value in this discussion.

Is it the mere presence of the NeX on all stations that is the issue? Is it the ability to purchase items for real money? Is it the fact that those items are spawned into existence entirely outside the player driven economy? If you continue to conflate the issue of "spawned items" and "micro transactions", this discussion can not take place.

Nah, it'll still be in the same place, only now, people won't try to inject claims about nothing really changes when something massively disruptive and game-changing is being introduced…

All of the above. Of the three, only the “purchase influence” bit is possibly covered by PLEX, but the way it has been integrated into the market and the economy as a whole, it actually can't happen — we're back to the “can't buy more win than the game already offers” point. In addition, it's the combination of the three — bypassing the economy to get better items than can only be had by investing RL-money — that is truly anathema to the game.

Depends what aspects you're thinking of. The NeX itself can safely be removed since it serves no useful purpose and ist just pointless duplication and dead, unfisnished, alpha-grade code. No “aspects” are needed — it's best removed in its entirety. The key aspect, though, is one of perception: from day one, the NeX became the poster-child for pay-to-win and the gateway for CCP to inch further and further in that direction. The larger problem is that, even before it could get to that point, the NeX — and indeed any MT/VGS/callitwhatyouwant — is directly harmful to the game since it bypasses the two core mechanics that make the whole thing work: the market and the destruction/production-cycle of the war economy.

As for the distinction between MT and spawned item, the point I'm making is that in the vocabulary of EVE, the two are the same thing — one is a shorthand for the other — that people trying to say “we always had MT” are trying to deflate or deflect the ire it creates by subverting this shorthand by (knowingly, most likely) applying a completely different, and ultimately pointless, meaning. Again, if you want to be really nit-picky about it, all items in EVE are already purchased for real money; all customer transactions with CCP are MT; and at that point, it becomes a meaningless distinction to make. And yes, this is pretty unique for how EVE works, but that's why (and how) the shorthand has evolved.

Because that was the entire problem to begin with: the spectre of applying industry-hyped concepts on a game that is fundamentally incompatible with those concepts. In essence, blame CCP, because they started it!

That's the really scary part: that at times, the developers themselves seem to forget what it is they have developed, and the unique characteristics it holds that make it a tough fit for the fancy new FOTM business model making the rounds in the industry splat sheets.

…which kind of shows how utterly useless the entire concept was to begin with, since everything it needed (and more) was already in the game and required roughly zero development. The only thing remaining at this point would be whether you still had to buy AUR NEX LP for cash or if you could grind it like any other NPC corp…

"Online gaming

Main article: Virtual good

The term microtransaction is sometimes used to refer to the sale of virtual goods in online games like World of Warcraft."

The above is a quote from Wikipedia.



Micropayments are online transactions that are below a certain monetary value this value can vary depending on who sets it.

If you want to know more look it up on Wikipedia.




Back to are PLEX MTs?

They are as far as the gaming world is concerned, although financial institutes won't see the larger payments as micropayments.

If they were not then you could not really call an MT store an MT store as a lot of the products are above the micropayment levels so the MT store title would be misleading.

You buy something from a store be it clothes a pet or a mount all 3 of those will more than likely individually be above the level of what the financial world would call a micropayment. But gamers refer to them all as microtransactions.

A pet, mount or clothes are usually tied to the account or character but they don't have to be.

PLEX are an ingame item they're an object that enter the virtual world via a redeem button. In other games you may get a purchase from the MT store delivered via the ingame mailbox. In the case of a PLEX or item from the MT store they are both items which are now in the virtual world which were not there before.

In short gamers do not see microtransactions in the same way that financial people see micropayments.

That's because you're thinking of them as paid subscription.

They're not a paid subscription, they're an object ingame that has a real currency value placed on them by CCP roughly inline with a subscription (slightly higher).

Ingame the isk value of a PLEX is subject to market forces.

The fact that a PLEX can be purchased for isk on the ingame market and used to extend your gaming time doesn't mean they are just a paid subscription. Although CCP have already covered the cost of their use as extended game time.

You could buy a PLEX or two (single PLEX is an expensive way to buy them) and use them to purchase a monocle from the shop for example.


So in short, PLEX are not a paid subscription as such, although the cost has already been covered by CCP.

You don't need to tell me that NEX and AUR is MT. And I do agree that since Incarna PLEX is somewhat contaminated with MT. Before that it was just a token representing payed subscription and I would change it back if I could. MT is probably what will ultimately kill this game.