EVE General Discussion

Both sides argueing over plex have valid points, heres a reality check, CCP wil never even remotely condider removing it from the game for obvious reasons, even with the problems it presents. CCP is finally dealing with RMT & Bot problems aggressively, so i would think that would be their position on not removing plex from the game.

Precisely, they have to play to win rather than pay to win.

Playing to earn isk is playing to win. Paying $$ for isk is paying to win. Isk is not the only factor for victory, however it isk is a form of power in EVE.

If only that were true. Unfortunately, it's not.

If you were actually paying for game time then you would just pay the subscription fee. People who buy PLEX with $$ are not doing it for the game time.

PLEX adding or subracting anything from the game does not change the fact that it's a vehicle to convert $$ to ISK. Does illegal RMT add anything to the game? No more or less than PLEX does. The difference between PLEX (legal RMT) and illegal RMT is that CCP gets the $$ and the market controls the amount of ISK you get for $$.

To be clear, I'm not talking about the person purchasing PLEX with ISK in the slightest. They are not the ones converting $$ to ISK regardless of them being a necessity for the conversion to take place. What they do with the PLEX after buying it with ISK is irrelevant. They could turn it into aurum or eject it into space, it makes no difference. The point is that PLEX is a vehicle to convert $$ into ISK, which is the basic principle of pay to win.

And again, in case it's not obvious, people with a purchased advantage can still lose but that does not negate the fact that they purchased an in game advantage with real $$.

…which doesn't matter. The fact remains that PLEX don't provide anything that isn't already available in the game to anyone and everyone. You're not buying anything that provides more or less “win” than would exist without that payment. You're getting the exact same thing that everyone else already have; you're getting the exact same thing that everyone else already use. Nothing new and — more importantly — nothing special is added. You're not gaining any kind of advantage just because you paid real money.

It is therefore not pay to win any more than paying your subscription and station-trading is P2W (i.e. not at all).

It is a form of RMT, but that is something completely unrelated and completely different. Don't confuse the two.

But that's just it: using real cash doesn't let you purchase any special advantage.

No. The basic principle of P2W is that, buy paying money, you gain special advantages over those who do not pay. PLEX does not let you do that because there is nothing special you can buy with it — in fact, PLEX doesn't even add anything to the game, but actually removes stuff, so it's about as far away from P2W as you could possible get.

Actually, that's exactly what it means.

If, by paying real money, you're not getting something above and beyond what people who aren't paying are getting, then there is no advantage and no P2W.

It's an advantage if the speed makes any difference. Here, like in so many other cases, it doesn't.
It's an advantage if ISK were like levels and more X beats less X, but again, that's not the case.

Again, the simple fact remains: you're not adding anything to the game that wasn't already there; you're not buying anything that wouldn't exist without the payment; you're not buying anything that is uniquely tied to you paying money; you're not getting any kind of advantage over those who do not pay.

You're still simply talking about RMT and confusing it with P2W — they are completely different things.

…if you can buy advantages with the money. Luckily, in EVE, you can't.

Much as I use the plex system, I gotta agree, the whole affair is kind of a pay to win...

When you can recoup a ship loss in a day without having to go through the pain because you can offer real world money to do so - that's an unfair advantage and is most definitely pay to win.

This is where you are mistaken. Buying ISK leads to gaining advantage over someone who has to earn the ISK: you can get back to the pew-pew faster. This is not pay to win, since P2W is specifically the ability to pay real money for items that cannot be gathered through in-game means. The closest that EVE has to "pay to win" are the Alliance Tournament memorial ships. EVE does have "pay to burn" though, where you can buy a monocle for $70, if you're the type that like to troll the forums and pretend to be hoity-toity.

Does PLEX give you an advantage? Yes, but only by saving you time. Pay 2 Win happens when you can buy items which give you an advantage over everyone else due to those items being better: the only example in that linked article where this was possible is the game designed around the principle of players buying weapons with real money.

PLEX is a form of micro transaction currency (in the credit card processor sense of "micro transactions"). There is a third issue at hand which is "virtual items stores" which issue items into the game fully manufactured, bypassing the player economy: this is only really an issue in EVE since games like LoL and LOTRO don't have much scope for items being traded between players.

Just when I thought I've already heard the most idiotic thing today, OP decides to one-up it. 0/10.

And the 1% are indifferent to their whining.

The anti-PLEX, pay-to-win folks in this thread seem to be hung up on this notion of fairness.

Lesson One, kids - learn it young, learn it well: Life. Ain't. Fair.

I'm old and established. I have a RL job that pays me about 2B ISK/hr at current market rates, but also ties up nearly all of my waking hours.

You're 14 and you live in a trailer park with your mom. You can sit around and play EVE 37 hours a week on your five year old Gateway computer, but you don't have two nickels to rub together. You can make 2B a day in pretend space money, but coming up with that monthly $15 is a real PITA because you're too fat to push a lawn mower and if you go outside for more than five minutes on a sunny day you'll explode you pasty vampire ****.

Now under capitalism, we call this a "market". I have money, and you have time to sell. Let's deal.

Oh, but wait. Now it's "not fair." Because I paid some pimply slob to grind my iskies for me. Is it unfair to my neighbors if I pay a guy to mow my lawn, too? Does my neighbor get to go "It's unfair he has that nice lawn, he just pays some guy to cut it. They should ban lawn services and make everyone cut their own grass." No. Pound sand, neighbor. Shoulda put in the OT last month, you lazy bastard but NOOOO you wanted to go visit wine country with your trophy wife and you're ******** kids.

**** fair. **** fair right in the pooper. There's no such thing. Take a lesson kids, if you have money it means you get to buy your way out of the boring **** in life. Apply yourself in school, don't blow your money on stupid ****, don't get yourself in debt, make good choices and start a good career in a growth industry. And someday you too can pay fat poor kids to grind fake space money for you.

Fair can burn in Hell.

I'd like to thank Johnnie Walker for his help in writing this post.