Summer Expansion - Incarna

[tgr]

Is there a recording of this eve radio session?

As to CCP's actions, they've changed radically the last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if they really are in a pickle, but it annoys me that, if it is a question of money, they haven't just gone out and upped the subs by, say, $5. It has been a while since they set that price, and inflation has happened, after all.

[sinij]

The thing is that even if that comes to pass and they don't get another loan to cover their cash position EVE as it is is still making a profit. More than half their company is not working on EVE and so if they really wanted to they could lay half the company off and just develop EVE.

EVE is beyond a cash cow for them, its the money they're dropping on Dust and WoD that are eating up their profits. If they end that they go positive immediately.

Exactly. If they are not willing to do that, I am sure Icelandic Bankruptcy courts will be happy to do that for them.

Plus, having existing player base that already maintains profitable title, pay for development of new titles via directly/indirectly increased costs is bad practice. Where is added value to existing customers?

[Pezzle]

Eve is not worth $20 a sub.  It is not our responsibility as players to bail out CCP.  Years of bad practices may at last cost the company.  I do not especially desire CCP's failure.  They have simply burned all the trust and good will on my part years ago.  For me, EVE is broken and shows no sign of improvement.  Why would I help bail out other projects which may not be of interest?  What incentive is there?  The promise of a better tomorrow?  Plenty  businesses have failed for lesser reasons.

[Simond]

I would actually happily go along with an increase in monthly sub fees to $20 or something to keep up with inflation if it meant that they wouldn't fuck up EVE.

I would happily point and laugh at the flaming corpse while pulling faces. CCP brought all this on themselves, it's nobody else's fault.

[tgr]

*shrug* I would assume that I'm not all that representative of, say, the active empire players, but I think the majority of the 0.0 holders would probably have no major issue with $20. On the whole, however, your reaction would probably be the most common, so I guess that CCP is just hosed with the direction they're taking both EVE and the company.

I'm waiting to see what they've got planned for the winter expansion, or at the absolute latest, next summer's expansion. If they still haven't fixed the SOV system so that a proper strategist can out-feint his opponent (instead of just stuffing a system full of people, grind through 4-6 timers (I forget the exact number), and move on to the next system), and supercapitals continue to be a growing problem, then I guess this is an MMO that has gone past its best-before date. Oh well, guess it's time to go back to being slightly more hard-core about photography again. I'll probably spend way more in petrol and road taxes etc than I did on EVE, not to mention I'll be ~polluting more~. vOv

[eldaec]

not to mention I'll be ~polluting more~. vOv

CCP your RMT is killing the planet.

[Numtini]

I doubt if $20 would make a significant difference to the current playerbase, but it would probably grind recruiting new customers to a dead stop unless the rest of the industry followed suit.

[Pezzle]

*shrug* I would assume that I'm not all that representative of, say, the active empire players, but I think the majority of the 0.0 holders would probably have no major issue with $20. On the whole, however, your reaction would probably be the most common, so I guess that CCP is just hosed with the direction they're taking both EVE and the company.

I'm waiting to see what they've got planned for the winter expansion, or at the absolute latest, next summer's expansion. If they still haven't fixed the SOV system so that a proper strategist can out-feint his opponent (instead of just stuffing a system full of people, grind through 4-6 timers (I forget the exact number), and move on to the next system), and supercapitals continue to be a growing problem, then I guess this is an MMO that has gone past its best-before date. Oh well, guess it's time to go back to being slightly more hard-core about photography again. I'll probably spend way more in petrol and road taxes etc than I did on EVE, not to mention I'll be ~polluting more~. vOv

You are fooling yourself if you think CCP is going to fairydust fix SOV or anything else actually wrong with 0.0.  The system has gotten worse, not better.  The entry barrier keeps getting higher.  In 0.0 people just get used to living in shit and roll up an alt or two for empire funds.  Why would CCP change anything if people tolerate it?  They get more subs and 0.0 sits there unfixed.

[tgr]

You are fooling yourself if you think CCP is going to fairydust fix SOV or anything else actually wrong with 0.0.  The system has gotten worse, not better.  The entry barrier keeps getting higher.  In 0.0 people just get used to living in shit and roll up an alt or two for empire funds.  Why would CCP change anything if people tolerate it?  They get more subs and 0.0 sits there unfixed.

The thing is, they have hinted at changes. God knows what those changes are going to be, however, but I'm going to keep the bitter from taking over until after we've seen what those plans are, and more importantly if they can actually be arsed to follow through with it instead of just going "ooh shiny" and adding a new incursion-like feature instead of adding treaties.

As I said, my patience isn't going to be boundless, if they do not fix the SOV system etc within the next 12 months to make it as strategic as it used to be, with a tug-of-war mechanic (some have suggested DAoC's model) for taking over systems, then chances are I'm going to take a break for a while and see if things still keep deteriorating.

[Amarr HM]

You're chasing rainbows Tgr, no offence.

[tgr]

You're chasing rainbows Tgr, no offence.

I'm well aware of the rather high likelyhood of that being the case, which is why I've set a clear criteria for not unsubbing. I'm not going to go all superbitter and rageunsubbing right now, but I'm not going to stick around forever if they insist on careening down this path.

[tmp]

CCP is making an accounting profit but is RAPIDLY running out of cash thanks to the cost of WoD and Dust.

If it's true it's pretty silly to run your company into the ground over something in the end you can't even show the design doc for.

[Thrawn]

If they screw over EVE doesn't that screw over Dust as well since the big selling point is being tied to EVE?  If EVE numbers drop that's less people interacting with Dust players and it just becomes another cookie cutter fps?

[tgr]

I would say so, so I would say that it'd be in their interest to not fuck this up more than it already is.

[Morfiend]

While I can sort of understand where the angst is coming from, not having been a part of EVE over the years myself, I find most of this rage a bit out of proportion.

I mean, people on the forums are going way to far. I was reading the newbie forum and here is an example of the crap people are spewing.

Don't worry about doing any missions.

Next patch you'll be able to buy faction standings and such through AUR currency.

I wouldn't waste time training skills or working on your faction standings.

Hang around with your credit card and you'll be able to be just as uber as the 8 year vets who've trained skills for so long and wasted countless hours on grinding through boring mission after boring mission to get thier faction standings.

This is just silly, yet I see this attitude represented time and time again. Do these people not realize that due to PLEX pretty much everything you can buy for Isk, is also RTM? It is just sort of boggling to me.

I personally hope they do implement a few things like maybe remapping, and/or bloodline respec for AUR.

[tgr]

If you thought people on the internet wouldn't overreact, then I have a bridge in San Fransisco to sell to you.

[Simond]

CCP is making an accounting profit but is RAPIDLY running out of cash thanks to the cost of WoD and Dust.

If it's true it's pretty silly to run your company into the ground over something in the end you can't even show the design doc for.

CCP

[Kia]

Is there a recording of this eve radio session?

The Mittens interview & ex-CSM discussion is at http://www.eve-radio.com/podcast-download

[palmer_eldritch]

While I can sort of understand where the angst is coming from, not having been a part of EVE over the years myself, I find most of this rage a bit out of proportion.

I mean, people on the forums are going way to far.

Eve's official forums are even worse than most official MMO forums. It also has a culture of trolling (even more than others), so some people will be trying to provoke particularly insane outbursts from others for their own amusement.

But you're right, the rage is quite a sight to behold.

[kildorn]

The rage is a combination of the normal rage of "you want to put microtransactions into my monthly fee MMO?!" that would die off in a week, and the pricetags involved. RMT is always going to cause a minor shitstorm when announced, it's just stupid to announce it and flagship the product with a $60 item. And then respond with the absolute worst PR statements in the history of community management (why are you so upset? Idiots buy $1000 designer jeans!) and the dumbest internal communications ever being leaked.

Basically, it would have been a week long ragefest followed by $$$ from vanity microtransactions to pimp your spaceship... but ::CCP::

[Reg]

Are they selling any ship decorations yet? I really would spend serious money to paint my stupid freighter.

[kildorn]

Are they selling any ship decorations yet? I really would spend serious money to paint my stupid freighter.

Exactly. Sell ship details and paintjobs for $1, and you'll be fucking RICH. Sell monocles for $60 and you'll.. well.. you'll be CCP.

[eldaec]

Is there a recording of this eve radio session?

The Mittens interview & ex-CSM discussion is at http://www.eve-radio.com/podcast-download

You can skip the first two hours of this. It only gets interesting around the time Hilmar's email leaks.

[Kitsune]

The email is mentioned at 2:25.

[Pezzle]

You are fooling yourself if you think CCP is going to fairydust fix SOV or anything else actually wrong with 0.0.  The system has gotten worse, not better.  The entry barrier keeps getting higher.  In 0.0 people just get used to living in shit and roll up an alt or two for empire funds.  Why would CCP change anything if people tolerate it?  They get more subs and 0.0 sits there unfixed.

The thing is, they have hinted at changes. God knows what those changes are going to be, however, but I'm going to keep the bitter from taking over until after we've seen what those plans are, and more importantly if they can actually be arsed to follow through with it instead of just going "ooh shiny" and adding a new incursion-like feature instead of adding treaties.

As I said, my patience isn't going to be boundless, if they do not fix the SOV system etc within the next 12 months to make it as strategic as it used to be, with a tug-of-war mechanic (some have suggested DAoC's model) for taking over systems, then chances are I'm going to take a break for a while and see if things still keep deteriorating.

Good luck to you sir.  'They' have hinted at changes for YEARS.  There are piles of backburner, unfinished and abandoned projects.  Hell, they do not even have documentation.  Ongoing developments have convinced me even beyond the '18 months' bit that they have no plan to address anything on my own concerns list even if they say they do.  If the game remains fun for you keep playing it until it is not.  Do not play a game for years that you do not like hoping that it gets better.  It won't.

[Goumindong]

This is just silly, yet I see this attitude represented time and time again. Do these people not realize that due to PLEX pretty much everything you can buy for Isk, is also RTM? It is just sort of boggling to me.

P2W or PfA is significantly different than RMT. Real money transfer is not an issue for the in game economy, things have to be purchased and the automatic stabilizers that are present within the system [specific NPC trade goods] makes a stable price system that RMT cannot disrupt. The long and short of it is that with automatic stabilizers, so long as everything that is bought and sold is created within the system, "real money" is just another currency.

But it is not the case with P2W. In this case, if in game advantages can be purchased outside of the game economy then you have significant disruption in the distribution of advantages. Specifically what will happen is an increase in the price in plex as the supply for consumption relative to demand dries up. But more importantly, as the price of plex increases the relative price of paying real money for advantages decreases.

The prospect of this, to people who finance their in game activities with in game activities is that, in order to keep up with the rest of the game [and let us not kid ourselves that a few % points of advantage, stacked on top of each other, in a game of real losses are entirely significant] the cost of playing will rise substantially. [edit: sentences added] The simple act of trading isk between people cannot do this. All that happens is that one persons accrued advantage is transferred to another person. By adding purchasable advantage to the other currency [and only the other currency] you now allow prices to reflect the relative marginal advantages. And with EVE, the margin of advantages is increasing.

These players are EVE's greatest assets. It is not the players that play casually that make EVE what it is, because players that play casually do not create the drama, they do not provide the experiences that others crave. It is the people who take time and plan, who "play seriously". As you implement P2W you make it more difficult for these players to play the game and that is a seriously foolish situation.

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for a cash shop in EVE. But its simply will not happen in the way that it ought to. The majority of players who will purchase items are "peacocks". They buy because they want to look cool. But creating materials for peacocks is not cheap, it is in fact quite expensive because you have to commit yourself to continually create new art assets. [edit: sentences added] These resources do not exist within the EVE team. Art asset creation is almost exclusively for Dust and WoD. In order to make this happen there would need to be a radical shift in the structure of CCP or new hiring. Hiring that they don't have the money for[end edit]The next player after that is the one who is in it for advantages. But creating advantages are cheap, they require few, if any art assets, and are relatively easy to implement.

If there were no plans for a PfA/P2W cash shop then it would be no big deal, but there clearly are. We have their internal documents which show there are, we have reports from people who have worked there that confirm that that is the way they work and we still can't get a confirmation as to just where the cash shop will end. I mean, if they came and said "we are going to sell you a new paintjob for your thorax for $1" it would have been a big hit. But they didn't, they came and said "we are going to sell people advantages, such that keeping up will become ever more expensive".

[Morfiend]

I agree with some of what you said, but at its core the fact that PLEX = Isk means that everything in game is P2W(to a simplified extent). Now, if they remove AUR from being able to be purchased with PLEX, then we have a real problem. But the fact is, right now, anything they put in the cash shop is still purchasable with Isk.

They have already said "No gold ammo". Also, I think you are putting words in their mouth to an extent.

Now, I said I understand that people are upset that RTM is getting mixed up in their subscription game, and CCP has handled this HORRIBLY. Like about as bad as they could handle it. But really, I can buy a rifter with Isk, or Isk I got from a PLEX which I paid for.

If they price this stuff out of reach of the pure Isk buyers, then thats a whole different issue.

[Goumindong]

I agree with some of what you said, but at its core the fact that PLEX = Isk means that everything in game is P2W(to a simplified extent).

Except that no, its not. The ability to buy isk with money does not make it P2W, the same advantage is accrued, the only difference is to whom it goes. Arguably it is a better situation because it allows those players who would otherwise not be able to play the game for free, to finance their play by trading some of their advantages. [and this is a very strong argument in this case]

But that is not the case when the items and advantages are created outside of the game world. That breaks the "strict transfer" situation that is going on. This is because no longer does the advantage need to be accrued by someone playing the game, but also the ability of those people who do play to trade their effort for advantage is lessened.

It is, in all ways that are important, significantly different. The fact that "some people pay money to others" doesn't matter. Bitching about that is like bitching about "welfare queens and their Cadillacs". The issue is not that "someone else got something for free" [not that they do, they clearly paid for it]. The issue is the effects it has on the economy and the players.

[Goumindong]

If they price this stuff out of reach of the pure Isk buyers, then thats a whole different issue.

They can't price stuff in reach of pure Isk buyers. It is more or less impossible.

Advantages in EVE are of an increasing marginal kind. The first 5% of advantage is not nearly as strong as the last 5% of advantage. This is both because advantages are multiplicative stacking and because the advantages are more or less binary [I.E. you die or you don't] and can even be recursive on top of that [I.E. the number of times you survive].

This means that every small advantage is insanely valuable, its why 5% implants are so much more expensive than 3% implants, its faction ammo(and t2 long range) [the kind you can actually acquire in enough quantity to fit into a ship] is the defacto ammo despite being the most expensive ammo that you can purchase in any quantity.

If they make the advantages that you can purchase cheap in terms of real dollars then the people who would otherwise sell their plex for ISK are going to slow the rate at which they do so. Why will they slow? Because why would they sell a plex to attain isk advantages when the advantages from direct purchase are stronger and also cheaper? At the same time, those people who want to purchase these items[and will be almost required to do so because of their relative advantage] will want to buy plex. So we have increasing demand and decreasing supply.

Do we have a guess at where the prices will equalize? We can guess by other comparable bonuses and a theoretical dollar cost of the item. [the higher the dollar cost and higher the comparable bonuses the more isk we assume to cost]. If something costs $5 then right now we have 1/4 of a plex in cost, so 100m isk. But do we really expect prices to stay the same with increasing demand and decreasing supply? No, we don't.

[Fordel]

TLDR:

If you use Plex to buy ISK to buy ships, your still limited to the number of ships other players can make.

If the CCP RMT store sells ships directly, they can sell you infinity ships.



Did I get the jist of it?

[Sir T]

Holy Crap, I ignore this subforum for a few weeks and I miss such a delicious boil of hate!   

Must digest information, will have comments later...

[Pezzle]

TLDR:

If you use Plex to buy ISK to buy ships, your still limited to the number of ships other players can make.

If the CCP RMT store sells ships directly, they can sell you infinity ships.



Did I get the jist of it?

That is certainly a large part of it, yes. 

[Furiously]

Skill points for isk....that would give them a nice short term income.

[Amaron]

Skill points for isk....that would give them a nice short term income.

My head hurts trying to figure out what that would do to the game.   The whole plex->aur thing makes it really convoluted.

[luckton]

Skill points for isk....that would give them a nice short term income.

My head hurts trying to figure out what that would do to the game.   The whole plex->aur thing makes it really convoluted.

Everyone with disposable incomes will rule New Eden.  Every other player will either quit out of rage/despair from no longer being on a level playing field or will say "Challenge Accepted" and keep playing in an attempt to beat the rich folks.  The rich will either win by using their money to buy power-ups and advantages that overcome their inability to play Excel In Space, or will complain to CCP that they'll take their money and run if CCP doesn't fix the imbalance of how they're loosing to these 'chump players'.