Saving Eve: 2 places to start

     Back a couple years ago, the common complaint was that CCP was pumping out too many big game features - the "Jesus features", they like to call it now.  Why were big, new features a problem?  Well, because for the most part, none of the features were complete.  They were like a house that had doors and windows that stuck because the house was cooked, and it had nothing finished on the inside.  CCP promised they would get back to them, but for the most part, they never did.  Eve is in perpetual beta.  It's got all kinds of things that were unfinished or patched and are still broken.  Null sec sovereignty, factional warfare (yeah, still broken), wormholes, corp and alliance UIs and player owned stations, to name a few biggies.  Contrary to the spin fests that David Reid puts out, even with these new, awesome ship changes in the latest patch, subscriptions are still in dire need of resuscitation.  CCP's penchant for grabbing PLEX money for anything and everything, to me, is proof that they are looking hard at ways to make some extra cash.  Most recently, anyone who wants to pay $20 for an overpriced EON magazine that costs $15, just let CCP know.  They'll pop one in the mail for you, but that'll probably cost another PLEX for mailing fees.  After all, who the fuck would want to use a PLEX to pay for their subscription anyway??

     So, the two ideas?  Well, not that they are anything novel, but they are simple, but not necessarily easy.

Players in station or active in systems

     First, drop all the other side projects, and put ALL the coders on fixing null sec sovereignty.  Make sovereignty performance based, and then alliances and corps will only be able to hold, what they physically can hold.  What they are living in.  No more dog-in-the-manger bullshit where big organizations own all kinds of space that no one does fuck all in.

      See the picture?  Right now, when I took that screenshot, there were ~40,000 players online.  You can see exactly how much of that population is in null sec, based on the display that is set to show how many players are active or docked in systems.  Two words:  GHOST fucking TOWN.  The biggest dot of the dots in the outlying null sec space is 92 players, and that was only one dot on the edge of the Vapor Sea.  All the rest of the big dots?  None were over 50 - I checked.  The vast majority of the small dots were 1 to 5 people.  Yeah, I spent about 30 minutes mousing over and clicking on that shit just out of curiosity.  Lots of podders and bloggers like to throw around null sec populations like 20,000 or higher, but the last real numbers of active null sec ACCOUNTS were just under 12,000 accounts, and that number went up from the previous CCP population numbers by .05%.  And yeah, that's not five percent, that's 1/20th of one percent, and that was the end of 2010.  For people to imagine that the active accounts in null went up by nearly double since then?  Whatever shit they're smoking is better than medical grade pot.  So for anyone interested in guessing, 12% of the online population is about 4800 accounts in null vs a very optimistic 20% of 8,000.  Look at the dots and decide for yourself.

     So anyway, performance based sovereignty.  Lots of easy-to-see unused space will no longer be claimed.  That leaves lots of room for other corps and alliances, that aren't part of and don't have huge super-friend daisy chains, to move down into null and maybe carve out a bit of space for themselves.  THEN they can spoon up with all the blue-fests down there.  And holy fuck, if that doesn't mean that there would be room and reason for some of the high sec players to move to null, like the players are crying about and CCP expects.  Also, with all the problems in null sec, and the sov grind that exists, lots of problems need to be fixed before other things like POSs are touched.  It'll be extremely easy to completely fuck up POS reworking when the space the POS is supposed to go in is fucked.  Fix the space FIRST, then you'll have more of a clue about what the players want and need a POS to act like.  Fix null sec FIRST, and that will sate the Eve vets, and encourage other players to go down there.  Fixing null is unlikely to bring in new players and more money, but new player features can come later and I'll touch on options for more money too.  More on that in another post though.

     2nd, ship skins.  Drop all the bullshit that the CCP artists are doing for all the NEX store crap that the majority of players don't give a fuck about, and get them on ship skins.  Supposedly, according to CCP devs, implementing individual ship skins is not that much of a difficulty anymore with the new V3 graphics.  Apparently, some CCP staff take issue with the idea of players being able to change the colour schemes on the ships, but too fucking bad for the devs.  I might give a fuck if they ACTUALLY PLAYED, but they don't, so I don't.  I doubt the players do either.

     My idea on how to do this is for another post, but basically, each player pays for a ship skin, once, for each type of ship.  There are over 200 different boats, so that is 200 individual payments, from 450,000 accounts.  Each skin only has to be bought once and while I doubt many would want custom skins for ever ship in game, I bet it would at least get 10 to 20 ships per player, not to mention start a new graphics industry going in-game for designing skins.  If you ever want to turn off the custom skin, there's an option for it in settings.  If you want a new/different skin, you pay for it and it's applied.  There's some money for CCP.  That way, CCP doesn't need to fuck with people actually using PLEX for what they were fucking invented for, by "allowing" players to buy $150 video cards for $400 worth of PLEX, or fucking $15 magazines for $20.  This, obviously, aside from being a big revenue stream for CCP, allows the many creative players to exercise their art muscles and would go a long way of appeasing the player base while CCP devs try to keep their heads out of their asses and hit the next big problem.  For that, I would suggest POSs for the WHOLE dev team to get on.  The more people working on it, the faster it gets done and the more people available to work on more patches.  Ship skins would also pique the interest of new players.

     That's it.  Forget about FW, POS, the fucking NEX store, UI tweaks and anything else.  Fix null, get ship skins, then move off to the next point.  Keep Greyscale and Punkturis away from the processes, and everything should be fine.

DUST Motes: Speculation

     I remember a Star Trek episode where the plucky crew of the Enterprise stumbled on a race of xenophobes, and the aliens kept erasing the crew's memory while Data tried to help clean up the errant loose ends.  Problem was, a few strands were left hanging here and there and the humans, being human, couldn't help but tug at them to find out what they were attached to, which led to the inevitable nearly-fatal hijinks for the entire crew.  I think of that show when I think of DUST 514.

     DUST will be a fairly major accomplishment if CCP can take the idea they've been cooking since 2008 and get it to decently mesh with Eve.  There are probably a fairly huge number of technical issues to deal with, and that doesn't even include the game balancing issues between the two games' populations and complicated market interactions.  On one hand, CCP needs to develop slow enough that the ship doesn't sink when they smash the bottle off her nose on launch, but they can't wait too long either lest a fickle FPS crowd loose interest in a prolonged and de-featured beta, and the crowd goes looking for another ship.

     I probably have more plans imagined for DUST than CCP does, but that doesn't mean what I hope DUST will be, is what CCP intends DUST to be.  For non-Eve players, some of the very generally described game play features inspire a lot of speculation that tends to grate on the already fairly raw nerves of the Eve players, especially the null Eve players.  FPS players are pretty jazzed about the ability to actually "claim" in-game resources and land, and that it can still be theirs tomorrow when they log in again.  It's something that has only been possible on a very limited scale, and is completely transient in other FPSs.  The ability to claim  planets and space - sovereignty, is an exciting thing and some of the most vocal DUST players are looking forward to dropping in all over the Eve verse, scooping up planets left and right.  Eve players think parts of the rumoured game play will be pretty cool as well, until of course planets and systems in null sec are mentioned.  At that point, the nicey-nice, and genial conversation sort of hits the floor.  The polite smiles go bye bye.

     For non-Eve players, they really don't understand the time and effort involved in claiming space in null.  FPS lads think that a few rounds of match play, run over some bunnies, capture a few zone guns, and they're well on the way to grabbing some tasty null sec space.  An Eve player really doesn't want to hear about that shit when it takes them days and days to go through the iHub and TCU reinforcement timers, or what happens to the shit they have in the system's outposts.  A DUST bunny says "WTF is an iHub and a TCU??"  The short answer is, they're a couple of many things that are really going to piss off Eve payers, that's what they are.  Eve players need to carry around supplies, plan moves, build ships and mods and ammo and take it with them when they go off to kick someone's ass.  They really don't want to hear any bullshit about how DUST bunnies can drop from the sky, like the special snowflakes they are, and start poking gaping holes in their alliance's sovereignty.  Eve players don't want to hear about a magic travelling market that goes with the bunnies, everywhere they go, and making their gear on the fly as they drop into the planet zones.  Eve players don't want to hear that an alliance might need to go out and get a bunch of PS3s if they want to keep control of their space with the same effort as they do now.

     Speculation is always going to be an issue when you have a bunch of gamers as excited as the DUST bunnies seem to be.  NDAs, limited game functionality, and cloak and dagger references to game features are lacking just enough detail that they inflame the imaginations of the console players, and inflame other things in the Eve player base.  After all, it's not like CCP dropping stupid shit in the lap of the player base is a rare thing.  Eve players can do some crazy shit, if there's too much stupid shit.  With too little understanding of Eve, the DUST bunnies will dream up some really optimistic, pro-console game play, and that already isn't very popular with Eve players, especially in null sec.  With too little info on DUST, Eve players are going to dream up some really pessimistic pro-console game play, and that is not going to make integration any more acceptable with Eve payers.

     Eve players are already on a bit of a short fuse and all the recent ship balancing and eye candy is helping a little, but I don't think it's really taken the heat off of the Eve pressure cooker a whole lot, especially with the null crowd.  DUST is no where ready to come out of the oven yet, and there are so many aspects of the game that haven't even been tested or seen yet, it's got to be well into next year before they even think about an open beta, if they're smart.  There are a lot of fancy games that have just come out, or are going to be released soon.  Maybe CCP is being smart and they're waiting for the smoke to clear a little from titles that might be too close to DUST, like Planetside 2, MWO, Hawken and Halo.  The longer CCP waits, the better the game will be, but the longer they wait, the more tired the enthusiasts will be of grinding the same beta content and over-speculating about features that that could be years away from implementation.  I think CCP needs to start adding more little bits and pieces, a little more often, or people aren't going to be around in the months ahead that I think it'll take to test out even the most basic planet-taking features.  I'd hate to be the guy planning the release date.  While CCP claims that the nature of Eve's and DUST's game play connection is such that either game could survive without the other, it would be a real shame to see the incredible potential of DUST, roll over and sink to the bottom on launch.

PLEX for subscriptions? I sit corrected.

     Earlier on, I talked about CCP considering allowing PLEX to be used to pay the way for fan events.  Well, only being about, oh, nine and a half months LATE, it turns out CCP is already fine with players using PLEX for fan events.  Specifically Fanfest 2012, where PLEX could be used for access passes of various style, plus fanfest events of many kinds, including a hoity toity dinner and a chance to get a behind-the-scenes tour of CCP itself..  What I should have said, is that PLEX is considered being allowed to pay for PLAYER created/run events, like Eve Vegas, or ones anywhere in the world that are quasi, or fully, CCP sanctioned.

     On one hand, it's cool that CCP allows players to subsidize a fanfest event by working on the cost in-game.  At the same time, it takes an in-game resource that was intended for subscriptions, and drives the price up because more uses for the PLEX increases the demand and increases inflation.  increasing the PLEX prices to the point that players are no longer interested in, or no longer have the time to earn the isk to pay for the PLEX, means they will either pay for PLEX with real money, or stop playing Eve.  People who heavily rely on PLEX for subscriptions, will opt for not playing anymore.  Pretty much defeats the purpose of PLEX in the first place.  PLEX for subscriptions should be a CCP priority.  PLEX for extracurricular things should be a very distant second.  If CCP stays greedy and allows PLEX for anything and everything, they'll eventually pay with subscription loss.

     Accepting ISK, on the other hand, or partial PLEX and partial ISK for non-subscription things, means they still make extra money off the PLEX, they might be able to manage PLEX inflation, keep subscriptions and they would provide a big ISK sink for Eve.

     EDIT:  Also, just noticed, but PLEX are not $15 each, but $20 each.  Not sure when the price went up, but it's been a while since I bought any with real cash.  That's an extra 25% increase in the money CCP gets every time they spin a PLEX-for-something plan.

Gevlon + FW + DUST = theory

     Perhaps it might be time to don either a tin foil hat, or some kind of protection from people who are wearing said tinfoil hat.  Your choice.

     Gevlon posted a few thoughts over at his blog, back at the end of last month, that postulated another viewpoint on the whole Factional Warfare fiasco.

     In a nutshell, here are the salient points . . .

- DUST 514 is basically a black hole for ISK.  When a DUST bunny dies, if they're paying for better-than-default gear, the gear is lost and they need to buy more.
- the DUST players will be initially fighting on, and for, temperate planets in and around the FW systems
- FW players will be issuing contracts for the bunnies to take planets for them
- CCP possibly "planned" for the FW isk faucet patch in an ill conceived plan to flood the FW players with tons of ISK so that highly lucrative contracts could be issued to the bunnies, who would then in turn be able to spend their ISK windfalls on highly upgraded DUST gear for their toons, which would cause the console players to be massively enthused about DUST and continue playing it
- with so many FW farmers soaking up too much of the ISK faucet, CCP realized that much of the bunny-intended-ISK was ending up in the hands of players who wouldn't be interested in FW PI, and therefore pre-emptively patched, and "fixed" the FW isk fountain

     Some of that might be slightly more paraphrased than the original, but that's the gist of it, as far as I can make out.  Interesting hypothesis, but I'd feel better about his post if it appeared nearer the beginning of Apr.  Having some experience with DUST, and Eve/CCP, I have some . . . "observations".

1.  While it would not surprise me that CCP would come up with a financial plan as entirely fucked up as this, and with one of the devs publicly explaining that if you don't use a "legal" exploit when it's presented to you, you're an idiot, well, I have a hard time buying the idea that this was intentional on CCPs part.  More likely, they relied on their frequently clueless economist instead of talking to the players, specifically, the goons who raped their stupid patch.

2.  For anyone that has played DUST, it's a long fucking way from being ready to come out of the oven.  The maps (only two right now) look like they were designed by a flunked out class from the Vermtek Community College FPS Level Design course of 1991.  It takes 5 to 7 minutes for the game to even load, and one of the two levels is a pure sniper fest (they had more maps).  The graphics quality needs to come up to par, keyboard and mouse functionality needs work, and the chat and group mechanics are about 1985 level.  If CCP was planning to leave the FW isk tidal wave flowing until DUST was released, Eve's economy would have been pretty much permanently trashed.

3.  While lots of DUST fans, including marketing types and many people who have never even played it, will get dreamy expressions and misty eyes while they talk about the millions of DUST players, you'd be lucky right now to find 30 people in local.  Only closed beta, I know, but from only about 25 years of console and computer gaming, for a beta, it's a ghost town.  Keep in mind that's over 400,000 beta keys that CCP gave out, not to mention you can get into the beta by buying the mercenary pack for 20 bucks.  If that extrapolates to going live, it would take a long, long, long, long time for a likely small console community to burn through trillions of PI contract iskies.  Those, would be some fucking rich dust bunnies!  They could buy a ton of trick shit! (even though it would be a long time before they could actually USE it)

4.  Having tons of isk in DUST is nice, but not necessary to get "good" gear.  Like Eve, skill training allows marked improvement in performance and survivability, so better performance is not necessarily money dependent.  Additionally, to get the "best" gear, that requires you buy the items with AUR.  AUR = pay to win.  Again, even with great gear, it requires prerequisite skill trees be fleshed out to use the gear.  The skill training requires skill points, not isk.

5.  It's not hard to make isk, and to fight without losing ANY isk or to build up isk, you just use default or "special offer" gear, both of which have unlimited quantities.  Additionally, the bunny market is going to scale and fluctuate based on console isk flow, players that die a lot will get a bonus to the isk they get rewarded, and players that don't get killed a lot get slightly reduced isk rewards.  As mentioned, you can buy all kinds of cool guns and tanks and suits, but if you don't have the skills to use them, the gear sits there until you amass the millions of SP it takes to use them.  Also, if Eve players end up being the ones that get the BPs for making the bunny gear, there goes the isk sink.

     Maybe the goblin was trolling, and I took the bait hook line and sinker.  Maybe he's serious.  I can't tell.  It's an interesting theory, but I think it's fundamentally flawed because the supposed end point, the focus, of CCP's master plan, is a FPS that has a long way to go.  Mind you, it's not like it would be the first time that CCP sends something off to fly before it can fly.  I don't know what Sony would say about a still birth from CCP.

More CCP pay-to-win

     When I did my last post on what I think/feel/believe is a pay-to-win scenario that already exists in Eve, I had it on a time delay for posting.  In the mean time, one of the items I mentioned, the latest open tournament, has had some changes.

     First, the entry fee of 20 PLEX was reduced to 10.  Apparently this was in partial response to complaints from players that the entry fee was too high.  If true, that's a step forward from CCP.

     At the same time though, word from CCP was that there were anywhere from 60 to 80 teams who signed up for the tournament.  That number depends on the quality of your rumour connection I guess, but a number in the 60's was apparently put forward directly by CCP.  Amazingly, more than half the signed up teams bailed on the tourney before the bidding for spots would start, though.  That's crazy, right?!?!  Now, the conspiracists would proffer that there never were that many teams that signed up, and that the number of teams claimed by CCP was a very pathetic and douche bag attempt for CCP to try to get player groups to bid more PLEX for the 32 team spots.  More PLEX bid means less PLEX in game, which means PLEX prices will rise (as they are doing), which means more PLEX will be bought to replace tournament PLEX and sold at higher prices.  Can't really see who would benefit from all that PLEX selling, except of course CCP, oh, and the richer Eve players.

     So, move ahead a bit to the point where the bidding is done, and they couldn't get enough teams to play in the tournament.  Of the only 27 teams that actually bid for a spot in the tournament, only 3 teams bid 10 PLEX, and the top teams bid over 40.  Of the 27 teams, 575 PLEX were bid.  Once players found out that there weren't even enough teams that bid for spots, some wanted a complete refund and were ready to bail out.  At that point CCP decided to give everyone back their extra PLEX, and so all 27 teams were in the tourney with a 10 PLEX bid.  Hopefully, that's 300 PLEX that might end up back in the hands of players to help stave off more PLEX inflation.

     More tin foil time though.  It is rumoured that there was some behind the scenes shit going on with some CCP devs trying to entice certain players into the tournament.  Now, with their denials about the whole T20 incident, and then their recant of the denials when the CCP dude admitted that he was a cheating fuck, but they still didn't a) fire him or b) re-instate the player's accounts that outed the mess, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an honest answer out of CCP if a couple of their devs WERE pulling strings.  The whole "pro-Eve tournament" thing would be another potential cash cow if CCP could siphon off a bunch more PLEX.  The tinfoilers would also be remiss if they didn't point out that 2 of the three 10 PLEX bidders also got a bye for the first round.  How many OTHER alliances/groups (with perhaps tournament participation history) did CCP contact with possible enticements for the tournament?  Were the two 10 PLEX bidders given a little nudge nudge wink wink and a bye if they decided to join the tourney?

     Personally, I don't give a fuck about the tournament, or whether CCP has a couple devs doing shit in the shadows.  I'm more concerned about how much more lag or bugs they'll inject, or how they're going to fuck up the UI.  If CCP wanted ALL players involved, CCP could have accepted ISK for entry fees as well.  After all, they've already been PAID for every PLEX that's in the game.  Apparently though, they only want the "most dedicated teams to enter and compete to be champions".  Uh, yeah, ok.  Mainly though, the teams most willing and able to pay CCP with real cash to let them in the tournaments.  Pay to win, much?

     But wait!  There's more!  :)

     In more pay-to-win news, CCP is thinking about accepting PLEX as a form of payment to attend fan events.  Good for them, bad for players who buy PLEX with ISK, but then, like so many "programs" amd "offers", CCP is only interested in the players who can AFFORD to do that.  PLEX is a cash cow to be milked.  Fuck the fact that PLEX for ISK was implemented to HELP players pay for their subscriptions.
    
     Additionally, according to David Reid (CCP's marketing dude), they were SO happy with the whole video-cards-for-PLEX thing, that they want to do it again.  Now, why wouldn't CCP be happy when they can offload a hundred video cards (that cost them less than 200 bucks) for $300 worth of PLEX each??  Again, good for rich players who can bankroll that amount of ISK to PLEX at the drop of a hat and definitely good for CCP.

     Last point, according to our very own Alekseyev Karde, you know, the CSM dude, the guy who represents players?  Well, according to him and his buddies, any player that complains about the inability to use PLEX to pay for their subscription, (which is why it was instituted in the game) is a whiner.  Nice.  Good thing Alekseyev is thinking about ALL the players, or maybe he's only interested in a select subset of players, like the ones who have enough disposable income to pay for subscriptions and PLEX with real cash.   Start at 20 minutes.  That's some fairly elitist bullshit, but at least then he casually wonders what effects it will have on the people/plebes that he thinks are whiners.  Yay player reps!

     Tournaments, CCP convention tickets, video cards?  My, my.  So MANY uses for people who can afford to throw PLEX around.  I guess the dumb-ass, whining players who actually use PLEX for what it was intended for will have to HTFU, or go play something else.  Go pay-to-win!  ;)

By the numbers, fanboy style

     Fanboys, gotta love 'em . . . mostly.  They're certainly good for PR and CCP isn't going to be breaking any radio silence to correct the more rabid and optimistic mathematicians and accountants in the player base.

     The fanboys I'm referring to are the ones that mention that Eve has numbers ranging anywhere from 200,000 players up to 400,000 players.  Apparently differentiating between "accounts" and actual "people" is a rather pointless endeavour.  Another optimistic example is the people who talk about how ~60,000 players voted in the election!!  Again though, people don't seem to be overly concerned about the difference between an "account" and an actual skin bag, filled with mostly water.  AKA, a "person".

     My thinking about the numbers worked sort of backwards, in time, that is.  In doing my usual listening-to-podcasts thing while doing the despicable mining-thing, I listened to the latest Crossing Zebras podcast and they had their new Gentleman's Agreement alliance CEO on with them.  He was talking about his alliance size and what his recruiting plan was.  He mentioned that he has over 1500 CHARACTERS in his alliance, but he figures he actually only has about 300 players.  300 people.  That's pretty amazing, but not surprising, to me, anyway.  As one of those multi-account dudes myself, I slowly saw/realized that multiple accounts allow you to more easily play Eve.  More accounts allow one to accomplish more, not only with parallel training, but making exponentially more isk.  At some point the income vs account curve might flatten out, but at what point that is, I don't know.  I do know that more accounts means you HAVE to play more, or enough to fund all those accounts, especially with regards to using PLEX.

     So anyways, working backwards, from the recent podcast; the CSM 7 election.  So there were 59,109 votes cast by "eligible voters" says CCP.  That right there, is some pure bullshit spinnery.  "Eligible voters" my ass.  In plain English, 59,109 ACCOUNTS voted.  Some important stats, thinks I, are the fact that the average account age is 2.89 years.  Anyway, time to strap on my tinfoil hat here. . .

     Older accounts, older (likely) players, and also likely aware of the meta game's influence as well as a number of the issues being addressed by the candidates, in all sec areas of the game.  Last time CCP did a quarterly report of what the account numbers were for each zone, null netted something like 12% of the active accounts.  How accurate that number is now is anyone's guess, but at 2011 published numbers by CCP, they claimed 325,000 accounts, and that's what MMO data still says too.  That might have been optimistic on CCP's part and was definitely before all the banned bot and rmt accounts, but they say the voter turnout was 16.63%, so that's still around the 355K accounts level.  We'll run with that for now.  So possibly around 45,000 accounts are being operated in null out of the total subscriber-ship.  That's a big number if you consider them all to be people, but at GAA's ratio, that's only about 10,000 (or fewer) real players in null.  How many null PLAYERS actually voted?  With a 60k total vote, a large list of candidates and so many null sec players getting so many of those 60k votes, what is the REAL player vote?  30,000 players?  20K?  Less?  I wouldn't be surprised if the real number of players voting was in the 15 to 20k range, but that's just me.

     Now at an advertised active account level of around 350,000, again, how many real people does that actually represent?  Not everyone has 55 accounts like a certain indy guy I know, or the ratio is as lopsided as the GAA's, but I bet there are a shit load of players with at least 2 accounts, and likely a very large number with 3 to 5.  Not being a statistician, I wonder if there are enough players with multiple accounts to bring the accounts to players ratio up  to 2:1?  Maybe even between 2 and 3:1?  So really, maybe around 150,000 actual players?  Less?  I seriously doubt there are 200,000 players (excluding the Chinese servers who apparently have about 100k accounts.)  CCP knows exactly what the ratio is, but you can bet their ass, your ass, or your cat's ass they won't tell.  Encouraging their customers both commercially and technically (via the software) to operate more than one account is a smart business move.  More bucks per player.  It's also a bad move, especially when the subscription numbers are mostly stagnant or when they pull a bonehead update and piss players off.  In good times, each player is worth multiples, but in bad times, every player that leaves takes multiple accounts' revenue with them too.

     No doubt CCP realizes that there are some very clever numbers dudes in the player base, and that's why they stopped publishing the quarterly reports.  Having the extra power in the customer's hands is bad enough (especially when they multi-boxing), but giving them the numbers so they might be able to actually calculate their advantage, well, that just moves CCP from the position of driving the cart, to pulling the cart.

Pay to win, CCP, A-OK!

     With DUST nearly ready to come out of the oven (supposedly), and its future reliance on RMT for CCP income, I got to thinking about pay to win.

     I've always been of the opinion that pay to win was already in the game, and was easy to see and use from the first few days of me playing Eve.  I'm talking about PLEX.  You can train skill points at the same rate as the next guy, but if neither of you has earned enough ISK to buy the item/module/ship you'd like to or need to, the person who can buy a PLEX will get a jump start that the other poorer player might not be able to afford.  If you both can train cybernetics skill up to be able to use level 5 implants, but neither can afford them, the player who can sell a couple PLEX for the ISK to buy the set will get, and keep, a permanent advantage over the player who had to grind out the ISK, in-game, the hard way.  At any rate, I found it curious how so many people lost their shit when rumours of special boats and "golden" ammo were floating around.  Curiously limited scope of view, they had, thought I.

     So, what got me thinking was a while ago when CCP had 100 wicked awesome video cards that they were "giving away" for 20 PLEX each, to the first 100 people that showed up.  This is from well back in the spring, so no news flash here, but I have a "life" (TM) so often some of the meta content/bullshit gets back-burnered til more off-peak mental load times arrive.  So anyway, for 20 PLEX, or a little over $300, you could have gotten one of these ~$250 (retail) video cards if you jumped at the offer in the less than 2 minutes it took to sell them out.  It's also important to keep in mind that no company is going to pay, or going to be required to pay, full price from a video card company when they take 100 of them.  So how much did CCP pay for the cards?  $200?  $150?  Less?  Cleverness on the part of CCP to accept PLEX that players have bought off them, watch as the PLEX prices raised for a period of time as 2000 PLEX were removed from the game, their price in isk rose, which sucked even more isk out of Eve than the amount used to buy the PLEX for the video cards, and then make a tidy profit on the video cards that they got from the manufacturer for a (probably) huge discount in the first place.  So, rich players can convert ISK/PLEX into a video card without breaking a sweat, , not to mention CCP selling even more PLEX to fill the hole left by the 2000 used for the video cards.  If that's not pay to win, I don't know what is.

     Then, there was the alliance tournament.  Again, PLEX was the currency of choice instead of ISK because CCP said it's "just easier to manage and allows us to create some revenue to fund this and future tournaments".  Players pay the bill to run the tournament . . for the players, but not all the players, only the ones who could pony up at least 10 PLEX for the first 32 auction slots, and then another 10 PLEX for the last 32 random draw slots.  640 PLEX guaranteed, ~$10,000 US, and word is/was, that there were some pretty epic bids by the richest alliances to guarantee their slots.  1,000+ PLEX is likely a more accurate guess as to how many were bid or used for tournament slots.  Maybe considerably more than that.  Likely considerably more.  Soaks up a lot of that ISK in an ISK-flooded economy and CCP gets paid twice.  Once when the PLEX were bought, and the 2nd time when new PLEX were bought to replace the ones burnt up for the tournament.  CCP could have accepted ISK in lieu of PLEX, but ISK isn't worth shit to CCP when they can get the players, the rich ones, to cough up $150+ per team.  So, really, could any alliance have entered, or just the ones with the money to pay to win?

     Now, there's the New Eden Open tournament.  Again, PLEX are the entrance currency.  LOTS of PLEX.  This time it's 20 PLEX for the minimum bid, so like $300 per team, more expensive than the last one, but in the end, the absolute minimum of PLEX down the pipe, taken out of the game, is 640.  I think it would be very safe to assume that with $10,0000 in prizes, bids will be even more epic than tournament ten.  That's at LEAST $10,000 US that the players will take out of the game economy and gave BACK to CCP.  Huge ISK sink for the richest players in Eve, good for CCP sopping up more ISK from the game, getting funded by their own customers, twice, like before, and the anti "golden ammo" crowd aren't saying a word.

     Word was, one of the CCP devs said that all the PLEX that were confiscated from the banned RMT and macro/bot accounts were going to be put back into the economy.  No number was put on the PLEX that have been confiscated, nor was there any mention of how CCP was going to put the PLEX back into the economy.  Now, the new word is that confiscated PLEX will be given away in the tournament.  Not back to the general customer base who would appreciate the extra PLEX reducing the cost of the ever climbing PLEX prices due to the FW ISK fountain-fuck-up, pumping out more ISK than every high sec incursion in the game ever did.  So the richest players are the ones with the highest chance of getting some PLEX back who can use them or sell them at inflated prices due to the high PLEX demand.  Pay to win?

     Now, CCP says that the PLEX entry fees are also to help pay for the logistics and costs of setting up and running the tournament.  Well, the way they're doing it, yeah, it'll piss a bunch of money up against the wall, but rest assured, CCP will make out like bandits just like they did with the $300 they were charging for the video cards they got for less than $250.  Considering that the MINIMUM amount of money players will pay CCP to enter their tournament is $10,000, there are very simple ways for CCP to cut costs if they really want to, and it won't compromise tournament coverage.

     They don't need commentators to be taken to Iceland.  CCP needs to Google existing tech like Skype and USB video cameras.  Plug a Skype conference call and video feed into their little alliance tournament screen and no one needs to be IN Iceland.  The software and studio are set up, but all that's needed is to plug the audio and video into the tournament display and their job is done.  They can rent their "studio" out to the Icelandic shopping channel or something.  The cost of the tourney is reduced, more people can enter and/or entrance fees can be dropped to include non-rich alliances.

     So, are the players dumber than chickens that they don't see the pay to win?  Or is the anti-pay-to-win crowd silent because the common rabble are kept in their place?  If pay-to-win is modest and accessible by almost all the player base, apparently, Eve players lost, and will lose, their shit.  BUT, if pay-to-win is only accessible by a small minority of the richest players and alliances in the game, apparently, pay-to-win is A-OK.  I guess CCP and the "right kind" of players understand that when everyone is super, no one is super, and that, like in real life, is not acceptable.