If you are reading this blog then you are probably aware of all the rage and terror that has struck EVE’s community over the past few days, regarding micro-transactions that came with Incarna, but the point that troubles most EVE players is whether CCP will enable us to buy items that will affect the game through Aurum.
To all CSM members going over to Iceland next week, as well to any angry vet that thinks their game is at stake, I suggest you spend some time to watch this presentation, from a GM of a gaming company that was faced with the same question CCP is faced today. “Should we enable game-changing items in our game via MT?”. After watching this video, all the doubts in my mind about what the future holds for EVE were gone.
In my humble opinion, being working for a multinational money-driven corporation in real life for many years, I always believed that, although CCP does pretend to listen to their customers, at the end of the day, as a company that values their P&L, would have no option but to enable EVE players to buy game-changing items through their NEX store.
CCP’s published devblogs, the leaked Fearless magazine and Hilmar’s leaked email all lead to the same conclusion. The emergency summon of the CSM next weekend is just a PR stunt to either throw dust in our eyes or to come out clean and present us with their vision of adding game-affecting items through the NEX store.
So, for me it’s clear. Sooner or later, CCP will add game-affecting items through their NEX store. Bitch as much as you want about it. They will do it sooner or later.
What sort of items would they be adding? That I don’t know. Here are my guesses:
- Customization Items, that don’t affect gameplay but are used primarily within station environments
- Clothes, Monocles and other stuff that will satisfy the “peacock” player amongst us (what true pirate wouldn’t want to have a parrot on their shoulder?”
- Racing stripes on ships, custom paint jobs
- Dancing poles and other stuff that you can put up in your CQ’s
- Game Booster Items, that will help a player “catchup” or grow faster than others
- Skill Points booster – buying this would double the SP/hour you’d be training for a period of time, say 24hrs or a full week
- ISK booster – buying this would double the ISK you make from bounties, killing rats etc for a period of time
- Skill Point reset – buy this and you can re-allocate all your skill points the way you like.
- Premium items, that will give you a competitive edge against other players
- T3 items that have better fitting and add more damage, optimal range or are for some reason better than anything in the game today
- T3 ships or T2,5 ships that give better bonuses or are somehow better than what we have today
- T3 implants and boosters that give you better bonuses etc..
Feel free to add to the comments below your ideas as well!
Now, if CCP does it well, this is going to be fun for all.
If they add Customization items, they need to ensure it doesn’t break the immersion element of New Eden. If they enable custom paintjobs they need to ensure that we won’t see pink hello kitty ships or Thoraxes that do look like giant cocks (that won’t be difficult to pull off).
If they add Game booster items, they need to price them correctly and give a nice variety that will help newer players boost their training plans, but also allow veterans to re-map their skills or offer some other form of “booster” for vets.
If they add Premium items, they need to make sure that these items are dropped and that are being produced by in-game materials. New weapons systems? yeah! New ships? hell yeah! New ammo? sure!
My only worry is the implementation and integration with the already existing in-game-market of EVE. Note to CCP: Please don’t make a secondary Aurum-driven market for those items. What you have already is magnificent, don’t make a secondary market that you’ll need to have Aurum to pay for any of the above items.
I already hate the idea that I have to convert ISK to Aurum for the existing (poor choice) of items available to NEX store. Why not just use my ISK? Why do I have to get plex first and then convert it to Aurum? That is complicated without need – well we are talking about CCP here so… anyways…
At least for non-clothes and stuff, give players the BPCs for any in-game items, not the finished goods, and finaly allow us to see pod-killmails with the implants your clones carry. This way, every bitter vet that is now against this idea will have the chance to high-sec gank your T3-fitted hulk in highsec, pod your expensive +10 learning pod and loot your expensive T3 gun or Golden ammo.
EVE is a game of more than just SPs and ISK – adding Golden Ammo is something good for the game in the long term.
At the end of the day, EVE is a game where how good your ship is, or how many SPs you have play a secondary role. I still recall my loss of my T2 interceptor against a rifter pilot that knew what he was doing. I am still losing T2 Recon Cruisers when I make the wrong calls, and we still win with our BC gang against Faction-fitted nano Vagas and Dramiels and Cynabals.
Do it right CCP and we’ll love you about it. Do it wrong and you’ll get a lot of people sad. Given your history, you will probably launch it half-baked, full of bugs and won’t ever bother to fix it. This is a dangerous path, failing to do this right will probably have quite a negative impact on your P&L for next year…
my 2 thoughts,
qp
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#1 by Bel Amar on June 28, 2011 - 08:23
Do it right and we’ll love you for it? If they do any variant of Game Booster or Premium items, I will hate them for it and ultimately turn my back on a game that I’ve loved for 6 years.
The concept of either diminishes the EVE experience entirely, removing one of the elements that made it unique. And ultimately, it’s unique nature is the reason I play
#2 by nekre on June 28, 2011 - 09:43
Hell yeah! At last someone I can agree with. People are overreacting big time on this and to be honest I haven’t heard one good objective reason for them to do so. In my mind the only people that should be pissed about what’s going on are the ones that use ISK to buy PLEX for game time. That’s because the price of PLEX will go up.
Everybody else is just afraid about CCP wanting to unbalance the game just for cash which is total BS. No game designer would do that because they know the game would loose players in the long run. As long as CCP handles this with care so that the items in the NeX market and the ones in the general one are well balanced in price and as long as the NeX market is a secondary one I see on problem. On the contrary I can’t wait to blow up some golden overpriced ships!
Also selling SP and faction standings is ok as long as you don’t get the feeling that you have to do it in order to enjoy the game. So they should both be restricted to new players in order to avoid that sort of environment. It should also be priced right so that these become convenience features that remove some of the grind instead of must have features.
I hope you guys will also talk on the radio about this, if so let us know, I want to tune in !!!
#3 by Shandir on June 28, 2011 - 10:59
Nerke – MT items always unbalance a game, because on each side of the scale you have to place a wallet, and those wallets will not be equal.
No MT items are going to be ‘restricted to new players’ – that would be moronic, as vets have more money to burn, and have greater attachment to the game to do so.
Lastly, and most importantly – why should they allow you to pay to lessen the grind, when they should be working to lessen the grind by gameplay improvements?
If you gain more profit by having bad mechanics and then allowing some players to bypass them – why implement better mechanics?
Take vanity items, for example – there are a rack of free clothes – some of these free clothes are quite nice – they are explicitly competition for the MT clothes. If the MT clothes are not as attractive/interesting as the free clothes, the MT clothes will not sell. Therefore, either they need to have the MT clothes be great and the free clothes good (which requires them to be able to produce ‘great’ on demand) or they need the free clothes to be less than good, and the MT clothes to be good (much easier to do consistantly).
Similarly – any gameplay element which is restrictive, annoying or boring becomes a profit point, why improve repetative missioning when you can add new content behind a paywall – any why add new free content if it competes directly with paid content?
They certainly wouldn’t follow this line of reasoning to it’s logical conclusion (Add nothing to the game except that which is MT, degrade the free gameplay until MT is all that is playable). But this is only because they need enough pull in the free game to draw new players in, and to keep the players who resist buying MT in game for long enough that they become tempted.
MT makes it unprofitable to improve the free game more than slightly, all additions to the free game are purely to facilitate more MT purchases.
MT cannot exist in tandem with balance, balance makes MT valueless, MT makes balance unwise.
CCP should not be hurting for cash to improve EVE, either – where exactly are they spending the over $50m they make each year? They should not *need* to pull in extra profit, and it certainly will not be profit which can cause more and better game development for EVE. They have a huge staff, and that staff (was it 300 or 600) is not producing what even a third of that number, and a third of that income should allow. Game companies of much smaller size produce much more content, for much less cost – EVE is clearly on a back-burner at CCP, and anyone who thinks that “more money for CCP = more development on EVE” needs to realise that CCP has the resources already, they’re just choosing not to allocate them to EVE.
A lot of the community is not that angry – they are sad that CCP has so full entrenched themselves on a path that will almost certainly hurt the game, and so completely decided on certain company objectives that will make their future games (which are each promising) deeply suspect from the outset.
#4 by De'Vadder on June 28, 2011 - 12:44
“Everybody else is just afraid about CCP wanting to unbalance the game just for cash which is total BS. No game designer would do that because they know the game would loose players in the long run.”
Have you ever played or heard of Allods Online, Star Wars Galaxies or Battlefield: Heroes? All three of these introduced unbalanced micro-transactions meaning that people who did not pay where not able to actually compete with those who did. And only BF:H survived it. And even prospered a lot. Surprisingly allthough it is the worst of the lot as you could buy instant heal bandages and having unlimited of them made you virtually unkillable, meaning that there was not even just a paying vs non-paying difference but someone who payed 10€ per fight would allways beat the guy who payed 10€ per day.
But still i aggree, it is not even unlikely that they will do it allthough they first promised no MT at all and later promised only vanity. And that is actually the worst imho. The blatant lying. And at the same time they speak of mutual respect and friendship.
And of course it is utter bullshit telling us we would actually like Eve more the more we may pay for it. We already pay them. And we pay them enough. We pay them so much, that they thought it would be easily enough to develop not one other expensive game but two of our money.
They do not do this to please us, they do it allthough they know that most player hate it but they really want the money. I would not even be so angry if they at least were honest about that. But they keep telling us and probably themselves that all of this is for the players and i believe most people are annoyed by them treating us like 12 year old idiots.
#5 by Quivering Palm on June 28, 2011 - 16:02
Her are the facts:
1. CCP is aware that MT is a valid profitable business and they want to pursue all possibilities to increase their revenue.
2. CCP have already stated that they will offer vanity-only items through MT.
3. Other companies (see the link in my original post) have already discovered that MT for vanity items only apply to a very small % of their subscribers, so the Return-on-Investment is very low as profits are low.
Based on the above, and the recent exposure of leaked information, it is apparent that CCP is considering offering non-vanity items through their MT system.
I make the following assumptions:
1. CCP is investigating the possibility that at some point they could offer non-vanity items through their MT system.
2. CCP has called an emergency CSM meeting to discuss with the CSM how they fix the PR exposure these disclosures have caused.
It is my personal belief that during this meeting, CCP will discuss with the CSM how they could introduce balanced non-vanity items in the game that will keep the player base happy and yet increase income for CCP.
I believe we’ll be presented with a “CSM approved” list of non-vanity items after the weekend.
There are lot of things that CCP can offer through MT that will help alot of players, without un-balancing the game.
For example: they could offer a “booster” that once consumed your standings increases at double the normal rate. If they offer this at a decent price, every player who wants to run missions in order to get access to +8 standings for jump clones, or wants to come back from a -10 sec rating has the option of buying said booster at the cost of some $$ to help him reduce the ammount of grind they would normaly do. That would be a welcome addition to the existing gameplay that wouldn’t in any way un-balance the game. It simply provides a distinctive advantage for players that want to pay some extra cash.
I am quite certain such booster items will appear sooner or later in the game. Hell, I’d love to get an item that can allow me to re-map my skillpoints! I’d pay for such an item myself with cash, and as long as the item is tradeable and is offered at the right price, the ISK cost of such an item could also be something that anyone could buy using their ISK, not RL money. I believe such items can be easily balanced and assigned a price that will make sense for both paying and non-paying players.
The question is if they will offer items that affect PVP – either “golden ammo” or anything that gives an advantage in PvP scenarios (fleet fights, production times or costs, market PVP etc) for paying players over non-paying ones. CCP has stated that they will not offer such items. I hate being lied to – but listen to that interview (again link on my original post). EA said they would never offer such items, but when the revenue they made didn’t justify their investment they had to kneel and offer such items in their store.
So, if and when CCP chooses to do this, they way they implement this will be a make-or-break decision for EVE Online. If CCP listens to player feedback and especially CSM feedback, they have the choice to make such additions in the game in such a way that it won’t be an instant “I-Win-Button”. Finding the right balance is the trick.
I am not confident they can pull it off though… CSM is all talk and no real value as it stands today. I am not confident that CCP actually listens to players feedback. It remains to be seen how they will act on this issue…
edited for clarity – qp
#6 by Emisary Apollo on June 28, 2011 - 17:10
+1 Eve is a game (that I love!!) and CCP is a business. People need to embrace the reality of those two things! They’ve got to grow to survive and I think Incarna and MT will help.
#7 by De'Vadder on June 29, 2011 - 00:34
I do not get that logic but CCP themselves enjoy using it aswell. The premise seems to be, that somehow CCP will suddenly not make enough money out of Eve to keep it alive and updated is they not make more and more money.
But the facts are, they have 600 000+ active accounts, each paying around 12-15€ a month (depending on the way the subscribers pay). That is somewhere in the range of 8 000 000 € every month! Of course the maintenance of the hardware is not cheap. But a few tenthousand bucks can handle that. Maybe upgrade costs increases that to something like 100 000 a month for hardware costs. I have no idea how the tax situation is in CCPs case but even exagerated that will allways leave CCP with at least 5 million € per month to spend. If they would spend that on development of Eve it would be way more than enough.
The problem is, they instead spend it on Dust and WoD and whatnot. Because for some reason, they are not comfortable with having only one, highly profitable game.
So why do they NEED to grow for Eve to prosper? Eve would prosper A LOT more if its revenue would be spent on itself and CCP would concentrate on increasing, pleasing and keeping its community and players.
Instead they prefer to jeopardize the playerbase. And i am actually convinced that Eve would loose many many players if they added non-vanity items and continued to not add new content (Incarna is so unbelieveable low on new content that calling it Expansion is an insult).
#8 by De'Vadder on June 29, 2011 - 01:13
And just after writing that, i found http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1541173
Looks like i was right about the too high cost of WoD and Dust allthough i randomly doubled the number of subscribers
#9 by Mer on June 29, 2011 - 13:28
“don’t make a secondary market that you’ll need to have Aurum to pay for any of the above items”
PLEX will be used by someone for extending a subscription, somewhere down the line. So, PLEX does not increase CCP’s revenue, as it does not matter to CCP if player A or player B pays for the subscription of player B.
Aurum (as soon as they take away the option for PLEX conversion) is directly increasing CCP’s revenue.
#10 by Anabaric on September 30, 2011 - 09:59
The conversion from Plex to Aur will never be removed, this way the isk rich players will be able to destroy plex (one way conversion) and thus that is 1 month of game time that CCP does not have to honor. Plex are like a loan from the player base to CCP, its advance payment of game time.