Regardless of whose right or wrong, Ms Freak definitely gets a swath of internet points for clear cutting to a ton of issues currently going on in EVE Online. Being an outsider myself, I had mostly just agreed with Tobold that the delivery of many of these items was what made it so big of a list of problems. This list makes it seem a lot more real than I had suspected.
There are rumors and filings that CCP is going through some serious growing pains regarding cash flow and management. The cash flow issue is to be expected at the very least since they are working on three MMOs, only one of which is making money. (I did find it funny that Ms Freak in the list says that CCP can do whatever they like with regard to microtransactions for Dust 514 and World of Darkness.)
Again as an outsider, I am not opposed to a $70 appearance item, and I do think it is a little sensational that it’s being used as the poster child for all that is wrong in EVE. Hopefully for all those not really understanding what has been going on as of late, these links might help clear the air.
–Ravious
KTR needs an EVE player to report about that. Tobold’s take on EVE was always that of someone who never really played or liked the game, without making a judgement on his outside evaluation.
We are always looking for bright new writers, especially for games like WoW and EVE. :)
@Longsac This fellow is a consumate professional on the subject! http://mmoreporter.com/author/doyce/
I think all the rest of the anger would have been minimal if not for Fearless, that focused the frustration and brought the anger to a head.
Tobold had a good point that I think a lot of players were missing.
The PLEX itself wasn’t really a microtransaction. It was more of an advance payment to CCP.
There was a sense of integrity with PLEX. I could buy it knowing without a doubt that it was going to be used as subscription time for EvE. I am paying a company I have faith in and keeping another person in the game, maintaining the community I enjoy.
The gripe I have here is that CCP knew that the PLEX was an advance payment. They poorly managed the money. Seeing that initial boost of income from PLEX turned CCP into a teenager that just got their first credit card.
Instead of fixing the problem internally and properly budgeting the cash, they turn back to the players with a clever ploy to make us destroy the PLEX, thereby paying off the credit card bill.
This thoroughly ruins the integrity of the PLEX.
I cannot buy a PLEX with peace of mind knowing that I am keeping my community together.
Now the codes that I buy could be used to push the game in a developmental direction I don’t agree with.
There were a few problems with CCP’s management of events leading up until riots of the last weeks.
First was the degree of player power. As someone who grew up playing games mainly as sports in a school setting where strict teachers were the referees it astonishes me how little MMO companies want authority over their games’ rules. Nevertheless this has been the pattern in a great number of games and CCP more than most with the extraordinary manifesto they announced when creating the CSM, a player council that would be a partner in the game’s development.
So the players felt it was THEIR game, not CCP’s.
A related aspect to this issue was that CCP has tried to be on the players’ level rather than a remote authority. Many former players have been recruited to staff, many former staff still play and are active in the community. CCP staff sang a rap song HTFU to us last year (which I rather enjoyed) and have co-opted the Northern Coalition slogan Best Friends Forever for their development team. It’s too close, you can’t be both peers and in charge with any grace.
Next is the economic simulation. Eve has an inward-looking complex economy which plexes do not quite disrupt. However the cash shop breaks the fourth wall. It’s the developers peering out from behind the spell of immersion that the game creates and saying “Want to buy something cool?” It breaks immersion in a game where many players spend weeks and weeks perfecting their spreadsheets to manipulate virtual trends in a make-believe economy.
The last issue is the sense the player base has that the main thrust of the development effort is to something we see as superfluous fluff – walking in stations. It’s like someone improving chess by developing a cosmetic design feature for your Queen – it misses the point of the game. Of course Eve aims to be a world not just a game and a virtual world is more what these MMOs intended to be. So it’s certainly arguable that walking in stations is a good feature, it’s just one that many of us are underwhelmed by and since we feel its OUR game not CCP’s = powderkeg, lit recently by some rather greedy decisions.
Well, why not? Most EVE players I know are pretty libertarian, and if a company wants to release a game with pay-to-win microtransactions, go ahead – as long as they’re honest and upfront about it, anyone who doesn’t like that idea just won’t play it. Building it in from the get-go is vastly different from saying “microtransactions are for vanity items only,” then pushing a memo saying “what if we sold players better ammo on NeX?”
Most EVE players I know react to in-game betrayal with violence and a grudge that never goes away.
I know, but in the context of the thread it feels more like ‘f, your other games; we’re protecting EVE.’
The monacle is just the cherry on top of the shit sunday. Cash shop issues aside, the tact with which CCP is handling this is similar to, if not even more arrogant then, gPotatoe/Allods cash shop bungling at release. At least this is what I get from Ms Freaks well worded forum post. I don’t even play the game, but from the threads I’ve read over the years, this seems a total about-face from the respect most players pay to CCP and Eve in general. Gamers are forgiving though if issues are addressed promptly and devs would be smart to realize that simple fact.
Well, its more appropriate to charge whatever they want on Dust514 and World of Darkness because they are new games and people will play those games knowing that there are high prices.
When this all started breaking I thought CCP was nuts.
Now I actually think its clever, if they are going where I think they are going. I think in second life you can buy clothes from users for real world money. I know thats how the original Sims worked.
The 100 bucks for a business license seems really good then, if you can sell *in game* items this way CCP also gets a cut, that EA/Maxis whatever didnt get from people charging for Sims plugins.
We know that space stations are coming, and people are supposed to have bars and shops. Now you have a storefront inside the game where you can sell items for real world money. Thats even better.
CCP has also set the bar, by saying, look, people… some people… will pay 70 bucks for a dinky monocle. If you design a nice shirt and charge 70 bucks, and manage to sell just two of them, you’ve covered the cost of the license and have some left over.
They could also, potentially, get real world designers to make clothes. If they let Target sell their stuff, why not.
And I would feel better about that than giving 70 bucks to ccp anyway.