It's not available yet, but as far as I understand, the discussion with the CSM ended with "that's stupid, but I suppose if it's just for a little bit because you aren't ready yet everything won't melt down". The feedback from the CSM members seems to be that most of their issues raised were either ignored, their questions weren't even answered, or they were heavily pushed to take other positions.
Did you read any of the rest of the discussions here, or just drop in to post in a hurry?
You can either read the several other discussions here where it's been explained to people that said that how there was a missing part to their understanding, or you can read the thread on the forums where that's very clearly explained.
The quick tl;dr: What the player buys with real world money is an in-game item called a PLEX, which is then put on the player market, so that other players can buy it with in-game currency. That in-game item is then used by the purchaser to extend their game time, thus removing it from circulation.
The buyer gets isk, the seller gets game time, and the market stays stable. Items purchased by the PLEX-seller are items that were produced by players, and that isk goes to those players - standard economics.
That claim was by Zinfandel on the ATIX stream.
However, they're not delivering that. They're delivering "pay Aurum, receive Ishukone Scorpion".
Well, there's some milking involved, assuming that the internal plans for game-changing items for real money come to fruition.
Eve is full PvP in a way that is different from almost every other MMO out there, and if an item or ship is better at its job than another, it will be used nearly to the exclusion of all others, and destroyed in great amounts as well.
Either the cash store ships/modules are better than the player-produced ones, and they'll be used instead of them, or they're equal or worse, and they won't be used in any noticeable amounts, no matter the size of the additional RL cost, because winning is what matters. CCP will see no return on their development cost, and they will be forced to improve the items until they are used.
Carebears in hi-sec may buy one of the items, but they won't be destroyed, and thus there won't be any continuing demand.
Yes, Eve is full PvP, and items (except for the character items from the new cash shop and rigs/implants) have a chance to drop when a player's ship is destroyed.
Even the rigs and implants that don't drop are destroyed when the ship is destroyed and the player is podkilled.
This destruction is part of what drives Eve's huge economy.
Yes, CCP could do that, at the cost of exactly this kind of uproar.
You may have noticed that the economist's reports have been fact-checked by the players each time they come out, often with a deeper understanding than those that have database access have?
How long did it take the players to figure out that technetium was going to be the bottleneck, and start strategic moves for tech moons?
Eve already has a subscription. Some items are now available for RL cash in a way that bypasses the (extraordinarily deep and complex) player economy. Currently, those are vanity and decorative items only, though their one ship type for sale so far is now expected to be deployed into the game without requiring player-manufactured components. CCP has something of a history of putting half-finished features into place, then not fixing major issues for years.
The information that has the serious players raging is the leaked internal plan (voiced by the Lead Designer, no less) to expand the real-money transactions to items that *do* affect gameplay while bypassing the player economy, on top of the subscription cost.
In fact, it's pretty much a canonical example of "News for Nerds".
"Stuff That Matters" is debatable, of course.
That's the irony - Eve has always been all about the externalities and unintended consequences, though still within the game.
As a sandbox where people can do some very bad things, it shows quite well what people will do given free rein. They'll do the same thing here. The long-term players can see it, and this particular change breaks the sandbox.
Yes, and the moment something is better in a PvP game, it will become the standard.
Can't do F2P and still have offline training, though.
Eve will have to be subscription +pay for items to still exist as Eve without a complete change in structure.
Perhaps this is why they're running off the older players now? Not so ideal to have a 100M+ SP character "modified" to fit into a new character skill design.
That's their prediction, yes. I'm sure that Joseph Gallo, fresh from 14 years at Citigroup, has all sorts of Powerpoint presentations that show exactly that when the VCs meet to discuss the RoI.
The question here is twofold:
1. Will the switch from devoted Eve players to casual gamers and ingame transactions actually provide this return, or will it actually be much less? Casual gamers may well be driven away by Eve before CCP can simplify it enough to hold them. CCP has repeatedly failed to execute on their big plans in the past.
2. Can Eve still be the "golden goose" that will fund the development of DUST and the WoD MMO as the subscriber base drops? They need to carry enough Eve subscribers for revenue through the upcoming hard times, or CCP Atlanta, Newcastle, and Shanghai are done for.
You're right. Their great experiment is in progress. The players that have been devoted to Eve for years are in the process of leaving now.
If they succeed, Eve/DUST may gain many casual players. Farmville has a huge number of players, and Zynga's making plenty of money. It won't be the Eve that mattered anymore, though.
Even if the experiment fails, the game will still be around. SWG was around for 6 years after the NGE. In fact, it was just announced a couple of days ago that it was finally having the plug pulled. Did you know it was still running?
The uproar isn't even in the same ballpark as last time. This is far bigger than t20, and more people that normally disagree with one another are united against this. Mittens says Goons are done if it happens, *and* PL is banning recruiting of Aurum users. Ex-BoB/IT players are against it, and even the Russians are upset.
This is bad for everyone but the casual player - the Farmville/F2P player that stays for an average of 7 months.
Eve is not a casual game. This change is trying to make it a casual game, and there are better casual games out there already. It's moving Eve from a niche where it has no competition (except possibly Perpetuum, and that has a way to go) into direct competition with the giants of the industry.
CCP is cool and all, and it's fun to laugh at Oveur's drunken antics and remember when the devs still played their game in 0.0. The basic idea of Eve is incredible . However, they're not actually that good at what they do or at executing those ideas, to be brutally honest. They will fail badly when put up against the big guys.
Honestly, most players would grumble, but be okay with, an increase in the subscription fee, as long as it came along with more focus on Eve instead of WoD and DUST.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn
