[Eve] Microtransactions

Gneez

What's this I'm reading about microtransactions? I took a brief glimpse at eve-o last night and the forum was in it's usual state of moanyness but everyone was moaning about MT's.

Apparently now you can buy GTC, switch it into plex, then trade plex in for MT currency? and buy special issue scorpions with it or something? looks like it's the start of the MT culture in eve, I bet you a year or two from now they'll be selling skillpoints and ships with base 60% resists for cash.

Can't say I regret leaving eve, don't miss it at all and by the sound of things it just keeps going more and more downhill.

bizmark

They are selling ****ty stuff like skins for scorpions and hats

Gneez

I want an eve hat

Mantel

Might take awhile but I can't see them selling in-game items that are of any use until well after Dust 514 takes off for them, that will be their test bed for useful items traded for money. MT in eve itself will be limited to cosmetic items, at least for the moment. It's bound to change though, because they've got them a Bizdev team! Yay! Time to make some crazy surprise descisions that will anger the customer base and don't make much sense at all.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=901

Monetizing 3rd Party Apps

They where even stupid enough to put "Cha-Ching" in as one of the bullet points. They put too much on the "some people will need to pay us" instead of "If you make 3rd party apps and charge for them we won't sue you if you give us some money"

witless1

Yeah I thought the MT for items stuff was a way for Dust players to get a kick start in the economy of the game or buy some weapons without requiring the backing of an EVE player. Most likely a tester for bringing it in on a larger scale. Any premium DLC or MT in general that can unbalance a game turns off gamers. Battlefield 3 is getting a lot of heated press by their announcement of exclusive weapons for people who buy a certain version of the game. One of the weapons involves a flash suppressor for a sniper rifle which will give an insane advantage to snipers. I can't see CCP making the MT purchased weapons over powered or game breaking, they probably will be available for ISK within the game anyway.

D

Gneez, if you haven't looked back, what is keeping you occupied?

Gneez

D wrote: »

Gneez, if you haven't looked back, what is keeping you occupied?

Real life! (and world of tanks) I don't really miss eve except maybe some of the people I flew with sometimes, but am still in touch with them, read the eve-o forums maybe once a week at a glance, but after 5 years in game even pvp became repetitive, factor in the huge amount of time needed to roam and even have a chance at a good fight then one can quickly become jaded of it despite all the freedom you have.

I would play again if it was free2play though, seeing as bitter-old-vets like me just use it 99% of the time for chatting anyway.

Gneez

Anyone else following the 70 page threadnought? seen this posted was pretty interesting, its microtransactions all the way in the future!

sionnach

Gneez wrote: »

Anyone else following the 70 page threadnought? seen this posted was pretty interesting, its microtransactions all the way in the future!

Yup I've been trying to keep up with all the outrage but there's so much It's impossible to follow it all.

My thoughts two days after the initial "everything about this is ****" kneejerk response:

CCP is a business, of course they want to make more money and of course they want to get in new players, but they're completely ignoring their current player base. The clusterfudge triggered by incarna will hopefully be a wake-up call for them.

Walking in stations to me is an embarrassment, it's just your neocom turned into a poorly lit shed. Some people like it? Fine, if that's your thing have fun with it, but don't cripple functionality for the rest of us because 2% of capsuleers like to walk slowly to a bounty screen.

I like to fly spaceships, when an expansion comes I want to have more things to do in new spaceships.
Over the last two years the best thing to happen in eve for me was the changes to faction ships. All of a sudden we had lots of either new toys or better toys to play with. That just required slapping a new paint job on a few ships and changing around some numbers on others.

It's really annoying to think about how much was accomplished with so little in that change, and how pathetically little has been accomplished with so much in incarna. Imagine how much better eve could be if all that effort was channeled into what the players wanted instead of a fricking 400m isk skirt.

tl;dr:
CCP i want this:


stop giving me this:

bizmark

I would say ccp has jumped the shark but i dont think the fonz could afford the 9 million plex's to pay for the skis , jacket , hair and such

Mantel

bizmark wrote: »

I would say ccp has jumped the shark but i dont think the fonz could afford the 9 million plex's to pay for the skis , jacket , hair and such

I think they still have one more trick up their sleeves that will leave everyone in the industry with heads exploding from disbelive.

That in-house mag they put out was pretty ****ty as well tbh.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BzXIJ_oa17nNZTEyMGYwYTgtODU2MC00NmEwLTk3ZWUtNjE5MGI1NDQ4NWIw&hl=en_US&authkey=CKTK0LgE&pli=1

"Greed is good"

Gneez

They are gonna give EvE players a Pyrrhic victory by half heartedly apologising and promising to make everything right, people will calm down, being easily mollified with short attention spans, then six months down the line they'll sneak their new business model through with as little fanfare as possible, bit by bit, piece by piece until eventually you'll be able to buy SP and ships with cash, It'll start out with Aurum for fitting spots, or for Sec gain or for standings change, then it'll slowly morph into aurum for Ships and SP. Hving been through 5 years of poorly handled disaster after poorly handled disaster with CCP i can tell you all the outrage won't mean a damn thing, they'll mollify the playerbase and sludge forward regardless.

Mantel

If eve is to go free to play then they need to replace their Plex backbone. If they hadn't gone with the micro-plex idea they might have been able to pull it off and just started with vanity items.

Either way this - http://eve.beyondreality.se/NeXCQResponse.html is a decent response to CCP.

Gneez

The Dev Blog is mind blowingly bad

Coriolanus

They constantly surprise me with how fúcking awful they are at communicating. They need to hire a PR firm and keep the devs away from the blogposts for a while.

VinLieger

So disgusted with CCP right now. I applied for a summer internship this year, sooo glad i didnt get it now that ive a better idea of how they operate. Im sure it would have been a good experience and looked great on a cv but i dont think id ever feel clean after working for them now i know what they think of their customers

R0ot

VinLieger wrote: »

So disgusted with CCP right now. I applied for a summer internship this year, sooo glad i didnt get it now that ive a better idea of how they operate. Im sure it would have been a good experience and looked great on a cv but i dont think id ever feel clean after working for them now i know what they think of their customers

I'd say their NetOps team would be awesome to work for.

bizmark

Was shocked at how bad that dev blog was iv seen a lot of **** with ccp over the years but this is a whole new level of stupid

Gneez

Nevore wrote: »

They constantly surprise me with how fúcking awful they are at communicating. They need to hire a PR firm and keep the devs away from the blogposts for a while.

That was the PR firm, they need to let the Devs do the communicating and do away with poorly done BizDev Pr crap like that, they actually do have a PR team hired, this is the kind of stuff that it puts out. When Tom B and Oveur and the other high up devs would post they would post well and deal with issues and address problems, these days it's just regurgitated crap like that dev blog.

edit: not sure why I'm so worked up about this, I quit 6 months ago!

Gneez

Not sure if legit, however . . . .

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:16:54 -0400
To: riverini@gmail.com
Subject: ccp ceo global msg sent today
From: evewatch@hush.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=.UTF-8.
Message-Id: <20110623221654.CF1E76F438@smtp.hushmail.com>

sent by hilmar to ccp global list-

(strt)

We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldnât be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

(end)

bizmark

I dont even know any more

sionnach

The ccp response threadnought has now reached an impressive 250 pages and is still going strong. For comparison, the T20 thread barely broke 100. Unfortunately if the Hilmar email is legit, it's having absolutely no effect.

Mantel

Navigator deleted the thread that contained the email. Stupid move, it's just reinforced the legitimacy of the email.

CCP Navigator wrote:

Guys and girls,

The forum rules are quite explicit and our job, on the Community team, is to enforce those rules. Rule number nine states:

'Private communication between the Game Masters, Eve Team members, moderators and administrators of the forum and the forum users is not to be made public on these forums or by any other venue. You are not permitted to publicize any private correspondence (including petitions) received from any of the aforementioned.'

The rules are clear, posting any private communication from any member of CCP is not permitted on ths forums.

Navigator

A new meme is born

sionnach

/me investigates "perpetuum"

VinLieger

sionnach wrote: »

The ccp response threadnought has now reached an impressive 250 pages and is still going strong. For comparison, the T20 thread barely broke 100. Unfortunately if the Hilmar email is legit, it's having absolutely no effect.

Having an effect on what? did you read it? its even more inflammatory and sparked even more anger

sionnach

By effect I meant effect on CCP, not the community. Hilmar's email proves they're still shoving their fingers in their ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA"

Djanzer

As a newish player in eve terms (2 years or so) at least compared to some of you guys, have to say really fed up with the direction eve is going.
The leaked pdf and mail are the icing on the cake after two fairly mundane expansions where we basically got a new 'quest' system and a store to buy 'gear'. Not the eve I signed up for...


Downloading perpetuum as I type this.. yay for internet robots

Mantel

sionnach wrote: »

/me investigates "perpetuum"

Some aspects are quite like eve I've heard. I ment to try the trial ages ago but it required you to link your facebook account or some crap like that. I've heard that's not needed anymore though.

Mantel

Sorry for another picture but someone just opened a door in my mind!

$60 Monocles... a mocking dev blog
Monocles, mocking
Monocles...




CCP is Lulzsec! Just wait for the hats, half-full wine glasses and comical mustaches to appear in the Nex store.

Gneez

they're writing a new devblog for you plebian scum

Mantel

Gneez wrote: »

they're writing a new devblog for you plebian scum

With 100% more love.

Gneez

Well the CSM meeting has gone as expected so far, CSM are shaping up to be CCP's apologists in the matter, from a thread on eve-o

The Peace Talks - Day One
The first day of the great Incarna Peace Talks is over. I will not attempt to go into incredibly great detail in this posting; I just want to give a broad overview and offer some impressions. To be honest, I'm exhausted and only have a few minutes before dinner.

I want to start by saying that everyone at CCP, and in particular CCP Zulu, was very open and frank about their opinions, and provided any information CSM requested. This was very useful.

In the morning, we discussed issues regarding the rollout of Incarna and the Captain's Quarters. Just about everything people have been *****ing about and then some was discussed in detail -- melting video cards, multiboxing, lighting, the death of ship spinning, just to name a few.

CCP started this meeting by saying something incredibly smart. It gave me hope that the entire summit would be a success, but you will have to wait to find out what it was. Suffer, *****es.

Then, after lunch, we spent over 3 hours discussing the Noble Exchange rollout and virtual goods pricing. This was a very passionate session, to say the least.

CSM got a complete rundown on the overall CCP vanity goods strategy, and it became obvious how a series of mistakes and communications breakdowns -- both internal at CCP, to CSM, and in their messaging to you (and lack thereof) -- resulted in the NEX rollout debacle.

There should be a devblog coming out in the very near future that explains CCP's strategy, puts things into context, and hopefully starts healing this self-inflicted wound. Anyone can shoot themselves in the foot, or the ass, but in this case CCP managed to do both with one shot, which takes real skill.

The day ended with some work-in-progress demos of the other CQs and an establishment. Some nice work, and the Gallente CQ is the best CQ IMHO.

Tomorrow, we will tackle the big question: Does CCP have plans to release game-affecting virtual goods (aka "gold ammo")?

Suggestion of the day: adding a "Just Say NO to Virtual Goods" t-shirt to the Noble Exchange, priced higher than a monocle. Is CCP fearless enough to do it?

End of quote.

UPDATE
Apparently ship spinning / the old hangar is never coming back. Trebor_CSM tweeted about that, I was about to copy that tweet but apparently he removed it (!!) I am not making this up.

The first reply in the thread sums it up nicely.

TL;DR

CCP: It was all just a breakdown of communication: here's a dev blog for the plebs
Trebor: Suffer, *****es.

Summary: Yawn.

I honestly don't see a point to the CSM. Way I understood it, it was about feeding info to CCP re: game changes so they could get **** done for us in expansions. Which always seemed to be carping on about obvious **** they never had any interest in addressing because - as we later found out - polished content etc etc etc.

Since then, what's the point? Are the CSM just cheaper than hiring a PR firm? Guess they are.

Venom

Does the Eve online playerbase even consider the CSM to be anything apart from CCP apologists?

Any MMO Iv ever played that had a player council was always nothing more than a bunch of developer arselickers.