EVE Online Is Selling Value Packs And Some Players Aren't Happy - MMORPG.com

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EVE Online Is Selling Value Packs And Some Players Aren't Happy - MMORPG.com

EVE Online has a long storied history of being, for the most part, completely player driven. This is especially true with the player economy, as each item and skill-point being sold in the game is meant to be completely player created. However, CCP Games is now, once again, selling value packs to get new capsuleers started, drawing ire from some of the game's more high-profile pilots.

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Tiller

Gotta make that money. They must've been watching all the $$ people blow on fake ships for SC. At least these are actually in the game.

I remember buying a game pack with nooby ships and other items for a second account I made years ago, how different is this?

WhiteLantern

"Don't make the game easier to get into, we're worried about long term health." Oxymoron?

Kyleran

Its always amusing to see the weird little hills some EVE vets choose to die on.

tawess

Yeah... It is selling skillpoints... But holy jeebus ... I think some people are forgetting that back in the day you could off-line farm skills...

The game need a positive churn and anyone just getting in the game and seeing how much skillpoints are needed to be "guud" would just piss the feck back out again. This will not really shift the balance and skills are only part of the system, no amount of skillpoints will save your ship from PCpirates... So the rest of the economy will live on.

itchmon

As a 150m SP player I don't mind the skill packs at all, there are a lot of people who would potentially be eve players if it weren't for the dopey long skill training times.

The packs seem engineered to get people through that initial skill slog and into the "content" of the game.

This is a good thing to this bitter vet.

Erillion

Rhoklaw said:

Up next, Eve Online goes F2P with cash shop, bwuahaha.

This is so 2016 ;-)


Have fun 

Seelinnikoi

Ah, Tencent. We missed you!

Utinni

Something changes in EvE, players get upset.

The endless cycle continues.

fearu

CCP has been selling Skill Points ever since they released SP extractors and injectors a few years ago. You just bought Plex and exchanged them directly for SP.

This is absolutely the slippery slope where that was leading and at this point who even cares. If the players wanted a "pure" game, they should have revolted back then, the cat is well out the bag now.

eolse

You can only buy 1 pack and it gives like 25% of 1 skill . 5 days of training . 250k skill points none of those packs are really great deals they use to have the one on . I mean they had that pack back a few years ago for 50 bucks you would get like 3 months omega time , 1500 plex 2 multiple charater training things and 5 skill extractors if you sold it all in game stuff you end up with like 10 million skill points once they put skill injectors in the game they were selling skill points..

Kyleran

Rhoklaw said:

Erillion said:

Rhoklaw said:

Up next, Eve Online goes F2P with cash shop, bwuahaha.

This is so 2016 ;-)


Have fun 

Yet here we are in 2020 and they are now selling skill points for money.

The vets aren't angry about the selling of skill points for money.

They are upset CCP is selling skill points directly which undercuts the veterans previous monopoly and limits their ability to "set the price" for them. 

Erillion

Rhoklaw said:

Erillion said:

Rhoklaw said:

Up next, Eve Online goes F2P with cash shop, bwuahaha.

This is so 2016 ;-)


Have fun 

Yet here we are in 2020 and they are now selling skill points for money.

They did this via Skill injectors for many years now.

Money --> Plex --> ISK --> Skill Injectors --> Skill Points

The new version just makes it faster and more direct.

Have fun

Spiider

Hello Chinese overlords. Farewell player driven universe. Profit is King, everything else is a slave to it.

Erillion

The " player driven universe" was on a downward spiral to insignificance.

Anything that brings flesh blood to EVE Online is welcome.

Have fun

Thane

tawess said:

Yeah... It is selling skillpoints... But holy jeebus ... I think some people are forgetting that back in the day you could off-line farm skills...



The game need a positive churn and anyone just getting in the game and seeing how much skillpoints are needed to be "guud" would just piss the feck back out again. This will not really shift the balance and skills are only part of the system, no amount of skillpoints will save your ship from PCpirates... So the rest of the economy will live on.

"offline farm skills"? seriously? you didn't actually reach a higher skill lvl, did you? wanted to work for 6 months ONLINE to complete it?

Panther2103

Rhoklaw said:

Erillion said:

Rhoklaw said:

Up next, Eve Online goes F2P with cash shop, bwuahaha.

This is so 2016 ;-)


Have fun 

Yet here we are in 2020 and they are now selling skill points for money.

They had been doing this for a while through plex. Also the game has been F2P (with limitations) for a while now too.

Rawiz

Glory years of this game are over definitely.

H0urg1ass

Honestly, as long as Skill Injectors are in the game, then it's hopelessly lost and purely Pay to Win.

I have two completely naturally trained characters that I have owned for nearly 20 years in this game.  I played before the skill queue, when you had to do alarm clock skill changes.  I used to show off my skill point total and it was a great point of pride in the game that I had reached the level I had.

Then they added in skill injectors and within a few weeks thousands of characters went from zero to hero around me.  People with month old characters suddenly had twice as many skill points as I had because they had the money to bypass me.

15 years of dedication to EVE Online and suddenly I was nothing special anymore.

That part has really annoyed me for a while now when I think of EVE.

Myrradah

Skill points let you get in a ship, but not be good at it. Sorry but jsut getting skill points doesnt mean you can beat someone in a 1v1 etc. I love killing newbs in blingy ships that they shouldnt be flying because they dont even understand the basics of the game.

Myrradah

Im still special with my SP level - but more importantly my born on date - Day 1 baby. Someone once told me I was number 54 or something. beta tester and still love the game.

Erillion

I do not care about my SP level. It says nothing about skill in EVE. Even after 15 years of EVE. I do not care either if others went from „zero to hero“. If they suck at playing, they can have all skill values at maximum and they  would still suck. They could fly a Titan and still die. Over and over. 

Have fun 

Kyleran

H0urg1ass said:

Honestly, as long as Skill Injectors are in the game, then it's hopelessly lost and purely Pay to Win.

I have two completely naturally trained characters that I have owned for nearly 20 years in this game.  I played before the skill queue, when you had to do alarm clock skill changes.  I used to show off my skill point total and it was a great point of pride in the game that I had reached the level I had.

Then they added in skill injectors and within a few weeks thousands of characters went from zero to hero around me.  People with month old characters suddenly had twice as many skill points as I had because they had the money to bypass me.

15 years of dedication to EVE Online and suddenly I was nothing special anymore.

That part has really annoyed me for a while now when I think of EVE.

You exaggerate.  Only a very small handful of players have ever spent the money to buy enough skill injectors to surpass your 250M plus skill points, and my guess is you never met or fought against one of them.

Even if you had, their extra skill points gave them no advantage against you unless you did an absolutely terrible job in your training plan.

I had 6 accounts with skill points ranging from 145M to 60M, and there was almost no ship I couldn't fit or fight at all level 5 skills except for a few of the largest supers.

Despite my SP totals,  my Kill board totals are poor, I am by no means skilled at fighting in all of those hulls, in fact I'm only somewhat competent in just a few of them.

I have met 6 month old players who trained naturally who had more kills than I did, despite our huge gap in SPs, they were just aggressive awesome killers who did nothing but fight. (Did my best to recruit them to my corp)

EVE is one of the few games where someone might try to pay fortune to buy ISK or skill points yet they never won anything important in doing so.

I lost a lot of fights in EVE, but not once did I ever think it was P2W which beat me.

Most often, it was the 6 to 1 odds against and my PVE focused ship fits which did me in.

hfztt

I feel that sometimes the whole P2W discussion gets a bit off track.

We all have different takes on what P2W is, but recently I have changed my own understanding a bit. I have changed to a more hardcore interpretation of the concept: For me P2W is any way I can use money to buy progression, content and/or cosmetics. Yup. Even cosmetics. With that hard core definition anything that is not a pure B2P without expansions(!) or a straight monthly fee is P2W.

So basicly everything today goes in my P2W bin.

And I am OK with that. P2W can be a fine and even fair model, if used correctly. As long as the game is up front about what it is doing, and keeping to those principles, I as a consumer can decide if I am OK with that. I respect that game developers have to make money, and P2W like mechanics are part of that tool box.

Warframe let you buy gear as well as earn it in game. Works for me, as the barrier to get it in game is not especially high.

The original and to some degree still existing mechanic in World of Tanks of Gold Ammo, was game breaking for me, but seemed ok for others.

EVE's Plex model worked as well. P2W in my book, sure, but in no way game breaking for me. Now straight up selling SP for money, is game breaking, but in very limited amounts or as one off's as in this case, that is fine by me too. But standard way of obtaining SP directly without the connection to in game activities by players, would be game breaking for me.

So, this I am fine with, but they are walking a fine line.
  

Kyleran

hfztt said:

I feel that sometimes the whole P2W discussion gets a bit off track.

We all have different takes on what P2W is, but recently I have changed my own understanding a bit. I have changed to a more hardcore interpretation of the concept: For me P2W is any way I can use money to buy progression, content and/or cosmetics. Yup. Even cosmetics. With that hard core definition anything that is not a pure B2P without expansions(!) or a straight monthly fee is P2W.

So basicly everything today goes in my P2W bin.

And I am OK with that. P2W can be a fine and even fair model, if used correctly. As long as the game is up front about what it is doing, and keeping to those principles, I as a consumer can decide if I am OK with that. I respect that game developers have to make money, and P2W like mechanics are part of that tool box.

Warframe let you buy gear as well as earn it in game. Works for me, as the barrier to get it in game is not especially high.

The original and to some degree still existing mechanic in World of Tanks of Gold Ammo, was game breaking for me, but seemed ok for others.

EVE's Plex model worked as well. P2W in my book, sure, but in no way game breaking for me. Now straight up selling SP for money, is game breaking, but in very limited amounts or as one off's as in this case, that is fine by me too. But standard way of obtaining SP directly without the connection to in game activities by players, would be game breaking for me.

So, this I am fine with, but they are walking a fine line.
  

Being a stickler for definition and usage of words or terms I would call your methodology a measurement of the degree of advantage one can purchase, hence Pay for Advantage (P4A) is more accurate.

P2W has been rendered effectively useless as everyone tries to apply the term to a genre where largely there is no real winning nor do many games truly include such obvious mechanics where paying is the only way to success. 

I've read about some mobile gatcha games which regularly stand up new servers so the players can literally spend their way to winning but that's a dirty world I don't care to visit.

hfztt

Kyleran said:

  

Being a stickler for definition and usage of words or terms I would call your methodology a measurement of the degree of advantage one can purchase, hence Pay for Advantage (P4A) is more accurate.

Yeah, I cannot really disagree. My main point is that being able to pay for an advantage is not always an inherently bad thing.

Unless of course one takes the standpoint that "advantage" is an inherently bad thing in itself. I do not, just to make that clear! But if one did, you would be back with the exact same definition issue as P2W has...