EVE Online Ragestorm

[Plazus]

With the release of their long awaited expansion, Incarna, the majority of the playerbase is in spitting rage. With the prelude to the walk in station feature (Captain's Quarters), CCP released a feature with a microtransaction market, called Noble Exchange (NeX). Unfortunately the prices on this market are extremely absurd and shady. You would need to spend about $68 worth of PLEXes to buy a monocle- which has absolutely no function in game other than to make your character portrait look spiffy. An in game t-shirt would cost you about $25. No one would ever see you with these nice vanity clothes unless they look at your character portrait. The walk in station feature is incomplete, and no one can really interact with eachother in the same station environment yet. Essentially Incarna is an incomplete expansion.

In addition to the absurd prices, there was a leak within the CCP company where the Dev Teams discussed adding additional items that would gain players an advantage if they spent real money on it. Like having an uber spaceship that beats all other ones in game if you are willing to pay real money for it. CCP has also lied to their playerbase because several years ago, they promised the community never to implement a mircrotransaction feature to the game. Their promise was broken.

There are also reports of bad communication within the CCP company. A website was posted on their forums with anonymous comments from various CCP employees. They talk about the Pros and Cons with working in the company. All of these comments illustrate the same problems and that is within upper management. CCP appears to be imploding from within and the EVE Online community is feeling the effects from in the game.

Looks like another large MMO might be coming to a close, that is if CCP can't get their problems fixed.

[Beefcake]

The other day I logged in and looked at buying a military uniform for my character off the system. The jacket alone would cost $16, plus the pants and boots would be $50+ USD yet they're just cosmetic things. Incredibly absurd, however, they refuse to add a system that would allow me to re-sculpt my character which I would pay for. (Although I wouldn't pay much for it.)

I've played games that went down the "Power Up Item Mall" road and let me tell you it doesn't end well. I remember a player in VCO who spent $10,000 USD in one month buying power-ups off the Item Mall, his character was so powerful that he could take on 100+ normal players with ease and not even get scratched. After seeing that I quit and never looked back. If EVE goes the same way I'll just pack up and move on, I hear Star Wars the Old Republic is due out soon.

[Tac]

In other news..

SOE is closing down Star Wars Galaxies. Shouldve happened years ago after the NGE patch.

[kilo2]

With the release of their long awaited expansion, Incarna, the majority of the playerbase is in spitting rage. With the prelude to the walk in station feature (Captain's Quarters), CCP released a feature with a microtransaction market, called Noble Exchange (NeX). Unfortunately the prices on this market are extremely absurd and shady. You would need to spend about $68 worth of PLEXes to buy a monocle- which has absolutely no function in game other than to make your character portrait look spiffy. An in game t-shirt would cost you about $25. No one would ever see you with these nice vanity clothes unless they look at your character portrait. The walk in station feature is incomplete, and no one can really interact with eachother in the same station environment yet. Essentially Incarna is an incomplete expansion.

In addition to the absurd prices, there was a leak within the CCP company where the Dev Teams discussed adding additional items that would gain players an advantage if they spent real money on it. Like having an uber spaceship that beats all other ones in game if you are willing to pay real money for it. CCP has also lied to their playerbase because several years ago, they promised the community never to implement a mircrotransaction feature to the game. Their promise was broken.

There are also reports of bad communication within the CCP company. A website was posted on their forums with anonymous comments from various CCP employees. They talk about the Pros and Cons with working in the company. All of these comments illustrate the same problems and that is within upper management. CCP appears to be imploding from within and the EVE Online community is feeling the effects from in the game.

Looks like another large MMO might be coming to a close, that is if CCP can't get their problems fixed.

I wondered how long it would take to show up here. They had a protest in Jita with 2500+ ships, so many they had to close jita off for a while. People were killing concord and some of the caldari navy. Yeah I don't think having ship upgrades and things like that for sale is good. It becomes more about how much money your willing to spend to make uber ships.

[Stoney]

For me, I don't mind someone in game paying for something that I have access to, but if the best ships and kit are only available from the Nex Store, and cost real money, I'll quit playing.  I mean, hell, if their having that hard of a time monetizing the game, I'd be willing to pay another $5/month in exchange for them to keep improving the game content.  I know subscriptions have sort plateaued over the last 6 months--I wonder how much influence that has on the situation.

I can see the "crawl, walk, run" approach with the WIS stuff.  I don't like that its basically a bug test of the engine that will drive their Vampire game, but...  And, I see some value in the WIS stuff long-term.  I do not like the CQ stuff at all though.  My graphics card went ballistic when it was enabled, and the graphics were laggy and stuttered.  FR dropped into the single digits.  And, they pretty much penalize you for turning it off by giving you that static wallpaper to look at. 

I'm not butt hurt like all the really vocal types, but I am concerned about the MT issue.  I know a lot of games in the industry are going there, but I don't like it at all.  Just feels like the players with access to Mom and Dad's plastic have an advantage or something.

Be interesting to get HTC's perspective on the industry and this trend (on anyone else in the industry)

[narsus]

Yeah EVE has been going down a bad road for a long while. I stopped playing for several reasons...the meta gaming has been aweful.
Lag in large battles terrible, even medium scale depending on system.

Sadly the game is too much like work, and less like fun. Very cool concept but many improvements need to be made before I would ever go
back.

[Ack-Ack]

I'm not butt hurt like all the really vocal types, but I am concerned about the MT issue.  I know a lot of games in the industry are going there, but I don't like it at all.  Just feels like the players with access to Mom and Dad's plastic have an advantage or something.

Be interesting to get HTC's perspective on the industry and this trend (on anyone else in the industry)

Microtransactions are here to stay whether we like it or not.  The question is whether or not the trend will lead to the majority of MMOs being released as F2P or hybrid (combination of subscription and F2P business model) business model like DDO or Lord of the Rings Online.  It is also being used by some MMO companies as a last resort measure to keep their game and company in business like what Cryptic just did with Champions Online and soon with Star Trek Online.

The companies that will be successful with a microtransaction business model (whether or not they remain a subscription based business model, become a F2P/hybrid business model) is how well they incorporate the microtransactions.  A poorly laid out microtransaction business model could lead the customer to feel that the company is fleecing them by making the customer purchase items in the item mall to remain competitive with the other players, which is the case in some games like Battlefield Heros and most Asian F2P games.  A well thought out and implemented microtransaction model is one like the one Turbine has come up with for their two MMOs (Dungeon and Dragons Online and Lords of the Rings Online), where the items you can buy can also be attained through in game if you took the time to grind for the items, items that open up new areas or quests, character and inventory slots, etc.  Turbine has proved this type of microtransaction model can succeed in the western market and I'm willing to bet that more western MMO companies that want a successful way to gather extra revenue will follow Turbine's example and go to a hybrid model.

ack-ack

[Stoney]

Ack-Ack,

Why not just raise the price of a subscription?  I've been playing EvE Online for just over 3 years now, and we're still at $15 / month.  At a 3% rate of inflation, that would mean I should be paying around $16.50 now after 3 years.

[Plazus]

In my personal opinion, the coveted monocle available on the NEX in EVE isn't even worth $5. I say this because the cosmetic items on the NEX has absolutely no function in game whatsoever. Since it has no function, and since no one in game can actually see your monocle (unless they look at your portrait), it greatly reduces its monetary value. I feel very sorry for those who spent their money on something completely worthless. They basically got scammed by CCP.

In fact, nothing in their NEX is what you would call a MICROtransaction. There is nothing MICRO about it. CCP failed at modeling an MT system that works. They seriously need to lower their prices by several magnitudes.

As for raising the price of monthly subscription, I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. I am quite disappointed that CCP released a half-arsed expansion with an MT feature that isn't really MT. The time spent making this MT feature was time wasted, as it could have been spent on expanding the WIS feature, or fixing bugs, or balancing the game.

[Ack-Ack]

Ack-Ack,

Why not just raise the price of a subscription?  I've been playing EvE Online for just over 3 years now, and we're still at $15 / month.  At a 3% rate of inflation, that would mean I should be paying around $16.50 now after 3 years.

That would cause a large number of customer to cancel their subscriptions because they'll start to feel they're being ripped off, especially during these hard economic times.  The only time it could potentially be successful is the developers were also offering something to justify paying an increased price, otherwise you can potentially leave the customer with the impression the price increase was due to a desperate measure in trying to raise capital to keep the game afloat, leading to customers thinking the game or company is in financial trouble.

Turbine really hit it out of the ballpark with their hybrid model.  When they first introduced it with Dungeon and Dragons Online, people were sceptical that Turbine could save DDO.  Within a year, DDO became profitable and a big money maker for Turbine, so much so that subscriptions increased by hundreds of thousands.  Later analysis showed that customers that were playing on free accounts were actually spending more money per month in the item mall than what they would be paying if they had a subscription.  The DDO free account subscriber was spending on average $45 a month in the DDO item mall, while the VIP members were spending far less since they get a monthly allotment of item mall currency with their subscription that is enough to purchase one top tier item in the item mall. 

It's been so successful for Turbine that it's increased the life of DDO and Turbine has now introduced this business model with Lord of the Rings Online and their seeing similiar gains with LoTRO as well.  Other companies have also started to follow with their own similiar hybrid model, like SOE with EQ2 and Funcom with Age of Conan.

ack-ack

[Innominate]

CCP really is raising the bar for trashing a game in record time.  The only competition seems to be SWG: NGE. 

For a better rundown of what's going on, or a guide on how to murder your game overnight: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/26/eve-evolved-the-day-that-eve-online-died/

[Reschke]

Well glad I bailed on the game after a month. I saw some of the things on the future of the game since I was there and took a long look at the Incarna portions they were releasing for testing and a bunch of things were just not adding up for me. So I decided to keep my $18 a month that I was going to be charged on my $15/month subscription and use it other places.

[bozon]

I can't see why you are complaining about the prices of useless items - don't like it, dont buy them, they are useless anyhow. When games start selling items that give an advantage in the game and for PvP it means that they quickly become required, then is the time to bail out.

[Ghosth]

Personally the price of a Monocle doesn't effect me much, I really don't care what my character looks like.
I won't buy one whatever the price.

I also really don't care about walking halls in stations. So Incarna to me was pretty much a bust.

Eve overall I've been enjoying for the last 2 months. But I'm not there for the combat.

To me the bigger issues are

Where is CCP headed with their Microtransaction setup?
The second they release pay to win you will have a real revolt.

CQ side of Incarna seems to have adversely effected a large number of eve players on older slower hardware.
They've been able to run 2 clients on the same laptop, etc, and can no longer do so.

Some AMD systems have been running incredibly hot, same for some ATI video cards.


Me I'm fine for now, still get a solid 60 fps in space, but walking in station pulls me down to 20.

[lazydog]

well like bozon said don' like it don't buy it. just give me something to shoot at and I'm happy. I've been in fights with over 200 in the same system with a lot of lag and needing to turn off all the affects but since the update i see very little and i can leave all the affects on. i could care less about how much things cost but i do have a problem with someone having an advantage from buying mods .but after all the bull CCP has taken i don't think that will happen.