CCP Misses the 'Micro' in Microtransactions

        The inital round of Incarna's Noble Exchange does not look promising. Remember last post when I said I buy virtual clothing in Second Life? Well let's take a look at that for a moment.

        Players create SL content and sell it for game currency - Linden Dollars. The basic exchange rate is 250 Lindens per US Dollar, though it varies based on demand, as RMT is sanctioned and there is a semi-open-market currency exchange managed by Linden Labs. Players define their own prices for their content. Going rates for typical items of clothing range from free (for benevolent sellers) to L$500 for very nice items of clothing. Ornately detailed items of clothing can possibly go up to a thousand, and good avatar skins go for a couple thousand apiece, as they are complicated to design and look lifelike. Convert to USD and we have $2 for great items of clothing, $4 for superb pieces of clothing, and $8 for a really good skin. Cheap enough for people to afford easily, right?

Now we look at CCP's initial prices. This is taken from EVENews24:

Exchange Rate: 3500 AUR = 1 PLEX = $17.50 = 400 mil isk at Jita (New Eden main trade hub).

- Looking Glass Ocular implant – 12k AUR -> 3.5 PLEX -> $61.25 ->1.4 Bil ISK

- Men’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Shirt – 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> $16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK

- Women’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Blouse – 3.2K AUR -> .91 PLEX -> $16.00 -> 364 Mil ISK

- Men’s ‘Comando’ Pants – 3k AUR -> .85 PLEX -> $15 -> 340 Mil ISK

- Women “Impress” Skirt – 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> $16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK

- Women’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Blouse P – 4.4k AUR -> 1.25 PLEX -> $22.00 -> 504 Mil ISK

- Men’s ‘Precision’ Boots – 1k AUR -> 0.28 PLEX -> $5.00 -> 112 Mil ISK

- Women’s ‘Greave’ Knee-Boots – 2.4K AUR -> 0.68 PLEX -> $12.00 -> 272 Mil ISK

        About the only thing close to being competitively priced in Aurum is the Men's Boots at $5, and even that is very pricey by SL standards - L$1250 can more intelligently buy several full outfits.

        Now considering many people are very spacepoor, this seems like a big slap in their faces. Many new pilots I talk to in my corporation struggle to afford a battlecruiser, let alone items that are the price of one or two fully-fit battleships. Don't get me started about how ridiculous that monocle is...

        Now there is a rumor on EVENews24 that CCP is looking for more ways to incorporate microtransactions. A supposedly leaked memo details the areas CCP is considering, such as items, ammunition, ships, faction standings, and lots of aspects of DUST, since the console folks pay a one-time fee instead of a subscription. This memo also voices the desire for recurring microtransactions, as once a piece of clothing is bought, you don't need to buy it again. Temporary advantages or perks, therefore, are preferred. To that end, they want to make cyclical offerings of limited-edition items that introduce a sense of rarity. Also on the plan is consumable items, especially weaponry, as it is a fundamental part of the game, highly desired, and highly advantageous.

        Money for power is damning to any game. CCP counteracts it with the skill training system. You can buy as much currency as you want, but beyond implants it's useless to make you a better pilot if you lack the needed skills.

        Money for faction standings gives you instant Level 5 missions, instant jumpclones, instant research agents, instant ability to launch a POS in empire space, and instant elimination of transaction taxes. That's an uncomfortable amount of power IMO. Selling advanced weaponry for cash is equally destabilizing and dangerous, and the memo acknowledges this, but proclaims the desire to do it anyway because it will be a surefire seller. I don't doubt that for a second. I don't think it's fair either.

        The reason for all of this attention to microtransactions is revealed as well - everyone else is doing it, so we have to do it too in order to stay "competitive." This sounds like the typical short-sighted idea conceived by upper management, who fails to consider the consequences of their decisions.

        I don't like the direction this is going. And seeing that this is just the tip of the iceberg, I feel like I'm piloting a freighter named The Titanic. Or perhaps The Hindenburg.

CCP Gets Greedy

        I will be brief in response to CCP's plan to charge $99 a year for any commercial application that uses their Intellectual Property: ISK isn't money. If I earn ISK for my site's services, I am not earning money because I cannot (legally) convert it to money, hence it is not a commercial venture. Ad-supported sites, sadly, I must agree are making money and must pay the fee.

        It's also ironic that this plan was created with respect to Capsuleer, but now Capsuleer is discontinued and will not return. I fear how this will impact the community as a whole. And right before Incarna's release, too.

Incursion 1.5 Thoughts

        I always find it amusing that CCP brags about their sandbox environment where one can do anything they like, yet they are constantly releasing patches that push forth an effort to influence what people should be doing.

        Today's offering makes Highsec missioning more available and lucrative than ever before. My corpmates are saying that it's ridiculously easy to get to the reputation level needed for level 4 missions. I'll be testing out that theory in Serpentis space, flying a dirt-cheap Rifter and flying in the face of the resident hooligans who are claiming Serpentis space for themselves in the wake of TEST's failed effort to drive them out.

On Downtime and Exploits

        So it seems my alliance managed to create a nice bit of controversy. EVE was taken down for half a day to apply the Tyrannis 1.2 patch. Before the server went down, TEST planted Territorial Claim Units in areas of unclaimed 0.0 space. They normally take 6 hours to complete the claim, during which the unit can be destroyed. Due to the downtime, however, nobody could contest the claim and TEST returned to EVE several systems richer. Apparently the former owners (or non-owners to be more accurate) did not like this chain of events and petitioned the GM's who revoked the claims on the territory.

        So the first question is: was this an exploit? Probably. My personal thought as a programmer is that timed items like this should not elapse while the server is in downtime. As soon as the server came up and was accepting player connections, then the competing alliance should have had 6 hours from that point to contest the claim.

        So now extrapolate that. What if the downtime was arbitrary, like the two-day unforeseen outage caused by moving the database? The timer starts when the server is up, but how can a group organize when the server comes up at a random time with real-life constraints sometimes preventing you from acting?

        Also, consider what timers stop and which ones continue. Skills continue training because they don't affect other groups directly. What about reinforced towers? Other sovereignty timers? Planetary Interaction? Research and Industry? Capital Shipbuilding? My opinion is that any timer that can cause a loss to someone should stop. That means that towers and sovereignty freezes and everything else keeps going.

        It's not perfect, but it's better than provoking GM interference in the shadow of the whispers of favoritism of which CCP will probably never rid themselves.

On PLEXes for Remaps

I feel the "PLEX for Remap" issue is being terribly blown out of proportion by the player base. People act like it will give people a huge advantage when they don't stop to consider that you still have to train the skills after the remap. Even when your stats are optimized, the training time is still significant. Why have attributes at all, then? There's still the opportunity cost. You either train things you're optimized for, or you train other things anyway at a suboptimal speed, or you wait a year to remap, or you pay a PLEX and remap now. Each time you take the PLEX route you diminish the significance of attributes, but you pay a large sum for that privilege.

I know people who stuck themselves into a remap that outlived its usefulness and would give a PLEX to reset and train other things. Plus, would it not make sense during one of your annual remaps to take a small detour down Charisma Lane, knowing you weren't going to spend an entire year in it, but getting good things like Trade, Social, and Leadership skills out of the way, then dropping a PLEX to remap again to the next important attribute set? Maybe if Charisma had a more significant role in the skill set such that there might actually be a year's worth of its skills worth training, it wouldn't be the neglected stepchild that it is now in the eyes of the remapping capsuleer. But that's a separate issue...

Save Capsuleer!

The folks behind the Capsuleer application for the iPhone have announced that they are discontinuing the project. The reason being that CCP has not yet granted them a license to give them the rights to sell their app, despite previously giving them overwhelming praise and promises of cooperation.

As a developer, an EVE fan, and a blogger, I'm compelled to lend my support. We need to get this issue brought to CCP's attention. These guys deserve it for the time and money they have invested.

Nashh Kadavr has created a petition on his blog.

There is a thread in the Assembly Hall to get the CSM's attention.

Please do what you can to increase the visibility of this crisis.

The CSM and CCP Play Nice Together

        Big news on the Dev Blog today. The CSM and CCP announce 19 improvements planned for Incursion that were directly proposed by the CSM. This is a huge win for CCP, the CSM, and us, the players. I patiently witnessed the outrage after June proclaiming that the CSM was the same old story and that nothing would be done. I was personally miffed that CCP would postpone core game development for fringe features that the public didn't really clamor over, and rubbed it in at Alliance Tournament VIII with a guy wearing a "No New Features" shirt as he was talking about the new features!

        But we can put all of that angst behind us now. This is proof of progress. It may be slow, but it exists, and that's good enough for me. I'm confident that the momentum will pick up as time goes on. This seems to be a very passionate and strong-willed council, especially with Mynxee at the helm. I wish them continued success.