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In another thread, another poster wrote:
But then I read more about the subscription and SKILL system, and how they are tied together. How it sounds like they are copying EVE, and the advancement of your character skills have NOTHING whatsoever to do with achievements in the game (which really bugs me). You just get constant training, on AND offline, depending on how much you paid.
Of course the cap seems to be the full month subscription... but then I read that there will be a market available where you can buy "training points" for in-game currency. Currency which is available through the cash shop for real money.
Hence, it SOUNDS like someone with a lot of money can just cap out on training for the month, then go to the market and buy even MORE training points until they have quickly maxed out their character.
Thus, Pay2Win, unless I'm misunderstanding (completely possible).
and I wondered why this is seen as a bad thing? I'm unlikely to play this game, but if I do I'm likely to have very little time and interest in levelling up. Is there a problem if I have the option of paying for a "finished character" without having to go through the slog that other have? Doesnt that just mean more capital to make the game better for those with the opportunity to play more than me?
I know very, very little about these kinds of games, I just dont understand what the problem is (provided there arent some options solely available through purchasing for real dollars). It seems to me it's just a way to reach a different market - a market likely to be far more profitable for Goblinworks than those able to play a few hours a day and 'do it the hard way'.
Please take that query as it is - from someone relatively ignorant about how it all works and the online RPG culture. I just dont really see how it affects anyone else if I pay extra and level faster.

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Well, the way I understand it is not how your quote makes it out. As I understand it, skills will be "trained" over time and you will only be able to train one skill at a time. So, unlike your quote, one month of training is equal to one month of training.
Some skills (or skill packages) will require buying a manual from a vendor in order to train. THis manual might be only purchasable with sky metal which is EITHER purchased with in-game or out-of-game currency. However, buying this manual only allows you to actually start training the skills, it does not instant learn it. Once can still only learn one month of skills in one month.
Finally, skills, even if fully trained via time will also require an in-game task/mission component to make it usable. Once the time and task components are both completed, a "Merit badge" is earned and the associated skill becomes usable.
At least this is how I understand it.

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Well, the way I understand it is not how your quote makes it out. As I understand it, skills will be "trained" over time and you will only be able to train one skill at a time. So, unlike your quote, one month of training is equal to one month of training.
So this answers the main query.
On the Kickstarter, GW commented directly on the topic of "Pay To Win" vs "MTX":
We promise: No Pay to Win. :)
The heart of our MTX strategy is to monetize skill training. With a subscription, you'll get a month of skill training time (this is how EVE works, for example). You can put that all on one character, or you can divide it up between multiple characters. Because month lengths are screwy, if you pay for 12 consecutive months you'll get 5 "bonus days" of training time compared to the following.
If you want to, you'll be able to buy training time in increments perhaps as short as 1 day. If you bought 30 one-day increments, you'll pay a price higher than buying 1 thirty-day increments. And 1 thirty-day increments will be slightly more expensive than a month's subscription.
Now here's the cool thing. If you want to, you'll be able to sell the training time you buy with MTX on the in-game market for in-game currency (we call it "Coin"). (This is how PLEX works in EVE). So it will be possible for someone who has a lot of in-game currency to trade you Coin for time. They get to play "for free", and you get more Coin than you could make yourself.But there will be some "convenience" items - not so convenient that you can adventure without having a balanced party, but something to help cope with momentary setbacks. And there will be some stuff related to inventory management - allowing you to carry more gear. Subscribers will get some of these kinds of things refreshed automatically when their subscription is billed.
And there will be bling (stuff to make you look cool) and mounts (but mostly just bling mounts, not mounts that are meaningfully better than what other players have). We'll never make a mount that is the "best mount" available for MTX; you'll have to get those via the in-game systems.
We expect eventually to have additional bling-type items such as materials you might put in a player-owned house or other structure; stuff that has no mechanical benefit but that some players might covet.
That's the scope of our MTX plan. The best Gear in the game will be crafted by players - not dropped as NPC loot, and not buyable by MTX.
The abilities your characters have will all be earned by skill training and in-game actions. You won't be able to buy them directly via MTX.If we introduce things like races via MTX, those races will have no meaningful mechanical benefit that is better than any other race available without MTX. (I'm speaking in aggregate; they might have some aspect that is better, but when you average out all the aspects of a race, they'll be no better than the other races in the game).
Our goal is absolutely not to create a condition where you feel compelled to engage in MTX just to keep up with the rest of the players.We are aiming for a place where the monthly subscription is the "best value", but still offer something for people who want to pay less, and something for people who want to spend more on the game without it becoming a mechanically unbalancing proposition.

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Okay, I appreciate that. I suppose that makes it something of a moot point.
I still don't understand what the problem would be with allowing someone to blow $500 and start with a whiz-bang character. Just seems like another revenue stream for goblinworks which means more content for everyone. I don't understand the impact that would have on those paying a minimum amount and spending time in game improving their character.
(From the bits and pieces I've read it obviously is an issue, I'm not challenging that. I just don't understand why).

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Here's how it works.
If you don't pay, no skill training. Seems odd but I am guessing the point of this, is that if you are short of funds for a month, you can still play the game. Your character will just cease to advance.
However if you do pay for skill training, you are not paying for skills. You are paying for training time. So lets put it this way. Lets say the training item costs 10$ a month if it's not part of a subscription package.
You need to pay 10$ a month to advance at the highest possible rate, but if you pay 10,000$ a month you won't train 1000 times faster. You will just have 999 leftover training time items each month. You still train as fast as the guy with just one.
That at least is my understanding of what we've been told, as someone who is actually familiar with the EVE skill training system.
I'm perfectly fine with this system. Frankly if a game isn't worth 15$ a month to me, it isn't worth my time to play it. If people aren't willing to invest a very small amount into the success of this game, I don't see why they should be successful in it. It's likely a month of skill training in PFO will be LESS than 15$ anyway.
@Steve: That is an issue because some of us want to progress and watch our characters develop, and we don't want to get stomped by people who blew 1000$ on the first day to have an uber-character. It's not an issue of money even. I have plenty of time to set aside years worth of skill training before this game's release. I just don't want everything handed to me right away. I want to watch my character and this world develop.
Also characters that powerful should be rare even years down the road. Take note of how many characters you find in EVE with 2.5 years+ of training. Not many. But that game has been out well over 2.5 years.

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One thing EVE has is the character bazaar, where you can legally sell a character (just the character, no items allowed on it if I remember correctly) for in-game currency (ISK, i.e. gold in Pathfinder). The transfer itself costs 2 PLEX (the meta-currency, 1 PLEX = 1 month playtime) or actual dollars\Euros\etc. payable by the seller.
Note that the character has to have been played (or at least, trained) by someone, and EVE allows only one training character at a time per account. So characters you can buy won't be more skilled than is possible in-game at any given moment in time. And while having skills helps (in EVE) to unlock access to gear, even characters who're only 1-2 months "old" can assist in taking down the biggest ships around when flewn correctly. Or win at playing the markets.

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@Steve: That is an issue because some of us want to progress and watch our characters develop, and we don't want to get stomped by people who blew 1000$ on the first day to have an uber-character. It's not an issue of money even. I have plenty of time to set aside years worth of skill training before this game's release. I just don't want everything handed to me right away. I want to watch my character and this world develop.
Cheers. I appreciate the perspective.
I can understand people wanting to take their time, I just don't fully understand the bolded. I cant see why it would be annoying to be beaten by someone who has invested more money than you where it wouldn't be annoying to be beaten by someone who'd invested more time (or been lucky enough to join a better equipped guild or so forth).
I'm not really into pvp though, so maybe that changes everything.

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I see it in terms of how it relates to the community through meaningful player interaction. One would normally forge ties within the community and through these ties become more "powerful". Someone who bypasses the community building aspect not only sort of snubs the community, but, perhaps more importantly, doesn't add to the community through the ties they would've developed.
The community is the key to this game. Power is going to be decided on how deep your ties are to the community.
With that said, I can imagine a great roleplayer coming in with a powerful character and at that point becoming an important part of the community, but I think that will probably be an exception to the rule if it were allowed. Again, thankfully, it seems like the reason for wanting to start as a powerful character is weakened because of the nqture of the game.

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I can understand people wanting to take their time, I just don't fully understand the bolded. I cant see why it would be annoying to be beaten by someone who has invested more money than you where it wouldn't be annoying to be beaten by someone who'd invested more time (or been lucky enough to join a better equipped guild or so forth).I'm not really into pvp though, so maybe that changes everything.
Well too an extent time is equally annoying though it depends on how much, I think the big thing is time has a finite limitation of how much they can be ahead of someone, while money has no such limitations. In either case, having the advantage be large enough to single handedly decide the match, makes the game no fun. In games which 1v1 is the issue, it generates the feel of, ok lets show eachothers bank accounts and whoevers is larger wins, lets skip the part of actually paying and the fake fight portion.

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Thanks for the replies. It makes sense, I guess (I confess to being almost totally ignorant about how online games work - my main experience being MUDding in the early 90s..).
It seems like a lost opportunity to me, but there's no point annoying your customer base for a few extra dollars around the edges. Maybe there'll be another constructive way for people with money but no time to be involved other than just directly competing with those with time.
In passing - can someone tell me what MTX stands for?

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I generally am not a big fan of getting stomped by people who have a much stronger character than me in general but it's just something that will be a part of PFO. There are a few things that make me willing to accept it in PFO.
1. I know this is a selfish reason, but my account on the first beta wave is already secured. I never WILL get stomped by a much older character.
2. Characters with capstones will be rare in this game. Most people don't stick with a game for 2.5+ years. So even 2.5+ years down the road I expect less than 1% of characters to have one.

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I generally am not a big fan of getting stomped by people who have a much stronger character than me in general but it's just something that will be a part of PFO. There are a few things that make me willing to accept it in PFO.
1. I know this is a selfish reason, but my account on the first beta wave is already secured. I never WILL get stomped by a much older character.
2. Characters with capstones will be rare in this game. Most people don't stick with a game for 2.5+ years. So even 2.5+ years down the road I expect less than 1% of characters to have one.
The rarity (coupled with the reliance of the game on a thriving community) is a good argument against the paying-for-progress I was envisioning. If that's valued, it would make sense to preclude a fast-track, no interaction option.

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One thing EVE has is the character bazaar, where you can legally sell a character (just the character, no items allowed on it if I remember correctly) for in-game currency (ISK, i.e. gold in Pathfinder). The transfer itself costs 2 PLEX (the meta-currency, 1 PLEX = 1 month playtime) or actual dollars\Euros\etc. payable by the seller.
Note that the character has to have been played (or at least, trained) by someone, and EVE allows only one training character at a time per account. So characters you can buy won't be more skilled than is possible in-game at any given moment in time. And while having skills helps (in EVE) to unlock access to gear, even characters who're only 1-2 months "old" can assist in taking down the biggest ships around when flewn correctly. Or win at playing the markets.
I hope this feature isn't delivered in PO. I think the character bazaar has contributed to the less positive aspects of the EVE community.
Anonymity is bad for the game culture. WoW's deployment of cross-realm features and dungeon/raid finder functions delivered a similarly detrimental effect. They allowed people to be anonymous jerks and not suffer the consequences of a bad reputation. These features damaged the particular communities that had developed in each realm in Classic WoW.
The time-based skill training system and role of plex-like transactions in PO are all good with me. It's the ability to buy and sell characters that I object to bringing into PO.

Robb Smith |
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Agreed with most, i am just not a fan of Pay2Win, even though I myself personally have more money than time at this point in my life. It drastically diminishes accomplishments when one can just go pay $20 bucks and get the same advantage.
I'm on the fence about paying for training for alts at a nominal progression rate. I'm somewhat of an alt-a-holic myself, so It's a tough one for me.
Personally I think TERA was the company that has, to date, done Microtransactions "best". Lots of fun cosmetic options, but nothing that gives any sort of "In-Game" benefit. Though, I admittedly haven't played in a long time so I'm not sure if the gym bags give any sort of play-impacting item.

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2. Characters with capstones will be rare in this game. Most people don't stick with a game for 2.5+ years. So even 2.5+ years down the road I expect less than 1% of characters to have one.
I actually think that unless the game is a complete and utter turd this will actually work just the opposite of what you're thinking.
Eve online, which this subscription model is based on has many many many accounts with well over 2-1/2 years time on them, I have 2 of them and a 3rd with about 1-1/2 years.
Most games people quit because you log in every day but have nothing really to do, friends aren't on and you can not progress without being logged in and playing.
A new game comes out, well you don't have time to play both and progress in both so you dump the old one till the next expansion or the new one gets boring.
In eve, and by extension presumably PFO you can still progress your character even if you never play (just loog in for 5 minutes a day or week or even every 45 days for top tier skills to set up training).
You can play that new game and still progress in PFO just by setting up training.
Sheer inertia will keep you going.

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We promise: No Pay to Win. :)
The heart of our MTX strategy is to monetize skill training. With a subscription, you'll get a month of skill training time (this is how EVE works, for example). You can put that all on one character, or you can divide it up between multiple characters. Because month lengths are screwy, if you pay for 12 consecutive months you'll get 5 "bonus days" of training time compared to the following.
If you want to, you'll be able to buy training time in increments perhaps as short as 1 day. If you bought 30 one-day increments, you'll pay a price higher than buying 1 thirty-day increments. And 1 thirty-day increments will be slightly more expensive than a month's subscription.
Now here's the cool thing. If you want to, you'll be able to sell the training time you buy with MTX on the in-game market for in-game currency (we call it "Coin"). (This is how PLEX works in EVE). So it will be possible for someone who has a lot of in-game currency to trade you Coin for time. They get to play "for free", and you get more Coin than you could make yourself.
I must be reading this wrong or misunderstanding other posts from GW.
I beleive this was to be a player based economy with the best items being player made and sold for in game Coin.
If I understand the comment above you buy time with real money, sell if for in game coin, use coin to buy the top tier best items in the game, thereby "paying to win"
What am I missing here?

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Goblin Works wrote:We promise: No Pay to Win. :)
The heart of our MTX strategy is to monetize skill training. With a subscription, you'll get a month of skill training time (this is how EVE works, for example). You can put that all on one character, or you can divide it up between multiple characters. Because month lengths are screwy, if you pay for 12 consecutive months you'll get 5 "bonus days" of training time compared to the following.
If you want to, you'll be able to buy training time in increments perhaps as short as 1 day. If you bought 30 one-day increments, you'll pay a price higher than buying 1 thirty-day increments. And 1 thirty-day increments will be slightly more expensive than a month's subscription.
Now here's the cool thing. If you want to, you'll be able to sell the training time you buy with MTX on the in-game market for in-game currency (we call it "Coin"). (This is how PLEX works in EVE). So it will be possible for someone who has a lot of in-game currency to trade you Coin for time. They get to play "for free", and you get more Coin than you could make yourself.I must be reading this wrong or misunderstanding other posts from GW.
I beleive this was to be a player based economy with the best items being player made and sold for in game Coin.
If I understand the comment above you buy time with real money, sell if for in game coin, use coin to buy the top tier best items in the game, thereby "paying to win"
What am I missing here?
You're assuming "the items make the man". While being able to buy those top tier items indirectly with real world money will give you an advantage in one respect. (not having to grind to increase your coin) That doesn't mean they don't have to work to gain the proficiency to use said item. Through badges, skills, etc., etc.

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If I understand the comment above you buy time with real money, sell if for in game coin, use coin to buy the top tier best items in the game, thereby "paying to win"What am I missing here?
While the top tier items will give an advantage, they aren't a sure fire win, and quite a bit still takes a good amount of work, infrastructure etc...
Also you have to remember that training time, is a resource, it is worth what people are willing to pay etc... (IE if everyone is selling training time, training time becomes cheap, if nobody is constructing the gear, gear gets expensive etc...).

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@Summersnow
Also keep in mind that you aren't summoning that item into existence for cash.
Somebody has to first gather the components for that item, then sell them to somebody that can refine them, then sell them to somebody that can make that item. That person then sells that item to you for coin that somebody else gathered and gave to you. You are buying that item, and nobody else can buy that item.
This is the reason why the EVE Plex system has been so popular and such an economic success both in the game and for the developers. The developers aren't putting anything new into the game, somebody is giving you coin to pay for their subscription for a month. That is coin that they and countless others have been involved with creating.

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Andius wrote:2. Characters with capstones will be rare in this game. Most people don't stick with a game for 2.5+ years. So even 2.5+ years down the road I expect less than 1% of characters to have one.I actually think that unless the game is a complete and utter turd this will actually work just the opposite of what you're thinking.
Eve online, which this subscription model is based on has many many many accounts with well over 2-1/2 years time on them, I have 2 of them and a 3rd with about 1-1/2 years.
Most games people quit because you log in every day but have nothing really to do, friends aren't on and you can not progress without being logged in and playing.
A new game comes out, well you don't have time to play both and progress in both so you dump the old one till the next expansion or the new one gets boring.
In eve, and by extension presumably PFO you can still progress your character even if you never play (just loog in for 5 minutes a day or week or even every 45 days for top tier skills to set up training).
You can play that new game and still progress in PFO just by setting up training.
Sheer inertia will keep you going.
Are we talking accounts over two and a half years old or with two and a half years of training time? Because my account is about six years old but I don't think it has over two and a half years of training time and I know it doesn't in any single specialty.

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I think what will make having a character with more than 2.5 years of training is more the fact that you have to pay to keep training. Therefore, anyone with that will have in fact been actively playing, or at least actively paying, for more than that time. And I assume they'll have to check in from time to time to update their skill learning. If they take a break for a while, the character will be older but it won't have more skills.

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If I understand the comment above you buy time with real money, sell if for in game coin, use coin to buy the top tier best items in the game, thereby "paying to win"
There's a huge difference between:
"I buy something on-demand from the cash shop, and it is immediately available to my character and instantly usable."
vs
"I buy something on demand from the cash shop. Then I put it up for sale on an in-game market, where I receive Coin in return at an exchange rate set by market demand not developer fiat. Then, I have to negotiate for and purchase the uber-cool stuff I want in game, which may, or may not, be available at the time & place of my choosing. I may have to buy it in one place and transport it to another place. I may have to travel to a very dangerous place to make the purchase, and then return from that very dangerous place to wherever I want to use that purchase.
In order to get full value from my purchases, I need to have trained certain skills, achieved certain merit badges, and have been awarded certain character abilities; the achievement of which may have required months (or years?) of real-time."
Realistically there are people who will say the two are both "Pay 2 Win". But the absolute iron-clad reality of the situation is that there will be people who organize to sell in-game equipment for real money the day the game opens to the public. Those people will never be stopped no matter how much we invest in trying to do so.
Therefore, we either let them do what they do (which results in a lots of bad activity), or we do something that blocks a part of the value they attempt to extract from our game which reduces that bad activity.
The "Plex" system pioneered by CCP has several advantages over 3rd party real-money vendors:
1: There's an offsetting positive contribution to the community for each purchase which is that someone is playing the game who might not otherwise play. We are effectively selling game time, not Gear.
2: The ability to conduct this business with us dramatically reduces the exposure our players have to fraud, identity theft and malware, which in turn reduces our customer service overhead and makes people less likely to experience problems they attribute to our software, helping us maintain a high reputation for quality.
3: We have an element of control over the entire process. We can change the price for the game time we sell to affect the amount of Coin it is going to generate when sold on the in-game market. This gives us a knob we can adjust if we think that there is too little, or too much game time going into the system, or of the price being paid for that time is too high or too low. It's an essential part of our "Central Bank" mentality of how to manage the economy and avoid classic degenerate spirals of inflation and deflation.

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3: We have an element of control over the entire process. We can change the price for the game time we sell to affect the amount of Coin it is going to generate when sold on the in-game market. This gives us a knob we can adjust if we think that there is too little, or too much game time going into the system, or of the price being paid for that time is too high or too low. It's an essential part of our "Central Bank" mentality of how to manage the economy and avoid classic degenerate spirals of inflation and deflation.
So, you'll alter the price of training time in real world dollars to effect the in game market? That doesn't sit right with me. The amount gold in the game will be static, selling a chunk of training time to a player will merely shift it around a bit. Its not a sink or a faucet.

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what Ryan is saying is if you're buying PFO's version of plex to sell for coin then GW can if they see the need to adjust the cost of "plex". if you are paying a monthly subscription that cost will remain static and unchanged.
For example if "plex" is selling for 100k worth of coin but costs 10 dollars from MTX. if the value of coin is in effect worth 10 dollars then no adjustment is needed. but if that same "plex" is selling for 100k coin and 100k coin just buys you a night at the local inn (gods forbid it) then 10 dollars for that amount of coin is unreasonable.
Hope this helps.

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So, you'll alter the price of training time in real world dollars to effect the in game market? That doesn't sit right with me. The amount gold in the game will be static, selling a chunk of training time to a player will merely shift it around a bit. Its not a sink or a faucet.
The amount of gold in the game will be far from static, And I would expect to see a sink. In EVE PLEX costs more than a subscription, unless you only buy it at certain sale times, or in large packages. And each sale of plex on the market takes about 10 million isk out of the game.
The cost of training time will most likely increase over time, I left EVE for a year, and the price of PLEX doubled.

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True in a sense, but the game time that they are injecting into the market does 'create' gold and resources as somebody uses it to adventure/craft, assuming that the end user wouldn't have just bought a subscription if it wasn't available as an in-game item. You can assume that at least some of the players using it wouldn't have, so more coin is indirectly being created through the players using that time.
I actually hadn't thought of that effect until now.

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So, you'll alter the price of training time in real world dollars to effect the in game market? That doesn't sit right with me. The amount gold in the game will be static, selling a chunk of training time to a player will merely shift it around a bit. Its not a sink or a faucet.
MTX's are neither a faucet or a sink. They do not add or remove coin/gold to the world. They simply move it from one player to another.
Say 200 players with 1000 coin each. One of these players sells training time to another for 500 coin. This player has 1500 coin, and the one who bought it from him now has 500 coin. The total coin in the world has not changed at all.
Faucets are things that put money into the world, say NPCs paying coin for quests, NPCs buying goods from players etc...
Sinks are money going to NPCs.

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Valkenr wrote:And each sale of plex on the market takes about 10 million isk out of the game.How does that happen? If I sold a PLEX for 10 million ISK, I would expect it to go into my bank, not out of the game...
The 10million is the current combined transaction fee for posting, and buying(5 mill each) PLEX for 600 million on the market.

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Are we talking accounts over two and a half years old or with two and a half years of training time? Because my account is about six years old but I don't think it has over two and a half years of training time and I know it doesn't in any single specialty.
I went back and looked on the eve site.
From 2003 - 2011 (last time I had an active, ie training subscription) I have 42 months of training
I can fly everything from frigate -> battleship, including the t2 variants for each of the races, although I am only t2 in minmatar & caldari weapon systems and only truely excell in minmatar, lighter amarr and most caldari.
Keep in mind, the last level of a particular skill for many skills is a 30-45 day train so you can easily get lost in another game while you wait for that train to complete.
Even if your bored with the game, unless you are desperate for real world cash sheer inertia keeps the sub going because as soon as you finish that next train you'll be able to fly a new ship, use a new weapon / armor / module, manufacture a new blueprint or harvest a new resource, even if you aren;t actively playing every day.

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Summersnow wrote:If I understand the comment above you buy time with real money, sell if for in game coin, use coin to buy the top tier best items in the game, thereby "paying to win"There's a huge difference between:
"I buy something on-demand from the cash shop, and it is immediately available to my character and instantly usable."
vs
"I buy something on demand from the cash shop. Then I put it up for sale on an in-game market, where I receive Coin in return at an exchange rate set by market demand not developer fiat. Then, I have to negotiate for and purchase the uber-cool stuff I want in game, which may, or may not, be available at the time & place of my choosing. I may have to buy it in one place and transport it to another place. I may have to travel to a very dangerous place to make the purchase, and then return from that very dangerous place to wherever I want to use that purchase.
In order to get full value from my purchases, I need to have trained certain skills, achieved certain merit badges, and have been awarded certain character abilities; the achievement of which may have required months (or years?) of real-time."
Realistically there are people who will say the two are both "Pay 2 Win". But the absolute iron-clad reality of the situation is that there will be people who organize to sell in-game equipment for real money the day the game opens to the public. Those people will never be stopped no matter how much we invest in trying to do so.
Therefore, we either let them do what they do (which results in a lots of bad activity), or we do something that blocks a part of the value they attempt to extract from our game which reduces that bad activity.
The "Plex" system pioneered by CCP has several advantages over 3rd party real-money vendors:
1: There's an offsetting positive contribution to the community for each purchase which is that someone is playing the game who might not otherwise play. We are effectively selling game time, not Gear.
2: The...
I guess we have different definitions of pay2win.
Player 1 & 2 start the same day, both keep there subscription active for the same length of time and train the same skills at the same time.
Player 1 however plays every day for 3-4 hours on average and actually contributes to the game.
Player 2 does the bare minimum to keep his skills up and get the badges he needs for gear and skills.
After 1 year player one has earned enough money by playing the game to get some nice stuff.
Player 2 spends his bonus check on a bunch of Coin and uses that to buy BETTER equipment then player 1 whos actively participating in the game could ever possbily hope to buy.
That to me is pay2win.
Doesn't necesarily mean player 2 is a better player or could take player 1 in a duel, but he's "cheated" the system to get a leg up.
I'm curious as to if you have any plans or thoughts on how to deal with this or if you've considered it?

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Summersnow wrote:I'm curious as to if you have any plans or thoughts on how to deal with this or if you've considered it?I consider it to be a corner case and not fixable.
Well, given that more people will come to the same conclusion "hmm, buy game time, sell to another player for in game coin and buy uber item..." maybe you could try turning this into a positive selling point?
something along the lines of
We understand that not everyone has the same amount of free time to invest in the game and we don't want people to feel they will be forced to grind endlessly for Coin to keep up with there friends and companions and thus give up we will have an in game system whereby people can buy game time with real money and sell it to other players for in game coin, thus benefiting the game and allowing them to cut down on the grind to purchase the player made gear, potions, scrolls, etc whatever, that they have trained the skills, earned the achievements, badges (whatever term your usign for "unlocks") so they can spend more of the limited time they have enjoying the game, rather then working the coin grind treadmill.

cattu |

Well, given that more people will come to the same conclusion "hmm, buy game time, sell to another player for in game coin and buy uber item..." maybe you could try turning this into a positive selling point?
something along the lines of
We understand that not everyone has the same amount of free time to invest in the game and we don't want people to feel they will be forced to grind endlessly for Coin to keep up with there friends and companions and thus give up we will have an in game system whereby people can buy game time with real money and sell it to other players for in game coin, thus benefiting the game and allowing them to cut down on the grind to purchase the player made gear, potions, scrolls, etc whatever, that they have trained the skills, earned the achievements, badges (whatever term your usign for "unlocks") so they can spend more of the limited time they have enjoying the game, rather then working the coin grind treadmill.
Plex has been generally considered a good success in EVE. This is, at it's core, essentially the same thing and tends to be fairly self balancing through market demand.

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@Summersnow
By that definition, every game is pay2win. Runescape, Diablo II, Everquest, World of Warcraft... all of them. These games all had thriving black market economies in which somebody could pay another person cash to give them an item or character.
By that definition, any game that simply has tradable vanity items is also pay2win, as somebody could buy a bunch of Blue Peacock Hats for cash, sell them to other players for coin, and then use that coin to purchase the best gear in the game.
When most people speak of pay2win, they mean the specific case where you can purchase in-game items that significantly impact character progression. These items are bought for cash and appear in your inventory. This is detrimental for a couple of reasons I can think of:
1. The game economy can go all screwy based on how many of these items people decide to buy at a given time. These items are being created with no player effort.
2. If those items are only/almost only obtainable from the cash shop and they have a significant impact on character progression, other players feel they must purchase those items to keep up with all the people that are skipping the hard work that normally goes into achieving that level of progression. They may feel their time is cheapened.
PLEX avoids this because, as I stated a few posts above, the work to create whatever that person is buying was put in by another player.
Essentially, instead of taking the time to grind 1,000 bears for their hides to sell, Player A is paying Player B for the time he spent doing that. This is beneficial for both players. Player A gets to spend more of his time doing things in the game that he enjoys. Player B got paid for spending his time doing something. Heck, Player B might even LOVE murdering all those pesky, smelly bears.
In WoW, my roomate and I set ourselves goals to corner the market and hit the gold cap. If I could have paid for my subscription with the gold I made, I might still be playing today (the economy, not the actual game, gods no!)
Another thing some games do is sell consumables. GW has already stated that they plan on selling combat consumables in the MTX. I don't like it at any level for personal reasons, but they have made the important distinction that these consumables will not be 'the best'. The most important thing is that purchases from the MTX are more of a convenience than anything. "Oh, I don't want to bother going all the way back to town for more potions, I'm having a great time in this dungeon!" Not: "There are no potions for me to buy anywhere close! I guess I have to buy some from those Greedy Goblins..."

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Pay 2 Win: You pay money to buy powerups or equipment for you character that are not available in normal gameplay, and are not accessible without spending Real World Cash.
The good free to play games don't offer more power, they offer a quicker solution if you want to pay a little more money.
I'm glad I started this thread. I've learnt a lot. :)
The latter scenario is what would suit me. I dont want to pay money to be the best, I just want to be competent without having to spend hours and hours fulfilling not-fun tasks.
FWIW, I think someone like me isnt going to be particularly good even if I had some way of obtaining the best items - presumably spending hours developing your character 'the usual way' pretty much guarantees you'll be more skilled at actually playing than someone who buys their character 'ready-made'.