Spaceships, tanks & everything gaming related
Nope. More space barbie. Another batch of clothing has been released from NeX shop. You can now dress your female avatar in some pretty camo skirt, or some navy shirts. You can’t walk barefoot, so you have one more pair of shoes to choose from.
Great. I don’t know how about you, but I’d like more *ships*.
Many players have noticed, that CCP has recently released a second batch of items, that can be bought from the Noble Exchange (one of the items included in the second release is GDN-9 “Nightstalker” Combat Goggles). Those curious about what will be coming in future batches can check themselves. In order to do so, open the Market, go to Apparel group and uncheck “Show only available”. There is several kinds of monocles coming to the NeX near you!
EDIT: as to confirm my post, two days later CCP has released a third batch of items, more affordable this time.
All EVE Online players who shared their media in the EveIsReal.net player museum have contributed towards the whole community. CCP will deliver 1000 AUR to every active account on Friday, 29th of July. Another batch of 1000 AUR awaits to be claimed, if players upload enough media. Want a free monocle? SHARE!
EDIT: because some people asked: Engine trails were removed from EVE Online in the Apocrypha expansion. Previously this feature was toggleable in “ESC” menu and produced trails which can be seen on the screenshot above. Engine trails looked great when ships were warping away, or when ceptors were orbiting larger ships.
Doen’t matter if one is completely new to EVE or if one is a vet, almost every player knows that EVE Online is a PVP focused game. Large majority of people will however limit this PVP to pure combat, which is not exactly true.
The Noble Exchange have gained lots of attention when it was first introduced, but now that things calmed down, people started using it. And just like in PVP combat, some players just aren’t good at market PVP.
First off, let’s do some maths, because EVE’s second nickname is ‘Excel in space’.
Typical sell price of a PLEX is today 368 million ISK (Essence region). One PLEX can be converted to 3500 AUR, so the exchange ratio would be:
1 AUR = 105 143 ISK
That means, that if for example Men’s ‘Precision’ Boots cost 1000 Aurum, they should not be sold below 105 million ISK. If the same applies to Women’s ‘Executor’ Coat, I should pay at least 368 million for it.
Luckily for me, some people decided that math sucks, and it’s better to sell some clothing below these thresholds ‘because why the hell not’. So I bought said boots for my main for 59 million and the Coat for my female alt for 30 million ISK.
Wanna proof? Look below 😉
PS. I also bought a Fenrir freighter for 680 thousand ISK in the past, so this kind of things really happen.
Inspiration comes in various forms. The video below is a new trailer for EVE Online, a sci-fi MMO game by CCP Games. After watching this trailer for the first time, I felt an immediate urge to share some of my experiences with EVE. I think every player has at least few similar ones.
CSM said in their statment, that vanity items means clothing and ship skins. So, how much would you pay for a Roden Megathron skin, or lets say an EOM Apocalypse? If these paintjobs were to be one run items, I would personally pay for such a skin a maximum of 1000 AUR, which is halfway to the price of a Navy Mega (skinned Megathron is still just a regular Megathron). For cruisers, the acceptable price for me would be max 500 AUR. What do YOU think? How much would YOU pay?
The more expensive skins get, people are less likely to fly them (and loose them), so CCP should make the price low enough so that people buy the skin again, if they lost their skinned ship.
[poll id=”2″]
CCP has published an official statement after the emergency CSM summit held in Reykjavik last week, you can read both CCPs and CSMs statements in this dev-blog.
Information most important to the EVE players, both these who left the game, and those who stayed is:
For some players such an information is still not enough to regain trust in CCP. One can claim, that even though Zulu said that the Noble Exchange will be for vanity items only, MT ships and ammo can still be introduced at a later date under a different name, lets say a “Noble Armory”. I will say: put such conspiracy theories aside and give Devs a chance. They surely did a mistake of not communicaiting things properly, but the fact that CCP is developing two other games does not mean that they have abandoned EVE Online, and only want to “milk the cow” now. If this was the case, there would be no Incarna at all.
For me personally these two statements are enough to trust CCP again, but I will watch the progress closely. I have been playing long enough to know, that the recent backlash neither is the first time, nor will be the last, when there was a miscomunication between the Devs and the playerbase. I just hope there will be no more such intense situations like this recent one. EVE can be broken by many things. If enough players leave the game, economy can break down and the game will be broken even more, than by the Devs themselves. We, the EVE players, are also responsible for making EVE such a great game it is: CCP might provide the spaceships, but we are the pilots who fly them and who make New Eden so beautifully alive. I have played many games, and there is no other game world so dynamic as this one.
In closing I would like to thank the CSM board very much for their commitment, and if Mittens is going to run for another term, I already know who to vote for in the CSM#7. You, sir, are simply the best.
However, I do know that non-vanity stuff could be introduced in a way that would have minimal impact on industry and economy. NeX can be compared to just another LP store where you pay with $ instead of LPs. Why no one is ragequitting over LP store? Because besides LP you need to trade in Tags (which encourages PVE interaction) or a Tech I item (ships, mods, which encourages manufacturing).
I do support playerbase’s concern about PLEX prices. Increasing the demand will increase the price, and that can’t be avoided. Fixing the exchange ratio between ISK and PLEX is possible by capping the maximum price with NPC buy orders, but this would create a huge ISK sink and in turn result in some serious deflation. So the forseeable effect of introducing non-vanity MT will force switching people who pay for gametime with ISK to a paid sub instead (or make them quit). But then again EVE was never meant to be free to play…
CCP would like to increase ARPU (to combat crisis, to increase salaries, to make new games, etc). Lets assume, that ARPU is 14,95 EUR (1.0x) per 1 account. Before Incarna, there was no PLEX sink in the game (except for PLEXes being accidently destroyed).
But why is ARPU around 1.0x? All additional payments made by people buying GTC and converting them to PLEX are eventually consumed by people who pay for playing with ISK. This is a 1 to 1 relation, so effectively everyone is paying the same amount and ARPU equals 1.0x.
Allowing players to undock with PLEXes was not only simpifying the code. It was the first time where a small PLEX sink was introduced. With another sink introduced (NeX), ARPU will increase above said 1.0x per account, and it doesn’t matter if this is vanity or non-vanity items.
If you disagree and see any flaws in my logic, please convince me otherwise in this thread.
I’ve planned to write a short post about the status of the backlash, but instead, I have “stolen”* some pictures, so instead of me telling you how people react, you can see yourself. I just hope this “emergency” CSM summit brings some really good news.
*) all images are property of their respective owners and have been used for information purposes only
The new expansion brought us Captains Quarters, Agent Finder and new turrets, but it has also brought quite a few bugs. This patch is supposed to fix most of them:
Complete patchnotes are already available here.
