Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Price of Interaction


Another day, another heated discussion among the carebears about how to stop the New Order from transforming highsec into a paradise.


Meet castle2 keep. By his own admission, he is AFK 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time he complains about stuff in local, or in his bio. He strongly believes the New Order is in violation of the EULA.


castle2 is confident that bumping and ganking are both against the rules. But when fellow miner OmegaRunner says otherwise, he begins to doubt his long-held beliefs.


If it's not against the rules to interact with AFK miners, then it should be. Otherwise, castle2 will quit the game. And the EVE community wouldn't want to lose someone who idles in highsec ice fields 90% of the time, would they?


I often warn people that EVE has been infected by carebears with an alien ideology. castle2 confesses his belief that highsec should have no PvP--unless both sides agree to it. Never mind the fact that by entering New Order territory (0.5 security and above), he is deemed to have agreed to the Code, and he forfeits his ship(s) by not obeying it.


Like many carebears, castle2 is confident that with enough whining, CCP will bend to their demands for the sake of subscription fees. Nothing new there. What's more interesting to me is the fact that castle2 says he knows people who quit because of the New Order's attacks. In other words, castle2 knows people who are even more thin-skinned than he is. A scary thought!


This is why education is so important. How can miners learn to follow the Code if they begin from the assumption that AFK mining is the only possible form of mining? castle2 can't understand how someone could sit in front of their keyboard while their ice harvesters are active.


Over the past month or two, the references to the New Order being a "cult" have increased dramatically. I challenge any miner who feels that way to join the New Order family and do what I tell them. If, after a year or two, they still think we're a cult, I'll be shocked.


As far as I know, castle2 still hasn't quit EVE yet. But if CCP doesn't act quickly, we could wake up one day and find ourselves with one less AFK miner in highsec. Is that a price we're willing to pay, just to allow people to shoot at spaceships?

18 comments:

  1. And by their words shall ye know them:

    "and being ganked will prevent them from paying the next plex"

    They wail into their blankets that Eve is not fair. They deliberately avoid supporting CCP. Then they threaten to quit.

    There is a word for such as these, and it isn't pleasant.

    DrT

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have a counter point to this.

      I haven't checked anywhere else so I'm going on UK prices. Plex costs around 15GPB, whereas a normal monthly sub costs 10GBP. Meaning that if someone buys a plex with isk on the market, then the seller had to buy it to start with. Meaning CCP actually makes more off castle2 buying plex with isk than they would off him buying a normal monthly sub.

      Feel free to correct me if I've missed something.

      P.S. I'm not defending the "entitlement" mentality some miners show, I'm only going on the economic debate.

      Delete
  2. Anyone who 'plays' a game afk has already quit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "and this is Highsec, it's supposed to be safe from PVP"

    -Disgustingly ignorant


    "I challenge any miner who feels that way to join the New Order family and do what I tell them."

    -Fuckin' hilarious

    This is why what we do is important people.

    -Galaxy Pig

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

    It's 10. Fucking. Million. ISK. Better to pay that than to lose your 100m+ Machinaw or Hulk. Hell, all you have to do is say you support the New Order in your bio, even if you don't. You won't have to worry about it later on anyways.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wait - you mean these AFK miners aren't paying real money to play the game? Then how exactly does their ragequitting hurt CCP?

    ReplyDelete
  6. You guys, I hate to stop you, but when someone buys a PLEX with ISK, and applies it to their account, CCP gets paid $15-$20 real monies. Not that this in any way makes them valuable to the game, or means that anyone will miss them, but they are technically "paying customers". It's just that they value their own time so little that they would rather grind for dozens of hours in game, instead of work 1-2 hours in real life and buy a PLEX. For some reason people would rather spend hours and hours on their space-job then spend any of their "hard-earned" cash. Don't ask me to explain that mindset, but I will happily reap the benefits of it.

    -Oink

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love how people seem to think that people play EVE for hours & hours to buy PLEX with isk because they must be poor & jobless or something.

      Delete
    2. I dont think they said anything about being poor or jobless. Just commented on the idiocy of not paying what only takes 1-2 hours to make in RL. Instead devoting dozens, if not hundreds, of in game hours to get 30 more days to do the same damn thing

      -k

      Delete
    3. "You guys, I hate to stop you, but when someone buys a PLEX with ISK, and applies it to their account, CCP gets paid $15-$20 real monies."


      No, CCP got paid 15-20$ real monies when someone bought the PLEX with real money. CCP doesn't magically get another 15-20$ when the PLEX is applied to someone else's account, that's not how it works. If that AFK miner didn't exist, then the PLEX/ISK demand curve would move a little bit. PLEX would be worth a teeny bit less ISK, and one marginal person who didn't buy a PLEX before, now does(or one person doesn't buy a PLEX at all because the return isn't as good, but CCP controls the price of PLEX and I don't think PLEX are all that elastic in real world money terms). Maybe this person isn't an afk'er or a botter. That person deserves the PLEX more than the afk'er or botter. Therefore, good riddance to the afk'er or botter who only played because he could make enough cheating to freeload into this game, your replacement is much more worthy to play EVE than you.

      In the end, people pay PLEX for ingame currency because they're getting entertainment value from EVE. afk'ers and botters provide a very low amount of entertainment value to PLEX buyers, so they don't deserve to play for free. Content creators and enablers, as CCP Seagull puts it, are the ones who deserve to play at no real world cost.

      Delete
    4. @Audrik Villalona
      Brilliant explanation, I agree.

      Also gratulation to the New Order having fun with afk mining.

      Delete
    5. +1... they consume plex thru isk, not rl cash. However one small niggle: they do provide enormous entertainment, just not wittingly 😉

      DrT

      Delete
    6. In fact, the best outcome for CCP would be for the PLEX buyer to lose them all while transporting them in a frigate to Jita, and have the the Random Number Gods decide they don't drop.

      So no, CCP does not care whAt happens to the PLEX once bought, and CCP would be best served if they all burned up unused in a gank.

      Delete
  7. I did like the Medium Shield bit too.

    Transfers 40HP of shield per 5 seconds, or 8HP/sec. Against ganking ships which have approx 100 DPS each after resists. And you have to have 1 or more pilots sitting around at keyboard all day waiting for the gankers to turn up.

    You gankers may have met your match with this brilliant plan!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. holy antimatter > medium shield Transponder I

      Delete
  8. I love his bio.

    "I have a right to be afk"

    And I have the right to shoot you.

    Best not be afk when I'm around, bub.

    ReplyDelete
  9. CCP gets their money when the plex is purchased from CCP themselves not when the miner buys it off the market. If the miner doesn't buy that plex and make demand increase someone else will. Plex are like oil there is always massive demand for them.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anothee character biomassed. This can't end well.

    Which will be a big shame.

    ReplyDelete

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