PK Your Savings Away? Don’t Mind if I Do
This is a post I didn’t publish about a month ago in response to EVE’s PLEX changes: “I’m curious as to the legal ramifications this may have. I’m guessing they’ve already figured any of those out because you can already sell PLEX, just not outside of the station you got them. Still, it’s $14.95 that can either be taken by another player or destroyed entirely in a blast. The latter is actually the scarier of the two for CCP, I think, because you’re now able to give them $$ for something that they can (be accused of) destroy(ing) via code.” Less than a month later, and someone destroyed more than $1000 of PLEX in one PvP battle.
74 PLEX, at a cost of $14.95 per month of game time, were destroyed by Method Of Destruction players. That amount of PLEX could have been used for six years, two months of EVE subscription time and cost $1106.30 US to whomever purchased the game time initially. All 74 PLEX cards were destroyed in the PvP battle, leaving CCP the benefactor of $1106.30 worth of unrecoverable destroyed virtual goods.
What this represents is a fundamental shift in the way certain PvP activities must be considered. Before, you could attempt to attribute a real dollar value to destroyed virtual assets, but it involved a lot of hocus pocus. Now, you can actually know the exact dollar value of certain destroyed virtual assets, because they were purchased for real currency.
I’m not accusing CCP of destroying the 74 PLEX in the conflagration (though their loot code needs some work), but it’s still interesting to watch player reaction to an unprecedented event in MMOs, and it’s a decision I certainly would never have made as a game designer (that said, CCP makes a lot of decisions with EVE that I would never make, such as making it literally impossible to catch up with other players if you didn’t start playing EVE on day 1 and maintain a permanent subscription).
Source: Massively
Pretty scary stuff when you put it in real life terms. When you break it down though and realize this is EVE we are talking about here, it’s not all that surprising. EvE is one of if not the most unforgiving player environment in the MMO market.
Oh and in defense of CCP’s skilling system, unlike WoW and other MMO’s out there, you don’t have to ‘catch up’ with your opponent in the arbitrary skill point race to beat them in combat or any other aspect of the game. Truth is, they’ve built a system where skill and knowledge stack up against skill points quite well.
If too many PLEX start going up in smoke, some lawyer somewhere is going to start asking CCP to prove their code doesn’t favour the destruction of PLEX over making it lootable from the wreck.
So many good reasons to not play hardcore if you not willing to lose everything. Tuhd stick with being semi-casual gamer.
You should also consider that it is around 22-23 billion isk, a super-carrier costs around that much and they die all around. That player could’ve easily sold PLEX’es bought a super-carrier and then it won’t even make it to news page.
In any case, nobody forced this guy to undock from the station with PLEX’es in his cargo. There is simply no need to undock with PLEX at all. Golden rule of EvE: Don’t fly things you cannot afford to lose.
You’re leaving out the fact that the guy transporting the PLEXs was using a crappy ship. If he had half a brain he would have used a more resilient ship.
Perhaps I can offer a different take on what occured. First as a player if I play a lot and generate lots of isk from playing I can trade my isk for a PLEX and use it to pay for my game time and thus I end up playing the game for free. The person that bought the PLEX is probably someone that does not have alot of time to grind missions or mine for isk so they spend real world money buying a PLEX and then sell it in game for isk. A win win situation and why PLEX was introduced. I think this beats gold farmers who sell their gold for real world cash that can be spent on anything. Here your just buying an item that can only be used to pay for game time. For the record this transacation can all happen within a station were there is zero risk of anyone losing anything.
Anyone who has played EvE knows once you leave the station your ship and cargo are at risk so when the person made the craxy decision to transport all the 74 PLEX on a single frigate ship while at war with another player copr they had to know they could and probably would be attacked and killed at anytime. When members of the warring player corp came across the ship they attacked and destroyed the ship without knowing what was on the ship as they were at war, they were just playing the game as intended.
The person was stupid to move all those PLEX in a small ship with no protection while being wardecked. Most likely they bought all of those PLEX with the intention to resell to other players at a better price than they payed and thus generating more isk.
http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4032&tid=7
If I buy a bike and ride it without a helmet and crash and get brain damaged should I be able to sue the bike company? No because I chose to be stupid and not properly protect myself and no this person should not be allowed to sue as they knew the risk and chose to be stupid.
I’m not blaming the killers in any way. I would have done the same thing. While the person who lost all that PLEX obviously made a move he never should have made, there are certain situations where I believe designers need to protect players from themselves.
Making it possible to lose real world money for in-game actions is one of the situations that I will never bend on. I’m blaming CCP for making the poor design decision, even if it is in the flavor of EVE.
It’s not something that will ever impact me directly. If/when I next decide to pick up EVE before getting pissed off that effort != reward for the 5th or 6th time, I will most likely not use PLEX. If I ever do, I will not be foolish enough to carry it with me anywhere. Ever.
Worst-case scenario for me is that CCP gets in legal trouble and regulations are imposed on MMOs that would not have surfaced otherwise. I don’t want my design space limited because of some other developer’s nonsensical decisions.
D00d. Do something about the pharma spammer in the forums. I implore you.
Eve = Greedy. / Entropia Universe = Scam. / WoW = DERP? / SL: Giggity./ Mix this together for a perfected Crap Smoothie of MMO/RPG!
PLEX PRICE: wth?
SKILLS IN EVE: 40 Days for this?
5 HOURS OF MINING IN EVE: *Click*
AFTER EXAUSTING AN ACTIVITY IN EVE: Wheres my beer.