Horse armour?

Worse... 
 
Quotes from the internal newsletter: 

- I shop therefore I am
- Buy me I’ll change your life
- You can develop a friendship by “spending” your time, or you can pay to get the same benefits that friendship would otherwise allow.  
- Emotion and engagement are the fundamental foundation for virtual goods sales.
- The question of virtual goods sales is not “to do, or not to do?” Rather, it’s “how do we do this?”

"One other service we’re looking at is selling faction standings. We want to offer convenience for a price. As an example, your friend might give you free tickets to see her band play simply because the two of you are friends; meanwhile, other fans have to pay for a ticket because, well, that’s how it normally works. The more noteworthy the band, the more those friendships (and thus the tickets) are worth."

"On the opposite end of the scale to vanity goods are performance-based items such as weapons. They are consumed through gameplay, making them a potentially powerful source of renewable income. Selling them for real money is very tempting. They are highly desired by the player audience and yield lower development costs, as variation can be achieved through numbers rather than unique art assets. Selling them though, is highly controversial. We are planning on doing so. I would be tempted to say it is because we are fearless, but the real reason is that we have strong evidence that selling performance enhancers, in moderation, works." (This was in the bit about DUST and not eve)

"Cosmetics are the easiest form of virtual goods sales to discuss, but they’re not the only ones. Items that improve the player character’s capabilities are some of the most effective at converting free or trial players into paying ones. According to Jon Selin, Lead Designer on World of Darkness, metrics from other games that sell virtual goods indicate that overall enjoyment increases"

Been a while since I played EvE but unless the economy has gone fubar 1.4 billion isk for a vanity item seems incredulous.

I think that's put an end to the occasional EvE-itches I get.

Sometimes I think it's as much fun watching EVE's politics from the outside as it was playing the actual game. Things have indeed gone a bit crazy.

I never played enough EVE to care about this but it does seem sort of disgusting. Then again it's up to players to speak with their wallets, if this works it's because the players wanted it to work.

That game was always capitalist. Now the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. 
 
It's oddly fitting. 
 
But dumb. Especially since they're supposedly trying to draw in new people, with the redesign of the starting experience and removal of learning skills.

I'm not automatically against micro transactions but it seems really out of character for EVE and CCP. I don't think any MMO can get away with having a monthly sub and micro transactions.

Do we even know whether the document is real yet? It seems overtly greed centric, my first instinct was that this was a satirical pamphlet someone has made in response to the vanity items in incarna.

i think the game will continue as normal for us folks that don't want to alter our appearance (for billions!)

Do we even know whether the document is real yet? It seems overtly greed centric, my first instinct was that this was a satirical pamphlet someone has made in response to the vanity items in incarna.

That game was always capitalist. Now the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. 

@fayte109 said:

The Document quotes buying ships, equipment & Ammo with the new currency, to quote a corp colleaqge of mine: "Train your character, grind your isk, fly your ships well and get beat by the guy with the gold Rifter that his daddy's credit card paid for. That's not something I want to be a part of anymore."

Your friend has it in a nutshell.

Wow, looking at the EVE forums, I am getting what always happens when there's a rift between players/forum users. One person is talking smack about something and then another asshole comes along and says something like "Oh, QQ, why don't you cry more? Just because they want to make money and you don't support it doesn't mean that they've sold out. If you really were serious about quitting the game/leaving the forum you'd already have done so!" Shit, this has happened to me on occasion (on other gaming sites) and I don't get it at all. Sure, the cry might be a little childish, but it's a cry for attention that the place you love to be on is turning into something ugly. 
 
Micro-transactions for vanity? Sure, who gives a fuck if someone wants a ship that looks like a dick. Micro-transactions for better items? Now, why the fuck would anyone even think of that, except to make more money? A company should make money, but guys, there's a fine line between greedy fucking bastards and having a balance between making money and caring about what your community wants. AMIRITE?

@Titus said:

... Micro-transactions for vanity? Sure, who gives a fuck if someone wants a ship that looks like a dick. Micro-transactions for better items? Now, why the fuck would anyone even think of that, except to make more money? A company should make money, but guys, there's a fine line between greedy fucking bastards and having a balance between making money and caring about what your community wants. AMIRITE?

Basically this. Micro for performance based items has never, ever worked out in this kind of setting and Eve is kind of a beast all it's own.

Fuck this, this is inconsiderate and unnecessary. It goes against what the community is all about, they aren't the type of people who want or need to pay extra money for Eve, most players in that game have been at it for years and have been paying monthly for it since it came out.

This is why you don't trust Developers, they will stab you in the back anytime theres money involved. It doesn't matter who it is, Valve, CCP, Bungie, DICE, they all put their own paychecks before their games.

Friend told me about this earlier, seems CCP have gone about this all the wrong way,

Though according to him CCP have been screwing up a few things these past few months with EVE Online.

I have no interest in games that sell a gameplay advantage. That EVE FPS was the one thing that I was really interested in from E3, and this is scaring me off.

This seems to keep on rolling, i'm really interested in seeing an official response from CCP, but there keeping VERY quiet atm.

EVE for a while now has already provided a way for people to buy isk with real money (through PLEX). Where these microtransactions would start to irk me is if they allowed for the purchase of items that are not otherwise available for sale in game for isk. Otherwise, there really isnt anything that is new about this, other than vanity items and stuff that doesn't matter and I don't care about. 
 
People already buy isk with real money and in doing so get in-game advantages. We can just hope that they don't start selling stuff like ammo that cannot be bought with isk, or other things like skill points or faction standing - that's the stuff that would really make an impact and right now serves as the limiting factor in the game, rather than isk.

@Titus said:

Wow, looking at the EVE forums, I am getting what always happens when there's a rift between players/forum users. One person is talking smack about something and then another asshole comes along and says something like "Oh, QQ, why don't you cry more? Just because they want to make money and you don't support it doesn't mean that they've sold out. If you really were serious about quitting the game/leaving the forum you'd already have done so!" Shit, this has happened to me on occasion (on other gaming sites) and I don't get it at all. Sure, the cry might be a little childish, but it's a cry for attention that the place you love to be on is turning into something ugly. Micro-transactions for vanity? Sure, who gives a fuck if someone wants a ship that looks like a dick. Micro-transactions for better items? Now, why the fuck would anyone even think of that, except to make more money? A company should make money, but guys, there's a fine line between greedy fucking bastards and having a balance between making money and caring about what your community wants. AMIRITE?

I guess they saw TF2 and thought "That seems to be working well for them, let's try it".

And I don't have a problem with people trying something new, as long as they are able to change based on the feedback they get.

This seems to keep on rolling, i'm really interested in seeing an official response from CCP, but there keeping VERY quiet atm.

I have had the EVE itch for a long while, but this news, if it's true, really puts me off. On the one hand, it's beautiful how this opens the in game power economy to more corruption. On the other, I don't want to play the game where one can have a significant advantage just because he has the money in life to buy it. On my third, cancerous hand that ought not be, haven't you always been able to trade cash in for ISK? I think I'll also wait for word from CCP.

@Beforet said:

...On my third, cancerous hand that ought not be, haven't you always been able to trade cash in for ISK? I think I'll also wait for word from CCP.

Thats a fair point, but simple wealth in EVE isn't enough to turn the tide against you. Especially when it's 15 bucks for 350 million ISK. most ships worth having will cost 3-4 times that in the grand scheme and many will cost factors more than that.

Meaning you could always spend 15 bucks and get a quick influx of cash but funding your way to power was never going to work out well, especially when all it takes is for you to be targetted by someone that doesn't like you and you're out 60 bucks.

I'm not 100% convinced this is real yet but it looks it might very well be, and I understand players being very pissed off with this. On the whole non-cosmetic products available through micro-transactions are a very unappealing prospect, the only game I've ever seen pull it off in an acceptable way was TF2 and that was a real one-off situation where they had given players a cheap, non-subsciption based experience with ridiculous amounts of free content over a long period of time. What CCP may be doing here doesn't seem pretty and while micro-transactions have worked out for a lot of other games EVE is a rather unique case. I think it'd be easy to say that this completely going to break EVE but while the deep investment players have in the game may make them very sensitive to this kind of change it also means that they'll be more reluctant to leave the game, especially when there are so few alternatives on the market. I really don't like the sound of what CCP are doing but it's just so hard to know how this will play out. It's kind of ironic that the downfall of this economically-based game world might very well be real-world economics.

The inclusion of these types of transactions make it seem like CCP is going to make EVE F2P. And like with nearly every F2P MMO out there, it basically ruins the game. No one wants to feel like they need to pay and/or pay more to win.

kinda glad I haven't played in months, 
though every so often I do consider picking it up again

Quick Update: its confirmed to be True: 
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1536065&page=5#126

@Pinworm45 said:

That game was always capitalist. Now the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. 

Beautiful.

Wow. This is a change. Eve fans go from incessantly praising their game on message boards to bashing it.
 
2012 apparently is the end.

This is just messed up, you should only be required to pay for a game once, I've not the cash, nor the...retarded-ness to play games like these.

All of this controversy is just the culmination of how CCP has been acting for the last couple years now. I've only been an infrequent EVE player, but I've enjoyed browsing the forums, and everytime I went back I would always look on the forums to see huge petition drives and hundreds of players screaming at CCP to fix things for months and months. Once upon a time CCP was pretty in touch with their players but in the last couple years they've started to take a much more disgusting tone in how they're running their business as well as becoming grossly out of touch with everyone actually playing the game.
 
Inside EVE there was either a disaffected employee or person who was friends with employees within CCP working on EVE (it's not clear which one is the case) and he said that the groups at the bottom of the EVE totem pole call the higher ups "Team Awesome", because they're always focusing on some ridiculous grand idea no one wanted nor asked for, and when it's introduced, it either becomes yet another in the long list of things CCP just immediately forgets about after implementing it or they're shocked beyond shocked at the negative reaction from the community. People playing EVE simply want the game to work, but CCP never seems to actually stop and take care of loose ends.
 
Apparently the breakdown in communication really got going when CCP started looking at more and more ways to monetize EVE, and hired an ex-Citibank guy to come on board with them. Not so surprisingly, this has apparently not gone over well, as CCP is now just straight-up lying to the playerbase about micro-transactions, not to mention charging ridiculous amounts of money for worthless items to begin with. Frankly, I hope CCP gets what's coming to them. I've been interested in coming back to EVE lately, but after this, there's not a chance in hell I will ever play that game again unless they seriously get their shit together. But once they've gone this far, why would they ever turn back?

@Ragdrazi said:

Wow. This is a change. Eve fans go from incessantly praising their game on message boards to bashing it. 2012 apparently is the end.

Ever since Dust 514 was announced theres been conflict. Its been years.

Worse... 
 
Quotes from the internal newsletter: 

- I shop therefore I am
- Buy me I’ll change your life
- You can develop a friendship by “spending” your time, or you can pay to get the same benefits that friendship would otherwise allow.  
- Emotion and engagement are the fundamental foundation for virtual goods sales.
- The question of virtual goods sales is not “to do, or not to do?” Rather, it’s “how do we do this?”

"One other service we’re looking at is selling faction standings. We want to offer convenience for a price. As an example, your friend might give you free tickets to see her band play simply because the two of you are friends; meanwhile, other fans have to pay for a ticket because, well, that’s how it normally works. The more noteworthy the band, the more those friendships (and thus the tickets) are worth."

"On the opposite end of the scale to vanity goods are performance-based items such as weapons. They are consumed through gameplay, making them a potentially powerful source of renewable income. Selling them for real money is very tempting. They are highly desired by the player audience and yield lower development costs, as variation can be achieved through numbers rather than unique art assets. Selling them though, is highly controversial. We are planning on doing so. I would be tempted to say it is because we are fearless, but the real reason is that we have strong evidence that selling performance enhancers, in moderation, works." (This was in the bit about DUST and not eve)

"Cosmetics are the easiest form of virtual goods sales to discuss, but they’re not the only ones. Items that improve the player character’s capabilities are some of the most effective at converting free or trial players into paying ones. According to Jon Selin, Lead Designer on World of Darkness, metrics from other games that sell virtual goods indicate that overall enjoyment increases"

yep

I think there's certainly some truth in the idea that CCP prioritizes 'shiny new' over 'working'. And yes there always seemed to long known, long unfixed issues being discussed on the forums. All such a shame.

So the latest then is that some CCP bod no-ones heard of (always a good sign when they are supposed to be PR/Community relations) wants to start a discussion. To me, it sounds like plan B. Plan A was ignoring the QQ until the forum users got tired and moved on. Plan B looks set to be the same, but this time with more pretending to listen.

Damn my EvE itches.

I'm very disappointed about this. I have genuine love for EvE. I think i'll be hanging on to see what happens but the die most certainly has been cast.

Yup shit has hit the fan alright its been brewing for a while but the vanity items and pdf leak just pushed it beyond boiling point

Whats so shitty about this micro transaction business is that rich people in real life become rich people in-game and the poor will be poor even in gaming standards. Viva la capitalism!

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

This is just messed up, you should only be required to pay for a game once, I've not the cash, nor the...retarded-ness to play games like these.

You mean versus the subscription model where you only have to pay once ..... every month?

How long do developers think they can nickel and dime gamers? I'm getting really sick of this kind of shit.

@Picard: CCP won't get any more of my money, i just cancelled my accounts.

I've been catching up on some of this, the more I read the worse it gets.

Friend told me about this earlier, seems CCP have gone about this all the wrong way,

Though according to him CCP have been screwing up a few things these past few months with EVE Online.

I'm not automatically against micro transactions but it seems really out of character for EVE and CCP. I don't think any MMO can get away with having a monthly sub and micro transactions.

There has been a huge amount of real money going in and out of that game for years now, legally and illegally. The universe will continue as always minus a few grumpy vets. Or I'm missing the point completely and it is bigger than micro transactions they are talking about.