Pay to win - I pay real money and get an in-game advantage. Whether it is a short-cut to something that is already available through other means, or if it is something that is not otherwise available is irrelevant. You can pay the developer (or a third party) real money to gain some sort of advantage.

We have this in EVE currently in the form of PLEX and alternate accounts. Assuming the goal is to get rid of the ability for players to spend cash for in-game advantages, getting rid of PLEX is easy enough (although will likely **** a lot of people off and lose customers.) Finding a solution to alts is much more difficult.

But hey, who cares about the integrity of the simulation/sandbox when there's cash to be made? We can use that money that we get by making the game worse to then make the game better! Makes total sense!

EDIT: Why is **** censored? Is urine censored too? Consider this my official test. Bet it isn't.

EDIT 2: Nope, urine is okay but **** is not. Makes about as much sense as spending real cash for an advantage in an interactive simulation.

But it is an advantage that you can pay for, and thus p2w.

But it's still an advantage that you pay for. Not only that, but paying for it gets you the advantage more quickly than earning it in game does (unless you're making more isk/time than you get by spending a few minutes on the website making the purchase) which is a unique advantage in and of itself.

Time, just to name the most obvious one.

And you could have made 2.5billion if you had spent the extra 2 minutes to purchase a PLEX.

Because you can make even more money even more quickly buy buying PLEX for real money. Isn't that obvious?

It's like you do it on purpose.

Team A and Team B are each made of 10 players
5 of team B players control 3 alts each moreover, 5 of those 10 supplementary alts are static scouts + offgrid booster, the other 5 are fighting ships requiring little micro (snipers for example, warp in lock all and change target when it's down)
Team A has no alts, but has a fleet of 30 FRIENDS ships coming to help...which will be spotted by the static alts

Guess who will do the most damage, then break off and dock?

The fact remains that you could purchase something like 28 PLEX per day to bolster your income by an additional roughly 14 billion ISK per day (at current market prices.) That's in addition to whatever you're already making. If you don't see how that's buying an advantage, then you're beyond my help.

But they don't. Static alts and tower sitting offgrid booster are pure afk characters, no input required. You cannot ask of a player controlling a single character to do this, because he won't.

Degrees are irrelevant. Where the money goes is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you can spend real money to generate an advantage in game.

Then you're beyond my help. It's been pointed out as clearly, obviously, and succinctly as is possible. Anyone can spend real life money to tip the balance of the game in their favor via PLEX, via Alts, which are both inarguabley advantageous in that the provide you with the means to do stuff. Just like any other resource. You get a thing, in the game, for real money.

In the case of corps, static scouts are invariably afk alts.

Alts. PLEXes (and by proxy, Aurum.) These are things that must be purchased with real money, whether you're doing the purchasing or someone else is. Who does the paying is irrelevant. The relevant thing is that they are advantages that must be paid for with real money.

How is looking at an open client on a second monitor complicated? Does it require keyboard input?

Someone did. And someone, almost always at least two people, benefited from doing it. Again ... benefiting in-game from someone spending real money on the game.

We are talking about static scouts. "Eyes" in 1337-D1KS, which do not require input, but are here just to watch for local spikes and fleet movement through said system.
Any corp worth its salt has several "eyes" around, which just stay there as a zero-input requiring intel source.


Of course, you need mobile alts, actually played. But you know all that, and just play dumb.

And that's why every corp worth its salt uses quite a few of them, cloaked at key gates from a distance. They thus provide shiptypes, direction, and are only prone to miss targets if you fail to switch to them when seeing or hearing stuff happening on their client.

Sometimes I think I should really use alts, it seems I've got a better clue than most people.

At the point where real money began to affect game balance beyond the basic admittance fee.

Oh ok my bad people spend isk or money on static alts because they're useless and nobody knows how to make advantage of them, makes sense

They are obviously not getting exactly the same advantage. They spend money, and then an item is place in their hangar which would not have been there had they not spent money. The person who did not spend money does not get an item placed into his hangar in such a manner because he did not spend money. He has to buy said item with ISK. The problem isn't that you can buy things with ISK, the problem is that you can buy things with real money.

You're the only one doing so. I was merely referring to a corp using static scouts alts for its own personal intel.

Now not only do you spend no money for exactly the same service, but you also spend real money in addition to ISK for even more of the service. Advantage.

You can spend real money on EVE to get stuff in-game. That is real money affecting the game balance. That is the problem.

I assure you all the use of static alts scouts I've seen ingame has provided a huge advantage to those corps I've been in. Mostly WH corps, though. Their smaller side tends to eliminate sloppiness esting upon others' shoulders, as happens sometimes in null.

Big flashy on-screen visual effects are so hard to miss.

Did you train Metal Gear Solid IV right after Courage Wolf V?

Can't you see and hear gate activations?

Can't you see a WH fire?

Which part of key gates don't you understand?

Do you need to watch every irrelevant, less-travelled gates?

Do you need to watch 50 systems just to have safety in a few?

The moment plex were introduced on the scene is the moment this game stopped being a sandbox.

As convenient as plex can be they sure as **** had a negative impact on game play as a whole.