How is the EVE community so against 'paying to win' gameplay and yet alts are fine

Im against pay to win. Why?

To me it would take away unique gameplay eve offers for me. In this game where paths you choose are not scripted, its truly up to yourself to make you what you want to be.

Want to be elite PVP player? Go learn it. Pay to win would take this learning away. Anyone can learn ingame skill, But to be great, you must learn so much more then just those. Gamemechanics, application of right things at right time...

Lets not forget this is subscription based game, so i shell out real life money to buy gametime code, or large pile of iskies to get plex from market. Either way, your paying your sub monthly.

Eve is unique in ways it allows playing it. Its many things... World largest realtime economy simulation, practise ground for future leaders (Yes i believe some of those skills are traferrable to real life).

To me what got me sub this game in 2008, was no hand holding attitude of game itself. No easy shortcuts to be great. Yes i did try wow, it was IMHO too easy. As introvert personality person, eve is what truly speaks and challenges me...

Everybody can have alts, not everybody can afford or is willing to spend $300.- on "gold" ammo.

Um because we all have ISK and can buy anything we want with it, getting the ISK via plex or ingame methods makes no difference.


If there was gold ammo only available for RL cash that would break that balance.

Alts don't alter the gameplay in any way. From a gameplay perspective they're just a bad substitute for other players. Meaning they don't do anything a character controlled by another person couldn't do. In fact they're often worse, since managing them reduces their performance. You either have to micromanage several accounts, which means all perform below normal or you have them all copy one set of instructions, which means they perform their task efficiently, but in a very limited manner compared to a group of actual players. This makes them worse overall compared to actual players. Gameplay wise they are still governed by the same rules and have no advantages compared to other characters.

What they do offer is convenience and allow you to focus on wider range of activities at the same time. This is an advantage to the actual player behind the characters, but it doesn't offer advantages as far as characters in the game are concerned. They're still standing on equal footing, their gameplay functions are still governed by the same rules and no amount of RL monies can be used to bend those rules.

-when you pay real money to buy some Command or T3 boosting alt, you're paying for the win.
-when you pay real money to buy some logistics or ECM alt you are paying for the win

If you can't afford an alt, find a friend who can pilot a Falcon. One hardly can 'win' EVE by paying real money, there is always a bigger fish. People pay to make the game more comfortable, you can't blame them for it.

So if a sit an alt at the pos full gang links I don't have to take care about it doesn't alter my game play at all?

My pvp Tengu thanks to this gets a 4k max speed 30km web 50km disruptor, higher shield amount/resists but no, it doesn't alter at all the game play.

Of course.

Alts don't alter the gameplay in any way. From a gameplay perspective they're just a bad substitute for other players. Meaning they don't do anything a character controlled by another person couldn't do. In fact they're often worse, since managing them reduces their performance. You either have to micromanage several accounts, which means all perform below normal or you have them all copy one set of instructions, which means they perform their task efficiently, but in a very limited manner compared to a group of actual players. This makes them worse overall compared to actual players. Gameplay wise they are still governed by the same rules and have no advantages compared to other characters.

What they do offer is convenience and allow you to focus on wider range of activities at the same time. This is an advantage to the actual player behind the characters, but it doesn't offer advantages as far as characters in the game are concerned. They're still standing on equal footing, their gameplay functions are still governed by the same rules and no amount of RL monies can be used to bend those rules.

Lin I understand the points your trying to make, for the most part, I agree.

However

One of the major draws to eve, in my opinion, is the possibility that if you make enough isk, you can play the game for free by buying plex. But the plex has to come from somewhere, and it's not coming from some npc service, it's coming from someone who paid for it with actual money. Likewise, when someone buys plex, there's no galactic bank of eve to cash in your plex for isk, you need an actual willing player to buy it off of you, and the fact that people continue to buy plex hints that people for the most part have no problems with this exchange, or at the very least think it's somewhat fair. It is players after all that determine how much plex is worth.

Now yes, there are people who blow hundreds of dollars buying tons of plex, selling it and go roll around in a pool of monocles in their officer fit nightmare, but there's also the person who's too lazy to grind the missions for the isk to buy the hac he just got the skills to pilot, or the people who are just bad at managing or making isk in general. But in the end, their paying to give someone else a free ride on their dollar. No isk is being generated, just circulated, while very real wallets are emptying.

And for those that are rolling around in monocles in their officer fit ships, the fact of the matter is that while you can essentially "buy" ships and modules, something that you cannot "buy" is capability, or ¦¦s¦¦k¦¦i¦¦l¦¦l¦¦p¦¦o¦¦i¦¦n¦¦t¦¦s¦¦ (I'm a moron). A group of players, or even a single one, can still blow your trillion dollar butt out of the sky in ships that cost a small fraction of your own.

I'm sorry I dragged this out, I'm not the greatest at organizing my thoughts. I just wanted to say that, while yes, you are kinda right, there's another side to things, and people buying plex has the potential to benefit more than just the person who paid for it.

Edit: Whoops, completely forgot that you can "buy" skillpoints by buying a character.

It depends on how you look at 'pay to win', everything in eve can be brought with nothing more than a subscription and if your good enough at eve in terms of making isk you dont even need that. That doesnt mean you couldnt buy your way to the top either as you can buy countless PLEXs to buy a very high skillpoint character on the character bazaar and oodles of isk to go with it but it still doesnt mean they'll have the experience gained in that time training that character as countless faction fitted faction battleship killmails with terrible fits have shown over the years...

Most of my points have already been made, but it seems a clarification is needed.

The simplest way I can understand it is that while traditional Pay 2 Win setups act at the expense of other players, PLEX and alts (which can theoretically be powered by PLEX) actually offer value to both sides of the equation. The $ PLEX buyers get ISK to reduce their grind, while the ISK PLEX buyers get their play-time paid for by in-game money. $ buyers can only get as much as the ISK buyers will support/demand.

This is facilitated by the fact that PLEX is sold on an open market, rather than being used to acquire otherwise unobtainable and combat relevant equipment. Because both sides benefit, neither side is really offended.

I'm ok with that, now what do you think if I just get my credit card out of my pocket and get enough plex/convert it in to isk to buy that new Cloacky Basilisk, am I paying for the win or not?

How is the EVE community so against 'paying to win' gameplay and yet alts are fine

No your paying to get your ship blown up eventually there is no such thing as pay to win in eve as that would indicate being able to get a over powered item you couldn't get in the game unless you pay RL money for it that will give you a huge advantage over everyone else such as a mod. that give you a 99.99% resist in everything or a battleship doomsday auto cannon that can do 30k damage every 3 sec. from 300km away.

Now does alts give a player an advantage as far as skill training yes it does since you can specialize each one in certain areas for example this is the only account I have and I got him mostly trained in pvp skills but also trained up in industrial,mining and tradeing aswell now if I would of made a alt and focused my main on pvp and my alt on trade my skills would be alot higher in both those areas.