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Taxman helix
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Posted - 2008.06.24 19:29:00 -
[1]
Hi , I wonder if you can help me. Having recently returned to Eve I fund my time on eve purchasing Game time codes and Purchased a 90 day GTC at $38.99 from an authorized reseller. Simply put I saw that as good value $13 a month for playing a game. So much so that I purchased a second account for my Daughter.
I understand that the CCP have now changed the way time codes are purchased. That the 30 day and 90 day cards have been withdrawn and that a 60 day card replaces them at a cost of $34.99. I donÆt need the mathematical brain of Stephen Hawkins to realise that this is a price hike. For the sake of rounding up to a cent. I will refer it to $39.00 and $35 respectively.
On the 90 day cards my monthly cost to the game was $13 per account. On the new 60 day cards my monthly cost to the game will be $17.50 per account. This equates to an increase of $4.50 per month or approximately a 33% rise in costs per account.
In an economic climate that is putting real life demands on my wallet , I find it hard to justify continuing playing the game. At the very least I would have to discontinue the 2nd account.
After investing a lot of time and effort in attracting new and old players to the game I cannot understand the logic behind a 33% price hike.
I accept that the 90 day cards were discounted due to the fact that I was paying for 90 days up front. I feel your costs should have been considered more carefully. I wonder if you should have employed Stephen Hawkins to help those who lacked the foresight to anticipate reactions to a price hike via the back door.
Obviously as I compose this e-mail it drips with sarcasm. But if you upset your customer base soon you will have no customers. And barbs aside for the moment and back to the subject at hand.
Are the CCP likely to review the pricing to reflect a more reasonable and affordable connection Price?
If I had been on the team that had decided the final cost , I would have pitched it @ $25 per 60 days and then plastered it on all the websites and forums that you had indeed reduced the playing costs for many of the players.
I look forward to your response.
Ian R Smith AKA Taxman û Helix.
will keep you posted.
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Keegster
Amarr Distillery Lazy is our middle name
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Posted - 2008.06.24 19:51:00 -
[2]
i'm actually surprised nobody has replied to this so far as it will affect almost all people in the game.
Percentagewise that is indeed a big hike.
Sadly i can see the price of buying ingame GTC rising signigficantly too. 60 days are currently around the 280-320 mark. soon they'll be the price of current 90 day cards. |
Su27frogfoot
Caldari
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Posted - 2008.06.24 19:57:00 -
[3]
All I can say is I agree with what you say.
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Elyse
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Posted - 2008.06.24 20:05:00 -
[4]
Welcome to an inflationary global economy. Prices are going up across the board, comodities, energy, and labor costs are increasing world wide. It probably costs EVE more to maintain their servers and developers than it did the last time they increased prices. Have you noticed anything else increasing in price, like food, energy, housing? $17.50 for a month's entertainment is still cheap. Try taking your girlfriend out on a date for less than that?
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MelDevi
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Posted - 2008.06.24 20:17:00 -
[5]
Keegster's right. The increased $ cost of GTCs will increase the ISK cost. I just sold 6 for 330 ea. and the latest post is 360.
But did only GTCs go up? I got no notification that my monthly paid subscription went up.
Mel
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NaughtyCoCo
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Posted - 2008.06.24 20:20:00 -
[6]
i have sold one character (closed account) and i will discontinue subscribing on another, will go from 4 to 2 accounts because of this gtc change.
I might even drop the second too...even more isk to grind to support them.
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Keegster
Amarr Distillery Lazy is our middle name
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Posted - 2008.06.24 20:22:00 -
[7]
Originally by: NaughtyCoCo
I might even drop the second too...even more isk to grind to support them.
this might actually be the issue though - how many people are now playing for "free"?
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Chithso Castro
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Posted - 2008.06.24 20:49:00 -
[8]
Originally by: Keegster
Originally by: NaughtyCoCo
I might even drop the second too...even more isk to grind to support them.
this might actually be the issue though - how many people are now playing for "free"?
u talking about all the farmers?.k ccp increases the price of gtc and stops selling 30-90 day cards.we(the 3rd party that sell em on forum stop selling becose they are to expensive.its a bad thing to say but some of us will find alternative ways of suplyng our selfs with iski's aka isk farmers.so the point of increasing price to drop allt-iskfarmers and so on is for nothing becose more people will buy isk from the farmers
also mabe u should rather remowe that buddy program...
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Hrian d'Fat
Caldari Hrian Trading
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Posted - 2008.06.24 21:13:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Hrian d''Fat on 24/06/2008 21:13:29 Fact: 1 Euro = 1.5515 U.S. dollars
You might or might not know, but the USD and EUR costs were / are the same, so someone paying through CC in eur pays 14.95 a month, while someone else paying through CC in USD pays 14.95 a month. The only difference really is, that 14.95 USD is mere 9.63 EUR.
Now consider all those people paying from GTCs getting their 3 months at a price, thats almost half of what was intended.
It was only a matter of time before CCP had to do something.
There are just a few issues here: 1) Its a shame how they did try to PR this as a step made to make the life of someone - in our case i think it was the GTC dealers - easier, by adjusting their GTCs to some never heard standards.
2) Its ridiculous, that not only did they increase the prices, they did it twice by eliminating the 30d GTCs, esentially forcing people who pay through GTCs to buy two months even if they only want to buy one.
What CCP should have done: Tell us that the current economic situation makes it necessary to increase the prices on GTCs (why werent the USD prices bumped up on CC transactions btw?). Increase the pricing of 30 and 90d GTCs accordingly.
What CCP should still explain is why people paying in USD are paying only about half of what people paying in EUR pay. Are the europeans little piggy banks they can milk more or what?
Im pretty damn sure, that offering the same service for different prices depending on region is not considered a nice business practice, given there is no valid explanation for the difference of course.
In our case, i doubt there is any.
I think this is a clear case of negative discrimination. I DEMAND THE SAME PRICES AS U.S. CUSTOMERS GET, OR AT LEAST A CORRECT BREAKDOWN OF EXTRA COSTS INVOLVED IN SELLING THEIR SERVICE TO ME.
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Scraps McFadden
Minmatar
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Posted - 2008.06.24 21:33:00 -
[10]
Originally by: Keegster
Originally by: NaughtyCoCo
I might even drop the second too...even more isk to grind to support them.
this might actually be the issue though - how many people are now playing for "free"?
Actually, no one is playing for "free". CCP is getting their money for the time. I buy GTCs using isk via the secure approved method, but the person I bought it from with my isk payed CCP for the time that I am playing. I might not see the cost, but it is certainly not free.
The only thing I can suggest to the european folks complaining about the difference in cost between USD and EUR is try to buy GTCs with isk from folks who payed for the game time in USD. That might put enough of a crunch on their income for them to do something about leveling the costs, but only if everyone does it...
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Sophia Stormbringer
Lightning Technologies
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Posted - 2008.06.24 21:50:00 -
[11]
Looks like you people finally woke up after all. Back when I predicted that people were going to quit their game accounts, I got laughed at and my thread got bashed, because nobody believed that 60d gtcs would cost as much as 90d gtcs did.
There you go CCP, thanks to all the leaving people, you won't get more money, but a lot less happy customers.
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Sooss
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Posted - 2008.06.24 22:03:00 -
[12]
As far as I can tell, even if you have all your settings set to US, the subscription system still charges you in Euros. This is of course assuming that my account hasn't been locked to Euros when I first registered as being from the UK....
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Ugunidad
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Posted - 2008.06.24 22:04:00 -
[13]
Edited by: Ugunidad on 24/06/2008 22:05:11
The prices have remained same if you use a credit card. Using one to pay for the account you will be charged the old price of $13 a month. CCP does not require one to register a credit card upon activating an account like some other games do ... but what they effectively have done is increase price of playing for those, and only for those people who do not have a cc that their billing system would accept, which they have already stated will be a minority.
As for increase in ISK prices the old 90 day codes were selling for about 380-400 mil ISK a piece for a while now which corresponds to 120-133 mil ISK a month (right now they are selling at 400-450 mil since they are being discontinued).
I bought several of the new 60 day codes for 300-350 mil which corresponds to 150-175 mil ISK a month.
Total difference: about 35 mil ISK extra per account per month which is equivalent to running three more level 4 missions or about 2 extra hours of grind per account per month.
It probably makes a big difference for someone trying to support 3+ accounts with traditional ISK grinding activities like mining and mission running that pay 10-15 mil ISK per hour. I personally have figured out ways to make 100+ mil per hour while playing EVE long time ago, so even though I own more than 3 accounts I am not considering closing any of them.
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Sooss
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Posted - 2008.06.24 22:18:00 -
[14]
If you want a cheaper way to buy the 60 day timecodes, buy them from battleclinic in Euros (22.24) which equates to ú17.57 ($34.63) or ú8.79 ($17.32) per month...
...just a thought...
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DarcKry2
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:17:00 -
[15]
OK here is my thought which you can take that and $.50 and buy a can of coke well maybe $1.25 due to inflation. The way I see it is yes CCP has a cost of keeping their server up and yes prices are going up everywhere I agree on that. Lets look at this for a minute. The more prices raise the less people play Right? Ok now the less people play the more the company has to raise prices to be able to stay afloat. Follow me so far. Would it not help CCP's wallet out if they lowered the price so more and more people could play and thus by volume of sales decrease their overhead. If you sit back and look at the whole economy when people can't afford to play because of other commitments then who will be the one to fall due to a huge drop in customers? CCP will! Lets do this if CCP will just try to lower prices on the game play and GTC's for about 3 months then watch their amount of gamers pick up by about 25% to 30%. That is just my $.02 worth. What do you all think?
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Fitz VonHeise
The New Order.
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:25:00 -
[16]
Originally by: Sophia Stormbringer Looks like you people finally woke up after all. Back when I predicted that people were going to quit their game accounts, I got laughed at and my thread got bashed, because nobody believed that 60d gtcs would cost as much as 90d gtcs did.
There you go CCP, thanks to all the leaving people, you won't get more money, but a lot less happy customers.
Roget that...
I have 7 active accounts. I will be going to five shortly and probably four.
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Tinitras
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:32:00 -
[17]
Originally by: DarcKry2 OK here is my thought which you can take that and $.50 and buy a can of coke well maybe $1.25 due to inflation. The way I see it is yes CCP has a cost of keeping their server up and yes prices are going up everywhere I agree on that. Lets look at this for a minute. The more prices raise the less people play Right? Ok now the less people play the more the company has to raise prices to be able to stay afloat. Follow me so far. Would it not help CCP's wallet out if they lowered the price so more and more people could play and thus by volume of sales decrease their overhead. If you sit back and look at the whole economy when people can't afford to play because of other commitments then who will be the one to fall due to a huge drop in customers? CCP will! Lets do this if CCP will just try to lower prices on the game play and GTC's for about 3 months then watch their amount of gamers pick up by about 25% to 30%. That is just my $.02 worth. What do you all think?
I think people do not play EVE for many other reasons rather than cost. I have never heard anyone state that the did not open an EVE account because it costs $15 a month, ever. I have heard people complain about it being boring, slow-paced, too confusing and difficult, too risky to be enjoyable, etc. From this follows that if CCP drops subscription fee to $10 you will NOT see an automatic 20% rise in subscription numbers. As for people owning multiple accounts, less than a quarter of players do that and most of these 22-23% or so have just 2 accounts and are not going to open 3rd if fee drops to $10 because each account requires additional play time and in my experience is generally a big hassle.
CCP probably has some employees that evaluate the market and optimize profits for them. These people have calculated that CCP will make more profit by raising GTC prices to $34 and elimitating 30/90 day codes. Also note that this change does not affect majority of playerbase - subscription costs through the website if you pay with a credit card have remained the same as always, 12-15 dollars or euros a month. Yes there will be a few people closing accounts because of this change just like always, players closing their accounts because they got suicide ganked, scammed, podded with a snake set, or because they got bored with 0.0 POS warfare, and so on and so on ... but whoever optimizes profit for CCP has concluded that overall the number of accounts lost won't decrease the overall revenue.
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A PECK
Gallente Aliastra
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:37:00 -
[18]
well this really sucks. I had to go to buying GTCs to play the game a couple months back. Thought I was doing pretty good was able to keep 2 accounts up with 90 day cards and 2 noobs up with 30 day cards. now looks like I wont be able to do the noob accounts. So looks like CCP will loose 2 accounts. Even thou I have to buy my GTC with Isk someone had to buy the GTC. So if I can't make anuff isk to keep all 4 going because 60 day cards are now 350 and higher what I was paying that 90 days. there is no point in the other 2 accounts. It was nice having one alt with mining leadership almost had him up to a mindlink too.
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DarcKry
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:47:00 -
[19]
I have been in the gaming community for about 8 yrs. now and I know several people that the main reason they do not play eve is because the price. I love eve and choose to play it regardless. The others I know like eve but would rather go and buy the games like cod4 and BF2142 and Battlefront and so on because they buy the game and thats it. I did not say they would increase ammediatley but I am sure they would in a small period of time. No I do not set and try to figure the market out but, I am a gamer and I am giving this from the people I talk to and my own stand point. Still none the less the ones that have alts they have had to shut down due to price would they not be more inclined to reinstate them if the price dropped then that would be more money in the wallet. I am not saying this is the solution just a suggestion to try or atleast look at if nothing else.
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Big Al
Stoat's Ultimate Carebear Adventure
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Posted - 2008.06.24 23:54:00 -
[20]
So cancel your accounts.
I don't like the change either, but CCP doesn't really care what you post, they care about the bottom line.
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Puertorrican Sensation
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Posted - 2008.06.25 00:23:00 -
[21]
*bump*
Wow! This is insane. I feel like I have been robbed. Honestly. Plz do something about this CCP.
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Taxman helix
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Posted - 2008.06.27 11:57:00 -
[22]
Well no response from them yet.
I will not be renewing my second account.
I was not planning to fund my accounts on Isk , and I feel deeply let down that as a Paying customer they should ignore so far.
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Kaya Divine
Gallente
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Posted - 2008.06.27 12:10:00 -
[23]
CCP hoped that this will increase theirs profit. Sadly that will not happen. When gtc start to expire, and number of active accounts diminish, they will understand that. I consulted moralists to learn how to appear philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with and in the end it all came down to one principle:win or die. |
Brengholl
Gallente Special Operations Corp
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Posted - 2008.06.27 12:48:00 -
[24]
Originally by: Hrian d'Fat What CCP should still explain is why people paying in USD are paying only about half of what people paying in EUR pay. Are the europeans little piggy banks they can milk more or what?
Im pretty damn sure, that offering the same service for different prices depending on region is not considered a nice business practice, given there is no valid explanation for the difference of course.[/quote
i remember reading about that before i registered for the game
it said that europe has some kind of software tax that the rest of the world dosent have, and thus the price diference i did not personaly check if this is true or not, bit that's what ccp said is the reason
...i live in europe but my country is not in the european union, and i get charged les than 10Ç on my card depending on the exchange rates, so that could confirm the tax claim about the european union
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Dim Corby
Valheru Empire Science and Production Agency
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Posted - 2008.06.27 13:01:00 -
[25]
Edited by: Dim Corby on 27/06/2008 13:13:27 Edited by: Dim Corby on 27/06/2008 13:04:32 It's not only that pricing went up because CCP made it more expensive. I can live with that... it's more frustrating that prices are rocketing due to shortness of offers.
Only a week ago you where still able to buy the 'old' 90day gtc's which are now gone and since they are gone the 60d gtc price is going manic cauze on every WTS 10 people are bidding (regardless if it's sold or not) and 100 people are not even taking the time to postbid cause the gtc is gone in seconds.
I actually had one that in the time where I was pushing the reply button and contacting the player ingame, the gtc was sold. There could not have been more then 10 secs inbetween. http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=807793&page=1#2
This account is due to end during summerholiday if I don't find (read succeed) someone to sell me a bloody gtc beforehand!
So action to be taken; bring back the choice!
edit: well finally, after a week looking, I got one... 60d for 400m! I do as Barti says except cleaning his bloody Hulk |
Alanaggh
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Posted - 2008.06.27 15:52:00 -
[26]
My account went dead jus today, so I just realized new price policy.
This is just crazy, can you just imagine your cinema ticket 33% more expensive ! You will insult the seller and go back to your home !
So folks i'm sure this augmentation is here to pay plane ticket for representative player and democratic joke CCP offers to us...
Just pathetic !
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Srioghal moDhream
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Posted - 2008.06.27 16:44:00 -
[27]
Actually it is more like this.
You go to the theatre and pay by CC and pay $15, but if you pay by cash you have to pay 17.50.
Does that make any sense at all?
Or another way to look at it.
You go to a theatre twice and pay $15 each time you go. or you buy your 2 tickets ahead of time and pay $17.50 each.
Does not make much sense to me, and I will personally consider putting a couple of accounts on long term change and just rotate them out as their training becomes complete so that I never have more than 2 active at any one time.
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TwIsTeDSoLdIeR
Gallente Federation of Freedom Fighters Executive Outcomes
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Posted - 2008.06.27 17:25:00 -
[28]
Edited by: TwIsTeDSoLdIeR on 27/06/2008 17:26:20 The only reason why americans are paying more or seeing a larger inflation rate is because the dollar has crashed on the market. From my perspective it only has gone up ú1.50 per month -: In uk pounds for a 30 day gtc used to cost close to ú8 (ú7.9* or soemthing) via buying them in dollars (shattered crystal), then dropped for a while to about ú7. Now in uk pounds a 60 day GTC is ú17.49 ($34.99 on shattered crystal) so as u can see it only has really risen up by ú1.50-ú2 per month ($3-$4) approx 6% ?, get my drift ?
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Taxman helix
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Posted - 2008.06.29 18:15:00 -
[29]
reply as follows
Hi Ian,
Thank you for your e-mail, it is always good to get feedback.
For some time we have been offering codes for 30,50,90 and 100 day of game play. We have long wanted to attune our program to make it more straightforward and we therefore decided to change the denomination of codes offered. You are correct that the new 60 day code is more expensive than the 30 and 90 day code but I would like to point out that you can still pay the same price for the game as before by subscribing. A three month plan is the same price as a 90 day code.
I am sorry if this has caused an inconvenience for you but we don¦t have plans to change the prices at this time.
Best regards,
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Taxman helix
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Posted - 2008.06.29 18:17:00 -
[30]
Originally by: TwIsTeDSoLdIeR Edited by: TwIsTeDSoLdIeR on 27/06/2008 17:26:20 The only reason why americans are paying more or seeing a larger inflation rate is because the dollar has crashed on the market. From my perspective it only has gone up ú1.50 per month -: In uk pounds for a 30 day gtc used to cost close to ú8 (ú7.9* or soemthing) via buying them in dollars (shattered crystal), then dropped for a while to about ú7. Now in uk pounds a 60 day GTC is ú17.49 ($34.99 on shattered crystal) so as u can see it only has really risen up by ú1.50-ú2 per month ($3-$4) approx 6% ?, get my drift ?
MMM do your maths again remember you are now paying $34.99 for two months instead of $38.99 for 3 months...... I dont think I need to explain that any further.
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