What Price The Prize?

Yesterday on twitter a conversation started about the upcoming Skill Point trading in which famous blogger Noisy said some things I disagreed with. Before I get into the conversation, Noisy is one of the best EVE bloggers and someone's whose opinion I value highly, so I was not trying to pick a fight or troll him. Not sure if twitter conversations capture the nuance enough to make that point.

To reiterate something I've blogged about in the past, I've come to feel that the skill points system is an unnecessary limitation that impacts negatively newer players and has virtually no impact on veteran players. So while I would prefer that skill points are removed almost wholesale, I'm not opposed to a system that allows newer players to get skill points if they so desire to reduce the negative impact imposed on them by the system. For the record, the Character Bazaar is a similar system but far more advantageous to veteran players since the skill point trading is done via an entire character and thus the costs per transaction are far higher.

Back to the conversation above. Noisy says that skill point trading is contrary to the purpose of the game which he defines as "to journey thru the galaxy developing your character in hopefully fun and/or interesting ways". That's a good purpose; in fact its an admirable purpose, but I disagree its the purpose of the entire game.

This is the meat of the disagreement here, a fundamental parting of ways on whether or not being willing to pay cash to skip parts of the game is an acceptable practice or not. Other people compared it to purchasing a max level character in World of Warcraft. Noisy is of the opinion that if you want to skip part A to get to part B, then you should just stop playing the game. But I'm of the opinion that if part B is considered enough value to you to skip part A, paying cash for it should not be a big deal and should be allowed. 

In EVE's case, there are multiple "grinds" aka limitations: the ISK grind, the skill point grind, and the ability/experience grind. My enjoyment primarily lies in testing my ability against other pilots in PvP as both a pilot and Fleet Commander. I've been in the game so long that I've past the ISK grind and skill point grind but I could imagine coming into the game, wanting to get into the PvP in a meaningful competitive way, and being frustrated by the ISK and skill point grind and wanting to get a boost past them. PLEX already offers a way for the former, and now Skill Point trading offers a way for the latter. 

Noisy seems to be a hardliner against any form of paying cash to skip any limitation presented by EVE and I can see his point of view, even if I disagree with it. I don't think we should allow someone to pay cash and get "gold bullets" or any other advantage over other players that cannot be obtained in any method except cash, for example. Nor do I think we need to allow them to skip progression entirely so that they skill up to perfect titan pilots in a matter of a few minutes and lots of credit card payments. I do think there is a middle ground to be found to allow those with more cash than time to find happiness in the game without unbalancing the game for those with the opposite.

Noisy's attitudes towards RMT may put him in one minority, but I'm sure my attitudes towards skill points (death to skill points!) puts me in a different minority. I hope the different perspectives help CCP continue to make a good game.

Tunnel Vision

Last week on the Super Secret Podpack skype channel I got into a large discussion with Xander Pheona and Jeg Elsker of Crossing Zebras podcast about how much CCP was to blame for allowing the SOMERBlink / Shattered Crystal Plex selling partnership to evolve into what is effectively Real Money Trading (aka RMT), and then subsequently in late August run a community spotlight on the site which can be taken as tacit approval of the practice.

Xander and Jeg are argued that CCP should have done thorough background checks on the sites they promote and that there was a massive failure on their part to not see the process as being RMT and thus unhealthy for the game, and therefore heads should roll for this oversight.

In hindsight, vision is 20/20.

It is not fair to treat a large company as a single entity where the knowledge of one person should be automatically known to all other parts. Its also a little unfair to expect line employees tasked with fairly straight forward tasks such as "check this organization for signs of RMT" and expect them to have the flash of insight to realize that this promotion gimmick is actually a new and innovative form of RMT while simply checking for the traditional known forms of RMT. In other words, I'm not going to go and hang CCP Jimmy the Auditor from the nearest tree because he didn't raise flags that the Purchase Plex for SOMER Credit was a questionable practice. Nor would I take CCP Bobby the Security Guy out behind the barn to be put down for not detecting it either. People, especially employees in a large company, can get tunnel vision to the known and not see the forest for the trees when confronted unexpectedly with the unknown.

Tunnel Vision

That all being said, I'm glad to see CCP is addressing the issue for all ETC retailers and closing this loophole. Now that CCP Jimmy and CCP Bobby have been educated to this form of RMT and its put into their specific areas of tunnel vision, they are no longer excused from missing it when it arises.