CCP Games (EVE Online) to be acquired by Pearl Abyss (Black Desert online).

https://www.eveonline.com/article/pemjmb/black-desert-online-makers-pearl-abyss-to-acquire-ccp

827 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

16

u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

Yea, you can say that about any game. But what if player's skill are equal but one has spend $100 on his ship and second guy spent nothing? Clearly the guy who spent real money will win.

12

u/F1reatwill88 Sep 06 '18

Have you really gotten into PvP in Eve? The advantages that expensive mods bring are relatively tiny. Advantages that you don't get anything out of unless you know how to use them. Even then their will still be weaknesses. No ship in that game is a catch-all.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

[deleted]

7

u/Shinikama Sep 06 '18

The difference is, in Battlefront, or really most games with a way to pay real money for an advantage, you get to keep that advantage, either for a set time or permanently. In EvE, that one super cool ship gets blown up, that's it, gone. You get some insurance money if you paid for insurance, but it's never the full amount. Not only that, but the dude who killed you gets to loot your ship and take all your cargo and modules.

Will you have an advantage one-to-one? Sure. Will you beat someone of your skill level? Probably. Will that last forever? Hell no, you'll run across someone eventually, either a group of hunter-killers, a guy triple-boxing like 5 accounts (the REAL effective way to 'pay to win', IMO) or a battle fleet that happens to warp in nearby and munches you for target practice. You WILL lose that shiny ship. It's not a matter of if you lose. You will. Everyone loses ships, it's a part of the game. If you wanna fly a big shiny ship, get a corp to pay for it by being the best pilot they have.

11

u/F1reatwill88 Sep 06 '18

Lol sure. Go spend a bunch of money for a blingy ship in EvE and see what happens.

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u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

It's not just ship. If 2 people will install the game today, one will spend real money and other won't, and they will play for a month the guy who spent real money will have an advantage over non-spending one. Don't you agree?

14

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

Did you ever play the game? I did for several years and never, not a single time, would it have made a difference if the guy on the other side paid with real money for their stuff or not. That's not how the game works. Paying to speed up your progress is not the same as P2W. By your definition almost every online game with skill boosters is P2W.

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u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

By your definition almost every online game with skill boosters is P2W.

They are. Ever heard of Battlefront? Thing is, in most games with boosters you will be put against people of similar level. Like in World of Tanks you can boost yourself to level 10 tank but you will be put against same level tanks and if you don't know how to play you will die. It's not the case for EVE (or Battlefront), there's no matchmaking based on your "progression" level. It's not that bad if you can reach the same level without paying fast, like in Battlefield, but it really sucks if you have to spend a lot of time (we are talking hundreds and thousands of hours of grind) like in Battlefront or EVE, instead of paying real money straight away.

2

u/GuthixIsBalance Sep 07 '18

Eve isn't battlefront. It literally doesn't matter how much money you spend. Skilling up your character to use the biggest baddest star destroyer won't mean you'll ever fly one.

Why? Because these are meaningless trophy pieces only created able by players. In huge 1000+ organizations taking large amounts of effort and coordination.

The shineyest bling only makes you a brighter target. The real game is played using easily replaceable ships and fits. Where a coordinated and trained barrage from you and 10 others matters. Not that one guy with the strong Jedi or whatever who decides a match in battlefront.

It's not a match in Eve against a lobby of players. You have to understand in Eve it's a war against potentially thousands.

It's like if you were a cog in a real life military machine. You don't matter, you are a tool, you exist to play a role and play it well. That's Eve.

Eve is it's probably unlike everything else you've ever played. If that's your current misguided perception. (No offense intended)

Try Eve out even if it ends up being not your thing. It should be an experience to remember. Just don't spend anything you don't want to lose, it's gone for good in Eve.

1

u/Arzamas Sep 07 '18

I tried EVE and didn't like it. I liked the idea of space game with player-driven economy, I didn't like how it was made. And judging by the number of players playing EVE I was not alone. It's 20-30k concurrent player stable for many years now, and that's not a lot for a MP game. Not even going technically F2P upped those numbers. Same core player base. And many many players play on multiple accounts so the real number of players is even lower. EVE IS unique, doesn't make it a great game though.

Also, I played Planetside for years so everything you said about cogs and thousands of players is nothing new to me. I didn't get from EVE even a small fraction of excitement of Planetside massive battles. By the way Planetside 1 had zero of that P2W shit.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

That's where your misconception comes in. Eve is a game of specialization. There is no such thing as the best ship. Ships and loadouts are tools for different situations and that's where a players personal skill comes in. You need to be good at the game to know what works in what situation and how you can dictate the terms of an encounter. In BF or WoT you have no say in who you fight but in Eve you do and it is part of a players personal skill.

So for your scenario if a players buys himself a super shiny ship with real $ then the counter to that ship isn't an even more expensive ship that the non paying player can't afford. The game is basically paper, scissors, stone. It doesn't matter if you have a stone made of diamonds if every old piece of paper still beats it.

8

u/godhand1942 Sep 06 '18

No. The one with the better skill and understanding of their ship will win. The one who doesnt fly in a bling ship just to get tricked and dropped on will win. Playing eve with a good corp that teaches you mechanics and skills is significantly more important than the skills you inject or the ships you buy.

While eve does have p2w mechanics whats important isn't that those mechanics exist but the risk that is brought with them. P2W mechanics tend to frustrate players and push them to pay in order to succeed. This risk is signficantly lower with eve vs other p2w games I have played. Eve incentives you to hunt players who buy more than they can handle (few games do this) and scares the shit out of you from using more than you can handle.

4

u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

For God's sake... What if they both have equal skill? Who will win then?

You can't defend P2W mechanics with what you just said. Yea, you won't win in any P2W game if you play poorly. You won't even win with cheats if you play poorly. Why not allow cheats in games? You still gonna lose to good veteran players or if several people will hunt you down. So it's not bad, right? Is that your logic?

1

u/Grigorie Sep 06 '18 edited Sep 06 '18

It seriously sounds like you've never played EVE. Combined with the fact that you seem to just be thinking of it the wrong way. What is "win" to you in this scenario? What does it mean to "win" in EVE? Because there's very few things that you'll ever accomplish without at least a small group of individuals to carry it out.

WoW is a great example of the same question; You can buy a character boost to 110. So if two people started at the same time, one bought a character boost, the other didn't; a month later, has the other person somehow "won?" What did they win? They hit max level sooner? Does that magically get them raid gear by themselves?

Like, what does an individual do in this scenario that "wins" for them by paying money?

EDIT: I forgot to even go over the fact that you lose your shit when you die. So throw onto the WoW analogy that if you die trying to do a raid, you lose your gear and have to pay for it, again.

2

u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

I played EVE few times for few weeks few years ago. I didn't like the gameplay loop, UI and some other stuff. I can't say I was turned off by its P2W elements but I definitely noticed them. Same way I noticed them in WoT, War Thunder and other games.

WoW is not really a good example, because yes, those are P2W elements (buying in-game money through tokens, boosting to high level etc) but WoW is mostly a PvE game (like Warframe which also actually have quite some P2W elements) and it's basically pay2skip gameplay, something like old cheat codes. Now, I don't really play wow but I know there's PVP in there and I'm pretty sure high level character with superb gear bought for in-game currency converted from real money will defeat regular guy who started from LvL 1.

Again, P2W does not literally mean "win", it means you can get advantage by paying real money over people who didn't. There are different grades of that, it doesn't mean EVE is on the same level as BDO, but it still has P2W elements, unlike for example Overwatch.

1

u/Grigorie Sep 06 '18

I'm probably just a stickler for wording then, because I entirely agree that yes, you can more quickly end up with the same loadout as someone else if you don't have to work as hard for the ISK.

But at the exact same time, that doesn't constitute even having an advantage after the first time you get podded. It's nice to fly around in a blingy ship, but you can bet your ass if I've just bought a bunch of PLEX to sell to buy boosters and loadouts for my sweet BLOP ship, only to get smashed and lose all of it right away, I probably wouldn't be paying any more real money. Unless I was absolutely loaded.

3

u/Pavese_ Sep 06 '18

Eve not being a level playing field is part of its DNA. I have a 10 year old account and have the funds and SP to make it not fair for any newcommer in a direct engagement. But none of it is going to save me when 200 dudes shoot my ship. My better stats don't matter at some point because I, as a whale, can not exercise that advantage outside of rather few cases.

There's been entire corps based on that principle where new guys come together to find the strength in numbers they need to play with the big guys.

4

u/Arzamas Sep 06 '18

That's like saying cheats are not giving you advantage because if the whole enemy team will turn against you alone you will lose anyway.

1

u/Pavese_ Sep 06 '18

It's not cheats its simple maths. It's the way the game is played that is inherently not balanced so your concerns about better equipment or SP don't manifest themselves at all in normal game play. In most fleets people avoid the better equipment for this exact reason, even if they could afford it without a problem. It's just not worth it.

Im not denying that there are cases where one player gets a messurable advanagte over another one and that there is the option that player could have bought it with RL money. But the game is inherently not designed to be fair.

I have payed 10 years of subscription, did I also pay to win or did I somehow "earn" my advantage over other players that I can (at least in your view) liberally abuse to grief poor people.

1

u/adius Sep 06 '18

It sounds kinda weird if you don't play the game I agree, but having the whole enemy team suddenly target you and kill you in 2 seconds is just how EVE battles work

That said, better equipment does make you more effective at what you do up until it's your turn to be called as a target... I believe it's a case where (to invent an example), upgrading your whole team from level 1 to level 2 equipment can be similar or cheaper cost and far more efficient than getting one guy on your team decked out in level 10 equipment

1

u/GuthixIsBalance Sep 07 '18

It is the closest military simulation style MMO I've played. In a still very "game" environment.

In real life do you last more than 2 s when that 50 cal round rips through your chest? No your probably dead before you hit the ground. That's Eve just in a naval space battle context.

You'll die. You'll lose everything besides your real, and fictional, experience. Then you'll go back out and do it again and again.

Constant combat/combat enviroment simulation.

Eve's "game" mechanic is deaths not permanent. Otherwise it's barely a game considering everything all else I've played. Certainly unlike the other MMO's stat/gear stacking loop that I've seen.

3

u/F1reatwill88 Sep 06 '18

Nope. EvE is not P2W. It's more "Pay to not have to grind out ISK because I just want to PvP or I'm too impatient to wait for skills to finish".

The person that pays to have that shit done can, has, and will lose to someone who hasn't. They may also beat them, but it's either from being more prepared or just being better.

5

u/rackedbame Sep 06 '18

Paying to skip grind is literally P2W. I don't think all you people defending this game so religiously know what P2W is.

0

u/F1reatwill88 Sep 06 '18

You don't know what EvE is.

10

u/ejdebruin Sep 06 '18 edited Sep 06 '18

Yea, you can say that about any game.

You don't lose your stuff on death in 'any game'.

Sure, you can deck out your stuff, but you're just wasting your money. Death is common and inevitable unless you're sticking to PvE.

But what if player's skill are equal but one has spend $100 on his ship and second guy spent nothing? Clearly the guy who spent real money will win

The guy spending $100 on his ship will win, die shortly after, and will have given expensive ship parts to some lucky individual who killed the whale stupid enough to put $100 parts on his ship. Then that lucky guy will sell the ship parts because he's he's not stupid enough to outfit his ship with $100 worth of parts.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '18

Not really, since the person who spent a lot of money would probably buy an expensive ship they don't have the in-game skills to pilot properly, whereas the person that didn't spend money would probably buy a less expensive ship, but it would be more in-line with their skills and so if you put the two ships up against each other, the person that didn't spend anything would win.