There is a common misconception among those who pay their account via buying PLEX in Jita for ISK. It's best summarized by Jester. The idea is mostly "I'm a useful customer of CCP because someone else bought the PLEX for $15". It's completely wrong.
At first let's step aside from pixels and look at the real world. In the real world you are a player who plays a game provided by the developer. You should be paying for this service some way, it's obvious. You either do so by subscribing the game, paying the developer directly. The other is helping him creating content for other, paying players, increasing their likelihood of remaining subscribers. If you do neither, you are leeching and are a useless waste of server capacity for the developer.
CCP made a mistake, no doubt. They designed the game with the same assumption as the developers of World of Tanks: if you are a free player, you are cannonfodder for the paying players. In World of Tanks if you don't pay for the game, your tank upgrades very slowly, making you easy target. In EVE you must rat/mine/mission in a ship that is totally unfit for combat to get resources. If you don't pay for the game, you must rat/mine/mission about 10 hours/month extra to generate the ISK needed for your PLEX. During this 10 hours you are easy target for roaming gangs. If you die to them you have to re-farm your lost ship, providing them further hours of fun. In the original design "playing free = time spent as target".
The design failed when they made highsec way too profitable. The highsec player is neither playing in group, providing content to his groupmates, nor he is a target for anyone (assuming he is not an idiot and fly something that can be reasonably ganked). He is playing alone for free, wasting server capacity. Have you seen the TiDi and the "can't jump in because of traffic jam" in Jita? I'd guess 50% of the players who caused this annoyance haven't paid a single $ for CCP or provided any content for anyone. Due to imbalanced highsec "playing free = time spent playing alone".
OK, OK, but he still generates ISK, LP and minerals that paying players are ready to buy for $ via PLEX. Isn't it makes him useful to CCP? No, because CCP can generate ISK, LP and minerals from thin air. If a highsec miner would be replaced by an NPC who sells the same amount of minerals in Jita and buys PLEX from the ISK, no one would notice or care. Since the paying player would get the same thing for the same $, he would have no reason to stop paying.
The bottom line is that CCP could replace non-paying highsec PvE players by an item shop with no effect on anyone else besides less lag and keep the same $ for less server and tech support costs.
I'm not saying that highsec PvE players must be purged. I'm saying they must pay for the game they play with $ as they provide no content to anyone. Technically this can be implemented by stopping them being able to farm the cost of PLEX with normal play. Highsec income must be nerfed to the range of 5M/hour. Out with L4s, incursions and all ores besides veldspar!
Update: just found out the most trivial way to explain it: every in-game item is worthy only in comparison to the amount in the hands of other people. If you double the ISK in the hand of everyone, you just caused inflation. If highsec farmers would disappear, there would be less tritanium for sure, so less ships. But the amount of ships vs the amount of ships in the hand of your enemy won't change. Similarly if you pay $15 to buy a PLEX, from this PLEX you can buy less ships, that's true. But the amount of benefit you gain from the PLEX (compared to your enemy or the average gamer) will be the same, so you become no weaker nor stronger by the increase of ship prices.
At first let's step aside from pixels and look at the real world. In the real world you are a player who plays a game provided by the developer. You should be paying for this service some way, it's obvious. You either do so by subscribing the game, paying the developer directly. The other is helping him creating content for other, paying players, increasing their likelihood of remaining subscribers. If you do neither, you are leeching and are a useless waste of server capacity for the developer.
CCP made a mistake, no doubt. They designed the game with the same assumption as the developers of World of Tanks: if you are a free player, you are cannonfodder for the paying players. In World of Tanks if you don't pay for the game, your tank upgrades very slowly, making you easy target. In EVE you must rat/mine/mission in a ship that is totally unfit for combat to get resources. If you don't pay for the game, you must rat/mine/mission about 10 hours/month extra to generate the ISK needed for your PLEX. During this 10 hours you are easy target for roaming gangs. If you die to them you have to re-farm your lost ship, providing them further hours of fun. In the original design "playing free = time spent as target".
The design failed when they made highsec way too profitable. The highsec player is neither playing in group, providing content to his groupmates, nor he is a target for anyone (assuming he is not an idiot and fly something that can be reasonably ganked). He is playing alone for free, wasting server capacity. Have you seen the TiDi and the "can't jump in because of traffic jam" in Jita? I'd guess 50% of the players who caused this annoyance haven't paid a single $ for CCP or provided any content for anyone. Due to imbalanced highsec "playing free = time spent playing alone".
OK, OK, but he still generates ISK, LP and minerals that paying players are ready to buy for $ via PLEX. Isn't it makes him useful to CCP? No, because CCP can generate ISK, LP and minerals from thin air. If a highsec miner would be replaced by an NPC who sells the same amount of minerals in Jita and buys PLEX from the ISK, no one would notice or care. Since the paying player would get the same thing for the same $, he would have no reason to stop paying.
The bottom line is that CCP could replace non-paying highsec PvE players by an item shop with no effect on anyone else besides less lag and keep the same $ for less server and tech support costs.
I'm not saying that highsec PvE players must be purged. I'm saying they must pay for the game they play with $ as they provide no content to anyone. Technically this can be implemented by stopping them being able to farm the cost of PLEX with normal play. Highsec income must be nerfed to the range of 5M/hour. Out with L4s, incursions and all ores besides veldspar!
Update: just found out the most trivial way to explain it: every in-game item is worthy only in comparison to the amount in the hands of other people. If you double the ISK in the hand of everyone, you just caused inflation. If highsec farmers would disappear, there would be less tritanium for sure, so less ships. But the amount of ships vs the amount of ships in the hand of your enemy won't change. Similarly if you pay $15 to buy a PLEX, from this PLEX you can buy less ships, that's true. But the amount of benefit you gain from the PLEX (compared to your enemy or the average gamer) will be the same, so you become no weaker nor stronger by the increase of ship prices.
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