Microtransactions: pay for easy mode

People dub non-cosmetic microtransaction games as "pay to win". But for some reason they keep playing the game they observed unfair. That's weird, good players who are robbed from their victory by paying players should simply quit.

The reason for them not quiting became visible when I was playing a silly flash game: Bloon tower defense 5. Typical pay-to-win game where you can get atrocious power upgrades for money. Yet it's a fun game for free, exactly because the game is challenging without the atrocious power upgrades.

I think "pay-to-win" isn't a correct term. It is "pay for easy mode". The game is challenging and good for free, while bad players can buy easy mode. It's like World of Warcraft would be free to play without access to daily quests, LFR and LFD and you can pay for accessing these features. Good players, while would have trouble maxing out valor points, would enjoy progressing on normal and hard mode raiding and pre-made dungeons where they have to enter in the gate, while rightfully looking down the easy mode kids.

The only ones unhappy about the microtransaction model are those who want to display superiority instead of just be superior. Since it cannot be proved that you earned your progress by playing well and not by paying, there is no "l33tness" in progressing, nothing to show off. But it bothers only a small but noisy minority.

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Evidence that playing good has little to do with play time

Sirlin's "play to win" theory made significant impact in the meta-gaming community, but it's rejected in the wider gaming community. This theory claims that the performance of the player largely depends on his attitude, rather than his playing experience. I expanded this theory by the explanation why there are people who don't play to win: they want to pull stunts that impress real or imaginary peers who want to see sparkles and "ownage" instead of a "boring, cheap" play followed by a "you won" screen.

However the above lacked experimental proof, and without it, the bad players (large majority) can keep claiming that performance is only function of gaming time, dubbed as "no life". The claim is hard to disprove because successful gamers indeed spend lot of time in games. Unsuccessful ones too, but how to catch them? I mean some can be caught by doing extremely time-consuming "achievements", while getting little progress in the main line of the game. However they are a small minority, the large masses cannot be caught playing more than the "no lifers". In absence of accurate time data, anyone can claim that he just "has life" so he doesn't play as much as the other guy. Similarly, if good play is presented, they can simply claim that the performer plays 80 hours a week. Even if someone starts a new game and book his hours, one can easily claim that his previous gaming experience helps, since games are similar. They reached an unbreakable circular argument: anyone who plays good surely plays a lot and playing a lot makes anyone good player.

So I took a different approach. What if I could win while playing bad? I mean if you have "low skillz", you must be a casual. The perfect test-game was League of Legends. It's a pretty grindy (or costy) game, where you battle against other players using units called "champions". There are hundreds of them. They are purposefully unbalanced, every champion has a "counters", champions who can easily defeat it. So the only way to win is to have a large stable of champions so you can always pick one for the job. A champion costs 3-6000 game money and you get about 100-300 for a game if you play for free. Alternatively you can buy one for $15-30. So to have an "OK" collection of champions, you need to play thousands of hours or spend several thousands of USD. Add that the game is fast-paced, so you need to develop muscle-memory for each champions and memorize how to move against each enemy champion. It's easy to say that one must be a no-lifer to win here.

Here I come with nothing like that:Oops, I played practically one champion. It is a "recommended" one, meant for newbies: weak but easy to handle. To add, I did not even learn the other champions. What does Katarina do? She jumps around and does damage. That's all I know of her. Even less of those who aren't often played by enemies. Add that I have zero experience in RTS games and left WoW raiding for being too fast-paced.

Knows nothing about the game, did not grind gear, moves sloppy: everything is ready for a disaster. And indeed I got insane amount of flame from teammates for being unskilled, noob and a troll just for playing. Yet, it's not them, but me who got this:
Now being in silver league isn't a great thing. I wish to elevate at least to gold, but something very unexpected happened in EVE that will take up my gaming time. You will soon hear about that. Anyway, according to the game wiki, 68% of the players are in bronze. Despite I'm being utterly horrible in the game, I got into the top 1/3. How?

Simply by playing to win, as opposed to trying to kill enemies. The unsuccessful players want to "pwn" enemies to show off their "l33t stats" to peers. I preferred farming NPCs for gold and XP, defending and attacking towers, which are the objectives of the game. Players respawn you know. Most hate I got for completing an objective at the cost of letting a teammate die. That, and helping them which is dubbed as "kill-steal".

The above can be easily repeated, and having some meta-gaming knowledge, I know now that I picked a pretty bad champion as jungling needs teammates to somewhat cooperate, like be defensive when facing a stronger opponent instead of just rushing into the enemy, feeding and spamming "come gank jungler ffs". Some day I might repeat with an easier champion.

The result is that someone with a play-to-win mindset outperforms other players, even if he is utterly incompetent in the game, because most players don't even try to win. A snail easily wins a running race against a rabbit which runs in circles. The bronze players don't need more champions or better reflexes as they already 10x better than me on those fields. They just need to play to win.

PS: please note that there is a "normal game" mode in League of Legends, which is more fun, due to the lack of lengthy pre-battle selection (ban, pick turns, someone quit queue). So the people who picked competitive ranked games are surely attempting to win. They are just failing to.

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ur a kid!

The title is a troll comment I get often. It doesn't make much sense. It's clearly not an argument. While we know that socials don't bother with arguments, just with insults, butt-kissing and attention seeking, "ur a kid" isn't really an insult.

They seem to genuinely believe that my statements have a special quality that fits to kids. What is this? To the answer, we just have to look another troll comment the "u dun get EVE" (you don't understand EVE). This is pointless on its own, as the commenter never tries to teach me the meaning of EVE.

For a social the point of everything outside of body functions is having positive social emotions. Being loved and/or respected. The "meaning of EVE" what they can't define but are sure that I don't get is "hanging out with friends". In this respect gaining billions, topping the killboard or conquering regions are "meaningless pixels" while running around in frigates and spamming porn and meme links is "awesome fun".

Now back to the kids. Children in the modern world are taught in schools to science, art and professions. They are expected to perform in a rational manner and are measured by numerical scales. So a kid internalizes a moral system where performing well is good and failing is bad. Education is the greatest advancement of mankind and the sole reason of our progression. However, around puberty the kids start to get into "bad company", to peer groups that defy the school norms and claim that having good grades is "no life" and the "fun" is in being intoxicated, engaging in unsafe sex and perpetrating petty crimes.

Since I measure my progress with charts and not by "having fun", I must be a kid who has not been lured by "friends" away from the boring schoolwork into "the fun". In that sense "ur a kid" means "you aren't a dropout", which is actually a compliment.


PS: tomorrow comes the results of a little research, disproving that performing well has nothing to do with "being no-lifer", and performing bad has nothing to do with "being casual".

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Fuel station Auguror

In its infinite wisdom, CCP games gave the T1 cruisers Auguror and Osprey a role bonus of +1000% energy transfer array and +200% energy transfer amount. You have it without any skills. What can we cook from this ship? For example a petrol station:It takes about 2 weeks to learn this ship (energy grid upgrades 5 needed for the reactor controls). What is it good for? Well, it has a cyno, so you can cyno in your capital ship. The capital aligns out to a safe and warps if anyone lands. The Auguror remote sensor boost the capital to make it lock the Auguror faster. A non-triaged carrier can lock a cruiser in 20 seconds, but it can be decreased to 4 by the sensor links. As soon as the Auguror is locked, the capital starts a capital energy transfer array on it. In turn, the Auguror starts the 4 large energy transfers on the capital.

The capital will gain 820 cap/second from the Auguror and spends only 135 running the capital transfer array, so its net gain is around 700/sec. Even if the capital has no energy generation on its own (it surely has some, even on full combat fit), the fuel station Auguror can fill a carrier to 75% from zero in 70 seconds. If the capital has a T1 MWD to decrease cap size, the time needed goes down to 50 seconds. This ship is designed for the solo pilot moving his capital around and wants to do so fast.

Without the cyno, the fuel station Auguror can support POS repping carriers too. The carrier exits triage with no cap left, and can re-enter triage with full cap in a minute. There can be other uses like orbiting a nontriaged ratting carrier that reps/caps ratting battleships and keeping it on full cap. Of course it will need to downgrade on the transfers a bit to be able to fit some tank against random rat damage. Since it can throw cap to 107km, it can even have PvP uses, supporting a cap-intensive forward ship from behind (like smartbombing Rokhs from the other side of the bubble).

Anyway, if you are in need of cap, the T1 logistics cruisers are the ships for you.

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Heroes and villains are overrated

Young people often dream of becoming a hero, one who is capable of doing huge differences all by himself. Of course none of them actually becomes one. However it's not because they didn't try hard enough or failed. It's because the heroes themselves are overrated. Nothing shows this better than the recent S2N Citizens sovereignty drop. A hero/villain (depending on which side you are) completely exterminated the renter system of the Nulli coalition.

Yet, Nulli and allies already reclaimed most of the systems. I'd guess in a week or two no one could tell that anything happened at all. Some difference he made!

The reason for the failure of him becoming hero/villain is not his personal shortcomings. What he did was one of the largest moves in EVE history. But he tried to move something stable. If Superman would lift a huge rock, the rock would return to its original place as soon as Superman gets bored of holding it. The stable equilibrium is that the rock stands on the ground and it needs perpetual effort to keep that changed. Nulli owned those systems based on its force. The same way they gained them they could regain it. Actually they could do it much faster as everyone else were aware of their force and choose not to mess with them.

When a Goon spy did the same to Band of Brothers, they collapsed. However they weren't stable earlier either. They were on the sure path of defeat and the sov drop was just the final nail in the coffin.

So it comes down to this: becoming a hero/villain is purely the result of luck. Thousands of people could do the same things before and after him without becoming famous. The hero was at the right place and the right time to give a final push to something that was about to fall anyway. He merely takes credit of the efforts of the thousands before him.

Don't try to become heroes, don't dream to make a "big thing", simply work on your goal and if the goal is reachable, it will be reached. You won't be remembered, but you will remember accomplishing your goal. Those who set out with the plan "become hero or a bum" has about 99.99% chance to end up being a bum.

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Trust issues once again

I wrote about it several times, but yet again, misplaced trust have cost some 200 systems to Nulli and 500B to TLC.

EVE is not real. In real life you have one life and it's precious to you. Going out to "awox" is pretty trivial, you just grab a kitchen knife and stab random people on the street. But sooner or later the cops come and either shoot you on site or you'll be arrested and spend the rest of your life in jail. This makes random awox fun a bit less lucrative. Spies in real life also made huge impact, like delivering the US nuke secrets to the Soviets. They got in the electric chair though.

On the other hand in EVE you have alts. If you steal huge amount of money, you can come out clean by simply biomassing the thief character. The victims of the awox, suicide gank or corp theft are completely unable to retaliate to the "real you". For this reason you must never ever trust anybody. How can you operate then? By clear trades and placing people of position into the position of personal risk. Let me explain it via a rental system that could prevent the S2N disaster. Currently the PvP alliance "owned" the system and several people managed it. Let's turn it upside down: the manager "owns" N systems. He rents it out, the rental income is his. As he clearly can't protect it, he pays a security payment to the PvP alliance. In step by step:

1. Alliance owns systems.
2. Guy pays upfront cost to get the systems. Scams can be prevented by using either third party escrow or giving systems one by one. He gets one system, pays for it, gets next.
3. Now the guy owns the systems. If the alliance betrays him, they have to grind it back and lose credibility. Alliances can't easily be remade like alts as members can choose to not move with the leaders.
4. Guy either rents them out or uses the systems himself, either way getting income.
5. From time to time he pays security payment for the alliance to protect him. If the alliance doesn't protect him, he lost one payment only.

What about the own assets of the alliance? They can be owned by several members. If one or two goes rogue, he can only cause small problems and not drop the sov in regions. Every alliance asset can (and should) be in private hands of people who paid for them. This way thefts are impossible as you can't steal your own assets. An "alliance asset" that is managed by someone is a loot waiting to be taken.

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How would TEST finances look like if I manage them?

When Riverini of EN24 re-posted my article over reaching half trillion, he also added a comment: "TBH, I wonder if a guy like Gevlon or DannyCentauri would have been in charge of TEST finances how would they look like today...". I'm glad I was bored and had some time swimming in poor man tears that the other forum comments are, because it's an important question.

So how would TEST finances look like if I was in charge? Worse than now.

Let me explain. When a system doesn't work as it should work (and an alliance shouldn't be permanently at the edge of bankruptcy) people look at the leaders and shake their fists. TEST is poor? Fire the damn incompetent and put someone in his place who has skills! Sometimes their rage works and the leader is removed or leaves in disgust (for example Montolio). The people get what they wanted, a new leader who does as they pleases and ... things go from bad to horrible. I mean while Montolio was at the helm, the timers were offensive.

When a system doesn't work, it's the system that doesn't work and replacing "clerks" won't help. While those who work in the administration of a democratic system consider themselves powerful, they are just clerks. They can't make the system work any better. Leader change works in only two cases: if the old leader was indeed some horribly incompetent or corrupted one, or when the new leader can somehow convince the people to change the system itself. But for that you don't need to be the leader. Actually it makes the change harder because everyone assumes that the changes are for your own good.

TEST is poor not because their income is mismanaged. Goons aren't fighting over pitiful moons because Mittani and Rydis RMT-ed the tech money away and need replacement. They both work on an income scheme that makes them naturally poor. Their income is a joke. I mean we are talking about 5000 man organizations that live on 0.5-1T/month. That's 50-100M/person income. A few weeks old highsec miner would laugh on that.

People believe that some genius will come who makes things right. Riverini here cast me into the role of a financial genius who could turn this 50-100M into a meaningful sum. I can't. No one can. TEST and Goons are doomed to either stay docked when the chances are against them or field comedy fleets like Thalwars, Caracals and bombless bombers. I loved how The Mittani claimed "while shooting a structure with 30 bombers is a miserable, time-consuming process, 150 bombers can nuke an Ihub down into reinforced within 20 minute". It is plain stupid as it's the same man-hours, just distributed over more people. Maybe these doctrines are my punishment from fate for calling Drakes the ships of poverty. Now I can think of them as the lost golden age when unnerfed Tech made the alliance "rich" enough to field battlecruisers. (I can hear highsec mission runners laughing).

To have decent finances, these alliances need at least 1B/month/member. Moons and other passive income sources won't provide these. I mean if you are a CFC or TEST member and flied 2 hours/day on average as part of the war effort, you put 45 hours into this conflict. If your side wins today and keeps Fountain with no further combat in the next 4 years, then you gained the same ISK as you'd have if you spent the same time ratting.

Oh, I'm sure you'll say that ratting is bad and fighting is so much fun. Well, according to The Mittani himself "the foe is either being blueballed or massacred entirely, and not having much fun." But let's act like sov war was fun. Even if you have fun, the alliance coffer is still empty and reimbursement requests are coming in.

Decent money can only come from one source: the members. They must contribute. It can be either a mandatory tax, it can work in alliances which have mandatory CTAs. For those without CTAs, only volunteer donation is imaginable, probably motivated by some toplist. Either way the alliances must have industrialists, miners and ratters who pay for the bills both for themselves and for the combat pilots who can't make money since they spend their time in fleets. Luckily there are such people, many already inside the alliances.

To utilize this income source the alliances need to change their culture, making PvE a valued activity instead of "lol carebear". Changing the clerk who desperately trying to make ends meet won't make difference.

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