Vanity Items: A compromise between Player Driven and MT

[zergl]

Foreword
The NEX store completely circumvents the player economy (apart from the resale) which is decidedly un-EVE like (especially when previous expansions have taken great pains to reduce the amount of NPC seeded stuff, see shuttles and PI). I have been thinking about this compromise for Vanity and MT since :monoclegate: and shelved it for a while during the rage shitstorm, but I think it might be a nice basis for discussion for the CSM to bring up in Iceland.

Introduction
As much as it pains me to say, with Hat Fortress, Valve did one thing right. It included the players in the creation of content and let them have a cut of the profit and, if I remember it correctly, it was generally received with a lot less rage and even support compared to the Mann Co. Store in general. The NEX store offers none of this. All items are produced by CCP, all RL money goes to CCP. The players can merely try to make some ISK off trading the items after the fact.

The Creative Process
This is quite simple. Open up the file formats and creation tools/SDKs necessary to create clothing and, later when full incarna hits, furniture, gambling machines, etc. etc. etc. and let the players/community go nuts with it.

The Approval Process
To prevent excessive Penis spam, levy a fee of one or two PLEX to submit an item. This should at least make it somewhat cost neutral to run, as less dev approval time will be wasted with rubbish submissions and the fact that CCP already receives money for the process.
Possibly crowd-source preselection with a new subforum where submissions can be vetted and discussed before any dev time is wasted.

The pre-manufacturing Process
If accepted, the player would obtain a BPO for the item he created and maybe a $TIME "patent protection period" where he will be the only player with this BPO and he can acquire additional BPOs for AUR/PLEX should the demand be high enough. After the $TIME period, there would be two options, either open the BPO to be purchasable by everyone or maybe allow the creator to renew the protection.
If there should be a "patent protection" in the first place, if it should be indefinite or time based, etc. is very much open to discussion. Unlimited protection would imply that once an item's creator left the game there would never be any more of that item. This could be a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing, depending on your point of view.

CCP Created items would have BPOs purchasable at any time for anyone.


Manufacturing and Cost
All Vanity and Incarna items would require ordinary minerals and trade goods to produce as well as either AUR in the manufacturing costs or special NPC seeded items for AUR in the materials list (think along the line of spacesilk cloth for clothing and ultramahogany for furniture, fluff like that).

Trade and Sale
Make trading of these items happen through a new/rebranded NEX store which levies a low AUR fee (flat or percentage based) for every purchase.
edit/clarification: The player would set the price in both ISK and AUR, any CCP fee would be on top of that. Add a mechanic to re-merge AUR to PLEX so that a player could effectively sustain his gametime from AUR revenue from this store.

TL;DR
This process would be almost exclusively player-run with three possible points (creation, production and trade) where CCP could get a a tiny cut of RL money.
Supply and Demand would be king again.



DISCUSS

[Andrea Griffin]

Since we have a clothing store we might as well allow talented players to capitalize on their talent. It's like paying someone to make you a (lame, vertical-space stealing) forum signature.

However.

It takes how long for an alliance logo to be approved? Oh, wait, has that process even been fixed yet?

[Mike deVoid]

I like nearly all of this suggestion. Specifics here and there can be tweaked without changing the essential premise:

*Players + CCP design vanity clothes, furniture, games, etc
*Players designs are submitted to CCP with a cost imposed for submission (to improve quality)
** (could possibly include an element of community voting on submissions to further streamline selection)
*The NeX store transitions to only selling selling BPO/BPCs in order to incorporate player manufacturing
*Each stage of buying the Blueprint, manufacturing the items and, selling them *could* have AURUM be required to be paid [to CCP].


The only aspect I do not see as being implemented is reconstituting AURUM back into PLEX, as I don't think CCP will ever change that. However, if you ensure that the above process does not involve paying a player in AURUM at any point them it doesn't matter.

[Virtuozzo]

While this is a route I would pursue for consideration, this really does come down to the choice of CCP. Short track low key MT for vanity via convenience to power. Or, investing in the game, enabling dual tracks that do not sacrifice either, or even perception.

How likely would it be for CCP to a) engage on that and b) deliver on that in c) a sufficient timeframe to meet their commercial targets without d) scrapping or compromising what they already have on the table for EVE as a whole (including all the requirements imposed by Incarna).

I admit, it would be truly innovative. Truly remarkable. And yeah, commercially stabilising and rewarding. But it's just not "shiny new".

And yeah, it would have been the better choice. From any angle for both short and long term.

[Virtuozzo]

You know, the more I run this through projections, the better it looks. At least in terms of sales / retention / trust / spinoff / awesome angles. There's no real way for us to fully figure out whether it would fit in CCP's available resources. But it could be a killer, for existing and quite a few prospect (but currently not reachable, even via MT) consumer types.

What gets me, is that it really builds upon and extends the original principle of player driven events to player driven content (not necessarily created, as there would be limitations and CCP would also introduce their own content). It just fits right in with that, but I do worry about it potentially causing a substantial technical debt.

That being said, from everything sofar this is the most healthy angle for all sides. I'm just not sure if it is that attractive to CCP.

[Minsc]

While I don't think having player designed clothing is very feasible at this stage. I fully believe that CCP should include players in the NeX market. The way I'm thinking it could work that would give CCP decent initial sales of an item and then when those die down open it up to the players to produce and sell the items.

It would work like this: CCP initially offers a limited run of any item in the NeX store for say a few weeks or a month. This allows early adopters to obtain the clothing and gain some exclusivity. After the initial timeperiod CCP could offer bpc's of varying runs that industrialists could then purchase and build and sell for isk on the normal markets. Maybe in the future they can include player created content but it just seems to me it would involve a lot of extra overhead for CCP, limiting the potential revenue from that system. Maybe a compromise is for CCP to run a quarterly contest when community members design something for the store and get prizes for it. Similar to the ship design competition but with them actually following through in a timely manner.

This idea of course only applies to clothing items as I feel any of the ship skins should ALWAYS require the exchange of the base ship in order to get reskinned one.

[raiden55]

a pretty interesting idea

btw zergl, do you have shares on 3DS max owners ? xD

[EntroX]

it is already well established a lot of players (hi pattern) can and do create awesome things, so a fuck yeah for me.

that is of course as long as the creators reap something out of it.

[randomToon]

As much as I like the idea I see several problems with it.
For one CCP has proven that they can't be trusted, especially with MT, as they'll inevitably try to milk more and more money out of it("players design clothing, so why not let them design super duper ammo using AUR" kind of logic). I'm against any kind of MT in subscription games, especially Eve, but I understand that this proposition is a compromise.
Should CSM decide to present this idea to CCP they should also make it very clear that this is as far as they're willing to concede and they won't give any more ground to CCP. Also - CCP should be constantly reminded of this.

Re-merging AUR to PLEX would mean that AUR would be useless and should be totally removed from the equation(which would be a good thing).

This system would be perfect if it was using only ISK and PLEX. I think that AUR is just bolted on and doesn't fit the game.
Having said all this I do support this idea as the last attempt at making an arrangement that will suit both CCP and the community, I do see problems down the road however.