No Seraph, Space Communism Is Not Healthy.

Hello, my name is Porky and I’m a writer and analyst here at EN24. The thoughts and opinions written here are mine and not meant to represent anyone else’s.

Seraph recently wrote an article for Eve News that I did not agree with. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the article he wrote needed a rebuttal, so here it is:

Seraph makes the point that more isk in the game devalues the isk itself by saying  “Currency’s value is not an absolute but rather relative to how much money exists.” The entire piece is revolves around the premise that people are not happy because they will make less ISK ratting in their carriers. At a superficial level (the only level possible on reddit), the message is ‘CCP sucks and I want more ISK’. However, many players have a strong objection to the fighter nerf for a completely different set of reasons.

There is no need to guess why CCP is making this change; they made it clear when they wrote “This trend is unsustainable. Having such a large ISK faucet is bad for the economy, and this ISK faucet is concentrated to a relatively small number of players”.

Seraph made his argument on behalf CCP by concentrating on the first half of their nerf justification. The valid objection to the nerf is with the second half of the sentence, which calls into question a lot more than basic economics. It infers that CCP is on some sort of Space Communism mantra. What CCP is actually saying is “Senior players have a disproportionate ISK advantage compared to newer players and need to have less buying power”. Controlling an economy by controlling the availability of goods (drops), the value of the currency (amount of ISK) or the cost of ownership (tax) is all fine. What is not fine is someone saying “you can’t have more than that guy by more than a certain ratio”. Is this philosophy a good one?

Before I move on to my counter to space communism, let’s put to bed the notion that CCP is nerfing fighters to increase the value of ISK. If CCP wanted to increase the value of ISK, they would reduce the amount of ISK in the game, which they could do by decreasing bounties or by making goods more expensive. They did neither. Additionally, if they believed that fighters are too powerful in combat, then why not elaborate on that and present reasons for that; they chose economics. Now let’s go back to arguing against the communists.

Should we strive to have more equality in capability between veterans and newer players? I say NO.

1. Newer players being in awe of others accomplishments and capabilities provides motivation and instills persistence by showing them what they could one day attain. Every one of the guys ratting in a Nyx remembers looking at others and saying “I want that”. Being the little guy provides people with something to strive towards.
2. The ISK the carrier ratters are making is spent on the market and often explodes at the hands of newer players. One of the redeeming qualities of Eve is that players can come together to ruin someone’s day. The newer player has a better gaming experience when he has been a part of the collective effort to bring down the rich one.
3. There are dozens of items in the game that cost many billions of ISK. The only realistic way for people to afford them is to make more ISK at a faster rate. If you want some sort of socialist policy with affordability, then put price controls in place and make every item more affordable.
4. The disproportionate ISK made by high-yield ratters gets used. Ask anyone who rats at a high rate what they do with their ISK and you will get many answers, but few just sit there and look at a bigger wallet without doing something with the influx of cash.
5. Space Communism is not possible. Even if by some tweaking, you made it so that ISK/hr was somewhat similar, the Corp & Alliance behemoths would kick into gear and take disproportionate amounts in tax to benefit a fewer number of skilled pilots. This already happens; players get taxed so corps can own capitals for a smaller number to fly.

So what should CCP do? Start with accurately identifying the problem and communicate the actual evidence that indicates it’s the problem. For example, CCP should provide evidence that inflation is too high and we need to reduce the amount of ISK in game. One more thing, let’s not excuse CCP for this blunder. The “nobody’s perfect” argument is true but there is also the “learn form your mistakes” argument.

Porky

Thoughts? Flames? That’s what the comment section is for, right down there VV!