Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: Makkal on 13 Oct 2013, 01:17
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As mentioned in this update (http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-ccp-mystery-code-demystified/), CCP will soon introduce cybernetic arms.
As part of the Rubicon release, we’ll be unveiling a new body modification option for Capsuleers: Cybernetic arms.
(http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/65243/1/CE_MC_PHANCA_EN.jpg)
Mystery Code holders will be receiving the exclusive ‘Phanca’ Cybernetic Arm to sport on their characters.
Note that alternative cybernetic arm models will be available to all players at a later date.
I'm going to guess you have to pay real money to get them.
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I sure some that will have them will put them on market/contracts.
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Upon closer inspection, I had to wonder...can these arms flex at all?
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I'm just hoping they come out with some in pairs. Amieta has had prosthetic arms since before I made an actual alt for her, but I've had to make do with long sleeves in her portraits etc.
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Upon closer inspection, I had to wonder...can these arms flex at all?
Probably made of synthetic bendium or something vOv :psyccp:
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Upon closer inspection, I had to wonder...can these arms flex at all?
I found myself wondering the same thing. It's like the designer sort of forgot how arms work.
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Most likely going to come out on the Aurum store hopefuly not for a stupid amount of money, alltho you could just ask people who are geting the collectors edition if they want to sell it to you I know I'm going to be selling my one
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Most likely going to come out on the Aurum store hopefuly not for a stupid amount of money, alltho you could just ask people who are geting the collectors edition if they want to sell it to you I know I'm going to be selling my one
There'll be similar items, but not this specific one.
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Upon closer inspection, I had to wonder...can these arms flex at all?
Yes, because it's just a really realistic paint job tattoo thing, not an actual cyber arm. :psyccp:
It's a regular arm model with a tattoo layer, and I'm inclined to assume that's what it actually is IC.
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Yes, because it's just a really realistic paint job tattoo thing, not an actual cyber arm. :psyccp:
It's a regular arm model with a tattoo layer, and I'm inclined to assume that's what it actually is IC.
While I think I understand what you're saying, I'm not entirely sure of the assumption about it being a tattoo IC.
Dev posts aren't exactly PF, but this one (http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-ccp-mystery-code-demystified/) seems to strongly suggest CCP regards them as actual cybernetic limbs. I don't know if they show up under the Tattoo category in the character creator or if they're being given their own category which would further reinforce this idea.
Sure the graphics and game tech behind it is probably as you've said - a re-skin of the tattoo layer - but you could make an argument that hair, eyebrows, lipstick and other makeup make use of the same or similar layers and I don't see too many people ICly saying 'That's a remarkable shade of puce you've had your eyelids permanently inked with'.
I guess what I'm saying with regards to that claim being made IC is 'Danger! Danger! There be the possibility of Derp!' and also long threads on the IGS or in the Summit full of bleh circular arguments :)
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Yes, because it's just a really realistic paint job tattoo thing, not an actual cyber arm. :psyccp:
It's a regular arm model with a tattoo layer, and I'm inclined to assume that's what it actually is IC.
While I think I understand what you're saying, I'm not entirely sure of the assumption about it being a tattoo IC.
Dev posts aren't exactly PF, but this one (http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-ccp-mystery-code-demystified/) seems to strongly suggest CCP regards them as actual cybernetic limbs. I don't know if they show up under the Tattoo category in the character creator or if they're being given their own category which would further reinforce this idea.
Sure the graphics and game tech behind it is probably as you've said - a re-skin of the tattoo layer - but you could make an argument that hair, eyebrows, lipstick and other makeup make use of the same or similar layers and I don't see too many people ICly saying 'That's a remarkable shade of puce you've had your eyelids permanently inked with'.
I guess what I'm saying with regards to that claim being made IC is 'Danger! Danger! There be the possibility of Derp!' and also long threads on the IGS or in the Summit full of bleh circular arguments :)
No no no no. Shhhhh. Don't ruin my carefully constructed logical view of the world around me. Don't ruin it. >_<
I also don't intend to call anyone out and tell them what their character is wearing. I'm just trying to explain to my incredulous self that it's not a cybernetic arm.
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I'm pretty sure there's no visible fixed shoulder, elbow or arm joints because there'd be no way to make them look good without also changing the physics and modeling of the arm. So the entire area is white, smooth, uniform "bendium" plastic. If there were visible seams, you could see them shift over where the actual joint would be, skin-like.
Somewhere in CCP headquarters, the guy that made this is gnawing on his desk.
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If I buy the CE, I will not have Egivand wear this arm, because smooth plastic nanofibre muscles isn't Minmatar enough. I demand hydraulic rust-red with wires and duct tape and bolts on it.
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If it works like the tattoos there would be right and left arm options. Hopefully they will have both. I will have one if someone needs it.
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I'm just hoping they come out with some in pairs. Amieta has had prosthetic arms since before I made an actual alt for her, but I've had to make do with long sleeves in her portraits etc.
Amieta was the first one I thought of when I saw this.
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Microtransactions have been the most disruptive thing to ever happen to computer and video games. I hate everything about it and what they've done to gaming and game design.
it's what pushed me out of console games and I despise that aurum is a part of eve.
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And PLEX ? :tongueincheek:
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I think its more about accessing content that is unavailable unless you spend real money.
You can buy a plex or you can grind missions, the time scale is just different. No one is getting aurum items without spending $$. Or gold pods, etc.
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Just the exclusive items, actually. You can convert a PLEX into 3500 AUR, unless I'm misremembering things.
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I think its more about accessing content that is unavailable unless you spend real money.
You can buy a plex or you can grind missions, the time scale is just different. No one is getting aurum items without spending $$. Or gold pods, etc.
Yeah, but golden pods and C3PO arms aren't really making any gameplay difference, are they? If people want to spend 150$/€ for a book, an usb hub and a board game, it's their choice. (I'd prefer 150€ in cash and the Golden Pot to the Golden Pod a hundred times.) But if they would design decent Khanid clothes, I'd spend a bit. Anyhow, I never spend or bought AURUM, yet do posses an array of NeX stuff. I think the system works well.
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I think its more about accessing content that is unavailable unless you spend real money.
You can buy a plex or you can grind missions, the time scale is just different. No one is getting aurum items without spending $$. Or gold pods, etc.
Yeah, but golden pods and C3PO arms aren't really making any gameplay difference, are they? If people want to spend 150$/€ for a book, an usb hub and a board game, it's their choice. (I'd prefer 150€ in cash and the Golden Pot to the Golden Pod a hundred times.) But if they would design decent Khanid clothes, I'd spend a bit. Anyhow, I never spend or bought AURUM, yet do posses an array of NeX stuff. I think the system works well.
I know it is entirely cosmetic but that's not the point. I always take issue with selling exclusivity to certain people in games.
I'm a dinosaur, but in the stone-age you paid your money and you had just as much access to content as everyone else for the same price.
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Confirming this MMO noob agrees with the dino-vitalia. Exclusive items for $ is fucking stupid. MMOs are meant to be, in my mind, a great equalizer. You get as much out of it as you put in (sometimes) and all the RL $ in the world can't give you any edge or uniqueness. But then shit like this comes along and...blah. Stupid. Just stupid. Cosmetic or not, it's fucking stupid.
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$$ for game money is a bit more nebulous, as the things you get with PLEX are also available through in-game sweat and toil. Maybe you work a full time job and don't have time to grind missions like other people do but you still want to compete.
It's the exclusive things that tick me off.
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I agree. Plex I get to an extent, as a lot of people in Eve have work, families, etc, and they don't want to spend what little game time they have grinding isk to do fun stuff. So sure, I get that.
But HURRHURR ONLY $ 4 DIS AITEM NO ISK U PLEB LOLOL annoys me.
And actually, when people DO have the time to grind isk, are RL rich, and just use that money to buy a shit ton of plexes to get isk to use against other people (decs, spying, ganking, etc), that pisses me off too.
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grinding isk to do fun stuff.
Maybe the issue lies in these 6 words.
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Let's please bear in mind that this isn't a first-gen cyberpunk-type cyberarm. More like three hundred and fiftieth. Just because it looks metallic doesn't mean it ain't bendy, especially if it's a Gallente model.
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Confirming this MMO noob agrees with the dino-vitalia. Exclusive items for $ is fucking stupid. MMOs are meant to be, in my mind, a great equalizer. You get as much out of it as you put in (sometimes) and all the RL $ in the world can't give you any edge or uniqueness. But then shit like this comes along and...blah. Stupid. Just stupid. Cosmetic or not, it's fucking stupid.
Why would EVE, a game that prides itself on cutthroatness, attempt to bring 'equality' to an MMO?
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It transcends Eve Makkal. It has nothing to do with the game and more to do with what online gaming is. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire in the real world or a burger flipper. The game equalizes all and only your skill puts you on top. Any game that allows you to buy your way to the top or buy your uniqueness is just blah. Eve is cutthroat because of the players and their abilities, not because they have a spare few thousand to spend to buy a golden bullet.
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This does nothing to stop you from being equal. It is a vanity item.
Go shoot people with cybernetic arms. It won't help them.
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OK no I get that. As I said before, I get that. I know it's only a vanity item which is why I'm not really that annoyed. But like Silas, ANYTHING that you can get with real money and not in game money is kind of a bleh to me.
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Why? Useless vanity items do nothing to give someone an advantage. This helps out CCP, and if some people want to have snazzy looking cybernetic arms then they can get them. Especially since they are only getting them early.
This all seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.
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It transcends Eve Makkal. It has nothing to do with the game and more to do with what online gaming is. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire in the real world or a burger flipper. The game equalizes all and only your skill puts you on top. Any game that allows you to buy your way to the top or buy your uniqueness is just blah. Eve is cutthroat because of the players and their abilities, not because they have a spare few thousand to spend to buy a golden bullet.
Okay... so? I don't see any golden bullets here.
It's a cosmetic item. It has no effect on gameplay. So are the clothing items that come with the box. The handful of items that come that do have gameplay effects (and they are, literally, a pair of implants, a frigate, and a 5-run Gnosis blueprint if you're an EVE player; DUSTies get some dropsuits and guns) can all be sold on the market for ISK.
What your money is really paying for with the purchase of that box, are the EVE Source book, the Rifter USB hub, and the English version of Hættuspil. All of them physical, real-world items that provide no benefit to gameplay, and each individual one costs money to create. Sure, you can claim you are technically paying for the ingame items too, but remember: the costs for adding digital content to the box are near-zero for CCP on a per-box basis - they incur the cost of the work of creating the item once, after which it is just 1s and 0s in the game client, copied over and over and over.
None of this changes anything at all for game balance. The DUST items are, as I recall, limited-use and the player only gets 50 of each. The Tash-Murkon Magnate is just a reskinned T1 Magnate. It's a paint job just like the Sarum one. And the Gnosis you'll get out of the BPC are identical to the ones we were ALL given for the 10th anniversary.
These all have ingame values in ISK, sure, but only because people put those values on them. The T-M Magnate is really worth no more than a vanilla one you can get off the market in terms of gameplay mechanics. The only reasons it will cost more are because it has a different paintjob (people will pay to look different), and because it'll be, in theory, a limited-issue item.
OK no I get that. As I said before, I get that. I know it's only a vanity item which is why I'm not really that annoyed. But like Silas, ANYTHING that you can get with real money and not in game money is kind of a bleh to me.
Okay, except there isn't a single case in EVE where there is an item you can ONLY purchase through real-world currency. There are three things in EVE you can directly purchase with real money:- PLEX
- Aurum (either directly or through PLEX)
- Your subscription itself
Each of these can be purchased ingame, using ISK. Want a PLEX? Buy it off the market for ISK. Want Aurum? Buy a PLEX with ISK and convert it to Aurum, or buy one of the Aurum tokens that are floating about from a year or two ago. Want a subscription? Buy a PLEX with ISK and convert it to game time. (Want ISK? Buy a PLEX with ISK and resell it for more ISK.)
There is not a single item in this game that can only be purchased through the use of real-world money. Everything that can be purchased with real money, directly or indirectly, is available to you ingame through the use of ISK.
You are getting way too worked up over what is presently a non-issue, and likely to remain one.
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For crying out loud I was just agreeing with Silas. Never mind.
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You're both overreacting to a situation that doesn't exist in EVE.
The post I made is for both of you, even if your posts are the ones I quoted.
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PLEX : pay real money for ingame advantages, even if they are generated ingame by other players. More or less, it is equal to paying their subscription to people and in exchange they farm for you.
I have always been rather mitigated on those. But it's still way better than standard microtransactions on ingame items.
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I'm not worked up, sorry if it comes across that way.
Although I dislike $$ for vanity items as well, my issue is with exclusive in game items for cash.
It creates and supports a culture among developers where everything is parceled up to be milked as microtransactions, instead of a part of the regular game.
You used to pay x amount of cash and that cash gave you the entire experience.
Now you pay x cash for a much smaller portion of that experience in most every game, and are almost forced to keep spending money on many games in order to continue to access multiplayer or content that would have been in the original game.
A good example is 'map packs' for FPS games. The map pack comes out and 80% of the playerbase buys the items, and if you don't participate your pool for matchmaking just shrunk by 3/4.
Other examples include specifically removing content from the original game to create revenue streams by charging separately. (Mass Effect 2 and 3).
Or of course the lovely Game Stop where purchasing a game through them gives you in-game content of high power, etc.
Believe me the producers of media have their tentacles into the creative process and shit will be worse moving forward.
Here's a good new example, the Star Trek into Darkness Blu Rays have different content depending on which retail outlet you purchase at. If you buy it at Best Buy you get one set of bonus features vs if you buy it at say, Target.
You want both? Sucks to be you.
The vanity arm is of course not a big deal, it's just a skin, it harms no one and effects no gameplay, I just dislike the developer culture around this sort of thing.
*Edit*
I'd also add that most MMO's that do the microtransaction cash sort of things are at least free to play. I can't think of a lot off the top of my head that charge a monthly subscription and also ask for cash for additional things?
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EVE, however, is not one of them, because all of the ingame items that you can purchase/acquire through real money can also be purchased ingame with ISK or directly traded between players ingame.
STO (which a bunch of us have been playing lately) does the same thing. There's a lot of stuff you can buy directly for real money through Cryptic's "zen" currency, but because you can also convert ingame currency into Zen via players who have purchased it and are looking to trade on the exchange, you can, eventually acquire any of those items without ever paying Cryptic a single cent. It just takes longer.
Which is the same for all of these ingame items. You could shell out some money to buy a PLEX (or in the cyberarms' case, the collector's box, which given the actual hold-in-your-hands-and-smell-it things you get out of it, is worth the purchase imo) and convert the PLEX to Aurum to buy the item from the NeX yourself, or you can sell the PLEX for ISk to buy it from someone else who's gotten it off the NeX, or you can just save up ISK from missioning or whatever and buy it that way.
There isn't a single item in EVE purchasable for real money that affects game balance in the slightest.
If you have an issue with microtransactions in general, fine, but don't bring EVE or CCP into this when they clearly aren't doing the stuff you're saying you don't like about microtransactions.
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If you have an issue with microtransactions in general, fine, but don't bring EVE or CCP into this when they clearly aren't doing the stuff you're saying you don't like about microtransactions.
Gotta bring EVE and CCP into this, they charge $$ for all sorts of silly things like character resculpting and xfering characters.
Why charge at all? I want my subscription fee to pay for all of these things.
Or don't charge me a subscription and charge $$ for all the things.
The isk to plex/aur thing is a bit of a false choice as you are giving people a choice to grind it out for x amount of time or pay cash... it has been carefully calculated at a rate that means plenty of people say 'the hell with that' and pay a few bucks.
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Gotta bring EVE and CCP into this, they charge $$ for all sorts of silly things like character resculpting and xfering characters.
To be honest most MMOs charge you with $$ to resculpt, change portrait, or name... I don't like it, but I already imagine what it would be if it was free... What a mess.
In any case I agree with you on everything else. PLEX are only good for players that can't afford a subscription, and that's their only redeeming feature to me.
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I would totally get this if I could afford the collectors edition. Sweet as shit.
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Sweet as shit.
Ey yo, don't ask me how I know, but shit ain't sweet. :s
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Sweet as shit.
Ey yo, don't ask me how I know, but shit ain't sweet. :s
Scatrina operates on a don't ask don't tell policy . . . . . .. . \o\
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[...] the 'phanca' cybernetic arm is more of a decorative piece as the description reveals...
"the F-706.574 'Phanca' Cybernetic Arm, is unique among heavily mechanized capsuleer accoutrements in that rather than focusing primarily on the future, it draws on a dark part of ancient empire history - one that's either completely barbaric or unquestionably devout, depending who you ask.
Its origins lie in an Amarr decree where a member of the oligarchy - who was whimsical, powerful and, it is speculated, quite astoundingly insane during the tail end of her life- demanded that all current and future heirs of a particular royal house have their right hand amputated. They acquiesced, but had the hands replaced with cybernetic models in a silver coating.
The first heir who suffered this fate took great pride in it, and his silver hand is on display in the open court of the Amarr Royal palace. When capsuleers - themselves the unquestionable elite of New Eden - started taking to cybernetic arms, it was only natural that this be one of the first models put into public use."
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The cybernetic arm is based off of the Ardishapur one? Incoming Amarrian rage at anyone not Amarr wearing this arm. :P
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The description is pretty win, although I always imagined Ardishapur's would be more silver shiny blingy
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Eeeeh. "Based on" is a pretty loose description; the "Phanca" that we will be getting also extends all the way to the shoulder, whereas the Ardishapur decree only mandates that hands be removed.