I am not a big fan of the EVE Portal App, which was rolled out to us last August.
EVE Portal App
I’ve tried it a couple of times and… well… it is kind of shit.
That probably isn’t fair.
Say rather that it does not fulfill any useful purpose for me in a world where the Neocom II app exists. That gives me all the game info I need in a format I prefer. This is largely because I want to run the app on my iPad (aging people like bigger screens), and the EVE Portal App is strictly designed for phone screens, so even when resized to the tablet screen it looks awkward and cramped and mis-aligned, while Neorcom II is designed for a tablet screen. (Though the EVE Portal App is a lot worse than other phone focused apps in that regard.)
Take the skill queue view, for example.
Skill queue EVE Portal App
Skill queue in the Neocom II app
That is the exact same amount of screen real estate being used or mis-used.
The EVE Portal App does have the advantage of letting you change your skill queue, along with a few other things the Neocom II app cannot do, but nothing all that important to me.
All of which doesn’t mean much because, as a general rule, I try not to go out of my way to bang on things I don’t like if they are peripheral to my game play. But today, today I feel the need to bring it up. Why? Because CCP just pushed out an update that introduces a PLEX trading feature to the app.
PLEX Trading on you Phone
As briefly described in their announcement:
A new feature has come to EVE Portal, the official EVE Online companion app. Exclusively for players in Omega Clone state, the Jita PLEX Market will enable you to trade PLEX anytime and anywhere, directly from your mobile device via the EVE Portal app.
The Jita PLEX Market gives you the ability to trade PLEX for ISK and vice versa. All transactions go through the Jita 4-4 market where players can browse and create PLEX sell & buy orders. In addition, you can browse and modify/cancel outstanding PLEX orders and browse your PLEX transaction history.
CCP mentioned something about this being a plan in the past, but if we started listing out things that CCP brought up as possibilities that never quite came to pass, we might be here for a while. But now that it is here, the question that springs to mind is, “Why?”
I know why CCP would want this. Anything that sells more PLEX is money in the bank for them. By is there a group of players out there who are dying to buy and sell PLEX in game to such an extent that they need access to the market on their phone?
I am also curious about this going through the Jita 4-4 station exclusively, regardless of where your clone might me. I guess it simplifies things somewhat, just pegging it to that location, and is something of an incentive to use the app if you don’t already have a Jita alt. It also officially cements that station as the central trade hub of New Eden, as if there were any doubt. But it does leave out the Perimeter Trade Towers one jump over where the prices are a bit lower.
You do get an advantage selling PLEX through the app, at least if you want to sell immediately to a buy order; you get a pass on the broker’s fee, which can run around 100K ISK alone per PLEX. I guess that is something to tempt people who just buy PLEX to sell it for ISK right away, effectively a little extra ISK in your pocket with each sale.
But was it worth the effort?
Again, it isn’t going to impact me as I am not going to use it since the app looks horrible on the iPad. I mean, seriously bad, worse than that first screen shot might lead you to believe.
EVE Portal – not for tablets
But it might impact the EVE Online economy I suppose… if anybody uses it.
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