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45 million ISK cover charge to PvP...
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Skex Relbore
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#121 - 2012-07-19 15:06:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Skex Relbore
Billyboy Joe wrote:
Yes, but you guys have to understand that there are costs in building a new clone.

Biomass, expensive machinery, intricate bioengineering, who pays for that?

If you can't afford it perhaps you shouldn't be skilling up.


Realism argument fails because it doesn't cost the same to change home stations or install a jump clone. What you think they actually load your clone up in an industrial and ship it from your old station to the new one? How to you reconcile this with jump clones? If "realism" was something that mattered to the developers every clone would cost the same since they'd all have to meet the same specifications to work.

It's not though. It's purely a game-play mechanic that was put in place because death penalties were a major THING when this game was in development they wanted to put a "Gotcha" in that people could screw up to reinforce their "cold harsh universe" theme.

It also wasn't much of a big deal back when most players had fewer than 50 mil sp and clone costs were still pretty reasonable it could almost have been considered a rational decision when the game was developed since there was no actual experience with how the mechanic would work. In concept it's fairly sound stronger character should cost more because they should lose less. But the game mechanics often have unintended consequences that aren't always obvious to the developers when they dream them up. Players can be real damned creative particularly when you put enough of them together.

I don't know exactly what consequence the developer who implemented this mechanic intended or what their vision of how the game would/should look when they dreamed it up. For all we know they thought that people would be too reckless and aggressive if there wasn't some sort of governor on their behavior.

What I can say for certain is that this mechanic discourages risk taking, I don't know how much it discourages it. But I know that it does. And frankly I don't see any benefit from this system that actually justifies it's existence. It's effects as an isk sink are trivial at best and any "risk" it injects can not be mitigated in any way other than to not play or to blob the hell out of your opponent and ensure that you never pick a fight you aren't guaranteed to win.

When it comes to ship loss you can tailor your risk. You can fly anything from a free noob ship to an officer fit Titan, how much you risk is only limited by your will and wallet. Clone costs on the other hand are fixed thus they put a hard floor on what you can choose to "risk". Thus you quickly get into scenarios where the rational choice is to not take that RISK because there isn't sufficient REWARD to justify it.
Teinyhr
Ourumur
#122 - 2012-07-19 15:33:06 UTC
Malcanis wrote:
Of course it's a choice. .....

There's nothing holy about your skillpoint total. SP are just tools, and adding on more tools just for the sake of saying you have the biggest collection, and then complaining that they weigh you down isn't rational.


I've chosen not to use alts. Why do I have to make an alt so that I can enjoy the game more? I think I'm already being punished for not being 200% more efficient in generating ISK for this policy I've set for myself. I think that is "punishment" enough as I'm not fauceting billions of ISK to the game.

I'll tell you what's not rational - you saying I can't or shouldn't gather more SP on the only character I ever aim to play, just because you seem to think that a character that is old is swimming in ISK. I'm not, partially because I don't have alts, it's undeniable that alts help you generate a lot more ISK than you could on a single account. And the other part is, m not good at playing the markets.
Marconus Orion
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#123 - 2012-07-19 15:44:01 UTC
Malcanis - How much time are you having to spend on retraining core skills on your new alts? I must say, I am tempted to petition CCP to see if your account was hacked. The arguments you have been trying to formulate in this thread have been absolutely terrible and very unlike you.

Once again. The risk pilots take should be with the ship and such things. NOT how long they have been playing the game.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#124 - 2012-07-19 15:49:47 UTC
Billyboy Joe wrote:
Yes, but you guys have to understand that there are costs in building a new clone.

Biomass, expensive machinery, intricate bioengineering, who pays for that?

If you can't afford it perhaps you shouldn't be skilling up.

Lore: Obstructing good ideas since (insert year here).

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Large Collidable Object
morons.
#125 - 2012-07-19 15:58:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Large Collidable Object
Rath Kelbore wrote:

Just for fun, having all of those skills at five, how much would a clone cost???




As a matter of fact, I trained a throwaway frig alt just for the purpose of flying T1 frigs - didn't go for missile skills and some other skills instead and I'm not really a perfectionist in that regard, so took just what I considered essentials to V (low rank/high value skills) - so only ended up with 32 skills at V instead of the 40 mentioned in the list, but that character is roughly 18 mill SP, so covered with a Mu clone (20,000,000 SP, 1,340,000 isk) - considering that's ~1/15 of my next lowest pvp character, it saves me a lot of isk and pod travel time (I typically self destruct the pod if noone has the mercy to blow it up).

It pretty much equals my highest SP character at flying frigs (minor drawbacks, such as armor compensation skills only at IV etc..), but nothing I'd seriously notice in practice.
You know... [morons.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjOx65yD5A)
Ron Maudieu
#126 - 2012-07-19 16:43:49 UTC
Can't afford to lose your pod? Then don't undock. Lol
Malcanis
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#127 - 2012-07-19 17:05:09 UTC
Marconus Orion wrote:
Malcanis - How much time are you having to spend on retraining core skills on your new alts? I must say, I am tempted to petition CCP to see if your account was hacked. The arguments you have been trying to formulate in this thread have been absolutely terrible and very unlike you.

Once again. The risk pilots take should be with the ship and such things. NOT how long they have been playing the game.


Given that the alt on Malc's account has

(logs in and checks)

Current Skills: 223 (Skill Points: 47,223,311.00)

Not that long, these days.

I'm sorry you don't like my arguments. They're consistent with everything else I believe about EVE, even at the minor cost of my own immediate personal convenience. I would be delighted to see the reply to your petition, if you wouldn't mind forwarding it to me.

"Just remember later that I warned against any change to jump ranges or fatigue. You earned whats coming."

Grath Telkin, 11.10.2016
Mag's
Azn Empire
#128 - 2012-07-19 17:41:52 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
Mashie Saldana wrote:
The 45m ISK for the clone is nothing compared to the implants that are lost at the same time.


Implants are voluntary purchases that give distinct tangible benefits, your clone cost is somewhat out of your control unless you wish to stop progressing in the game... and frankly it makes little sense.

Why, exactly, should a clone with more skills learned cost more? Is it more expensive to grow one with a bigger brain? SmileSmileSmile

Yes, I'm being a bit silly with the question but it really does make no sense what so ever.

There are better ways to do this that also promote using inexpensive, riskier ships in combat... and involve player industry and the economy.
You know at first I was against this argument, but the more I think about it the more clones do seem like a silly cost mechanic.

If not a player involved mechanic, then maybe just a 3 tier system. 10, 20 and 30 million ISK. Either way, I'm drawn to the idea of change.

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Adalun Dey
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#129 - 2012-07-19 18:54:49 UTC
FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
INDIVIDUAL clones are expensive. At 40 million isk, clone costs can be a barrier to high-risk PVP. "just for fun" roams where you expect to eventually die go from pocket change to costing an hour's worth of PVE. When CCP continues to indicate they want to encourage more PVP, clone costs are doing the opposite.
- New players losing their brand new T2 cruisers, the ones they put the majority of their ISK in.
- Miners losing their Hulks to suicide gankers while looking for non-PVP related activities.

These are the people being ridiculed when they whine on the forums about how UNFAIR EVE is. Yet we should make it easy on the veteran PVP pilots - you know the ones that ACTIVELY engage in PVP, the ones that have been for years and should full well know that it potentially involves them losing their 40 million clone. And all because they might have to engage in a MERE hour's worth of PVE activities. I think both the newbie and the miner would gladly trade places with the PVP veteran when it comes down to the ease with which their assets (clones, ships, modules) are replaced.

There are plenty of games you can engage in PVP action in in which getting killed doesn't mean any downtime whatsoever. Why not go and play those or petition CCP to add a quick death match option with simulated ships, simulated modules, simulated clones and no ISK penalty for losing any of it. You'll just have to accept it won't have any consequences on the rest of EVE either.

PS Nothing personal, I just don't agree with you.

[i]" Take my love, take my land, take me where I can not stand, I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me. "[/i]
Takeshi Yamato
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#130 - 2012-07-19 19:10:18 UTC
Ron Maudieu wrote:
Can't afford to lose your pod? Then don't undock. Lol


I cannot tell if you're trying to argue against or in support of the proposal to reduce clone costs.
Maxpie
MUSE LLP
#131 - 2012-07-19 19:14:47 UTC
OP, I get where you are coming from, but I don't think you could change this without taking away from what sets Eve apart from other games. Death should be relatively expensive and painful.

What I would do if I were CCP however, is remove attribute implants. Yes, I have jumpclones, but I'm just plain not ever taking my good implants into WH or null. So what happens, inertia sets in and less pvp happens, rather than jumping into a clone and knowing it will be another 24 hours (more like 45 hours since I play at around the same time each day) before I can jump back.

Also, CCP, please send a courtesy email when our clone is almost up.

No good deed goes unpunished
Guttripper
State War Academy
Caldari State
#132 - 2012-07-19 19:14:54 UTC
Eternus8lux8lucis wrote:
Like this idea a lot.

Love the addition of a PI build for these thats wicked and well done imo.


Thank you for liking this idea. When the idea hit me, a bunch of little aspects to Eve and its lore flooded as potential ideas. The Broker aspect seemed like a good choice - from what I have read in the books, he was not exactly a perfect specimen but more a combination of bits and pieces forced through will power to keep going. So I asked myself how can a player obtain a corpse short of PVP? Then Dust raised its hand and motioned that players will be fighting for "something" on these planets - especially the Barren and Temperate ones. What does Temperate planets have in abundance but "life". So I pieced together a bit of this and that from those worlds to create a Frankenstein beast. I thought about having other aspects of planetary interaction added to the mix - perhaps precious metals or silicon chips for expanded skill point storage, but decided to present the basic idea and if it really took off, then go back to refine it.


Eternus8lux8lucis wrote:
I do not like the copy and paste of the skills. Id suggest something more on the lines of you save, randomly, up to the amount of the level you have trained. Level 0 gives you 25mil as a base, though it wont actually work until you have L1 trained, which would net you 50mil sp, L2 75mil, L3 100, L4 125 and L5 150. Then have an advanced level thatll do 50mil sp per level. Thatd pretty much cover everyone currently in Eve.

The reason I dont like the copy and paste is its a long winded work around thats annoying as people WILL forget about skills and reqs. But the snapshot of skill training at the time and no active training on that clone is a nice touch, though Id say that the original clone should stay training with its attributes and whatever in place. Ironically this will encourage using these while having a +5 implant set for training sitting in a station somewhere.


As I was reading through this thread, I could relate to many of the ~complaints~. Since it appeared that clone cost has been a limiting factor compared to modules and ships, I was looking for a cheap alternative. I was pondering how to take a slice of my skill points to use without the worry of placing my whole collection in harm's way. Thus the idea of copying and pasting skill points since the player can pick and choose what they want. While I understand your point, short of me gaining higher levels in this skill, how would it know what skills to capture per level except by a number? While a bit of work on CCP's part for coding, if a program like EveMon can add unlearned prerequisite skills when you choice a skill, then why not here?


Eternus8lux8lucis wrote:
Issues I have. Using a medical facility or more specifically a clone vat bay where would the original clone stay? You cannot have more than one clone in any station at once, though you can have an active clone and a jump clone there, but storing 2 clones needs work there. In a clone vat bay there is a set number of clones available as well. Do these use up the clone vat bay clone amounts? Also if the ship gets blown up with these clones in them if stored are they destroyed? Just some questions and issues to address.


Of course - again I just wanted to get the basic idea presented without diving into all the little impossibilities involving other clones. Unless these clones kept their name as "simulacrum", then it might alleviate many of the clone / jump clone issues.


Eternus8lux8lucis wrote:
Clone death. If they are destroyed before the 48 hour expiration period and one waits out the timer how long until one can use another clone of this sort again? If its immediate or delayed again by another timer like the current JC timers? Can a person pod themselves so as to get out of a clone early before the 48 hour expiration timer? This imo is one of the easiest ways to abuse the system. If its all immediate and u can use more than one itd be an easy way to go around JC timers for short periods. Not a huge issue but still something to look at. As if they are installed in dif areas of Eve one can simply reship the clones around different areas.


Since I figure these freak of nature beasts would be relatively cheap on the market next to the cost of a clone, I went back and added the "cool down" factor with the benefit of being reduced per level trained of the skill. I did not want people to be ~zerg rushing~, yet wanted to add a subtle penalty for getting whacked. Add how I was thinking along the copy and paste angle, along with limiting factor of total simulacrums equal to skill, I figured enough penalty was added to avoid abuse.


Eternus8lux8lucis wrote:
What immediate would allow is the ability to reship clones just as one reships for quit and painless PvP. Depending on installation I can see it being used to allow force projection of players to certain areas, friendly stations, clone vat bay equipped ships, who would then reship into available fleet fit ships and go from there on short ops. Again force projection is a real problem and though this would open up more PvP combat in a lot of ways by circumventing the current JC timers theres those issues to look into as well.


One aspect either I missed or did not make clear was once a simulacrum was activated, the timer would begin ticking without stopping. So jumping out of one back into a clone meant that the corpse would still be rotting away. I want to see these as expendable items with a constant market.

Roll Sizzle Beef - I did not think of that angle of creating copies of a high skilled player and selling them to other players. While there is the eventual death timer, I am not sure CCP would go for that. Lol

Sorry if I missed anything - a sudden twelve hour work day took me by surprise last night and the mind is wonky.

Again, thanks for reading!
Large Collidable Object
morons.
#133 - 2012-07-19 20:00:18 UTC
Adalun Dey wrote:
I think both the newbie and the miner would gladly trade places with the PVP veteran when it comes down to the ease with which their assets (clones, ships, modules) are replaced.


Seriously - I don't get where people get that idea from. Granted, for the first few weeks money may be harder to come by (not necesarily, as soon as people stray from grinding their way up the ladder of highsec agents on their own, it actually is quite easy).

Agent accessability has been made easier, learning skills were removed, easy to fly and quick to train ships like the Tengu were introduced to make it easier for newbs - and there's nothing wrong with that - the game needs a constant influx of new players.

However, most commonly known isk-making activities cap out at relatively low SP - mission running? Foolproof in a Tengu any 2-3 month old can fly well enough for highsec l4 content - the only way to do it faster would e.g. be a mach, which can be trained rather quickly too.

WH content? Tengu is the ship of choice. Exploration? Not terribly skill intense either.

Trade? I use a dedicated alt for that and it has really low SP.

The point is that most PVE activities are quite well maxed at let's say 40 mill SP, Trade needs less and maxing a Hulk doesn't require 100+ mill SP. Next step would be ratting in a Titan (I guess SC's suck at it now and carriers/dreads were never good at it anyway and doubt tracking nerfed Titans still are) if one decides to go down that road, which most people don't.

Beyond ~40 mill SP, isk raising activities don't become significantly easier, but that's were clone costs start to go out of whack.

Quote:

There are plenty of games you can engage in PVP action in in which getting killed doesn't mean any downtime whatsoever. Why not go and play those or petition CCP to add a quick death match option with simulated ships, simulated modules, simulated clones and no ISK penalty for losing any of it. You'll just have to accept it won't have any consequences on the rest of EVE either.




Noone wants any of that, but when CCP designed the med clone cost stucture, they couldn't even anticipate their game would be around for that long and high SP content wasn't even designed yet, so CCP should readjust the cost increase to todays realities.

They should have done that back in '08 when they added the clones from Tau upwards.
You know... [morons.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjOx65yD5A)
Ptraci
3 R Corporation
#134 - 2012-07-19 20:26:26 UTC
You know if it's too expensive you could, well, just not have a clone, bite the bullet, and re-do a level 5 skill once in a while. Of course this won't work if you're getting popped every day... but apparently you're poor.
Large Collidable Object
morons.
#135 - 2012-07-19 20:57:15 UTC
Ptraci wrote:
You know if it's too expensive you could, well, just not have a clone, bite the bullet, and re-do a level 5 skill once in a while. Of course this won't work if you're getting popped every day... but apparently you're poor.


Ok - I'll take the troll...

You know, I haven't lost a pod on my highest SP character in way over 2 years - mainly because I either:

- Don't use him at all.
- Prefer lowsec to null.

Even when I enrolled to 0.0 last year for a couple of months to kill the NC for good, I haven't lost a single pod due to flying mostly caps in blobs - but usually, I don't enjoy either.

Redoing e.g. Amarr Carrier V once in a while is not exactly efficient.

I'm done with K/D ratios and enjoy leeroying and getting killed and yes - I'm poor, but rest assured I don't have to worry about grinding isk for my clones until I have lost about 9000 Upsilon clones Roll.

It's a matter of principle - any other company provides benefits for their long-time customers, CCP punishes them. 
You know... [morons.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjOx65yD5A)
Marconus Orion
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#136 - 2012-07-19 21:09:13 UTC
I simply can't get behind those who say the clone upgrade system is fine when they risk their pod biannually.

What about those who pvp on a regular basis?? Im talking about those who see combat daily and multiple times during that day. They are risking a substantial amount more in ship and moving the economy than those who dabble in pvp once in a great while.

Yet the system punishes them for having a set between their legs...
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#137 - 2012-07-19 21:18:10 UTC
Exactly. Clone costs only really punish those who play the game as intended.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Ervi San
Perkone
Caldari State
#138 - 2012-07-19 21:30:58 UTC
The clone system penalize most old players, who like to do pvp, and have fun, in a game that they pay to have fun.

with +120M sp's, 45M isk's for the clone is too much, CCP should change it
Skex Relbore
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#139 - 2012-07-20 00:06:52 UTC
Ron Maudieu wrote:
Can't afford to lose your pod? Then don't undock. Lol


That's exactly what people are doing which is the problem. They either don't undock and there for don't PVP or they only engage when they are at no actual risk of loss as in in large blobs or severely uneven ganks.

The idea is to get people to undock and don't give me that "why don't we just make ships free too" it's not the same thing, because different ships do actually offer different capabilities depending on what you spend on them and hell if you really want you can use a free ship (hello newb ship) so it's not comparable.
Urgg Boolean
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#140 - 2012-07-20 00:47:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Urgg Boolean
Nirnias Stirrum wrote:
Maybe an option to forget skills?

Havnt thought much about it so dunno what the consequences would be.

Personally i think the way it is now works. As previously stated, good ISK sink and we definitely need more ISK sinks in this game.

This concept is in other games - kinda like the Matrix where they download knowledge/skill modules ::
you have a llimited pool of brain cells, so you can only learn so much. So, from time to time, you swap some skills out, and different ones in, based upon immediate need. That costs $$$ (or ISK in this case) - so it allows the flexibility of knowing a vast array of skills, but being limited to using only some subset of your total knowledge at any given time.

The consequences are strategic. You load the skills for the current operation. Since it is an expensive money sink, the richer you are, the more you can swap skills and take advantage of skill swapping. So, you set up for a trading day on Monday, Rorqual pilot the next, and Carrier pilot Wednesday ... In EvE now, the only thing this would do would is allow a wimpier clone to hold a capped upper limit of SPs.

And yeah, whoever said it - get rid of insurance all together except for noobs.