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Why should that be the only option? If someone else is willing to sell it, why can't I buy it like anything else? No one tells you if you want a ship to mine for it and build it yourself. Why is this different?

You realise that the pro vets with unlimited wallets would profit the most from this, don't you?

This is a good change in my opinion. It will really help people who are looking to upgrade their character, but don't want to change the background, story, reputation and history that they've created.

It's not obtuse at all. I pay money to CCP. I gain arbitrarily large amounts of SP on an arbitrary character of my choice. Someone else loses some arbitrary number of SP. It's a clever twist, but, here's the rub, this still happens:

$$$ to CCP <------>Direct, instant, arbitrarily large SP gain on any character of my choice.

It's like SOMER Blink. Lot's of stuff happened in that scheme, people won prizes, community events were organized, etc. But, in the end, RMT still happened. You can twist it all you want, but RMT is RMT.

And here? Yeah, there's a twist. The matador has a shiny red cape with the word "liquidating" embroidered and everything. But, in the end, I am buying instant, bulk SP for my character with cash going to CCP. It is what it is. Direct purchase of bulk SP via CCP.

Excellent idea. I really hope this is implemented soon...can't wait to start shopping!

Again, as I have strenuously pointed out, the character bazaar does the exact same thing. Has for years. CCP gets theirs on every transfer.

I've been playing EVE for close to 3 years now, no bittervet yet but no new player either. With or without this proposed change I expect to continue playing for quite some time to come.

But had Transneural Skill Packets been in the game when I started playing I most likely wouldn't have made it past my first year (maximum - 3 to 6 months more likely) before unsubscribing.

For one thing it doesn't matter if the proposed mechanic really is pay to win or not: for a new player it definitely looks like pay to win and I refuse to really get involved into games like that. I may fool around with them for a while, but I won't immerse myself in them and I know right from the start that I'll drop them within a couple of months.

But more importantly the skill limitations during my first months were a, if not the main factor, that forced me to really commit to the game, that made playing EVE that intense of an experience when I started and that got me completely hooked up in the end.

I went into fw within my first month of playing EVE, right from the start with the intention to become a pvp pilot. I knew very well that I wouldn't be able to compete with pretty much everybody else in that area for quite some time, but I also knew that the time it would take me to become at least somewhat competetive would depend on how fast I would get an understanding of the game and on how well I would be able to apply that and plan ahead - read on my skills as a gamer. So I dived into the game, I spend hours a day searching for online resources and digesting them, I planned ahead, fumbled , adapted my plans, improved, fumbled again, changed my plans another time and so on and so on. It took me roughly 2 months to find a fit (a single fit) that should work out for my style of playing games and the meta at the time, then I started training specifically for that fit. After another month or 2 I figured out a way to change it to make it more versatile and effective, so I changed the fit and the training plan once again (I'm flying a variation of that ship to the very day btw). And then I started to get better with the ship, both with regards to skills and with regards to skill as a pilot.

And all the time I knew that if I messed up in any way, if I missed crucial points of the game mechanics, if I screwed up my skill plan or messed up in any other way that could mean me losing weeks or months to reach my goal of getting competetive in pvp.

It was frustrating. It was glorious. It was intense. In some ways it was one of my best times in this game.

Now imagine the same thing with the possibility to buy SP. There isn't half as much on stake for you during your first few weeks or months. Even if you refrain from taking the easy way to just fix any botches you make with your credit card (or use it to instatrain into the skills you believe need) you know that there would be the possibility to do so and that other people are doing it. This diminishes your sense of achievement.

If this is about player retention: I believe that the key point for that is immersion and there are different kinds of that. One kind of immersion is immersion with the mechanics and structures of a game and Transneural Skill Packets will take away from that big time and in my opinion won't add to any other

If it is about opening another source of revenue for CCP (which is legitimate): there are ways to achieve that which won't alienate large parts of the player base. Corporation and alliance skins come to my mind straight away here.

But please, pretty please, don't do this. As mentioned numerous times above this system is open to exploits in many ways, but more importantly, it will change the feel of this game radically in a way that I'm not looking forward to.

Why does "maximum possible SP" matter to anyone, or anything, at all?

Why do you need to "vet" recruits by SP? The character bazaar exists. Furthermore, simply plug the following formula in:

SP / pilot age = 2700

and if it's above that, it's a red flag.

Using pilot age to perform battlefield assessments is a laughable concept. Again, the character bazaar exists. I have only been playing since 2010, yet I own a 2007 character.

The whole concept is incredibly brittle. You've probably lost quite a bit by relying on it, and don't even realize it.

You are in the camp of "I don't care about my name". That's fine. There are others who ARE concerned about their name. Because this is Eve online.

One name. One reputation. And everyone in the cluster knows it.

But I would still vouch for a name change that changes ID as well for a fee, maybe even skillpoints lost.
What I want even more like detailed in my last post, is having the ability to move skillpoints inside of your character, without loss. Just pay for the item, and do it.

Then we can also get rid of attributes and make the remaps we get as a timed measure to move skillpoints around at no cost. And if we want to move more? We pay.

I would still be able to train skills the same way I have since 2010. Not a single thing would be robbed or changed.