EVE General Discussion

Well I don't want to drag this off topic too much, but Blizzard put more 'stuff' into the game in one expansion than CCP has ever put into their game. Not really a criticism, just my observation Exodus was a biggie, and Trinity gave us more ships, then we got incursions and better character creation. But I feel none of it equates to the sheer amount of work that goes into creating traditional MMO raids and questing zones. I suppose it's like Blizzard gives us rooms filled with paintings, and CCP give us the canvas and the paint

Actually it was someone else who tried to equate EVE's expansions with those of other MMOs. I was actually describing how they are not the same.

Anyway, back to the thread topic.

Completely free seems a bit off. There should definitely be a price on them, but let's look at the percentages here: Let's say the average character sold on the bazaar goes for 15 bil and the transfer fee is paid in PLEX. At a PLEX price of 1.25 bil, that means 16.67% goes to CCP. On the other hand, if the average character goes for 20 bil and the transfer is paid in money, that works out to 6.5% for CCP.

Now let's look at the price of skill extractors in a very conservative way: Let's say extractors go for $4 and PLEX for $20. At 2000SP/hour (so the SP has a high value) you get about 1.44 mil per month, so let's just say it takes 1/3 PLEX of training to fill an extractor. That works out to each injector costing 1/3 PLEX for SP and 1/5 PLEX for the extractor. That comes out to 37.5% of the transaction going to CCP, and that's pretty much the bare minimum where the extractors are obtained at the ideal price and the SP comes at a relatively high price. The percentage is more like 45-55% with more ideal training methods.

See the problem? If anything the cost should be a little lower than the character bazaar to ensure a healthy market develops. Even if they were free CCP would eventually come out ahead in the end due to SP being lost in the injection process. I'd say a price of about 120 each and 100 in bulk would be reasonable, but the current prices will completely destroy most of the potential use and market for SP packets.

Yup. The amount of whinging that has come out of this so far only suggests that they almost turned this travesty into a good thing. I mean, the idea is still idiotic and the reasons for implementing it were (predictably) complete bunk, but at least it has come to generate some comedy.

Just a bit of commentary here. It's like a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica ie "This has happened before, it will happen again" lol.

CCP come up with some idea and even go so far as to suggest that it is for new people/the small guys/ groups, whatever. Many Veterans and Established players (having been through this before) see right through it the 1st second the idea is posted. And we say so.

Others (either newish players who lack the context of past experience or the more naïve/idealistic/unrealistic types among the veterans) look at the idea and foolishly think it's going to work as intended, and throw their support behind it in the form of snarky "you bitter vets are gonna get it now" posts.

The Vets/Established with some common sense and a touch less personal greed try to explain to these people that not only will this idea NOT help new players, in Fine Malcanian Fashion, it will enrich US (the folks who have been here for a while) and make the gaps between old and new, rich and poor, big group and little group even wider than they were before.

But people like this never listen, and they are SURE that the opposition comes from people who 'just don't like change'.

I almost feel a bit guilty when I see the obvious results of these things (like who people were sure as hell that Dominion sov was going to stick it to the 'big cartels' and let the little guy into null sec, when all it ended up doing was let the little guy RENT his way into null while his isk found it's way into big group's wallets lol). I mean, it's like laughing at that 'special kid' in school who got off that special bus every day, when the reality is that he couldn't help being special, any more than these Naïve types can help their lack of common sense or wisdom.

I hope everyone eventually gets their feet back on the ground and realizes this injector/extractor thing is just a bad idea. As in all bad ideas the reasons it's bad are so numerous it's moot. Why it's a good idea? One or two...CCP has something (else) to sell. Players can juke the system. Putting the two plusses in boldfaced caps doesn't make them more than the negs.

I really couldn't believe it when I heard someone on a payroll actually dreamed this up and kept his/her job.

CCP remind me of Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory - and we all know what happened to him.

Glad to see that i'm not the only one thinking that. Every since I saw a CCP developer happy with more activity in the server versus more population, things have been slowly falling into place so CCP can earn more money from players "doing stuff" than "entering the servers".

Monetizing activity is the key to the F2P door. And then, CCP just bought a oversized server to replace TQ2. If your neighbor changes his car for a bus, it's obvious that he plans to fill it. And nothing that CCP has said points at a chance of a surge in new players.

Yes, it's a hunch so far. Intuition in lieu of enough data. And the consequences would be so dramatic that I've been making up my mind for the first stage -F2Pdemographics. I don't want to think of the next stage, F2P burnout and death. That still is years away.

And maybe CCP will just not go F2P after all. Maybe the insufficent data hides a key to go back to population growth in some way I couldn't imagine.

But chances are low. Because any "magic key" CCP could have, would have been used 2 years ago when they ended up firing 20% of their employees.

Be thankful CCP went for the deep gouge instead of making a more logical business model for SP trading, with the deep gouge method a path to free to play or a blatant pay to win Eve was pushed back just a tad bit further.

How does bashing CCP make me a CCP alt.?