EVE General Discussion

What is even more ironic is on another forum (I might be mistaken due to my Google Fu hating me) how he did not want to train anymore due to the clone upgrade cost being too high for the next tier.

So I take your 'no sympathy for 6 year vet player who can't affort clone upgrade costs...' and toss that pie right back in your face Malcanis.

I don't think hiding the problem in psychological penumbra is the way to go about fixing this problem.

The ISK needs to be spent on ships, ammo, and mods, not silly things like a bigger brain.

Surely that choice is a pretty dumb one within the context of a pay-to-play MMO isn't it?

"Hey guys we've got this revolutionary business model to keep people paying to play our game - we make it so once they reach a certain threshold there's actually a disincentive to carry on developing their character"

Having to pay 45m+ on clones is a tangible disincentive to flying anything small, which could easily cost less than the clone including fittings, or solo. I'm "only" at 30m per clone and already it's annoying me - I feel for the guys and girls who are unlucky enough to have been playing longer.

One thing I realized is that high clone costs go against EVE's sandbox philosophy.

The sandbox philosophy is about freedom to do what you want and be who you want in the game. The rising clone costs push you towards avoiding to fly small ships and avoiding spontaneous high risk PvP. Ships, modules, implants can be chosen according to the pilot's budget and inclinations, whereas the clone cost only rises.

Some might say, but it makes sense, it's been this way since forever therefore it must be working as intended. To this I respond: nonsense, the game is full of outdated little things put in place when EVE was a very different game. Once upon a time, losing ships wasn't a big deal because tech 2 didn't exist and insurance returned the full hull cost (or even more). Yes depending on the market, it was profitable to buy ships and self-destruct them. This is why clone costs were set high, to add real loss and thus risk to PvP. In today's EVE, from a game mechanics point of view, they do not need to be high because of tech 2, module costs often being higer than hull cost, reduced insurance, etc.

I don't understand why people say we need to train another char to continue what we want to do in eve just to keep a silly cost down to pvp in small ships. I mainly fly canes down and due to being in fw currently and also a pirate I can loose my pod in lowsec as well as the 00 roams. I like to fly rifters and thrashers but its annoying that the cost of my clone which isn't past the 92 mill level yet can be 10 times the cost of the t1 fitted rifter I enjoy flying. We generally fly rifters in fun fleets to include new players and while I can rock around in the 00 blob with a carrier I enjoy the small gang more while I teach newer players that their skill point level can be useful in pvp.

I like that my kill mails are mainly on this char and not my other 4 mains and I like the fact that Stoogie has a reputation in certain circles which gets us fights we maybe wouldn't usually get. why should I as a 8 year vet ( I biomassed my first char like a moron when I restarted) who has supported eve for that length of time be punished for wanting to pvp as with new players.

I can loose 10 ships a night due to the way we fly (not everyone agrees with it but its fun and provides challenge for people we fight) that could cost me 900 mill in ships if its canes or 9 mill if its the rifters. If I do loose the 10 rifters in 00 and I loose my pod half those times, thats 5 clones coming in at about 75 mill, Thats potentially 75 more rifters and fittings which could go into the market and push more iskies about.

While I agree that there needs to be sinks in eve maybe this sink needs reducing and others increasing or get rid of some of the very stupid isk faucet's.

And before anyone calls me a bad pvper its my choice to fly like that and its also entertainment for at least 20 players on my side alone let alone the people we're fighting. Also we Usually kill alot more than we loose. (usually)

One can only cringe at this terrible argument. Me thinks you're just throwing buzzwords around without understanding what's being said.

There is a choice when it comes to ships, modules, implants, etc which is in line with the sandbox philosophy. There is no choice in clones (the only choice being not to develop the character further, which is so stupid that nothing needs to be said about it).

This thread is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

You know, I almost always switch to a "combat clone" before I go for PvP roams. I generally use only +3% or even +1% hardwirings and +2 implants on it. It's kind of disappointing that my clone costs are bigger than the cost of the implants.
Like I've said in other threads before, I'd probably be more active if I didn't have to worry about losing ISK the equivalent of ten fully t2 fitted rifters for example if I got podded.
IMHO all the clone prices should be slashed at least around 90%. I firmly believe that would encourage solo PVP and PVP in general more than any of the other commonly tossed around ideas on the forums (remove local, force hiseccers to mine / PVE in lowsec and other "great" ideas).



Stopping developing my main character is not a choice. Well okay, it is, but it is a mind bogglingly idiotic one and I can't believe you're actually serious. Are you?

Like this idea a lot.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's a DUMB choice.

Of course it's a choice. You can choose to do it, and apparently for some people the incentive (capping clone cost) to do it is considerable. For my part, I'm not really that bothered about 10 mill more or less on the 7 or 8 occasions a year when I get podded, but since I don't want to train capital skills on Malc, and he's pretty much a pure PvP character, I genuinely have all the skills I need on him. The marginal benefit of training medium autocannon spec 5 or whatever is hugely exceeded by spending the same SP on training Caldari Cruiser 5 on my alt.

Putting the training onto specialised alts is not only not an "idiotic" choice, it's an excellent choice for me and I have benefitted a great deal by it.

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.