Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Clone costs are a limiting factor. If removed high SP characters will be able to take more risks and fly more confidently while doing so.

Also in large engagements the Clone costs will need to be considered. Take for example a war between Goons and TEST; lets say Goon clones are on average 10 million ISK more expensive than TEST clones, and in a week maybe 1000 pods get blown up per side. So Goons are down 10 billion ISK just in clone costs. This is not an insurmountable handicap, but it is one that needs to be accounted for. Removing this disadvantage would make older alliances more powerful when compared to newer ones.

There's also the matter of intel; If I am in a system with one red who is an old char I can safely bet that he is not in a frig. That information can be important.

Are you speaking to me?

You get to retain 100% of those skill points for your 20mil. You could buy cheaper clones and sacrifice a few SP's or you can go to empire space and fight there when you get the urge to fight in a small ship.

I do actually agree with you that the "free" skill points coming up this summer suck. I don't want my char to have 6 million more SP's and the same abilities because of clone costs. It would be much nicer if CCP just stripped BC and Destroyer from all characters and gave appropriate points refunds for them. So people could buy the racial destroyers / BC's they want along with a few skills they want and not have to pay the clone cost for ship skills that they don't want. Seems to me that would be easier to code as well, but who knows how the server would handle that sort of thing.



I love this, maybe it is insulting because you failed to build a character appropriate for its intended purpose. Maybe its meant to be insulting. Your char paid 2 million per clone at some point, then 3, then 7.8 million! Wow, thats getting expensive, and I can't even use all those skill on a combat pilot? Hmm maybe I should start training one of my other chars up and think about this for a while? Hell with it, 13 mil!!! well I guess I will just be careful now...and keep training wahoo.

You made a mistake in character development. In Eve when you make mistakes you pay for them, other players are there to make sure of it because they have something to gain from your loss. Clone costs are no different.

You are asking for a limitation to be removed just because you don't like dealing with it. Some people don't like dealing with bubbles, or gate camps, or ECM, or faction standing repair, or ship replacement costs / time, or grinding ISK. Some people don't like dealing with groups of people and yet many things in Eve cannot be accomplished by one person acting alone.

Eve is a place where the challenge comes from competing against other players. That competition extends far beyond the realm of FPS, there are many paths to victory. If the clone cost limitation is lifted from high SP characters those characters will have a significant advantage that they did not posses before. Freedom to operate wherever and in whatever ship they want to without having to consider loss of their clone.

I get that you "just want to hang with your friends in your favorite clone or whatever." But other players are here to fight, and to destroy one another if possible, that is what makes Eve great. This is a competitive game, not a chat room in space. The risk, the fact that you are playing against others who want to win as much as you do, and that there are many ways to win; is what sets Eve apart, what makes it a great game.

So being able to adapt better and faster to the tactical situation is not a significant tactical advantage? One that is perhaps tempered by the risk to an expensive clone. And those costs don't add up enough to influence war strategy. That's what you are saying here?


I have listed many reasons why clone costs are an important part of balancing powerflation. That you have not read them or do not understand them is of little consequence.

from looking at things, CCP seems to have :

a. never expected people to stay around as long as they have (they've added clones at least once)
b. expected that the high SP players be spacerich enough that losing a 20m pod wasn't any more detrimental than a low SP player losing a 2m pod

1.) Clone costs increase unreasonably so.... It's acceptable that more skillpionts == higher clone costs... but 10's of millions of isk for a clone becomes fairly harsh... More SP does not mean you have more isk.... it might increase your options to make isk, but it still takes your time to earn isk, and generally the rate at which a 40m SP character earns isk and the rate a 140m SP character earns isk does not "make up" the clone cost difference.

2.) Skillpoints give diminishing returns by requiring exponentially more SP to get that extra level... Since we already pay the diminishing returns in terms of SP utility, there is little reason to have an exponentially increasing clone cost...

P.S. I love small ship combat.... and while I have a large number of skillpionts, in any ship only a small number of those skills are applicable to it.

P.S.S. There is only one reason to keep high clone costs:
-- A prohibitively expensive clone makes people chose between flying back home in a pod or destroying the pod to "quick travel'. When the choice is 20 minute journey vs 5m isk clone... 15m isk/hour is only so so.... When the choice is a 20 minute journey vs a 30 m isk clone... well 90m isk/hr is a good income. This also translates to how fast you can reship, etc... Time is valuable, and if clones are too cheap then the time to "save" your clone is worth a lot more than your actual clone. (counter point: implants quite often make-up the majority of clone costs, so while 30m isk for your clone is harsh, it's often much less than the implants in your head.).

Death must have consequences and clone prices are already too cheap, it should be doubled, this is EvE Online not some kindgarden themepark game.

get rid of clone cost unless pod kills start showing what that pilot payed for the clone on the kill mail. As it stands now a pod is only worth 1 mil make it worth the clone that got pod or get rid of clone cost.

A better idea,

I think that anyone who uses ISK to purchase a PLEX should also be subject to a 10% handling fee which would be 97% sink, and 3% PLEX fraud insurance fund. Don’t feel too badly about the people buying PLEX, after all they have enough ISK to buy PLEX. And the non-quantifiable variables of long-term market aggregation once inflated by marketing over-saturation will almost certainly compound to a level that is both sustainable and profitable.