EVE General Discussion

yea. and this is the thing you need to keep in mind when you choose where to live and pvp.

it's like me would do lvl4s in my pimped carebearmobile in caldari space being member of minmatar militia

All that information is great, but none of it is in real time as compared to that roaming group with a dictor who just rolled into your path. I fly with a lot more expensive implants than +3's at all times because i can afford to. I can also afford my clone costs without any issues.

My Issue is that with as much money as we already spend on our ships, mods, and implants, not too mention the amount of time and money we have given this game to get where we are, can we at least be given a break on our clone costs?

Alts have always posted on these forums as long as I can remember (2007) although did play from 2005 although never used to visit the forums back then.

Must admit would have liked to have played from 2003, but didn't know the game existed back then.




Yeah, clone costs are too expensive, I'm glad you recognise that fact.

So when they get reduced at least you won't be too disappointed.

Sometimes it does feel like a bit of a punishment, i have played since 2003, won't ever hide behind an alt, and will always speak my mind.

i like what CCP has done in terms of making the game more new player friendly, but most of the subs in this game are long term players and their alt accounts. A change as simple as lowering clone costs will only make the majority of players happy.

Perhaps if not even reducing the cost of all clones as much as say one you hit 80m or 100m SP's the clone cost doesn't go any further beyond that point? Not too mention that a say 40m SP character specialized in a ship that a 140m SP character can fly the exact same suffers less of a loss than the 140m SP player when podded. How exactly is that fair?

tl;dr

Its pretty small as a sink and reduction of the cost will probably lead to more pod death anyway, so it should even out. Clone costs as a sink is a pretty minor issue.

The issues that I have seen with merit for keeping or raising clone cost either revolve around;

-Normalizing the feeling of risk for pilots of different skill levels. This is the hard core PvPers who want glorious kills with big numbers that will hurt. They want Eve combat to remain scary and dangerous because they enjoy it that way. That group will often point out that the cost for Eve combat has come down over the years as ever denser sources of ISK have been uncovered and pushed into the economy. So in real terms the clones and the loss of combat in general is less than it was 5 or 6 years ago.

-The cost on high level clones is one of the few balancing factors for new players v older players. Power creep and mudflation are 2 of the biggest problems in closed game worlds like Eve. CCP has kept inflation down to a dull roar. But power creep is starting to become serious despite Eves broad and fairly shallow skill tree. And players being overly distanced in terms of power levels is far more damaging to PvP than cost of combat being a few % points off for one group or another.

The idea that clone costs are punishment is a perception, all the arguments for lowering clone cost follow this trend.

The inability of less powerful players to have an impact on more powerful ones is a quantifiable value that should be addressed before the lesser issue of percieved injustice.

I really don't even see that as a factor, balancing how?

You mean losses? Even if you are talking about losses it really won't make any difference to the newer player.

Corey you make it sound like all pvp happens between the old and the young, when in fact reality is nowhere near as cut and dry like that. Everybody fights everybody, so when high clone costs financially limit the amount of pvp that some high-SP players can do, you remove their presence from both sides of the equation in any given conflict.

The only thing that high clone costs do is make less stuff get blown up; they don't magically shift the efficiency formula in favor of newbies.

"Punishment" isn't my word; I took that directly from several posts in these threads. It is a feeling that is held by many people who oppose the clone cost mechanic.

To me rules and limits in a game are the individual puzzle pieces that define the play area. Disincentives for certain actions and consequences for others balanced by rewards create a dynamic that makes gaming interesting.

The game is a continual process of pushing oneself past disincentives like resource depletion in order to set up the potential for victory. The threat of failure and potential loss competing with ones attention and focus as the brass ring is just coming into view is a core component of the game. Going through this process creates the feelings of dread and exultation that are so pronounced in Eve.

So disincentives are a part of the game and must not be removed. They can be balanced by greater reward if they are too strong, but to remove them would erode what is actually a very delicate and hard to attain formula for in game dynamics.

Are you still talking about shaking in your boots when your talking about in game dynamics?

How is a disincentive that prevents some people from PvPing a good thing?


You are wrong, it's only a disincentive for those people that can't afford to keep replacing them. If you have more isk than you know what to do with then isk becomes practically worthless to you and in those cases it's certainly not a disincentive.