Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't see how that is an exploitation of the mechanic. People should be able to spend their LP however they want. This also does not stop people from accumulating LP. I know someone sitting on 60b+ of Caldari LP if he ever cashes in you will know.

navy still come after u even if they are pretty much in bed with u. u can be +10, but they shoot u just cause of FW.

Buying a hookbil on the market from another player is one thing. Getting it for free (or the cost of a kestrel) off an NPC because of LP's is another.

That access to a cheaper hookbill is intended for someone who put the work in. Just like perfect refining and access to jump clones and higher level mission agents.

Which is why I am a huge advocate of putting each type of LP on the market. It is taxed just like buying and selling an item is. (Woo! more isk sink!) The market will agree to the value of the LP. LP is susceptible to the same market forces as anything else. It will rise and fall as things change. If it falls too much you will likely see massive LP buys that turn into items that are again sold on market. If it rises too much then you will see an uptick in LP production. Free markets win again.

If you need another character to do it then you actually don't have access to the highest refining rates. That character does, you have that refine + whatever costs the other character imposes, which perfectly parallels the cost of the hookbill on the market vs the LP store.

Same with clones and standing, someone offers a service to you, whether at a cost or not is their choice. The commonality in all those cases is that the NPC granted rewards and abilities are at no point actually removed from one character to be given to the other. Players who don't have those capacities enlist the aid of players that do and, with the exception of when credit for the earning act is actually shared, again a player choice with that particular consequence in mind, the ability to perform the task itself is not transferred.

Additionally this whole thing ties back into the point of location and interaction being important. A nullsec player shouldn't be able to bypass the mechanics of LP store locations relative to their characters location, along with any other limits created by personal decisions that may be involved (Faction standing/Security status/War dec/etc) any more than a highsec player who doesn't want to go to null should expect to be able to run DED 10/10's.

Edit: I got lost in the flow of conversation somehow and attributed a stance to you that you didn't have apparently. The voucher idea you presented a few posts back is one that I can get behind, but the proposed isk-like ability to transfer LP is a no from me.

Quite right! And I don't think that should change. Adding LP vouchers to the LP stores wouldn't change any of that, especially if there's a conversion cost involved in the purchase of those vouchers. All it would do is allow players to not have to worry about 'which item is getting the best isk/LP today' and instead just purchase the vouchers and post them to the market instead. Thus allowing the purchaser of the vouchers to decide what they want to purchase from the LP store.

As for bypassing the mechanics of the system, there's already a way to do that in game. Just get a jump clone in the appropriate station and leave it there. When you're ready to convert your LP just jump over, use your LP, and then wait out the timer to jump home. Sure you're giving up a night of playing in your normal sandbox, but as long as you're not KOS to the empire your JC is in you could always find something to do while you're there.

There is one point I agree with you on. Nothing is free. The idea that allowing people to buy and sell LP is not giving anyone an advantage. In fact this is leveling the playing field for people who live in 0.0 and have to currently fly 20+ jumps to cash in their LP where as mission runners live in the same station they cash in at. Currently the cost of flying from 0.0 to a station to cash in LP is higher than people are willing to pay making it so the just don't cash in or simply do not use the ESS that CCP added. If people are able to sell their LP it does not remove the cost of converting it to goods to sell for ISK it only facilitates that process.

You're forgetting that part where that hisec player is paying for the convenience of ease of access by accepting lower rewards for his activities. Missions run in hisec offer lesser payouts than those in low or nulsec. Not having easy access to the LP store is the price that nulsec player is paying for getting the greater payouts offered in nulsec. There's always a trade.

As I'm mentioned in other posts there is a way around the travelling, just leave a JC in the LP station and jump to it when you want to cash in. Wait a day (less if you've got skills) and then jump home. Costs you a JC and a night of playing in your usual sandbox, a fair trade imo.

so remove LP's if NPC's cannot properly express gratitude...

or should we just come up with a way of trying to quantify it but not make it tradeable, because its a game. Which is exactly what they did.

Maybe you missed this part of my argument. I understand, my posts can be intimidating:



If you're going to treat the NPCs like people and you're earning favor with those people then why not just ask those people to do favors for others in your stead?



I agree, but removing the effort required entirely is not an effective solution to the problem. There must be compromise. Risk vs Reward. Effort vs Payout. Without some sort of trade it becomes a non-issue, and LP should not become a non-issue.

If u want to do that, u can with the existing system.

But u want it to be publicly tradeable, which none of the favours we've discussed are.