Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yes it does matter who determines the price. Very, very much. Price controls have a very, very dubious history. That you slide right over it suggests you are not to be taken at all seriously.

[Suggestion] New player
I think that a great thing, for new player, it's the possibility to use their first skill point as they wish. I mean the possibility for new player to assign 1m sp where they need. This way even a 1 day player can join a small fleet, yeah not maxed but better than now.
1m sp is not that much even 2 m sp i think that nobody would be angry about this change,but surely it would be a great change for new players.

First off what sub trends? Dror has a looong history of making nearly impenetrably statements. Second you don't know either because it is an empirical question and the only people with the data are CCP and they ain't sharing. How can I side step his question when I was responding to you and he jumped in?

As for SP, you completely failed to grasp the point I was making. Having CCP set a price for SP instead of letting the price be set by the market are very different things.

You whine that you want to buy SP. Fine, character bazaar is that way -------->. The bazaar lets you buy SP.

As for your "logic" we have on the one hand the following statements: the character bazaar is a form of buying SP.
Now we have this statement: If buying characters negatively effects subs....

So, are we to conclude that buying SP negatively subscriptions? Fine, no to buying SP. Close down the character bazaar, no buying SP from CCP, etc.

I will also say this, I'm impressed at your ability to try link SP in any way possible to subscription rates.

Good, then you can stop posting. You wont be missed.

Oh, and for the record, you did write, "Doesn't matter who sets the price." So you're wrong on that count too.

Yeah, I did say that about the price, only thing is you've taken it out of context to what was actually being said.

Depends on the price doesn't it?

Suppose CCP decides to sell SP, and people can use PLEX to do so. What are the effects?

First off, the price of PLEX would take another jump, probably a significant one. Did you think of that? Have you made any posts bemoaning the price of PLEX?

Further, if the price of SP is say, 10,000,000 SP/PLEX it could cause a significant problem. There are quite a few players who could afford to buy say, 10 PLEX and inject 100 million SP into 1 or more characters in the game.

Of course, if the price is 1,000,000 SP/PLEX then the same player would only have 10,000,000 SP to inject.

Suppose we have 500 players who could afford 10 or more PLEX, does that sort of SP influx cause a problem in the game? I don't know, but suddenly having 500 players who go nearly instantly from starting SP to 100 million probably would have some effects.

Further, those players are predominantly going to be older and more established players, not complete noobs. The complete noob players to get the same effect would have to drop about $200 of RL money.

So, we can rest assured that this kind of change would violate Malcanis' Law as well. Paraphrasing, "Any change claimed to benefit new/younger players will invariably provide a greater benefit to older/more established players."

Somebody wants to buy SP...character bazaar. That is the answer.

Yes....which is why some sort of buying SP program is almost invariably going to help/benefit older players who have deep wallets in game. Especially if CCP sets the price and that price is too low. Of course, setting the price higher puts it out of range of the typical new player.

So drop this claim that it will help new players and help promote content.

JFCOAMFPS

Now you are confusing the issue, as you typically do when you paint yourself into a corner. If increasing starting SP helps boost subscriptions (doubtful) and/or helps with player retention....fine. Boost starting SP. Nothing you have written undermines the point that allowing the purchase of SP can be extremely unbalancing if the price is set incorrectly.

Look, here is the problem. SP are essentially infinite. There is no constraint on CCP to limit the amount. Further, the cost to CCP is extremely low. In fact, setting the marginal cost to zero is probably a good approximation. So the potential profits from this, on paper, are essentially infinite except for the fact that there are a finite number of players who have finite amounts of RL money. In other words, from a profit maximizing stand point there is nothing stopping CCP from trying to push as many SP into the game as the market will bear.

Further, there is always the possibility that CCP will do the "math" and note at some point in time that the profits from a one time "hyperinfalation of SP"--i.e. pushing a massive amount of SP into the market at some discounted price and destroying the game and walking away with the profits is the best strategy.

In other words, the problems with allowing the purchase of SP at a price set by CCP is stupid beyond belief because it has many of the same problems associated with the private issuance of fiat currency. No, I am not making this up, go read on the denationalization of money and the works of Friedrich Hayek (Nobel prize winning economist). And Lawrence White who points out the problems with Hayek's position. The problem is there is no way to guarantee the value of fiat currency with this time consistency problem. And in this case since there is just one issuer of SP there is no competition as in Hayek's writings and models.

CCP was either very, very smart or they lucked into the right answer. Setup a market that effectively allows for the trading of SP via characters but does so in a way they (CCP) has very little input (CCP basically enforces the rules of the market and takes what is essentially a Rake to let people play in that market) but other than that the price/SP is set by the market--i.e. supply and demand. Thus creating a stable market in which the stability of the price and quantity of SP is fairly well assured. Stepping outside that mechanism would be incredibly stupid. And that goes for anyone thinking that stepping outside such a market is a good idea.

Feel free to describe how reward and motivation are irrelevant with the goals of the game's design (or any other inflection of "the issue").

Why, though, would the cost be set beyond 1 month's worth of SP per PLEX price? With that simplicity, how is "the value of privatized money" relevant, as it's a set price with a set item?