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Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

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Author
Chirality Tisteloin
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#2421 - 2015-10-17 10:09:24 UTC
Here are my two cents to the various concerns that have been voiced:


  1. This will diminish the attachment to my characters / devalue the sense of unique history and achievement that is embodied in the skill set: For me the big change there was the removal of the skill queue cap. When I started EVE, the daily, later weekly, skill queue management was instrumental in making me log in. At that time I thought the whole training scheme was super clever for that very reason. With hundreds of days in my queues this motivator is gone and I can see players let their new characters just sit there and accumulate sp without logging them in. People who want to roleplay their characters' development still will be able to do that.
  2. This can be abused to create super powers: I have not seen ways to abuse the system that would not already be possible in one way or another with plex, alts and the bazaar.
  3. We won't be able to tell the skill level by looking at character age: This is indeed a plus in my book. It'd be great news if you need to be a bit more careful when engaging a young character. You'd actually need to observe their behaviour instead of just clicking show-info.
  4. The bazaar was a good market that would be destroyed: Can't say anything on that since I never tried to use it, let alone make isk off it.
  5. Monetisation through peer pressure: This made me very uncomfortable at first. But once I realized that it is the extraction of skillpoints from a character that costs aurum and not the consumption of the skill package, these concerns were largely calmed.


So at the moment I am pretty positive about the change.

What I would like to see is some twist, rooted in the game world. Maybe there is a fun way how messing with ones' head could have some effects on your mental health. I am more thinking of perks than serious penalties. Maybe there is something that can be tied into the storyline and the changes to implants that have been hinted at in the past.
Simply adding something like "This character had her neural pathways significantly disrupted by repeated skill injections and is going to collapse soon." to the character description could also appease the people who fear the diminished intel.

See you at my blog: http://spindensity.wordpress.com/

Gassner
Katholische Pfruendepachtstelle
#2422 - 2015-10-17 10:11:55 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:

Note that people that cash in their alt's SPs would get to play for free...

Why is this bad? When you roam looking for a decent-value (T2 cruisers and above) fleet to shoot at, would you prefer more targets or less? Do you even ever think about how 'EVE-old' are the guys you're fighting?


Because giving me more shiny stuff to shoot at also diminishes the value of a single quality kill i managed to hunt down on myself.
Especially if there are high chances my adversary was able to acquire his assets and skills with way less effort ($) than me or another pilot (time).
Asveron Durr
Vandanian Order
Greater Itamo Mafia
#2423 - 2015-10-17 10:13:21 UTC
Here is something to consider since this skill idea will not assist younger/newer players.......

First few days or coupleof weeks are fine maybe......

But then space rich guy and his few friends ensure they drop their PLEX hoard(some of it) into aurum.
Then purchase the skill extractors....
Then use them on characters they have not been using in a long time....

And only after they have begin snapping up the skill injectors off the market....

Calculations between aurum/plex differences/worth, and equivelancy of RL Money will:
Allow for market manipulation and control, effetively making it impossible for new players to purchase these injectors....

Eventually the plex is much higher than it is today
and the Injecotrs will be soon enough in the range of 500million to 1 billion ISK themselves also.....

This will make the idea into "Golden Ammo" as the only ones able to use it at that point would be those that spend REAL cash on plex or even aurum...because the ISK market is for all intents an purposes in the control of players....and mostly veterans at that.
I could do it....and I am sure the the other EvE moguls out there are thinking of it.....

In effect i predict in a few short months of being implemented as currently stated this "skill idea" becomes a point of RMT and enslavement for new players to established organizations that will setup a way to exploit the "i have to have it now" crowd.

It will fail as valuable change in the game......
an as one person said once already....when a newer player quits he will pass on the knowledge:
1.) you have to spend $15 to subscribe
2.) then buy a plex to cash in to purchase the skill injectors $20
2a.) or buy aurum to get as many skill extractors as possible $20
3.) you will also have to fork over $20 for a plex to train a 2nd character or $15 for a character on another account

Just to be effective......and that is how the "i want it now" crowd will think and behave....
Bad reviews and word of mouth that EvE will cost approx $30 - $60 every month or every other month or so to be competitive will destroy player retention more so than now. It will no longer be seen as the $15 per month subscription game by a greater number of people than many realize. It will be seen as a PAY TO WIN game on par with many others, but more expensive.

And this is not including the fact of those that may buy plex for ISk to get the ships they will be able to fly after injections only to lose them faster because they have no practical experience how to truly play this game.

CCP promised us no "Golden Ammo" ideas, they practically promised us they would not establish a money grab scheme like so many other games do or have done, and some of those have failed os miserably they are either stagnant as well in player numbers or do not exsist anymore.

IF Hilmar and compant really wish to kill off one of Icelands top income makers....then who are we to stop them. But if they are looking to truly see EvE last a full decade at full steam ahead they would be well advised to reconsider this idea.
Veteran Players will scheme and break everything you introduce into this game.....becaue that is what we do, this is no different except you will be literally handing over the keys to your finances and ability to grow this time in ways you simply do not unable fathom at this point.
Might as well go public and start letting veteran players buy actual CCP stock.
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#2424 - 2015-10-17 10:14:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Levi Belvar
Dave Stark wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
The sticking two fingers up part refers to : 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added /// So ive played the game for 9 years had upto 3/4 accounts running so someone comes along maybe stays for a month or 2 but gets 500,000 for the same $£$ and i get shafted ...... Thats not unfair ???


at 80m SP he gets the same 50k from a packet too.

that restriction is on the character's SP not the age of the account.

if you create a new character on the account you'd get the same 500,000 sp.


So what is the whole exercise for then ????

Is it for the benefit of new character creation or to add yet another game straining microtransaction that has nothing todo with the bazaar in itself but to afford old characters or the more wealthier the potential to max their toons by using RMT

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

Dave Stark
#2425 - 2015-10-17 10:14:34 UTC
159Pinky wrote:
Kitagawa Mika wrote:
Really cool idea, would love to see this implemented sooner rather than later. This is a good way to help new players and to make eve a viable option for new players. As it stands now, someone coming in to EVE as a new player the skill system and required time must be really daunting. I understand that older players don't like change, but I see only upside... So I welcome this idea with open arms to insure the progress and success of EVE going forward.


So, where will new players get the isk to buy this? Not by playing cause it'll be expensive. So they'll have to buy plex with real money. If you feel like this "pay to play" is good, then yeah: this is good for new players.


i feel that could be solved by doing dropping everything by a factor of 10.

a skill packet costing 30m vs 300m. that's a huge difference. for a new player 30m isn't a seemingly insurmountable amount of isk. 300 is.

i remember 100m was a milestone and frankly a bit of a struggle, so trying to reach 300? oh god.. 30m, not so much.
Gassner
Katholische Pfruendepachtstelle
#2426 - 2015-10-17 10:15:26 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Gassner wrote:
They could as well just sell the SPs from npc market orders or for aurum.
Why do you think a system that creates SP out of thin air would be better than the proposed one, that gives SP to player A only if there is a player B willing to give his SP for ISK and, potentially, game time?


Well, read again.
I'm in no way proposing that.
There would be just so much SP on the market, it would not matter if they came from alts or thin air.
The game is over 12yrs old, there are way too many alts, boom.
Dave Stark
#2427 - 2015-10-17 10:17:28 UTC
Levi Belvar wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
The sticking two fingers up part refers to : 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added /// So ive played the game for 9 years had upto 3/4 accounts running so someone comes along maybe stays for a month or 2 but gets 500,000 for the same $£$ and i get shafted ...... Thats not unfair ???


at 80m SP he gets the same 50k from a packet too.

that restriction is on the character's SP not the age of the account.

if you create a new character on the account you'd get the same 500,000 sp.


So what is the whole exercise for then ????

Is it for the benefit of new character creation or to add yet another game straining microtransaction that has nothing todo with the bazaar in itself but to afford old characters the potential to max their toons by using RMT


according to the devblog it's to make things more granular and give you more control.
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2428 - 2015-10-17 10:18:11 UTC
Gassner wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:

Note that people that cash in their alt's SPs would get to play for free...

Why is this bad? When you roam looking for a decent-value (T2 cruisers and above) fleet to shoot at, would you prefer more targets or less? Do you even ever think about how 'EVE-old' are the guys you're fighting?


Because giving me more shiny stuff to shoot at also diminishes the value of a single quality kill i managed to hunt down on myself.
Especially if there are high chances my adversary was able to acquire his assets and skills with way less effort ($) than me or another pilot (time).
Fair enough, though I think, generally speaking, most people would prefer more populated space.

Note that the ISK-value, and the corresponding time it took someone to mine minerals, PI stuff, moon goo and build that shiny ship stays the same though.

Also I'm proud when I kill a capable pilot, not a high-SP pilot (I never check).

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Aesther Hert
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#2429 - 2015-10-17 10:20:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Aesther Hert
I like this idea. Gives more freedom hence more fun to the game and remove some of the too rigid rules. It'll also remove this "vet" "noob" segregation and give the game a real sandbox feel. And not "skill queue online".

But I also understand that it upsets some vets. But for the new players (or most players) the "I'm older than you so I win" is artificial and frankly stupid.
Dave Stark
#2430 - 2015-10-17 10:20:47 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Also I'm proud when I kill a capable pilot, not a high-SP pilot (I never check).


probably because past a certain level of SP, it's completely irrelevant (which is why i honestly don't see how a 400m sp character appearing tomorrow would be bad)
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2431 - 2015-10-17 10:21:35 UTC
Gassner wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Gassner wrote:
They could as well just sell the SPs from npc market orders or for aurum.
Why do you think a system that creates SP out of thin air would be better than the proposed one, that gives SP to player A only if there is a player B willing to give his SP for ISK and, potentially, game time?


Well, read again.
I'm in no way proposing that.
There would be just so much SP on the market, it would not matter if they came from alts or thin air.
The game is over 12yrs old, there are way too many alts, boom.
I see what you mean, but you're making the same mistake 99% of the posters are making: looking at it only from the buyer's perspective.

What about all the ISK flow from buyers to sellers? Sellers being, as you say and I agree, a very large chunk of the EVE population.

It's funny, people seem so attached to SP accumulation they're overlooking the opportunites to sell unnecessary SP.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Integra Arkanheld
Andorra Paradis Fiscal
#2432 - 2015-10-17 10:22:49 UTC
I have not been playing at EVE for many months now, but I keep the character and continue the training so when I come back to the game (and I will come back), I have more skills and I have not lost time. I can use some PLEX to make some cash and continue the game as if I had been playing.
If you implement this new ability to buy skill points, instead of paying to maintain the account, I will simply cancel the account.
If I come back to the game, I only need to sell a few millions SP (now I have 197M), and only keep the useful skills.
Why will people continue to train skills if they have "finished" the character? The only use for more skills will be to sell them for more isk instead of trying to have everything. It will be better to have several 50M (or even 80M) specialized characters than one 200+ M character.
If you implement this, most old characters will be dismantled into smaller characters, and old players will sell all the new SPs they will be doing.
Right now, a new player is limited, but after several months, he can become a useful character. Old players are not so much more powerful as the only thing they gain is more and more useless skills. Yet they continue at the game because they love their main character, and like to see it growth. With this new system, players will plan specialized characters of 50M SPs, and make them. Once they are finished, they will sell the extra SPs to pay for PLEXs and play for free. Many players will also stop playing the game as they may feel that the have finished it once they have made all the different styles of characters.
One of the problems with this system is that all characters will be identical. Everyone will want to use the same 50M SP plan for the same role, so for example all miners will be the same characters with the same skills, and so on with traders, industrials, haulers, small ships pilots, big ships pilots and capital pilots.

What might be useful to do is:
-be able to change the character name
-be able to change the character physical appearance,
-be able to redistribute some skill points (losing for example 25% of them in the process) to others skills. You do this removing a trained skill that you no longer want and recovering the 75% of its value in unallocated SPs to reuse yourself (Never for selling)
-be able to remove the implants
-be able to remap the skills
-have this be available like the neural remap once per year for free, or paying with aurum once per 3 months for example.

Be careful with what you do as it might have a very big impact in the game.
a25639
Doomheim
#2433 - 2015-10-17 10:23:08 UTC
Some people seem to be afraid that this feature would allow rich players to get alts with like 400m sp, which is more than what you could buy on the character bazaar. I’d like to explain why that’s not a problem.

What people don’t seem to realise is that there is only a limited amount of combat skills. You need approximately 150m sp to get at least level 4 skills for every available combat ship and module. Once you have that many sp you can continue to train barely useful level 5 combat skills until you have approximately 290m sp. At that point you will have nothing left to train but completely useless skills.

We have long passed the time where characters with 150m combat sp began to be available on the character bazaar and in 1 or 2 years even characters with 290m combat sp will become more common on the character bazaar.

If you want to have a high sp combat character now you can get it on the character bazaar. If you want to have a high sp combat character after this feature is released you would still get it from the character bazaar because it will be much cheaper than using skill packets. The diminishing returns are not only a great sp sink but they also protect the value of high sp characters.

In the end it will cost a shitload of ISK to push your character to 400m sp and the only advantage you get is the possibility to use your combat pilot also for mining. Who cares?
Ima Wreckyou
The Conference Elite
Safety.
#2434 - 2015-10-17 10:25:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Ima Wreckyou
Sibyyl wrote:
Ima Wreckyou wrote:
This "plan" has nothing to do with alt recycling of any kind. It simply shows how you can basically create free alts on accounts who are always subscribed because they are part of an SP farm. This is interesting for ganking because of the limited skills needed there.

I misunderstood your original post. Thanks for the clarification. From what you said:

Quote:
since the SP you produce by consuming this PLEX will always sell for more than they cost to produce this way


You're saying SP is a commodity that will always retain its value (in fact its value will always closely follow the value of the most valuable commodity in the game now, which is PLEX). This commodity will be able to be earned by anyone:

  1. With a character with at least 5M SP
  2. 100% passively
  3. Without any interference from market forces that are faced by by all other passive income in the game, like PI or Industry


But something is off about your math. Specifically:

  1. You can only sell 4 skill packets "per month" (since the SP alt will only gain 2M SP/month at max)
  2. To sell 4 skill packets, you have to purchase 4 extractors with AUR or ISK
  3. In order to PLEX your account you will have to earn as much ISK as 1 PLEX + 4 Extractors


I don't see it happening.

It does not really matter what is needed to create the packs, since it is the same stuff everyone will have to use to create such a pack.

The only thing I can see that maybe is off whit my idea is that the amount of people doing this is so high that the market get saturated. In this case you would have to sell packs at a lower price and it would not pay the full subscription.

In this case however people who take a break will make a better deal if they just cancel their subscription and purchase the SP if they come back. We don't know if the low PCU is caused by players who actually left or just don't log in and are waiting for something. If the later is the case this may be a serious concern for CCP.

Anyway, in both cases the PLEX prices will skyrocket, since there will be a lot of players who are no longer interested in getting SP for a bunch of their alts and rather just farm packs for passive income. I will do it for sure if this hits TQ.

You could make an argument that this is already possible with the character bazzar and in a way it is. But it takes a lot of planing and effort to get those toons sold and this is why only a couple of people do it. This will completely change with the SP pack system.

Something else:

You did not address my concern that this will look to a new player like a classical F2P paywall. Do you think this is not an issue and why do you think it isn't one?
General Lootit
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2435 - 2015-10-17 10:27:11 UTC  |  Edited by: General Lootit
159Pinky wrote:
Kitagawa Mika wrote:
Really cool idea, would love to see this implemented sooner rather than later. This is a good way to help new players and to make eve a viable option for new players. As it stands now, someone coming in to EVE as a new player the skill system and required time must be really daunting. I understand that older players don't like change, but I see only upside... So I welcome this idea with open arms to insure the progress and success of EVE going forward.


So, where will new players get the isk to buy this? Not by playing cause it'll be expensive. So they'll have to buy plex with real money. If you feel like this "pay to play" is good, then yeah: this is good for new players.

I can afford that. In FW earning rate is about 75kk per hour on trial account. So if Packet will be cost around 1/4 of PLEX (assuming that farming rate is 2000k SP per month so 500k SP is 1/4 of month) I need 4 hours to buy Packet which worth 1 week of traning.
Dave Stark
#2436 - 2015-10-17 10:28:29 UTC
Ima Wreckyou wrote:
Anyway, in both cases the PLEX prices will skyrocket, since there will be a lot of players who are no longer interested in getting SP for a bunch of their alts and rather just farm packs for passive income. I will do it for sure if this hits TQ.


unless the margins are 100% or better (which i seriously doubt) if you're doing it purely to make isk rather than offset the cost of having the account... you're better off just straight up selling plex.
Devils Fighter
Paradox Collective
#2437 - 2015-10-17 10:28:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Devils Fighter
I can't understand why people are complaining about P2W. Buying PLEX to buy characters is something new players already do! This just makes it more granular and actually they will probably spend less on buying PLEX as they don't have to buy the whole character with lots of excess skills or pay a premium to buy a very focussed character.

I am concerned that newer players might be shoe-horned in to joining the bigger alliances if they are offering free skill packets as a recruitment incentive. Not a bad thing in itself but a bit of diversity and incentive to join smaller corps and alliances only adds to the game.

CCP might need to rethink T3 skill losses as they'll not really be a penality under this system - perhaps a delay of a day before you are able to apply unallocated SP to the skill that was lost?
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2438 - 2015-10-17 10:29:57 UTC
General Lootit wrote:
159Pinky wrote:
Kitagawa Mika wrote:
Really cool idea, would love to see this implemented sooner rather than later. This is a good way to help new players and to make eve a viable option for new players. As it stands now, someone coming in to EVE as a new player the skill system and required time must be really daunting. I understand that older players don't like change, but I see only upside... So I welcome this idea with open arms to insure the progress and success of EVE going forward.


So, where will new players get the isk to buy this? Not by playing cause it'll be expensive. So they'll have to buy plex with real money. If you feel like this "pay to play" is good, then yeah: this is good for new players.

I can afford that. In FW earning rate is about 75kk per hour on trial account. So if Packet will be cost around 1/4 of PLEX (assuming that farming rate is 2000k SP per month so 500k SP is 1/4 of month) I need 4 hour to buy Packet which worth 1 week of traning.
I believe it will cost less. If people sell SP from their alts, they don't necessarily need to get the 'farming' SP/PLEX rate, because they'd pay the PLEX (or sub) anyway to actually play with their alts.

Not saying 'SP you don't need is free' (like 'minerals you mine are free' LOL), but it's certainly worth less than a full PLEX per month.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Sean Crees
Sean's Safe Haven
#2439 - 2015-10-17 10:32:17 UTC
CCP Logibro wrote:
[img]http://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68656/1/skilltrade1_550.jpg[/img]
The Character Bazaar has been around for a while, allowing enterprising players to buy and sell characters from others. Lately, we've been exploring some new ideas around improving it, but ultimately realized that our effort was better spent investigating a similar idea: skill trading. This is a pretty big thing, so make sure you read the entire dev blog, and let us know what you think of the ideas inside.


Please also read this reminder on our forum rules ~ ISD Decoy


Are you looking to deploy this in on 3 November 2015, or mid December, or is this a longer term thing?

I'm getting really close to 50mil SP, and if that's going to be the first major soft cap, i'd REALLY like this feature before i hit that mark. :)
Ima Wreckyou
The Conference Elite
Safety.
#2440 - 2015-10-17 10:36:17 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Ima Wreckyou wrote:
Anyway, in both cases the PLEX prices will skyrocket, since there will be a lot of players who are no longer interested in getting SP for a bunch of their alts and rather just farm packs for passive income. I will do it for sure if this hits TQ.


unless the margins are 100% or better (which i seriously doubt) if you're doing it purely to make isk rather than offset the cost of having the account... you're better off just straight up selling plex.

The point is not to make ISK. The point is if I have an account where I don't need anymore SP because it's perfectly focus trained for what it does I can just sell the accumulated SP as packs to lower the subscription costs.

There are two possibilities here:

- If I can sell them higher that what it takes to create the pack (PLEX + extractors) I can create a free account with zero effort.

- If I have to sell lower that what it takes to create them all the people training while taking a break will make a better deal if they just cancel the subscription and buy some packs if they come back

(Yes, there may be some space between the two possibilities depending on how expensive the extractors are.)