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I think we need to focus on the problem of new characters and giving new characters a fair go with the game. Since this proposed solution is focused in this direction.

The honest truth of it is that THIS GAME is absolutely harsh and unforgiving to new players. If we want EVE to grow we need to be a little more forgiving and understanding and help new players along so they can get enjoyment out of this game before they give up on it.

I know there are nay sayers and long time players I'm looking at you, YES I'm also worried about EVE dying, but right now I'm more concerned with a diminishing player base especially with a few alternate titles coming out, something needs to be done.

I have wasted SP's because when I was a new player I didn't know what the game offered or what skills were needed to do what... I thought certificates were achievements... implementing ISIS and the new mastery were awesome and helped to address these issues but more is needed to guide new players towards spending SP's on what they ACTUALLY do in EVE and not what they think they'll like to do... in a few of months, and instead of enjoy their hard trained SP's just regret the time and $'s they just spent on the game.

During my time with EVE I've often found myself leaving it repeatedly. This because at the start I got bored with the few things my character was good at doing, so I only experienced a small part of the game. We've all experienced that at the start, and we all hated it, and it causes EVE to lose players because YES there is consequence, but I need to enjoy this game, not feel like I've ruined my character and lost at EVE. Why put people through something you yourself hated going through?

Instead of bad mouthing the idea and complaining and whining, how about you guys use your brains and give some of your own ideas how we can try and get more players into EVE, and more importantly keep the new starters from losing interest.

I'm not sure if tradeable SP packets is the answer, personally I've prefer a SP resculpture certificate, which I can use to reassign my skillpoints. That way I keep all my own skillpoints (no transferring between characters) get rid of skills relating to things I'm NOT DOING, and put them into things I AM DOING.

An appeal on the tradition of video games is a logical fallacy -- and unhelpful for furthering the conversation. There are obviously no suggestions to implement an XP system because other RPGs have it.

The analogy is equally unhelpful -- video games produce an extra level: interaction. The depth of that interaction often grants the game's prestige, and EVE is a sandbox game. There's still progression through making in-game money and spending it.

You realize that leveling systems are to arbitrarily gate content? What benefit does this have for the ordinary state of the game? Nothing. Leveling in WoW is unsupported content -- the PvP is, ludicrously, single-shot for some classes. SP prevents newbies from the depth of the game -- of which is the reason they've come.

This whole thread is basically on about P2W and what defines that. How about "fun"? Fitting a frigate effectively is more fun that t1 nonsense-fittings because of SP. That's sorta vague, so there are plenty of definitions of fun through motivation. If you won't look that up, none of it comes from SP as a system -- but playing well, being valuable as a character, and exploring.

SP is all paying to have more fun, whether it's through playing Skillqueue Offline for multiple subs or through injector SP. Is that P2W? Yes.

so you buy one with the skills trained that you want. there's more than 1 character on the bazaar.

no, it isn't a big difference. whether you purchase the character wholesale or you hatched one this morning and juiced it up on transneural packets is irrelevant. you're still taking a 100m sp pilot to a fight.

there's no character age limit to buying characters on the bazaar that i know of, and any character will be able to inject packets. so i have no idea what you're talking about with "younger alts being a waste of time".

It´s amusing to read all this "hey we will all profit from it selling sp´s from our active accounts - this will earn us our plex" opinions.

Just to counter this a little bit with another one:

I don´t think sp value will be determinated by plex value as with all markets there is demand and ... i know you know ;)

so wich scenarios are possibly happening if this feature hits tranquility?

As literally everyone should have noticed it by then the market will be flooded with sp packages at first.
The often mentioned new players are not here - so if they are the main target group this feature aims at (as many like to point out) sp for selling will have literally now value - as noone will buy it...
if there are not enough people willing to buy them a huge deflation of sp value will follow. this will also affect character bazaar, maybe to a point when it will be a major loss plexing accounts to train them for selling. (very high sp chars may be excluded) if this happens a lot of people will have spend rl money / ingametime for plexes just to notice that these investments will be burned right away.

The more people selling sps the more value sps are loosing if theres no customer base - the more value sps are loosing, the higher the breaking point at wich there are too many sps on a char to justify the costs.


Now let me add speculation and scamming into this projection, if ccp does not cleary bann abusing, scamming and speculation on this feature. (this is definetly going to happen - don´t be naive)

Whats happening if speculation kicks in can be observed looking at the plex price.
It may take a short while until the markets are flooded with cheap sps (at least i would wait until this if i would speculate)
but then a rise is going to happen over time. This will go on until noone is willing to pay for sps anymore because its not affordable for the average player. (again - look at the plex) The argument "its for the newbz" is clearly invalid! It´s for the rich - and noone else.


Another characteristic of eve players is: just throw more ***** at it (*** = insert players, isk, money, power projection, a.s.o.)
A coalition of players that wants to stay in control and is able to pay whatever is needed to pay - do whatever is needed to do should realise that sps are now a ressource like ore or gas. If you want to be in charge it´s absolutly necessary to control the ressources and possibilities your opponent has access to. So again, this also counts for sps - if your enemies are able to push themselves to your level and compete with your abilities you need to do anything to stop this or at least make it harder and harder for others to do so.

Plexes today gets hoarded although it may be not able for some traders / investors to cash out without damaging their theoretical asset values. This will also happen to sp. they will be bought for speculation, hoarded and all that stuff.

Also in a case like this sp trading is clearly not able to serve any role for new players, expect they have a sufficient rl wallet and are prepared to spend it.


And it goes on:

So lets assume players like to earn the isk they need to plex their account via selling sps - this is only possible if they run multiple accounts. A single account player would be able to do this also, but he / she would instantly stop any characterprogression. So for the average player it´s a choice between outcome and progression. a case like this would only extend the gap between the (ingame + rl !!!) rich and poor, disabling the second ones even more to catch up.



As a last one, let´s mix some of these thoughts.
If sp prices are on a level where it´s possible to buy plex on the market, train your sps, extract them via plex (to buy aurum) and even then sell them with a profit, what will happen?

First of all this will destroy massive amounts of plex. plex prices are going to skyrocket to the point where it´s not profitable anymore to do so. But this is only counting if sp prices remain static -belive me, they won´t. the higher the costs involved, the higher the sp value on sell. So plex prices and sp prices may start rising, puching each other higer and higher.
If you take the massive amounts of hoarded plex into account it´s clearly a feature seculators dream of and holders of large plex stacks dream of. Only a situation like this will allow them to drop their stacks without destroying the markets.

I don´t want to talk about the effects it would have on the character bazaar as sp value will clearly affect it...


Due to all this it seems to me there are only a few small groups clearly in need of this.
First of all it´s ccp - this will be a massive cash drop for them in a subscription game. The have made something happening which every other gaming company dreams of. TWO Payment models in the same game - subscription and microtransaction - and the resulting pressure in the community to use both of them if you want to be able to play AND compete with others.
We have already a pressure to sub more and more accounts to if a player wants to "compete" - this will only add to this.
More pressure to sub more accounts per player / more pressure to spend extra money beside your subs... this is the course ccp is following and eve with its actual and future changes gets reconfigured to serve this purpose more and more. this is not going to change: there´s a problem with greed as you never will have enough.
Second one are the rich players, speculators and scammers that would be enabled to milk the crowd...

Thanks

The point is that they can't just alt themselves a PLEX's worth of injectors.

That's weird, you seem to have missed the true meaning. It's CCP's first step into making extra money through pay to win/advance in a subscription based sandbox, and not just any other MMO where things like economy or balance don't exist or matter all that much but here, actually HERE, in EVE.

And what it REALLY is is a test case to see how well the mechanics work and how gullible we are to let p2w slip into this game, slowly getting us used to the idea and then upping it more and more.

Funny, that.

you are aware you've just called two things different, that are the same. right?

buying a character from the bazaar with the skills you want is no different to hatching a character today, buying sp, and having the skills that you want.

not to mention, that pilot on the bazaar will be cheaper and the "flaws" are going to essentially be free SP making the character bazaar character better value for money. you can afford to take a character that has more than you want and pay less for it due to the diminishing returns in the suggested system.

both systems use real money, typing it in caps as if that's in anyway relevant makes me chuckle to myself.

No there's a massive difference but the issue is that some people, like you yourself admitted, are personally interested in this idea so they're never going to openly agree that those differences exist. How many hours of trolling are you going to invest into this thread today, you had quite a long run yesterday.

Theyre not the same in anyway at all, you keep forgetting about one line at the bottom of the blog that makes all the difference as i stated before.

Oh, and one last note on the Bazaar, it won't go anywhere for now

If this does create a good source of income, that will disappear.