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Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

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Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2601 - 2015-10-17 18:36:39 UTC
Mr Epeen wrote:
Tiberius Heth wrote:
Mr Epeen wrote:
Grandpa Nickles wrote:
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.


Not sure how you got that out of the blog.

To me it was about making purchasing SP a little easier and less convoluted. The CB is a mess as it stands and CCP is looking at ways to make it more accessible to everyone, not just newbs.

Mr Epeen Cool


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.
Here's the thing.

Characters are not destructible. They've been piling up SP for near 12 years now. That's not good for the game as I've stated many times in the past.

My solution has been to lock characters to the acct that created them and remove character trading. CCP has come up with a solution that not only drains SP from the game on possibly a massive scale, but keeps money flowing into their coffers from transaction type fees.

It's not quite what I wanted, but I find it an acceptable compromise.

Mr Epeen Cool


Massive draining of SP...is not a potential problem.

I think everyone needs to stop posting and go read about fat tailed events. And then rethink this proposal.

Yeah, nobody will do that. Posting knee-jerk reactions or convincing oneself there are no problems are just way too easy instead.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Urziel99
Multiplex Gaming
Tactical Narcotics Team
#2602 - 2015-10-17 18:36:47 UTC
Tiberius Heth wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
What part of buying a toon from the bazaar with all it good and bad points dont you get thats so vastly different than being able to open your bank account - REAL MONEY - and purchasing skill points to create a perfectly doctrined pilot with zero flaws


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.


Someone from a corp called say no to features complaining about "trolling" from a forum regular. Talk about Irony.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2603 - 2015-10-17 18:38:25 UTC
Levi Belvar wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
What part of buying a toon from the bazaar with all it good and bad points dont you get thats so vastly different than being able to open your bank account - REAL MONEY - and purchasing skill points to create a perfectly doctrined pilot with zero flaws


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.


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.


I doubt the bazaar will go away as buying characters with more than 50 million and certainly more than 80 million SP will be more affordable on the bazaar.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Dave Stark
#2604 - 2015-10-17 18:38:35 UTC
Tiberius Heth wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
What part of buying a toon from the bazaar with all it good and bad points dont you get thats so vastly different than being able to open your bank account - REAL MONEY - and purchasing skill points to create a perfectly doctrined pilot with zero flaws


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.


probably a few more hours then i do this thing called sleep.

there isn't a massive difference at all. humour me; i start with a character with a skillsheet i don't like. i end up with a character with a skill sheet i do like. which system am i describing, the suggested system, or the current one?
Estevan Andrard
Doomheim
#2605 - 2015-10-17 18:39:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Estevan Andrard
Grandpa Nickles wrote:
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.


The main problem with how new players see EVE is that we players all know this, but CCP do not seem to. They hide behind weak circumstantial evidence from low significant numbers for the conclusions they draw. One roll in Twitch, YouTube, Reddit and other social media that is not this forum and you see how people who tried EVE actually felt about it. There is no point in pointing that out, because if someone where to put some thought in all the "New Player Perception" to change it, it would have been done already.

The whole thing is, this is a bad idea, mostly for the new players. They will inherit the New Eden trashed by it, they will be cash cows for vets with SP to sell, and while they farm ISK for the already rich people, the situation for the new players wont really enhance at all. There wont be a better experience for new players, there wont be a worse experience for new players, the actual problem is that there wont be any experience for new players.

The argument that you need to replace a bad idea with a good one to criticize it has no value. It is just a bad idea, period. There is nothing better to do instead, the better idea is to leave it as it is.

If con is the opposite of pro, then is Congress the opposite of progress?
Black Pedro
Mine.
#2606 - 2015-10-17 18:40:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Black Pedro
Dror wrote:
Black Pedro wrote:
Dror wrote:
Black Pedro wrote:
No, the Buddy Invite program is still in full effect. You get either 30-days game time or a PLEX for having a buddy (or your new ganker alt accout) subscribe, even if they use a PLEX to do so.

It only supplies PLEX through actual payment.

Whatever. It supplies 30 days of gameplay. Which is functionally equivalent to a PLEX for those that pay with PLEX, and of equal value to a month's gametime for those who pay by subscription.

The point is that using the Buddy Program you can get yourself an alt with 60-day training for no extra cost (effectively free). That is enough for a near max DPS ganking alt, a pretty decent PI alt, an effective mining alt or a useful industry alt. You can then harvest the SP each month to cover most of the PLEX cost to keep it running indefinitely - you have effectively a free alt and can do this as many times as you would like.

Whether that is good or not I pass no judgement. This devblog and this thread is to explore this proposal which is what I am doing: this change dramatically lowers the cost of fixed SP alts.

Make of that what you will.

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

That was never my point. My point is that you've made Eve effectively free-to-play for accounts that don't care about accumulating skill points. That will have profound effects on the economy as everyone can now run as many mining (or PI or industry) alts as they want for a fraction of a PLEX each. It will also enable each ganker to run as many ganking alts as their hardware can handle for practically no additional cost.

That is a massive change over the status quo. Sure, in theory you could do something similar now using the character bazaar and an extra slot on the account, but that requires months or years of planning and the ability to front the significant PLEX cost. Now, any Tom, ****, or Harry can run as many alts as they want and just harvest the SP to pay most of the cost of the next month's PLEX cost.

This will impact the economy and provide significant upwards pressure on PLEX prices.

The 8 Golden Rules of Eve

Why Do They Gank?
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#2607 - 2015-10-17 18:47:24 UTC
If you strip away all the people saying about the history, legacy the original concepts blah blah

If you strip away all the fan boys saying its good great, not a problem blah blah

get rid of the alternative skill remaps


Skill points > Money not a 1 off payement but done so that each packet costs

A sub game that is already full of F2P microtranactions now wants to inject a system where people who dont mind pumping in real cash to create elite toons being suggested, also underlying this is that the character bazaar for now is staying, what happens when the injection system is introduced and the CCP declares there no use for a bazaar because you can create the toon of your choice with transnural skill packs

create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2608 - 2015-10-17 18:48:01 UTC
Black Pedro wrote:
Dror wrote:
Black Pedro wrote:
Dror wrote:
Black Pedro wrote:
No, the Buddy Invite program is still in full effect. You get either 30-days game time or a PLEX for having a buddy (or your new ganker alt accout) subscribe, even if they use a PLEX to do so.

It only supplies PLEX through actual payment.

Whatever. It supplies 30 days of gameplay. Which is functionally equivalent to a PLEX for those that pay with PLEX, and of equal value to a month's gametime for those who pay by subscription.

The point is that using the Buddy Program you can get yourself an alt with 60-day training for no extra cost (effectively free). That is enough for a near max DPS ganking alt, a pretty decent PI alt, an effective mining alt or a useful industry alt. You can then harvest the SP each month to cover most of the PLEX cost to keep it running indefinitely - you have effectively a free alt and can do this as many times as you would like.

Whether that is good or not I pass no judgement. This devblog and this thread is to explore this proposal which is what I am doing: this change dramatically lowers the cost of fixed SP alts.

Make of that what you will.

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

That was never my point. My point is that you've made Eve effectively free-to-play for accounts that don't care about accumulating skill points. That will have profound effects on the economy as everyone can now run as many mining (or PI or industry) alts as they want for a fraction of a PLEX each. It will also enable each ganker to run as many ganking alts as their hardware can handle for practically no additional cost.

That is a massive change over the status quo. Sure, in theory you could do something similar now using the character bazaar and an extra slot on the account, but that requires months or years of planning and the ability to front the significant PLEX cost. Now, any Tom, ****, or Harry can run as many alts as they want and just harvest the SP to pay most of the cost of the next month's PLEX month.

This will impact the economy and provide significant upwards pressure on PLEX prices.


No, this notion of "free to play" in Eve is not like in other games. Somebody, somewhere at sometime had to buy the PLEX a player uses to play for "free" (and FFS, how can so many people who are pretty good at understanding opportunity cost, at least when it comes mining fail so hard when it comes to grinding for ISK to PLEX an account...do you all put so little value on your leisure time?). It is more accurate to say,

"I don't pay money for my sub, I give away a good chunk of my leisure time to get the ISK that I then transfer to another player who used his RL money to get a PLEX to 'buy' my ISK probably because he hates grinding or doesn't have as much leisure time or values it more than I do."

If you want to shorten that down the "I play for free" fine, but not really.

FFS.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#2609 - 2015-10-17 18:50:03 UTC
Levi Belvar wrote:
create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next
As opposed to "Start a skill plan for a toon of your choice, play for a few weeks, get bored what('s) next?"
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2610 - 2015-10-17 18:52:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Teckos Pech
Levi Belvar wrote:
If you strip away all the people saying about the history, legacy the original concepts blah blah

If you strip away all the fan boys saying its good great, not a problem blah blah

get rid of the alternative skill remaps


Skill points > Money not a 1 off payement but done so that each packet costs

A sub game that is already full of F2P microtranactions now wants to inject a system where people who dont mind pumping in real cash to create elite toons being suggested, also underlying this is that the character bazaar for now is staying, what happens when the injection system is introduced and the CCP declares there no use for a bazaar because you can create the toon of your choice with transnural skill packs

create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next


The problem with this is that most of the people who can create elite characters....already have elite characters--i.e., older players.

Here is something I wrote on another board,

Consider the older player:

3 Accounts, with 3 free slots.
Billions of ISK

He wants 3 afktar pilots he can park in anoms and let the ISK roll in. He could log in to the game, make 3 brand new characters and then endow each of them with enough ISK to go buy the requisite amount of SP. Result, 3 AFKtar pilots and he sees his monthly income of say 2 billion a month.

New player:
1 account, 2 slots
paltry ISK.

His options, go shell out at least another $19.95 for a PLEX and maybe get up to 2.4 million SP. Yet another $19.95 and now he is at 4.4 million SP. And not knowing the game as well as the older player he probably did not allocate those skills that well. Maybe in spaceship command he has just enough to get into a BS. And for gunnery he skipped all the support skills. Then he runs into an older player in a svipul and is eaten alive. He logs off pissed as **** because his big ship just died to a little ship! WTF. And WTF, he spent nearly $55 ******* dollars. **** Eve, **** CCP, and what the **** is on television.

Anyone who thinks that newer players will be using this as much or more than an older player...I think they are sadly mistaken.

A new player might buy 1 may 2 SP packets after selling a PLEX in game, but my guess that is about it.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Dave Stark
#2611 - 2015-10-17 18:56:06 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
If you strip away all the people saying about the history, legacy the original concepts blah blah

If you strip away all the fan boys saying its good great, not a problem blah blah

get rid of the alternative skill remaps


Skill points > Money not a 1 off payement but done so that each packet costs

A sub game that is already full of F2P microtranactions now wants to inject a system where people who dont mind pumping in real cash to create elite toons being suggested, also underlying this is that the character bazaar for now is staying, what happens when the injection system is introduced and the CCP declares there no use for a bazaar because you can create the toon of your choice with transnural skill packs

create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next


The problem with this is that most of the people who can create elite characters....already have elite characters--i.e., older players.

Here is something I wrote on another board,

Consider the older player:

3 Accounts, with 3 free slots.
Billions of ISK

He wants 3 afktar pilots he can park in anoms and let the ISK roll in. He could log in to the game, make 3 brand new characters and then endow each of them with enough ISK to go buy the requisite amount of SP. Result, 3 AFKtar pilots and he sees his monthly income of say 2 billion a month.

New player:
1 account, 2 slots
paltry ISK.

His options, go shell out at least another $19.95 for a PLEX and maybe get up to 2.4 million SP. Yet another $19.95 and now he is at 4.4 million SP. And not knowing the game as well as the older player he probably did not allocate those skills that well. Maybe in spaceship command he has just enough to get into a BS. And for gunnery he skipped all the support skills. Then he runs into an older player in a svipul and is eaten alive. He logs off pissed as **** because his big ship just died to a little ship! WTF. And WTF, he spent nearly $55 ******* dollars. **** Eve, **** CCP, and what the **** is on television.

Anyone who thinks that newer players will be using this as much or more than an older player...I think they are sadly mistaken.

A new player might buy 1 may 2 SP packets after selling a PLEX in game, but my guess that is about it.


you missed option none of the above; scam the hell out of an idiot and blow it all on hookers, blow, and SP.
Black Pedro
Mine.
#2612 - 2015-10-17 18:58:26 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
No, this notion of "free to play" in Eve is not like in other games. Somebody, somewhere at sometime had to buy the PLEX a player uses to play for "free" (and FFS, how can so many people who are pretty good at understanding opportunity cost, at least when it comes mining fail so hard when it comes to grinding for ISK to PLEX an account...do you all put so little value on your leisure time?). It is more accurate to say,

"I don't pay money for my sub, I give away a good chunk of my leisure time to get the ISK that I then transfer to another player who used his RL money to get a PLEX to 'buy' my ISK probably because he hates grinding or doesn't have as much leisure time or values it more than I do."

If you want to shorten that down the "I play for free" fine, but not really.

FFS.

You don't get it. Of course someone is paying - the person who is buying all your SP. But you are getting the use of those alts you are farming the SP from. You are uncoupling the ability to run extra accounts from the SP they give. This will cause many more accounts to be created and used as ganking/PI/industry alts which will significantly impact the economy.

Right now if I want an alt to do industry it is 1 PLEX. With this change alts will cost a fraction of a PLEX as most of the cost will be paid by the player buying the SP.

Sheesh.




The 8 Golden Rules of Eve

Why Do They Gank?
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#2613 - 2015-10-17 18:58:31 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next
As opposed to "Start a skill plan for a toon of your choice, play for a few weeks, get bored what('s) next?"


Your paying your sub for that and there are alot more things to keep you happy now as opposed to 9+ years ago, granted if you have been in game a certain length of time the best option is to max the queue and leave it for a month or so but its not costing you anything over your subs.

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Mr Epeen
It's All About Me
#2614 - 2015-10-17 18:59:08 UTC
Black Pedro wrote:

That is a massive change over the status quo. Sure, in theory you could do something similar now using the character bazaar and an extra slot on the account, but that requires months or years of planning and the ability to front the significant PLEX cost.


To be fair, those months and years of planning have already been going on for months and years. You can buy a fleet of whatever specialized pilots you want right now thanks to people like me that have been creating specialized characters for sale since forever. They will have no standings, no corp history and no reputation. And be a fraction of the price of making them using the proposed system.

Either way the important factor is time over return. It will always be a better return to sell a character made with the current method than banging out a character at double or triple the price from packets. SP trading is just not going to be the big game breaker all the sky-is-falling crowd think it is. It's set up that way.

Mr Epeen Cool
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2615 - 2015-10-17 18:59:13 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
If you strip away all the people saying about the history, legacy the original concepts blah blah

If you strip away all the fan boys saying its good great, not a problem blah blah

get rid of the alternative skill remaps


Skill points > Money not a 1 off payement but done so that each packet costs

A sub game that is already full of F2P microtranactions now wants to inject a system where people who dont mind pumping in real cash to create elite toons being suggested, also underlying this is that the character bazaar for now is staying, what happens when the injection system is introduced and the CCP declares there no use for a bazaar because you can create the toon of your choice with transnural skill packs

create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next


The problem with this is that most of the people who can create elite characters....already have elite characters--i.e., older players.

Here is something I wrote on another board,

Consider the older player:

3 Accounts, with 3 free slots.
Billions of ISK

He wants 3 afktar pilots he can park in anoms and let the ISK roll in. He could log in to the game, make 3 brand new characters and then endow each of them with enough ISK to go buy the requisite amount of SP. Result, 3 AFKtar pilots and he sees his monthly income of say 2 billion a month.

New player:
1 account, 2 slots
paltry ISK.

His options, go shell out at least another $19.95 for a PLEX and maybe get up to 2.4 million SP. Yet another $19.95 and now he is at 4.4 million SP. And not knowing the game as well as the older player he probably did not allocate those skills that well. Maybe in spaceship command he has just enough to get into a BS. And for gunnery he skipped all the support skills. Then he runs into an older player in a svipul and is eaten alive. He logs off pissed as **** because his big ship just died to a little ship! WTF. And WTF, he spent nearly $55 ******* dollars. **** Eve, **** CCP, and what the **** is on television.

Anyone who thinks that newer players will be using this as much or more than an older player...I think they are sadly mistaken.

A new player might buy 1 may 2 SP packets after selling a PLEX in game, but my guess that is about it.


you missed option none of the above; scam the hell out of an idiot and blow it all on hookers, blow, and SP.


Pretty sure most scammers, corp thiefs, etc. are older players too....

I don't see this helping retention much...tbqh. But maybe I'm wrong...maybe we'll start trending back up and be at around 48,000 players on average logged in vs. 24,000.

But I doubt it.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
BrundleMeth
State War Academy
Caldari State
#2616 - 2015-10-17 19:02:11 UTC
I remember when they introduced the 24 hour skill queue. People went ballistic, calling it the end of EVE. Then, they went to an unlimited skill queue...and no one said anything. My point is...this new idea...whatever...
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#2617 - 2015-10-17 19:02:46 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Levi Belvar wrote:
If you strip away all the people saying about the history, legacy the original concepts blah blah

If you strip away all the fan boys saying its good great, not a problem blah blah

get rid of the alternative skill remaps


Skill points > Money not a 1 off payement but done so that each packet costs

A sub game that is already full of F2P microtranactions now wants to inject a system where people who dont mind pumping in real cash to create elite toons being suggested, also underlying this is that the character bazaar for now is staying, what happens when the injection system is introduced and the CCP declares there no use for a bazaar because you can create the toon of your choice with transnural skill packs

create an awesome toon, play for a few months ..... get bored what next


The problem with this is that most of the people who can create elite characters....already have elite characters--i.e., older players.

Here is something I wrote on another board,

Consider the older player:

3 Accounts, with 3 free slots.
Billions of ISK

He wants 3 afktar pilots he can park in anoms and let the ISK roll in. He could log in to the game, make 3 brand new characters and then endow each of them with enough ISK to go buy the requisite amount of SP. Result, 3 AFKtar pilots and he sees his monthly income of say 2 billion a month.

New player:
1 account, 2 slots
paltry ISK.

His options, go shell out at least another $19.95 for a PLEX and maybe get up to 2.4 million SP. Yet another $19.95 and now he is at 4.4 million SP. And not knowing the game as well as the older player he probably did not allocate those skills that well. Maybe in spaceship command he has just enough to get into a BS. And for gunnery he skipped all the support skills. Then he runs into an older player in a svipul and is eaten alive. He logs off pissed as **** because his big ship just died to a little ship! WTF. And WTF, he spent nearly $55 ******* dollars. **** Eve, **** CCP, and what the **** is on television.

Anyone who thinks that newer players will be using this as much or more than an older player...I think they are sadly mistaken.

A new player might buy 1 may 2 SP packets after selling a PLEX in game, but my guess that is about it.

This seems to vastly underestimate how much is between the NPE-video window for sub retention and something like 30M SP, for really experiencing the game.. the idea being that much more experienced characters can still benefit.

It's less than obvious what the criticism is -- with almost this whole thread. New players won't benefit? Let's discuss removing SP.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.
Dave Stark
#2618 - 2015-10-17 19:05:24 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Pretty sure most scammers, corp thiefs, etc. are older players too....

I don't see this helping retention much...tbqh. But maybe I'm wrong...maybe we'll start trending back up and be at around 48,000 players on average logged in vs. 24,000.

But I doubt it.


maybe. laz telraven on the meta show on 30/9/15 said he purchased a new character within like a week. gorski, the csm member, said on Crossing Zebras in his article about this that not long after staring he purchased a character...

it's not just old players that purchases high SP characters, it's players that are new to the game as well.

laz even goes as far as to say "100m sp is low".

https://youtu.be/LQAnaMTptgA?t=39m23s source. (might have to rewind it a bit)

doesn't really matter if it helps retention or not - improving retention has never been stated to be the purpose of this change.
Karin Yang
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2619 - 2015-10-17 19:05:41 UTC
Estevan Andrard wrote:
Grandpa Nickles wrote:
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.


The main problem with how new players see EVE is that we players all know this, but CCP do not seem to. They hide behind weak circumstantial evidence from low significant numbers for the conclusions they draw. One roll in Twitch, YouTube, Reddit and other social media that is not this forum and you see how people who tried EVE actually felt about it. There is no point in pointing that out, because if someone where to put some thought in all the "New Player Perception" to change it, it would have been done already.

The whole thing is, this is a bad idea, mostly for the new players. They will inherit the New Eden trashed by it, they will be cash cows for vets with SP to sell, and while they farm ISK for the already rich people, the situation for the new players wont really enhance at all. There wont be a better experience for new players, there wont be a worse experience for new players, the actual problem is that there wont be any experience for new players.

The argument that you need to replace a bad idea with a good one to criticize it has no value. It is just a bad idea, period. There is nothing better to do instead, the better idea is to leave it as it is.


It is true that this change does not create more experience for new player and more things need to be done. But I don't think it does no good for new player. Eve is only a game for a small part of people.
For those who want to play pay2win games, they will find they are wrong and leave anyway, so don't bother to keep them.
For those who buy SP and unlock features but finally find that its not a game for them, they will leave anyway.
For those who may finally find something enjoyable finally, is eve able to catch them? Not really. Because they quit before they find it is interesting, and because they don't want to wait months to unlock it. They may be good PvPer, Industries, Trader, but they will never know that.

It won't change much for player who already decide to stay. But if this change can make only a small group of players find sth they like to do before they quit, it is worthy.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2620 - 2015-10-17 19:10:14 UTC
Black Pedro wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
No, this notion of "free to play" in Eve is not like in other games. Somebody, somewhere at sometime had to buy the PLEX a player uses to play for "free" (and FFS, how can so many people who are pretty good at understanding opportunity cost, at least when it comes mining fail so hard when it comes to grinding for ISK to PLEX an account...do you all put so little value on your leisure time?). It is more accurate to say,

"I don't pay money for my sub, I give away a good chunk of my leisure time to get the ISK that I then transfer to another player who used his RL money to get a PLEX to 'buy' my ISK probably because he hates grinding or doesn't have as much leisure time or values it more than I do."

If you want to shorten that down the "I play for free" fine, but not really.

FFS.

You don't get it. Of course someone is paying - the person who is buying all your SP. But you are getting the use of those alts you are farming the SP from. You are uncoupling the ability to run extra accounts from the SP they give. This will cause many more accounts to be created and used as ganking/PI/industry alts which will significantly impact the economy.

Right now if I want an alt to do industry it is 1 PLEX. With this change alts will cost a fraction of a PLEX as most of the cost will be paid by the player buying the SP.

Sheesh.


So like what, create an account with 3 PI characters where one is perpetually training a high SP (i.e. high rank skill) skill that you constantly are draining every time you get that extra 500,000 SP?

Okay, yeah I see where you are going with this.

Another reason not to go with this proposal. It is adding a largely passive form of income to the game which CCP has always indicated is less than desired.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online