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Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

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Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2821 - 2015-10-18 01:18:24 UTC
CCP Terminus wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Jasmine Heap wrote:
I've always viewed the character bazaar as something that not many people were involved in. Perhaps I am wrong about that. I never used it myself. My fear with these changes is that it will mainstream and popularize the easy acquisition of SP. Look, perhaps my fears are unfounded, but I know how I *feel* about these changes. My gut says this is the wrong thing to do. I suppose there is a real structural problem with the "uncloseable gap" between players with hundreds of SP and new players, but simply allowing that gap to be closed on existing toons with isk/aurum/plex/money just feels wrong


According to the dev blog on average about 70 characters are traded each month.

Not sure if you consider that alot or not.


Roughly 70 characters are traded per day, not per month. Something like 25000 a year give or take.

Some more data:
- Most traded characters are 50 million SP or lower.
- A good portion of trades are to newer players (measured by new customers not just new accounts).


Are you able to distinguish new accounts from alt accounts?

"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
Karin Yang
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2822 - 2015-10-18 01:19:58 UTC
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?
a25639
Doomheim
#2823 - 2015-10-18 01:20:29 UTC
Don ZOLA wrote:
I have not played with the numbers, but if your estimation is correct then it is disaster. 6bil per 1mil sp is cheap. There are dozens of players with trillions of isk who will start the competition for top 1 total sp position. Ie as they already have quite developed characters, let`s say 200mil sp and current top 1 having 279mil sp, that means that such player for 480 bils will buy himself that spot. Since i expect more than 1 to actually go for it, we might have all current top 5 or even top 10 players kicked out of those positions. And that is complete disaster.

It will surely happen. However, players doing this won’t gain any reasonable advantages by doing it. After all there are only combat skills worth 290m sp available and that includes mostly useless level 5 skills.
TanelEE
Freakination
#2824 - 2015-10-18 01:22:15 UTC
Nope! NO! God NO!
Great humor guys...

NO!
Wendrika Hydreiga
#2825 - 2015-10-18 01:23:12 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:

Are you able to distinguish new accounts from alt accounts?


That's like asking Santa Claus if he can tell apart the good children from the bad.
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2826 - 2015-10-18 01:24:41 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
[
Not compared to the character bazaar. There you'd pay 500 million/1 million ISK. Over 80 million SP, go to the character bazaar.

Sure, somebody could, in theory, go out and try to buy 79 million SP worth of SP...problem is they'd need for there to be 10*79 million SP to be on the market.

You are making an argument based on infinite SP on the market and that is flawed. You are wrong. Dead wrong. Stop posting and go play with the numbers.

Look, I do NOT like this idea. Initially I did, but then I thought about it some more and now I'm not a fan. Go find a better reason to oppose this idea than starting out with....

Assumption: There is an infinite amount of SP on the market and the price is invariant to demand.

As soon as you start with that assumption you are just wrong.



I am not making an argument based on infinite sp. I made argument on 5-10 players needing less than 100mil sp each. That is 1 bil sp total. Even less if there are less contestants. And that is nothing. If this idea works as intended there will be much more sp on the market as thousands of alts would be stripped of unnecessary sp in order to get some more isk. Not to mention people who will make farms for this. Even if there is it never happens to have more than enough tsp on the market for the instant purchase of total needed amount, they can do it in time. Ie buy 10mils this month, buy 20 2nd month, buy 5 3rd month etc, all based on available market. Maybe it will take them time or maybe they will make purchase orders at 50% higher price in order to get them fast, but they will still get them for affordable amount of isk.

So stop posting before actually comprehending what is said.



No, you are implying there is always enough SP on the market for players to buy. In effect, an infinite supply. Did you outright say it? No, but it is an implication of what you wrote. A simple inference really.

Suppose 5 guys need 100 million SP. An SP packet has 500,000 SP in it right now according to the Dev Blog. But if these guys each have a character with 200 million SP then they can't just by 100 million SP worth of SP packets. Because if they did they'd only get 10 million SP on their character. They'd need to each buy 1 billion SP. For all 5 that is 5 billion SP. Or to put it in really stark terms they'd need to drain down to 5 million SP 25 205 million SP characters.

I'm sorry that strikes me as just complete errant nonsense. Could it happen in theory? Yes. In theory, I could win the lottery tomorrow and quit my job. Do I plan on that happening? No.


I did mean 79mil sp in that example which means 790mil sp in TSP. But do you even read my posts? I have clearly stated that they do not have to buy it all instantly. I even wrote you an example.

+they can buy characters from char bazaar and sell TSP to themselves. You can easily buy 1bil sp from the bazaar at any time. Not to mention that they probably already have multiple alts on their own, which they have used to build their economy empires so they might just have to convert them to TSP. So yes, they can EASILY get 1bil sp at affordable price even without infinite supply as they can supply themselves.


The price of 300 million is just a ball park minimum estimate. Guys going out trying to hoover up the SP is going drive up the price as well.

And guess what they'll keep training too. In fact, the training might generate more SP than they can buy depending on market conditions. If they are optimized for training in terms of attributes they may earn as much as 2 million SP. Depending on market conditions maybe they can only buy 20 million SP off the market and essentially double their training time. So now instead of taking 3 years 4 months to get to 279 million they get their in 1 year 8 months. OMG, game shattering.


Can you please read whole posts, not just jumping on one sentence?

As soon as this change hits I can go and buy 1bil sp on character bazaar and convert them to TSP. So the cost is extractors + chars. Or I can take my alts and convert them to TSP. Then give them for free to my main. Then only cost i will have will be extractors. Aurum price of extractors influences my cost in plexes. And considering this is something designed to help everyone, that cost should not be high. So for affordable amount of ISK (for a trillionare) i will do it. Capiche? If not then sorry, I cannot draw it better.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2827 - 2015-10-18 01:25:45 UTC
Karin Yang wrote:
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?



For some bored super rich people it will surely be interesting aim.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2828 - 2015-10-18 01:26:34 UTC
a25639 wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
I have not played with the numbers, but if your estimation is correct then it is disaster. 6bil per 1mil sp is cheap. There are dozens of players with trillions of isk who will start the competition for top 1 total sp position. Ie as they already have quite developed characters, let`s say 200mil sp and current top 1 having 279mil sp, that means that such player for 480 bils will buy himself that spot. Since i expect more than 1 to actually go for it, we might have all current top 5 or even top 10 players kicked out of those positions. And that is complete disaster.

It will surely happen. However, players doing this won’t gain any reasonable advantages by doing it. After all there are only combat skills worth 290m sp available and that includes mostly useless level 5 skills.


They will not do it because of advantage but pure prestige.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
a25639
Doomheim
#2829 - 2015-10-18 01:28:24 UTC
Don ZOLA wrote:
Karin Yang wrote:
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?



For some bored super rich people it will surely be interesting aim.


Sure it will be. But it's not in any way a problem for other players. At that point it's nothing but a number without any ingame effect.
Karin Yang
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2830 - 2015-10-18 01:28:25 UTC
Don ZOLA wrote:
Karin Yang wrote:
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?



For some bored super rich people it will surely be interesting aim.

It's only something like top 1 position in bounty office. If you like it, just go for it. But that's not disasters at all. Who cares.
CCP Terminus
C C P
C C P Alliance
#2831 - 2015-10-18 01:29:03 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
CCP Terminus wrote:

Roughly 70 characters are traded per day, not per month. Something like 25000 a year give or take.

Some more data:
- Most traded characters are 50 million SP or lower.
- A good portion of trades are to newer players (measured by new customers not just new accounts).


Are you able to distinguish new accounts from alt accounts?


Not perfectly but yes, that's what measured by new customers not just new accounts implies.

@CCP_Terminus // Game Designer // Team Size Matters
Omad Moreau
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2832 - 2015-10-18 01:29:20 UTC
Hello my space friends

This is my first post for Eve Online as I thought its time to speak up, done wrong I think this has the chance to kill Eve. So here are my thoughts on the subject.

You take "X" amount of SP from yourself and can only put it back into yourself. This will let the people who don't want to "mine" anymore use that +6mill SP just sitting there and stop a new character from having more SP than he/she should.

If done the way CCP has said I DON'T like the idea of a 1day character getting into a Titan (yes an extreme example). So maybe put a limitation on it. After using the service you have to wait "X" amount of time before you can use it again. Maybe you would have to wait for the time that it would have taken you to train the skill/s with you current attributes.

THIS IS GOING TO SEND PLEX EVEN HIGHER and is going make more people quit the game or unsubscribe alts and making Eve even more empty, not what I want to happen even if its a mining alt, ganking alt, scammer alt or that guy who may never leave his NPC corporation (love you CAS). Big smile

So yeah that's all I can think of right now for my first and probably only post. Ugh

Love you, miss you already and stay classy Eve.
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#2833 - 2015-10-18 01:33:39 UTC
@Teckos Pech,
What else would they spend dank FW ISK on, then?

"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.
Leonardo Adami
Doomheim
#2834 - 2015-10-18 01:34:53 UTC
Don ZOLA wrote:
a25639 wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
I have not played with the numbers, but if your estimation is correct then it is disaster. 6bil per 1mil sp is cheap. There are dozens of players with trillions of isk who will start the competition for top 1 total sp position. Ie as they already have quite developed characters, let`s say 200mil sp and current top 1 having 279mil sp, that means that such player for 480 bils will buy himself that spot. Since i expect more than 1 to actually go for it, we might have all current top 5 or even top 10 players kicked out of those positions. And that is complete disaster.

It will surely happen. However, players doing this won’t gain any reasonable advantages by doing it. After all there are only combat skills worth 290m sp available and that includes mostly useless level 5 skills.


They will not do it because of advantage but pure prestige.


If done for prestige but no advantage then this idea isn't going to break eve so go for it CCP I can't wait for this to be introduced!Big smile
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2835 - 2015-10-18 01:42:51 UTC
a25639 wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
Karin Yang wrote:
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?



For some bored super rich people it will surely be interesting aim.


Sure it will be. But it's not in any way a problem for other players. At that point it's nothing but a number without any ingame effect.


It is problem of consistency on customer-service provider relations. Please read my previous posts on this subject I really do not want to write the same things hundreds of times.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2836 - 2015-10-18 01:44:02 UTC
Karin Yang wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
Karin Yang wrote:
Why that 10 players max their skills matters? Does this make them the king of the universe?



For some bored super rich people it will surely be interesting aim.

It's only something like top 1 position in bounty office. If you like it, just go for it. But that's not disasters at all. Who cares.


Not at all. You can instantly become top 1 position in the bounty office by dropping isk on the bounty. It took someone 12 years of effort, time and subscription to be top 1 sp wise.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#2837 - 2015-10-18 01:45:55 UTC
Leonardo Adami wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
a25639 wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
I have not played with the numbers, but if your estimation is correct then it is disaster. 6bil per 1mil sp is cheap. There are dozens of players with trillions of isk who will start the competition for top 1 total sp position. Ie as they already have quite developed characters, let`s say 200mil sp and current top 1 having 279mil sp, that means that such player for 480 bils will buy himself that spot. Since i expect more than 1 to actually go for it, we might have all current top 5 or even top 10 players kicked out of those positions. And that is complete disaster.

It will surely happen. However, players doing this won’t gain any reasonable advantages by doing it. After all there are only combat skills worth 290m sp available and that includes mostly useless level 5 skills.


They will not do it because of advantage but pure prestige.


If done for prestige but no advantage then this idea isn't going to break eve so go for it CCP I can't wait for this to be introduced!Big smile


And again... it undermines customer-service provide relationship and sends message to everyone that they cannot expect any consistency from CCP. If you cannot understand why that is bad, you can read some of my previous posts where i summed it.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Interfly Ghormenheist
The Caravan Track
#2838 - 2015-10-18 01:47:05 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Interfly Ghormenheist wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Interfly Ghormenheist wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:


the bold bit.


The only bold thing would be rhetoric instead of dialectic. I would like to read your argument.


He was referring the claim about infinite amounts of SP? That part is not going to happen. Not with this proposal.

Again, if you oppose this idea, like I do, make a sensible argument, not just a rage post.


I was merely pointing out, that I would like to read something more concrete.

I hope this is to your liking.


Not really, the problem is the decreasing returns to SP packets. Past 80 million SP you have to buy 20 SP packets to get 1,000,000 SP that is you have to buy 10,000,000 SP to get 1,000,000. If the 300,000,000 ISK/SP packet obtains (and this is probably a low estimate), then after 80 million SP means you'd have to spend 6 billion ISK/1,000,000 SP. Or about $100 in PLEX at current prices to get 1,000,000 SP. To reach 200,000,000 million you'd need to spend 120*$100 or $12,000. In terms of ISK going form 80 to 200 million SP would cost about 144 billion ISK.

This simply is not going to happen as a general rule. There might be somebody that stupidly rich in-game (i.e. tens of trillions of ISK) that they might do it...but even still, why not just buy a 200 million SP character in the bazaar for a fraction of the cost?

And it would likely be years before one "profited" at least in terms of ISK. If I plunk down say 200 billion ISK to get a character up to 200 million SP, how much ISK can that character generate in a month? How long before I "recover my investment"? Granted maybe having a 200 million character is "profit" enough. But if I'm new to the game I'll likely die like any other newbie until I figure stuff out. I might be flying around like a bonehead in a T2 cruisers with a mixed tank, guns of different sizes, maybe even different types doing stupid things like flying straight into a bunch of hostiles with no transversal and wonder...why did I die?

And chances are any alliance would not likely take me. They'd see I was 2 weeks old and their API data showing I have 200 million SP. Wallet warrior who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. Granted, maybe I went to the character bazaar and bought up some 8 year old character that had very little SP and built off of that...but then my employment history would look a little dodgy, 8 years in game in a noob corp and I know what I'm doing? Uhhh okay maybe not. And where is my killboard data? My corp requires killboard information as well. No killboard data, no admittance.


I beg to differ. Still liked your response. Blink

I do agree in regards to SP maximizing not becoming the general rule if these changes are implemented.

Someone aquiring the necessary ISK ingame seems less of a problem than someone using AFK money to buy in. No way to prevent it, if the current mechanics would not be adopted simultaneously. Buying a char in the Bazaar could only be the first step. It could be followed by breaking some of them up for SP harvesting. Transneural Skill Packet mass consumption would be a next step. Once some would start “skill doping”, how many more would follow suit?

Given the relatively low impact that skills have performance wise in EVE, maxing seems unlikely. I will also give you that. It would be possible though. The market would give the answer, as usual. This conflict is more about values, ethics, than anything else, though. The option alone is enough to alter the perception of EVE.

The recruitment process of your corp would bar most dopers from there, and from many more decent corporations. Still there would be the Nouveau riche around. Many of these definitely would continue to failfit. This does neither proof my argument, nor deny it.

The difference between skills as requirements and performance factors should be taken into consideration in this discussion. What remains is that I still do not understand, why the only factor that gave veterans the slightest advantage should be taken out. Without any compensation? Shocked

So why not simply cap the SP that can be injected per character and adapt this over time? Or limit the level per skill that can be raised by consumption? Maybe according to tier, maybe also combine all of these factors, define some new? Anything is better than this abomination.

Last time that “greed was good”, the information was leaked. In 2015 it was posted.
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#2839 - 2015-10-18 02:03:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Aerasia
CCP Terminus wrote:
Roughly 70 characters are traded per day, not per month. Something like 25000 a year give or take.

Some more data:
- Most traded characters are 50 million SP or lower.
- A good portion of trades are to newer players (measured by new customers not just new accounts).

Interesting. I'm going out on a limb that there aren't a lot of 10M SP characters being bought, so let's say an average of 25-30M (or, roughly 1 year old).

That's 625-750,000,000,000 SP changing hands every year. Or, 1,500,000 skill extractors used.
Post-extractor, that's also going to mean a lot of SP burned by the tax. 10% doesn't seem to unreasonable: 75 Billion SP/year up in smoke due to extractor tax? That's 3,000 years worth of SP burned away for injection costs.

50,000 PLEX consumed by transfer fees, or ~$850,000 USD.
That amount of PLEX accounts for ~25 days of sales volume in Jita. It makes you wonder what the PLEX converted extractor cost will be.

I do envy Quant's job. <3

Don ZOLA wrote:
Since i expect more than 1 to actually go for it, we might have all current top 5 or even top 10 players kicked out of those positions. And that is complete disaster.
Your ability to gauge a 'disaster' might need some recalibration.
Daniela Doran
Doomheim
#2840 - 2015-10-18 02:08:33 UTC
Levi Belvar wrote:
I wouldnt get your hopes up, its a company there has to be something in it for them to impliment a change that benefits both sides.

That would negate the need for a character bazaar and the freehold sale of skillpoints, depends if theyre in it for pure profit purposes only or they do actually listen to the client base.


I see, so it's the money CCP is making from Character Bazaar that's spawned this greed.