These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

First post First post First post
Author
Portmanteau
Iron Krosz
#3001 - 2015-10-18 12:01:33 UTC
Colt Blackhawk wrote:
60% of all whiners didn´t even read the full stuff of proposed changes.


100% of this post was fabricated statistics
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3002 - 2015-10-18 12:02:51 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
To mine minerals, you have to dedicate your account's time to mining


yeah, and time in eve has a monetary value attached to it as it's a subscription game. thus we know the monetary cost associated with producing minerals.
Not really.

The 'minerals I mine are free' argument is silly considering ISK/hr opportunites, where the 'hr', the time, is PLAYER TIME that has nothing at all to do with the subscription model or cost of the subscription.

Minerals you mine wouldn't be 'free' even if EVE were f2p.

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

Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#3003 - 2015-10-18 12:03:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Don ZOLA
Dave Stark wrote:

and they have to with the new system, too.


Sellers have to, buyers do not. They just pay for sp and inject it in the existing char, ie stack up SP.


Dave Stark wrote:

i'm sorry but no. making a character before me and keeping an active subscription isn't "investing years of time effort ad money" it's simply knowing about the game before i did. it's like pretending you being 5 years older than me is somehow an achievement. also that's level of "achievement" (******* lol), is still retained. your character's DOB will adequately demonstrate that you started the game before me. you don't need more SP than me to show that.


That would be like, complaining in golf that you are not champion because Tiger woods found about ie earlier and invested his time and money there so he has unfair advantage. I mean, really? Of course they have it, they have been using some service for longer time, they should have it. Which does not mean all will have it due to their activities/inactivities. But it is perfectly normal that they have it.

Dave Stark wrote:

this system makes it hilariously easy for people like that to do it for free - they are one of the people who benefit from this system the most. suggesting they're the ones most likely to quit is something i find amusing and absurd at the same time.


But they do not need it, they are not spinning ships because they lack content, they just do not the play anymore, no matter what you give them. They are basically just idling out of habit. But still paying.


Dave Stark wrote:

1% of the total players? more characters are traded every year than the daily PCU (25550 char trades per year, vs 24k period average since the middle of this year to now). there's a HUGE market for buying and selling whole characters. do you really think this less obstructed system is going to see a reduction in the capsuleer cattle market? really?


They will still do it, only minor amount will inject it to the mains. Why, first because of their nature, those are the people who want to speed things up. Most will want to speed them significantly, 1mil sp is nothing. And they have diminishing returns. So getting 100mil sp char might be cheaper from bazaar (assumption, we do not know about whole pricing and market influence on it). It would not be perfect, but who cares they would get what they want. After all this is not aimed at making perfect chars but for speeding things up?

We have both agreed previously that this wont work much for new players, And for older there are diminishing returns, so it wont be that good ROI. Therefore not many will use it.

Dave Stark wrote:

what fundamentals? you've always paid ccp to skip the skill grind and buy/sell SP.

a lot of your "arguments" seem to be made up "what if" scenarios based on wild fantasies. i must be honest.


I have already explained this numerous times. I really do not want to waste my time anymore, having to repeat everything already explained to ignorant people who keep repeating same questions without reading the answers. All those "what if" scenarios have been seen through the time. Being here from the start gives helped me see them.

Since not you nor me are really making decision on this, based on the number of supporters or anything else, I hope CCP reads my posts and I am willing to spend my time to discuss with them if needed to go even more in details. I am open even to change my mind if they provide me counter arguments that will show that mine arguments are wrong (something that no one on this topic made). If not, then just let them do whatever they want and suffer the consequences.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know

Dave Stark
#3004 - 2015-10-18 12:04:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Dave Stark
Don ZOLA wrote:
I am open even to change my mind if they provide me counter arguments that will show that mine arguments are wrong (something that no one on this topic made). If not, then just let them do whatever they want and suffer the consequences.


probably because all of your arguments are against pre-existing systems rather than the proposed one.
Lulu Lunette
Savage Moon Society
#3005 - 2015-10-18 12:07:21 UTC
+1 to this idea.

I hate how much an alts game this is. So we can melt down and biomass the rejects you see for sale in the bazaar? Awesome!

Besides with the current proposal it sounds like it's not really worth doing once you hit 50m SP. I've got almost 9m SP atm so I would use this if the price was right!

@lunettelulu7

Dave Stark
#3006 - 2015-10-18 12:08:16 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
To mine minerals, you have to dedicate your account's time to mining


yeah, and time in eve has a monetary value attached to it as it's a subscription game. thus we know the monetary cost associated with producing minerals.
Not really.

The 'minerals I mine are free' argument is silly considering ISK/hr opportunites, where the 'hr', the time, is PLAYER TIME that has nothing at all to do with the subscription model or cost of the subscription.

Minerals you mine wouldn't be 'free' even if EVE were f2p.



the cost of minerals is irrelevant anyway,

returning to the point, SP do not get generated unless a subscription is active therefore there is a cost associated with producing SP that simply cannot be removed.

what you choose to sell SP for is entirely your choice. however that does not change the fact that without the cost of a subscription running those SP could not be created.

as we know what these production costs are we know the minimum price they can be sold at to cover costs, and there fore the price you must remain under to undercut people engaging in SP production for profit.
Cearain
Plus 10 NV
#3007 - 2015-10-18 12:10:19 UTC
Mike Azariah wrote:

I sit in Rookie Help Chat and listen to new players trying to figure out how to play for free. How to earn that 1.2 bill within 30 days. Those types, will they stay if I tell them that not only is it unlikely but that they will have to pay extra to be decent at the game.



It would be an added option in the game not a requirement. They can still wait to train into ships and based on the costs in the Aurum store most will wait most of the time. A few may exercise this option, or buy a character. But this isn't changing much.

OGB is the sort of pay to win cancer that is costing eve subscriptions. That pay to win not only requires an additional monthly cost but it also makes the game less fun by requiring people to drag alts everywhere.


This stuff with skill points versus buying a character is not that big of a deal.

Mike Azariah wrote:
Will new players coming in look and see the rich instaboosting themselves into better ships and leaving the normal subscription player behind in the dust?



The new subscription players have already been left in the dust by people who have subscribed longer. New players are not just competing against other new players. This is a single shard.

This would just give newer players an *option* to catch up with money instead of time. I think giving new players more *options* is good for new players. Generally I think giving players (new and old) options is good for them.

Make faction war occupancy pvp instead of pve https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=53815&#post53815

Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3008 - 2015-10-18 12:11:02 UTC
Tristan Agion wrote:
Moac Tor wrote:
So I agree with Gully, there will be a massive oversupply of SP and the price will not reflect the price of plex as you are expecting.

If the price for a skill packet drops very significantly below about a quarter of a PLEX, I for one will start buying up skill packets with whatever ISK I can spare. There is of course a massive reservoir of SP that could potentially be released to market. But in practice, the SP flow will be limited by vets actually bothering to trim their characters or dissolve their alts. If the price drops too low, many of them won't do that any longer...

I expect that there will be an initial "gold rush" period with the price fluctuating wildly. But since the price is basically capped by the possibility to farm, the price can only bottom out briefly, it cannot really spike. I for one will be waiting for serious drops to invest, and I imagine others will, too. And within a few months we surely will reach some kind of fairly stable equilibrium at a reasonable fraction of the "best farming" price. I would expect something like 0.2ish PLEX.
Could be, hard to say...

I agree with you that the price relative to PLEX is capped, because SP farming will require almost ZERO effort. Just set up an account, make packets once a month and sell them. 5 minutes player time max for each packet. PLEX prices could change a lot though...

On the other hand, after the SP 'reservoir' is released, you'd still have a lot of active accounts that could extract some or all of their monthly SP... hard to say how strong this 'constant' SP flow will be.

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

Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#3009 - 2015-10-18 12:11:17 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Don ZOLA wrote:
I am open even to change my mind if they provide me counter arguments that will show that mine arguments are wrong (something that no one on this topic made). If not, then just let them do whatever they want and suffer the consequences.


probably because all of your arguments are against pre-existing systems rather than the proposed one.


Not really.

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know

a25639
Doomheim
#3010 - 2015-10-18 12:18:10 UTC
Maybe sp farming is indeed going to be necessary to satisfy demand. After all character farming is necessary now as well to satisfy character demand.
Tristan Agion
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#3011 - 2015-10-18 12:24:32 UTC
Daniela Doran wrote:
The first had consequence, the latter doesn't and is farmable(which makes it far worst).

Given the massive reservoir of SP in existing characters, the proposed skill packet system is not farmable in a practical sense. The only way a farm would work here is if the vast majority of players who have substantial SP did not use the system. And if that were the case, then what reason would you have to complain?

Instead, what I expect will happen is that the character bazaar will turn into a "mining" operation. If I know what I can sell a skill packet for, then I know for how much I can buy a character in the bazaar, in order to break it down into skill packets, to be sold at a net profit.

As soon as we get some idea about stable skill packet prices, it will not be farming with multiple characters that will come to the fore. It will be mining old characters by buying them off the character bazaar that will be the new ISK opportunity. The equivalent of margin trading will be that people sell characters in the bazaar for less than they could potentially make if they chopped them into skill packets themselves. You will effectively pay some "character miner" for the convenience of dissolving a character for you, just like you effectively pay a margin trader for the convenience of getting your money right now.
Vaju Enki
Secular Wisdom
#3012 - 2015-10-18 12:24:45 UTC
I spend a lot of time thinking about this, read some blogs, listened some podcasts and i changed my mind.

If CCP solves some of the implementation issues, this change can be good for the game.

The Tears Must Flow

Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3013 - 2015-10-18 12:26:11 UTC
a25639 wrote:
Maybe sp farming is indeed going to be necessary to satisfy demand. After all character farming is necessary now as well to satisfy character demand.
Yes, but is it easier to extract 500,000 SP off of any character and sell it immediately in Jita, or making/giving up a whole complete character and trying to sell it through the forums?

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

Dave Stark
#3014 - 2015-10-18 12:28:45 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
a25639 wrote:
Maybe sp farming is indeed going to be necessary to satisfy demand. After all character farming is necessary now as well to satisfy character demand.
Yes, but is it easier to extract 500,000 SP off of any character and sell it immediately in Jita, or making/giving up a whole complete character and trying to sell it through the forums?


I imagine the best opportunity will be to purchase "imperfect" characters.

you strip out something like mining V, top up some of the support skills with it. sell any left over SP for profit and you're left with a perfect focused character that has lost almost no resale value.
Jared Khanar
#3015 - 2015-10-18 12:29:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Jared Khanar
Imagine Alliance XYZ. They have trained to fly a specific doctrine because it´s the most efficient one. There are many alts involved to support fleets and stuff. They are rich ingamewise and reaching their goals.

Now a feature like sp trading is implemented. As eve is changing constantly this alliance is forced to build up sp farms and activly use it. Why could this be?

Imagine new ships, modifications of existing ones... suddenly the doctrine of this alliance is nomore as effective as they would like to. Maybe they can easily be countered now... so a new doctrine gets developed by fc´s and alliance leadership - the new most effective doctrine within the new mechanics. but people have trained for the old doctrines, for the old fittings and fleets. with an established alt-sp farm (the alts are there and payed and their sps are maybe not needed for their purposes) this alliance is now able to almost instantly switch their pvp characters to the new developed doctrine. this may involve huge amounts of isk, but massive alliances are able to pay. so opponents without these sp farms or without the needed assets / isks are suddenly no more competitive within hours. also the choices made bevorehand - which skills to train, which ships to head for, have no impact anymore.

Also, as a side effect, this system can easily be exploited by ccp itself. if something like described above is happening and the company needs money, theres no reason not to change some small aspects here and there, generating an outcome that motivates players to sell / buy / reallocate sps for that instant, needed cashdrop?

Economic Services

trading spacepixels

Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3016 - 2015-10-18 12:31:03 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
a25639 wrote:
Maybe sp farming is indeed going to be necessary to satisfy demand. After all character farming is necessary now as well to satisfy character demand.
Yes, but is it easier to extract 500,000 SP off of any character and sell it immediately in Jita, or making/giving up a whole complete character and trying to sell it through the forums?


I imagine the best opportunity will be to purchase "imperfect" characters.

you strip out something like mining V, top up some of the support skills with it. sell any left over SP for profit and you're left with a perfect focused character that has lost almost no resale value.
Yeah, agree.

Also, people would certainly pay a premium for a well-built character, compared to the tedium (and probable mistakes) of manually allocating even just 20 million SP.

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

Dave Stark
#3017 - 2015-10-18 12:32:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Dave Stark
Jared Khanar wrote:
Imagine Alliance XYZ. They have trained to fly a specific doctrine because it´s the most efficient one. There are many alts involved to support fleets and stuff. They are rich ingamewise and reaching their goals.

Now a feature like sp trading is implemented. As eve is changing constantly this alliance is forced to build up sp farms and activly use it. Why could this be?

Imagine new ships, modifications of existing ones... suddenly the doctrine of this alliance is nomore as effective as they would like to. Maybe they can easily be countered now... so a new doctrine gets developed by fc´s and alliance leadership - the new most effective op doctrine within the new mechanics. but peaople have trained for the old doctrines, for the old fittings and fleets. with an established alt-sp farm (the alts are there and payed and their sps are maybe not needed for their purposes) it this alliance is now able to almost instantly switch their pvp characters to the new developed doctrine. this may involve huge amounts of isk, but massive alliances are able to pay. so opponents without these sp farms or without the needed assets / isks are suddenly no more competitive within hours. also the choices made bevorehand - which skills to train, which ships to head for, have no impact anymore.

Also, as a side effect, this system can easily be exploited by sccp itself. if something like described above is happening and the company needs money, theres no reason not to change some small apsects here and there, generating an outcome that motivates players to sell / buy / reallocate sps for that instant, needed cashdrop?


this is literally no different to the situation we have now.

sell the pilot that can't fly the new doctrine, buy one that can.

****, for a decent price you can get one that can fly pretty much all the doctrines to begin with. for less than 100m SP there's very few subcap doctrines you can't fly well.

not to mention you're casually ignoring the logistics of moving/producing thousands of new doctrine ships - which pretty much always has been and always will be a bigger issue than getting people able to fly them.
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3018 - 2015-10-18 12:33:59 UTC
Jared Khanar wrote:
Imagine Alliance XYZ. They have trained to fly a specific doctrine because it´s the most efficient one. There are many alts involved to support fleets and stuff. They are rich ingamewise and reaching their goals.

Now a feature like sp trading is implemented. As eve is changing constantly this alliance is forced to build up sp farms and activly use it. Why could this be?

Imagine new ships, modifications of existing ones... suddenly the doctrine of this alliance is nomore as effective as they would like to. Maybe they can easily be countered now... so a new doctrine gets developed by fc´s and alliance leadership - the new most effective doctrine within the new mechanics. but people have trained for the old doctrines, for the old fittings and fleets. with an established alt-sp farm (the alts are there and payed and their sps are maybe not needed for their purposes) this alliance is now able to almost instantly switch their pvp characters to the new developed doctrine. this may involve huge amounts of isk, but massive alliances are able to pay. so opponents without these sp farms or without the needed assets / isks are suddenly no more competitive within hours. also the choices made bevorehand - which skills to train, which ships to head for, have no impact anymore.

Also, as a side effect, this system can easily be exploited by ccp itself. if something like described above is happening and the company needs money, theres no reason not to change some small apsects here and there, generating an outcome that motivates players to sell / buy / reallocate sps for that instant, needed cashdrop?
Yes, I'm sure goons are already making grand plans for the new system. No tinfoil or grr goons - they're just really good at creating and implementing complex schemes.

As for your last point, that would truly be despicable. Cry

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

Delegate
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#3019 - 2015-10-18 12:34:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Delegate
Cearain wrote:
Mike Azariah wrote:

I sit in Rookie Help Chat and listen to new players trying to figure out how to play for free. How to earn that 1.2 bill within 30 days. Those types, will they stay if I tell them that not only is it unlikely but that they will have to pay extra to be decent at the game.



It would be an added option in the game not a requirement. They can still wait to train into ships and based on the costs in the Aurum store most will wait most of the time. A few may exercise this option, or buy a character. But this isn't changing much.


Actually it does change a lot in new player experience. After this, a player starting the game will be unable to compete not only with older players but also with those of his peers that bought SP. So he will receive a very clear message: first pay for the sub, then grid/pay for the ISK and finally pay for the progress (or be left behind). There is a major difference from character bazaar here. A player with say 2-4m SP isn't going to engage in activities targeted by a 30m SP char bough off the bazaar. But he will meet players of similar age that performs better than him, because, for example, they bought 1.2m SP in core skills. After this change retention in new subs will drop.
Daniela Doran
Doomheim
#3020 - 2015-10-18 12:34:45 UTC
Colt Blackhawk wrote:
I read again some posts and I have to say I am astonished.
So people just cry "NOOO" and you can see 60% of all whiners didn´t even read the full stuff of proposed changes.

This change won´t hardly affect the higher sp players. It simply won´t make sense to buy SP if you ave already 100mil sp.
This toon for example has almost 70mil sp. NO way buing a ton of sp for this toon.
Just do the maths and READ THE DAMN BLOG and now calculate how many sp you would literally trash to get from 70mil to 120mil.
In fact the sp destruction due to conversion losses would even first time in eve history decline the total sp groth/player in eve.

Benefits of the proposed changes are mostly for new players.
For example: Player A starts mining career, after some months he does accdentaly his first pvp. Now he has almost evrything in mining and no pvp skills. So player A is angry and maybe quits the game because he sees that mining is boring OR he quits the game for four months and lets his skill queue run until his toon is ready for pvp.
Why does nobody see this mess???

Ah yes because eve is a vet game and all those vets cry 24/7 about eve is dying and no new players but on the other side they want those new players only for easy targets and to show them how superior the vets are^^
Eve needs a BIG change to attract new players.
Forget all those old crying bittervets. The are also responsible for the declining eve player numbers but they refuse to accept it.
Maybe the community is the biggest foe of eve actually.

Another benefit is: You skilled on op ship X. CCP nerfs it and you see all your SP have been wasted for this ship. So the wasted SP you do not need any more belong to CCPs responsibility and not yours.
With the new changes you can reskill but for the tradeoff of loosing some skill points.

Next thingie: All the bittervets cryinhg about "this is pay to win" refusing to realise they are playing pay2win already for years amuse me.
Eve is already pay2win. You want to be a pvp solo god? Just buy plex with money, sell it and buy all the toons you need for solo pvp on char basar. OGB toon: Check. Cloaky falcon toon: CHeck. Cloaky logi toon: Check.

But I bet the whining of all those whiners goes on and on.

These changes WILL make it a lot easier for new players and this is the right direction.


So in other words you want CCP to sacrifice the vets in hopes of attracting new players? Most of the Vets would probably leave and the ones that remain would make it their sole purpose to torture the new blood without mercy. New players spend more and more money to try to get even (to no avail) and the remaining bittervets continues to punish the vengeful new blood. New blood loses faith in game and say it's rigged and leave. Bittervets gets bored with new blood PCU declines and then they leave.. for good. The end of eve. I can see this happening all within the span of a year.