EVE Information Portal

I still haven't used the SP they gave us the last couple of times yet...

Again, I concur with my fellow capsuleer.

This argument is so simpleton I don't even know how to answer to this, I can only presume you are a troll, because if you are not you need help.

TL;DR: Just do it. It already exists in another fashion.

There are some things to remember here that it seems a lot of people are missing.

SP is already being traded at "zero risk" through the sale of full characters every day
Pure and simple, the Character Bazaar in the forums hosts thousands of full character sales. Some of these characters have a "colorful history," some of them have never been outside Jita save their first trip there from in their noobship. People have whole accounts and theorycrafted training queues dedicated to doing this already.

This really isn't fundamentally different than the existing Character Bazaar
People are already paying real-money to buy Characters/SP. What functional or fundamental difference is there between paying X Plex or Y Dollars for a "Perfect Interceptor Pilot" or whatever flavor character than paying for the equivalent SP in smaller pieces? In both cases, person A has dedicated time and money to create the original SP and person B wants to buy it.

There are actually benefits to this proposed approach
The functionality proposed here is a way to provide, accommodate, and bring additional exposure or awareness to a system that has existed for a very, very long time already. While there's likely no official poll on the topic, I would wager a guess that most "new" players are unaware of the Character Bazaar altogether. By creating a mechanic IN-GAME and on the market, everyone will be able to readily see it and choose to take part if they wish to. Further, you retain ownership of your name, race, gender, and history, to boot. Just because someone else in the past had to stomach buying a character with some unfortunate aspect to it doesn't mean everyone else needs to suffer the same.

They notion that they didn't earn the SP is baseless
On that logic, one could say that neither did anyone that ever purchased a character on the Bazaar since its inception. Let's say I decided today to buy a new 80m SP character. Well, there's 80m SP I just got for cash that as far as I'm concerned just came out of thin air (in my perspective).

With the sharp falloffs and high skill points among veterans, there's not much to gain/exploit
At a 10% efficiency, it would really be more cost-effective to buy an older, higher SP character. To put this in another perspective, a subscription costs about $15 a month. This would be like spending $150 for that same month. Will there be people that do it? Probably. Is this going to make a significant difference? No, it really won't. I don't feel there is much difference between a 150m character and one with 150.5m. I could take it further, too; there's really no functional difference in that character and one with 200m. Your skills all max at 5. They can't be any better at any given task than a low SP character who only maximizes for said task. The other guy buying out 5s in Dreadnaughts, Carriers, and whatever else is irrelevant when you're facing them in their Sleipnir. The other guy buying out a bunch of interceptor skills is irrelevant when you're facing their Sabre. On the other side, the guy who is actually flying what he paid into isn't any different than the guy that just flat out bought the "perfect whatever pilot." It's already a factor of EVE. We already deal with it.

====

What's the concern, then? Are people enraged at the idea that some low to mid-range character can pick up someone else's SP(resources) and add them to their own at a whim? Is that really any different than me selling the above theoretical 80m SP character and buying a new one at 100m instead? Why should I, or anyone, have to jump through additional steps to accommodate the same exact result? In every case, it always comes down to "Person A spent time building what Person B wants and is willing to sell it."

Personally, my feelings on the matter are that in the grand scheme of things are that if this can keep new players active (or bring ex-players back) in the EVE universe, this is ultimately better for everyone.

Are there improvements that can be made to the proposal? Sure, and that's what the purpose of this thread is for. It seems the most common notion is that of a hard cap. While 10% efficiency is already pretty severe and discouraging, a hard cap would just be another step where that last 10% goes away. Where to define it, and why, would be what needs to be figured out. Would it also be preferable that this process starts at 90% efficiency instead of 100%? Is it preferable or even beneficial to the sandbox for all such transfers to result in a permanent loss of total SP in the database? If so, why should it when the Character Bazaar doesn't result in that?

Yeah, sure, arms race. I'm sure someone will pick you, as individual, and train exclusively things that counter you (there must be a lot). And this guy is a rich veteran, that for some reason doesn't already have skills to fly whatever he wants trained, he needs to buy a lot of SP tokens for that. Yeah, looks like a very realistic scenario to me.

Pretty much, yeah, all while skills all still cap at 5, and the veterans, like you said, probably already have it anyways.

What are these advantages that presumably don't already exist in another fashion (character bazaar)?

To paraphrase Andy Warhol: in EVE's future, everybody will have 50 million SP.

Probably. But if enough people decided to pause their training and cash-in the SP (e.g. to buy PLEX in-game), prices could drop quite low.

Say you can't afford to pay your sub in $ and don't want to or can't grind 1.2 bil ISK a month for PLEX. Would you be willing to sell ALL your monthly SP for 1.2 bil ISK and play, instead of unsubbing?

If the answer is yes and other people do it too, would you be willing to sell your monthly SP for just 1 bil, so you just need to grind 200 mil for a plex?

Yes the devblog says extractors will be sold for aur.

Not sure you'll need to farm on your alts, market price for SP could be equal or even cheaper than PLEXing an alt.

On the supply side, people could buy more PLEX for cash too, to afford the SP packets if they don't have enough ISK.