EVE General Discussion

I love you too.

What you do with this feature isn't the concern. The concern is how this is a yet another tool, like SRP, to disincentivize smaller groups. The Blood Harvest event is a good indicator of what players are willing to do for SP. Unlike that event though, SP trading allows any large alliance to provide that SP faucet without any danger of PVP or external threats.

Providing a mechanic that is vulnerable to Malcanis's Law right out of the gate goes against the design philosophy CCP would like us to believe they have been pursuing lately.

One-sided perfectly skilled fleet comps give us gudfites how?

The thing I find problematic with this is that there's no scaling options for those who cannot afford high investment of R/L cash or time. With implants one can choose a set of +5s if you are rich in isk or R/L cash. If you are not you can choose +4s that give 4/5ths the speed boost for 1/5 th cost or even +3s and son on. There will be no TSPs with 4/5ths the SPs for 1/5th the cost, it's either spend a lot of isk or R/L cash or miss out... this is a problem. There will be a distinct separation of haves and have nots that implants do not cause.

Implants of course have their own issues like risk aversion due to potential loss, but there are better ways to sort that out than creating a new rich / poor class structure within EvE.



Just pointing out that if one is to use UK colloquialisms one ought to use the UK spelling which is "arsed"

This game has been going since 2003, many of the longest serving players may have started families now... less time for sure, Spare money ? Maybe, maybe not, pretty sure that CCP still want their monthly sub though.

You also forget that this game isn't just played in affluent countries, even the sub could be viewed as expensive when considering the average monthly income of some countries where EvE players reside, do we still want them to play ? I think we do.

There are most certainly many other reasons why someone may have little time or little spare cash over and above the monthly sub not everyone who plays this game is a sub 30 US residing middleclass space nerd.

I fear that your post was either incredibly ignorant or just a fancy way of trying to get #nopoors to fly as a legitimate argument. Not sure which of those is worse TBH.

PTW is one of those rather abused terms, and this is an example. At most this system would be Pay to Advance Faster and even that isn't the best fit because this would be something you could get with ISK. Grinding gold or the equivalent to advance faster is hardly a new thing for MMO's.

No, that in and of itself isn't good or bad. I'm just saying this is closer to an XP booster that can be bought with in or out of game currency than any sort of super gear that can only be bought with real cash.

I don't know enough to say it's good or bad, but I don't believe it to be a big deal either way. I will admit I'll probably make some use of it when it comes in.

You and I are so completely different I see no point in wasting any more energy talking to you, of course I'm not sure you'll notice as most of your rebuttal seems to consist of you talking about yourself and how many subscriptions you pay for. One of the most egocentric posts I've ever seen on EvE-O ... well played.

I fall firmly into the camp of players not likely to use this mechanic. That said, I'm not adamantly opposed to it either.

As has been stated, the bazaar already exists. This just offers an alternative: instead of buying a 100m SP toon that you're not attached to, you can make a toon that you are attached to competitive, albeit at a greater cost. That's a pretty zero-sum situation, so no opposition on my part.

The other thing that seems to be overlooked here is that it will mitigate, but not eliminate, the effectiveness of local as an intel tool. Yes, you can still see how many are in system with you (in empire space ofc), and who they are. But now you have no way of knowing what their capabilities are based solely on character age. Is that six-month character a newbro just passing through? Or is he also highly skilled and specced into the hard counter to what you're flying? Better stay on your toes.

No it was definitely levelled squarely at your completely missing the point post from within an egocentric vacuum... your goon affiliation has nothing to do with it.

Writing up your own background in terms of accounts/subs isn't intended as an exercise in epeen flexing, and it is useful to evaluate where the person is coming from in relation to this SP discussion. I'm like Rain with over a bill SP across my accounts. I probably won't use this feature but I support it for other players. It will allow them similar options to us in terms of characters without having to purchase characters whose names they dislike or a time investment of nearly a decade passive SP grinding. That's not to say they'lll pay less or end up playing for a shorter period, they'll just have the option to configure their alts in a more customisable way. In that sense the mechanic levels the playing field for those who can afford it (we've been paying by instalments where they might pay in shorter chunks) and for those who have more time/skill at ingame ISK making the option will also be there. The traditional sub model with passive SP acquisition will also be there for people with neither RL funds or massive amounts of time ingame, and I'd question this assumption that this option will make them the 'losers' in such a market.

The link that was inferred but not made explicit in Rain's post is that if you consider the ability to use real money to run multiple accounts or to buy/train more characters as a form of P2W, it's already in place. Just because some players can afford to run a dozen alts and have billions of SP does not make them more successful ingame than others. You might well be able to solo multibox certain types of PVE, or bring strong support alts to combat ops, but that doesn't translate as success without significant investment into learning the mechanics, finding a good group to play with, and playing smart.

Regarding the 'no poors' argument it seems a legit concern that new players may feel they have to pay more early on to be able to play. But that pressure is already there in reality. There's already a problem where new players feel they need to run multiple accounts in order to specialise their training and get the most from their characters. You see new players being advised to do this in multiple areas (rookie chat, help, new citizens, reddit, ingame channels). Usually they have already made the choice to run a second or third account so the advice being given out is how/what to specialise in. But you rarely see older players commenting that multiple accounts are excessive and might not be necessary, because there's a tacit acceptance that multiple accounts are required to keep up with everyone else or to optimise the SP system.

There's also a core of new players who sell plex early on to fund their ingame activities. Again, this question pops up frequently in new player channels (how do I sell/redeem my plex?) so anyone involved with new players has to be aware that there's a split between the haves/have nots already.

There are also frequent questions about 'how can I make enough ISK to plex my accounts' from new players, suggesting people are joining the game with the assumption that they can FTP from the beginning, which is actually fairly grindy and arguably an unattractive playstyle. One of the worst types of discussion you tend to see is when a new player rolls a second 'ISK making' account to earn money for their main combat alt and to keep both plexed. It's committing to significant amounts of grind from the get-go whilst not really having an understanding of how to make ISK. Occasionally older players will advise to not bother with a second account and just pay the sub in cash, but it's clearly unheeded advice, and you have to ask why people recognise so early on that multiple accounts are essential? If 2-3 accounts are the norm people are already being ripped off in terms of subs or being expected to grind for 20 odd hours a month for plex.

Players who are dependent upon plexes to run multiple accounts that they committed to during a stage when they don't really understand SP or how to make ISK are likely to suffer from massive burnout as a result of choices they make in the early stages. And once someone has invested significant amounts of time training and refining multiple characters, they're likely to get attached to those alts and see them as necessary to their game experience, which may be accelerating attrition rates. Sensibly you might expect people to simply drop their extra subs during periods they can't afford to fund them and just keep their main running. I get the impression people see their alts as essential to gameplay, and if they hit the point they can't afford some, they just drop all of their subs and stop playing altogether. It's not an ideal scenario.

I'd personally prefer a system in which new players understand that they can purchase SP but that there are limits to its usefulness. Being able to extract will allow them to undo previous skilltraining mistakes. But the one thing people aren't really focusing on much when discussing this is that it might be possible to break this multi account dependence from the beginning. By encouraging people to focus on one account which they can try multiple ingame activities on, with a view to specialising later, it allows them chance to play and understand ISK making systems before they get locked into an onerous account configuration. And for what it's worth, plenty of people are willing to pay a modest chunk for a new game when they first pick it up - particularly if they know ongoing the expansions are free. £50-£100 upfront might work out a lot more economical than running multiple accounts, or £10 monthly sub/£10 spent on SP boosts.

I tried to explain my take on the situation, and talking about myself is the only way to do that.