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Dev blog: Skill trading in New Eden

First post First post First post
Author
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#921 - 2016-01-21 22:29:54 UTC
CCP are you sure this will work as you intend? Are you sure this will draw more new players into the game? Are you sure it won't just **** off more people than make them happy?
Tiddle Jr
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#922 - 2016-01-21 22:30:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Tiddle Jr
FT Diomedes wrote:
[quote=Norn Thilnir]

We already have SP for ISK. I buy a PLEX with ISK. I activate my account. I can now train SP for a month. In that thirty days I get 1.944m SP. I buy another PLEX. I activate dual account training and set up my queue. A month later I have 1.944m more SP on that character.

All this change does is reduce the time barrier between paying the money and getting the SP. How much is that worth? Nothing to me. Probably quite a bit to a competitive young player who wants to succeed in Eve.

As a player who has almost nine years in game, I am not at all concerned with a new player trying to catch up with me. He can match my ISK (by grinding for more hours or spending real cash to buy PLEX to sell for ISK), he can match my SP (by buying a character on the bazaar or injecting a bunch of SP packs), but he cannot buy nine years of experience in this deep and complex game. And if he does match me in experience by immersing himself in Eve, playing a ton, watching training videos, and learning from those around him: that is a good thing. Not a bad one.


Why not just give every greenhorns 10m SP and 100m ISK, so they could maximize their focus on learning and gaining experience and don't care much of time they have to waste on reqiured SP they have to have to be able to fly on certain ships or fit certain mods. Isn't SP injection is all about it?

"The message is that there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know" - CCP

Sissy Fuzz
Sissy Fuzz Communications
#923 - 2016-01-21 22:31:19 UTC
Useful Alt wrote:
WTB 500b worth of SP

to be sold for 1T

rinse and repeat


this idea is bad, let see who will control the SP market

very nice cash cow btw but still very bad decision

I have a hunch... it begins with G and ends with swarm.
Sissy Fuzz
Sissy Fuzz Communications
#924 - 2016-01-21 22:43:26 UTC
Soldarius wrote:
Okay, I've read enough salt-encrusted posts by entitled whiners.

This is my main. There are many like it. But this one is mine. I would never consider selling it. But I would consider selling off some misplaced SP because I had no one to tell me what was good to train or even for what learning skills were used back in 2009. I have completely wasted SP in mining and industry on this toon. I want to sell them.

I really don't care what my SP total is, other than as some sort of vague e-peen wagging. Sure it feels good to look at it and occasionally take it out and blow my load all over someone. But it is not what makes Soldarius Soldarius. It is, like everything else on the character sheet, a part of the character. Even if I do not choose to use any of the various character modification options that CCP has given us, I am glad to know they are there. So if I want to modify my clothes, my portrait, my ships, or soon my SP allocations, I can.

If there is one thing I have learned about Eve, it is that your irl wallet size is not directly proportional to your skill in game. TMC, EN24, and others are packed full of articles showcasing potatoes that think eve is p2w. They pull out dad's credit card and plex their way to that all purple marauder and think they are invincible.

I don't care how many SP you have or how many purples you have. If you don't know how to play the game and whip out your wallet on day 1, you will still get #HAZED mercilessly until you either HTFU or gb2wow.

On the other hand, if this gives a noob some incentive to farm up for a bit and accelerate himself into some of those low-SP doctrine ships like Svipuls, Caracals, T1 logi, or a Celestis for FU fleet, I'm okay with that. I don't doubt for a minute the most wealthy entities will throw injectors onto the market at cost in their local trade hub. Or maybe even give them away as an incentive to join. Jita injectors will get manipulated. New stuff always does.

As far as SP-farming, if it is profitable, I will do it. For me, that would be if I can make enough to pay for the extractors for one month of training + 1 PLEX per account. I might even pay PLEX to do multi-character training if there is enough profit in it. My goal would be to net 1 PLEX per month per character.

One of the few posts that made any sense or showed any redeeming qualities was the suggestion of having SP packs that focus on specific skills. I think that's a capital idea.

Blow your load? Wow, you are primitive.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#925 - 2016-01-21 22:46:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Scott Dracov wrote:
I just... well I don't care anymore at this point

The total disconnect CCP has shown with this latest cash grab that no one wanted but CCP.

They don't even have the gall to admit they want this and are pretending players who were paying them for years to access skills who are now seeing their investment in time and money nullified and made insignificant wanted to screw themselves over.

CCP killed the goose that laid the golden egg with this latest debacle out of total ignorance of what everyone was paying them for all these years.

EVE is not terribly fun most of the time.
EVE is not terribly difficult most of the time.

However what EVE does take is time.

EVE is Time personified with spaceships.

Many myself included were willing to invest that time out of the enjoyment of seeing something that takes a long time progress even knowing the rewards were unrewarding and needed to be replaced by new rewards as soon as they were accomplished by waiting more time.

Now all that is over.

The majesty, immutability and insurmountably of time in EVE is lost.
Is that what we've been paying for for all these years?
Access to skills?
As opposed to access to a game we enjoy that for all real purposes won't be changing with this?
Are the goals and activities you've set for yourself being somehow nullified?

Further how is any of that nullified?
Is your SP going away?
Are the skills you trained going away?
Is the experience of playing the game for those years going away?
Is the method you used to obtain those skills going away?
Are you mandated to use skill injectors and as such removing the choice of doing the same skilling going away?
How are you getting screwed over?
Are you not able to take advantage of this change the same as everyone else?
Were your skills not obtained the same way everyone else' were to date?

Is Eve just the wait, and does the wait only hold meaning if it constrains everyone else as well the same way?
Jeven HouseBenyo
Vanity Thy Name Is
#926 - 2016-01-21 23:24:48 UTC
Primary This Rifter wrote:
CCP are you sure this will work as you intend? Are you sure this will draw more new players into the game? Are you sure it won't just **** off more people than make them happy?


Another disturbance in the Force. I agree with the above quote. Shocked

Is Pay RL Cash for SPs to Win now the answer to the neglected New Player Experience? How are those future frozen meat puppets supposed to learn this? Yay to others that have a roomy monthly budget to fund CCP's avoidance of bankruptcy proceedings, that ain't me. My toons are well off, I'm Not!

>Jeven

Minny boat flyer, unofficial squeaky wheel.

'Game Ethics and Morality Monitor' I remember promises.

Snark at 11-24/7/365.25. Overshare? Yup.

Yes it's my fault. And if you don't staap it I'll do it again. ;-P

No you can't has my stuffs OR my SPs.

Moac Tor
Cyber Core
Immediate Destruction
#927 - 2016-01-21 23:35:30 UTC
Memphis Baas wrote:
Norn Thilnir wrote:
Whatever happened to the harsh consequences for actions/decisions in EVE?


WE happened.

Like it or not, it's been 20 years since the days of "harsh" Ultima Online and Everquest, and every single game out there has moved away from "harsh", has evolved to "there is still grind to keep the masses paying, but it must be disguised under at least SOME fun, and the masses must be appeased with convenience features and fluff, or they'll stop paying."

Every single MMO has unlimited re-specs, microtransactions for fluff, and conveniences like name change, server transfer, and appearance customizations. We screamed for months before allowing CCP to introduce appearance customizations, and we're screaming every time they try to introduce what's standard everywhere else.

If you all absolutely want the game to STAY THE SAME, because it's the game you like or whatever, then fine, it's actually a very simple solution: no more patches, no more changes, everything stays exactly as it is now; go play. CCP can put the servers on life support and go develop something else. Enjoy.

Otherwise, if you want this game to still be supported by CCP, then accept that it's their game and they'll do whatever they want to do with it; play, or don't play.

When you say "WE", you actually mean the ADHD generation that has been bought up on games which have been dumbed down to spoon feed and cater for them. This is why there are hardly any decent games out these days. I played UO when it was released, you cannot find a gaming experience like that in todays age of gaming which is a shame. If it was released now you'd probably get small PK zones with the rest safe areas unless you agree to a duel, and micro-transactions for every decent item or skill in the game. Part of the reason many people played eve was because it was a relic from that time, and it was hard-core, and there was no such thing as micro-transactions.

I realised eve was parting company from players like myself a while ago when they released micro-transaction for SKINs; a feature which I had been excited about getting before they made them indestructible and only purchasable via the aurum store. I was still holding out some hope they might reverse this and go in another direction, although the skill trading is the final nail in the coffin for me.

Now I am not too bothered anymore what happens to this game.
Tristan Agion
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#928 - 2016-01-21 23:44:08 UTC
Ima Wreckyou wrote:
You completely ignore where the SP will be coming from in the long term. There will be a lot of specialized toons who don't need more training and will be PLEXed now because they can sell off the SP and buy another PLEX with the money.

I certainly will do this and I am sure a lot of other people will do this as well. Unsub all the specialized accounts and PLEX them with the ISK I get for the SP that get accumulated over the month. So this will drive PLEX prices up, A LOT since more people will use PLEX. I will create even more accounts and finance them this way if the injector pays the bill for the PLEX + extractor.

Since PLEX and the SP you sell are somewhat coupled there will not be a big problem for people who get their ISK this way. However if you want to actually train and still PLEX your char you will probably have to farm a lot more of that ISK to get one.

We already know that the price for farmed SP will be 0.25*PLEX+extractor_price+profit. So your imagined infinite rise of the PLEX is impossible because the SP price would rise with it. And if PLEX is too expensive, then so becomes SP, and the market collapses. Furthermore, if the profit becomes too low, then most people will not in fact farm even if they theoretically could. Basically, the profit has to cover the bother of actually dealing with all those toons, buying the extractors, applying them, pricing them in the market etc.

Finally, the price for SP is basically fixed to the price of PLEX, so it will always cost roughly the same in real money to buy a skill packet. Rising PLEX prices may make it near impossible for most to grind ISK for gaining SP, but it will not affect those who pay real money, at all. In fact, buying PLEX becomes more attractive as ISK source as PLEX prices skyrocket. Considered in "real stuff", a PLEX was worth 10 Asteros not too long ago, but now we are more at 15 Asteros. Yet the price in US$ for a PLEX has not changed, so in term of US$ EVE is becoming a cheaper place.

If PLEX prices rise quickly, then potential buyers of SP will find them unaffordable, producers of SP will find their profit margins too small to bother, and those who have real money to spend will find it attractive to cash it out in PLEX and ISK, to buy SP (at always steady prices in terms of US$) or stuff (at rapidly sinking princes in terms of US$).

This will push PLEX prices back down. There will be a balance point. The 1 trillion ISK question is just at what level...
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#929 - 2016-01-21 23:45:37 UTC
Jeven HouseBenyo wrote:
Primary This Rifter wrote:
CCP are you sure this will work as you intend? Are you sure this will draw more new players into the game? Are you sure it won't just **** off more people than make them happy?


Another disturbance in the Force. I agree with the above quote. Shocked

Is Pay RL Cash for SPs to Win now the answer to the neglected New Player Experience? How are those future frozen meat puppets supposed to learn this? Yay to others that have a roomy monthly budget to fund CCP's avoidance of bankruptcy proceedings, that ain't me. My toons are well off, I'm Not!

>Jeven


I pay real life cash for SP every time I subscribe an account using my credit card. In fact, just on this account, I have purchased nearly 23,652,000 SP in the past year. It cost me $135. OMG! Eve is suddenly pay to win!

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Indahmawar Fazmarai
#930 - 2016-01-22 00:03:33 UTC
Primary This Rifter wrote:
CCP are you sure this will work as you intend? Are you sure this will draw more new players into the game? Are you sure it won't just **** off more people than make them happy?


Nevermind new players. It's about the money. This feature started with the question: "What else can we do so players buy more AUR?"

And here we are. Skillpoints, which used to be a retention tool, have become a "hurdle" that can be "lifted" if you pay again to CCP after paying your subscription.

It's not about what could go wrong. It's about how nothing goes right once you start to double charge your newer customers for a subscription based product.
Mike Azariah
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#931 - 2016-01-22 00:25:38 UTC
FT Diomedes wrote:


I pay real life cash for SP every time I subscribe an account using my credit card. In fact, just on this account, I have purchased nearly 23,652,000 SP in the past year. It cost me $135. OMG! Eve is suddenly pay to win!

.
No, you bought time. Time top play a game, have access to servers, experience what they made. The SP were a byproduct of that time but it is not what you bought.

Now they are dividing the sp from the time and something is being lost in the separation. Removing it from the rest of the game and making it a thing and of itself and putting a price tag on that aspect.

If you think you bought sp in the past tell me if you forgot to refill your skill queue did they hand you the extra points that you had bought? No? Shame, really.

m

Mike Azariah  ┬──┬ ¯|(ツ)

Rumblestrip
Doomheim
#932 - 2016-01-22 00:33:07 UTC
Doomheim awaits.
See you on the other side.
Iowa Banshee
Fenrir Vangard
#933 - 2016-01-22 00:44:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Iowa Banshee
Mike Azariah wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:


snip !



Now they are dividing the sp from the time and something is being lost in the separation. Removing it from the rest of the game and making it a thing and of itself and putting a price tag on that aspect.


m


We can infer from this statement that CCP plans really are to separate SP from time - Have you let slip something from the NDA

Will subscriptions in the near future be for time access only? - I hope they include a few free Tokens to spend on Skills !
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#934 - 2016-01-22 00:47:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Mike Azariah wrote:
No, you bought time. Time top play a game, have access to servers, experience what they made. The SP were a byproduct of that time but it is not what you bought.

Now they are dividing the sp from the time and something is being lost in the separation. Removing it from the rest of the game and making it a thing and of itself and putting a price tag on that aspect.

If you think you bought sp in the past tell me if you forgot to refill your skill queue did they hand you the extra points that you had bought? No? Shame, really.

m
Saying that we buy time to log in but not SP because they don't reimburse SP from when the queue is empty seems inconsistent. CCP doesn't compensate us for the time we're not playing either, but at the same time, skills in queue or not, CCP does cut off our SP gains when our subs lapse. SP accrues with time, and time is paid, which means SP, or more accurately the potential for SP, is paid for with that sub.

That's not a byproduct, not when they've already price pointed timed SP gains through MPTCs.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#935 - 2016-01-22 00:50:49 UTC
Mike Azariah wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:


I pay real life cash for SP every time I subscribe an account using my credit card. In fact, just on this account, I have purchased nearly 23,652,000 SP in the past year. It cost me $135. OMG! Eve is suddenly pay to win!

.
No, you bought time. Time top play a game, have access to servers, experience what they made. The SP were a byproduct of that time but it is not what you bought.

Now they are dividing the sp from the time and something is being lost in the separation. Removing it from the rest of the game and making it a thing and of itself and putting a price tag on that aspect.

If you think you bought sp in the past tell me if you forgot to refill your skill queue did they hand you the extra points that you had bought? No? Shame, really.

m


Mike, I completely disagree with you. I have been continuously subscribed to Eve, paying by credit card, since I joined back in 2007. I have not logged in to Eve every single day during that time.

I bought SP when I remained subscribed to Eve through a deployment to Afghanistan and another to Iraq. I bought SP during the few months here and there when I was burned out on Eve, yet remained subscribed knowing I would come back to the game eventually. Literally the only thing I gained from that time I spent subscribed was extra SP. I experienced nothing of Eve during that time - and each time paid for it dearly with rustiness and lack of new game mechanics when I came back to Eve.

Between field exercises, training, deployments, burnout, vacations, and other family commitments, I would estimate nearly half of my nine years in Eve has been spent playing Skill Change/Queue online. If that's not paying for SP, I don't know what is...

Furthermore, even if you are paying for access to the servers, you cannot play Eve 23/7. You do gain SP 24/7. My average play session is probably 5 hours a day. That means for 19 hours a day all I am paying for is a skill queue that keeps passively ticking up SP.

And that still does not address the point about dual character training. That is literally paying for more SP. You cannot play more than one character at a time.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Memphis Baas
#936 - 2016-01-22 00:53:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Memphis Baas
Moac Tor wrote:
I realised eve was parting company from players like myself a while ago when they released micro-transaction for SKINs


The unfortunate reality is that your subscription payments are as valid as anyone else's subscription payments, so although being the ONE game that still offers hardcore PVP is commendable and even desirable, all the microtransaction games out there are clearly following a profitable trend, and the gaming community is what it is, wants what it wants.

I'm ok with microtransactions for SKINs and costumes, and even this skill re-spec system (cumbersome as it is with the injectors), because CCP does appear to want to maintain some of the gritty, hardcore aspects of the game. To me, the skill trade system doesn't seem like the start of a trend that's about to spiral out of control, but rather like a step that they can take to increase their revenue, without affecting the PVP combat mechanics all that much. You can shoot and kill the guy in the ship just like before; who cares HOW he got the skills to fly the ship.

You're not competing against anyone's actual skillpoints, you're just competing your ship vs. the enemy's ship. Falcon or Arazu decloaks at 45 km, does it matter whether it's a 2006 character or a 2016 character flying it? I don't think you'll have time to even worry about it; it's do or die at that point, their support fleet is on its way. You see a critical ship in the overview, and you react just like before, nothing's changed. The fight, the repercussions, the killboard scores, the loot haven't changed.
Lelira Cirim
Doomheim
#937 - 2016-01-22 01:00:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Lelira Cirim
At 51M I'm sortof on the cusp of this being useful for me, so I'll give it a try and rejigger some stuff.
I'm just sad that the amount extracted/injected isn't a power of 2.
Pudding proof that "extras" are designed to be sold. Unless you don't mind 12,000 points hanging off your x2 skill. :p

Darkblad wrote:
What's the use of an Aeon Khanid Skin for somebody who extracted the skills to fly an Aeon.


Skin extractors. Literally could not be more lore appropriate.Lol
I don't hang out in the Bazaar enough to know if they take SKIN value into consideration nowadays, but this feature makes sense whether or not they do. 2016, the year we could all Undo Our Mistakes. \o/

Mike Azariah wrote:
No, you bought time. Time top play a game, have access to servers, experience what they made. The SP were a byproduct of that time but it is not what you bought.

The abbreviation of SP is rather unfortunate in this context. Oops

New Eden's oldest profession. Cool

Do not actively tank my patience.

Zeddrick Anthar
Golden Orb Ate My Grandma
#938 - 2016-01-22 01:02:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Zeddrick Anthar
Tristan Agion wrote:

Furthermore, if the profit becomes too low, then most people will not in fact farm even if they theoretically could. Basically, the profit has to cover the bother of actually dealing with all those toons, buying the extractors, applying them, pricing them in the market etc.


I agree with your main point but I think you're wrong about the 'people won't do this for no profit' thing. Remember that even if you just break even with this you get to have and use an account without putting any ISK or RL cash into keeping it active. You can't advance the skills on that account but many won't care about that -- I'm sure plenty of people have accounts like that. I know I do. Take your pick from market trading alts with all the market skills already, JF alts, accounts full of cyno toons or PI alts, link alts with all the leadership, etc skills they need, spy characters, hillariously named alts you use to troll people with, ganking alts. I'm sure there are others too.

I know I'd be happy running some of my currently unsubbed accounts at break even. Compared with some of the self-funding methods I've used in the past (PI farms, market trading, etc) using the extractors and selling the skillpacks is really low effort. This is going to be the lowest-effort way there is to farm, you can probably get it down to a single digit number of minutes per month. The only issue is going to be the high setup cost and that you'll need to invest a few billion ISK in PLEX buy orders, etc to keep the wheels turning which mean it won't be an option available to people who aren't already established in the game.
Tristan Agion
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#939 - 2016-01-22 01:28:21 UTC
Zeddrick Anthar wrote:
I know I'd be happy running some of my currently unsubbed accounts at break even.

Well, I guess that makes sense if you actually want to play those currently unsubbed accounts. Then "break even" means to you that a toon that used to be inaccessible now has become accessible, and the price you pay for this is merely the ado with the SP extractors. Notably though, this now active toon would never make any progress, i.e., this would only work if you are happy with playing the toon as it is, forever.

However, this is not proper "SP farming". It's more "toon access paid by SP". A proper "SP farm" must make net ISK from selling SP, and furthermore, the ISK/effort ration must be competitive with other ways of making ISk.

In a sense, you are actually a SP farmer's nightmare. You and people like you might indeed destroy the market - because you would be happy to sell the "product" at cost, or possibly even somewhat below cost.

If the SP injector price stays around or below 0.25*PLEX+extractor_price, then we know that the main thing happening is that people are using this to keep "finished alts" active in the game. I think that probably would be a good thing...?
Zepheros Naeonis
TinklePee
#940 - 2016-01-22 01:31:06 UTC
Wendrika Hydreiga wrote:
Plus, forum popularity points are not a valid metric for anything! They practically give them out in the likes for likes thread! Most of the likes I got are roleplaying popularity points imagine that.

Actually, it is a fairly accurate representation of the general opinion of the player base on what features they do/don't like. Being this isn't the features/ideas forum, I suppose the numbers are a bit off as the like button is used more more frequently to show favoritism towards a feature rather than simply "that's funny!" or something irrelevant to the topic at hand.