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Dear Yaasmine, if CCP are so worried about new player retention due to lack of skill points, then let them gift all new players X amount of skill points.

Two players start on day one of their Eve career.

Player 1 cannot afford to fund extra skill points with cash.

Player 2 can afford to do so and does.

One month later, a real disparity arises between the two players.

So, even if one accepts cash for skills in principle, it is manifestly unfair.

As a matter of historical record, I objected to the Character Bazaar at the time on the straight-forward grounds that it was easier to learn how to use, for example, a bought Titan pilot than it was to train one.

Dear Yaasmine, I am pleased that you made several billion in your first two weeks.

You are obviously very good at Eve Online and I rather think you do not actually need extra skill points.

Fly safe.

Just a bunch noobs looking for an easy mode Eve, how pathetic. This game is gone to get real boring soon. And I hate boredom.

You make it appear here as if we are actually buying the SP with AUR, rather than the extractor. In reality, the SP are generated by some subscribed character. Since optimally one can train about four skill packets a month with one character, that means the "raw resource" price for a skill packet is 0.25*PLEX.

The extractor is a pure "overhead" imposed arbitrarily by CCP. As such it can in principle cost anything, since it has no necessary relationship to the game. I think it should be an in-game rare drop instead, which would resolve the "cash grab" whine. But we know that CCP does want to cash in on this.

So we can take your estimate, which more or less gives the "SP to AUR" cost, and ask what kind of overhead would be sensible. I think 10% to 20% would be reasonable. And thus we arrive at a cost of about 100-200 AUR, whereas about 500 AUR (50% overhead!) surely is a pain threshold. That is exactly what I posted many pages back.

I think CCP would be well advised to keep the AUR price low on the extractor (or even better, make it a drop in-game instead). I've been a strong supporter from the start, but that also means I will be angry if CCP sets some ridiculous price on this. There's nothing worse than getting people's hopes up and then disappointing them...

In the end, I think one should pay about 350M-400M ISK for a skill injector with 500k SP on Jita. That is within a newbie's reach, assuming that the newbie has paid real cash for their month of game time. In fact, it would be a better "per month ISK sink" goal for newbies than trying to PLEX their account. If you play hard and/or smart as a newbie, and generate 350M-400M ISK above expenses per month, you get to progress 25% faster. If you play harder and/or smarter, and generate 700M-800M ISK, you progress 50% faster. Etc.

That sort of price point may also lead to altruistic / speculative gifting of skill injectors to newbies. Newbie joins your corp, do you give him a skill injector to get him up to speed? If the price is too high, then that is too risky. But if the price is low enough, then you can play a "win some, lose some" game here...

If PLEX prices do not inflate too much (which again is helped by a low AUR price of the extractor), and if overheads remain in the 10-20% range, then a skill injector price of 350M-400M ISK is quite possible - and I mean the steady, long term price. On introduction, I expect considerable fluctuations, and probably more down than up.

first off

cash for skill? you mean the Bazaar? why do you guys hate skill injectors while ignoring the character bazaar


even without the character bazaar, there was account selling.


so why are you against skill injectors? while ignoring whats RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

skill injectors will cost more per SP than the character bazaar.



and no, i won't threaten to quit. i'll be using the t3 destroyer to join the corp on military missions. aka stuff that a kestrel can't do.

not to mention, i can PLAY THE GAME to earn currency to buy skill injectors to speed up the training.

so instead of sitting on my ass waiting for the skill que, i can PLAY to speed it up

You seem to know quite a bit about various aspects of the game for a new player.

Most people against this idea dislike the character bazaar. Using a necessary evil to justify a change tells you all you need to know about that change.

Injectors will provide unallocated SP and so are much more valuable than a character off the bazaar with fixed skill layout.

A pirate ship will probably do all you wanted from the T3. If you are ISK rich enough for these injectors you are certainly ISK rich enough to use pirate ships in the meantime (many are much better than their tech II counterparts anyway).

Somebody has to pay the RL money for you to buy PLEX in game for the injectors, if new money doesn't come into the game then all that will happen is PLEX inflation and older space rich players (or RL rich players) will hoover up all the SP initially extracted.

Whilst I'm not one to quote Malcanis Law all the time in this case I believe it will very much apply. *If* this is good for new players (I don't believe it is in any way) then it'll be a damn sight better for older/rich players. The diminishing returns will not affect this as to the truly space rich paying more means absolutely nothing.



so instead of sitting on my ass waiting for the skill que, i can PLAY to speed it up

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yes skill injectors are unallocated. hence them costing more isk per SP than the characer bazaar. and with players controlling the market, the price can go up extremely high if players so choose.

and yes i could use a pirate ship. except again, its 2 weeks of training for support skills like gunnery, motion prediction and so on. not to lv 5 mind ya. but to lv 3-4. and lv 5 electronics.....
plus pirate ships cost alot more. and while right now i don't blind blowing a few up. in the future, i expect i wont look as favorably on that.

yes intially i expect the older richer players will hog all the SP initially extracted. which is why i suspect that when it first launches, players will price SP very high (on par with plex). and as demand drops, the price will drop.

Its a market economy. demand and supply. price and demand. after the initially boom it will settle into a price level that majority of players are happy with.

and as i said numerous times now, if you have a problem with it. make a suggestion to a fix. not "remove it"

but instead something like

"limit how often u can inject SP"
"limit how often you can extract SP"
"what the AUR price should be"
"what the diminishing return for high total SP characters should be"

and so on.

Oh dear...