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It's just a cash grab for CCP. The only good thing for Eve is the SP sink.
Unless you are truly wealthy (IRL or IG)... then this is not really a good idea for you.

I'm not going to quit yet, but won't resub at the end of this year.

There will be two forces acting on the PLEX prices due to skill extractors. On one hand, since one can turn ISK into PLEX, and PLEX into AUR, people will be shopping for more PLEX to buy skill extractors. That's an increase in demand. On the other hand, since people will want to buy skill injectors, but many won't be making enough in-game ISK, they will buy PLEX for real cash and sell them for ISK. That's an increase in supply.

Let us consider the "production price" of an injector (from a SP farm). It is 0.25*PLEX+extractor_price. Let us also assume that the SP farmer is buying the extractor by converting ISK into PLEX, and then exchanging every PLEX for (I believe) the fixed amount of 3,500 AUR set by CCP. Thus the actual production price is entirely proportional to PLEX: (0.25+extractor_price/3500 AUR)*PLEX. This means however that extractor pice has essentially no impact on the supply side. Why? Because buying PLEX with real cash always nets me the same number of "production price" skill injectors. Let's say the extractor price would be 875 AUR. Then the "production price" would be half a PLEX. If I buy a PLEX with real money, I can expect to buy two skill injectors with it. That statement is independent of how many ISK I'm actually getting for a PLEX. If I'm getting more, then the skill injectors will also be dearer, if I'm getting less, then they will also be cheaper.

If the AUR price for the extractor is high, then people need to buy more PLEX with ISK to afford them. This increases PLEX demand, and will raise PLEX price. On the supply side, basically nothing happens, as just argued. So the PLEX price goes up.

It is correct that PLEX prices will likely go up over this, but the more the extractor costs, the more they will go up. So if you like your PLEX prices low, then you should hope for extractor prices as low as possible. Of course, if the extractor price is so high that almost nobody buys any, then this will retain the status quo, also for PLEX prices. But that's unlikely. The worst case scenario for PLEX price is the one you seem to want, namely extractor prices that are very high but not so high as to stop all trade. That will make the PLEX price shoot up considerably.


How would any of this "destroy EVE"? It is exceedingly unlikely that we have enough industrialists who will extract SP from themselves to fulfil the demand for skill injectors. It is likely that after burning through the unwanted SP pool of older players, most injectors will be produced by dedicated SP farms. We can predict their "production price" by the existing game mechanics.

None of this will lead to major upheavals on the market. As far as game play goes, it is likely to accelerate mainly progression among "middle age" players, who can generate enough ISK to afford this, but do not get hit so badly by the injector efficacy reduction. Most newbies will be too poor, and for the really old players it will not be worth it in most cases. The lower the extractor price in AUR, the more the uptake will come from younger players, simply since this will mean a lower total price in ISK for the injectors.

So instead of SP sinking "Unless you are truly wealthy (IRL or IG)" it's sinking especially because of wealthy players. Also there isn't such a thing as cost irrelevance with SP due to the number of SP you can sink into a character and the likely cost of that SP (before counting the unknown aur base cost). There is also supply constraint which no amount of isk or cash can work around if it becomes an issue.

Ah, ok. On that point we agree.

Most of the players do want some kind of skill respec ability to cope with the constant changes in Eve but not flat out SP trading in this corrupt form, there's a big difference. It breaks the main core mechanics of what Eve is and why it's unique for a player to transfer his/her already trained skills to an entirely different char.

The end result is a game that is no longer Eve. It will instead become another space WoW clone or World of Spaceships. If that's what CCP wants then their reputation as one of the greatest MMO game designers in the industry is gonna be destroyed and replaced with the money grabbing sellouts they've become.

I'm going to miss this game once the lazy, instant gratification kiddies get done ruining it..

I hope there will be a way to tell who buys SP so I can keep them under a constant wardec, hell I'll create another corp just for that purpose alone, thanks for the idea.

I'm ambivalent about whether there should be a public account of purchased SP. I wouldn't mind personally. But I do like that it introduces more intel uncertainty. Perfect intel is bad IMHO.

I agree that would make it too easy, but having the ability to hide purchased SP would be even more of a game breaker in my opinion, buyers of SP should have to wear a scarlet letter of some sort.

Here's my prediction. The market will open expensive (as always) but rapidly bottom out as people ditch their millions of mining SP. A combination of consumer and investor purchasing will soak up the excess supply within a couple of weeks and the price will gradually climb. It will plateau after a couple of months as the non-peak demand level is established and high SP vets start farming their static alt accounts to subsidise subscription plex cost. DEPENDING on the cost of extractors.

So my advice is to buy skill packets as soon as you see it bottom out. Expect price spikes around major rebalances. Also, remember that CCP will probably offer periodic discounts on extractor costs.