EVE General Discussion

Even if there is a source, the numbers will have been misinterpreted to suit an agenda; Icantchucks previous signature is a prime example.

I'd prefer to grind for skill points than grind for PLEX to fund an account.

You can grind in the real world, buy PLEX, sell PLEX, buy sp injectors, happy face. No need to grind in-game if you don't want to.

Alternatively just add it to the skill queue and wait.

Grinding is optional.


Then you say you have to grind to be competitive. Which is like most games, levelling in other games is grinding xp.

Before it would take a player a long time to be able to compete with those that had played for a long time. You would also need multiple accounts to truly be able to compete with them. Now time isn't so much of an issue, although it still takes time to learn to play the game.

Pay 2 Win is a weak argument to begin with. Everyone keeps screaming bigger ships or buying characters doesn't make you better at the game, but when it comes to skill injectors it is somehow unfair advantage. It's just a knee jerk reaction.

However, undeniable fact is that something intangible, but still a very important part of EVE, has died with skill injectors. This isn't about being a bitter vet, or bragging rights. Skill points have forever lost some of their value and significance. It is only natural to have a negative reaction to this.

On the whole though, I think injectors are a right step, but it is a bit of a treating the symptom and not the cause issue. Just like learning skills, just like attributes and attribute implants.

This part got me confused a bit.

You seem to forget that a 300 million SP character, trained for pvp, will have certain number of skills that will grant him bonuses, which will propagate to every single ship he sits in as well as the skills that will max out any module he puts on any ship.

So if we keep things in the confinement of a pilot that knows what he's doing but has 2 skill points vs a 300 mill sp pilot that knows nothing about eve, then yes, your analogy and faith in this system stands correct.

Your analogy is wrong however, because for every ship in eve the rules are the same - rules of piloting the ship and using its modules, UI commands/icons, engagement rules (lock, shoot) are the same for every one, and every ship.
The fact that F-1 car is very different from Ford Focus 1.4 has nothing to do with differences in eve, other than yes, there are bigger, faster, better ships then other, even ones built for a specific purpose (like the F-1 car is).

Both pilots in your analogy will undock, align, orbit, keep at range, lock and shoot using same methods, same UI,.. this can't be said for the two cars like F-1 and a regular car. They're started, driven and controlled in different ways, thus one can not expect to know how to drive an F-1 car, no matter if he has a drivers license.

However, if one would have an equivalent of a drivers license in eve, meaning he would know the fundamentals of flying a ship and using his modules, your rifter pilot would be in a world of hurt very fast.

Not only that a 300mil SP pilot, skilled for pvp has an advantage on the field before a single shot fired, every part of eve has the same problem now. 300mil sp character skilled in industry has and edge over a low sp one, traders, builders,.. every way you look at it, a 300mil sp player will have an edge over a low sp players! That's the core part of eve isn't it?

Your argument only works in a specific situation, a low sp player but with high eve skills vs a high sp but with low eve skill player, and arguably only in pvp situation. Good luck building that super with a toon from 2003 and 2 sp.

What all this means my dear Falcon is that you've opened a shortcut to things we're supposed to reach the hard way, with every 5% bonus of something to reflect to at least 1% increase in my chances to do something better or faster or more of then someone without those 5% of something. This way one can pump a character in a heartbeat with sp, and only has to learn to play the game, or the part of the game that interests him/her while I had to learn and wait for ages for that logistics to 5 or jumpfuckingdrive to 5, all while failing to quickly rep someone or just can't reach that system for a drop, cause it's out of range for my blop with jdc4.

Now, I don't really know how I feel about all this.
I can't say that I don't like the idea that one of my kids someday may find eve a game for them to play, and could have the option of having a character that can instantly fly most of the ships in the game if they put a certain amount of money in it.

On the other hand, I couldn't care less, since I'm kinda doing my thing anyway.

The vast majority of players and potential players are not Ironbank, so they still have to plan where to use the sp from the sp injectors.

When i was young, Vets use to joke about carebear tears. Seems the shoe is on the other foot now. I havent seen this much crying over something in ages.

- If you think Eve is F2P or P2W, then you seriously need to get out more. Eve isnt close to either.
- If you think this is all a scam so CCP makes more money. Well increasing revenue is a benefit to the system, but you have to remember CCP puts a lot of money back into game development. It doesnt always work out well, but there is no other game company that reinvest such a large portion of their revenue back into game development. Most game companies produce some cookie cutter fast and easy to make new title to make another payday while letting the current games die off.

- If you think SI is going to affect your gameplay, you are right it is. How it affects your gameplay is 100% up to you. You can either utilize the new tools CCP gave you to play this game and utilize the younger characters that can now fly the stuff that you do gangs with... or you can cry and whine about it on the forums like a 5 yr old that didnt get their way. Eve has always been a game where you have to embrace and utilize change.

- If you think new players are going to be a significant threat to you now, you may be right. But that means you havent learned very much over your eve career. If you require newbros to feed upon in pvp then you probably arent very good at pvp as you are having to use the same advantages that you are currently crying about newbs now getting in order to have an advantage. I guess if you want to kill other players youre just going to have to learn how to use those ships you fly.

Vets always liked how eve was "hardcore" well that is until it became "hardcore" for them, then they cry like a WoW player trying out Eve. "Now a newb can kill me!" Oh no! As was so common of phrase for the vets to tell the noobs over the years, guess you are going to have to....

"LEARN TO PLAY"

Competition is ok


I've seen one guy in the past, mining whole belts by himself with a few alts.

What happens if 7 more people start to do the same thing, the belts will become depleted fairly fast.


That's why competition can be bad for those that have a huge advantage.

The percentiles of players by character age is from here:

https://www.themittani.com/features/new-age-skill-injections

The rest where just examples to the point that financially speaking, losing veterans is not as serious (in the short term) as losing new players.

Apparently the original source of the graph by CCP Rise is reddit (where else ) so I'm NOT going to dig for it.

And you can grind ISK and buy a max gunnery skilled character off the bazaar.

But he did it just with RL money!!!!!

Before SP trading, he coudl sell PLEX and buy an alt with the same gunnery skills.

I've posted a large bit of this before, but it still seems relevant. I pretty much agree with Falcon on this one, but either way...

TL;DR: 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.

The 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 falloffs and high skill points among veterans, there's not much to gain/exploit
When I originally wrote this, we were looking at a 10% efficiency where it would really be more cost-effective to buy an older, higher SP character. This has been scaled down a bit, but it's still really not an issue. Allowing veteran, high SP pilots to do this would really only mean they're spending money to train up a little faster. I myself don't particularly want to spend double or more toward my monthly costs for what is in my opinion, not even relevant for me anymore. More skill points? Okay, where should I put them? Ships I'll likely never buy or fly? I've already maxed all of the core ships I like to fly, what is another 250,000 SP going to do for me? An extra 500k? An extra million? I could throw them in titans, maybe super carriers or bombers, but my playstyle and preference will likely never see me in any of those ships. 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.

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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.