EVE General Discussion

Some people are emotionally attached to eve after playing it consistently for 10+ years, it's almost a part of their lives by now. To these people eve is CCPs main successful project and as a result they expect it to also be CCPs main investment focus. However it seems more like CCP are abusing eve as a cash cow to be milked for every $ it can give while it still has subscribers. It's sad to see that EvE really hasn't changed substantially since Incarna, even now that the engine rewrite is done the new features amount to very small changes. Structure shoots turn into structure lasering, both are simple press f1 on structure receive sov mechanics.

I question if CCP are capable of modernising eve while retaining it's original feel and style. A good tutorial would do wonders for gaining new players and then they can find out the value of the journey. Don't bend over backwards for the "I want convenience" crowd, it will only lead to bad things.

I suspect some of those only really play EVE too, MMOs have changed a lot since this game started, a lot of players that were originally against in-game shops and using RL cash in-game have quite simply got used to it.

People are used to cosmetics for sale for real world cash but when it gives a player an unfair advantage then it tends to be disliked. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with gold ammo but people feel cheated when they lose simply because the other guy has paid more money. SP trading IS an advantage you pay RL$ for in that a max skilled t3 will beat one with lower skills, not only pvp but every other area. A SP boosted trader will pay less tax, an SP boosted industrialist will have lower costs, same with PI, mining, exploration, in fact I challenge you to name an activity where skills DON'T matter. Not that they shouldn't matter, this is an MMO after all, but the direction CCP is heading devalues skill points and cheapens the whole experience.

If you want a shallow experience then that's fine but I'd prefer you find it elsewhere than EvE.

But this isn't gold ammo, you can still train normally.

It is correct that in a case 2 players with same age and abilties and same ships and fits engage in a PvP activity, the one who bought more SP has a higher chance to win at a certain stage of this game (with diminishing effects). If I fight a maxed caracter in a frigate with my main in the same frigate this effect would be close to irrelevant as his only advantage would be that his turrets deal 2% more damage. But this is a theoretical case that I would say is extremely unlikely to happen ever.

The reality after the introduction of SP is the same that was in existence before - you will fight a pilot that is not of exactly your age, has more or less skillpoints, more or less skillpoint invested in skills that affect the ship and modules he is flying. You will be not in the same ship and not have the same fits. Your way of flying and fighting will be different.

So the only difference now is that it is possible for a younger character to close the gap (or at least make it smaller) to an older player by buying SP now at a premium instead of waiting one year before even considering to be able to compete.

Why is a loss against a young character who trained faster (i.e. bought SP directly) different compared to a loss against an older player who bought SP on a plan over time. Being subbed to a game for years is not an achievement, like age is not an achievement in RL.

An achievement is the experience you earned in your life / your pilot career and this can not be bought. I was killed by pilots with less SP before and I killed pilots with close to max SP before, this will not change at all.

I have to say that I am still strongly opposed to the introduction of SP, but for totally other reasons. I strongly believe that it will have an overall negative effect on the earnings generated from this game which will over time result in less ressources allocated to game development and ultimately to an earlier termination of the game. The latter, unfortunately, will affect my game experience in the worst possible way. There is still hope that I am wrong - I will be more than happy if I am.

I agree with a lot of what you've said there, the effect in a single case is not going to be particularly huge as in your 2% example. Although it could be a large difference at newb levels, for example a low tier skill could be boosted to 5 giving a 25% bonus over someone who chose not to inject. My problem is that it opens up instantly all aspects of the game and I fear this will lead to a loss of players as the novelty wears off from trying activities and people leave.

Would you mind explaining your reasons why you feel SP trading will be bad for the game? I'd be interested to hear.

Thanks - as for your question:

before the skill queue was introduced, you had to alarm clock to not lose training time = potential SP

when the skill queue was introduced, you had to login every 24-48 hours

before SPI you had to stay sub not to lose potential SP

Now you can unsub whenever you lose interest as you can buy back the lost training - albeit at a premium. So when you lose interest in a game - it is an opportunity cost based decision with different parameters now:

- if you stop playing now and do not get attached to it again, you win money (money not spent on subs)
- if you stop playing now and want to play again at a later stage, you lose money (the premium you have to pay for buying skillpoints over subs), but you will not lose potential SP anymore.

The opportunity cost to not log in has diminished over the years. Now even the opportunity cost not to sub has been decreased significantly. The less you log in, the less likely yoiu regain interest - if you are unsubbed it is even less likely. This together with the propability that a lot of older players are seriously disappointed by losing their self-defined status will very likely lead to a decrease in the older and more committed playerbase. I personally doubt that this can be compensated by new players and I also doubt that instant achievements will help to stay commited. There will be a lot new players who will buy SP and than experience that the return with respect to competitiveness will be smaller as expected - this is not supportive for their long term committment.

So even if the loss of committed subbed players can be compensated by new players, I think the player numbers will become at least more volatile. And this is not good.

There are some other aspects on the other hand. EvE is f2p for a lot of players - those players have no direct economical value for CCP (some of them are like highly sophisticated NPC that deliver content, some ot them only act as PLEX buyers which could easily be replaced by NPC buy orders, most are somewhere in between), but they do not bring in revenue.

Only CCP knows, how many f2p players we have currently - but the percentage will increase unless more new players come in. If you have a lot of clients that do not pay for your service, you have to make other players pay more and/or establish new revenue streams. Maybe the percentage of f2p players is already that high, that the only option was to go for additional revenues. In this case I am totally wrong and SPI and the microtransactions to come are the only option to save the game.

Time will show.

That statement is based on what?

Clearer?

I see more people loging in recently since you can inject SP.

SO they do that. Clearly they have seen a lot of potential on PLEX and AUR sales for SP estractors.

How, exactly? A person has to buy that plex sometime for real life money, and one plex costs more than a month's subscription price. Devs would have more money if people only used plex, instead of subscribing.