EVE General Discussion

Sadly many people simply dont care enough to shoot the monument again.

Shooting was the pinnacle of EVE.
Pilots hand in hand fought for what was ours - EVE !

There is no doubt nor debate CCP made a mistake by limiting SKINS to T1 sh*t tier ships and then charging them insane prices.

Sadly it will take Hillmar a long time to understand what went wrong.
"Greed is good" part of upper management probably will never understand.

Logic is simple - if you pay 30$ for T1 skin then you will pay 90$ for T2 skin.
Because we all wear Japanese designer jeans for 1000 $ outside CCP.

Sadly Hillmar and his band of disillusioned helpers do not understand that you can make more money with a live horse that you take care of then by beating a dead horse with a large Japanese designer stick.

Changing SKINS to be used vertically for hulls would make people pay extra, because they would be worth it.
Say you buy Gallente cruiser SKIN for 30$ and then you can use it on all Gallente cruisers ( T1 / T2 / T3 ) variants .
Would that make you a satisfied customer ? Of-course it would.
Also with larger amount of people buying CCP would receive more revenue.


Its not rocket science CCP.

Just ask former CCP employees at Riot. Im sure they can give you a hint or 10.

Laughing implies jest.

Most people laugh of jesting.

Others lack of comprehension.

Fools laugh every day. Yet they insult no one. For we pitty the fool that is laughing at us.

So laugh away my fool, we will take no insult.
Much like a primate would beat chest to show dominance because no amount of wisdom will make primate understand.

Personally, I'm not seeing why the capability to apply skins needs to mirror the method of selling them. QA aside, we already know that every skin works on some level with every ship. I just don't see how that obligates them in any way to actually implement them like that. It also allows price points to proportionally mirror the cost of ships they apply to instead of creating a single super price tier.

Sticking to their guns with the lore considerations also theoretically helps with skin variety. The fewer hulls they need to QA with a particular skin, the more skins they can QA in a given time period and the faster the available variety grows.

Also wasn't the domi, a T1 ship, said to have an issue with the Quafe skin that needed fixed?

The problem isn't we want it all now. The problem is we want to know what the Plan is.
We want to know will we be able to skin any ship any way, and if not, what will be the limits?
Will we see Skins available for more than just AUR and the 30day drops.
Will we get some sort of SANE pricing on the NES, cause atm prices seem totally random.
It costs more than a PLEX to get a Sarum Tormentor.. a T1 Frig skin. I can get a Syndicate Myrm, Roden Brutix, and an Interbus Vexor for that, and have Aurum left over. It's totally random. It costs the same to get an Khanid Aeon Skin as it does the Apoc, or the Oracle..


We keep asking the questions, CCP keeps saying we hear you, and we hear NOTHING back.

I want to know what CCP's plans are. THEN we can have a talk about the direction.. At the moment we are all sitting here blind, with a few scraps of Skins, and no idea where things will go.

To add insult to injury, when CCP finally said they were gonna let us in on the plan, they then decided not too because there were some vague posts made on ANOTHER site, that in no way laid out what CCP was GOING to do, just what some dev's personal opinions were..

If a Merlin skin already costs $30
Think how much a Harpy will cost...
Then try to imagine price tag on a Hawk.

You could easliy spend around the price of ONE YEAR SUBscription just buy 3 versions of basically the SAME EXACT hull with current price scheme.

If t1 frig goes for $30, you KNOW the t2 version is gonna cost a lot.

Greed is Good

Oddly enough, that Merlin SKIN is trading on market at around 35,000,000.00, and I'm still trying to figure out what the cause of the massive depreciation is. It's 3.5% of its listed AUR value (4,300 AUR est 1,020,000,000.00 ISK).

I'm a frequent customer of PLEX and AUR, I don't care who knows. And what I've found is that my real money spending is tied to a stable amount, and doesn't fluctuate. The only thing that changes is what I decide to spend it on. In other words, here are two scenarios of player spending behavior:

Player A:
Really cool stuff means spending extra money

Player B:
Buys cool stuff but only spends X money, usually on the coolest thing out of what's available.

So for someone like me, it doesn't matter how cool the offerings are, or how expensive they are, I will tend to only spend $100-$200 every six months. I haven't decided what this means for AUR pricing, if other players spend this way. I wouldn't be surprised if the total real-money spending by players hasn't changed from before SKINs were introduced.

I also haven't thoroughly chewed on the implications of AUR item tendency to hit dirt cheap prices on market. I wonder if it's just a failure of appeal, and it means players just don't find it that interesting. Even if it's character-bound, in the case of the Merlin Nugoeihuvi SKIN, players simply don't care (according to market prices).

I've spent some time looking into real money / vanity item sales in other video games, and it has explained a lot about the AUR store, and makes EVE's pricing seem normal.

The problem I see now is ship SKINs are not as cool as items offered in other games (mostly armor and clothing), and simply lack the same visual power. Perhaps this is a problem with the layout of the client, where it's beneficial to remain as zoomed-out as possible from the ship. In other games, your avatar or vehicle is front-and-center on your screen and the game client is more or less designed as a constant showcase of your avatar/vehicle.

In EVE's case the customization of color also falls short of other game item offerings, which have extra bits like streamers or fabric, and lighting effects... perhaps showing more skin on the avatar. For the most part, they alter the silhouette of your character, and paint jobs (SKINs) are bland in comparison.

The only analogue that comes to mind in EVE is the EWAR suites seen on the Blackbird / Rook / Falcon. I think ship customization has to approach that type of impact before it can compare to the items offered in other games: different engine models, cockpit, tails, wings. A customization of the 3D mesh, not just the textures.

On a related note,
I take that to mean station interiors are being deleted for the sake of simplicity, in addition to structures becoming a single brand (no more Caldari / Gal / Min/ Amarr stations). If that's the case, EVE is losing a major showcase of its ships (ship hangar and CQ from the bridge).

My interim verdict is fairly negative. It seems to me that vanity spending in other video games is tied to the avatar, an appreciation for which EVE's players don't seem to have, or want to admit having. You can't charge barbie prices without providing the barbie.

Pricing is fine, cool factor is lacking. Color scheme is not enough customization, and alterations to the base 3D mesh need to be offered.

When players say they would pay a buck for a SKIN, what they're saying is that's how cool it is. $1. The AUR store might even need to offer new ship models before cool factor reaches the $20 level. The good news is it might even be higher than that if the model is cool enough.

A completely new battleship hull that will always have the same stats as a Raven, for example.

EVE still lacks in showing off the ship model, though. I think the client needs a new HUD that allows the player to remain zoomed in on the ship more of the time. The UI is slow to give up its tables, though, so this would probably take a long time and a lot of elegant design that EVE does not historically possess.

He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
No. We just...
No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

Ok, thanks. I must have misread or misunderstood something in the SKIN devblog. I thought the old NES offerings were discontinued when SKINs hit. Something about a reward for players who participated in the NES trial. Is that not what happened? I assumed current SKINs were not the same as pre-SKIN NES offerings.

We understand this.
But that $30 merlin skin is currently on market for 35-42million isk.
So you are saying it will go up 300% to 1.2 billion isk soon on market to reflect the new higher aur price?

Maybe people just refuse to pay more than 40mill (1/20th of a plex) on the frigate skin?
Supply N Demand?

The ship blueprint bpcs were pulled from the NES when the blog dropped. They're back up now as permanent SKIN licenses, with the new pricing.

Still no Dev Blog..

I think CCP is doing this intentionally, to try and have everyone forget about how awesome that weekend was.