EVE General Discussion

Alright, lets try to put the final nail in the ranting about skin prices.

1) The SKINS system was created by CCP as an extra source of revenue.
-It is in no way skummy or unfair for CCP, as a company, to want to make more money. More money equals more projects, more projects equals more products, more products equals more consumers, and that's how business works.

2) The SKINs system was created to be an isk sink. (I was wrong about this one, disregard this point)

3) The SKINs you buy are one-time purchases.
-Unless you chose to purchase the skin for another character, or to do market pvp with later, you only ever would have a reason to purchase only one skin. There is NO WAY for you to lose the skin once you activate it.

4) The SKINs you buy are infinite.
-Once you have a SKIN, you can apply it to an INFINITE amount of the ships that it is applicable to. On top of that, you can apply it on the fly; no need to dock, no need to switch to a different ship, no need to change the fitting in the slightest. Practically instant application.

5) There is a surplus of many of the early SKINS in the game.
-NOH Rokh skins are approximated at 800 milion isk for the AUR you would spend on them. I don't remember the Merlin and Caracal, but they're about the same. Ludicras you might say, that anyone would pay 800 million isk for a frigate skin, or about $20 US cash. Except that there are literally thousands if not millions stockpiled already, and that surplus is going ot take a long time to eat through. I bought a supposedly 800 million isk Rokh skin for about 60 million because the supply is MUCH greater than the demand.

6) There are lots of ways to make absurd amounts of isk.
- A corpmate of mine lost his 2 billion isk pod, and about 4 days later, from doing Incursions, made it back. This has happened multiple times. Another friend of mine plays the market pvp game and makes billions and billions of isk a week, which he uses to fund his alliance. Yet another person I know can plex enough FW LP in a day to cash in two Navy Issue battelships, and that's on a day he only has ONE alt active.

7) SKINs are entierly cosmetic.
- They do not affect the game in the slightest, stats wise. Therefor, this is not a case of pay to win, it's pay to look different. And you are by no means required to purchase any of these to get any kind of advantage.



To sum it all up: The prices for SKINS is approximately what the market can sustain currently. Coupled with the high number of isk in the market, the unlimited nature of the SKINs, the inability to lose them, the surplus already on the market, the surplus of ISK people have, the availability of methods to make ISK, and the one-time buy nature of the SKIN licences, in the end, the prices are about what we should expect them to be. Maybe some of the really new ones are a bit expensive, since there is no surplus on the market currently, but that's a different problem.

Just because you can't afford every SKIN you like, and just because you have to make a decision between the SKIN you like and that shiny new Macharial that you'll lose on undock playing station games like an idiot, doesn't mean that it is unfairly priced. Hell, CCP is, as far as I know, the only developer who has made in-game cosmetic items not only purchasable by in-game money, but also SELLABLE for in-game money.

As someone who's read half of a book on economics, my arguments are obviously incredibly well-reasoned and should have changed your mind by now and you should send me isk as appreciation for opening your eyes to the truth.

How is something I buy from another capsuleer an isk sink?

Actually you've got a point there. Besides the taxes, which on a one-time buy item is paultry, then it's just moving isk around inside the market instead of taking isk out of the market. Nice catch.

It's a sink when players convert a PLEX to get the AUR, and then the item is consumed... effectively destroyed.

No, cause it's still trading real-world money for an in-game item. X player bought it with RL money, sold it to Y player for isk. Whether player Y uses it for account time, or for AUR, the money he paid for it is still technically in the game, and the money player X paid for it is still outside the game.

I had to think about that for few seconds too.

People take issue with the silly prices for something purely cosmetic. I'll draw the comparison to TF2 again. They have cosmetic items as well that you can never lose after purchase. Yet when they cost 5 dollars, you're already talking expensive. So why is it that CCP demands that an ingame item needs to cost a month worth of subscription time? It's completely out of proportion and no casual EVE player is gonna be able to justify a 15 dollar cosmetic item. I'd like to know what that exact price point came from and why CCP thought it was a good idea. Because I don't see it.

Also what ever happened to the time limited SKIN's. Was that idea dropped because CCP figured those would probably be favored over their hideously expensive permanent ones?

They could make the SKINs $0.01, and I still wouldn't buy them.

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea. Sarum makes me Iron Man in space, it's great. The Police and Quafe skins are as close as we get to "whimsy" in these skins. Even some of the 'goth-grim-dark' skins have a bit of appeal.

The problem?

I can't fly any of these damned ships. It doesn't matter how much I like the Maurader 4-pack of skins, because it'll be Thanksgiving before I can even sit in any of those. Works well if you have the SP to pick the hulls that have the skins you want I guess, (and probably why it's good for them to start with the T2 Frigs), but within my own personal bubble? Sadness.

PS: Stop with Wiyrkomi, it's super boring. If you can't come up with a decent Caldari skin just go for Ishukone plz.

PPS: Also, Minmatar ships are too full of holes to make skins perceivable.

Pretty much this.

And, Blizzard is making the same mistake with their hero portraits for hearthstone. I'd buy them all at $5. I'm buying none at the $10 they are priced at.

Greed is good, guys!

Businesses set the "price" of an item, but not the "value" of the item- the value is introduced when the product is introduced.

The only determining factor in "value" is the availability of a resource- if it's infinite, the value is diminished. When a resource is finite, it becomes more valuable simply because not everyone can necessarily attain it.

Prices are reflective of "value", not "cost". A price is determined based on value, not the other way around- costs are dependent on the availability of a resource for a product. If diamonds simply became massively abundant, the prices of diamond-related products would drop rapidly because it's available to a lot more people.

Oh and "artificial" inflation of cost means the price has risen but the value of the item hasn't really changed. This is generally what causes inflation in economies, when prices rise rapidly regardless of the value of the item. Costs and prices- cost isn't negotiable, while prices are. Prices are set by businesses to determine profit based on cost. (and again, not the other way around)

Wait untill they will add AUR for logging in daily in EVE. This moment will come.