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Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

First post First post First post
Author
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#2121 - 2015-10-16 19:38:33 UTC
Dave Stark wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:
Dave Stark wrote:

if your only negative about this system is "it makes things easier" then clearly it's not that bad.


Get it right. It makes "something that under ideal conditions would not exist in the 1st place even easier". That is the point, it's stupid to expand something that should exist in the 1st place. Even CCP has said that the Character Bazaar exists to prevent a bad activity.


so because it shouldn't exist it has to be as ****** as possible? ... which just encourages that it exists to prevent.

really?


Nope, they can reform the Character bazaar. The thing you are supporting is not reform of the character bazaar.


i start with a character with one set of skills.
i finish with a character with a different set of skills.

it does exactly what the character bazzar does.



No it does not. The character bazaar doesn't like you do that with one character. It lets you buy another one.

I'm telling you, if this happens, it will be bad for the game, people will abuse it (I intend to, if for no other reason that to demonstrate to the DEVs why their idea was bad) and it will end up with CCP spending time and money to go back on it. It's better if this idea is still born now.

If I'm wrong, great, no harm done. But tell me, if what I predict is right and it ends up being bad, will you come back to this thread and say so? I'm willing to.

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2122 - 2015-10-16 19:39:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Teckos Pech
Mag's wrote:
Mr Epeen wrote:
Some stray observations.

CCP said: We're getting rid of learning skills.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to add a skill queue
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to add a stat respec once a year.
The rabble said: You just killed the game. We're all quitting.

The game didn't die. The rabble are still here.

CCP said: We are going to add multiple character training.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to make it a little easier on newbs by giving them a few SP to play with at start-up.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

EVE is still here and so is the rabble.

CCP said: Were going to make SP trading a little less convoluted.
The rabble are saying: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

I predict that the game won't die and the rabble is going nowhere. And thank God for that. I do so look forward to threads like this.

Carry on, rabble. Carry on.

~ed~ Adding more as I think of them.

Mr Epeen Cool
Mr Epeen, rewriting history, one post at a time.

Please, do carry on.


Heh...I was wondering about the reactions to these things myself...but am too lazy to go digging.

I loved the skill queue and I loved the unlimited skill queue. When the latter was implemented my main was like 6 years old...so tens of millions of SP. So I'm not sure many people complained. I'm sure some did, but I doubt it was met with this kind of response.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#2123 - 2015-10-16 19:39:57 UTC
Moac Tor wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:
Freelancer117 wrote:
Why can't we reprocess corpses into very small amounts of un-allocated skill points, since we are talking about brain tissue grafts.
source: http://crossingzebras.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Brain.jpg

To the victor the spoils right, and there is no clearer victory then Death Cool

Regards, a Freelancer



Bad thing is, I could live with this lol.

It actually seems like a great idea in comparison to what we have been discussing in this thread. Before this thread I would have said an outright no that is a terrible idea. Perhaps this was CCPs plan all along, then they tone it down and we are all happy because we have averted complete disaster. *chuckles*


Big smile

When i go find me a tinfoil hat, I'll get one for you too. We can both be protected from government spying!
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2124 - 2015-10-16 19:40:18 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
General Lootit wrote:
So why Pay2Win mechanic like PLEX is no concern to Play2Winers? Maybe because exchange hapens in which all sides in winning position. Payers gets isks and not worried about earning PLEX , tryharders gets free sub, CCP gets money. In skill transfering case something goes wrong and some side does gaining nothing or even loosing. There no secret that veterans loosing their prestige so we need to reward them more than cost exchange of unwanted skills.
PLEX isn't pay2win. It's paying for someone else's subscription in exchange for ingame assets, freely agreed to by both parties.

It's a genius system, unlike this proposed mess.


Buying PLEX and selling it in game is a round-about method of buying ISK. Many consider buying in-game currencies in video games a type of "pay to win".

It's pay to win if you buy them from the game developer who creates them out of thin air.

If you buy them from another player, it's either RMT or PLEX. Blink


The difference is that, in case of PLEX, the developer (CCP) is not directly selling for $ a shortcut to bypass it's own gameplay mechanics, which are supposed to be well-thought and balanced, else they're pretty awful game developers to begin with.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Sibyyl
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2125 - 2015-10-16 19:41:02 UTC

Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Why is everyone fine with paying additional money to a subscription game?

F2P mobile games are brainwashing the masses.

The battle is lost.


At least we're also getting new frigate toys to play with until the servers go dark.


The only reason why you would pay extra money into EVE for this change is being you might believe SP will make you a better pilot.

I don't think you believe that at all.

Joffy Aulx-Gao for CSM. Fix links and OGB. Ban stabs from plexes. Fulfill karmic justice.

BlackWilk
Cloaked Goof
Goonswarm Federation
#2126 - 2015-10-16 19:42:07 UTC
Maekchu wrote:
BlackWilk wrote:

I apologize if you are misunderstanding me. I will try to be more clear.

Paying for a ship does not guarantee you a win. Ill try the Barghest again. If you buy the ship but your missile skills only allow you a range of 30km, youre gonna lose. Paying for a ship and paying for the skills to fly that ship at maximum efficiency is greatly increasing the chance of success making it pay2win. Buy all the ships you want with your dollars. If you dont have the skills to fly them correctly ill destroy them all.

I was just pointing out a weird argument in your initial post. When you then agree with my counter-argument, I suppose it is fairly understandable, that I might have been confused by your statement.

As to the P2W element. The way EvE works, SP is not an important metric for deciding the strength of a character. This whole proposition, and many responses in this thread. Proves to me, that even after a decade of EvE, a vast majority are still overvaluing SP and perceive that more SP means a more "powerful" character. The character is not more powerful, it is only more versatile.

Combat in EvE resembles more a match of rock-paper-scissors, compared to a raw stat comparison. A character with less SP can still win over that 100M SP character, if they have the proper ship and knowledge. Combined with the fact, that getting skills to level 4 is not that long of a train and basically is 80% of the skill. Makes me take the stance, that this proposition is really not that bad as some might make it seem.

But something drastic needs to be done in order to attract new players. And this drastic something, will be hated by the general population of the game, since people will not always react rational, given the amount of time investment poured into their characters. But CCP is still a company, and needs revenue in order to keep EvE "Online" (see what I did there :D God, where did that bad pun come from?). Whether this is the solution, or something else is still up for debate. Personally, I think they are on the right track, that something needs to be done to the SP system.






Ok we are starting to get towards common ground :P. I agree that SP alone is not a factor on a pilots strength or skill. My argument against this is entirely based on the following type circumstance.

I am spec'd for frigates. Still not a perfect spec but lets do this example using 2 new toons. Say toon A knows from day 1 he wants to be a garmur pilot and puts all his skills into the frigate skills towards it and the support skills and weaponry for 4 months. He finds another pilot who is in a garmur but is only 2.5 months old. lets say he gets lucky and the enemy is the exact same kind of fit (cause i do agree with you, its a rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock, lava, tons of factors game :P). the one who has been diligent in his skill decisions and training should win the fight because of sp. allowing the 2.5 month old character to just buy all the skills to perfectly spec a garmur from day 17 breaks the game for toon A. This is where i come from with buying sp being game breaking. ive totally been bested by lower sp toons :P. and sometimes ive gotten lucky and picked paper to win rock.

I dont disagree with a company needing to make money either. totally ok. lets look at the last few years. we pretty much live in a society of inflation (much like for plex to go down in price would need a miracle :P). it makes sense that ccp would need to make more money. they havent raised prices in forever. i would by happy to pay 5$ extra a month to help keep the company in business. even if they lost 20% of their character base over that price raise (and i dont feel 15-20 is that ridiculous with how long it has been 15). it would still be more income than they currently get on 15$ (more regular too since its based on subscriptions and not on whims of buying skills).
Sibyyl
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2127 - 2015-10-16 19:42:48 UTC

Jenn aSide wrote:
Sibyyl wrote:

'Represents'.. please elaborate without degenerating into buzzwords without explanations. No, I don't think you're stupid. You really should know that by now and I'm a bit miffed that you would think that.



Think that because that's what you are showing me right now.

Everything about this idea strikes me as wrong, I've explained as best I can why that is. Sorry if that isn't enough.


You thinking that is not enough. I don't believe you've adequately explained your reasons why.

Joffy Aulx-Gao for CSM. Fix links and OGB. Ban stabs from plexes. Fulfill karmic justice.

Nafensoriel
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#2128 - 2015-10-16 19:43:52 UTC
Maekchu wrote:
Nafensoriel wrote:
Just needed to point out a small correction to the discussion here.

SP sales and Character trading are not identical.
When you sell a character you are buying time. This time might be fully utilized the way you want it to be or it might not.. The fact remains that to get a 200m SP char from the bazzar you have to have a char which was painstakingly trained to 200m.

With SP sales you have direct injection of something now rather than later.. In essence a removal of time.

TLDR: Bazzar = Buying someone elses time. SP Trading = Autisticly removing the need for time.

Regardless of your position on this subject the above is immutable. Removing training time will have a profound effect on eve online as it has never been done before. History will tell if its the right one. I personally only dislike the system because it will be abused for RMT but beyond that I see Rises point and I can see the clear desire for CCP to moniterize the game more.


But the 500k SP points are still trained normally on the character that wants to sell them. The SP does not magically appear out of nowhere. They have already been trained, just like on the characters sold on the bazzar.


This is a common misconception..
To explain when a character is trained currently.. every minute of time used is effectively "read only".

When you turn time into a "commodity" and allow direct extraction and transition of this new "commodity" you are effectively ticking the switch that says "read only" and allowing someone to adjust time at will within very wide constraints.

IE current system:
I train a character for 3 years. Sell it.
The buyer gets 3 years worth of time that cannot be altered except to add to it. The buyer is in effect buying my time and only my time. The quality of my product is determined by what I used that time for.

The new system:
I train a character and extract blocks of time. I sell it.
Time has been removed from the equation at this point. If I sell 30m SP it will act like trained SP. IE it will act as if you yourself spent the hours to train a character but without actually spending the time.

In short it removes the immutability of time=SP and instead converts the system into SP exclusively. The entire EVE wide SP pool is now no longer locked into specific characters that must be bought and traded to be useful but instead you have a system where we can redistribute the entire pool as we see fit.

Again.. this is an individual choice as to if this is good or bad. Both sides of the argument have pros and cons. I will state again that this type of system has never existed before in eve online. SP have, until now, been considered immutably locked once trained. The gravity of this change is so massive its hard to comprehend the long term possible interactions with the community.
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#2129 - 2015-10-16 19:43:58 UTC
Mag's wrote:
Mr Epeen wrote:
Some stray observations.

CCP said: We're getting rid of learning skills.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to add a skill queue
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to add a stat respec once a year.
The rabble said: You just killed the game. We're all quitting.

The game didn't die. The rabble are still here.

CCP said: We are going to add multiple character training.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

The game didn't die and the rabble didn't quit.

CCP said: We're going to make it a little easier on newbs by giving them a few SP to play with at start-up.
The rabble said: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

EVE is still here and so is the rabble.

CCP said: Were going to make SP trading a little less convoluted.
The rabble are saying: You just killed EVE! We're all going to quit!

I predict that the game won't die and the rabble is going nowhere. And thank God for that. I do so look forward to threads like this.

Carry on, rabble. Carry on.

~ed~ Adding more as I think of them.

Mr Epeen Cool
Mr Epeen, rewriting history, one post at a time.

Please, do carry on.


lol..

But more seriously (serious face on), the mistake people make is thinking that all dissent is just some kind fo selfish knee jerk reaction. They think "you just don't like change", mainly because they gloss over all the time a change happens and people say "I like it".

Some people do have a reaction like that, but that's not all of us. Some ideas are actually bad. Not all change is good, rather each individual change MUST be judged on it's own merits.

The "any change is good change" people remind me of this commercial.
Chrome Veinss
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#2130 - 2015-10-16 19:44:37 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
BlackWilk wrote:
Sibyyl wrote:


Would you be against respeccing without SP transfer?



i know the question wasnt at me but it was something i discussed with a corp mate. if it came at a fair cost, say once per year like respecing the attributes or a higher dollar value. i would not be against this. but it would also have the restrictions of it can only stay on a character. so moving sp from character A to character A. it would also make an interesting mechanic if you could only respec a certain amount at a time but i wouldnt consider it a requirement for me to agree.
Why is everyone fine with paying additional money to a subscription game?

F2P mobile games are brainwashing the masses.

The battle is lost.


At least we're also getting new frigate toys to play with until the servers go dark.


CCP should drop the subscription model and convert all PLEX into sellable SP imo
Jill Xelitras
Xeltec services
#2131 - 2015-10-16 19:46:12 UTC
Bumblefck wrote:
'CCP Logibro'?


Moar like 'CCP Logi-'no'!




Hate the message not the messenger !

Ah, who'm I kidding ...

Don't anger the forum gods.

ISD Buldath:

> I Saw, I came, I Frowned, I locked, I posted, and I left.

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2132 - 2015-10-16 19:46:19 UTC
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
General Lootit wrote:
So why Pay2Win mechanic like PLEX is no concern to Play2Winers? Maybe because exchange hapens in which all sides in winning position. Payers gets isks and not worried about earning PLEX , tryharders gets free sub, CCP gets money. In skill transfering case something goes wrong and some side does gaining nothing or even loosing. There no secret that veterans loosing their prestige so we need to reward them more than cost exchange of unwanted skills.
PLEX isn't pay2win. It's paying for someone else's subscription in exchange for ingame assets, freely agreed to by both parties.

It's a genius system, unlike this proposed mess.


Buying PLEX and selling it in game is a round-about method of buying ISK. Many consider buying in-game currencies in video games a type of "pay to win".

It's pay to win if you buy them from the game developer who creates them out of thin air.

If you buy them from another player, it's either RMT or PLEX. Blink


The difference is that, in case of PLEX, the developer (CCP) is not directly selling for $ a shortcut to bypass it's own gameplay mechanics, which are supposed to be well-thought and balanced, else they're pretty awful game developers to begin with.


Look it is pretty much buying ISK. By letting players turn them into PLEX and implementing a PLEX market it does skirt the issue, but the end result is pretty much the same...my money ends up as ISK, in the end. Trying to word smith it so it is not my money ending up as ISK is just a foolish endeavor.

In this, broad sense, it is "pay to win". I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it because if players who do not have time to grind for ISK or don't want to grind for ISK can still play the game and become targets for me or I for them...great! Everyone is having fun. Working as intended.

This current change on the other hand, conceptually I'm not opposed to it. I'm concerned that if we end up in the bad state (i.e., it can be abused and people figure it out) it could be quite bad. So...as it is currently proposed, no I can no longer support it.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

J Livermore
Doomheim
#2133 - 2015-10-16 19:46:27 UTC
Clancy Davis wrote:
Why all the confusing mechanics? Why not just make it so you can have multiple PLEXed training queue on an a character? Or annual "skill remaps"? "[B]e creative. Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop Tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon."



Marketing reasons, I think. CCP thinks this will be taken better than straight buying sp directly from them.
Dave Stark
#2134 - 2015-10-16 19:47:51 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
No it does not. The character bazaar doesn't like you do that with one character. It lets you buy another one.

I'm telling you, if this happens, it will be bad for the game, people will abuse it (I intend to, if for no other reason that to demonstrate to the DEVs why their idea was bad) and it will end up with CCP spending time and money to go back on it. It's better if this idea is still born now.

If I'm wrong, great, no harm done. But tell me, if what I predict is right and it ends up being bad, will you come back to this thread and say so? I'm willing to.



ok humour me.

what difference does it make if you walk away with the same character or not?

see, many people have said this yet nobody has actually said how this is in any way going to break the game other than "i'm gonna abuse the **** out of this". you gonna get more sp than the game can store in a 32 bit signed interger and cause the server to implode?

if you're right - i won't be able to come back here... eve will be dead. i'll make a reddit post instead. deal?
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2135 - 2015-10-16 19:48:27 UTC
Sibyyl wrote:

Hi Alex. Good to see you're still around.

Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
In a nutshell, I'd say the skill system is about releasing content to the individual player over time, giving a reason to remain subscribed, including a sense of progression and character development.

Let's address each one of these.

  1. Reason to be subscribed. That's a CCP reason. What does this have to do with any of our arguments for or against?
  2. sense of progression. This still exists. Prerequisites are not going anywhere, and frankly no one has infinite resources such that all progression in the game is bypassed.
  3. character development. No I don't think stacking a bunch of skills in a list has anything to do with character or your development of it.
Wasn't trying to change your mind, you asked a question I gave my best answer. P


Sibyyl wrote:
Quote:
I'm not against changes in the skill system, but I'm strongly against this change because it involves Aurum. It's not a new feature available to all (already paying) players, it's exclusive to those who dish out the cash to CCP. Don't like that at all.

But PLEX can be coverted to AUR.

Aye, but:

1) from CCP's point of view, PLEX is an obligation (to give a service, i.e. this game we play), AUR is additional revenues for... what? the game they should already be giving to players that sub or buy PLEX?

2) PLEX comes from people's wallets. more AUR = more PLEX (if you want to convert) = higher milking of the player base, and this time it's not for vanity stuff but for SP, which is a pretty useful gameplay resource. not good to offer gameplay-relevant stuff for $. CCP has never done so, I believe they should keep it that way

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

BlackWilk
Cloaked Goof
Goonswarm Federation
#2136 - 2015-10-16 19:50:31 UTC
Nafensoriel wrote:
Maekchu wrote:
Nafensoriel wrote:
Just needed to point out a small correction to the discussion here.

SP sales and Character trading are not identical.
When you sell a character you are buying time. This time might be fully utilized the way you want it to be or it might not.. The fact remains that to get a 200m SP char from the bazzar you have to have a char which was painstakingly trained to 200m.

With SP sales you have direct injection of something now rather than later.. In essence a removal of time.

TLDR: Bazzar = Buying someone elses time. SP Trading = Autisticly removing the need for time.

Regardless of your position on this subject the above is immutable. Removing training time will have a profound effect on eve online as it has never been done before. History will tell if its the right one. I personally only dislike the system because it will be abused for RMT but beyond that I see Rises point and I can see the clear desire for CCP to moniterize the game more.


But the 500k SP points are still trained normally on the character that wants to sell them. The SP does not magically appear out of nowhere. They have already been trained, just like on the characters sold on the bazzar.


This is a common misconception..
To explain when a character is trained currently.. every minute of time used is effectively "read only".

When you turn time into a "commodity" and allow direct extraction and transition of this new "commodity" you are effectively ticking the switch that says "read only" and allowing someone to adjust time at will within very wide constraints.

IE current system:
I train a character for 3 years. Sell it.
The buyer gets 3 years worth of time that cannot be altered except to add to it. The buyer is in effect buying my time and only my time. The quality of my product is determined by what I used that time for.

The new system:
I train a character and extract blocks of time. I sell it.
Time has been removed from the equation at this point. If I sell 30m SP it will act like trained SP. IE it will act as if you yourself spent the hours to train a character but without actually spending the time.

In short it removes the immutability of time=SP and instead converts the system into SP exclusively. The entire EVE wide SP pool is now no longer locked into specific characters that must be bought and traded to be useful but instead you have a system where we can redistribute the entire pool as we see fit.

Again.. this is an individual choice as to if this is good or bad. Both sides of the argument have pros and cons. I will state again that this type of system has never existed before in eve online. SP have, until now, been considered immutably locked once trained. The gravity of this change is so massive its hard to comprehend the long term possible interactions with the community.


though not used as an arguement against this new change, i love how you put the comparisson of time=the quality of your toon over just injecting skill points. well phrased mr philosopher.
Gully Alex Foyle
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2137 - 2015-10-16 19:50:34 UTC
Sibyyl wrote:

Gully Alex Foyle wrote:
Why is everyone fine with paying additional money to a subscription game?

F2P mobile games are brainwashing the masses.

The battle is lost.


At least we're also getting new frigate toys to play with until the servers go dark.


The only reason why you would pay extra money into EVE for this change is being you might believe SP will make you a better pilot.

I don't think you believe that at all.

True, in fact I believe this would be a ripoff, and I'm not comfortable with CCP ripping off its players, even if I personally wouldn't fall for it.

Make space glamorous! Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!

Sibyyl
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2138 - 2015-10-16 19:52:31 UTC

The PLEX->AUR->MCT->ISK->PLEX workflow stability follows the PLEX to ISK conversion price curve.

I can't really speak to the motivation for AUR. I agree it's confusing.. but we already have MCTs for AUR and MCTs are essentially 30 days (or 2M SP).

Joffy Aulx-Gao for CSM. Fix links and OGB. Ban stabs from plexes. Fulfill karmic justice.

Sibyyl
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2139 - 2015-10-16 19:55:42 UTC

Jenn aSide wrote:
I'm telling you, if this happens, it will be bad for the game, people will abuse it (I intend to, if for no other reason that to demonstrate to the DEVs why their idea was bad) and it will end up with CCP spending time and money to go back on it. It's better if this idea is still born now.


Jenn, you and I both. My plans have already been made. It will be glorious.

Joffy Aulx-Gao for CSM. Fix links and OGB. Ban stabs from plexes. Fulfill karmic justice.

Vic Jefferson
Stimulus
Rote Kapelle
#2140 - 2015-10-16 19:56:37 UTC
Chrome Veinss wrote:
CCP should drop the subscription model and convert all PLEX into sellable SP imo


I had some choice words for this idea, but unbelievably silly is what I'll stick with.

Do you hate EvE so much that you want to see it go the way of 99.99% of free to play 'games' that are little more than poorly disguised pay to win skinner boxes?

Show me more than 3 free to play games that have lasted 12 years with speakable player base. Free to play is an excellent bussiness model because of whales, but basically a death sentence on game longevity.

Vote Vic Jefferson for CSM X.....XI.....XII?