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Dev Blog: Exploring The Character Bazaar & Skill Trading

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Stalking Mantis
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5301 - 2015-11-03 12:29:46 UTC
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source

Amarr Liason Officer Extraordinare -->Check Out Amarrian Vengeance/Amarr FW History from 2011 to 2014 https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=352629&find=unread
Suede
State War Academy
Caldari State
#5302 - 2015-11-03 12:52:21 UTC
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source


Microtransactions and 'monocle-gate'


The development difficulties were only part of the Incarna problem. According to sources, CCP management had decided to introduce microtransactions, unbeknownst to most of the rank and file, charging real money for cosmetic items with which to customise character avatars. This is a familiar feature in online games, but usually a new outfit for a player character will cost $15-20. CCP decided to charge much more. The most notorious example was a monocle costing $70. The price tag infuriated fans kick-starting a major pricing controversy that would go on to become known as Monocle-gate.

The CEO had members of the fiction writing team put the apology together - he was either so out of touch, so arrogant, that he couldn’t find the words himself

Eventually CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson issued an apology to the players. But even this short appeasement wasn’t what it seemed; according to Blood, Petursson didn’t actually write it.

“He had members of our storyline team – a group responsible for writing in-game content and fiction – put it together,” he says. “He was either so out of touch, so arrogant, or perhaps both, that he couldn’t find the words to say himself. They bailed him out big time.”
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#5303 - 2015-11-03 13:45:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Levi Belvar
As far as i'm concerned over all this now, where is anything prestigious when the entire game is to be monetized. I have noticed that they have removed the 5 to 15 mill skill point bracket which offered 450k return, which gives the now 5 to 50 million skill point bracket for a minimal loss the chance to reskill to what ever they want as long as they're willing to pay. So where does the "We want to make sure training decisions are still very important and that rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point" come into play apart from if you are one of the unlucky ones who have been loyal to the game, Your reward is to get 50k .... Thats more like a 2 fingered salute than anything to do with prestige.

Helmar's let his pet Seagull fly high, Rise into the clouds and take one giant turd on anyone that's been in this game longer than a few years !!!!

Good luck in your future premium / freemium plus endeavours.

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Venus Aka
Doomheim
#5304 - 2015-11-03 14:29:01 UTC
I like the idea and hope this gets into the game soon. Big smile and the new characters whom I've met ingame and invited to Eve online also hope that it gets implemented Blink

Good job CCP.
Jared Khanar
#5305 - 2015-11-03 14:32:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Jared Khanar
Levi Belvar wrote:
As far as i'm concerned over all this now, where is anything prestigious when the entire game is to be monetized. I have noticed that they have removed the 5 to 15 mill skill point bracket which offered 450k return, which gives the now 5 to 50 million skill point bracket for a minimal loss the chance to reskill to what ever they want as long as they're willing to pay. So where does the "We want to make sure training decisions are still very important and that rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point" come into play apart from if you are one of the unlucky ones who have been loyal to the game, Your reward is to get 50k .... Thats more like a 2 fingered salute than anything to do with prestige.

Helmar's let his pet Seagull fly high, Rise into the clouds and take one giant turd on anyone that's been in this game longer than a few years !!!!

Good luck in your future premium / freemium plus endeavours.



CCP Fozzie, Seagull, whoever...

Even if it´s easy to blame one person for everything (I do so myself too often)... don´t.
If someone works for a company he / she "sits between the chairs" in some way.
Most times there is someone above you, giving orders. Others are examinating or contributing to decisions.

It's odd, but it seems a lot of online gaming companies have goals for their "live" as a legal entity, that are conflicting with the expectations of the consumers of their products. Or at least the way they are trying to reach these goals offer a great potential for trouble.

Whether they realize at some point that this can be handled differently?

Anyway... for the employee: someone has to pay your bills.

Doubt this is the creative work and decision from a single, isolated person.
Certainly this is ccp ceo + management approved and instructed.

Economic Services

trading spacepixels
Leonardo Adami
Doomheim
#5306 - 2015-11-03 16:57:43 UTC
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source


Quoting a four year old post in an attempt to say CCP is going back on their word. They're not. MMO''s are not games that are designed to be a fixed state but rather a a malleable one. They're designed to grow, expand, and change. If you have over 80mil skill points which takes significant time then it's not worthwhile to use this option. You'd be better off headed to the bazaar to find a character that meets your skill point requirements. If you have less then 5mil you get the lost benefit. They're not screwing over vets. If they were trying to do that they'd make it a flat everyone gets 500k skill points regardless of the amount of skill points you currently have. The diminishing returns keeps things balanced and numbers can always he adjusted to keep things in line.
Amanda Orion
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#5307 - 2015-11-03 17:20:15 UTC
Leonardo Adami wrote:

Quoting a four year old post in an attempt to say CCP is going back on their word. They're not. MMO''s are not games that are designed to be a fixed state but rather a a malleable one. They're designed to grow, expand, and change. If you have over 80mil skill points which takes significant time then it's not worthwhile to use this option. You'd be better off headed to the bazaar to find a character that meets your skill point requirements. If you have less then 5mil you get the lost benefit. They're not screwing over vets. If they were trying to do that they'd make it a flat everyone gets 500k skill points regardless of the amount of skill points you currently have. The diminishing returns keeps things balanced and numbers can always he adjusted to keep things in line.


They are.
The diminishing returns just mean it costs more - but you can invest money to bypass time.
Some people are willing to spend SERIOUS RL cash to get what they want in EVE.

Relying on diminishing returns for balance is naive at best...
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#5308 - 2015-11-03 17:41:13 UTC
Leonardo Adami wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source


Quoting a four year old post in an attempt to say CCP is going back on their word. They're not. MMO''s are not games that are designed to be a fixed state but rather a a malleable one. They're designed to grow, expand, and change. If you have over 80mil skill points which takes significant time then it's not worthwhile to use this option. You'd be better off headed to the bazaar to find a character that meets your skill point requirements. If you have less then 5mil you get the lost benefit. They're not screwing over vets. If they were trying to do that they'd make it a flat everyone gets 500k skill points regardless of the amount of skill points you currently have. The diminishing returns keeps things balanced and numbers can always he adjusted to keep things in line.

The environment and content may change but not the principles the game was built on, and you keep mentioning vets, a 4 year old character can have more than 80 mill skill points That is not a vet at all. So yes its nothing todo with prestige what so ever its just anyone who's invested any sort of time into this game is going to get screwed over.

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Stalking Mantis
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5309 - 2015-11-03 18:19:31 UTC
Leonardo Adami wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source


statement


Doing so would be going against a core mechanic of EVE online just to get extra cash so yah.

Amarr Liason Officer Extraordinare -->Check Out Amarrian Vengeance/Amarr FW History from 2011 to 2014 https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=352629&find=unread
Don ZOLA
Omniscient Order
#5310 - 2015-11-03 18:25:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Don ZOLA
Leonardo Adami wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source


Quoting a four year old post in an attempt to say CCP is going back on their word. They're not. MMO''s are not games that are designed to be a fixed state but rather a a malleable one. They're designed to grow, expand, and change. If you have over 80mil skill points which takes significant time then it's not worthwhile to use this option. You'd be better off headed to the bazaar to find a character that meets your skill point requirements. If you have less then 5mil you get the lost benefit. They're not screwing over vets. If they were trying to do that they'd make it a flat everyone gets 500k skill points regardless of the amount of skill points you currently have. The diminishing returns keeps things balanced and numbers can always he adjusted to keep things in line.

They are. We are speaking about fundamentals here, not some minor changes which are liked or not liked by someone. Changing fundamentals can easily lead your customers to ask themselves if it is worth to invest time and money in something which might be something else in a year or five. How will that affect current player base we will see, but judging from responses here and ingame there will be a lot of unhappy customers...

There are 2 rules in a successful life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#5311 - 2015-11-03 21:49:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Levi Belvar wrote:
As far as i'm concerned over all this now, where is anything prestigious when the entire game is to be monetized. I have noticed that they have removed the 5 to 15 mill skill point bracket which offered 450k return, which gives the now 5 to 50 million skill point bracket for a minimal loss the chance to reskill to what ever they want as long as they're willing to pay. So where does the "We want to make sure training decisions are still very important and that rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point" come into play apart from if you are one of the unlucky ones who have been loyal to the game, Your reward is to get 50k .... Thats more like a 2 fingered salute than anything to do with prestige.

Helmar's let his pet Seagull fly high, Rise into the clouds and take one giant turd on anyone that's been in this game longer than a few years !!!!

Good luck in your future premium / freemium plus endeavours.
If there was a bracket removed it wasn't recently as I have some numbers floating around from ~2 weeks ago that don't have that 5 - 15m SP bracket. The strange thing is that if that's true and the 5-15m bracket was merged with 15-50m at the same rate of 400k/packet rather than 450k the "minimal loss (20% being minimal apparently)" was increased for the 5-15 range, making it less trivial to change skills around, and didn't make things better for the range as a whole.

Also, how are we "unlucky" to have characters with the range of options allowed by 80m + SP? Because we can't add packets at the same rate of a lower SP character? Simple solution, make a new character. All those new players will have the same options should they get to the same SP range. No one is getting shafted since everyone has the same options, either creating new characters efficiently of respecking capable ones at a loss, thus "rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point."

Stalking Mantis wrote:
Doing so would be going against a core mechanic of EVE online just to get extra cash so yah.
They've been doing that since the character bazaar was created, thus charging extra cash for the transfer of SP is at this point just as much a core mechanic, just with a more prohibitive price point. But I guess we're ok with it so long as the entry point is several plex rather than a fraction of one.
Magnus Roden
Center for the Advancement of Human Endeavour
#5312 - 2015-11-03 22:14:46 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
Doing so would be going against a core mechanic of EVE online just to get extra cash so yah.
They've been doing that since the character bazaar was created, thus charging extra cash for the transfer of SP is at this point just as much a core mechanic, just with a more prohibitive price point. But I guess we're ok with it so long as the entry point is several plex rather than a fraction of one.



No the character bazaar does NOT break the "rules", if you think it does and this is thus the same then you're lacking insight, or you're just avoiding the issue on purpose.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Jadon Wallace
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5313 - 2015-11-03 22:22:16 UTC
I don't see how this is going to be targeted to new players again, unless you're willing to break out the credit card and sell some PLEX on the market to beef up your capital then it won't work for new players. Older players will benefit more as they will have much more capital than the newbro, so this system is kind of self defeating isn't it?
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#5314 - 2015-11-03 22:24:14 UTC
Magnus Roden wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
Doing so would be going against a core mechanic of EVE online just to get extra cash so yah.
They've been doing that since the character bazaar was created, thus charging extra cash for the transfer of SP is at this point just as much a core mechanic, just with a more prohibitive price point. But I guess we're ok with it so long as the entry point is several plex rather than a fraction of one.
No the character bazaar does NOT break the "rules", if you think it does and this is thus the same then you're lacking insight, or you're just avoiding the issue on purpose.
There is no issue to avoid precisely because of the bazaar unless you think character level investment is only meaningful when it's just time and trading SP needs a significant entry point.

Fact of the matter is trading identities trivializes consequence rather than enforcing it as you literally get paid as a seller in the bazaar to liquidate your reputation. It's just legitimized alt rolling that bypasses the normal consequence of doing so, but we're apparently fine with it since someone else is still holding the bag when the sale is done.

That people say it's fine because of reputation is completely backwards, and that's the closest thing to a defense of a difference that people have presented. And even then it's easily trivialized with existing social connections.

So in the end the result is the same, we're fine with paying real cash for SP so long as the investment is high and the bad rep from old players hurts new ones.
Levi Belvar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#5315 - 2015-11-03 22:25:48 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Also, how are we "unlucky" to have characters with the range of options allowed by 80m + SP? Because we can't add packets at the same rate of a lower SP character? Simple solution, make a new character. All those new players will have the same options should they get to the same SP range. No one is getting shafted since everyone has the same options, either creating new characters efficiently of respecking capable ones at a loss, thus "rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point."

Dont you think 80mill plus characters might of made a few errors when they first made there character and may wanted to have the option of respeccing there own skills, but at a 90% loss of skillpoints doing it is hardly fair ???

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#5316 - 2015-11-03 22:37:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Levi Belvar wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Also, how are we "unlucky" to have characters with the range of options allowed by 80m + SP? Because we can't add packets at the same rate of a lower SP character? Simple solution, make a new character. All those new players will have the same options should they get to the same SP range. No one is getting shafted since everyone has the same options, either creating new characters efficiently of respecking capable ones at a loss, thus "rapid respeccing of skills is not an efficient choice at any point."

Dont you think 80mill plus characters might of made a few errors when they first made there character and may wanted to have the option of respeccing there own skills, but at a 90% loss of skillpoints doing it is hardly fair ???
I don't think it any less "fair" than having a 100m SP character compared to a new one. Nothing about the skill system currently is about ensuring parity between what characters can do. So to answer your question directly, no, I don't think it's fair. I don't think it should be as it's the price of having a highly capable character already. It also helps protect the concept of highly capable characters from triviality by making further investment more costly.

I don't think I should easily outpace the 200mill SP guys that decide to train normally, I don't think I should costlessly outpace the 100mill SP guys that spent their training time more wisely.
General Lootit
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5317 - 2015-11-03 23:06:10 UTC  |  Edited by: General Lootit
Don ZOLA wrote:

They are. We are speaking about fundamentals here, not some minor changes which are liked or not liked by someone. Changing fundamentals can easily lead your customers to ask themselves if it is worth to invest time and money in something which might be something else in a year or five. How will that affect current player base we will see, but judging from responses here and ingame there will be a lot of unhappy customers...

I'm quite embarrassed about the fact that this is most popular topic on eve-o. It's not what newcomer expecting to see after reading news about new feature like this. BTW I asked in russian thread "Guys, what are your favorite patchs? " And you know what? None for a long time. I went to conclusion that there is no such thing for vet which called "good patch", every changing is bad(even if there is one good change than they could find a bunch of bad ones). And I think reasons for that behavior not in the game but in psychology.

Main source of concerns and side effects

Typical loyal customer with eleventy accounts
Magnus Roden
Center for the Advancement of Human Endeavour
#5318 - 2015-11-03 23:57:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Magnus Roden
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Magnus Roden wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Stalking Mantis wrote:
Doing so would be going against a core mechanic of EVE online just to get extra cash so yah.
They've been doing that since the character bazaar was created, thus charging extra cash for the transfer of SP is at this point just as much a core mechanic, just with a more prohibitive price point. But I guess we're ok with it so long as the entry point is several plex rather than a fraction of one.
No the character bazaar does NOT break the "rules", if you think it does and this is thus the same then you're lacking insight, or you're just avoiding the issue on purpose.
There is no issue to avoid precisely because of the bazaar unless you think character level investment is only meaningful when it's just time and trading SP needs a significant entry point.

Fact of the matter is trading identities trivializes consequence rather than enforcing it as you literally get paid as a seller in the bazaar to liquidate your reputation. It's just legitimized alt rolling that bypasses the normal consequence of doing so, but we're apparently fine with it since someone else is still holding the bag when the sale is done.

That people say it's fine because of reputation is completely backwards, and that's the closest thing to a defense of a difference that people have presented. And even then it's easily trivialized with existing social connections.

So in the end the result is the same, we're fine with paying real cash for SP so long as the investment is high and the bad rep from old players hurts new ones.


That character that is sold STILL adheres to the time invested into it, SP wise. And the buyer STILL has to deal with the consequences of the choices for that character: Name, SP allocation and corp/behaviour history. The choices the previous owner made and the consequences thereof still apply.

I'm sure you can understand this basic thing, it really isn't too difficult to comprehend.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Suede
State War Academy
Caldari State
#5319 - 2015-11-04 00:14:15 UTC
Stalking Mantis wrote:
"The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. "

CCP Hellmar
2011-10-05
Source



But enough talk from me. We all know that much quoted phrase, “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do,” that will make the difference here. From now on, CCP will focus on doing what we say and saying what we do. That is the path to restoring trust and moving forward.

Regards,

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO

CCP Hellmar
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#5320 - 2015-11-04 00:42:06 UTC
Magnus Roden wrote:
That character that is sold STILL adheres to the time invested into it, SP wise. And the buyer STILL has to deal with the consequences of the choices for that character: Name, SP allocation and corp/behaviour history. The choices the previous owner made and the consequences thereof still apply.

I'm sure you can understand this basic thing, it really isn't too difficult to comprehend.
And the trade of SP will also abide by the time invested to create SP, as it can only be made available by those willing to do so at the rate they can generate it. It still adheres to the seller's invested time.

That the seller can also erase consequence and get paid for it doesn't rationally make a good argument though. It's got nothing to do with not understanding, but rather everything to do with understanding that character reputation isn't a consistent consequence; it diminishes completely for older players with social connections in game.

So we're back to the argument that SP trades should have significant cost and hurt new players particularly. That's not something I can agree with.