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I am not against providing new players an alternative way to speed up their character development so that they can 'engage with' Eve earlier. It will help to expand the player base at a faster rate which is what Eve needs now. However, you need to put a cap on the total SP that a character can gain from this fast track. I am against the fact that a player can buy all the way to the top even though it is diminishing return. There must be a limit to the extent that money can buy.

Secondly, conversion rate must be less than 1:1. It has to be a net loss of SP in the process of transfer to discourage exploit. The number of SP that can be gained should be always less than the number of SP that lost in the game.

Thirdly, character that obtain SP by this way should have some indication in his history page. Other players can take this into consideration when assessing the experience of this character.

Finally, make it a private transaction between two players. Do not make SP tradable in public market because it hurts the feeling of ver players.

But everything you say here can be done by buying a pre-skilled character off the already existing bazaar.

I like some of the alternative ideas thrown around, like reallocated existing SP. Could let a missile player switch to guns overnight. A miner to fighter pilot, industrialist to an incursion runner, etc.

Another idea would be have attribute accelerators like the ones that currently only work for the first few weeks of a character. Well they could create new accelerators that work for a set duration and give a nice attribute boost to help skill up faster.

But I have to agree with CCP that this new idea is in line with the existing bazaar. What it does though it makes it much more open to smaller changes vs buying a high SP character. A player can make more moderate SP jumps.
What do you think is better:
1) Person converts PLEX to ISK and buys a 50M SP character off the bazaar.
2) Person converts PLEX to ISK and buys 10M SP and skills up a core skills and frigates. Then buys another 10M SP a couple weeks later and skills up cruisers. And then a month later buys another 20M and skills up all battleships.

Personally I like option 2.

OK, here's my thoughts as a player of some 12 years and this maybe my longest forum post in that time:

I'm going to look into the "vehicle" CCP wants to use for this SP Extraction\Injection first:

First you devalued my character by introducing Multi Character Training (MCT). When it was single character training you knew someone had spent their 30 days of game time training that character and couldn't train another on that account. That added value to the Character. To do MCT you attached it to PLEX which put PLEX prices up.

Next you introduced the NEX store with cosmetic items for the price of Aurum. Funny thing that PLEX converts to Aurum and so PLEX prices went up.

After that you introduced SKINs which lets players customise their ships. All good, except again you attached that to Aurum. Again PLEX can be converted into Aurum and so PLEX prices are currently at 1.2bil (Source: EVE Central)

Now we've covered that, let's see why PLEX was introduced: To allow people who are time rich but cash poor to be able to play the game and pay for game time from their in-game wallets. Currently a low skilled Character (<5mil SP) won't be able to afford 1.2bil to buy a PLEX to do any of this malarkey with SP extraction\injection.

You're pricing them out of the market FFS. More of a concern is that PLEX isn't being used for what it was brought in-game for and is just another money stream that's turning into a torrent for CCP.

Just change it's name to something more meaningful rather than the "30 Day Pilot's License Extension" and separate Aurum from PLEX. Class it as "Monetary Tiercide" if you want but PLEX should be for Game Time and all the other bumpf you're pushing onto PLEX (and the prices) should be Aurum

Suggestion: If you're short on cash just increase the price of subscription a little.

So now I've got that off my chest let's look at the Dev Blog itself:

The fact that in the OP tells you that you tried to get something past us and knew the reaction it would bring:

Don't hide stuff under innocent titles! We're not stupid and the dedicated core of players will read these things and drag it into the light.

What's happening with the Character Bazaar? Nothing by the looks of things. I think this Dev Blog falls into the 'Bait and Switch' category to be honest.

That done, let's look at how this would impact me as I'm sure the price isn't going to be cheap to buy those delicious unallocated skillpoints. To reach that conclusion I'm taking into account this line can be purchased in the New Eden Store for Aurum which effectivily means PLEX so 1.2bil plus SP value maybe 1.5bil:

Maximus Aerelius: SP 120,825,068 = > 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added - No Interest
Other Char same account SP 50,623,552 = 50 – 80 million skillpoints = 200,000 unallocated skillpoints added - No Interest
Main on other account: SP 71,724,124 = 50 – 80 million skillpoints = 200,000 unallocated skillpoints added - No interest

Being loyal doesn't pay off when it comes to introducing new things it seems. The longer you stay the more you don't get to say thanks. The "10 Year Veterans Station" is still a sore point. I'd also draw attention to the change to allocating an additional 350,000 SP to new characters. Did all those long-term subscribers get 350,000 SP as unallocated skillpoints to say "thanks for staying with us"? Nope. And now this slap in the face as an idea to effectively exclude veterans because, we'll, we just aren't allowed nice things. With that in mind how do you expect old players to introduce new ones when you keep excluding them for little things like the above?

I've posted this before but it rings so true with this suggestion from CCP:


EVE was never about how many SP you had and it was always touted as a long-game endeavor and a thinking mans game...
EVE had never bowed to the instant gratification that was catered to in other games (not mentioning any in particular).
Until today with this Dev Blog.

I joined Eve because I wanted something more than the instant gratification/fast burnout that most online games espouse. By allowing six-month old accounts the opportunity to boost their way to perfect supercaps grossly devalues the time necessary to get to the 50 million SP mark on your own.

It reminds me of WoW's instant level 90 boost that they added back in Mists of Pandaria. Leveling and progression just doesn't matter to Blizzard anymore. They hand out purples like candy and grant level 90 instantly at the swipe of a credit card. It's disgusting and it shames me to admit that CCP appears to be following a similar route, probably out of economic desperation; not greed, as I have never known them to be a company that abuses its community for extra revenue in times past.

I warn you, CCP -- doing this will most likely cause a mass exodus of subscribers from your already-dwindling playerbase. As soon as the younger accounts buy their way to perfect skills, they will have little left to look forward to, and the comfort in exclusivity and value of a long-trained skill will have diminished with the trivialization of acquiring said expensive skill.

Thank god you added diminishing returns. Now I am much less against it. It still doesn't sit well with me, but I'm not outright opposed against it any more. But first, questions:

How will we acquire these packages? ingame ISK sink? Plex? Aurum? A combination?

"Creating a Transneural Skill Packet requires approximately 500,000 skillpoints"
How will we choose them? Are we going to unallocate skillpoints into a "pool" and only when it hits 500.000 skillpoints (or whatever) the TNSP will be created? Are we only allowed to remove whole trained levels or can we deduct any number of skillpoints we like?

And if we are already at that, why are you not introducing the technology to remap existing skillpoints on the same character? Say you started with gunnery but you came to like missiles a lot more? Swappety-swap-swap! All thanks to that handy retraining item. You want to explore other parts of the game but have a bunch of capital skills you actually don't use any more? Move them around! If capitals come back to glory, you still can move them back.
Only difference: no diminshing returns for skillpoints moved within the same character. Or much much less diminishing returns.


Now, onto the rest:
If the "poop I have a bad name now" with strings attached was an issue, then it shouldn't be solved with a skillpoint transfer bazaar.
The issue could have EASILY been addressed by adding a plex-based service called "ID replacement" or have that be automatically executed upon character transfer.
As you enter your new name, you get a new character ID. Everything you have on the active account is transferred to the new character ID and the old ID gets emptied, only a name remains. That old character name now shows up as biomassed character. I'm sure you all know the corporation for "dead characters".
So no issues with reputation or some unknown one writing at you. A clean cut for a new reputation.
But you never delivered that :c For reasons I never understood. It would even be a service used without character transfer required.

Also, what you fail to realize as proved with 400.000 skillpoints for new pilots:
New players don't need so much new skillpoints. They need less steep requirements for skills. Remember the old Thermodynamics? Three level 5 skills. Now it is fairly easy compared to before.

Next would be a service for longer accelerated skill training. Now I know that is a double-edged sword because for one, it "generates" skillpoints out of "nothing" whereas that would still be the money that gets pumped into CCP. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
I understand the reason of "older players to give up skillpoints for newer players" in order to try to level the playing field between old and new players. But what exactly does it achieve? There will be only so much skillpoints traded as are wanted to be shed. And SP is much more finite than plexing.

Then why don't you do that? You want Skillpoints in gunnery? Then buy the package that has been extracted from Gunnery SP. That would be a welcome and literal way of "trading experience" or "inserting experience." instead of a "well let's just unallocate the SP I don't like" which feels flimsy.

Without actual intra-character skillpoint reallocation without penalties, it is not really that much more control. It is simply a way to make more ISK from new players instead of actually destroying ISK, or to shove skillpoints to your alts. We still have useless attributes and not a fixed rate of skillpoint gain no matter which skill you train for example. Remaps are not a solution.

Why using hard values when your game is so much based on percent? Just have a curve going down that starts after a set amount of skillpoints, like the 5 Million you mentioned. That is a lot better than set values since it is a lot less arbitrary.


Other comments only halfway related to the topic based on what has been said in the devblog:

1. Honestly? No wonder after you've destroyed a great tutorial and replaced it with really poopy opportunities and have not done anything to fix it for MONTHS :c Other than straying more skillpoints that STILL don't cut down to the real issues. I'm amazed how that was even manageable.
2. You mean, as EVERYTHING should be like in the game? I'm really getting tired of everything needing to be youtubed or wiki'd by new players and how knowledge is simply hidden until you come to an essay that explains it to you.
Do you remember how the tutorials worked once? Do you remember how there once was an explanation for turret tracking and missile mechanics?
Please, get all that. into. the. game. already.
I know, I'm sorry, totally wrong thread. But it is just sad to see how CCP wastes away the game by not filling it with information and relies on a playerbase that slaves away for them to fix all the holes :c

Bottom line:
before you haven't fixed the riddled wreck called "NPE" and made it whole again, you should not even remotely think about shipping this feature.

I think this is a terrible idea for Eve, but I love it for personal reasons.

It's a terrible idea because it destroys the characters having history angle - it's part of what makes Eve, Eve.

It's also a terrible idea because the same idiots who are telling newbies to min-max skill train will tell them how they have to Transneural Skill Packet themselves to 5M, maybe 10M, and make Eve more of a chore than it already is.

I love it for personal reasons because I have more than one character which is way over 100M SP, and I'd love to max out their train and sell that for ISK, instead of training just useless stuff.

Implemented correctly, this could lead to higher skill point characters being more valuable and retaining more of their worth.

Some quick envelope math suggests anything more than 2 of these siphons being able to be created per PLEX equivalent drags everything in the other direction--it devalues subscriptions and skill points obtained over time. So it really should only be one or two of the siphons and then the added costs of the skills from a character. I suggest only 1 per PLEX to be safe.

Also how are skill training multipliers handled?

Can we get an idea of what implementation ratios you are looking at?

Also CCP may want to describe what it would cost (notionally) to make a 80 M skill point character using these point buys as compared to someone paying full freight over time on a subscription.

I think if we see anything over two of these skill point siphons per PLEX equivalent, then we are definitely seeing a pay to win model.

If it is two, or better yet, one... then I think it actually may be in the players favor to encourage this and cull alts and skill points from the overall herd.

FML you guys really didn't learn from the monocle fiasco did you?

Just straight up no.

The most I would even consider is some way to rename and possibly re-map skill points, but buying skill points?!?!

It would make eve one step away from being free to play and full micro transactions, and we all know that's the final nail in any mmo's coffin.

******* fire whoever came up with this idea......seriously.

Thanks ... but no thanks.

Don't really have a dog in this race, but I'd much prefer some seksi skins for my Ishkur. Black and red pls. kthxbye.