EVE General Discussion

A rich brat could burn PLEX on the market for ISK, buy pre-trained titan pilots and titans with said ISK and achieve the exact same result before except probably cheaper since no SP were sunk in the diminushing return system of SP injector use.

Unless you were also against the bazaar, you have no point to stand on against SP injectors.

I actually agree with many of your points, especially some of the ones about shiny things as opposed to fixing issues.
The only thing i can say to you is to remind you of something that's been said time and time again, "there is no substitute for "time" in EvE".

o/
Celly

+1 Not only veterans.

Sure, new player may need a leg up to start being effective in their first three months.
Fine. Speed up their SP rate until they hit 5M SP.

Selling a by-pass with skill injectors is just bloody stupid.

• Not because newbies will fast track but because veterans will fast track multiple accounts.

Try and visualise the potential damage someone who already has 24 accounts and trillions of ISK can do by fleshing out their alts to have perfect skills for given purposes.
Now compound that by having an alliance of players like that with alts planted into other alliances.

What could I do with tens of accounts fleshed out to really mess with players?
Well looking at my current client open, I would have 25 of them all actively running before it approaches 100% CPU.

So hey, that could be ((1x T3 hot dropper + (1x HIC logged off in system) per system) x12 systems) +1x Black Ops Battleship.

Now think if a bunch of those multi-box miner who build Supers and Titans decided to train that stuff for a laugh.
Think of the plague, the tears. No limitations on time, nothing pulling them to train in different directions away from a setup like that.
Just one day on a whim, "You know, I could screw with some nerds"

That limitation also exist for anyone buying SP. He's only really buying options at some point because just like you, his rifter is not getting any better even if he bought alliance management V.

Not exactly convinced by either pilot. But hey, you also prove one of my points as they 'only' have 40 and 50m sp :)

Also, you're looking at it the wrong way around - The comparison is made in buying them, not selling them. Even then, the injectors are easier to sell since they give a flat, customizable 500k rather than possibly skillpoints you don't need, even if there's diminishing returns on it - The buyer's don't care. Pedantics aside, the bazaar is still the lesser evil by far.

A few points from a relatively new player on this rather sensitive subject:

1. I've used SP injectors to touch up a few skills on one of my characters. I'm not Rolling in money, so it was a few Isk savings worth 4 injectors without going for a remap. It was useful for the said character as I didn't have to wait until finishing the current skill plan. All in all, it bumped the character's overall skill points by roughly 4% for the price of 2 plexes. The character in question had been brought off the market for roughly 5B isk.

2. I don't buy the pay2win argument. I really can't think of a way to win Eve. Okay, I don't really play Eve as it is supposed to be played for a variety of reasons. I just do my little thing. It is fun, amusing, sometimes exciting. But I have fun playing eve (pretty much the only game I ever play). But I would imagine the same remains true for people who do play Eve. There are a lot of things to do and a lot of ways to have fun. The perfect sandbox, in my opinion.

On the other hand:

1. While it may not be pay to win, it is certainly hurting those who can't pay. The drop in SOE LP is a case in point and I can fully understand that if someone had trained a char for 9-10 months to be able to do those missions and earn a bit of isk, this flux has hurt his/her earning potential/motivation because suddenly, someone who has more RL money can do the same missions without waiting 8-9 months, and cause a massive drop in his earnings.

2. A huge part of eve - waiting for your skills to train, Learning to do other things in the meantime, finding different ways to have fun - has disappeared.

3. If the idea was to aid the development of newer players - I think it has fallen flat upon its head. The only people who actually benefit are either eve-billionaires, massive alliances, or people with loads of RL money (and even the latter, I'd wager very few actual new players will spend vast sums of money within their first few months without first testing the game to see whether or not they enjoy it. As a new player, hunting those clone soldiers in a destroyer while living in low-sec, trying to make a bit of money to buy a new ship - you don't really make enough isk to consider spending 600+M on 500 000 extra SP. While having found what I like in Eve, I don't really mind if a new character has suddenly 130M SP, if I was joining the game now, I'd probably stay far, far away from it simply because it would be utterly demotivating as a new player to compete in an environment where it seems that you don't stand a chance unless you spend a small fortune.

Personally, I really hope CCP revisits this idea of skill injectors. The basis is decent enough - a few extra skillpoints/skill remapping for money. But a carte blanche is not a very good idea. A limit on monthly skill points purchased/added would have been a much better idea. (I think a char can train close to 2M SP/month - so a limit of 1M SP/month purchased should have been a maximum).

Injectors are a way to use real money in order to progress your own character with precisely the skills you want - a character with a name, race and gender which you chose and sculpted yourself at the moment of creation. This is not analogous to the bazaar.

I don't mind the injectors, but stop comparing the use of them to buying characters from the bazaar.

They cost way more in game then I thought they would on the game market anyway. There's no way a newer player could afford them through in game means. Wich means they would either have to buy plex or aurum to get them. On top of that, low SP players are really the only ones that benefit from it (players wth the SP I have, the drawbacks are so drastic its not worth the cost), so its abviousley a money grab and not intended to be a helpfull game mechanic.

This is my biggest problem with them. If the extractors where manufactured by players (BPO's seeded in the market somehow) and the market price was dictated solely by the market instead of how much isk they are worth based on how much the arum cost to get them, I wouldnt be so put off by them. Sure this would make the use of them more rampant because they would be cheaper, but it would be a pure game mechanic and not a money grab.

The fact they can only be brought into existence by buying aurum means that CCP cares more about making RW money off it then it benefiting the game itself. This is a contrast of interest as far as the stability of the game world is concerned. If this pattern keeps up to a point that it applies to other things that directly effect the game (and there is a pattern with aurum) it will eventually cause a rift and destroy the game. The DEVS that where not around at the start of the game and dont understand the cult following that keeps this game alive could easily ruin it with this type of stuff. I actually find it insulting when we are told its for the benefit of the game when the real purpose is as black and white as a checkbook.

You argue if injectors alone hurt the game all you want, thats not really the point. Its the reason why they exist that is the problem.

As for the references to the BAZZAR. The people that say they are the same must drink too much, and we all know how much EVE players drink. If someone buys a character, nothing is added or removed from the game. That player and its assets still exist like it always has. Its the equivalent of a pilot suffering mass amnesia, forgetting a crap load of stuff and being a different person overall. It is also restrictive. Being able to level a new character (although only rich credit card silver soon babies will be able to afford it) means that there are more people fighting over the same resources with the ability to do so. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, but the two are not the same at all.

Some of the latest changes make me fear for the future of EVE. The map and camera not withstanding.

You do know CCP is a company and that they exist to make money right?