Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First of all, I'll start by saying that I think the game would be more fun if NO ONE could EVER use real money to buy an advantage. Well for lots of reasons, that ship has sailed. Given that you can already buy characters, and buy ISK, I don't think that this proposal is out of line. I think that is is balanced, requires player earned content, and may even have some nice side effects for us all.


Proposal.

Way to Buy Skill Points with In Game Items . . .

Available from LP store as "Learning Certificates" (or whatever name you like) that can be bought and sold on the market.

They can be "used" to give the character X amount of skill points to a pool that can be applied to any skill (just like the refunded skill points were).

Cost . . .
These would require Tags, ISK, LP . . .
100 Tags of a particular type , ISK = (the NPC price of those 100 tags), LP = ISK/500. The SP from those would be 2x the LP cost
Numbers of course may require tweaking,
For example More ISK, less tags will create a larger ISK sink and raise tag prices less


Example 1. "Federation Navy Midshipman Insignia I" has an NPC Buy Price of 4500 ISK.

So in the Caldari LP Store you would have the option to purchase an 1800 SP certificate that cost
100 Federation Navy Midshipman Insignia I, 450,000 ISK, 900LP

Example 2. "Republic Fleet Commander Insignia II" has an NPC Buy Price of 750,000 ISK
So the Amarr LP store would have the option to purchase 300,000 SP certificate would cost
100 Republic Fleet Commander Insignia II, 75 Million ISK, 150,000 LP

Comparison to 1 PLEX.
1 PLEX ~ 425 Million ~ 1.28 Million SP (at attribute levels of 20)
So with a plex (and waiting a month)
Each SP ~ 330 ISK


When Buying SP from above (assume LP cost 500 ISK and tags can be bought for NPC buy price)
Each SP ~ 750 ISK
So that one PLEX of ISK can be traded for 560,000 SP right now

Assuming that Tag Prices don't rise (they will), and that LP price floor stays around 500 ISK (it won't) it is still nowhere near ass efficient to buy SP with your plex ISK, than to just train your account.

But . . . You get the skills to use right now . . .
From the Character Bazaar you can buy high skilled characters for around 500 ISK/SP
This is still 50% more expensive than off the character Bazaar (but you don't have wasted skills so it probably evens out)

This will provide . . .
1) A Massive Massive Massive ISK Sink.
2) Something to do with all the "useless" tags (like the ones that aren't uses in the LP store right now)
3) More people in low sec to run L5s?
4) It is MUCH MUCH MUCH better than Plex for SP. This requires IN GAME CONTENT TO BE EARNED for each skill point that is given out.

Possible Results . . .
Plex prices fall as players convert real money into SP.
Tag values double, mission running competes with incursions.
Low Plex prices = less incentive to Bot as the value of ISK decreases compared dollars/Euro/...
L5 botting increases - pirates of the world rejoice.
CCP turns SP into $ (Plex -> ISK -> ISK Sink). We all win because of the ISK sink & CCP has more money to spend on making the game better (they won't but they could)
Dumb ass noobs start flying Capitals to run L5s - pirates of the world rejoice
The world ends because we can all buy SP (instead of just buying a char from the character bazaar)


Comment away about how much this idea sucks . . .

No.

LP can be hoarded, just like isk and plex. Your proposal is not pay to win. Your proposal is win for free by spamming agents.

At no point should we be allowed to convert rl moniez or any ingame item into skill points.

Play Eve for years like the rest of us to get anywhere meaningful, or go back to crackcraft.

WoW is that way ->

Hmm, I don't like this idea, too grindy. But I have a better idea instead that I think you'll like. How about we put some items in the LP store that won't give you instant SP but will enhance your training speed greatly. For example, maybe something that gives +5 points to any attribute of your choosing for the price of 65M isk and 65k LP. Additionally, you wouldn't be stuck with just one, you could buy one of these items for each of your five attributes. That would make a really sweet isk sink and do basically what you want but in a slower, long term manner rather than a small amount of instant SP.