They have kinda responded to this I guess by lowering the costs of clones on Sisi.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=235781

I posted about it in there. It's about 30% decrease in all medical clone costs.

Clone costs are actually too low. They encourage the meaningless lolcruiser fleets where players get to be mediocre and irrelevant, but pretend that it's OK because they tell themselves "I'm having fun". The people they kill lose nothing, they lose nothing, nothing changes in the game -- totally pointless. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay you can go play call of duty and not have to put up with clone costs at all. EVE should be about consequences, and the idea that you can go and die and suffer none is out of line.

To the OP, you have many options:
1) Stop being poor
2) Sell your character and buy one with fewer skillpoints, and have plenty of money to play with
3) Buy the highest quality clone you can afford, and lose skillpoints until you reach its limits
4) Quit the game

Option 2 is only a temporary fix, because the skillpoints of your new character will go up and you are apparently incapable of making ISK despite it being thrown at your feet at every opportunity.

Options 1, 3 and 4 are long term solutions and are preferable.

Who said anything about grinding missions in highsec? Why would you only use bigger ships once in a blue moon?

Wearing expensive implants is a choice. A decision that carries benefits and liabilities.

Skilling up a PvP character to a point that is difficult to pay for is a choice. A decision that has benefits and liabilities.

If your clones are too expensive then just use the free alpha clone for a while, you will save billions.

I think clone costs scale pretty well. As your SP increases, it should get easier for you to make money.

By the time you hit 100 mil SP, you should have more than enough money to pod yourself several times a day for a year.

For a while I thought that you were an alt of someone who is metagaming this issue. Now I just think that you don't understand.

"Eve pvp will die and no one will dare to fight anymore if clones remain expensive. Subscribers will be lost and the servers will close! oh noes!!!"

I have made many mistakes while playing Eve, and lost a lot of ISK because of them. I have played very conservatively and lost a lot of ISK because of that. Those choices all have benefits and liabilities.

The game is as advertised, to come here whining about how unfair and difficult it is after playing for 100million skill points is just bizarre. What game did you think that you were playing?

Isn't this one of the few things in EVE that actually makes money vanish, I think we need more things like that, I hope they don't make it so that one day players can produce and sell clones, otherwise we are just printing money forever from rat bounties

For making a choice?

People being less afraid of PVP will mean that people die more which will mean that more ships and implants are sold which will mean more market taxes which will be even more than clones!!!!!! Or something like that.

-Liang

A player choose to skill up a single toon to 200M points. No one forces them to.

You do know CCP isn't a player?

Why choose to put a 200M skill point toon into a Frigate? Why are players using such toons in combat... they want the advantage.

Then don't use it.

If you have trained up a 200M skill point character and then want to use them in a frigate... you have made a poor choice.

You have three toons for each account. I understand player want all of the advantages that come with a 200M skill point toon, but that is a choice.

There are consequecies to that choice.in EvE

First, your never offered proof why they shouldn't... other than it cost you ISK

Mining is not an isk faucet.

Then don't use it. Train up another toon problem solved. Or choose not to. Player choice.

High clone costs are detrimental to high SP characters. Those characters have very substantial advantages. The cost of clones dampens those advantages, in effect limiting the difference between old and new players.

To remove them would further separate old and new characters/alliances, and exacerbate the aforementioned issues of mudflation and creep. It would be like giving all players a 20% bonus to their current SP, pushing the highest skilled characters even further ahead.

There will come a point at which the newest players have no way to effect the older players, and at that point you are not playing on a single shard, rather 2 or 3 shards that are on the same server.

You are not barred... it just costs you.

Options and wealth.

An alpha clone character could win a 1 v 1 vs an Omicron clone, but the Omicron wont worry much about the loss. We should all be scared of one another. Once the outcome is certain then the mystery is gone.

Your 500,000 skill point toon will not have the skills as your 20M skill point toon does, but the cost of dying will be higher. You risk more, but you should do better in combat (reward).

Are you saying it is not fair?

there is one "why" you are asking for: CONSEQUENCES

1) (similar to new ship cost) it makes you TRY to safe your ass when in trouble instead of "f... it, i have another clone". In other games respawning makes you wait some time/until round finished. In Eve Online - it's ISK factor.
2) SP collecting. This is just another factor you HAVE to have in mind when your game is "COLLECT AS MANY SP AS I CAN". Many people say they WILL do PvP when "they have enough SP". Well, they can wait but then they WILL meet medical clone cost. At this point we have new excuse "the only thing why i don't do PvP"

i really think it's obvious

You can't seriously come and complain about 50 million ISK clone costs and then brag about how you PvP in a billion ISK implant set.

It only looks that way because you are tired and probably a little buzzed. After you sleep a bit and get back into Eve the cold hard reality of your poorly built combat character and the consequences of that build will still be there.

This thread will end like all the others before it; with cries of 'thats not fair!" and "its bad for Eve!" and "I didn't want to play your stupid game anyway!"

I have said all along that you do not understand the issue. It doesn't surprise me that you personally are not affected by it.

Well.... this is actually a good point. If you have an expensive clone then you might not want to always PVP with it. Lots of fleet fights are so big that the FC doesn't even know everyone in their fleet, let alone how many skill points they have or which implants or how much money they have in their wallets.

Saving an individual's expensive clone just might not be the biggest goal of that fleet. In fact, depending on orders, winning the fight might not even be the biggest goal of that fleet.

Quite honestly, there really is no reason why you cant make a sufficient amount of ISK in game to cover these expenses. You have the skill points so use them! There are plenty of money making opportunities in game from lvl4s and 5s to incursions and even scamming ^.^ The point here is that I was a music major in college full time. Which meant I spent 8am-5pm in class, 6-9pm practicing and the rest of the night was homework...yet I still found time to play the game enough to make money, keeping in mind my toon is only 41 mil SP. If I had the SP you do hell i could make loads more.

I was a music major in college full time.

Character development is a long term game that is part of Eve. Some people choose train everything on one character. That has great benefits in terms of versatility, logistics, and time spent moving between characters. The only drawback that style has is really clone costs.

Other people have played the game for years and used all three characters on their accounts. They had to train basic skills on all three chars, and have a much trickier logistics problem to deal with. The benefit to this type of account is that you can keep your combat characters in hot spots and leave the farmers in their mines or fields or whatever.

Both strategies are good, they each have advantages and disadvantages. I think option #1 is a bit more popular because it is simpler and the main drawback is clone cost. Which has been significantly reduced over the years by inflation. In fact I wonder if the rate of inflation was accounted for when they choose a slightly accelerating curve for those costs.

At any rate if the clone cost drawback is removed then the game has been simplified. Another option for strategy and implementation has been lost. I like the complicated long game, it is part of what makes Eve interesting.

And for people like myself who maintain separate chars and come to these threads to enjoy the tears it would be very unfair if clone costs were reduced. I might have to stop playing Eve and go to highsec and cancl my alt subs, yeah I would throw a batshit crazy hissy fit and invite all the other people who were in the same boat, we would whine and cry and complain until we got something that we want.

Or maybe not. I guess I would just keep playing.

well lets be rational , if you been playing for many years and reached ter100 mil sp long time ago and you still can not afford the clone upgrade costs , you must have done something wrong

Skill up a small ship pilot to 30 million points and leave him there. He will always be there sitting in a hanger in the right ship ready to go. Its not that complicated.

The arguments to do away with clone costs all come down to "Its irritating switching chars and I don't want to retrain core and I don't like it."

I personally don't actually like grinding ISK, I'm not asking that ISK be removed as a game dynamic. Its part of the game and the "work" part of getting ISK is part of what makes combat exciting and fun. To diminish the potential for loss in any way would change Eve. Perhaps my hands wouldn't shake and I wouldn't experience the great feelings of victory or success if it is made easier.

Maintaining the pain of loss in a game is perhaps CCP's greatest achievement. I like playing the game their way. Making combat cheaper so that there is more of it would make the experience of Eve combat cheaper. No reason for that.

Seems to me that being able to fly 4 races is like having more options than someone who can only fly 1 race.

I don't know how you can have such strong feelings about clone costs. There's a balance... I mean yah it's inconvenient for those w/ a fair amount of SP, but it's not a deal breaker at this point in the game. The flip side is that clone costs are a big ISK sink (I think it's big... or it should be...). Do you really want to remove or nerf a sink? We need more ISK sinks not fewer.

(1) Sure, why not? If you can find away to do that according to the Eve universe. I doubt you can that and you're probably only trolling, but go ahead.

(2) I see that you want to make the game easier and, in my opinion, less appealing by making everything easier to come by. By your standards I suppose we should just remove clone costs all together to make it even simpler to pvp. And then what?

(3) NPC barrier to entry. Complete BS. You could say that about all ships, modules and ammo too....and how about the skill books you need to use the stuff....

You speak like a consumer who demands satisfaction because you paid for a product and you are entitled to it. This mindset leads to overconsumption as people cannot ever be satisfied by passive entertainment, they continually consume in order to sate the hunger.

Try to view Eve as a great experiment, a journey, that we all have the privilege of taking together. revel in that, and soak up the possibilities that it can realize and present. You will be thinner but not so hungry perhaps.

For a while I thought that you were an alt of someone who is metagaming this issue. Now I just think that you don't understand.

"Eve pvp will die and no one will dare to fight anymore if clones remain expensive. Subscribers will be lost and the servers will close! oh noes!!!"

I have made many mistakes while playing Eve, and lost a lot of ISK because of them. I have played very conservatively and lost a lot of ISK because of that. Those choices all have benefits and liabilities.

The game is as advertised, to come here whining about how unfair and difficult it is after playing for 100million skill points is just bizarre. What game did you think that you were playing?

I am not sure clone costs do 'balance' PvP in any meaningful way but, if they do... a 65M skill pinot has the same advantage a 200M skill pilot does. Why are their clone costs different?

older players make more money so the cost's of theyre living/playing/dieing should be higher .

And highSP chars already have options for small ship PvP; go fight in lowsec or wardec someone and roam highsec. Theres no bubbles so really you should not be loosing many pods.

Resource management is a great part of Eve, it gives meaning to combat and allows a wider range of gamer to interact. FPS console games do a much better job of presenting a straight up brawl. It seems like the players who want to see clone costs reduced would like to see more of that type of gaming in Eve.

His choice, but if has 200M skill points, knows the cost of clones, but PvPs anyway and gets podded. Then complains...

That is no different than a miner taking out a retriever untanked and losing, then complaining.

You know the game mechanics... what did you think was going to happen?

I am saying it is a choice... a player choice. You may not like it, but it is the choice CCP has given you.

Look at this way. How many players on this thread and the other one have said they do not PvP because they have put all of their SP in one toon? They made that choice. They could have put toon into a T1 frigate alt, but they didn't... so now they have locked themselves out of part of the game.

Which is more viable under the present game mechanics if you want to PvP in a T1 frigate... put everything in one toon and not PvP or put some in an alt and PvP?

I'm starting to think he's just having a bit of fun trolling.

Could you please answer this question. I know we don't share the same view about this game but I would really like to know how you feel about it.

I WANT PEOPLE TO NOT UNDOCK IN A NEW SHIP BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD A NEW SHIP OR POD.

Undocking is not an optimal outcome for a small game like Faction Warfare or the various Eve tournaments. But in the greater game it means that you have broken your opponent, which is one of the finest victories in Eve.

*Fear not, they usually recover.