Very happy about this.

Can't wait to see if it has an outward effect on people's attitude/willingness to pvp more often.

I'm with you. We talked about it a lot here, and we all would rather make this system better than strip it out completely. I know this is a careful first step, but trust me, we want to do more with it and this is a way for us to act in a more informed way when we are able to more, and in the mean time it eases the pain a bit for you guys.

Something CCP is becoming more serious about (with Fozzie as one of the major champions) is making 'good' changes NOW even if there's some 'perfect' solution somewhere down the line that might take quite awhile to actually happen.

[Proposal] Bubbles don't affect clones.

Discuss.

I`m sad when i see this type of forums around EVE .. ppl crying about clone price as they get more skill points . Having over 100mil Sp and go around in frigs that cost 1 mill.. how funny .. if your so keen on flying those rifters you should just play on 14 days trial , i bet that would shut you up ..
EVE is harsh and we like it like that , don`t make EVE go same direction as WoW ..

I'll be contrarian voice here and say I don't think clone cost reduction is a good idea.

Fundamental principle of EvE design is that defeat matters, this is what makes it distinct among MMO on the market. If one loses as ship, that ship is gone for good, and all the time spent to acquire that ship is waisted. This is what gives meaning and significance EvE pvp.

Price we pay when we get poded is just an extension of that principle, and removing or even reducing that price establishes dangerous precedent as it is contrary to before mentioned design principle.

Also escalating price of clone with increasing clone XP can also be viewed as extension of another eve game balance principle, that small improvement in power come with disproportionally large increase in cost. This is why BC will cost 5 to 10 times price of cruiser despite providing much smaller increase in combat utility. Same is the reason why Jaguar or Wolf cost 50 times more then Rifer. So by extension it is only right and proper that more powerful clones (with more XP) will cost drastically more then less powerful clones (those of n00bs with less XP).

I would warn CCP designers to be wary of changes that would diminish impact of loss, on any level , being it losing space, losing ship or losing clone.

That said there are some things that could be improved when it comes to game clone mechanics. I think some boring and tedious parts of manipulating them should be automatised. For example when I want to plug an implant why do I have to go through ritual of pausing skill learning, plugging whatever I want to plugin, then restarting skill queue? When I get podded why do I have to manually update my clone, can't that be done automatically with normal ISK cost being detracted form my wallet? When I clone jump why do I also have to do boring ritual of going to pod, pausing skill queue, jumping, restarting skill queue and then opening again munch of my station interface windows because for some stupid reason they close down when I clonejump?

So yes there are improvements to be made with clone mechanics, but those are not on the line of making combat defeat and loss of pod less sigificant events. Keep it real!

you have 140 m sp clone you should pay more than the newbie with 5m sp's clone. I like the suggestion of the guy who proposed that the clone is a monthly subscription thing. Pay 1isk per 1 SP and die all you want for a month. I.e. that 140m sp char? Pay 140m subscription to the clone facility and die as much as you want. Pay 300 mil for 3 months, 550 for 6 months , i.e. subscription gets cheaper

while it makes completly sense to reduce or even remove clone costs, there is one thing you should keep in mind.

without any clone cost, what keeps me from instantly porting a 200 man fleet across eve without any time or isk cost?

oh in venal is a tower under atack, everyone pod express yourself to our venal office, take fleet doctrin x ships and go. and after that is done we wanted to finish that sov fight in delve. everyone podexpress to our corp office in 319 and pick the ships you have there.
oh and after that we podexpress to pure blind and harass goons a bit. and that all within 1 hour.

i thought everyone in the csm/ccp and most of the players agreed that force projection and risk free instant travel (jumpbridges, titan bridges, jumpfreighter, or podexpress for no cost) is the root of all 0.0 problems.

especially pilots and groups of pilots with advanced skillpoints and organisation would gain even more power from free podexpress.