A strange topic title and I've rapidly changed my opinions on these things over the past few years, but i'll explain where i'm coming from.

I have a good friend who loves the idea of Eve, has played it and is intelligent enough to grasp the concepts of it and work within the structures it has in place. He see's Fleet fights on Youtube and reports of massive scams and schemes and he loves it. He's not alone, I have multiple friends who are like this. The one i am talking about in particular has Subbed a few times and every time after a month or 2 has come back with the same feedback: It takes too long to get into properly fitted ships.

I used to ignore this, but it's becoming unavoidable - The new player-> veteran gulf is big and boosts for new players only goes so far. So my question is this:

I can give you one good reason why a Pay 2 Win Eve will never work.

A newbie with a 30 million SP character and the ships to go with them is still a newbie.

@Ralph King-Griffin gief Indy gif.. MINE.

OP needs his assets removed by his CEO, awoxed, kicked from his corp, have all his alts outed, have his JC destroyed and camped into a station without a medical till he's down to 900k SP.

We as a community need to make this happen, for the betterment of the game.

Errr pay to win in eve...

Buy plex
Sell plex for isk
buy character on bazaar

Is this not basically p2w?

Ooofft, lots of hate, personal attacks, extreme edge case scenarios etc. - I knew this would be a hot topic but I didn't expect it to take off quite so quickly.

I'm also pleasantly surprised that amidst the anger and bile most people where inherently agreeing with the base concept of why this idea isn't game breaking:

Buying SP doesn't make you a better pilot. It doesn't give you any experience in HOW to play eve or how to be successful. Players with years of experience can use trial accounts to get good kills in PVP. This is an excellent example of how experience trumps skill points in almost every situation - further developing the notion that buying SP would not give a player any real advantage due to a fundamental experience gap.

Even more accurately, having SP to spend doesn't mean they will even spend it on the 'right' things - but they will get what they want and if this brings them enjoyment then all power to them.

However - and here is the kicker: Having the SP to fly effective ships (especially during a meta switch e.g. when HML's where nerfed or when Marauders where buffed) can open up opportunities for players to GET experience. Being able to fly a fleet-doctrine ship can take weeks/months for players who start with a deficit. Equally someone who very quickly nails PVE and enjoys it (missions/incursions/explo-sites) and makes good money from it is stopped from moving into the next level because a larger ship requires an arbitrary amount of time to achieve the required 'break points' of DPS/Tank etc. that the more advances challenges require.

SP <> Skill. That applies to people who are 1 week old and people who are 10 years into the game. Just because you have 200M SP I wont think you're a good pilot. I'll just this you auto-renew a subscription.

Anyway - bring on the flames. It seems people get really but-hurt over the prospect of easily to kill newbies in shiny ships...

1) Total agree - however support skills that a non-ship-specific make a big difference.
2) Agree'd. but there isn't just 1 5% skill - there are a few dousen - especially in frigates. A small ammount of extra fitting, shield, hull etc. can all add up to a BIG advantage.
3) Real alliances run SRP's to replace expensive, high SP ships - it is frowned upon or outright not acceptable to bring something along the lines of what your talking about. Also: What if the pilot doesn't want to be a 'Space Healer'? What if they don't want to be the 'Support who wards'?
4) What you fly should be based on what you can afford - increasing your SP results in no ISK gain if you don't know HOW to earn money efficiently - that wouldn't change.

Also "Pay 2 Win" was an ironic statement: Because older players have paid for years and have a multitude of advantages that a new player doesn't have even if they had identical SP. It's actually closer to "Pay to catch up"

Any form of p2w boosting will be heavily abused by older players.

I'm a very new player (approx. 6 weeks) and cannot see the point of being able to just jump through all of the initial stuff (which I am of course, currently going through).

1) If you're serious about a game like EVE, you'll actually enjoy the learning and discovery phase, whilst flying the more basic ships / using basic equipment

2) Even if someone handed me infinite ISK / skills / ships, I wouldn't really have a clue what to do with them / it, and would most likely get bashed by anyone with more experience, which personally i believe would lead to even more frustration and confusion than a new player currently experiences, therefore leading to more quitting... "Hey I've paid my way to getting all this stuff, why am I not suddenly really epic at the game??!?! THIS SUCKS, I QUIT!!"

3) Like anything in life, you don't get full appreciation or enjoyment from it, unless you have put in the necessary effort to then reap the rewards

I don't care what game it is - Tetris, Sonic, Goldeneye, Sims, WoW, or EVE, you CANNOT run before you can walk, and cannot buy/cheat your way to being good at it. As I've read A LOT since being a member, the most valuable asset in EVE is not skills, equipment, or even ISK... It is the commodity of time. Without a lot of that invested, you're going to be the loser.

Just my two pennies worth, but I think I'm right

Of course - Eve requires a particular Mind Set to attract people. the ability to accelerate skill training would not change this.

More to the point, people are getting a little derailed: I'm highlighting that right clicking an object, choosing "train skill" and then waiting and fixed amount of time is unrewarding game-play. Taking part in a variety of activities without fear of 'loosing time' however seems to make more sense.

Eve has a lot of flavour - it can take months to reach an SP break-point to be effective at a lot of these things (e.g. what if you DONT want to PVP in a frig?). In that time I wouldn't blame some people for becoming disenfranchised with the skill system despite the game play.

The other thing to consider here is how broken this would be for experienced players' alts. Someone who knows a lot about making isk in the game could level a sidekick account super efficiently to make a ton of isk for not a lot of work. It's the same concept that prevents players from training industrial ships on a trial account, for example. I also think that pay to win is a slippery slope that leads to player laziness, especially in a player driven economy like eve that is based on hard work.

Wut? I have around 7m SP on this char (1 of 2 combat pilots), friggen blast to play. Properly fit frig T2 loadouts where applicable. Thinking about dropping in another month of training for a maticore, luv the ship with my other pilot. You're friend? should stick to WoW perhaps. That's it right? or some other clone of it. He want's quick level cap, be at the pinnacle of pwnrship. Doesn't exist here... so he is lost in trying to play this game as he would WoW.

As bafoon as that last paragraph in the OP sounds, I have a worried feeling CCP will not be shooting such proposal down. Reminds me of how Planetside 2 handles its access to competitive gear.

I see no issues with this... I mean we do already have the character bazaar so why not allow people to pay to boost their own created characters?

I would add the following terms though
-They are done as sp boosts and not flat amounts of sp. Something along the lines of 2x or 3x sp for 30 days
-They are cash only purchases to prevent plex prices from going through the roof

Edit: better yet allow 2x or 3x boosts to be purchased as sellable licenses for $5 more the same as plex.

Again, please explain what you consider "winning" in EvE

Winning is what ever you make it to be in eve. Finally flying that new shiny ship, getting those sweet sweet killmails, owning your own piece of space, collecting billions of isk in day trading among thousands more.

This is proposed as a tool to help those who want it. If you are already winning eve your way then don't use it but i don't see why it matters if other choose to use and pay for it. It's not like it's a proposal for over night cap pilots.

If sp is so insignificant why do you all care so much about the thought of someone catching up to your 5+ year old character?

You already can, there are these nice things called implants. You can take the isk you would of used for a plex and buy a set of +5's. Then you will train WAY faster then i will, even though i have been here for 10 years, i die WAY too much for implants. So you already have a 'sp boost'

Why should you be rewarded for coming to a 10 year game now, when I have been here since the nearly the beginning? This would break game mechanics and you would see a ton of vets quit over this.

And if they open it up to everyone, then you would STILL never catch up. Because again, as a 10 year vet, i know pretty much this game backwards and farwards, and i can easily make more money then you, so i could always just keep getting plex and keep boosting. So you would STILL get no advantage, thus making this idea pointless.

There are none.

Want to discuss it on voice?

ITT: Kneejerk reactionists who haven't thought it through.

Shame really. EVE was supposed to have an intelligent community.

lol, I'd almost pay a plex to see that.

Basically what you're dealing with is someone who is so dishonest that they believe their own lies lol. No amount of reason is going to break through that wall.

So much so that these types won't understand that what they think is such a great idea for new players (notice the OP stating the the "new player-veteran gap" is a motivation for this idea) is actually only a great idea for older players who (unlike new players) can throw in game isk generated PLEXes at their problems. Malcanis' law strikes again.

Makes no difference between vets and noobs.

Both could use it.

You seem to be under the impression I am concerned with new players catching up to Vets.
I am not. That was the other guy.

At 50-75% boost, it would still take 7years and cost MUCH more for the new player to match a 10yr Vet.
And at the same time, the Vet can be using the same boost option to get even further in his training.

The change wouldn't make any difference, for an advanced player could use the boost just as effectively as a new player can.
Ergo: no problems.

Sorry on my iphone makes punctuation and proof reading pretty bad.

How is usd -> plex -> isk not rmt? Real money to in game item.

Regardless of this reimbursing someone for time played or who gets the better deal or it was already there nonsense logic says it's usd for in game items.

Here is an example of pay to win. My win is to be able to plex my account each month by running level 4s;
With pay to win
Spend $200 on plex and sell them for 7bil. Go to character bazaar, buy tengu pilot, log in, buy a tengu, win game

Alternative w/o paying
Spend the next 8 months properly skilling to fly and fit a tengu while grinding l3s to earn enough isk to pay for it once skills are completed. Win game

Option A takes months less time due to external money. That is the very definition of pay to win and very possible and accepted in eve.

So pay to win is not a concern since it's already in the game.

Purchasing an item that doesn't exist in game with real money is the issue here. As i stated sp = time + usd if it was just cash we would not be having this debate. On top of paying cash for your sub you need to wait time to earn the sp so it is a combo of the two. Ccp has made several changes in skills and training times of skills so it's not like we are setting new ground here to ask for a way to pay to lower the time and offset it with more cash.

Let me explain where something like this would be useful to a new player
When i first started i signed up via the buddy program and was given 500m as a thank you. I spent the first 2 months afk waiting to be able to fly something capable of doing an l4 since the profits from l1, 2, 3 were just so laughable compared to what i already had in the bank. I would have gladly paid $30 at that point to be able to play weeks sooner.