If your math is correct than I really have nothing to complain about this change.

but I fail to see how it applies to a game where you should have fun.

4. Alt SP farms will likely not be a thing, except for people who don't understand basic economics. If I were to start a new account and train a character for 1 month with maxed out attributes I could get about 2.1 million SP. Given the current price of PLEX I'd have to be able to sell this alts SP for 583 ISK/SP just to be able to PLEX the account. And that is ignoring the cost of the extractor and the SP packet items.

I meant more in general than in this particular case. In gaming industry it's probably not a good idea leave your customers feeling disappointed where as on other areas of life it may be right thing to do.

The character bazaar does not let you bypass game mechanics; this idea does.

CCP introducing the first real p2w mechanic in EVE history and exposing themselves to greed accusations


How is this a smart move???

Yes it does, because again, we're talking raw SP. This creates a situation that is vastly different from how the bazaar works.

Yes, the SP have to be trained, but they can be trained and applied in parallel and without limitation to the pre-existing progression mechanics of the character. You bypass the mechanic that limit a single character to earn SP at 2700 SP/h. That character can now trivially acquire SP at two, three, ten times that speed if you're willing to pay for it. The parallelisation did not exist before, nor the direct effect on the pre-existing character.

Granted, trading entire skills bypasses the exact same mechanical limit, but it does so with strict limitations on applicability and parallelisation.

No, you could never do that. You could only ever accumulate SP on a character at the speed dictated by the character's attributes. With this change, no such limit exists.

By trading SP rather than skills, accumulation speed has no upper limit and only depends on your willingness to shell out cash, and thus you have a situation where you pay to bypass a mechanical limitation GÇö a limitation that is in place in full force in the bazaar (which is why the bazaar doesn't break things).

If this were true

The issue is that this is supposed to help new players and it will not.

For those reasons, weGÇÖve been wanting to take a look at improving the Bazaar for some time now. Recently, weGÇÖve seen new threads emerging where EVE players discuss options to help new players with progression. The combination of your threads and our Character Bazaar evaluation together were that extra kick in the pants to get us into gear.

Time.

The limitations on SP accumulation speed will remain for characters whose SP are being harvested. Extra SP will not be generated out of thin air and thus nothing is being broken.

would be bad for Eve's general health

SP sinks huh~~

Imagine if we had diminishing returns on isk transfers

If the idea that this is for new players, it really isn't.

Looking at the bazaar now and doing the math, the skill packets will be about 250M to 350M ISK each. Your avg newbro will need to be cash rich and committed to playing eve to spend RL cash to advance his/her char.

I doubt there will be many newbro's doing that.

This is for committed players (vets?) who want a new clean char but don't want to create a new account/sub and do it the "hard" way.

Aside from the ISK/$ cost, losing a character's history bothers me. Probably more than it should, but I like the intel I get from seeing the age of a char and its employment history even if there are a lot of assumptions I make from that data.

Woot... I'll be flying Titans in no time flat I just won't know how to properly. Now if only I can buy moon goo easily and have it delivered.

So what?

I fear what they suggest next if they manage to get skillpoints for cash through the door.

I have zero issues with making SPs easier to come by for new guys, but make it accessible to all not just cash rich older players and credit card happy new guys. All this will do (since supply will be limited and expensive) is setup another divide/barrier of entry between rich new guys and poor new guys where it just used to be young player vs old players.
There are so many better ways of getting *all* new players into the game quicker... this isn't one of them.

Logical deduction will tell you that this will clearly be affordable if this is meant to be designed to help new players.

GǪaside from the mechanic that determines how quickly a character can acquire skill points. This is a hard and fast mechanic that is currently impossible to bypass. I know you are smarter than this GÇö why are you so obstinate on not understanding the difference between what the bazaar does and what this proposal would offer?

There are no two ways about it: this idea lets you train skill many times faster than the mechanics for training skills allow. The character bazaar does not do this because it does not in any way alter what skills (much less how much SP) a character has. The reasons why the character bazaar does not bypass mechanics do not apply to this proposal because the two are nothing alike GÇö they trade completely different things between completely different parties.

I have already replied you on that one, yet you keep repeating it. Beside those phrases it is quite obvious that it is mainly aimed at new players, other way it would not need diminishing return mechanics. If it is aimed at everyone make 1mil sp 1 plex for everyone and simple as that. So do not try to twist it out.

Also, the main point of all you "supporters" is that it will help new players. While it wont.

Can you please answer on whole posts instead just taking some parts out of the context. Why is there diminishing return mechanism, aimed to give the most of the benefit to the new players (who are ready to spend additional cash) then?

So, YES it is aimed mainly at new players. And it fails on that.

I care that you are able to pay to bypass a core game mechanic.

So you just quoted the part where it says it favors new players and challenged me for stating the same with additional comment that it will not work. Thank you for making your own previous posts looking dump and finally taking away chances that anyone can give some seriousness to your posts. And of course thank you for such great meaningful contribution.

ROFL.

GǪexcept that no game mechanics are being bypassed by the bazaar.

Again, I know you are smarter than this, so just stop playing stupid.

WellGǪ unless you've used the character bazaar recently and Dave now has a new owner, in which case, LMAO at not understanding the service you just used.

You are confusing character and player.

Put another way: you say that the character bazaar can bypass the game mechanic that determines how quickly characters acquire skills. Ok, let's test that. I want to train Tippia at 5,000 SP/h (which the new scheme will let me do) rather than the ~2,600 she's currently stuck at. Could you please point me to the post or process in the bazaar that lets me do this.

Let me bold that once more for you. Beside the obvious mechanism which does it.

favors new players

or you need more?

favors new players
favors new players
favors new players

Please, either stop trolling or start to add some real contribution to the discussion. kktnxbye

This is amazing.

I don't know, perhaps he really is as stupid as he is displaying himself to be in this thread.

"supporters" have no counter arguments for those.

Aha so it is designed for those who it does not favor?

There are plenty of things to counter. When you see proposed ideas there are always arguments pro & cons. We lack those pro arguments here as " great innovation, way to go ccp" is not really an argument.

And when making such decisions beside pro & cons you need to take possible side effects in the consideration. And there are plenty in this case. Luckily, we can hope there are people smarter and more analytical than you working for CCP.

edit: It is new, they are changing the fundamentals of the game, causing inconsistency in it. I understand that you cannot comprehend why is that not good :)

I am starting to change my idea of supporting this or not.

As it seems, no one really cares how this affects new players or the overall perception of EVE.

If that is not really a concern for most people, I am starting to like the idea of basking in bought SP and Tony Stark style alt armies.

Think I will start to support this XD

Except that is not truth. Can you get 300mil sp char now? Is there any possibility to do so? NO.

Please do not go into how much it will cost to get it after the changes, it will be doable so fundamentals will be changed. And in that way the consistency and customer-service relationship.

And while you're there, show me where I can buy back T3 skills immediately after a welp.

Because that will be a thing for big alliance.

"Nice one guys, we actually beat the T3 blob, they're down for a few days to retrain, most likely"
>LOLISK and we're back.

GǪexcept for the fundamental fact that you can only acquire SP at a given maximum speed and that there is no way to inject a huge SP boost into a character. All you can do at the moment is continue to acquire SP at the same given maximum speed on yet another character GÇö one that offers no boost, or indeed any improvement whatsoever, to the character you already have.

Pretending that is is anything other than a means to bypass game mechanics for cash is nothing short of moronic.

If it were just a matter of adding some granularity to the character bazaar by allowing the trading of skills, you might have a point in it being a QoL upgrade (even though it suffers from many of the same problems), but they were far too lazy to do that, so instead we have this infinite mechanics-skipping abomination.

The eve fundamentals are lost this way.

Good thing that it wasn't used as an argument (counter or otherwise), then.


It will cause the fundamental problem that you are now able to skip game mechanics if you pay for it.

It is bad on a design level (since it's the antithesis of design GÇö it actually disrupts mechanics), on a balance level (because it can't be balanced since it relies on cost as a restriction), and on a conceptual level (it doesn't actually solve any of the problems it's supposed to solve). Hell, just for good measure, I'd throw in that it's bad on a morale level too: it absolutely reeks of desperate last-ditch cash grab to hope that a handful of whales will splurge on their newfound ability to not let something as silly as core game design sit in the way of their grand ideas.

There is the bandwagon effect for anything the becomes FotM but beside that, I also fail to see what is the real problem with SP being accumulated faster.

So when new hulls come out and the rich players can just auto-level them to IV/V - but poor people have to wait, you think that is healthy? I can't roll up to the bazaar and grab a decent pilot for a new hull they day they release. I can with this proposal.

I'm actually indifferent to the proposals as I'm kinda losing interest at the moment - but there's a lot of bullshit and ignored negative consequences going around.

It will cause the fundamental problem that you will be able to skip game mechanics if you pay for it.

No, currently EVERYONE has to wait.

The main issue is that you have to move the goalposts since you can't actually argue against the fundamental problem that this proposal creates.

You knowGǪ how it will cause the fundamental problem that you will be able to skip game mechanics if you pay for it. That is an issue in and of itself.

yet you avoided to reply on any of those...

except for the time when you moved them from the actual issue to a completely different one once you figured that you couldn't respond to the issue as stated.

If you do not have basic understanding you should avoid discussions then. Every single valid argument you have avoided to counter argument by stating "those are not real arguments"?

Well if they are so weak why not answer to the challenge and bury the challengers? Though I assume the real goal you are after is spam/troll so it is our mistake for even considering you for worthy participant in the discussion.

I hope you will have nothing against me quoting every post you made and doing the same to you.

Malcanis' Law is a real thing.

Haha that`s nonsense. You have no meaningful understanding how it really works. Do you have any argument for what you are saying?




See, I am already doing great in copying your way of posting :D

Haha, then why it is stated that it favours new players. How does it help everyone when it just rips of people above 80mil sp. If you want to boost everyone, make 1mil sp 1 plex for everyone. That is cold fair terms. Your arguments are invalid.

Then you aren't reading Tip's posts critically.

And then i challenge you to find 300mil sp char now and you cannot find it. Yet with this "feature" it will be doable. But then you skip to commenting that SP does not matter which is not related to original argument at all. And so you just keep taking one sentence out of context and keep changing subject every time you cannot come up with and argument for a challenge. Why are you surprised then, when i treat you as troll?

You have spammed this thread a lot, yet I do not think you made a single proper counter argument to solid arguments which are done here. SO enjoy your troll treatment.

try reading the devblog.

it clearly states it favours younger players.

except that the bazaar does not bypass any game mechanics. You cannot increase the SP on your character in bulk or make it acquire SP any faster through the use of the bazaar. All you can do is continue to acquire SP at the same maximum speed as everyone else on a character that has been built, still using that same maximum speed, by someone else. At no point in all of that are the mechanics that determine SP acquisition GÇö or indeed any mechancis GÇö bypassed, altered, or in any way tweaked.

"0 GÇô 5 million skillpoints = 500,000 unallocated skillpoints added
5 GÇô 50 million skillpoints = 400,000 unallocated skillpoints added
50 GÇô 80 million skillpoints = 200,000 unallocated skillpoints added
> 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added
As you can see, this design favors skill transfers for younger characters and makes them very inefficient for older characters. WeGÇÖve designed it this way so that we protect the prestige associated with long commitment to a single character."

Now younger characters does not necessarily always mean new players, but you have to pretty damned obtuse to not see it is at least biased towards benefiting new players, both in their mentioning of them and in the skill point distribution.

Again you are changing the subject. Why not answer my question? Ah because then you would have to admit you are wrong...

Game mechanics does not give you possibility to own 300 mils sp char at the moment. After this changes you will be able to have it ahead of the time regularly needed for it. It will cost but you will be able to have it. And that means that game mechanics will be changed.

But please, keep repeating it will not, and keep your argument lacking posting, I am actually enjoying how you make yourself look like a clown :D And hopefully CCP will read this topic and after they see what people who support this idea think and say they will find out how ******** it is :D

does it favour everyone?

Protect the prestige is not working, it is just more expensive to get it. You need to work on your comprehension skills.

bingo

read the devlog plz.

It states there it favours younger players. It is designed for everyone, but favours only younger players.

And again avoiding, my point owning 300mil sp (300mils is just example, can be 290 or 400)character proves exactly that game mechanics are altered. The thing you are failing to counter argument for last 30 spam posts you made :D

I am starting to feel like i am arguing a person with special needs and while it is quite easy to show how shallow your posts are it is not amusing to think that you really might be one :/

read the devblog please. It says it protects, but it does not really do it. So it is fail on their side and (oh shocker) on yours as well. For you i have no worries as i understand that you have comprehension problems, but ccp coming up with such ideas is what worries me.

oh really

so they state it favours younger players but it is not made for them and at the same time it protects older players but it does not do it for real. And you can lean on such statement to come up with something good? :D

Let`s say 400mil instead of 300mil.

Does such character exists with current game mechanics - no. If they implement this next year will it be possible to have it - yes. What means that something which should not be able to happen before 2020 will be able to happen in 2016.

If this is not proof of altering game mechanics then I do not know what else to draw you. Maybe to start from traffic lights and basic colors? :D

It matters of course. Because if it achieves it, CCP statement is faulty and incorrect. Which makes the whole story stupid (like it is not already) . And if we cannot be sure in CCP`s consistency of their game mechanics or their statements, it wont take much time before game dies.

it doesnt really matter, the point is that it protects prestige of high sp players (no matter how you call them) and it cannot do it. But again you try to twist it out :)

Thank you for your contribution on this. Because if CCP takes opinions here in consideration you will be the most responsible person it will not be implemented :)

It will obviously be doable, only question is if anyone wants to be #1 that badly.

I have already explained the importance of consistency in relations to your customers. Find a post and read it. Try to comprehend as well please :)

they are obviously as they are stating something which can be bypassed.

You might not think there is a prestige there, as Dr Caymus what he thinks and why did he put efforts to be top 1 all these years? And you cannot find such characters on bazaar.

You cannot buy more sp. I have 244mil and I cannot buy sp to become top 1. Until the new game mechanics change.

If i needed i could buy more different chars for different roles but I cannot increase SP on my main.

Beside making CCP statement void I am sure it will create unrest among players. As not having consistency and not beaing able to lean on something you planned to commit in a long term is not going to work. Meaning losing more players, meaning dead eve.

But oh, i already wrote about this like 50 pages ago and mentioned it like 10 times after it again, seems you are really failing on both reading & comprehension :/

It is not important at all are they high sp players or old players, both are referring to the same, yet you find a way to take it out of context and make it look like that is the whole point. Trolls used to be banned on these forums on pat, game aint going sh*t only ingame it seems :D

I'm sure someone probably already mentioned this but this is nothing short of RMT to skill up.

Basically, you get as many alts as your wallet allows. You start training them and every 5mil SP you strip their SP and inject into your main. You can basically have alt farms to win. With character bazaar or just training alts, you can gain an advantage but they're still stuck in their respective speeds, roles and skills. This is LITERALLY paying $ to accelerate skill training with no limit to it. The only limit is how much you're willing to spend to accelerate your skill training.

Because the game seemed to be consistent. So it looked like it was worth putting in effort. By changing that, CCP sends a message to the player base that when it comes to money there is no consistency. It`s all about the benjamins babe. Problem is that they can only see short term yield of money and fail to foresee what will happen in the long run.

Not everyone will quit because of it, it is not going to break a game imediatelly but it will surely make some people quit immediately and others to drop long term plans for the game as they cannot lean on it. So, yes more and more people will quit, causing less and less money for ccp and in the end the servers are going to die...

It is not maintained. If you drop from #1 to #2, you lost everything you did for years. Even if only one person gets above you, you lose your #1 spot. There is still going to be prestige for top100 accounts but all those who lose their positions in top10 are going to be quite pissed off.

And if Dr Caymus quits because of this, I will be first to follow him to show my support. And I do hope other top players will join as well to send "thanks for screwing us" message to CCP.

Players should not have the ability to instantly train certain skills at cost no matter how sweet the deal is

Stunned :D

That is the part I am worried about and why I am speaking here. It seems to me that they have not run proper analytic approach nor that they have considered all side effects as this is very bad decision in the long run.

I do not think EVE will not work well with so much focus in micro transaction. Either they should find some new unique (eve-like) way of those micro transactions or they should have find other ways to keep the player base and make the game "healthy" again. Since this as the first (newer) step toward that is not going to be successful while it will create tectonic changes to players mindsets.

Those costs are meaningless. So what I lose 2-3-400k skills point in the exchange, I wasn't using the character it was extracted from in the 1st place.

With the Character bazaar , If i buy a character and want to use it along side an existing character, I have to have two accounts, ., This new system will not only let me use a character with a name I chose, but it will let me raid characters I don't use to buff that one character, at the 'cost' of some isk and skill points I was never ever going to use anyways...

No. The people against the idea, like everyone else reading the devblog, are planning on abusing this. That's the fear.

Why would a main need more sp? :)

Your point being...?

A frigate for example, can only utilise a set number of skill points, once you have them you are on a par (skill wise) with someone who started on day one of Eve-Online.

I`d like eve pen again and some of the posters :)

I have no idea about the costs about the skins, i probably opened aur store when they started it, laughed on it and closed it. Make up does not add anything in game experience to me.

I do not have anything against anything what will really benefit the game. If CCP wants, give every new player 10-20-50 mil sp straight away. I do thing it is wrong approach but if that would be what is needed to keep the game healthy then be it.

I have the problem with introduction of this system which is determined to fail while changing game fundamentals which will cause a lot of unhappy customers, meaning even less players. And I do not think micro transactions are the model which can work properly in eve. It would change the game too much, in the wrong direction.

Funny, you don't have to be a paid subscriber to post in reddit. Here, you do.

Folks who have old accts that they no longer play with may see this as an easier method to 'cash out'

By Cash out, yes, I mean RMT. Of course they would be in favour of something that would allow them to get some of their money back out of the game. Strip an old character you no longer play with and see cold hard cash in return.

I am not saying that all of reddit thinks that way but that there are ways to explain the difference in opinion across various forums.

m

That means we are actually agreeing on more subjects. I do not like where this is heading to! :P

Though I would never buy them myself I am fine with isk sinks like skins etc, there is too much isk in the game and people who do not know what to do with it anymore.

As you stated very small amount of new players will actually utilize this. And I expect same amount of older players as well, just to fix some mistakes from the past. So CCP will not gain much, while they risk getting unhappy customers.

I have not read reddit as I am not active there, but i do think there were plenty of solid arguments for potential side effects which are great risk compared to so low gain they can expect.

And subscription model is about consistency, so you like that too! :)

The majority of posts are by around ten people having the typical forum meltdown you'd expect when CCP attempts to stray from the status quo.

It's not the size that matters, it's the content. And there's not a lot of content in this thread. Just froth and tears.

Mr Epeen

ButGǪthe character bazaar is it broken?

Half of the top ten are in favor of the change, including the guy who by far has the most posts, so it's people against the status quo (ie for the change) posting over and over and over again and people against the change posting much less often (but there are more actual individuals in this group).

Thanks for the typical uninformed mr. epeen post, it's all this thread was lacking.

For the same reason you lose your ship in EVE and don't have it magically respawn. Because EVE is a game of consequences, you chose to skill mining, that means you wait to pvp unless you spend 2 plex + the character cost in the Bazaar (an exception CCP has made because of the reality that some people will sell characters no matter what).

EVE is a certain kind of game. It should stay that way and turning a necessary evil (character trading) into a full blown unbalanced micro transaction is going the wrong way.

CCP could do lots of things to strengthen the Character Bazaar that doesn't go so overboard.

This is utterly the worst thing you could possibly do to the game.

This change will completely obsolete the skill training system.
This change will completely obsolete the attribute system
This change will completely obsolete the remap system

There is enough isk in game to max out 10's of thousands of characters with every single skill at level 5 (450 million+ sp)

It's taken me over 10 years to get my main character to 207 million sp, now comes along joe blogs who creates a brand new character and then buys enough sp to max out that brand new character with 450 million sp in a day. completely invalidating the years we've spent training our characters in real time.

This change will completely obsolete the character bazarr. Why? buy a new character, when you can simply create a new character to your exact liking and then spec him out with all the skills he'll ever need. No Training Required!!!

Why spend years training skills when you can now buy whatever skills you require for real or in game money.

A 90% loss of sp gained for older characters is irrelevant, they will just buy as many sp packets as they need to get the instant sp they want.

There will be nothing left to strife for in game, as you can buy everything you want, which means the game will quickly get boring.

This change will be the death of Eve GAME OVER!!!.

Well it was fun while it lasted, if this change go's through, I'm outta here.

You mean the steps that make the thing ok? Yea, that's exactly what it cuts out, which is what makes it a bad idea. The CB is balanced by it's deficits (ie needing a free character slot and the rest).

I'll say it again, when you have something that is a necessary evil (such as the CB, which only exists because some people will sell characters anyway, same as the relationship between RMT and plex), you live with it, maybe try to streamline it a little.

What you don't do is make it into a REAL evil , especially for the sake of revenue generation. And especially when CCP promised to not do things like this after monoclegate. CCP can fix the character bazaar without resorting to un-EVE like SP microtransactions (likewise CCP can fix EVE without resorting to gold ammo).

Get it right. It makes "something that under ideal conditions would not exist in the 1st place even easier". That is the point, it's stupid to expand something that should exist in the 1st place. Even CCP has said that the Character Bazaar exists to prevent a bad activity.

Nope, they can reform the Character bazaar. The thing you are supporting is not reform of the character bazaar.

I'm on reddit too ... am I "less dense" when I post on reddit ? I think you're biased ...

No it does not. The character bazaar doesn't like you do that with one character. It lets you buy another one.

I'm telling you, if this happens, it will be bad for the game, people will abuse it (I intend to, if for no other reason that to demonstrate to the DEVs why their idea was bad) and it will end up with CCP spending time and money to go back on it. It's better if this idea is still born now.

If I'm wrong, great, no harm done. But tell me, if what I predict is right and it ends up being bad, will you come back to this thread and say so? I'm willing to.

Game won't die. Quality of player base will change. It's pandora box, once open it can't be close again. In long term EvE will become microtransaction game. " If I can buy SP, why not deadspace modules?". People are inpatient. " I pay, I want more!" or "I wanna buy titan and win EvE". EvE needs commitment to play, it's a sandbox, instant gratification crowd will not do any good here.
PS. I'm ex-miner, spend great time, with great people in mine-ops. Never regret it.

I meant golden ammo, ammo, for the love of Jita monument!
I spoke with my girlfiend who played microtransactions mmo (I have no experience). Her conclusions: vets will be gone (most of them), new players will stay for a while but without being hooked (and it's hard to be hooked to EvE) will leave too. It's two way payment, subs/plex and paying for SP. SP is used not only for combat. There won't be any attachment to characters, you may rename them to: slot 1, slot 2 and slot 3. I think she's a bitter vet althought she not played EvE at all. "It's a bit too much science, I'll log D3 and chop some demons".

No one is reading this you know..

Is it matter? They all gone by now propably. BTW I assume all microtransactions are f2p, because of microtransactions. It was one of the reason, major, that she stopped playing. She didn't want to pay, and she starting to feel the gap between those who did. EvE SP is not all about combat PvP there are other activities too.

They have vets, with bigger wallets. Rich vs poor. Let's say it's +1 year after the SP for aurum introduced. "Should I start EvE? Well, it depends how much money do you have?".

What about the cool things you saw? The people you met? The friends you made? The things you experienced? The wanderlust of exploring space!

I know people jokingly call this game Skill Queues Online, but that's ridiculous! Now that the end of the skill queue tirany is at an end, we can't just throw our arms and quit!

So now we will have a commodity that is transferrable by Jump-clone, there can be many like me who have a jump-clone languishing in 0.0 unused because for various reasons you got out and left it there.

Now I have a commodity I can jump anywhere in Eve I have a clone. I could jump to 0.0 package up a skillset and sell it on the market (for a good profit one would hope) then put out a message to anyone local to order a specific set of skills. Jump back to High and into a fully specked clone, collect extra points from a set of farmer clones, when ready jump back and sell the package of skills to the client.

Profit
Hmm, not my idea of how the game should progress, I vote no to this change.

Doesn't change the fact, that the skills are still trained. The skills does not pop up from thin air, which was what the guy initially argued.

Whether this mechanic can be abused, is something completely different. Your example, shows a possible abuse and does not really contribute to the original discussion (which was regarding the time spent on training the skills).

At this point in time, it is really not possible to tell, if it will be profitable to do the above scenario, since we don't have all the information needed to make such a judgement. But it sure is a concern and something CCP hopefully will take into account. This is the reason for this thread. So people can discuss this change in a rational manner, and not throw their arms in the air screaming "Ragnarok!" and "The end times are near!". The latter provides nothing constructive to the table.

Whether or not you think it should have anything to do with Jump Clones is irrelevant. The 'sandbox' allows players to 'game the system' in however manner they think it may profit them. Even if that means using things like jump clones to move to various markets instead of flying there in a Stealth Bomber.

POS Bowling was a beautiful example of this. Not it intended purpose but it worked.

If I may pay to fly T2 cruiser I don't want to pay for sub. That's the difference. Microtransactions games are free, I can play them for free but propably I never get to the point where people with money are.
It's like someone write here about rigs. They supposed to be optional but they are not. Same will be with SP. Doctrines, new skills (or high level skills, like cruise missiles for T2) etc. It's new income for CCP, which is good. It's bad because it a favors players with bigger wallets.

Please keep the sandbox a level playing field.

Not bad Dave, I like the use of proxies here. Now, looking at your ~40 packets costing ~12 billion this could be used by the very, very rich to gain quite a bit of SP. There are players with sickening amounts of ISK and they could easily afford an entire yearGÇÖs worth of SP (~144 billion ISK).

Thus, it seems to me this policy will run smack into MalcanisGÇÖ Law.

So we should make it even easier?

What myth...it is clearly in line with Malcanis' Law. This change will predominantly to the benefit of the older players. This is not good for new players, IMO.

I agree with Dave Stark on this.

Okay, but I don't think older players need any more advantage. We already have high SP character(s) and most have pretty hefty wallets...now we should have the ability to gain even more of an edge?

Not sure that is what we need right now.

It isn't just mains, it is alts as well. Or re-arranging SP at the micro level. Suppose I have 2 cap alts who can fly the moros and revelation both at level 5 and I decide...screw it, I don't need an alt with 2 racial dreads...I'll keep the moros skill, dump the rev. So I buy the extractors, and then create 2 new character on free slots and pump in the SP and create a character that can fly iskprinter ishtars. Now I've taken 2 nearly fallow alt and created 2 that have improved my ISK stream. I know guys who have a few of these characters...they could park a small fleet of iskprinters in the anomalies. Or suppose I want to try my hand at trading. Now I could create trading alts and park them in different trade hubs.

Can a new player do these things? No. The bottom line is that older players will tend to have more flexibility than the newer players...that is an advantage.

Let us look further at the economics of the proposal.

1) CCP won't want to destroy the character bazaar. Thus the price per skill point will be significantly higher than the price per skill point in the bazaar.

2) the bazaar price is about 1 B isk per 2 M skill points (or 250M per 500,000 sp packet).

3) The previously calculated break even training price of 300M per packet to the player is in line with that because people can fund an account through training and selling toons. Because selling packets is much more flexible, CCP has to raise that cost higher, let us assume that they need to double the price. Anything less and the bazaar is doomed. Much more and nobody will buy.

Which suggest that the extractors will need to be priced at least at 250M per each. This makes a total price for the packets of about 500M per packet. Or about 2 packets per plex.

Sure but this makes it easier, faster, more efficient with less risk (i.e., I end up an AWOXer...whoops). Is that a good thing? Usually, I'd say yes...but this is a game balance discussion. Getting across the galaxy in game super fast was pretty much seen as a bad thing.

So you see absolutely no potential down side? At all? The risk of this going off the rails is zero, it is impossible?

That is not quite what I was getting at. I'm talking about something nobody has thought of yet that has a downside. Do you think that is zero?

I'm getting the impression you think it is zero.

In the Dev Blog he said 70 characters a day being sold / transfered... 70 characters at an avg 50m sp = 3.5 billion sp..

Now you don't have to sell the character, just extract all your unwanted sp and put it on the market for sale.
If this change happens, there will be 1,000's of players who will extract unwanted and even wanted skills just to make some isk.

That will translate to 100's of billions of sp points on the market availlable to buy.

it won't completely kill the training system, but it will do enough damage to make it an optional excercise.

no longer will you have to spend years training skills, you will be able to buy whatever skills you want instantly.

instant gratification that will quickly ware off and become boring as no effort was required to obtain those shiny new skills.

and for all those players who have had to spend years training their skills, its a kick in the teeth and a F***k Y*u.

Our CSM have come out so far universally against it, but you put up the thread anyway.

A single CSM a majority does not make.

Maybe they should just put up a vote on it?

Maybe that's because that's a horrible mentality to take when coming into any game. What kind of expectation is it that someone should be able to pick a game that's been out for so long and suddenly be able to go toe-to-toe with the best? How is that at all reasonable? If you want something like that play a MOBA not an MMORPG. Stop the bastardization of a genre.

I wonder what advantage Stark see's so clearly for himself that he would be pushing this so vehemently for so many 118 pages Dave Stark seems to be the village loud mouth that screams at everyone that whatever he thinks is a good idea has to be done.


It's not a personal attack so much as pointing out his arguments should have not one whit more validity just because he's been repeating them over and over.

Not sure if Stark (as a character seller, if I understood correctly) will have advantages.

Exactly!

And so will countless others...

PLEX allowed the ISK-earners to trade their ISK for game time.

Now we'll have this, that will allow the SP-earners (anybody that doesn't really need full-speed skilling on one or more of their accounts) to trade their SP for game time.


I admit I'm starting to like this...

Dave, this little detail is actually HUGE...


Today to get ISK out of your subscription time you have to:

. Know about the character bazaar
. Learn how it works
. Learn how to make a decent, sellable character
. Post on the subforum, follow the replies
. Do the transfer correctly
. Make sure you follow all the rules
. Etc....


Tomorrow you just need to:
. Buy an extractor in Jita
. Fill it
. Sell the packet in Jita


It's almost the difference between RMT-ing ISK and buying a PLEX in Jita, except of course that the char bazaar is legal thus a bit easier/less worrisome to use.

Dont start again. Either counter argument my arguments which were made 50 pages ago or drop this stupid "no one gave any arguments". And there were others who did some solid arguments as well...

I hope CCP are not shallow as it seems at the moment and that they will take an effort to read all arguments. And then provide us answers on those.

This seems to bypass the EVE experience and removes any consequences involved with any choices made by a player.


EVE was founded on premise of everybody has a choice and behind that choice there may be consequences. When injecting skills over the 9 years playing EVE I have made some good and bad choices with my characters and learned by my mistakes, this is a part of the EVE online experience and grows you into a more experienced/knowledgeable pilot. Though I have traded characters for the best majority of these tis still not the same as hot swapping skill points and there must be better options than suggested by the OP?

Even giving a new player more starting SP and a selection of starting roles and pre skilling needed skills to give them a turbo boost into the game content would sound more viable.

thats the thing... read them where they were made in the first place... trolllololo

Until someone counters them with some reasonable explanation I will stand by the fact that this is easily the worst decision ever since it will change fundamentals of the game for unknown expectations without helping more than minor percent of the players.

I thought that part was obviously clear. If it's not to you then you probably will not understand.

the last 50 pages are just dave trolling and ppl feeding him. but if that helps to make CCP aware that this is a very sensible topic... feed him \o/

If you were really interested you would read the feedback in this thread and see for yourself. If for some reason you want specifically MINE then here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6100830#post6100830

Effing Expert Troll he is. You have to give him points for linking an appropriately great song. :)

Anything to do with the character Bazaar is nothing like the buying and selling of pure skill points, You look whats being sold and find a toon that best suites your needs. Your taking control of someones ingame legacy and shaping it to what you want , their snapshot of time. That is a vast difference than being able to inject millions of skillpoints into creating a zero day perfect toon.

If there intention here is to purely create a new source of revenue for the game without bastardizing its core concept and longevity whilst benefiting a new player experience then the only way would be to give the new player / new character creation process the ability to create a character with say :

standard 400,000 sp free
Bronze 10,000,000 sp $XXX
Silver 20,000,00 sp $XXX
Gold 30,000,00 sp $XXX

This way it only applies to a new character, its not sticking two fingers up at the people who supported it from day 1 and it gives a cap on how many points can be gained without destroying anything already in game like plex / aur / isk

Dave I'm rather amazed at your posting on this regard. You are quite a level headed chap and clued on in many respects.
But I feel you're dismissing facts and inventing your own to fit your stance, in this instance.

We do not buy SP, we buy characters with all the baggage associated with them. This is why many of us are OK with the bazaar.
It does not bypass the training system, as those characters had to be trained over time with the normal mechanics. The speed at which they gain that SP has a ceiling.

The fundamental difference is now we will be able to buy raw SP and inject directly. How you cannot see the difference, is rather puzzling to me.
Buying raw SP is bypassing the training system for characters being injected. If I train for the first year 2 characters, then move the SP from one to the other, that's almost doubling the speed of one character. Not possible right now, so a fundamental change.

As far as 400m characters is concerned. I personally don't think this game will benefit in the long run, from the 'I want it now' crowd. If you don't see an issue with that, OK fine. But I do. For instance, FOTM is a thing and will not improve with this change.

I'm not going to argue the point with you, I've had enough of the topic. I dislike the idea and the blog just seems off to me somehow. I'm not sure why and maybe it was my initial thoughts when I first read it, that still lingers. It is an emotional topic for sure.

You ask what is wrong with it, I ask what does it fix. So far, not one person has answered that. As the onus is upon the ones wanting change, I will wait to see if anyone can justify it. I'm personally don't enjoy seeing a change like this, seemingly on a whim.

Dev: Oh let's do up the bazaar.
other Dev: Tell you what, let's sell SP.

It's such a mad escalation and tangent from the first thought. It just doesn't sit well with many of us.

Anyway that's me done. I still like ya Dave, I just don't agree with your stance.

The sticking two fingers up part refers to : 80 million skillpoints = 50,000 unallocated skillpoints added /// So ive played the game for 9 years had upto 3/4 accounts running so someone comes along maybe stays for a month or 2 but gets 500,000 for the same $-ú$ and i get shafted ...... Thats not unfair ???

So, where will new players get the isk to buy this? Not by playing cause it'll be expensive. So they'll have to buy plex with real money. If you feel like this "pay to play" is good, then yeah: this is good for new players.

So what is the whole exercise for then ????

Is it for the benefit of new character creation or to add yet another game straining microtransaction that has nothing todo with the bazaar in itself but to afford old characters the potential to max their toons by using RMT

Also I'm proud when I kill a capable pilot, not a high-SP pilot (I never check).

Anyway, in both cases the PLEX prices will skyrocket, since there will be a lot of players who are no longer interested in getting SP for a bunch of their alts and rather just farm packs for passive income. I will do it for sure if this hits TQ.

The point is not to make ISK. The point is if I have an account where I don't need anymore SP because it's perfectly focus trained for what it does I can just sell the accumulated SP as packs to lower the subscription costs.

There are two possibilities here:

- If I can sell them higher that what it takes to create the pack (PLEX + extractors) I can create a free account with zero effort.

- If I have to sell lower that what it takes to create them all the people training while taking a break will make a better deal if they just cancel the subscription and buy some packs if they come back

(Yes, there may be some space between the two possibilities depending on how expensive the extractors are.)

Plex cost 1.2 bill isk, this transneural package containing 2 mill SP is gonna sell for how much?

When your were seeking an answer i gave it you now you quote a line, i meant your take on it. I always took it in eve that certain area's were sacrosanct and now it seems not.

How will this effect a new player in anyway shape or form, except for him to spend real money to advance instantly. I agree with you that having a 400m sp toon has no bearing on anyones ability to pilot a ship no different than someone with 150m sp but to what end its not been earned, The size of the wallet should not dictate the class of the pilot.

In what way is this helping to boost the flagging sub base, its just taking money away from an already jaded one.

More control means more speculation/manipulation, a commodity as desirable as skillpoints (about as desirable a commodity as you are likely to get in this game) will be manipulated to death. New bros are going to be disappointed if they see this as a way to get into the game much quicker, unless they have a lot of real life wedge.

If it's no different than the CB why are they changing it ? More control means more manipulation, your arguments are becoming more obtuse and weak as you singlehandedly try to argue against the entire eve-o forum by yourself, I admire your commitment. :)

"Oh, and one last note on the Bazaar, it won't go anywhere for now"

If it does turn into a new cash cow you think they will keep something that dimishes their return

Hang on here, so in the realms of creating perfect toons now, either new or jacking unwanted skills from an existing toon to perfect it why would there be a need for a bazaar ???

So now ill do a Dave Stark and refer you back to the blog

"Oh, and one last note on the Bazaar, it won't go anywhere for now"

If this new character bastardization come to pass and is far more lucrative than there 2 plex/20 dollar transfer fee, you really think they will keep it.

Comes back round to who benefits most from it, certainly isnt that new guy and everything you mention above is about spending more and more on plex which will send it even higher. Comes a point in a game that you sub for every month and theres more and more need to spend real cash in it when you have to say where do you draw a line at .

Your last comment was refreshing as you were not as vitriolic about it being the way forward, i think this needs way more thought put into it before being implimented

Hire this guy for Team size matters, he has his stuff straight what the eve community wants :)

You lost it there bud

Its not for selling, its rehashing your own toon to suit your needs.

Nothing, but if you now have a toon that does everything you want why would you ?

Yes because having the ability to do a complete skill remap on your character is not the same as buying XXX packets of skill points from another source

PRICE

Yours in exopnentially expensive, im talking of a 1 of fee to remap your own skill set

I think so... like you said it's still conceivable but idk about how much that would be done in practice... requires another party, it's harder and would no doubt be very expensive you'd still be much better off probably buying a char close to what you want to "molding" it some.... and it is something that should be hard to do.

Of course there probably should be restrictions on the amount of SP you can reallocate at one time (read up there about being able to reallocate all of your SP at one OMG that would definitely be the end of Eve), and/or restrictions on how soon you can sell after you have reallocated points, but I do agree with the sentiment we don't need to be able to create perfect characters for someone else's instant gratification because they paid enough for it pay2win or have character factories minting these characters. That would destroy Eve.

You dont think there is a difference in buying skill points and rehashing your own character ??

If you think theres no difference then why not just go all out and say why all this bollox, why dont CCP just sell skill points for cash

No matter how it is presented and sugar coated, this is precisely what they intend to do really...

Cant you already have that now?

What are you saying really this is completely ok or the game is already pay to win?

There is more to it than that.... a character's name and reputation now becomes moot because they are just shells housing SP... a character should be an analogue to somebody a real person not just a mix of skills that can be bought and sold. It cheapens Eve.

How do you follow the history of the person if you can't follow his shell, because he just guts it after each major scam. I guess the honest players would be against this. All of the scammers rejoice!

There really are... Account API's and character sales... in the future when you have no idea where the SP came from or where it went, you really have no idea and no way to figure out, names mean nothing. Reputation is the only deterrent you have really against scamming in Eve. Who thinks we need more folks gaming the system or more scammers in Eve?

We're not talking absolutes here.

Yes, you can get the SP you want now by buying it. So it should be a lot EASIER because it's already currently possible?

Scamming is possible, and it's possible to avoid a bad rap, so let's make it EASIER to avoid one!

There are barriers to entry on what you're saying, we're only after solving a personal problem, tweaking our char a little avoiding wasted SP on our own char or obsolete SP or SP that no longer makes sense for its progression, you're campaigning for changing the whole paradigm for how SP is perceived and used, because Eve is already cheap. So let's make it CHEAPER!

If only we had an Eve Easy button with a credit card slot in it that spammed the message YOU WIN for each transaction.

If there is no correlation between SP's and in game skill then why would you need to be instantly boosted by the need for in game purchasing of skillpoints ??

I hope it will stay that way, but the point from Mr. Stark was you can just ask for the perfect char possibly in the future for folks where isk and cash isnt an issue.

If you cant actually fly a carrier you have no business boosting your points to be able to fly a carrier

Stark wrote:

"if you haven't arbitrarily waited a few months for sp to accumulate, you have no business being able to fly a carrier"

are you aware how dumb that is? you shouldn't be flying a ship because you didn't wait an arbitrary amount of time?


Is that any less dumb then a day 1 old char trying to pilot a Raven?

I think the time element of SP is actually a good thing in general. Yes the bazaar circumvents that, but again i'm not a huge fan of that anyway or the Plex for isk thing. Of course actually really earning it... showing that you understand it to obtain it would be more optimal but isn't this better than buying the skill outright without having to invest the time? (via whatever method) I don't have to like all elements of the game currently to disagree with a change in the game mechanics do I?

But on a more serious not if CCP takes their game design decisions based upon redit feedback then we would be playing a wow clone before you know it.

I don't understand the point of this new change other than to **** off your entire player base.

why not make this so i can re distribute my SP or some of it 1 time a year like remapping attributes this way if you make a ship i have a lot of SP in useless (CAPS) i can put that SP into other skills and ships that fit the meta.
Why would i have to pay CCP for SP when i already pay a subscription for the SP I'm transferring (if I'm moving SP about between my own accounts?)

The 1 thing that keeps me in this game is I have alot of TIME invested. 6 months for a sleipnir is a long time to wait to fly 1 ship ect. what is the point of wasting all that time if i can just buy 20mil SP and get it over night. EVE will loose the 1 thing it has holding it's older players the TIME we have all spent training for what we want

Speaking of older players if this is going to go ahead can you explain the reason why old players with more SP are being punished for supporting your game for the many years they have?

WILL CCP's NEXT CHANGE MAKE PLEX'S ADD LESS GAME TIME FOR OLDER PLAYERS?
NEW PLAYERS GET 30 DAYS
OLD PLAYERS GET 10 DAYS

seems to me that is where we are going these days

The concept of progression is pretty standard in video games. Some games may give you the illusion that you can access level 80 straight away by grinding for it, but the reality is that they have worked it out so that you arrive at that specific piece of content at a certain time. All video games work in this way.

Your complaint is equivalent to someone wanting to watch the end of the movie to find out what happens without watching the start or the middle, and then you would probably turn around and wonder why the movie sucked. There is a reason why everything can't be accessed on day one.

I had a look on it during the ship skin bug fiasco and all I saw was petulant children stamping their feet because they couldn't customise their ships however they wanted. Also the post linked above is very similar to the childish posting I observed before.

I don't think redit has ever come out with any proposal or contribution to the game that is sensible or noteworthy apart from the Pizza for CCP which was good, although that was mainly to make up for how bad some of them had behaved towards CC{ Fozzie and had nothing to do with game design.

Yes which is dumb and is generally discouraged. Putting SP onto the market will make new players feel like they need to grind to skip content they are not ready for when they should just be able to enjoy the starting experience as it unfolds through the passive training system. This was touted as one of the advantages of Eve over MMORPGs in all but recent years; what has changed?

Like hell it does, Skill packets are nothing like Bazaar toons in any way, same as rehashing a toon Vs the buying fail BS skillpoints way

no i do understand i can buy a 100mil sp toon if i wanted too but then im stuck with whatever skills were trained i cant just train 30 skills to lvl 5 in 2 mins then go fight someone who took 2-3 years to get there. that is a big difference that again only applies to young players not old ones and makes all the time i have invested into my younger alts a complete waste of time

What part of buying a toon from the bazaar with all it good and bad points dont you get thats so vastly different than being able to open your bank account - REAL MONEY - and purchasing skill points to create a perfectly doctrined pilot with zero flaws

No there's a massive difference but the issue is that some people, like you yourself admitted, are personally interested in this idea so they're never going to openly agree that those differences exist. How many hours of trolling are you going to invest into this thread today, you had quite a long run yesterday.

The problem with this is that most of the people who can create elite characters....already have elite characters--i.e., older players.

Here is something I wrote on another board,

Consider the older player:

3 Accounts, with 3 free slots.
Billions of ISK

He wants 3 afktar pilots he can park in anoms and let the ISK roll in. He could log in to the game, make 3 brand new characters and then endow each of them with enough ISK to go buy the requisite amount of SP. Result, 3 AFKtar pilots and he sees his monthly income of say 2 billion a month.

New player:
1 account, 2 slots
paltry ISK.

His options, go shell out at least another $19.95 for a PLEX and maybe get up to 2.4 million SP. Yet another $19.95 and now he is at 4.4 million SP. And not knowing the game as well as the older player he probably did not allocate those skills that well. Maybe in spaceship command he has just enough to get into a BS. And for gunnery he skipped all the support skills. Then he runs into an older player in a svipul and is eaten alive. He logs off pissed as **** because his big ship just died to a little ship! WTF. And WTF, he spent nearly $55 ******* dollars. **** Eve, **** CCP, and what the **** is on television.

Anyone who thinks that newer players will be using this as much or more than an older player...I think they are sadly mistaken.

A new player might buy 1 may 2 SP packets after selling a PLEX in game, but my guess that is about it.

Pretty sure most scammers, corp thiefs, etc. are older players too....

I don't see this helping retention much...tbqh. But maybe I'm wrong...maybe we'll start trending back up and be at around 48,000 players on average logged in vs. 24,000.

But I doubt it.

Another reason not to go with this proposal. It is adding a largely passive form of income to the game which CCP has always indicated is less than desired.

And if it hurts retention?

So, you notice a problem...so lets double down on it? Seriously? Starting to sound like being stuck on stupid.

why have i wasted 7 months dual training my alts up to be useful

Where did I pretend it is just now a problem? I have noted that CCP is not in favor of sources of passive income and have done things in the past to try and remove them or shift them over to being more active income streams.

You point out that the character bazaar is a form of passive income. Okay, fine. Now we are going to not only keep that source of passive income we are going to expand on it.

In effect, doubling down on something that is largely a form of passive income.

Yeah, new players are going to use this extensively and milk and honey for all. Sorry, not buying it. I do not believe that all the new players are going to be buying PLEX to speed up their training times. Some will, but my guess it is a small fraction.

As for your "additional" data, were they all a week old at the time? If you don't know, then more bullcrap straws. Go find out.

And that new player will be seeing his peers buy SP. He will see them more efficient at missions. More efficient at exploration. More efficient at mining. Whatever path he chooses there will very likely be players around of similar age but more efficient... because they paid. So maybe he will buy few packs, simply to not feel left behind by what supposed to be his peers. But ultimately he will realize that unless he comes to terms with normal skilling his choices are: sell an arm or quit.
New player experience will go south. But perhaps CCP assumes that at this point growth in new subscriptions is not on the table.

No we know some do it. And we don't know when they did it or why, except for on case.

Basically, you got nothing here but assumptions piled on top of some limited data.

Impressive as a turd.

You build a 10 pipeline skill queue by leveling alts with the sole intent to feed skills to one char. voil+á, you not only "bought a super char", this superchar is like you want, with the skills you want, and didnt cost you half of what it would from the Bazaar.

No we know some do it. And we don't know when they did it or why, except for on case.

Basically, you got nothing here but assumptions piled on top of some limited data.

Impressive as a turd.

http://eve-search.com/stats/thread/450912-1

Just a thing I wanted to leave here:

Dave Stark187 (7,1%)
Querns128 (4,8%)
Don ZOLA98 (3,7%)
Teckos Pech96 (3,6%)

Some people are rather violently pushing their agenda.

No one buys a toon on the bazaar to run l2s along newcomers.
A market with an entry level of 1-2 PLEXes (SP transfer) will be much more pervasive than character bazaar.

You knew this very well when writing. And that why I'm not going to waste more time on this kind of "arguments".