Then problem with that, is then it becomes the exclusive domain of those with a juicy credit card. At least a traded item is accessible to all which I've always considered to be one of EvE's strong points.

Just listened to Jeff Raiders latest podcast and Gorski Car was there taking about sp proposal. It gave me a slightly better understanding where he's coming from. He's thinking that overcoming some initial training barriers will allow newcomers to get involved with the 'cool' stuff in eve.

I would like to respectfully disagree. I have interacted with new players ALOT. At the risk of sounding arrogant I'm going to say that I have helped to get dozens if not hundreds of new players realize the beauty of eve and get hooked. Sometimes they were as young as few of days old. Big nullsec alliances want people in specific doctrines because they can't overcome their static bureaucratic nature. This is a problem that needs to be worked out internally by players instead of with a change that is forced on the entirety of eve

I and I'm sure most of the people opposed to this proposal want to help new players. We just don't think pressuring those players into paying money for skills is going to help that and it sends the wrong message. I keep hearing people say what are you worried about, sp doesn't mean **** in eve, its about skillz. Then why are we reinforcing this false belief by giving them an option to buy sp? Personally I don't give a damn if we give new players a bunch of unallocated sp. Do it through non tradable means as a reward for completing certain story arcs. Make it once per account and they should take a certain amount of time to complete to limit its abuse with alts.

This community has many intelligent, creative players and devs. If team size matters gives a good and clear idea of goals they want to achieve we can come up with solutions that everyone can be happy with. The dev blog seems a bit disingenuous and needs clarification for the reason behind this proposal.

You're fabricating again. You shouldn't try to force every lock and key.

It's already established that what's really motivating is freedom and the idea of mastery and, say, the depth of inter-relatedness. Undermining that, thus, is negative? How can you say that limitations on creativity (e.g. from fitting skills or ship unlocks or DPS) make subs come play? In fact, there's no reason for such a claim.. Then, what's the draw? Of course, SP is unhelpful for that experience for which subs would ask and for which they would refer and for which they would log on.

Planning better than the next can come from the immense depth of the game. It should come from gameplay, because limiting newbies from learning (through locked ships and playstyles) completely incapacitates the whole beginner demographic. That, unfortunately, includes starter corps, includes referral problems because of limited effectiveness, and just the whole of being a T1 in a T3 meta. They didn't necessarily "plan" anything. They just subbed more.

Restrictions.. like coming up on direct counters? How about the restriction of how market savvy or actually skillful the player is? How about the planning that could come from newbies being able to challenge the biggest sovereignties?

You're implying that you have some information on what promotes the success of a game. Can you describe how fresh subs can be interested in a game that makes them feel worthless? ..How veterans can find sustain for a game without fresh subs? In fact, the sentiment is often that a sub game should come with all of its content. Even if that content requires in-game resources, that's a goal. Are you implying that subs would [without SP] just fund a Titan and unsub?

Edit: Even if they might, that's a huge "if".. They would've played enough to get the resources for such an investment, and by that point they could be so in to the game that the idea of unsubbing seems ludicrous.

At what point is it OK to stop giving free SP? 10M that can be completely re-oriented however? Then, their only experience with further queueing is completely uninteresting trains?

If you're implying they would get bored with a no-SP game, how can you support SP at all?

This is about CCP not doing very well financially and desperately needing a new revenue stream.

Do you know which podcast?

Because you obviously can't be saying that SP actually keeps fresh subs interested. That's like saying that the door makes me enjoy being in my house. Like, nah, it's warm and great.

So, if you're implying a no-SP game is boring, you're just implying the game is boring. SP is no feature worth advertising, nor is it ever advertised -- just like WoW doesn't advertise its leveling process. It develops an uninteresting playing field and removes the majority of options (and thus a huge demographic of characters) from actually improving the game.

And with that approach you expect CCP to pay their devs how and for how long?

I can think that because if they limit it once and for all to newbros, then it does not fck up the core of the game, as you say. Because the newbro needs to be advanced to the core of the game first, so that s/he can participate in it.

Finally, a valid argument against. But we both know that we don't know the answer, that is, whether it would attract or repel new players. The answer would be in the data and would require testing. Your guess is as good as mine.