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.

Bad idea, as evidenced by the vast majority of 100-plus pages of posts.

I'd rather fly around in a Charon with a Budweiser skin. Surely AB InBev would pay something for that (yea, yea, I'd have to undock once in awhile...). This seems like its really about boosting game revenues. As an alternative, ad insertion could be done in a clever, tasteful and entertaining fashion without materially impacting game play. Just think of the possibilities:

Sell naming rights to popular stations. Jita IV-4, for example, might become "Oracle Station".

Apparel, of course, has enormous potential. Who wouldn't want to show up at the next alliance meeting sporting an Oakley monocle or North Face jacket?

Modules might be branded. Who needs Cormack's Modified Coprocessor when you could fit an Intel CPU instead?

Catarpillar exhumers, Shell rocket fuel, Quafe labeled as Coke, ads on billboards at stargates, the possibilities are endless. The revenue potential could be huge!

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

http://crossingzebras.com/skillpoint-trading/

afraid not, gorksi is in favour for example.

A single CSM a majority does not make.

Maybe they should just put up a vote on it?

A single CSM a majority does not make.

i'd rather they put up a legitimate reason why - as yet none of them apart from steve has. and even steve's reason is terrible.

buying sp won't make players think "i need to spend more money" than the current system already does, where the only way to close the sp gap between themselves and established players is to buy a new character from the bazaar.

i'm aware but even one supporting it means that the csm are not "universally against it" as you said.

i'd rather they put up a legitimate reason why - as yet none of them apart from steve has. and even steve's reason is terrible.

buying sp won't make players think "i need to spend more money" than the current system already does, where the only way to close the sp gap between themselves and established players is to buy a new character from the bazaar.

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

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.

Ok, I've got over my initial knee-jerk reaction.

My thank you to the few thoughtful, calm and rational posters.


Now I find this interesting, exciting and scary at the same time.


This would be a HUGE change, and I don't think all the ramifications have been noted yet (though I certainly haven't read all 2.300 posts!).


For example, let's look at the SP supply side.


Say you're more or less satisfied with the skills you have. Either because you have 100M+ SP, or because you have 15M but well focused on what you like doing in EVE. Note that this may change over time. You can be ok for a few months, then maybe you want SP to do other stuff, then maybe go back to not really needing additional SP anymore. Note that this happens all the time for utility alt accounts: once you have a good hauler, for example, you may well not be really interested in skilling them up in something else.


Now, guess what? To play the game (or even just to shitpost on EVE-O lol) you have to be subscribed. So you're accumulating SP even though you may not need them at the moment.

With this change, you could first change your skillplan to whatever, just to maximise SP/hour based on your current remap. Then, extract and sell these 'surplus' SP.


Fascinating, uh? But it gets better!


I understand it's safe to assume that your monthly 1.8M (or so) SP will be roughly worth the equivalent of 1 PLEX.


See what's happening here? If you forfeit your SP accumulation, you could PLEX your account without grinding ISK!

Partial SP extraction would of course be possible too, meaning that you could fund your monthly PLEX partly with ISK, partly with SP donations.


Did I get this right? Note that you don't need to be a multi-year vet for this to make sense. What do you guys think of this?

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

just gonna nip this one in the bud - no, i'm not.

however with this new system i'd probably start selling SP packets. i have an account that just has 3 PI characters on it. i'd simply use the SP to pay for the gametime as i don't need more than ~15 days worth of SP on those characters.

Hmm, why dont you add the Option to Sell a character as a Contract?

Contracts do have Auction feature. Setup Price for the Auction could be the 2 Plex.
And Bam, you have all features in game that are currently done in the Forum.

I see following Advantages:
# Character Auction is sufficently tested by the community. Prices are set by them. -> Low Game impact risk
# Development cost should be low (What you need to do is add Plex Pricing, plus generate a Character Item that allows you to browse the Auctioned Character. (Browseing the Auction Character is a feature that is in the game. you may need to generalize this feautre thought.)

I see disadvantages on Skilltradeing:
# Skilltraining devaluates by the Price in the market. (Drops the Price to low no one wants to skill.)
# High Risk to break the game, by destroying market price of skillpoints.
# High development Invest. You need new features like the 2 Items.
# This will impact a lot of People

I do not see the advantage you see. People want to play one role, not Pay for skillpoints.


I would add to the Aurem Market:
# Chirugial Services to change your Character
# Renameing Services

Renameing Services note: Please add a notification of all renames to people if they have them on the Contact list.
Just that a rename Service has been taken. So People know.

That is my Idea for now.

Proof of your statement can be seen in the drop of activity in the recruitment channels over the years. It used to scroll by faster than you could read it. Now, it barely moves.

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...

Something else I haven't seen mentioned.

Sec status would be meaningless. It's bad enough that Empire is already more dangerous than 0.0.

Instead of putting a gank alt out long enough to grind positive status back or train a new alt. These alts could be created almost daily. Start a new alt every day and pay to skill them up. Hit targets in 1.0 space with no indication something foul was afoot.

Honesty within the community has been brought up in many different forms in this EpicThread so far, I don't need to rehash those issues.

All this 'feature' would accomplish is help the dishonest in the game scam ever more. Increase the ability of spies to infiltrate target corporations with impunity and destroy any semblance of trust this game requires.

This idea sounds like it came straight from the goons.


The real question for CCP here based on the evidence presented so far as I and many others before me interpret it is:



What kind of players do you want in the game?

-- People that recognize consequence and work to build a good reputation?
-- People that want game mechanics to help them lie, steal and destroy?


Choose wisely CCP. We will be voting with our wallets.