Pookoko
Sigma Sagittarii Inc.
128
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Posted - 2015.10.19 20:03:21 -
[1] - Quote
When I first read the dev blog, I immediately hated the idea. Then I read through other people's posts here, and I can somewhat see the positive effects of such proposal too.
However, there are a few things that I'm still concerned about.
1. As the 'golden rules' page linked at the launcher clearly says, EVE is not all about skill points and isk. It's about using the right tool for the job at the right situations. Personally I feel that there are many ships and modules available to relatively low skilled pilots to utilise to over come a high SP pilot in a 'wrong' ship, i.e., a T1 scissors can still beat T2 paper. Through the series of ship balances and modules tiercide we've had, many T1 frigates and cruisers are quite useful now, and the idea has been that each of them has a 'role' to play, albeit less effective than T2. Such ships can still be very much effective for low SP pilots with support skills to IV, when the ship is fitted and piloted to serve its role and the strengths.
Skilling up to IV in most basic support/ship skills really does not take long time. I know the meta has changed a lot since then, but we used to have Drake fleets with arbalest HML and alpha fleets with scout artillery (just as an outdated example). Nowadays people rage about a noob in a griffin perma jamming them and a T1 fit celestis keeping them out of fight. Heck, a group of catalysts can gank pretty much anything given enough strength in numbers.
What I'm getting at is that there are already plenty of reasonable options available to low SP pilots, for them to be able to contribute to fleet or even have a stint at solo piracy if they understand the game mechanics. Everyone has experienced 'clueless' pilots with bling fit ships doing clueless stuff in low/null, losing horribly to a lower SP/cheaper ship that was fit for the purpose.
My first concern is that with such 'quick access to T2/T3 with ISK' option, the new players may not fully explore more humble but effective options available to them during their early eve career.
Personally I'd be happy to engage someone who's just bought a lot of SP and doesn't fully understand what he's flying, but would that actually be a good experience for the new players? To spend a lot of ISK (earned through real cash or via in game means or whatever) to get into what they thought would be a leet ship, only to lose it in a humiliating way to veterans in T1 frigs?
2. I understand that buying SP is just an 'option', and people can still train normally as we've done for over a decade. But WHO will actually be able to afford such an option? Buying SP will not be cheap. It's anybody's guess, but I'm pretty sure it will be more expensive than a T1 fit Battleship. A lot of new players who aim for Battleship to do r L4 missions or whatever, are usually in a situation where they cannot afford a BS by the time they have lvl III / IV skills for it. New players run L3 missions in drake to save up isk to buy a Raven (just as an example). Can these players, without any outside help or buying PLEX with real cash, be reasonably expected to buy enough SP to fully T2 fit a BS?
I think it's highly unlikely that someone that new to the game has enough ISK to buy that much SP. Traders boast that they can go from 1 million ISK to 1 billion ISK in X number of days, but that's because they KNOW the game, understand the market and know what they are doing in the market. Just based on exploration, missioning and mining, a NEW pilot is very unlikely to be able to buy SP packets to help his progress.
This is my second concern, that quick SP option will be there for all, but new players will not be in position to take advantage of it.
What it boils down to me, is that new players cannot afford SP packets from their usual in-game income, so they will buy & sell PLEX to buy the SP packets. Then they will skill up, and further PLEX to buy a T2/T3 ship and fit them with all T2 mods. And then, almost inevitably, they will lose such ships in loltastic ways we've all done before at some point in our early eve career (or even now!).
This fits the harsh world of eve, and a fool has every right to waste his money in any way he pleases, but I'm just not convinced that such scenario will 1) attract more new players, 2) help us retain the said new players, 3) encourage the new players to progress quickly and join the bigger fun.
Most likely I think new players either cannot enjoy the SP packet purchase option, or they will take this option and lose their stuff and rage quit with bitter taste in their mouths.
Don't get me wrong - I like the skill trading idea in many ways. I probably use it a lot myself to get my ever increasing number of alts trained up quickly and what not. But that's because I've been playing this game for eight years and have enough isk and know how to focus apply those newly purchased SP to my alts so they will serve a specific role, a role which I already have prior experience with.
So I do not criticise the basic concept behind skill trading, and on personal level I actually welcome it, but I'm not confident that this will really help 'new players' as some people say.
PS: Yes, there is already character bazaar, and some new players buy & sell PLEX to get a high SP character and fail miserably. I don't have any factual evidence for this, but at least from what I've seen personally, players who buy a new character from character bazaar are usually NOT that new to the game. They have usually experienced the game for a few months to a year, joined a corp and identified a particular role they would like to play, and go shopping for that specific character. Most people who trade on character bazaar are not complete noobs who's just finished their trial period (correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anybody has hard data on this :p).
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