If the price falls below 0.25*PLEX+extractor it suddenly becomes stupid to stay subscribed while not playing. You simply lose money and you don't have to be very smart to notice that. ... I doubt that there are enought RL rich guys with OCD that will just trow all their money at EVE to get their chars to max SP to compensate for all the negative effects this may have.

This sounds like you predict that CCP will be losing money with this change? I have a hard time believing that CCP will be worse off at least in the short term. Admittedly, it is complex to predict net effects here, but unlike us CCP does have all the numbers.

However, "PLEX-to-play" is a real problem for CCP. I don't see how EVE is viable if a large fraction of players stop paying real money after a relatively short time. To keep that going, you would need a strong influx of new players all the time - and that does not seem where EVE is at right now. If people stop playing who are not paying real money, then this no loss for CCP - at least not until EVE becomes so emptied of player-generated content as to become unattractive for people who do pay with real money.

I wonder if the core business strategy behind all the EVE developments is really just to weed out the deadbeats, but slowly enough so that EVE does not catastrophically empty at any point...

The price would have to fall below 0.25*PLEX, not 0.25*PLEX+extractor_price, since a skill packet is worth about a quarter month of training. This is (unfortunately) an argument for a higher price of the extractor...

If I had to take a guess, then I would say that the average EVE player is both older and more affluent than the average gamer. I'm thinking more tech professional than freshman here... And even if that were not true now, then it is still entirely thinkable that CCP has decided to pitch this niche game at this niche audience in the long run. It's not a bad niche to go for. The first few "computer game" generations are still in the market, and they are approaching the "wealthy" stage of life (a decade or two in employment, but before retirement).

So I really think itGÇÖs a lot of noise for nothing at all.

One point that occurred to me earlier: This is making ISK for absolutely no risk at all: Set up an alt in Jita/Dixie/hub of your choice, plug in +5's and remap to max on two attributes, train/extract rinse repeat. sell on the market. At absolutely no point int this cycle is the SP farm character at any risk in any way.

So much for risk vs. reward

Well there is some risk -- the risk that any trader has. What you're describing has a reasonably high upfront cost that you're gambling you'll be able to make back.

You could buy your PLEX, train the character, extract the skillpoints and the market could crash so you can't sell them back for the PLEX cost. That might happen because the PLEX cost goes up so much that the skillpacks cost more than people will pay or because so many people do this that the price of skillpacks hits a floor so it takes years to make back the cost of getting those alts to the 5M skillpoints they need to have before they can start producing. Or it might just be that you're competing against people ripping from an old alt who don't have the cost of actually training new skills that you do.

Not all risk is the risk of getting blown up.

On the assumption that 4 skill packs costs more than PLEX+extractors of course, otherwise why would anyone do it?

It just baffles me that CCP is not posting in any of the two threads. It's like there is no interest in talking to the community about this topic. Maybe even the devs are not completely behind this, not sure what to think about that.

How about if it requires podding: currently, podding involves "saving" the connections and patterns of all the neurons in your brain in the form of instructions, so that the medical clone's brain can be rearranged to be identical to yours, and then you wake up in the medical clone body and continue as you were.

So for your capability to fly Covert Ops ships, how about they put the neuron patterns for that to a disk and no longer apply these patterns to your clone; you forget how to fly Covert Ops. Then the buyer goes to a medical facility and they remodel his brain a bit according to the instructions on the disk, and voila he suddenly knows Covert Ops, like Neo in the Matrix.

Everybody just has to get podded for it to satisfy your "immersion" needs (thanks for that, btw, especially the people with implants will be really happy to give up their implants for your immersion satisfaction).

Dear Zozoll, so Titans from day one then?

...It's rarely a good idea to tell a customer, "Sorry. You can't buy and use that today. Your character doesn't have the right in game skill requirement."

Thought not...

whats the difference between buying enough skill points to use a titan

and buying a titan pilot. other than the fact you can choose your own name, and appearance.

THE DIFFERENCE IS (as I am weary of pointing out) IS THIS:

As things stand - although you can buy a titan pilot from the market - it still takes months to PRODUCE one.

It may be a fast upgrade for you - but it is not possible to make more titan pilots quickly.

Once SP trading is started, if you are an alliance with trillions of isk, you can start farming SP in parallel, so you can vastly reduce the time needed to PRODUCE (note PRODUCE - not OBTAIN) a titan pilot.

This will give a serious advantage to people with large wallets - be they ISK or dollars.

What is SO hard to grasp about this?

THE DIFFERENCE IS (as I am weary of pointing out) IS THIS:

As things stand - although you can buy a titan pilot from the market - it still takes months to PRODUCE one.

It may be a fast upgrade for you - but it is not possible to make more titan pilots quickly.

Once SP trading is started, if you are an alliance with trillions of isk, you can start farming SP in parallel, so you can vastly reduce the time needed to PRODUCE (note PRODUCE - not OBTAIN) a titan pilot.

This will give a serious advantage to people with large wallets - be they ISK or dollars.

What is SO hard to grasp about this?

If someone is willing to waste their isk making a titan pilot as opposed to just buying one on the forums, then why shouldn't they? A Made Titan pilot will be grossly over priced since there isn't AUR tied to every 500k sp on a titan pilot sold on the forums.

But I suppose a skill limitation would also be putting a limitation on real world profits. It's rarely a good idea to tell a customer "Sorry. You can't buy and use that today. Your character doesn't have the right in game skill requirement."

I responded to someone who used the titan pilot as an example.
The same applies to any other ship or skill.

Because NO RPG has any kind of requirements on items, right?

But why is it wrong though? Because it's instant? Someone will have to take the time to train that SP that's being sold so get over it.

But why is it wrong though? Because it's instant? Someone will have to take the time to train that SP that's being sold so get over it.

Too much inflation and players start to leave - one of the dangers of using the free to play model over subscription.

true, but unlike RPGs where you need to play to get the requirements for those items

in EVE, the only thing u can do right now is to w8.
nothing u can do to speed it up.

until now

Stating the injector cost as 0.25*PLEX+extractor is misleading. In fact because players can use in-game assets to purchase items, even game time, then the use of ISK or PLEX in any calculation automatically makes it wrong.

This has already been happening, esp. after in-game PLEX prices reached, and rose above, 1B ISK.

I know a fair number of players who cannot afford to pay for their sub with RL cash. Many of them have stopped playing in the past 6 months or so. They had been forced to spend an ever-increasing amount of their in-game time grinding ISK, in order to afford playing, and eventually decided that it was not worth it anymore.

As for the idea itself I remain completely neutral. I'll have no need to use any of it and I have nothing I want to part with for isk.

What I will react to is this eternally na+»ve notion that it 'might bring in new players'. All it will do is help veterans who actually know WTF they are doing, and it will make it even harder for new players (especially ones not willing to pay a sub AND then more money for plex or whatever) to get a foot in the door.

You bring in new players with a challenging game where innovative people can innovate, not by allowing people to feel like they can play catch up for cash. Especially when they can't.

in other RPGs it can take hours to months to grind you way up to the next level. I have played XP based RPGs where the items were in level increments of about 5 and it could take upwards to 2 weeks to go from level 100 to level 101.

Stating the injector cost as 0.25*PLEX+extractor is misleading. In fact because players can use in-game assets to purchase items, even game time, then the use of ISK or PLEX in any calculation automatically makes it wrong.

Stating the injector cost as 0.25*PLEX+extractor is misleading. In fact because players can use in-game assets to purchase items, even game time, then the use of ISK or PLEX in any calculation automatically makes it wrong.