Saelyth
Umbra Reconnaissance
Swamphole
15
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Posted - 2016.02.17 19:37:25 -
[1] - Quote
I've posted a large bit of this before, but it still seems relevant. I pretty much agree with Falcon on this one, but either way...
TL;DR: It already exists in another fashion.
There are some things to remember here that it seems a lot of people are missing.
SP is already being traded at "zero risk" through the sale of full characters every day
Pure and simple, the Character Bazaar in the forums hosts thousands of full character sales. Some of these characters have a "colorful history," some of them have never been outside Jita save their first trip there from in their noobship. People have whole accounts and theorycrafted training queues dedicated to doing this already.
This really isn't fundamentally different than the existing Character Bazaar
People are already paying real-money to buy Characters/SP. What functional or fundamental difference is there between paying X Plex or Y Dollars for a "Perfect Interceptor Pilot" or whatever flavor character than paying for the equivalent SP in smaller pieces? In both cases, person A has dedicated time and money to create the original SP and person B wants to buy it.
There are actually benefits to this proposed approach
The functionality proposed here is a way to provide, accommodate, and bring additional exposure or awareness to a system that has existed for a very, very long time already. While there's likely no official poll on the topic, I would wager a guess that most "new" players are unaware of the Character Bazaar altogether. By creating a mechanic IN-GAME and on the market, everyone will be able to readily see it and choose to take part if they wish to. Further, you retain ownership of your name, race, gender, and history, to boot. Just because someone else in the past had to stomach buying a character with some unfortunate aspect to it doesn't mean everyone else needs to suffer the same.
The notion that they didn't earn the SP is baseless
On that logic, one could say that neither did anyone that ever purchased a character on the Bazaar since its inception. Let's say I decided today to buy a new 80m SP character. Well, there's 80m SP I just got for cash that as far as I'm concerned just came out of thin air (in my perspective).
With the falloffs and high skill points among veterans, there's not much to gain/exploit
When I originally wrote this, we were looking at a 10% efficiency where it would really be more cost-effective to buy an older, higher SP character. This has been scaled down a bit, but it's still really not an issue. Allowing veteran, high SP pilots to do this would really only mean they're spending money to train up a little faster. I myself don't particularly want to spend double or more toward my monthly costs for what is in my opinion, not even relevant for me anymore. More skill points? Okay, where should I put them? Ships I'll likely never buy or fly? I've already maxed all of the core ships I like to fly, what is another 250,000 SP going to do for me? An extra 500k? An extra million? I could throw them in titans, maybe super carriers or bombers, but my playstyle and preference will likely never see me in any of those ships. Will there be people that do it? Probably. Is this going to make a significant difference? No, it really won't. I don't feel there is much difference between a 150m character and one with 150.5m. I could take it further, too; there's really no functional difference in that character and one with 200m. Your skills all max at 5. They can't be any better at any given task than a low SP character who only maximizes for said task. The other guy buying out 5s in Dreadnaughts, Carriers, and whatever else is irrelevant when you're facing them in their Sleipnir. The other guy buying out a bunch of interceptor skills is irrelevant when you're facing their Sabre. On the other side, the guy who is actually flying what he paid into isn't any different than the guy that just flat out bought the "perfect whatever pilot." It's already a factor of EVE. We already deal with it.
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What's the concern, then? Are people enraged at the idea that some low to mid-range character can pick up someone else's SP(resources) and add them to their own at a whim? Is that really any different than me selling the above theoretical 80m SP character and buying a new one at 100m instead? Why should I, or anyone, have to jump through additional steps to accommodate the same exact result? In every case, it always comes down to "Person A spent time building what Person B wants and is willing to sell it."
Personally, my feelings on the matter are that in the grand scheme of things are that if this can keep new players active (or bring ex-players back) in the EVE universe, this is ultimately better for everyone. |