Because kestrel.

Personally I don't like the character market either, but to the core of the matter, Pay to win ruins the game. End of statement

Seems silly and backwards.

Eve allows the entire sale of characters but not minor improvements on original character.

Because those characters had to be skilled up at one point by someone.


You can't buy SP, period. Someone had to go through the time.

Here's a suggestion, let people buy SP but only up to a monthly limit based on their worst attribute training times. Once you hit that limit you are not allowed to train until the next 30 day period.

Acceleration for the kiddies but fairness to everyone else.

This would mean that EVE could become WAY more attractive for new players that have a bit of extra cash as they could accelerate the first 30 days to jump up to already training stuff like electronics, engineering, navigation, energy management, the boring but essential skills. Let them insta train to a BC so they don't have the agony of waiting. They won't care that they cant train for the rest of the month cause they already got the stuff they wanted. If they train something and then suddenly decide they want something else then too bad, you screwed up, live with your mistakes, this is EVE; have fun waiting 29 days to train anything new.

And if you increase your skill point, you're the one who skilled up that character.

The difference is......?

It has no effect on the economy. The only difference is that one way will be defended to the death by used character salesmen scum.

yeah, buying SP is exactly the same as training.

It costs nothing to train SP. It costs something to fast-forward SP. If anything, fast-forwarding should be more powerful than training.

It costs nothing to train SP. It costs something to fast-forward SP. If anything, fast-forwarding should be more powerful than training.

So you convert one form of currency to another.

It doesn't even take time to train skills in EVE. Not real life time, just waiting time. No actual effort is put in.

What are you on?

Waiting time is still TIME. If it didn't take time, why do I still have over two weeks left on my current skill?

Time is EVE's most valuable currency. You do not understand how this game works.

Go away.

Time isn't a resource.

Time isn't a resource. People don't sell time. They sell skills, like lifting up a rock or programming a computer. They don't sell time. A vegetable's time is worthless. It takes all the skills of a partial-vegetable (IE logging on) to play EVE and train up skills if that is your only goal, which is why the character bazaar is demented.

And once again, if somehow the skills of a comatose were a currency, WHAT CURRENCY IN THE WORLD CANNOT BE TRADED FOR ANOTHER CURRENCY?

Currency, by definition, is meant to be traded. So why not trade some of my money for a fast-forward for something that would essentially have required zero effort anyways?

P.S. Don't cry just because you'll lose your precious character bazaar that nobody else cares for.

And if you increase your skill point, you're the one who skilled up that character.

The difference is......?

It has no effect on the economy. The only difference is that one way will be defended to the death by used character salesmen scum.

If time is not a resource, why do jobs pay by the hour?

In EVE, isk for skills isn't pay to win, it's win-to-win, since you need to have the isk anyways, and EVE is an economy game.

And it's no different from character bazaar since training skills takes no work and there's no "skill point economy" aside from the sh*tty character bazaar which we could do without.

In EVE, isk for skills isn't pay to win, it's win-to-win, since you need to have the isk anyways, and EVE is an economy game.

Here's a suggestion, let people buy SP but only up to a monthly limit based on their worst attribute training times. Once you hit that limit you are not allowed to train until the next 30 day period.

Acceleration for the kiddies but fairness to everyone else.

This would mean that EVE could become WAY more attractive for new players that have a bit of extra cash as they could accelerate the first 30 days to jump up to already training stuff like electronics, engineering, navigation, energy management, the boring but essential skills.

Let them insta train to a BC so they don't have the agony of waiting. They won't care that they cant train for the rest of the month cause they already got the stuff they wanted. If they train something and then suddenly decide they want something else then too bad, you screwed up, live with your mistakes, this is EVE; have fun waiting 29 days to train anything new.

Confirming in thread that OP should go back to WoW. EVE is not Pay to Win.

Neither is WoW.

Both games require that you actually log in and do something, then you win.

Frankly, WoW is just as complex a game to play as EvE is, and just like EvE, if you log in every now and then and do stuff you will eventually be max level.

What makes EvE different is it actually has a mechanism for player generated environmental content.

The Anchoring skill, and Sovereignty. That's *it*.

The skill system and the "Progress Quest" advancement system are just a backdrop, and if you read up on how Zynga designs their Facebook games you'll recognize the principles in action.

So while buying SP might not appeal to you, it is highly unlikely that it would "break the game".

Doubly so since "winning" in EvE doesn't depend on your character having a particular skill set.

It's not "Pay to Win" it's "Pay for Access", and that is a much more difficult concept to argue against.

So while buying SP might not appeal to you, it is highly unlikely that it would "break the game".

GǪaside from it bypassing a number of game mechanics and letting people uncontrollably inject the one thing that actually has any value in the game: time.

Give me a break, most of the "time spent" training skills is waiting for the game to decide it's OK to give you access to content now that you've been a good kid and waited your turn.

Total patronizing nonsense.

So you're fine with me rolling around jita with a swarm of one day old tornado alts? or an influx of one day old titan pilots?

Give me a break, most of the "time spent" training skills is waiting for the game to decide it's OK to give you access to content now that you've been a good kid and waited your turn.

Tippia, I know you think your analysis of this is sound, but I've seen enough games rise and fall to have a strong suspicion (admittedly unproven) that what makes a game sustainable isn't character progression but player progression.

Completely removing character progression and gutting the game of some of its core balancing features sure doesn't help with player progression, since it's consistently the draw of these kinds of games.

This idea doesn't solve any actual problem, but rather creates a whole bunch of them since it wreaks havoc with those core mechanics.

If character progression that takes years to finish for full player access to the game is a "core mechanic" required for continuation of the game, that is an indication that the actual content being restricted is too weak to be compelling in the long term.

Good thing, then, that it doesn't take that long to access the gameGǪ it takes about a month or so.

A month?

Tippia, I know you think your analysis of this is sound, but I've seen enough games rise and fall to have a strong suspicion (admittedly unproven) that what makes a game sustainable isn't character progression but player progression.

What are the most durable and popular games on the planet?

Nothing on-line, that's for certain.

Draughts, chess, go, various physical sports like soccer and baseball.

These games and sports last because they challenge their players without restricting them beyond their own abilities.

I see every sign that EvE is following the same path. It's a fun game (for now), but with the current paradigm new players will get steadily scarcer and more experienced players will simply get bored and drop off until there isn't enough of a player base to keep the servers running.

At that point few will mourn it's passing, and they'll go play a nice game of draughts.

A month?

Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

There's more than enough progression built into EvE just learning how all the bits fit together, they could just hand everyone a full set of L5 skills out of the gate and noobs would still be noobs and it would take at least 6 months for a normal player to get good enough at the game to compete with experienced players.

Anyway, IMHO, that is the only issue with SP in it's current form. And it's not really one that can be fixed very easily.

GǪit is also the exact opposite of the GǣproblemGǥ suggested here, and would only be made worse by the proposed solution.

But yes, the problem with EVE is more and more becoming one where we have too few skills and too much SP, rather than the other way around.

When I'd been in this game 6 months I'd already grinded enough ISK to buy myself a super capital alt off the character bazaar, and the only person in my alliance with even close to the amount of ISK I have joined Eve around September last year. He's also the second highest on our KBs pretty regularly (after me, naturlich).

Indeed, the issue with the OP's suggestion is that it would accelerate this process and effectively "end Eve early".

If having access to the whole game at peak ability ends the game for you, what does that say about the game?

I know of EvE subscribers who *right now* are not playing the game because they are waiting for skills to train on their characters so they can access the content they want to play in the way they want to play it.

If having access to the whole game at peak ability ends the game for you, what does that say about the game?

If having access to the whole game at peak ability ends the game for you, what does that say about the game?

There is at least one game billed as an RPG that has no character progression, and most FPS games have little to no character progression. These games all rely on player skill, just like most of EvE does.

The parts of EvE that a new player can access are closest to FPS games already, which is why a new player can actually work well with them.

So skill points are redundant at the same time they are so important that allowing people to buy them (by any means, look at every other thread on this topic) would break the game.

This contradiction indicates that allowing people to acquire skill points more quickly (even instantly) wouldn't actually change anything at all but making it clear to people much more rapidly if EvE was a bad fit for them as a game.

So skill points are redundant at the same time they are so important that allowing people to buy them (by any means, look at every other thread on this topic) would break the game.

So skill points are redundant at the same time they are so important that allowing people to buy them (by any means, look at every other thread on this topic) would break the game.

Personally I don't like the character market either, but to the core of the matter, Pay to win ruins the game. End of statement

Skill points aren't redundant, they are incredibly important, but our point is that beyond a certain point they are redundant for ships that allow you to play the game.

For example a new player can get into an assault frigate pretty quickly, allowing them to PvP effectively. They can also get into T3s and HACs quite fast, probably faster than it takes to really learn to use them properly.

In this way skill points are not particularly important, a new low SP player can be very good in an AF, HAC or even T3 and through these ships have access to most of the content in the game. Similarly the tier 3 battle cruisers were introduced specifically with new players in mind, they were intentionally not released as battleships for that very reason. (Also, because four BS per race = meh)

The difference is that whilst SP in this regard is not particularly important, it is important when it comes to capitals. It allows us perfect production, perfect mining, jump freighters, super capitals, titans.

This game simply would not work if everyone had access to titans, super capitals, jump freighters etc. Already the issues caused by these things becoming to common is starting to be felt, as I said earlier the OP's suggestion merely accelerates this process to the point where the proliferation of these ships, and the streamlining of logistics/mining/industry, would very likely kill Eve.

Other games have died in the past due to unlimited resources/XP becoming freely available and saturating the market, I'd rather not see it happen to Eve.

Either way, it's a moot point. CCP won't implement it.

In a way the market is pay to win.

As soon as i get the isk, i will be getting some skilled chars there anyway.

Only diference between buying SP and a character really is having to cope with awful portraits and fail cosmetic choices.

In a way the market is pay to win.

As soon as i get the isk, i will be getting some skilled chars there anyway.

Only diference between buying SP and a character really is having to cope with awful portraits and fail cosmetic choices.

Can you no longer do a portrait swap?

Would be intereting to have some dificult pve sites that would drop boosters for specific skills that would make its way to the market, like 1 week bosters that would accelerate said skill 30%.

Just some toughts.

Then Character Bazaar should be done away with too.