Lore background for Tovil-Toba and the Kairiola if somebody is interrested:
They can’t “set an example” for bad economic moves with this. They already developed a game for a dieing console and written off a few years of MMO development.
Unless you mean set an example on how to increase you chain of bad economic moves…
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Skins are a different product than server access. There is nothing wrong with CCP charging for them.
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How is “doing good for your customers” a bad economic move? Not to mention that they already get paid for the development of the game and all its functionalities. Your argument does not hold any water.
Because they already give us what we pay for. Your subscription entitle you to login on the server and play with Omega status on your account. “Doing good for their customer” in the way you propose would be pissing away an income stream. On that has proven to be very lucrative in the gaming world too as was seen back in the day with TF2 hats and skins for LoL heroes for example. Customers are entirely willing to spend extra money for completely aesthetic upgrades so any gave dev house giving that entirely away for free is doing a bad economic move.
Many games managed to finance their developpement by selling hats and other borderline useless stuff for their game but on the other end, I can’t even think of one game where this proved to be a bad move. All gave that got killed after micro transaction were not killed because they offered more platekini or cooler jeans for a price.
Begs the question what we finance with the subscription money. CCP mixes up free-to-play micros with the subscription model to make players pay double for the same thing. That’s perverted.
Pretty much all the MMO that still run on subs do both anyway by now. It’s an income stream and by large the player either accepted it or don’t make much of a fuss over it.
As for what your subscription and those extra purchase actually pay for, it would be hard to actually tell from our point of view. Depending on how much subs actually brings in and how much is spent on EVE, it might fund it + some extra for other CCP projects or maybe it does not fund it completely at the current spending rate and the extra purchase enable some more money to be poured into it. We are never likely to get the actual number tho so people will push those point of view according to their biased perception.
Personally, I see it as “dessert”. If I want some, I “order” it and pay for it but I don’t think it’s actaulyl part of my “meal” I ordered as sub.
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Very interesting that you had your starter, meal and desert in one go for many years and now you are willing to pay extra for the desert. Interesting point of view and on capitulation.
Some place still offer “complete” service for a price with all included. They call it “table d’hote” in French but I have no idea what the English word for it is. Not all included meals probably became a thing after many people complained they were paying for coffee and dessert even if they didn’t want it for example. The skins came backward tho. We payed for the game and then they started offering skins. It was never included as a feature since it didn’t exist to be included. Maybe CCP could create a “Ultra” clone state that increase the sub price but it comes with all skins.
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Server access and core development of the game. Skins are optional and the money from their sale covers their development as well as suplements the core game.
By charging for the skins it means that only the people who care about them and want them pay for their development.
If they where just included in the subscription then everyone would be paying for them, regardless of if they want them or not. And without the money from the sales the cost of development would be coming out of the core game development. So either a) we would be getting the same skins at the same rate, but game development on the whole would suffer. Which affects everyone. Or b) we would have fewer and lesser quality skins or none at all, which affects a smaller number.
By charging for them we get both. Skins for those who want them, without massively impacting development for those who don’t.
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How did CCP pay for that before skins? 
Besides, CCP did not hire more art guys just to develop skins or programmers to develop the texture render system. This comes all from the same developers, so core development is impacted. Prove me wrong wrong but am not seeing how CCP’s development before skins was less productive than after introducing the cash-grab.
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Technically, the new money coming from skin could also land directly in Hillmar’s pocket so no more DEV time would exist to make a difference between then and now.
Before skins we also didn’t have free to play. AFAIK we also don’t know one way or another if they have hired anyone new or not. even if they didn’t, art guys and texture developers are not coders, you can’t assume that having the art team not working on art would somehow make the coders more productive.
(numbers being pulled from ass, but it still illustrates the point)
Lets assume a worst case scenario where the price of skins doesn’t actually cover the cost of their development, lets say it only covers half and the rest of the cost comes from subscriptions.
if out of every subscription 10 cents gets used for skin development. and lets say there are only 50000 payed accounts (it is probably higher, but the last semi-reliable number I could find was from 2 years ago which pegged it at ~140000)
assuming this worst case scenario, that means that 50000*.1=$5000 per month going towards skin development regardless of if a player wants it or not.
Now if they rolled the price of those skins into the subscription fee, that number would double to 20 cents per sub to cover the development, thats an extra 5 thousand dollars per month that is coming out of the game development budget on the whole. and negatively affecting every person in the game regardless of if they give a damn about skins.
now that is a worst case scenario, based on low subscriber numbers, high development cost per skin, and the assumption that they only make enough money from the sales of the skins to cover.
CCP is a business, their goal is to make money, if the sale of skins was not generating enough revenue to cover their costs +a healthy profit, then they wouldn’t bother doing it.
by charging for the skins, it means that only the people who want them will be paying the cost to develop them. and those who don’t care for them don’t have to absorb that cost.
Even if ccp is only sinking just enough money back into the art department as it costs to develop the skins and pocketing the rest, that is still covering a good chunk of the art departments salary, which means they can dedicate the rest of their time to developing game assets. art departments still gotta get payed somehow. would you rather that money come from everyones sub, money that could be spent on coding and balance changes? or from a handful of people willing to splash 40 bucks on some pretty pixels.
I would like to have this money come from everyone’s sub because I actually want to use other skins than those CCP throws into rare PVE events. Some skins really look good and I would love to use them. But that is not going to happen when I have to pay extra money for something that ought to be included in my already big sub. Even less for skins that cost me 2 times the monthly sub.
This would, among other things, also result in higher interest in the game because you can just play it and get rewarded with skins one way or another, instead of having to directly or indirectly pay RL money for things that many players really want to use. In other words: Good press, more subs, more sustainable, long-run income instead of milking and nurturing whales. To me, this is a more sound and reasonable business model and economic decision than what CCP does now. But by the looks of it, this is just me.
so your saying that because you want pretty space pixels, and you don’t want to pay extra for them. you want the entire player base as a whole to subsidize their development, taking money away from development as a whole (because it sure as ■■■■ aint coming out of the profits)
because clearly your access to a luxury cosmetic item is more important than the entire rest of the games core development.
I get it, skins are pretty, I own quite a few of them myself, if there is a skin I want I buy it, either for cash or for isk. and there are a few that I would love to own but don’t because the price is just too damn high (i’m looking at you capital firewall breach skins) but if everyone has them, it looses a lot of its appeal, and if the price for those skins is a choice between a higher sub cost, or lower development budget for everything else. then i’d rather not have them at all.
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Don’t put words in my mouth. CCP wants everyone to use them, otherwise they wouldn’t put so many ads everywhere in the launcher and even ingame. With this change, they would achieve their goal and no money would get taken away from core development because there would more and more sustainable income overall. You should read the full response before accusing me of being selfish.
skins are a cosmetic item. you are fooling yourself if you believe “oh hey, you can make your ship look a little bit different if you want” is going to be enough to bring players flooding back in droves.
Nobody is going to go rushing to play tf2 just because they made hats free. and no one is going to rush to play eve just because there are a some free skins.
from a gameplay perspective making them cost money makes them more exclusive and valuable IG, that makes them more desirable. I’ve splashed far more isk than I probably should have on skins, I’ve even gone out and spent a couple days grinding the cash for ones I particularly wanted. might not be the most efficient use of my isk, but its something I felt like doing. that puts me out into space where I can create content, or become content for others.
If the skins where all free, then thats several hours that I might not have spent playing.
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Party hats were free in runescape though if you were og. They didn’t cost anything unless you botted/rmt’d well after they were legacy items.
You act like it a skin for a Rifter, no, its a CARRIER, if someone can afford that thing, then they probably have enough cash or ISK to spare for a nice skin.