It’s just a matter of trust.
No matter direct skillpoints sales are bad for the game or not, there is a fact they broke their own promise.
They are getting quick cash in exchange for their own reputations and trusts.
It’s very important to note here that this means all the skillpoints available to buy on the market in EVE will have originated on other characters where they were trained at the normal rate. Player driven economies are key to EVE design and we want you to decide the value of traded skillpoints while we make sure there is one single mechanism that brings new skillpoints in to the system – training.
So many angles to explore no short answer will be fair.
Let me be that guy, what about competing with 50m+ players? Should I wait 5-10 years? How’s that different from skill injectors?
DISCLAIMER: I don’t buy anything anymore from CCP, I bought one or two way back. Anxiety is not the answer, but I don’t expect a company to care for me, it’s my business to know how to spent my money.
Not sure if there will ever be a solution to that. Late cover will always be in a disadvantage from a certain POV against the people that started more early, but that literally goes with everything in life, work, crypto mining, investing etc. But if you want you can start today and enjoy it and still have fun. Just because other people have more because they started earlier doesn’t mean that you can’t join them as well.
Older players are usually pretty happy to help new players to get started and make some iskies. Now when it comes to the older players own lil niche secrets, well probably not going to tell those because they’re niche or secrets they learned trough their own hard work, probably.
Still though, bit sad to see that there is no answer from CCP to the recent community backlash regarding the state of the game and their monetization attempts. Transparency and communication are things which can keep a game community together, lack of both, well, may not break it but certainly wont help it in staying together.
The big issue I see with this is that new players losing their ship in an unexpected way are going to interpret what happened as an unfair trick to milk them.
This is going to be for them an objective, rational reason to not wonder what they may have done wrong or should do differently, and instead look at it as a trap that CCP devised to get more ISK out of them.
So, there are actually two important points here. First, is that you are not forever disadvantaged against the vets. Second, there is a big difference between direct selling of SP and injectors, and I assert that this is not a good deal for newbros.
Player Churn- Players are constantly coming and going in all MMO’s. As vets leave, newbros come in. And, over time, they rise in power and skill, and become the next generation of vets. It’s not unlike “churn” in real world militaries.
Specialization- You can actually max out a ship relatively fast if you focus your training on it. Of course, many newbros don’t know exactly what they want to do or what they want to fly, so they seem to spread SP all over the place. However, (and this is casual observation) it does seem like most figure things out well within their first year, and start becoming badasses in their favorite ships, roles, and activities.
Logarithmic Growth- The amount of SP required to train each level of a skill increases exponentially. Players have noted that out of the total training time required to train a skill, only about 20% is required to reach rank 4.
Tools For Growth- Well, everyone has access to cerebral accelerators, neural remaps, implants, and skill injectors. Unfortunately, newbros are unlikely to know how to best use these tools and/or be able to afford things like skill injectors. However, they eventually start making enough money to be able to afford them in bulk (I think I bought about 7 in my first year, but started eating them like candy in my second), and use them to pack on a tremendous amount of SP in a short amount of time. Vets, however, cannot do the same because of injector penalties. Yes, technically, they can keep injecting (I remember an article about one guy using them to become the highest SP character in the game). However, it is stupid expensive for them to do so, and often just better for them to be patient as they passively train. Thus, injectors are more a tool to help newbros to catch up, than it is for vets to pull ahead.
Ship Balance- Ships are brilliantly balanced so that bigger, more expensive, and more skill intensive is not always better. Even newbros in cheap ships can be competitive and make meaningful contributions to fleets.
Vet Power?- Azual Skoll has a blog post about being risk adverse in PvP, that talks about how he has a tendency to overestimate his opponent. Yes, there are dangerous and powerful vets flying around wrecking everyone’s ■■■■. But most vets don’t fit that category. You have care bears, industrialists, F1 monkeys, casuals, and a bunch of people who, for whatever reason, just aren’t that good. Hell, even the good players sometimes make mistakes or have bad days. Lord knows I start making mistakes when I get tired.
Player Skill- Player skill is the single biggest factor in determining outcomes. This is important because there is nothing limiting how quickly you grow as a player. Yes, you will start off as an incompetent turd, but you will gain power at an extraordinary rate (both in terms of player and character power). It’s like going from peewee to varsity ball in your first year, playing college ball in your second, and turning pro in your third. Yeah, you’ll “have to pay your dues” -we all did. But newbros are not forever disadvantaged; nor will it take them 5-10 years to become competitive.
I’ve said this in like 3 posts already, but -Eve was already 12 years old by the time I started playing. It already had a storied history. Empires had risen, held the galaxy by the throat, and crumbled to ashes, and entire generations of players had come and gone by the time I got pooped out into space in a rookie ship. I’m by no means a badass, and would likely get destroyed in “fair” fights, but I now have a character that is the top 1% of all characters in terms of SP, and 3 more in the top 4%, I multibox [redacted] accounts (which I mostly pay for through plex, and not real world money), and I prey on other players for fun and profit. I am the danger lurking in the skies of new eden for many players. I am what goes bump in the night. It took time and effort to get here, but I got here. And so can you.
SP Packs Circumvent Injector Penalties
So, remember how I said that injectors were more a tool to help new players catch up than help vets pull ahead? Yeah, well, selling SP directly to players allows vets to circumvent injector penalties. Moreover, there is the fact that CCP is (thank god) limiting the packs to one purchase per account, but are periodically releasing new packs. This means that, vets, by virtue of being around longer, essentially get to buy more SP.
This is not something that helps newbros catch up, as it disproportionately advantages older players. Honestly, I think newbros should be angry about this.
It’s obvious they are trying to milk EVE for all they can so they can try at more failed projects aside from EVE. Maybe they’ll actually not give up on something for once tho.
I will always continue logging into the game and keep this character’s account subbed and training skills, up to the day CCP shuts down the server.
In fact due to all the changes CCP has done over the past couple of years my main activity in-game is now a Trade career, even though my character is skilled for exploration / mission running,.
I ask because many people here cry about CCP, and they are acting like something recently has changed.
You could buy a 1 month subscription in 2007, and sell it for ISK in the forums. Even skill points were essentially for sale, because characters could be bought and sold.
Eve hasn’t changed as much as people think. The only real difference is it’s more apparent and widespread than before.
I must admit I am a little confused at the emotion here because:
Is the total truth of it…
One can argue that the injectors just made it easier to convert real cash into advantage but that is the only thing that really changed.
I have never been in favour of the plex system, especially when they made it so easy to grind ISK and pay for massed accounts. Removing easy ISK fonts makes it harder for excessive multi-boxers and bots which is good for the game IMO of course.
As I am happy to subscribe two accounts and am content with that. Maybe inching towards re-subbing…
But that character they bought was trained just like everyone else and you could look at that character’s history and have a good idea of what to expect, there is a difference between that and just going all-out and making SP a commodity but at the same time it really doesn’t matter. I was very much against skill injection/trading when it was introduced and in fact it was (one of) my rage quit moments, these days I use injectors and extractors all the time.
And that really is the thing: people are inert to change, all change, and some people are just in it for the drama and negativity. Yet at the same time they will end up making use of the things they said would be bad for the game and cry about how x change, the one that personally affected them, is going to completely destroy the game.
