Hey, CCP? I get that you want to (and need to) make more money, but there are better ways of going about it than selling skill points for cash. You’ve already got something good going with the SKIN market, so maybe you could expand on that by taking a leaf out of Digital Extremes’ book?
You may or may not have heard of Warframe, but it’s one of the most popular free-to-play online action games in the world, and the devs figured out a way to get more revenue and fan participation via the Steam Workshop in a way that I think is utterly brilliant.
They created TennoGen.
A collection of community created cosmetic content (yay alliteration!) that are selected by Digital Extremes and subsequently implemented in the in-game market, TennoGen has been a boon to the game’s community as well as the company ledgers. The cosmetics can only be purchased with real money, and all revenue generated from these purchases is split between Digital Extremes and the creators of the TennoGen cosmetics.
It’s even helped drag one creator out of poverty!
I can’t play the game in open mode for ten minutes without seeing another player decked out in something made through TennoGen, and it’s completely impossible to visit one of the hubs like Fortuna or Cetus without seeing at least a dozen more! Some of these cosmetics are so astonishingly detailed it will make your jaws hit the floor, and many are considered objectively better than what DE has made themselves.
Please CCP, give fans the ability to create and submit SKINS of our own design that you can sell in your store. You won’t regret it.