No, that booster is just a +3.
Also relevant to the discussion…
Hey guys,
Just wanted to drop in here now I have a clearer picture of the situation and can speak with some knowledge on what happened here.
We completely understand community concerns around the selling of Skill Points for cash, and we know how strongly you guys feel about this.
A few changes are going to be made to this pack soon in order to square things away.
Just to clarify things, we’ve sold starter skillpoint packs to rookies in the past via steam, and of course SP rewards are a thing through the recruiment program too. This isn’t something new, and we’re always looking for ways to increase the chances of a rookie pilot becoming a seasoned veteran that sticks with EVE for many years.
The objective of this pack was to give rookies a little bit more leeway with their initial training and to give them a leg up when it came to branching out into their first few new ships. While it’ll have that effect, it’s obviously been implemented in a way that’s causing community concern, so we’ll be making a couple of changes.
The first is that we’re currently looking at restricting the sale of this pack so that it’s available on account creation and lasts for 30 days.
Similarly, we’re also looking to restrict it so that it can only be used by accounts that are <30 days old.
We’re aware that there’s been a super strong community reaction to this pack going on sale and it wasn’t our intention to cause the pitchforks to come out.
Hopefully we’ll have this resolved soon.
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More SP are not magically going to make player retention better. Instead of wasting time on finding ways to suck money out of new players, CCP should focus on making the game fun again and creating more opportunities for player interaction.
If you feel that is a requirement for new players to enable them to do more stuff in the game from the start give them chars that have more SP right from the start and don´t try these cash grab methods.
Nice try for some damage control though, allthough it´s basically nothing but hot watery air. A smokescreen to try to hide an attempt to just milk money out of people.
But it´s all in the interest of new players right? I call BS on that one.
Edit: Also this whole thing contracdicts that you care about them staying for long times in the game. You trying to suck as much money out of them in their early days means you want to make as much money from them before they inevitably leave.
Smells like desperation and being out of ideas of how to improve player retention.
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You figured out how CCP and modern politics operates.
Now make sure everyone you know understands it too.
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Lol @ armchair experts telling CCP how to do their business. @CCP, I hope you achieve whatever goals were set when this was rolled out (◕ᴗ◕✿)
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I mean, as consumers we can only give back the feedback we feel is appropriate, if we feel the service provided is not up to our standards.
We could also just let this franchise die. Player numbers keep falling and summer is coming.
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The higher the value of the bait, the less effective it will be in the future.
Imagine I have a huge amount of jobs I need other people to do for me.
Some people will take the job for 100 (per month). They do the job for a while, then realize it’s a shitty job and quit. So I offer 100 again, but the people who would have done it for 100 aren’t willing to do it anymore … so I have to raise it to 200.
Imagine that, of course, there will always be some who stay at 100, but that their number isn’t significant. Worse, I have to raise their pay as well, because otherwise they’d stop doing it when others are getting paid 200.
Some of the formerly quitting 100-bucks-people will come back and new people are found, because 200 are enough to bait them. They will do the jobs for a while, until they realize its a shitty job and quit.
Some stay, of course, but their number is insignificant.
Again you need to raise the bait, because no one’s willing to do the job. I’ve lost many people due to the fact that the job is ■■■■. I’ve lost many people due to the fact that the pay isn’t enough. The pool of potential workers has shrunken.
When the job is ■■■■, I will keep to have raising the bait higher and higher,
with lesser and lesser gains until this scheme collapses under its own weight.
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I don’t disagree - you’re shooting the messenger mate.
We also have a substantial number of devs working toward improving the experience for new players during their first few hours in the game. We spoke about this at EVE North, and it’s something that’s on our radar for sure.
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I’m sorry for that one post.
Well, actually for more than that.
Well, you are the one interacting with the community here, so you are the one I had to shoot in this instance.
I am pretty sure it´s probably just stuff your higher ups did feed you to post to calm people down. And I actually feel sorry for you being in a position where you have to communicate that kind of BS to us.
You’d be surprised at the freedom I have to write whatever the hell I want when I talk to you guys.
The last thing I am is on a leash - if I was, I wouldn’t be working for CCP 
That’s the great thing about working community for CCP - regardless of who you’re talking to at the company, we give a ■■■■ about our players and everyone from myself right up to Hellmar is fine with our community communication being an open, candid two way street.
We don’t intentionally screw up or try to cause problems, and when we do we make sure we own them and set them right.
In this instance, we messed up and we’ll make sure that we fix the pack in question.
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I’m going to take a guess that this was CCP Marketing Dept having an awesome idea and just running with it without getting any internal feedback.
Because surely there are enough people at CCP who know how their users exploit everything? Right?
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You know how it worked in the past and it was more effective than what we have now. I don’t understand how it is not the most sensible thing to do to recreate the conditions relevant to making sure new players are getting engaged with others in an organic fashion … using Adrenline and/or excitement.
Random social interaction. CCP keeps reducing the one thing that gets people hooked in the easiest manner.
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Consumerism in the games industry changes drastically and rapidly.
Games aren’t what they were five years ago. Hell, games aren’t what they were two years ago.
Audiences, their needs, their attention spans and the psychology behind how they play, when they play, what they play and what they pay for changes every time these shifts occur.
People can armchair develop all day long on a public forum, but the reality is that it’s useless without internal metrics on the behavior of the people who’re playing your game.
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Throughout the years the NPE has been adapted by “a substantial amount of DEVS” several times and it only really ever got worse. What makes it different this time?
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Keep in mind though that not everyone had an issue (or not much of an issue) with it. The things to take away for CCP from this (IMO) are:
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Be really wary of going back on previous, publicly made promises.
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Be aware that you have packaged and sold the game in the past in a way that makes the “Pay for advantage” crowd very very hyper about the advantages they have paid for and want to keep. Not saying you should cater to that crowd (it’s bad for the game in the long run), but you should package/present things in a way that causes less rabid reactions from them.
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Do please make note of the fact that modern players do need viable catch-up mechanics, and think about implementing some of the more rational, game-enhancing suggestions that have arisen in this debate.
Thank you very much for your responses and explanations!
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And that is all fine, but please don´t justify things like that with it being in the interested of new players.
As I said above. If it was in the interest of new players you would have just given them more options without charging them extra for it, no matter how small the amount is.
I hope you guys will be looking into ways to make the skill system more easy to use and intuitive for new players as we spoke about last summit - Giving them 1 million Skillpoints isn’t going to do much if they don’t know how to use them properly, and dump them into 1 L5 skill instead of spreading around to L3/L4’s like they should to make the best use of the head start.
Still, thank you for the quick reaction.
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I wouldn’t bring it up if CCP had a track-record of doing it right.
Yet, matter of fact is, there’s no evidence of that.
That’s why I believe pointing at what worked in the past seems to be a sensible option. Plus, social interaction is - according to your own colleagues - actually raising the chance for retention.
When CCP put in Suspect State and the Protection Button, you they’ve put a huge nerf onto all of this. You can choose not to believe me all you want and you they can stick to your their metrics all they want, but when a company keeps stubbornly sticking to metrics, while not actually showing any signs of success using these metrics, then either there’s something wrong with the metrics, or there are quite a few important ones missing.
I don’t “armchair”, btw.
I put actual non-trivial effort into this.
Thank you for your reply. 
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