POS BPO Refund proposal

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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I asked the question in General Discussion regarding when we could expect to be refunded for the POS BPO’s now that all purposes for the POS Structures have been replaced. It unfortunately quickly devolved into a Troll Fest. So rather than being dragged under the bridge I decided to post an idea regarding how this could be done without significantly effecting the market.

For those of you who have old POS BPO’s, you recognize the amount of time and effort it took to collect and research them. Now you are reminded of all of that wasted effort, time and ISK whenever you open “that” hanger or can. You will understand why this is important.

When CCP announced Citadels, the question of what would be done about the POS BPO’s was brought up. At the time, and several times after, CCP commented that once all of the uses for a POS were replaced, they would be be refunding the cost of the old BPO’s. It is not unreasonable to ask when this is going to happen as the last of the uses for the old POS system has been replaced with Stargates.

The problem stems from HOW it will happen. I imagine this is why there has been a delay and lack of comment from CCP.

This is the problem. Refunding with ISK would flood the market with tens of Trillions of ISK, if not more, at a time when PLEX prices are at an all time high. This could potentially cause even more problems with the price of PLEX and likely wreak havoc on other markets. So refunding with pure ISK is an issue and I can understand why CCP would not want to do this.

The proposed solution: In the Near Term, create a Market Credit for the ISK value of the POS BPO’s that can be used only for the purchase of other BPO’s. BPO’s could be redeemed at full purchase price for this Credit if they are at ME/PE 0/0. If they have been researched a small % value could be added to the value of the BPO when redeemed.

It would be unreasonable for us to expect CCP to correctly identify the full research cost of every BPO for every player. Yet there was a significant cost to researching the BPOs. Players should be compensated to at least a small degree. One simple method of doing so would be to add a small percentage to the value of the BPO when redeemed which correlates to the research level of the BPO. Example: 5% for ME/PE of 1-3, 10% for 3-7, 20% for 7-10. This value is the only thing I can see worth debate.

Being NPC item’s, it would not cause any market swings if players rushed out to purchase more BPO’s. For the most part, those who have old POS BPO’s are industrialists. I cannot see many having an issue with converting, now useless items, into more useful BPO’s.

In the long term, after CCP can identify that most of the BPO’s have been redeemed, CCP might offer a fractional ISK refund for those remaining in game for a period of time decided by CCP. Those who hold on to the BPO’s after this offer could be considered to be holding on to them as collectors items and no more offer’s would be made. CCP could then decide how to handle requests for refunds from players returning to the game on a case by case bases.

Anyone see an issue where this would either cause problems with the game or needlessly inconvenience players?

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I like the idea of a market credit for new BPOs but I think it may add even more time for CCP to implement this new credit system instead of just giving us ISK.

The research done IMHO is irrelevant (I’ve several 10/20 prints myself) because you’ve likely made your returns on that research in the past - and if not that’s just a risk we failed to make a return on. Providing extra benefit (via the additional credit suggested) on conversion now seems an unnecessary complication to me at least.

The POS themselves do still have uses not fully replaced by Upwell structures yet. As mentioned in other threads Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) will likely replace the final functions of POS when introduced so I wouldn’t expect any movement from CCP until they are done.

There’s also the issue of all the abandoned POS kit in space - I hope they’d make a mini-profession like hacking a viable way of unanchoring and removing the old kit, but I guess that is another thread. The point being ‘OLD POS’ is a massive project for CCP so I personally wouldn’t expect it to happen for at least another 3-6 months after they publish how they’ll tackle the problem. Glad to see real discussion of how they should do it though - been on my mind too since returning to play the game. Cheers.

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This was answered by CCP Falcon in your main thread about refunds, so there is already plans to give refunds of some sort to current owners of the blueprints.

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