In rookie chat they said remote injection was so much cheaper. That I didn’t need to go to Caldari space to find my Caldari Drone Specialization at a reasonable price.
Well, I followed the advice and ended up buying the skill at a 1000%+ mark up. When clicking it, I hadn’t seen the tiny white text above the blue button. I assumed that after clicking ‘Buy and Inject’ that it would confirm the price and then proceed. Nope, it just goes straight to buying and took my isk.
Skillbooks are obviously spawned and supplied by npc stations. Unfortunately there is nothing in game that will tell you about their markets. If your not in a region that supplies them, then your SOL for trying to track down their source. Maybe there is some deeper meta based on lore and naming that lets you piece together where they are but new players, the ones looking for new skills, are not going to know that while learning to fly their ships and how to make isk.
To me, on a menu with no resizing options, with the price text taking up about 1% of that while a big blue buy now button takes up 10% is bad. That button should really be translated into ‘please scam me now.’
I would very much like some safeguards in place here. Add an extra window that warns the player that they are buying a skill for x% above the spawned price. This system is in place for buying over priced items in a region you can see, and should be used here for all of New Eden. Skillbooks are not items players can make and are required by new players to play the game. They are not like other markets with destructible, these skills are permanent additions to the character.
And yes, scams are a part of Eve, but I don’t think they should show up this early in the player’s experience. Let them learn the way they want to learn, and not by forced trial of fire. That said, the worst part of this is that they might not get the chance to learn at all. There’s no directive in the game telling a player to leave their current region, so they may never have the opportunity to know better and would continue getting scammed. Skillbooks and how they spawn are a total mystery to new players.
When you buy skills through the character sheet, you essentially buy it from an NPC, and that isk is taken out of the game. So, it has nothing to do with scamming.
Second, scamming is an intended part of the game. It is not, however, allowed in rookie help chat or rookie systems. So, if you see scamming there, you should report it.
Third, what probably happened is that you were just given bad advice by someone who didn’t know any better. There have been times when certain skillbooks were available through the Skill sheet for less than what they were selling for on the market, but, for the most part, you’re going to pay a markup. Moreover, when you buy the skill through the character sheet, you pay a markup over NPC order prices -which can be much higher than player prices for the skillbooks that are available through both, NPC sell orders and through the loot of certain activities (hopefully that made sense).
Regardless, let this be a lesson to you. Always check market prices before buying from the skill sheet. It’s mostly there for those who would rather just pay the markup and be done with it, than spend the time hunting down a cheaper NPC or player sell order.
@Mike_Azariah
Of course, all of that being said, it might not be the worst idea to warn new players that they are paying a markup over NPC sell orders and/or the average market price.