So I came to the conclusion to get to the skill level and DPS with ships I would need to spend 200 dollars on monthly subscriptions slowly bringing up my skills, or 200 dollars all at once. Ether way that is the cost of getting up to speed in EVE. I think this is a bit of cheat on the part of the company that develops this game. It is basically is a 200 dollar game. (Canadian money, probably 150 USD)
Uh… you realize that EVE Online has been a subscription game for 16+ years now, right Also, Skill Injectors allow you to skip a ton of time and you’re paying for that convenience.
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And skill injectors will give you diminishing returns once you get past the 5 million SP mark.
Getting up to speed is really more about getting the actual experience as opposed to having all the skills, and you can’t buy that for any amount.
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“I want it all and I want it now” doesn’t come cheap.
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Just learn it the normal way and see how many hundreds of times you can perfect dying.
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that there might be something wrong with this conclusion ? That there are smaller ships that actually provide more fun flying than bigger ones ?
For example, you don’t need a year’s worth of skill points to fly a tech3 destroyer, which opens avenues into decent level pve and pvp, with tech2 weapons and mods, the most important (engineering) skills from the Magic 14 under your belt to help with your fittings. Hell, you can put yourself in a stealth bomber and be hated by almost everyone inside of two months from scratch. It will take a bit longer to fly it well and learn the techniques involved.
In my (perhaps very personal) opinion, it helps tremendously to set yourself a play style as a goal, identify the line of ships that supports that style and the size of your in game-wallet (not $), and start at the bottom. It will prevent all sorts of frustration while you actually learn some harsh realities about this game.
First though, ISK is freedom of choice, so find a decent way of building your wallet.
There are no shortcuts, thank Bob. The food chain shrugs off injectors. There’s a lot more to playing EvE than amassing sp and skill levels, but I’ll let you discover that. In the mean time, save your money for the subscription, it’s enough, it always was.
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I believe that it is a reasonable question to ask if all skills really need to still exist. Do you really need to make new players invest that first 20 million skill points ( 200$ / 15 * 1.5million per month ) to get “basic” shield/warp/armor skills, or would it be better to let new players have more interesting choices in which ships they’d like to work towards flying.
I’m not saying that is a simple yes or no answer, but it’s a good idea and a fair criticism of the game in the current state to say that there might be some barriers to entry worth re-examining or dismantling if they don’t actually make the game better for new players.
If they do provide value to new players then it should be easy to explain why they exist. I’m not sure that it’s currently the case, and I’d lean towards there being some of those barriers that are actually unnecessary.
The “complete” skill tree takes more than 500+ million skill points. There’s probably room at the bottom for improvement and pruning. I’d likely start with the “magic 14”.
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I criticize CCP a lot for failings on their part, in game design, marketing, PR and code quality.
However, fine, it’s a $200 Cdn game. What exactly is wrong with that? Do they have advertising anywhere that says “EVE - play it all for $50” or something? Whatever else I may say about EVE, if it’s your cup of tea then there’s well over $200 of entertainment value waiting in it for you.
Star Trek Online has players who drop $200 every 3-4 months to get all the goodies they want in it. I’m sure other games are the same. What exactly is your point here?
Knowledge = lots of money generated from casual solo PVE gameplay (even more from more dedicated and/or fleet gameplay and/or PVP). That’s money by which to buy injectors. A few a week. One or more a day even.
The OP wasn’t elegant in his post, but the “problem” here as I see it being described isn’t that it costs 200$ Cdn to buy the game, but that it costs that to “start” the game.
I believe it would be better to create a game that encourages playing with assets more quickly, rather than paying to wait to eventually be able to play with those same in game assets if you happen to make it there, which most don’t.
Is this a paywall that really needs to exist?
(probably no)
If the paywall didn’t exist, would people still pay their 200$ to play?
(probably yes)
So then, why does that barrier exist?
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There is no paywall, unless you want everything at once. Example: in June last year I created an alpha account, the exact opposite of any alleged paywall. That character, because I know a thing or two about playing EvE, was in a Raven in no time, proficient with drones and missiles, and made billions (even lost a Raven or two fighting trigs solo, but such is life and he was rich enough to buy replacements immediately). He bought two daily injectors to push one skill to max after he was done training (5 months total, with all the free SP ccp is handing out)
Net cost: zero. Fun: priceless. Satisfaction: top level.
I’m convinced that skill training needs to be paced. It allows a player to grasp the full importance of skills he/she trains. It FORCES him or her to make the right choices - because EvE will punish relentlessly for making poor choices. Yes, it can be frustrating to have to wait until you can fly the next shiny hull. So is poor knowledge on how to fit ships, on why those skills exist. You can’t earn your spurs by simply buying them. You need to train, experiment, get good, understand what you’re doing, what the game allows you to do. That’s the beauty of it.
A marketing guy would probably snap my head off for saying this, but if it were my choice, with the best of intentions for the game experience, I’d probably only sell skill injectors to people with at least 100M sp already, people who should now exactly why they need that instant access. Now they are simply a lure, making people think they can be “good at EvE” because they shot their pilot full of sp.
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Your mistake is in assuming that skills are required. Don’t get me wrong, skills are important. But the single biggest determining factor in outcomes is player skill. And that’s why you can find videos of players on alphas in cheap fits getting kills in PvP, or running various PvE content (and sometimes making decent money in the process).
Skills certainly provide and advantage, but they aren’t required for success or to have fun. The boys in marketing might want you to think differently, but it’s just not true.
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I want to own Delve. How much does that cost?
Several hundred thousand players over the years have demonstrated that it doesn’t cost $200 to “start” playing EVE. As others have said, if you want it all, and want it now, you pay for that.
There is no issue here, other than someone saying “I want a year or two’s head start in a game, I just don’t want to pay what everyone else paid for that”.
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Fixt
Mr Epeen 
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So you are telling me that if you take two pilots who are both know all of the features and faucets of eve, know how to control and pilot all ships, understand all of the mechanics of the game… etc etc… and give one of them an alpha account with zero skills trained, and another one a completely trained pilot, and then put them both into the same ships, that fight will be fair and the outcome balanced?
No, it won’t. The pilot using the new alpha account will lose, and the pilot with the completely trained account will win.
To remedy the situation above you will need to “pay” to get past that “wall”.
People here are arguing that a 16 year advantage is ok, that a 15 month skill point advantage is fine, but in terms of game play and accessibility it’s bad game design.
Not what I said nor implied. Not sure how you got that from what I did say. I even said in my original post that skills do provide an advantage.
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It’s not about paying to win, it’s not about the exact amount of $ it costs to start playing, it’s about the new player experience and about the differential between a new player in a scenario where the game gives an advantage to those who have simply existed longer.
Why penalize a great player who hasn’t been playing as long as a poor player who’s been playing for a long time? Don’t you want better pvp fights? More pvp action? Why gate that behind a long and boring skill tree?
Your integrity
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Your dignity, reputation, and personal identifiable information. Oh, and monthly web hosting fees.
EDIT: â– â– â– â– I see @Shipwreck_Jones beat me by 3 minutes
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