Our latest dev blog is out, diving into Value Packs and what’s next for Starter Packs. We’ve been reviewing feedback and refining our approach to ensure these packs provide meaningful value to each segment of players.
Please share any thoughts and feedback that you have below.
I sure hope that CCP will buy from players, maybe in smaller markets, instead of creating that stuff from thin air and only pretending that they got the stuff from players. Repurposing assets from banned accounts could also work, but this is not a sustainable source.
Would you feel the same uneasiness if the ships supplied in these packs were sourced by player-made ships that were turned in to Paragon for EverMarks?
Only if you released numbers and stats in the MER, for instance, on how many ships Paragon receives from players. Otherwise, it would just be a blackbox no one knows what goes in. Transparency.
Would CCP stop selling the ships in those packs if not enough people turn in barges for EVERMARKS at that time?
I think the answer to that is no.
This means the sales of ships is not correlated to the supply of these ships by players.
Yes, I feel uneasy about it.
CCP spawns ships out of thin air which competes with player-made ships and undermines the player industry.
The existence of NPC ‘buy orders’ for EVERMARKS doesn’t make this situation better, it makes it even worse because while you mess with the supply not even the demand is natural now.
The only redeeing factor is that both the ship spawns and the NPC buy orders affect a limited selection of ships for now, so as long as players ignore the industry part of those particular ships they can pretend the economy in EVE is still ran by players. For now.
No that would be fake and it won’t convince anyone, please don’t do this. Everyone understands that it’s just another slippery slope Pandora’s box, regardless of how you (no offence) or anyone else tries to convince people it won’t be.
Why not just saying out right that these ships will not come from players and will instead be generated from thin air? You are saving us the hassle of finding that out a few months down the line.
Would you, could you, should you trust those numbers? Because it’s not like they couldn’t just make up any number they want to to suit their narrative and intended statistics.
Just something to consider and if in any way in some way that the numbers could actually be verified somehow, if that is even possible to implement.
That thought crossed my mind as well. However, the numbers would be part of the data export, so everyone can verify them. If they were fake, it would put the entire MER, the economy claims at large and everything else into doubt as well.
Overall I like the idea of dividing up the packs in a way that make more sense to the different types of customers. I do have some suggestions though.
The Starter Level 1 pack exists to “lure” new players into giving EVE a real try and what do new players want? Omega for a bit and some plex to “buy cool stuff”. They’re not really interested in accelerators right now because A) they don’t understand what they do and B) that relies on them understanding which skills they want to train, which they won’t and C) they are more long term items so not something a newbie who wants to “try EVE” is looking for. I’d suggest to remove the accelerator and replace it with some plex, like 30 or so.
And perhaps add the Core ships Operations expert system that last for those 15 days, that won’t do anything for seasoned players but it allows new players to “try out” EVE for real while they can focus their training on cool things. That way you also introduce them to those expert packs.
I don’t think that for the lvl 4 and 5 packs people are interested in the extractors. Most older players just train their characters while people who care for extractors want them in bigger numbers and generally aren’t interested in any of the other stuff, since they want to optimise and minmax their costs. I would replace those with something else.