Skill training of lapsed accounts stopping 8/15

[Amarr HM]

Yup Jayce is about right with those observation I am basically the third on that account but I ain't farming up for cap ship I have always paid dollar for my main and used ISK to fund my alts and with datacores selling so low at the moment it means I have to find another means of making ISK. I'm pretty sure I can suicide gank still in a battlecruiser but need to test it first.

[lac]

I try to do some training while my account is inactive for the first time in 12 months and they pull the plug after 4 days...
I was rather looking forward to resubscribe once my shiny new BS V skill was done. Now resubbing will mean a dreary 30 day skill training. I somehow doubt this will cause me to subscribe an extra month.

I can see how they wanted to stop people using this to create chars they sell to buy gtc's to fund more chars they can sell for gtc's, etc.
I'm sure Eve will survive fine without it but it does take some of the charm and incentive to resubscribe away for the average player.

[Pax]

Additionally, selling a char basically costs 20$ - an amount that easily and neatly covers any ghost training.

I, for one, used ghost training, it was a feature after all, so I'm glad I got frigate 5, cruiser 5 and battleship 5 out of the way while the feature lasted.
Battleship 5 is gonna cost some 45 Euros now 

[Slayerik]

Yup Jayce is about right with those observation I am basically the third on that account but I ain't farming up for cap ship I have always paid dollar for my main and used ISK to fund my alts and with datacores selling so low at the moment it means I have to find another means of making ISK. I'm pretty sure I can suicide gank still in a battlecruiser but need to test it first.

Its doable, but anything with a halfway decent tank gets to laugh at you and fly away. Concord response is about twice as fast, so go all gank , no tank. It lost a lot of it's luster for me, but I'm sure I'll dabble in it again someday.

[Thrawn]

Its doable, but anything with a halfway decent tank gets to laugh at you and fly away. Concord response is about twice as fast, so go all gank , no tank. It lost a lot of it's luster for me, but I'm sure I'll dabble in it again someday.

We'll just have to start organizing to do it in pairs. 

[mutantmagnet]

But the way it's set up, no matter whether people are farming characters up or not, CCP makes money.

Several examples:

• Person has multiple accounts.  Plays on a "main" and farms up one for cap ships.  Leaves gap in subs for dark training. Even so, everytime he wants to change a skill, he has to pay for at least 30 days worth of game time.  Ultimately, he'll sub without interruptions when the skills are all done.

This part of your calculation is being handled wrong.

If you look at the account population as made up of only players then you would be right. Therefore this change would make CCP lose money.

But the account holders aren't just players but also professional character sellers.

Professional character sellers are the people CCP are trying to price gouge and they are deliberately doing this even though it affects the bottom line of their customers who come to only play the game. I didn't think of this at first and it's surprising after reading the threadnaught noone has made that point. Regardless it's a good idea of raising revenue iff the amount of character sellers outweighed the number of customers who pay to play.

But because of the way CCP handled this I know if I was an investor I would be on the phone demanding someone get fired for this fiasco.

As good of an idea it might be I don't have access to CCPs datapoints to know with confidence that professional character sellers was outpacing the growth of real players ghost training.

The way they handled it was so terrible that even if originally the idea was good the idea is now bad because people are going to quit over this and character sellers as a result will face less demand for their services. If CCP originally didn't account for the possibility of character sellers reducing their ghost training for any random reason then all their careful calculations have been destroyed because of shitty P.R.

As a result I would want someone either from accounting or marketing to be fired if revenue doesn't meet projections two months from now. But I'm not an investor so I'm not going to care that much. *shrugs*

[Jayce]

I don't get that argument.  There's no way to (legitimately) get RL cash from the game, only vice versa.  And you can't live on ISK, so how are the professional character sellers an issue?  Every GTC card sale for isk eventually turns into cash for CCP.

If you're talking about isk sellers, they're already illegal and from what I can tell, CCP do a pretty good job of tracking and banning them and removing the isk from the game.

[Endie]

Battleship 5 is gonna cost some 45 Euros now 

What the hell are your perception and willpower?  It only took me 36 days or so, with +3s.

[Miasma]

So you have to train for over thirty days for each race's battleship?  Is there a standard race that everyone does that for or are they all pretty good?

[Phildo]

All depends on what you want your BS to do.

[ajax34i]

You must train for each race's battleship.  People take it to 5 so they meet prerequisites for (each race's) capital ships or T2 ships.

[Pax]

Battleship 5 is gonna cost some 45 Euros now 

What the hell are your perception and willpower?  It only took me 36 days or so, with +3s.

I used a naked clone so it would take longer on purpose.
Took 42 or so days, so even if it's some 37 Euros instead of 45, or howevermanyhundredsofmillions ISK, the point still stands.

[apocrypha]

I don't get that argument.  There's no way to (legitimately) get RL cash from the game, only vice versa.  And you can't live on ISK, so how are the professional character sellers an issue?  Every GTC card sale for isk eventually turns into cash for CCP.

If you're talking about isk sellers, they're already illegal and from what I can tell, CCP do a pretty good job of tracking and banning them and removing the isk from the game.

Farming characters for selling for ISK is a great semi-passive way of ISK generation. Making ISK is the boring part of the game, the fun is in the pvp, which you need ISK for.

Datacores are at rock-bottom low prices, missions are tedium², trading is time-consuming and requires considerable savvy and skill, suicide ganking has been nerfed to buggery, manufacturing margins are incredibly low, invention similarly, low-sec piracy has been all but destroyed because of FW (and plus it was always only a very few who managed to make a decent living from it), exploration is something I've never tried but from what I hear it can also be very very tedious, miningzzZZzZZzZZZZzzzz, POS profiteering is arduous and hard to make money from....

Having a 3rd account, funded entirely with ISK, slowly training up specialist characters for selling, using ghost training as much as possible was an awesome way to make ISK without having to spend hours and hours doing incredibly boring shit. I sold 2 characters in the last 2 years and made about 20 billion ISK profit. I was halfway through training up a minmatar recon specialist for a 3rd sale when the speed nerf was mooted which caused the prices for minnie chars to plummet. Then GTC costs spiraled and now ghost training has been stopped, so that char is now pretty much worthless for me to continue developing.

More and more it feels like CCP are removing all options of making ISK to fund the fun (pvp) without having to grind, and frankly, I think that's a big mistake for them.

[Predator Irl]

Then GTC costs spiraled and now ghost training has been stopped, so that char is now pretty much worthless for me to continue developing.

Won't this make your character more valuable now that it will take people more effort to train?

More and more it feels like CCP are removing all options of making ISK to fund the fun (pvp) without having to grind, and frankly, I think that's a big mistake for them.

Well, in a way they are making it a more level playing field for everyone. Isn't that going to help the game long term ?

[apocrypha]

Won't this make your character more valuable now that it will take people more effort to train?

Well, in a way they are making it a more level playing field for everyone. Isn't that going to help the game long term ?

First point, possibly yeah. I'll keep an eye on the char sales forum and see, although they'll have to get a lot more pricey before it's worth the current GTC costs to continue training him.

Second point, well I dunno, EVE has never been a level playing field - T2 lottery, uneven distribution of good rats/complexes/decent moons/etc, insider info certain alliances have had, devs playing in major alliances, massive advantages of older players over newer ones, etc. However much of that has been fixed or denied doesn't change the fact that a general perception people have of EVE is that it's not a fair game in any way.

And if leveling the playing field means reducing everything to the lowest common denominator of tedious grinding to make ISK for fun... well.. that's not a good bit of game design now is it?

[ajax34i]

I sold 2 characters in the last 2 years and made about 20 billion ISK profit.

2 years worth of subscription fees converted to GTCs = 6 billion ISK.
2 x transfer fees of $20 converted to GTCs = 0.750 billion ISK.

You made 20 billion on top of these costs?

To me it sounds like they're trying to make buying ISK via GTC's the most cost-effective way of avoiding the grind, rather than farming characters.  Maybe they're seeing lots of people with a farm of 20-30 characters and not liking it.  If you made 20 bil profit on 2, why not diversify and grow 20 for a 200 bil profit.

[apocrypha]

Hmm, maybe closer to 18 bill then. I did get lucky with them in terms of selling each when their race & specialties were in demand. Caldari mission runner and a Gallente industrial alt, plus with careful planning and ghost training I didn't have to spend as much as 6 bill for their GTCs.

I did consider having more than one for-sale character on the go at a time but that plus the 2 accounts I was playing for real started to make the Evemon planning annoying. You start to feel tethered to the bloody thing when there's that many skill changes going on :p

Plus they're not investment-free - GTC's, skillbooks and implants for lots of chars was, given my knowledge of CCP's nerfing tendencies, too much of a risk for me. I have to admit I suspected that char sales were going to get a nerf sometime for a while now, although I always thought they would suddenly ban the practice out of the blue one day - it is the CCP way after all :p

[bhodi]

Remember that these days you cannot resub with a purchased GTC if you follow their rules these days.

[Slayerik]

so is ghost training officially off? like, as in, anyone checked?

[Pezzle]

I cannot see the skill training change as a reason to quit.  Yeah they used inactive training as a lure but that is not what EVE is really about.  I see this as just a small chance we will see less cap ship pilots and less spies, both of which I consider good things.  Unfortunately those are probably unintended side effects :P
The strange way they announce these changes is not good.  Eve does strike me as the devs pet project rather than a game we are meant to enjoy.  This will impact on me minimally, in case I forget to resub and training shuts off for a few hours or a weekend.  That is about all.

[Endie]

I cannot see the skill training change as a reason to quit.  Yeah they used inactive training as a lure but that is not what EVE is really about.  I see this as just a small chance we will see less cap ship pilots and less spies, both of which I consider good things.  Unfortunately those are probably unintended side effects :P
The strange way they announce these changes is not good.  Eve does strike me as the devs pet project rather than a game we are meant to enjoy.  This will impact on me minimally, in case I forget to resub and training shuts off for a few hours or a weekend.  That is about all.

I agree on the fact that maybe there will be a few less alts around, which is no bad thing.  And the change won't hugely affect me, either: I rarely lapse my huge army of alts as it is.  I'll probably consolidate and empire alt with a goon one (since they never have to be in the same place at the same time), but that's it.

As regards the sentence I bolded, you probably know this already but Eve was pretty much a pet project of the devs.  A lot of the early impetus on Eve came from people who played UO in particular, enjoyed the hardcore PvP, and wanted to develop that while "fixing" some its they disliked.  I think that a few of the weaknesses have come where that original vision was diluted.

That said, I know that CCP was around in 1997 so they must either have been quick off the mark or had other aims as well in the beginning vOv.

[Jayce]

Yeah, I don't think it's a reason to quit either.  As my TLDR post before proves, it's definitely a good reason to go down to one or two accounts at most so that's why I think it will backfire if more money is what they are after.

[Thrawn]

Even with the current mass of bugs/issues/lag I still think I enjoy EvE much more then I would enjoy going back to some standard carrot-on-a-stick grindfest MMO.

[Amarr HM]

Yeh that's why I agree with Jayce I won't be spending any more money on Eve I'll just have less ISK to play with and only use two accounts now instead of three.

[LC]

Already canceled my account. This is just one more thing to add to my list of reasons.

[Pezzle]

Yeah, the devs were making something for themselves but when you try and attract customers it becomes something else.  It is not about YOU anymore.  They seem to be going that direction.  CCP is looking for more customers, bigger market share.  Some of the things I really like about EVE are gone or infrequent.  EVE TV concept was great, I want it back.  Tournaments and the like which are broadcast.  New and fun ideas, entertainment.  No, that is not a substitute for fixing glaring game problems LIKE THE FUCKING UI, however, it is better for me than one of the shitty vague and ultimately pointless blogs or at this point the CSM.  Yes, I think the CSM could be useful, but EVE TV is more entertainment. 

[Slayerik]

Already canceled my account. This is just one more thing to add to my list of reasons.

I saved my 'can I have your stuff?' for LC.

Since I saved it for you, I am big winnar right???  :)

[Amarr HM]

Yeah, the devs were making something for themselves but when you try and attract customers it becomes something else.  It is not about YOU anymore.  They seem to be going that direction.  CCP is looking for more customers, bigger market share.  Some of the things I really like about EVE are gone or infrequent.  EVE TV concept was great, I want it back.  Tournaments and the like which are broadcast.  New and fun ideas, entertainment.  No, that is not a substitute for fixing glaring game problems LIKE THE FUCKING UI, however, it is better for me than one of the shitty vague and ultimately pointless blogs or at this point the CSM.  Yes, I think the CSM could be useful, but EVE TV is more entertainment. 

Hah c'mon the CSM can be way more entertaining than EVE TV,  I really thought EVE TV was only average myself but did have plenty good points. I think the main problem was that it was a little bit clique and I suppose CCP might have envisioned it bringing new players to the fold. Unfortunately to outsiders it would or could make eve look a bit shit, if I was new to Eve and watched it I would be more inclined not to sub. I wish they would fix the fucking UI myself and the memory leaks, oh and I did I mention I want a skill queue 

[Thrawn]

I honestly think if I had a skill queue, even if it was only 1 skill deep, I'd be more likely to forget when my training is done and loose training time. 

[Amarr HM]

Nah Thrawn you couldn't possibly it would be awesome I just thought of a new idea, the CSM and EVE TV together televised bouts of Jade Constantwhine and Darius mudslingin!!! ok I'm trollin now I'll back off.

[Thrawn]

Nah Thrawn you couldn't possibly it would be awesome

Actually, yeah...if I had a 5 day followed by a 7 day skill training.  I'd only have to remember to add another skill sometime in that 7 days, don't know what I was thinking.  That would be pretty great. 

[LC]

Already canceled my account. This is just one more thing to add to my list of reasons.

I saved my 'can I have your stuff?' for LC.

Since I saved it for you, I am big winnar right???  :)

No.

You can't get "stuff" from an inactive account. I canceled all 5 of my accounts last month. I only had 1 day left on the subscriptions.

[Nerf]

Depending on the amount of stuff, I'd gladly reactivate them (and train a skill for you!) to get at it ^_^

[LC]

Depending on the amount of stuff, I'd gladly reactivate them (and train a skill for you!) to get at it ^_^

You are really out of luck then. Part of my reason for quitting is because I needed to go spend a week ratting.

[Nerf]

Sadface.  Guess it's back to suicide ganking with borrowed haulers for a bit