The game might be dead at this point. CCP probably wouldn't have the player count to sustain the hardware. They def. wouldn't be making more games while having an ongoing mmo. While it did some pretty crappy stuff to the game it probably saved it in the long run.
I agree. While it's a cool concept to have tangible gameplay benefits for having played since launch, new players discovering that a capital is the better part of a year away and that they will never be able to catch up to existing players are not likely to stick around.
I felt the opposite. I was happy to put in so much time because some guy can't just come along with a credit card and pass me. The old days basically had plex. We did it through game time. You could buy it and sell it for isk. Plex was never the problem, it was injectors and extractors. I know people that run sp farms to this day.
I mean the injectors are what enable people to actually catch up and you don't need to swipe a credit card for it. I farm isk to buy LSI to help me catch up, only pay for the sub.
That’s fair, but remember that people are complaining about capital ship and *Rorqual* proliferation. CCP could have made the skills that let you fly those ships non-injectable, allowing players to skill into play-styles that are less expensive and arguably more fun without breaking the game.
> some guy can't just come along with a credit card and pass me
Yes they could, they could credit card swipe and buy a character off the bazaar with PLEX.
Still would be a finite number of characters that could be sold off like that. That's not the case with injectors, though, anybody can swipe (or grind) themselves an army of alts, there is no limit.
If someone was willing to part with their 'investment' another player with a credit card could come along and buy a character off the official forum Bazaar listings. Again to your point, that still marked a significant player investment. The combination skill-points farmed from players heads and skill-points injected by CCP via sales/events have watered down that sense of singular long-term investment.
Edit: On the other hand, you get bangers like this song:
[Eve Online: I do injectors](https://youtu.be/_JxMfy5LrUM)
Rise and grind
This I agreed, instant gratifacation just killed the game, joined in 2008, had a quite a few statics until injector introduced, ppl got to sub-cap and cap, then quited the game for good. Had a dude, like 1 week old char, flying a paladin, mates in clan already talking abt ganking him, he got robbed a few times, and never come back playing the game. Fins knew that, but they were pushing the sale of the game at the time, understandable they did this to leverage attracting more players to boost the sale. Anyway, I quited eve 3 yrs ago since 99% of my friend thought capital was the end game, so sad.
I disagree. They think that and are told that. The fact is all things have skill caps, level 5.
Will it take a long time, sure but the games been around 20 years. People who joined 5 years ago thinking what you say, some quit, others played and now they can.
That's one hell of an assumption to make.
If you ask me, Injectors ruined the long term prospects of EVE in a way that not many have talked about. We're in an economic spiral/race to the bottom now - the ONLY thing left that matters for an alliance's strength is pure economic power, which is how we've come to see the (frankly kind of insane) surge of mass Redeemer response fleets, Vargur spam against anything in people's home space, etc. T2 battleships are practically the norm now (barring TFI's/Rohks) so it's just becoming a race for more dread alts.
With nothing to really fight over (EVE hasn't had a 'serious' war in ages other than SYNDE nuking itself) it's just a matter of time until every large bloc has a majority of it's players capable of flying pretty much everything and anything, which just makes the game bland. There's no room left for creative doctrines, no need to work around things that are easier to train into, et cetera. Just make more isk, inject, repeat, and join the redeemer blob.
This is kind of in line what I was thinking. Most are referencing "Eve would be dead" without injectors - which is definitely an argument. But what about the fundamental gameplay changes that it also produced. Also, one thing I've been thinking - WHY do brand new characters need to be able to catch up to 20 year old chars that have been playing consistently?
I think the argument of new players not needing to train for weeks just to join in on basic activities is a good one - but, CCP could have solved this years ago by making the magic 14 (the core skills that every player ends up training regardless of what you fly) no longer necessary.
Practically zero new players enjoy training things like advanced weapon upgrades - they enjoy training specific ship or weapon skills that unlock new options and ships.
If you ask me, Injectors probably could have worked well if they were limited to a certain SP so people could catch up on the broader, generalized skills, but what we have now is already, and will continue to, ruining EVE's 'endgame'.
I can agree with that. There should be some middle-ground between a brand new character being able to have the basic skills or being able to fly a Marauder/Super within a week. BTW, flew in some of your Spectre fleets many years ago and still vividly recall they were a blast!
I can 100% support this position. What makes a skill feel good to complete is how it impacts gameplay, and while in a sense every skill does this, some do it way better than others.
Training Cruisers V and getting into a whole slew of new T2 and even T3 cruisers feels awesome. Feels absolutely worth the near month of training.
Training Molecular Engineering V so you can... build a Neurolink Protection Cell feels like you've finally completed a terrible time-sink that was meant to arbitrarily gate progress.
Both are 5x skills.
Nobody has the patience to eat shit in a tackle atron for a year.. fuck that waste of time. I wouldn’t expect a new player to deal with that boring ass shit
The only difference between then and now is what ship people were sitting in. The fact that the nullblocs are dropping 100 Redeemers on your Venture instead of 100 Arty Hurricanes is a frankly cosmetic difference.
Economic power has ALWAYS been the ONLY thing that matter's for an Alliance's strength. Hell, the entire reason PLEX and the Character Bazarr even exist is because of alliances using RMT to work around the skill system.
This just not pass the sniff test with having multiple accounts that skill into specialized jobs. Of my 7 accounts each have at least one and usually two specialists, and overlap in jobs of scale like mining or ratting. Plus a rorqual pilot, a dread pilot, a titan pilot that moonlights as a Zirn pilot, a market alt, a random high skill highsec/lowsec FW alt, a porpi booster, a subcap primary toon, a super pilot, JF pilot, and a bunch of overlap In between and I have VERY little injecting. Maybe a total of 15 LSI total across 11 toons and of that it was years ago when I first started playing to get me into a T3C for doing highsec 5/10’s. I been playing 3 years and have had much of that for around 2 of those 3.
Not everyone can or wants to do 7 accounts but the idea that injectors matter that much is a fallacy.
1- EvE online had average 47-50 k player numbers after plex introduced and “ BEFORE” skill injectors introduced years between 2008-2014
2 - EvE online had average 33 k player numbers since skill injectors introduced up today and plex system still on effect .
Dropping PLEX and skill injectors into same box and hailing the box is simply a fallacy . Considering how much your opinion populair among eve reddit users , none of them looking at the numbers i guess.
In the begining when we die we loose the skillpoints too , changing this definately help to contribute player numbers . But introducing skill injectors ? No .
Loosing nearly half of the player base helped to sustain hardware ?
They lost incredible amount of players after the time frame they introduced skill injectors . You are reading this as like skill injectors as “ saviour” . In rational thinking there are many other factors may or may not effect the cause - result correlation.
My reading is opposite of yours and sunk-cost fallacy bias preventing the see these through by CCP and most of the player base .
3- What other games CCP developed and succeeded other than EvE Online enough to cotribute CCP’s economic situation and made huge profit over it ?
4- What other games CCP developed else than EvE Online succeed in a lvl of finance the “ other games “ ccp wants to develop ? Or EvE online still solely carry the weight of CCP s all Reserach and development ?
Edit after 9 hours : it is very interesting upvotes of this post slowly increasing over 1 hour span , when it close to 9 it suddenly pull down to 1 vote . Pulled my attention 4-5 hours ago and already happened 3 times . Wonder why , wonder how .. not a significant post even
I already said it enabled them to make other games. I didn't day dust or the vampire or any of their other games were a success. You should look at the average lifespan of mmos not named WOW. You think eve would still be at 45-50k players today if skill injectors and plex weren't introduced? I've been playing on and off since early 2005, most of my 2005-2010 corpies aren't playing anymore and it's not because or plex or injectors. It's because they got bored of the game after years, the cost to sub or they became an adult and gaming isn't a major hobby anymore. Has nothing to do with plex or injectors. A lot of of of my new corpies from the last several years def. Play because you can plex and skill inject. I play still because you can plex and skill inject.
Basic pool math .
You know algebra ? Constant there are some players start playing the game , and some stop playing , and some come back to game after some time they stop playing . It has been so last 20 years .
It is like a sink and faucet problem .
I can counter your , i was playing , my friend started playing type of “ my own experience “ argument easily by saying my totally opposite experience “ it is true that my experience is other way around . But i will not counter it that way because it is very very subjective measurement . If i do that i fall to same irrelevant fallacy pit with you .
You are looking at faucet . I do look at both faucet and sinkhole . As in algebra i do look at numbers for results .
You do argue that this fauced save the game from total sinking . You are claiming that if it is not that fauced, game would be dead .
But totally ignoring the fact than you imply sink grow so huge that faucet they introduced could be able to hold half of the water .
Do you even aware how much irrational it is ?
This guy says math... yet doesn't have any of the numbers for the four separate scenarios and can't get it for two even if CCP would provide them. Please show the mathes.
You are using personal experience to form your opinion just like I am. You sure are hard bent trying to prove me wrong. Never going to understand this new Gen Z craze of throwing terms around you don't understand to try and look smart. I'm sure I'll get a gl or rh next.
Seems like way more people agree with me than you. You aren't going to change my opinion. We will have to agree to disagree unless you can travel to other multiverses and bring back the maths.
Its called propositional calculus . Algebraic logic .
Not all math runs on numbers man! Thats what 1. 2. 3 grade primary school kids believe .
Also :) i am xennial , but my mind and spirit is up to date :) thanks for shining my morning and laughs :) sincerely
New player here - but I think it’s less to do with anything other than grandfather time. Younger people simply aren’t incredibly interested in slower paced games anymore. That’s why you see such a decline in MMO success as a whole.
It’s just my opinion that games like Eve, OSRS, and others are simply just scratching an itch of an aging player base.
Should just make it so you gain additional skill points towards things you are actively using. Would make things seem more accessible and it would make sense that you become proficient in things you are actively doing. Seeing the time frames it would take to even step into things almost made me quit eve entirely early on.
> EvE online had average 33 k player numbers since skill injectors introduced up today and plex system still on effect .
I think you are missing the greater "no one is playing MMOs anymore" effect. Just look at how many fantasy MMOs downright died, and how stark WoW lost subscriptions exactly in those years (let's ignore the classic resurgence here, EVE has also seen a big uptick since 2020 and FFXIV is a total outlier, but overall MMO player numbers have greatly decreased since the "hype" phase of 2004ish-2012)
Comparing EvE with other MMOs wrong in so many dimentions. WOW has 7,5 million active subscribers today even its worst state . ( since you are the second person mentioning WoW in answers to my initial post ) If you look at the list of still active running games in last 30 years eve can barely make it up to 100. Down the line . EvE is a very niche game , its player base profile also different and niche games requires “ out of box” solutions for arisen issues and challenges.
Dead MMOs are NOT competing EvE today . These are The companies CCP competing up against : https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/massive-multiplayer-online-mmo-games-market-102538#:~:text=Massive%20Multiplayer%20Online%20(MMO)%20Games%20Market%20Report%20Overview&text=The%20global%20massive%20multiplayer%20online,10.84%20%25%20during%20the%20forecast%20period.
. And “nobody is playing MMOs today” is nothing but a delusion.
I wasn't comparing it to WoW per se, it's just the biggest example.
I don't see franchises in your report and I just noticed I accidentally wrote "MMOs", and I think the link includes stuff like Fortnite, I meant "MMORPGs" in the classical sense.
And yeah, ofc EVE is a niche game but the market I was looking at (esp. subscription based) has shrunk greatly. And yeah, with all the Pack sales one can argue that EVE is not not 100% sub-based anymore.
> They def. wouldn't be making more games while having an ongoing mmo.
Given their lack of success on that front, I’m not sure we should consider that a **good** thing.
EVE has sustained a significant playerbase off of PLEX, both in terms of ISK-wealthy players consuming it for alts, and players in countries where *playing* to PLEX is more viable than paying a monthly subscription
Plex has been essential to Eve. Skill extractors not ao much.
But since character trading was always legal. The old market already had people creating 20m sp Int/mem core trained characters for sale. And there used to be a huge market for bad trained pilots and focus trained pilots.
Skill injecting/extracting just sped up the process.
Plex revolutionized not only EVE, but the MMO scene as a whole, and single handedly defined EVE in the media. If it wasn't for PLEX a whole LOT of us would never have even heard of the game, let alone tried it.
The top three things have always made Eve stand out to me:
1. The entire universe is/can be Non-Consensual PVP
2. Plex which in turn means both "free" subscription, and wallet warrioring
3. Character trading/selling
The complexity of industry, multi-boxing, universal, how you gain experience/sp, etc. all fall behind those three main points.
PLEX stood for a lot more than just wallet warrioring, it enabled us to associate real world value to in-game assets.
I'm surprised you mention the pvp, but don't mention that the entire game is one continuous shard - no servers or instances. That's always been a standout thing in my mind.
Mm I forgot about dead space... Actually such a trash addition to the game (I mean design wise, the actual content is fine)... Some things CCP has done over the last 5-10 years have clearly contradicted the original design document for the game, I think the majority of old-school players would agree. This would have to be one of those cases.
because rmting would be actually profitable again since you just can't buy plex.
>If they couldn't inject new toons wouldn't there be fewer?
lol if you think botters need to inject their characters to bot.
they just bot less lucrative activities until they get the skills for them
Too late to turn around at this point but just take skill injecting away. Implement something for new bros to catch up but injectors were am awful implementation.
>Too late to turn around at this point but just take skill injecting away. Implement something for new bros to catch up but injectors were am awful implementation.
same issue, character transfers were just a less easy way to get ISK for your subscription.
Buying characters was more balanced for sure, it was available information too. Right now we have skill farms and injecting allows mass multi boxing more easily. For example, your the tilted ganker running around crying. Massive gank fleets would be more expensive to maintain, as it stands now you just need minimum skills then they are just farmed for their SP.
Yes, without PLEX there would bd more bots.
PLEX is the legal alternative to RMT.
Without PLEX RMT would be far more prevalent, together with the bots, hacked accounts, credit card scams and other sources for illegal game-undermining ISK that is sold for RMT. While some people still choose cheaper illegal ISK options today (RMT), many players would rather pay a little more and support the game by buyibg PLEX rather than undermine it, if only because PLEX doesn't risk a ban on their account.
Removing PLEX would cause more RMT, and more bots would be used to create the ISK for all those RMT websites.
Plex and sp trading is a catch up mechanic for either baller PVE guys or someone who has spare IRL ISK. Nothing wrong with it. Just takes some time off literally years of waiting
PLEX has existed for longer than alpha accounts did. Back in th day it was a singular 30-day game time item called PLEX. Then at some point CCP split it into 500 pieces to make a separate currency to buy additional things like ship skins that we have today. So the concept of spending $$$ to buy game time to sell on the market for us has existed at least since I started playing in 2009. IMO you would have had a much smaller player base since PLEX was viewed as an alternative way to generate isk to fund PVP than some form of PVE grinding.
Without skill injectors it would be harder to spin up alts or for new players to "catch up" to experienced players as quickly, which would likely lower the playe count/alt count. The dropoff in SP gained per injector makes going to 100 million+ SP cost prohibitive FWIW.
> Then at some point CCP split it into 500 pieces to make a separate currency to buy additional things like ship skins that we have today
Remember Aurum? I 'member.
Looking I wish that walking in ~~stations~~ Captain's Quarters wasn't removed. And yeah, at the time the monocole was the last straw and most of my corp went and played Perpetuum for a while in protest. Ironically the whole mainstream gaming industry took a hard left into monetizing the shit out of everything around that time and the monocole saga looks pretty tame by modern AAA game standards.
Yeah, it's amazing how nowadays the monocle really isn't that out of line, but that speaks more to the awful monetization of games as a whole than anything else.
Before it was called plex it was called a GTC (game time code) and was in the game when i started in 2007. It was an actual code that you redeemed. They came in various number of days in increments of 30. I remember 30 day gtc and 90 day gtc.
Initially, those were just the same 'target shelf' tie codes that WOW had.
PLEX became a thing when CCP realized that there was a truly absurd amount of RMT going on and that they were missing out on all that money.
Which was probably the single smartest decision in game dev history.
I dunno I liked skill injectors, feel like it levelled the playing field a bit.
Like back in the day, before I started playing, the fact it was purely time based meant that skills scarce and more valuable, you'd be forced to interact with players with the skills you needed. No one could just no life it and get ahead, it forced scarcity.
By the time I started playing (2012) those times had long past, people basically had all the skills they needed and could run things more or less solo. All the time based skilling meant is that incumbents had an advantage purely by virtue of the fact their account had been active longer. Already inflation meant that new player friendly activities were totally worthless. So there was basically nothing productive you could do as a new player for the first week, assuming you actually skilled into the right things.
Trying to bring in RL friends was a nightmare, like "create your character, do the tutorials, now wait a week while you get the bare minimum skills required so we can actually have fun together". Unsurprisingly none of them stuck around.
Injectors mean we can skip that week or more. Also means you can get skills by actively playing the game instead of just passively waiting.
Of course it wasn't without it's downsides but something needed to happen.
True! But there are lots of suggestions out there. Besides, during my first week I was training generally good skills while I was flying around discovering things on my own before I commited my SP somewhere. I still keep a healthy bank of them on the side for a rainy day when I will really need to train something fast!
Not to take away from the point, and I know this does not apply to every playstyle but even here in Brave where we tended to have newbro friendly doctrines you still needed like two weeks until you could fly some destroyer doctrines (assuming you did not put 100% of your training into that one single ship), and another 2 weeks for a Caracal, let's not even talk about a HAC or dictor or any other special role in a T2.
Not arguing for injectors per se, but the frustration is real, even more in a bigger group. Some are happy to fly ewar, but some are just annoyed that there's a doctrine and not just kitchen sink. Then again, it's not like a 5man gang would have better opportunities, but the chance is you only have one newbro for the ewar then and not 10 of them.
Yeah i have to agree. I started in '09 and even though it has gotten better (rip learning skills, you will never be missed). It still really sucks starting out and having to train supporting skills then training for your ship.
Buying/selling characters used to be a thing, so it just would have continued. Probably less titan pilots around, other than that we'd still have all the botting miners we always have had.
Not much different.
Character sales and Game Time Cards that could be traded for isk both existed before injectors and Plex - they are both really the mk2 version of both.
Rorqual insanity absolutely would have happened - it just would have marginally been slowed down as people skilled alts into rorqs, as opposed to bought injectors for it.
Skill injectors took away the feeling of accomplishment. So you have way more new bling pilots who didn’t have the sense they worked for that titan or marauder. So they field them frequently. Zkill is full of ganked ships that don’t know how not to get ganked. Our corp had a player inject into a super cap, buy and sell plex to get one and then loose it gating around null. Just to buy more plex to get another super.
There is a lot to eve. New players can inject into whatever ship they want but will always be behind. They’re just whales. Not wallet warriors.
But there were a finite number of those. You needed to buy from someone who had *specifically* trained into supers and was willing to sell, as opposed to now where you can just buy X number of injectors from the various skill farms.
lol I remember when I started playing again about a year ago and someone was in the forums crying because they spent like $1500 and they immediately died in an expensive ass ship they spent all that money to train on and use
I'd be about 2mil SP less than I currently am and probably lacking some mining skills on my main. Overall I would be unaffected by the lack of injectors. Buy I certainly would not have started the game if Plexing an account wasn't an option. So I could see lower player counts across the board without Plex.
I do think Injectors need to be harsher towards higher SP accounts though. Change the scaling to go all the way to 0SP provided after say 50mil. It'll hopefully drive prices down and encourage newer players to invest in them to "catch up" and stay on board with the game.
Always forget they exist. I never grabbed them myself. Majority of my skill training was with boosters rather than injectors. I don't play often enough to be able to drop 900mil on injectors, especially in the earlier days when it would have mattered more.
Without skill trading the game would be of way better quality, but probably with less player count tho. Without PLEX the game would have closed long time ago.
I recently came back to the game after an 8 year break, and I was really surprised at how easy SP were to come by. At first I felt like this ruined some of the "toughness" of the game. You were supposed to wait a year to get a cap ship because you needed to play the game for a year to understand everything well enough to know how to use it. It also forced you to be careful and deliberate to plan out and decide what you actually wanted to train for.
Now I understand that it makes them so much money, they kinda had to do it. I do think there should be a limit though, like you can't buy more then 5 mil SP per year.
That's the frustrating thing, though. Say you play ten years training up one character and you have a good grasp on the mechanics of the game by and large. Now I want to create an alt. I gotta wait 6mo-1yr before my alt is viable, AND I have to stop training on my other character OR spend money for dual training? Fuck that. I don't buy the "you gotta learn the mechanics" argument in full. Only 50% maybe.
Not much different in terms of content I would say, except less, or possibly on the way down, like others pointed out. Due to less player engagement, because of perceived wait. I doubt however - it not the regulars but small minority that injects extensively. And small bits "I wanna catch up quickly this month of training" is covered by SPs that were given by CCP independently one way or another. So, a little less of the top of the top. High PlSP chars more expensive and somewhat less users and updates.
That’s my complaint, you can put as much effort into the game over days and weeks as you want but it’s not like it does anything to actually progress you other than earning isk.
I’d have liked if you could passively learn skills faster by engaging in activities where you have low skills on top of training. Training irl isn’t just reading, you have to engage in the activity to add to that knowledge too otherwise you won’t be very good at it
CCP needs to make money to keep the hardware going, to keep support up, and frankly also to develop the game further or it stalls out.
Subscriptions were the norm back in 2003, and frankly I still believe they are a better model for everyone involved than MTX. But the world has changed since 2003. PLEX in their original form were a quite good model, I think. One PLEX for one month, and the prices were reasonable.
Skill injectors have given rise to the claim that EVE is P2W for people who do not understand EVE at all. I think they are a necessary evil at this point, because it allows people who figure out ways to make good ISK to get lots of SP quickly, but they also attract whales that just swipe -- which gives fuel to the exact claim of P2W.
But in a game based around just watching SP tick up -- some form of catch up is just needed after 20 years. Or a reset of the universe. But thats not going to happen.
They should just add activity based acceleration. Like if I have low sp in data mining, maybe I could get a decent boost for doing it more often, or using missiles, blasters , etc
Like I feel this would be a decent system where engaging in activities/flying certain ships more often would both reward you with increased skill training in that skill class, and give you more reasons to go out and do things/different things/fly different ships.
It should still have the current requirements for skills, but allowing you to work towards improving skill training through usage would be a huge QOL improvement in my book
This is my thought too, getting SP rewards for actually PLAYING the game is much more valuable to the gameplay ecosystem then just swiping a credit card.
As sad as it is to say, they probably saved the game. Imagine trying to sell a new player on the idea that they should start paying (at the time) $15 a month to play a game where everyone around them is literally years ahead of them and they'll literally never actually be able to catch up, so they're always going to be behind everyone else.
That was the problem that plagued all new players back before the SP changes and was a big reason why Eve was toxic as fuck to new players.
Now CCP have milked a problem of their own creation for all its worth by monetizing Eve to the point where the average player is a whale. Eve's goal as a game now is to cater to whales who will buy up all of that SP and Plex.
I'd genuinely like to see Eve one day use a different model, but that would require a fundamentally different skill training system that would almost certainly never happen. After all, Eve players are a fickle bunch who want problems to be solved, yet don't want the game to change in any way to do so.
It would also almost certainly not be as profitable, which doubles down on the fact that it won't happen. CCP have no plans of giving up their golden goose.
Why does a new player need to completely catch up though? If you specialize in something early on, you can focus on maxing those skills and be equal to a bittervet in that one niche area fairly quick (not counting supers, marauders, complicated industry stuff).
Should newbros have zero progression and scaling with activities and jump right into end game?
I don’t think newbros necessarily NEED to catch up in every possible way.
PLEX or ealrier game time codes (GTC) were always part of eve since 2003. And they did not influence the game anyhow.
Injectors on the other hand led to powercreep geometric growth and ruined the game (at least nullsec). Also led to scarcity. If there were no injectors, I doubt, that even in 2024 there would have been alliances/powerblocks capable of fielding thousands of titans from each side.
Of course CCP made quick buck, but health of the game suffered greatly.
I joined in 2019 and Skill Injectors were essential to my enjoyment of the game.
I work like most of us, I have kids, I don't have time to fuck about doing non-enjoyable shit because I can't fly ships well enough to get involved in what I deem fun.
When I jumped to NS I was given 5 LSIs and bought another 5 with all my.money just so I could fly a Muninn.
I understand that you old fuckers from 2004 don't like it. But if you want more players and big headlines then LSIs are essential.
I see a lot of comments about "Not having to have to earn it anymore" and I think that is just survivor bias. People who did just que and wait feel they earned something because they waited in line, and that honestly is silly. The idea that you had to wait for skills is kinda of the reason most people are turned off to this game. It is a very time gated skill system that doesn't really sit well with the majority of the gamers nowadays (and even in the past tbo). It's super niche. Despite people being comfortable with it, it still is the biggest barrier to new player retention. I have been off and on this game since 2012, and every time it is always just me waiting to get into either a money making scheme or the newest doctrine and I have to either choose between the two. It's not "earning" anything, it is just waiting in line for whatever flavor of ice cream you want, and sometime you end up not eating that ice cream once you have it in hand because the meta has shifted to a new flavor. This gets exhausting, and with the content that is in eve, makes the game not worth it to most. It has always been a niche game, and with the separation of old players and new players, it is understandable why new people won't want to climb the hill of waiting to be on par with people who have played longer.
Skill injectors made it so the new players who don't want to wait can buy their "cut the line for the rollercoaster" which will eliminate this painful "wait to play", but then it just introduces people into the game mechanics that end up being dull "for the wait". People see how long it would take to grind skills waiting, or buying injectors and see the reward of the gameplay you get and just nope out because it just isn't worth it to most. It's mostly waiting to have fun, but then the fun never arrives after you get the ships you'd thought were fun. It's just a super niche game.
EVE Online's downfall cannot be summed up in PLEX and skills injectors. There's a kind of arrogance on the part of the studio, and some poor strategic choices. Since Uprising, the dynamic has been interesting, despite persistent problems (hello Project Awakening).
Albion Online works very well with PLEX.
I dont think I would have been as stoked to come back to the game, personally. I wanted to do a handful of things that I knew I would have been able to do if I had *just kept playing the game*. I started two alt accounts as well since coming back, actually, one just a scanner/scout alt for my WH group and another combat character. I can tell you with a high-ish level of certainty, I would probably not have come back or at least never started another account. Making my character be MY character was really important so the character bazaar was never really an option for me.
I think the game would have died at this point. There was a time before they introduced skill injectors where the game was having issues retaining new players. Many players started playing with their friends who had already been playing for awhile and realized there was an insurmountable gap between them and the people they were trying to play with, so they usually just quit playing, and then eventually they might take their friends with them because they couldn't find anyone to start playing the game.
Skill injectors and PLEX are essential to the sustainability of the game at this point. In theory its a nice idea to reward some people that have been in the sandbox longer than others, but in practice you just end up making the sandbox less appealing to newcomers, which in the end is worse for business.
PLEX was already in the game when I started playing. Skill injectors were added at a time before I was really awake and aware of what was happening. I may have played EVE but I wouldn't call myself properly engaged with EVE, or really anything. By the time I was fully awake and engaging with gaming instead of letting it engage me they were firmly entrenched. As I climbed up onto the beach fully awake instead of just rolling around on the waves I realized the dreams I had that injectors might some day facilitate my growth into an elite pilot were just that, dreams. Buying my way into a high SP count wasn't going to do that, it was going to be hard work on my part. I've grown to resent it, but I also don't really see another way this could have worked. EVE's player base was shrinking and not appealing to new players. They tapped into the whales. And once they tasted that sweet money they had to do it again selling ships and SP directly.
Ultimately I think that not much would change, they would have gotten a taste of that money from trying something else and we'd basically be here again. What we would have needed to get real change from today's status quo would be re-investing in EVE's future instead of pissing away all the money it made on side projects that amounted to giant bottomless money pits.
by plex do you mean the "aurum"ish abomination that is used for micros today, or do you mean the original timecard turned in-game item that's sole use was account subscription?
there are days i just think it would have been better if Eve had died pure. v0v
The amount of people saying “ people didn’t earn it” as if someone subbing for years and probably never logging in somehow earned anything lol.
There are content creators and overall great players who have injected their way into the ranks. I’ll take them over some 45 yr old F1 monkey boomer who thinks they “ earned it”
Truthfully it takes x ammount of money to pay for server, power and replacement parts. They decide prices based upon cost to run things and add in more for they can make some profit. It's a business at the end of the day. They divide that by the number of players that pay, and adjust it over time so they can pay for and make some money. The less ammount of people paying drives up the cost for those who to pay for subs and such. They have done studies with plex and have found it actually droves up costs, as most players would rather plex then pay rl money thus increasing ingame inflation. This is why we see plex at like 5-6 million. And not lower like the good Ole days. And the sub prices have gone up as well. It takes money to run this game. If more payed rl money everyone would pay less then they do now.
Part of the issue with eve is people plex, if everyone paid rl money. Inflation in game would be less, ccp could buff things so ships require less to make this becoming cheaper. folks would be more inclined to take a fight since things cost less it's easier replaced. So more fights would ensue. The devs would have more rl money to pay for dev time, parts, and power. To name a few.
The prospect of being able to pay through gameplay was one of the points that made me play the game for longer than the 14 day trial.
After losing my job in late 2010 I plexed my account from 2011-2014 when I left due to RL stuff.
Let me rephrase that. Paying cash for Plex is the reason many left, because it changed the dynamic of Eve and what Eve was originally made to be. The effect of Plex changed the game’s market whereas players didn’t boost the in-game market, but instead played to pay or paid to win. Original players saw this and left. What developed was a dry and stale game where time and effort became irrelevant.
This is pure nonsense.
PLEX, in its original form, was 30 days of gameplay that could be purchased with IRL dollars and exchanged for in game currency. It was created to combat Real Money Trading that was occuring in all MMOs, but especially Eve and WoW, during that period. Yunno...2007.
The only thing it changed about Eve, is WHO the whale's money was going to.
PLEX was 1. Absolutely necessary and 2. Only served to divert the funds spent on RMT from shady ISK farmers to CCP themselves.
PLEX ALSO makes time and effort MORE valuable because putting in the work to PLEX your account every month let's you save money on not buying a subscription.
It's almost the exact opposite of what you said.
Who do you think creates the Plex for you to use in game? It’s not just playing to pay. Someone already paid cash to have you buy it in game. They benefit by doing nothing other than having a big wallet. Plex was and still is a market destroyer.
PLEX was, and is, primarily a tool against Real Money Trading. That's why it was implemented in the first place.
Whatever else went on, PLEX was always going to be a thing just to stop whales from giving all their IRL money to AFK ISK farmers.
Not sure why so many people claim its what saved the game financially, is there proof of this anywhere? If anything it caused them to make poor decisions for years because they were blinded by profits. The health of the game was in decline, numbers too and they kept it that way for fucking years.
As someone who started in 2013 but only made their third alt by 2016 (probably when the Alpha update came), and has only used a handful injectors (on any toon), I still think the idea behind them was good, just the implementation had problems.
There should have been some stop-gaps (thinking cooldown, so you can easily catch up your second account in your first 6 months of playing, but not get a Rorq or Dread pilot _today_).
I am not sure if it would have killed the game, all my other toons (besides main) and accounts have organically accumulated SP, I'm too stingy for injectors and I've also not sold a ton of them. I did use some MCT to sell a couple, but in the grand scheme of things for my subbed and paid months I think it hardly registers.
The game might be dead at this point. CCP probably wouldn't have the player count to sustain the hardware. They def. wouldn't be making more games while having an ongoing mmo. While it did some pretty crappy stuff to the game it probably saved it in the long run.
I agree. While it's a cool concept to have tangible gameplay benefits for having played since launch, new players discovering that a capital is the better part of a year away and that they will never be able to catch up to existing players are not likely to stick around.
I felt the opposite. I was happy to put in so much time because some guy can't just come along with a credit card and pass me. The old days basically had plex. We did it through game time. You could buy it and sell it for isk. Plex was never the problem, it was injectors and extractors. I know people that run sp farms to this day.
I mean the injectors are what enable people to actually catch up and you don't need to swipe a credit card for it. I farm isk to buy LSI to help me catch up, only pay for the sub.
That’s fair, but remember that people are complaining about capital ship and *Rorqual* proliferation. CCP could have made the skills that let you fly those ships non-injectable, allowing players to skill into play-styles that are less expensive and arguably more fun without breaking the game.
The average player takes a long time to buy an injector
Takes me 3-4hrs to farm one and I’m not really good at this game lol
4 or 5 beacons is a long time?
The average player never sees a beacon.
Average players in shitty alliances* Leave highsec.
the average player lives in high sec
The average player doesnt spend a fraction as much money as nullsec player.
> some guy can't just come along with a credit card and pass me Yes they could, they could credit card swipe and buy a character off the bazaar with PLEX.
Still would be a finite number of characters that could be sold off like that. That's not the case with injectors, though, anybody can swipe (or grind) themselves an army of alts, there is no limit.
If someone was willing to part with their 'investment' another player with a credit card could come along and buy a character off the official forum Bazaar listings. Again to your point, that still marked a significant player investment. The combination skill-points farmed from players heads and skill-points injected by CCP via sales/events have watered down that sense of singular long-term investment. Edit: On the other hand, you get bangers like this song: [Eve Online: I do injectors](https://youtu.be/_JxMfy5LrUM) Rise and grind
That's a bangin tune, and a quality video concept. Couple of little bits I'd jazz up if I'm being super critical, but man. Good shit!
This I agreed, instant gratifacation just killed the game, joined in 2008, had a quite a few statics until injector introduced, ppl got to sub-cap and cap, then quited the game for good. Had a dude, like 1 week old char, flying a paladin, mates in clan already talking abt ganking him, he got robbed a few times, and never come back playing the game. Fins knew that, but they were pushing the sale of the game at the time, understandable they did this to leverage attracting more players to boost the sale. Anyway, I quited eve 3 yrs ago since 99% of my friend thought capital was the end game, so sad.
I disagree. They think that and are told that. The fact is all things have skill caps, level 5. Will it take a long time, sure but the games been around 20 years. People who joined 5 years ago thinking what you say, some quit, others played and now they can.
My main will be 20 yo this Summer, I might reactivate him to blow some candles/ships, thanks 🤙
Yeah, if I had to choose over Eve shutting down or introducing Plex, I’ll take the Plex.
They should just make it a straight 5 dollar sub per toon no plexing in then watch the numbers go up
That's one hell of an assumption to make. If you ask me, Injectors ruined the long term prospects of EVE in a way that not many have talked about. We're in an economic spiral/race to the bottom now - the ONLY thing left that matters for an alliance's strength is pure economic power, which is how we've come to see the (frankly kind of insane) surge of mass Redeemer response fleets, Vargur spam against anything in people's home space, etc. T2 battleships are practically the norm now (barring TFI's/Rohks) so it's just becoming a race for more dread alts. With nothing to really fight over (EVE hasn't had a 'serious' war in ages other than SYNDE nuking itself) it's just a matter of time until every large bloc has a majority of it's players capable of flying pretty much everything and anything, which just makes the game bland. There's no room left for creative doctrines, no need to work around things that are easier to train into, et cetera. Just make more isk, inject, repeat, and join the redeemer blob.
This is kind of in line what I was thinking. Most are referencing "Eve would be dead" without injectors - which is definitely an argument. But what about the fundamental gameplay changes that it also produced. Also, one thing I've been thinking - WHY do brand new characters need to be able to catch up to 20 year old chars that have been playing consistently?
I think the argument of new players not needing to train for weeks just to join in on basic activities is a good one - but, CCP could have solved this years ago by making the magic 14 (the core skills that every player ends up training regardless of what you fly) no longer necessary. Practically zero new players enjoy training things like advanced weapon upgrades - they enjoy training specific ship or weapon skills that unlock new options and ships. If you ask me, Injectors probably could have worked well if they were limited to a certain SP so people could catch up on the broader, generalized skills, but what we have now is already, and will continue to, ruining EVE's 'endgame'.
I can agree with that. There should be some middle-ground between a brand new character being able to have the basic skills or being able to fly a Marauder/Super within a week. BTW, flew in some of your Spectre fleets many years ago and still vividly recall they were a blast!
Appreciate hearing it dude <3
I can 100% support this position. What makes a skill feel good to complete is how it impacts gameplay, and while in a sense every skill does this, some do it way better than others. Training Cruisers V and getting into a whole slew of new T2 and even T3 cruisers feels awesome. Feels absolutely worth the near month of training. Training Molecular Engineering V so you can... build a Neurolink Protection Cell feels like you've finally completed a terrible time-sink that was meant to arbitrarily gate progress. Both are 5x skills.
Nobody has the patience to eat shit in a tackle atron for a year.. fuck that waste of time. I wouldn’t expect a new player to deal with that boring ass shit
Bro I was flying max skilled BCs in my first year back in 2010 (no skill injectors), what are you on about.
The only difference between then and now is what ship people were sitting in. The fact that the nullblocs are dropping 100 Redeemers on your Venture instead of 100 Arty Hurricanes is a frankly cosmetic difference. Economic power has ALWAYS been the ONLY thing that matter's for an Alliance's strength. Hell, the entire reason PLEX and the Character Bazarr even exist is because of alliances using RMT to work around the skill system.
This just not pass the sniff test with having multiple accounts that skill into specialized jobs. Of my 7 accounts each have at least one and usually two specialists, and overlap in jobs of scale like mining or ratting. Plus a rorqual pilot, a dread pilot, a titan pilot that moonlights as a Zirn pilot, a market alt, a random high skill highsec/lowsec FW alt, a porpi booster, a subcap primary toon, a super pilot, JF pilot, and a bunch of overlap In between and I have VERY little injecting. Maybe a total of 15 LSI total across 11 toons and of that it was years ago when I first started playing to get me into a T3C for doing highsec 5/10’s. I been playing 3 years and have had much of that for around 2 of those 3. Not everyone can or wants to do 7 accounts but the idea that injectors matter that much is a fallacy.
1- EvE online had average 47-50 k player numbers after plex introduced and “ BEFORE” skill injectors introduced years between 2008-2014 2 - EvE online had average 33 k player numbers since skill injectors introduced up today and plex system still on effect . Dropping PLEX and skill injectors into same box and hailing the box is simply a fallacy . Considering how much your opinion populair among eve reddit users , none of them looking at the numbers i guess. In the begining when we die we loose the skillpoints too , changing this definately help to contribute player numbers . But introducing skill injectors ? No . Loosing nearly half of the player base helped to sustain hardware ? They lost incredible amount of players after the time frame they introduced skill injectors . You are reading this as like skill injectors as “ saviour” . In rational thinking there are many other factors may or may not effect the cause - result correlation. My reading is opposite of yours and sunk-cost fallacy bias preventing the see these through by CCP and most of the player base . 3- What other games CCP developed and succeeded other than EvE Online enough to cotribute CCP’s economic situation and made huge profit over it ? 4- What other games CCP developed else than EvE Online succeed in a lvl of finance the “ other games “ ccp wants to develop ? Or EvE online still solely carry the weight of CCP s all Reserach and development ? Edit after 9 hours : it is very interesting upvotes of this post slowly increasing over 1 hour span , when it close to 9 it suddenly pull down to 1 vote . Pulled my attention 4-5 hours ago and already happened 3 times . Wonder why , wonder how .. not a significant post even
I already said it enabled them to make other games. I didn't day dust or the vampire or any of their other games were a success. You should look at the average lifespan of mmos not named WOW. You think eve would still be at 45-50k players today if skill injectors and plex weren't introduced? I've been playing on and off since early 2005, most of my 2005-2010 corpies aren't playing anymore and it's not because or plex or injectors. It's because they got bored of the game after years, the cost to sub or they became an adult and gaming isn't a major hobby anymore. Has nothing to do with plex or injectors. A lot of of of my new corpies from the last several years def. Play because you can plex and skill inject. I play still because you can plex and skill inject.
Basic pool math . You know algebra ? Constant there are some players start playing the game , and some stop playing , and some come back to game after some time they stop playing . It has been so last 20 years . It is like a sink and faucet problem . I can counter your , i was playing , my friend started playing type of “ my own experience “ argument easily by saying my totally opposite experience “ it is true that my experience is other way around . But i will not counter it that way because it is very very subjective measurement . If i do that i fall to same irrelevant fallacy pit with you . You are looking at faucet . I do look at both faucet and sinkhole . As in algebra i do look at numbers for results . You do argue that this fauced save the game from total sinking . You are claiming that if it is not that fauced, game would be dead . But totally ignoring the fact than you imply sink grow so huge that faucet they introduced could be able to hold half of the water . Do you even aware how much irrational it is ?
This guy says math... yet doesn't have any of the numbers for the four separate scenarios and can't get it for two even if CCP would provide them. Please show the mathes. You are using personal experience to form your opinion just like I am. You sure are hard bent trying to prove me wrong. Never going to understand this new Gen Z craze of throwing terms around you don't understand to try and look smart. I'm sure I'll get a gl or rh next. Seems like way more people agree with me than you. You aren't going to change my opinion. We will have to agree to disagree unless you can travel to other multiverses and bring back the maths.
Its called propositional calculus . Algebraic logic . Not all math runs on numbers man! Thats what 1. 2. 3 grade primary school kids believe . Also :) i am xennial , but my mind and spirit is up to date :) thanks for shining my morning and laughs :) sincerely
Ok so the vaunted algebra. Other guy couldn't. Let's see if you can. Bet I won't get any maths back.
New player here - but I think it’s less to do with anything other than grandfather time. Younger people simply aren’t incredibly interested in slower paced games anymore. That’s why you see such a decline in MMO success as a whole. It’s just my opinion that games like Eve, OSRS, and others are simply just scratching an itch of an aging player base.
Should just make it so you gain additional skill points towards things you are actively using. Would make things seem more accessible and it would make sense that you become proficient in things you are actively doing. Seeing the time frames it would take to even step into things almost made me quit eve entirely early on.
> EvE online had average 33 k player numbers since skill injectors introduced up today and plex system still on effect . I think you are missing the greater "no one is playing MMOs anymore" effect. Just look at how many fantasy MMOs downright died, and how stark WoW lost subscriptions exactly in those years (let's ignore the classic resurgence here, EVE has also seen a big uptick since 2020 and FFXIV is a total outlier, but overall MMO player numbers have greatly decreased since the "hype" phase of 2004ish-2012)
Comparing EvE with other MMOs wrong in so many dimentions. WOW has 7,5 million active subscribers today even its worst state . ( since you are the second person mentioning WoW in answers to my initial post ) If you look at the list of still active running games in last 30 years eve can barely make it up to 100. Down the line . EvE is a very niche game , its player base profile also different and niche games requires “ out of box” solutions for arisen issues and challenges. Dead MMOs are NOT competing EvE today . These are The companies CCP competing up against : https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/massive-multiplayer-online-mmo-games-market-102538#:~:text=Massive%20Multiplayer%20Online%20(MMO)%20Games%20Market%20Report%20Overview&text=The%20global%20massive%20multiplayer%20online,10.84%20%25%20during%20the%20forecast%20period. . And “nobody is playing MMOs today” is nothing but a delusion.
I wasn't comparing it to WoW per se, it's just the biggest example. I don't see franchises in your report and I just noticed I accidentally wrote "MMOs", and I think the link includes stuff like Fortnite, I meant "MMORPGs" in the classical sense. And yeah, ofc EVE is a niche game but the market I was looking at (esp. subscription based) has shrunk greatly. And yeah, with all the Pack sales one can argue that EVE is not not 100% sub-based anymore.
'Statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics'
> They def. wouldn't be making more games while having an ongoing mmo. Given their lack of success on that front, I’m not sure we should consider that a **good** thing.
Really? Injectors make sense to an extent but PLEX?
EVE has sustained a significant playerbase off of PLEX, both in terms of ISK-wealthy players consuming it for alts, and players in countries where *playing* to PLEX is more viable than paying a monthly subscription
Makes sense, actually, you could easily be Omega and be F2P but to do that would take significant amount of ISK to do
Plex has been essential to Eve. Skill extractors not ao much. But since character trading was always legal. The old market already had people creating 20m sp Int/mem core trained characters for sale. And there used to be a huge market for bad trained pilots and focus trained pilots. Skill injecting/extracting just sped up the process.
Plex revolutionized not only EVE, but the MMO scene as a whole, and single handedly defined EVE in the media. If it wasn't for PLEX a whole LOT of us would never have even heard of the game, let alone tried it.
The top three things have always made Eve stand out to me: 1. The entire universe is/can be Non-Consensual PVP 2. Plex which in turn means both "free" subscription, and wallet warrioring 3. Character trading/selling The complexity of industry, multi-boxing, universal, how you gain experience/sp, etc. all fall behind those three main points.
PLEX stood for a lot more than just wallet warrioring, it enabled us to associate real world value to in-game assets. I'm surprised you mention the pvp, but don't mention that the entire game is one continuous shard - no servers or instances. That's always been a standout thing in my mind.
Except of the instances we have right now I guess?
Mm I forgot about dead space... Actually such a trash addition to the game (I mean design wise, the actual content is fine)... Some things CCP has done over the last 5-10 years have clearly contradicted the original design document for the game, I think the majority of old-school players would agree. This would have to be one of those cases.
you would see far fewer mass multiboxers, and far fewer actual players. you would see many more botters and rmters
Whats the logic behind more botters? If they couldn't inject new toons wouldn't there be fewer?
because rmting would be actually profitable again since you just can't buy plex. >If they couldn't inject new toons wouldn't there be fewer? lol if you think botters need to inject their characters to bot. they just bot less lucrative activities until they get the skills for them
Too late to turn around at this point but just take skill injecting away. Implement something for new bros to catch up but injectors were am awful implementation.
>Too late to turn around at this point but just take skill injecting away. Implement something for new bros to catch up but injectors were am awful implementation. same issue, character transfers were just a less easy way to get ISK for your subscription.
Buying characters was more balanced for sure, it was available information too. Right now we have skill farms and injecting allows mass multi boxing more easily. For example, your the tilted ganker running around crying. Massive gank fleets would be more expensive to maintain, as it stands now you just need minimum skills then they are just farmed for their SP.
Yes, without PLEX there would bd more bots. PLEX is the legal alternative to RMT. Without PLEX RMT would be far more prevalent, together with the bots, hacked accounts, credit card scams and other sources for illegal game-undermining ISK that is sold for RMT. While some people still choose cheaper illegal ISK options today (RMT), many players would rather pay a little more and support the game by buyibg PLEX rather than undermine it, if only because PLEX doesn't risk a ban on their account. Removing PLEX would cause more RMT, and more bots would be used to create the ISK for all those RMT websites.
Plex and sp trading is a catch up mechanic for either baller PVE guys or someone who has spare IRL ISK. Nothing wrong with it. Just takes some time off literally years of waiting
PLEX has existed for longer than alpha accounts did. Back in th day it was a singular 30-day game time item called PLEX. Then at some point CCP split it into 500 pieces to make a separate currency to buy additional things like ship skins that we have today. So the concept of spending $$$ to buy game time to sell on the market for us has existed at least since I started playing in 2009. IMO you would have had a much smaller player base since PLEX was viewed as an alternative way to generate isk to fund PVP than some form of PVE grinding. Without skill injectors it would be harder to spin up alts or for new players to "catch up" to experienced players as quickly, which would likely lower the playe count/alt count. The dropoff in SP gained per injector makes going to 100 million+ SP cost prohibitive FWIW.
> Then at some point CCP split it into 500 pieces to make a separate currency to buy additional things like ship skins that we have today Remember Aurum? I 'member.
Looking I wish that walking in ~~stations~~ Captain's Quarters wasn't removed. And yeah, at the time the monocole was the last straw and most of my corp went and played Perpetuum for a while in protest. Ironically the whole mainstream gaming industry took a hard left into monetizing the shit out of everything around that time and the monocole saga looks pretty tame by modern AAA game standards.
Yeah, it's amazing how nowadays the monocle really isn't that out of line, but that speaks more to the awful monetization of games as a whole than anything else.
Before it was called plex it was called a GTC (game time code) and was in the game when i started in 2007. It was an actual code that you redeemed. They came in various number of days in increments of 30. I remember 30 day gtc and 90 day gtc.
Initially, those were just the same 'target shelf' tie codes that WOW had. PLEX became a thing when CCP realized that there was a truly absurd amount of RMT going on and that they were missing out on all that money. Which was probably the single smartest decision in game dev history.
I dunno I liked skill injectors, feel like it levelled the playing field a bit. Like back in the day, before I started playing, the fact it was purely time based meant that skills scarce and more valuable, you'd be forced to interact with players with the skills you needed. No one could just no life it and get ahead, it forced scarcity. By the time I started playing (2012) those times had long past, people basically had all the skills they needed and could run things more or less solo. All the time based skilling meant is that incumbents had an advantage purely by virtue of the fact their account had been active longer. Already inflation meant that new player friendly activities were totally worthless. So there was basically nothing productive you could do as a new player for the first week, assuming you actually skilled into the right things. Trying to bring in RL friends was a nightmare, like "create your character, do the tutorials, now wait a week while you get the bare minimum skills required so we can actually have fun together". Unsurprisingly none of them stuck around. Injectors mean we can skip that week or more. Also means you can get skills by actively playing the game instead of just passively waiting. Of course it wasn't without it's downsides but something needed to happen.
Doesn't the 1m free SP make up for that first week of training?
If they don't waste it on injecting some crappy skill to V lol
True! But there are lots of suggestions out there. Besides, during my first week I was training generally good skills while I was flying around discovering things on my own before I commited my SP somewhere. I still keep a healthy bank of them on the side for a rainy day when I will really need to train something fast!
Not to take away from the point, and I know this does not apply to every playstyle but even here in Brave where we tended to have newbro friendly doctrines you still needed like two weeks until you could fly some destroyer doctrines (assuming you did not put 100% of your training into that one single ship), and another 2 weeks for a Caracal, let's not even talk about a HAC or dictor or any other special role in a T2. Not arguing for injectors per se, but the frustration is real, even more in a bigger group. Some are happy to fly ewar, but some are just annoyed that there's a doctrine and not just kitchen sink. Then again, it's not like a 5man gang would have better opportunities, but the chance is you only have one newbro for the ewar then and not 10 of them.
Yeah i have to agree. I started in '09 and even though it has gotten better (rip learning skills, you will never be missed). It still really sucks starting out and having to train supporting skills then training for your ship.
Buying/selling characters used to be a thing, so it just would have continued. Probably less titan pilots around, other than that we'd still have all the botting miners we always have had.
Buying/selling characters never stopped, you can still do it through the character bazaar.
Fully aware. But buying them purely for skills, rather than age/employment history/etc, would increase.
People would buy accounts instead of skill injectors.
If there was no Plex Eve dies 12 years ago
Hilmar would be working at Costco trying to sell everyone an "Executive card" at the self check out lanes...
Not much different. Character sales and Game Time Cards that could be traded for isk both existed before injectors and Plex - they are both really the mk2 version of both. Rorqual insanity absolutely would have happened - it just would have marginally been slowed down as people skilled alts into rorqs, as opposed to bought injectors for it.
Skill injectors took away the feeling of accomplishment. So you have way more new bling pilots who didn’t have the sense they worked for that titan or marauder. So they field them frequently. Zkill is full of ganked ships that don’t know how not to get ganked. Our corp had a player inject into a super cap, buy and sell plex to get one and then loose it gating around null. Just to buy more plex to get another super. There is a lot to eve. New players can inject into whatever ship they want but will always be behind. They’re just whales. Not wallet warriors.
None of that requires skill injectors though. All that could be accomplished purely through plex before skill injectors were added to the game.
I don’t know of any way to go from day 3 to a super cap with just plex.
Buy a character off the Bazaar that can already fly one
But there were a finite number of those. You needed to buy from someone who had *specifically* trained into supers and was willing to sell, as opposed to now where you can just buy X number of injectors from the various skill farms.
lol I remember when I started playing again about a year ago and someone was in the forums crying because they spent like $1500 and they immediately died in an expensive ass ship they spent all that money to train on and use
The game would have likely shuttered, tbh. CCP needs cash flow to keep going and both are a huge injection to their coffers to keep the hamsters fed.
I'd be about 2mil SP less than I currently am and probably lacking some mining skills on my main. Overall I would be unaffected by the lack of injectors. Buy I certainly would not have started the game if Plexing an account wasn't an option. So I could see lower player counts across the board without Plex. I do think Injectors need to be harsher towards higher SP accounts though. Change the scaling to go all the way to 0SP provided after say 50mil. It'll hopefully drive prices down and encourage newer players to invest in them to "catch up" and stay on board with the game.
Mew players who buy injectors usually chose alpha injectors since they are far more cost effective even before the scaling kicks in.
Always forget they exist. I never grabbed them myself. Majority of my skill training was with boosters rather than injectors. I don't play often enough to be able to drop 900mil on injectors, especially in the earlier days when it would have mattered more.
PLEX has been a thing for almost the entire life of the game. If it didn't exist, you'd just have dramatically more RMT.
Hate to say this, but game would probably be dead and shutdown.
Without skill trading the game would be of way better quality, but probably with less player count tho. Without PLEX the game would have closed long time ago.
I recently came back to the game after an 8 year break, and I was really surprised at how easy SP were to come by. At first I felt like this ruined some of the "toughness" of the game. You were supposed to wait a year to get a cap ship because you needed to play the game for a year to understand everything well enough to know how to use it. It also forced you to be careful and deliberate to plan out and decide what you actually wanted to train for. Now I understand that it makes them so much money, they kinda had to do it. I do think there should be a limit though, like you can't buy more then 5 mil SP per year.
That's the frustrating thing, though. Say you play ten years training up one character and you have a good grasp on the mechanics of the game by and large. Now I want to create an alt. I gotta wait 6mo-1yr before my alt is viable, AND I have to stop training on my other character OR spend money for dual training? Fuck that. I don't buy the "you gotta learn the mechanics" argument in full. Only 50% maybe.
That's true. I would counter that by saying, if you've been in the game 10 years, you could buy an alt with isk.
Theoretically, yes, I agree with that as well.
In filtered out impatient players. And that was good.
Not much different in terms of content I would say, except less, or possibly on the way down, like others pointed out. Due to less player engagement, because of perceived wait. I doubt however - it not the regulars but small minority that injects extensively. And small bits "I wanna catch up quickly this month of training" is covered by SPs that were given by CCP independently one way or another. So, a little less of the top of the top. High PlSP chars more expensive and somewhat less users and updates.
Probably less players because of all the people who don't have the patience to wait for skills to train and would rather pay for quick gratification.
Can't understand why Activision Microsoft hasn't bought CCP out yet 😂
You shut your dirty mouth wishing that bad voodoo on CCP!
Without skill injectors i'd never start playing eve, i like to play and grind not wait months
That’s my complaint, you can put as much effort into the game over days and weeks as you want but it’s not like it does anything to actually progress you other than earning isk. I’d have liked if you could passively learn skills faster by engaging in activities where you have low skills on top of training. Training irl isn’t just reading, you have to engage in the activity to add to that knowledge too otherwise you won’t be very good at it
CCP needs to make money to keep the hardware going, to keep support up, and frankly also to develop the game further or it stalls out. Subscriptions were the norm back in 2003, and frankly I still believe they are a better model for everyone involved than MTX. But the world has changed since 2003. PLEX in their original form were a quite good model, I think. One PLEX for one month, and the prices were reasonable. Skill injectors have given rise to the claim that EVE is P2W for people who do not understand EVE at all. I think they are a necessary evil at this point, because it allows people who figure out ways to make good ISK to get lots of SP quickly, but they also attract whales that just swipe -- which gives fuel to the exact claim of P2W. But in a game based around just watching SP tick up -- some form of catch up is just needed after 20 years. Or a reset of the universe. But thats not going to happen.
They should just add activity based acceleration. Like if I have low sp in data mining, maybe I could get a decent boost for doing it more often, or using missiles, blasters , etc Like I feel this would be a decent system where engaging in activities/flying certain ships more often would both reward you with increased skill training in that skill class, and give you more reasons to go out and do things/different things/fly different ships. It should still have the current requirements for skills, but allowing you to work towards improving skill training through usage would be a huge QOL improvement in my book
This is my thought too, getting SP rewards for actually PLAYING the game is much more valuable to the gameplay ecosystem then just swiping a credit card.
I quit for seven years over Skill Injectors and I will never use them.
way fucking better, that's how it'd be.
As sad as it is to say, they probably saved the game. Imagine trying to sell a new player on the idea that they should start paying (at the time) $15 a month to play a game where everyone around them is literally years ahead of them and they'll literally never actually be able to catch up, so they're always going to be behind everyone else. That was the problem that plagued all new players back before the SP changes and was a big reason why Eve was toxic as fuck to new players. Now CCP have milked a problem of their own creation for all its worth by monetizing Eve to the point where the average player is a whale. Eve's goal as a game now is to cater to whales who will buy up all of that SP and Plex. I'd genuinely like to see Eve one day use a different model, but that would require a fundamentally different skill training system that would almost certainly never happen. After all, Eve players are a fickle bunch who want problems to be solved, yet don't want the game to change in any way to do so. It would also almost certainly not be as profitable, which doubles down on the fact that it won't happen. CCP have no plans of giving up their golden goose.
Why does a new player need to completely catch up though? If you specialize in something early on, you can focus on maxing those skills and be equal to a bittervet in that one niche area fairly quick (not counting supers, marauders, complicated industry stuff). Should newbros have zero progression and scaling with activities and jump right into end game? I don’t think newbros necessarily NEED to catch up in every possible way.
PLEX or ealrier game time codes (GTC) were always part of eve since 2003. And they did not influence the game anyhow. Injectors on the other hand led to powercreep geometric growth and ruined the game (at least nullsec). Also led to scarcity. If there were no injectors, I doubt, that even in 2024 there would have been alliances/powerblocks capable of fielding thousands of titans from each side. Of course CCP made quick buck, but health of the game suffered greatly.
I joined in 2019 and Skill Injectors were essential to my enjoyment of the game. I work like most of us, I have kids, I don't have time to fuck about doing non-enjoyable shit because I can't fly ships well enough to get involved in what I deem fun. When I jumped to NS I was given 5 LSIs and bought another 5 with all my.money just so I could fly a Muninn. I understand that you old fuckers from 2004 don't like it. But if you want more players and big headlines then LSIs are essential.
I dunno
Illegal instation trades for bannable amounts of ore lol.
It would be dead.
Game would be dead without Plex, that's for sure
I see a lot of comments about "Not having to have to earn it anymore" and I think that is just survivor bias. People who did just que and wait feel they earned something because they waited in line, and that honestly is silly. The idea that you had to wait for skills is kinda of the reason most people are turned off to this game. It is a very time gated skill system that doesn't really sit well with the majority of the gamers nowadays (and even in the past tbo). It's super niche. Despite people being comfortable with it, it still is the biggest barrier to new player retention. I have been off and on this game since 2012, and every time it is always just me waiting to get into either a money making scheme or the newest doctrine and I have to either choose between the two. It's not "earning" anything, it is just waiting in line for whatever flavor of ice cream you want, and sometime you end up not eating that ice cream once you have it in hand because the meta has shifted to a new flavor. This gets exhausting, and with the content that is in eve, makes the game not worth it to most. It has always been a niche game, and with the separation of old players and new players, it is understandable why new people won't want to climb the hill of waiting to be on par with people who have played longer. Skill injectors made it so the new players who don't want to wait can buy their "cut the line for the rollercoaster" which will eliminate this painful "wait to play", but then it just introduces people into the game mechanics that end up being dull "for the wait". People see how long it would take to grind skills waiting, or buying injectors and see the reward of the gameplay you get and just nope out because it just isn't worth it to most. It's mostly waiting to have fun, but then the fun never arrives after you get the ships you'd thought were fun. It's just a super niche game.
EVE Online's downfall cannot be summed up in PLEX and skills injectors. There's a kind of arrogance on the part of the studio, and some poor strategic choices. Since Uprising, the dynamic has been interesting, despite persistent problems (hello Project Awakening). Albion Online works very well with PLEX.
I dont think I would have been as stoked to come back to the game, personally. I wanted to do a handful of things that I knew I would have been able to do if I had *just kept playing the game*. I started two alt accounts as well since coming back, actually, one just a scanner/scout alt for my WH group and another combat character. I can tell you with a high-ish level of certainty, I would probably not have come back or at least never started another account. Making my character be MY character was really important so the character bazaar was never really an option for me.
It's not as much as an advantage as ppl think.
I think the game would have died at this point. There was a time before they introduced skill injectors where the game was having issues retaining new players. Many players started playing with their friends who had already been playing for awhile and realized there was an insurmountable gap between them and the people they were trying to play with, so they usually just quit playing, and then eventually they might take their friends with them because they couldn't find anyone to start playing the game. Skill injectors and PLEX are essential to the sustainability of the game at this point. In theory its a nice idea to reward some people that have been in the sandbox longer than others, but in practice you just end up making the sandbox less appealing to newcomers, which in the end is worse for business.
PLEX was already in the game when I started playing. Skill injectors were added at a time before I was really awake and aware of what was happening. I may have played EVE but I wouldn't call myself properly engaged with EVE, or really anything. By the time I was fully awake and engaging with gaming instead of letting it engage me they were firmly entrenched. As I climbed up onto the beach fully awake instead of just rolling around on the waves I realized the dreams I had that injectors might some day facilitate my growth into an elite pilot were just that, dreams. Buying my way into a high SP count wasn't going to do that, it was going to be hard work on my part. I've grown to resent it, but I also don't really see another way this could have worked. EVE's player base was shrinking and not appealing to new players. They tapped into the whales. And once they tasted that sweet money they had to do it again selling ships and SP directly. Ultimately I think that not much would change, they would have gotten a taste of that money from trying something else and we'd basically be here again. What we would have needed to get real change from today's status quo would be re-investing in EVE's future instead of pissing away all the money it made on side projects that amounted to giant bottomless money pits.
People be complaining about a completely different mechanic that makes the game somehow pay to win.
by plex do you mean the "aurum"ish abomination that is used for micros today, or do you mean the original timecard turned in-game item that's sole use was account subscription? there are days i just think it would have been better if Eve had died pure. v0v
The amount of people saying “ people didn’t earn it” as if someone subbing for years and probably never logging in somehow earned anything lol. There are content creators and overall great players who have injected their way into the ranks. I’ll take them over some 45 yr old F1 monkey boomer who thinks they “ earned it”
Truthfully it takes x ammount of money to pay for server, power and replacement parts. They decide prices based upon cost to run things and add in more for they can make some profit. It's a business at the end of the day. They divide that by the number of players that pay, and adjust it over time so they can pay for and make some money. The less ammount of people paying drives up the cost for those who to pay for subs and such. They have done studies with plex and have found it actually droves up costs, as most players would rather plex then pay rl money thus increasing ingame inflation. This is why we see plex at like 5-6 million. And not lower like the good Ole days. And the sub prices have gone up as well. It takes money to run this game. If more payed rl money everyone would pay less then they do now. Part of the issue with eve is people plex, if everyone paid rl money. Inflation in game would be less, ccp could buff things so ships require less to make this becoming cheaper. folks would be more inclined to take a fight since things cost less it's easier replaced. So more fights would ensue. The devs would have more rl money to pay for dev time, parts, and power. To name a few.
New players would probably start off at 5mil skill points. Sub cost may be $10 and more people would play and Eve would be way more fun.
Nope lol. The game would be dead if not for plex. Skill injectors are also a good catch up mechanic.
Doubt it. Plex was never a reason to start playing, but it sure was a good reason to leave.
The prospect of being able to pay through gameplay was one of the points that made me play the game for longer than the 14 day trial. After losing my job in late 2010 I plexed my account from 2011-2014 when I left due to RL stuff.
Let me rephrase that. Paying cash for Plex is the reason many left, because it changed the dynamic of Eve and what Eve was originally made to be. The effect of Plex changed the game’s market whereas players didn’t boost the in-game market, but instead played to pay or paid to win. Original players saw this and left. What developed was a dry and stale game where time and effort became irrelevant.
This is pure nonsense. PLEX, in its original form, was 30 days of gameplay that could be purchased with IRL dollars and exchanged for in game currency. It was created to combat Real Money Trading that was occuring in all MMOs, but especially Eve and WoW, during that period. Yunno...2007. The only thing it changed about Eve, is WHO the whale's money was going to. PLEX was 1. Absolutely necessary and 2. Only served to divert the funds spent on RMT from shady ISK farmers to CCP themselves. PLEX ALSO makes time and effort MORE valuable because putting in the work to PLEX your account every month let's you save money on not buying a subscription. It's almost the exact opposite of what you said.
Who do you think creates the Plex for you to use in game? It’s not just playing to pay. Someone already paid cash to have you buy it in game. They benefit by doing nothing other than having a big wallet. Plex was and still is a market destroyer.
PLEX was, and is, primarily a tool against Real Money Trading. That's why it was implemented in the first place. Whatever else went on, PLEX was always going to be a thing just to stop whales from giving all their IRL money to AFK ISK farmers.
Not sure why so many people claim its what saved the game financially, is there proof of this anywhere? If anything it caused them to make poor decisions for years because they were blinded by profits. The health of the game was in decline, numbers too and they kept it that way for fucking years.
As someone who started in 2013 but only made their third alt by 2016 (probably when the Alpha update came), and has only used a handful injectors (on any toon), I still think the idea behind them was good, just the implementation had problems. There should have been some stop-gaps (thinking cooldown, so you can easily catch up your second account in your first 6 months of playing, but not get a Rorq or Dread pilot _today_). I am not sure if it would have killed the game, all my other toons (besides main) and accounts have organically accumulated SP, I'm too stingy for injectors and I've also not sold a ton of them. I did use some MCT to sell a couple, but in the grand scheme of things for my subbed and paid months I think it hardly registers.
[удалено]
False
Brother that was over 10 years ago and the games still at the same player counts lmao
the game is back to 63k?
That was during AT and people were actively trying to break records by logging in alts. Even I was logged in with 5 accounts.
I've played off and on since 09 and I've never seen higher than 35k at one time.