Skill Extractor / XP Potions

From EVE ONLINE

All characters may use Skill Extractors to extract skill points from their characters. Using a Skill Extractor subtracts 500.000 Skill Points from your character. Once a Skill Extractor is used, it produces a Skill Injector item and places it into your Item Hangar, from where you can trade or sell it on the in game market.Skill Extractors are available for Aurum on the New Eden Store and may be sold by players for ISK on the in game market.


We could make an XP potion that extracts 1 mil applied xp from a skill . Add on store could sell players the empty potions . Then players can sell the XP potions to other players .

 

Would make the game entirely pay to win.

 

How so ? What exactly do you win ..other then TIME ? And how is having XP potions any different then the powerlevel services people already provide ?

 

What the basic description doesn't show, is that you get those full 500k points only up to a certain total SP. After that, the amount you gain from using them drops off sharply.

A similar setup would limit the "pay to win" this item might offer.

 

In the Eve implementation although a player has to transfer 500k of SP into the extractor that they can then sell.
The person buying the skill extractor does not necessary get 500k from the extractor. Depending on how much total SP they have it is has diminishing returns, so it actually remove SP from the game. These are aimed at letting new player catch up for in game currency.

You cant buy these for RL money, so the game is not selling XP, it is allowing player to trade SP in the in game economy but is a SP sink to the overall SP in the system.

To this end i don't see a problem with it and don't really see it as pay to win as someone had earn that XP, the system is not materialising it out of nothing for RL cash. At high level the 30% return makes it very expensive XP too.

See https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Skill_trading#Skill_Extractors

Regards
Spung

 

You can't buy the FULL ones for RL money, not directly, but the extractors are a cash only item.

Also, it is worth noting that for the cost of a small amount more than 2 months subscription time, you can buy two plex, sell them for isk, and buy the injectors with that, so it is a fairly thin lie to say you can't buy them with RL cash.

 

There are some advantages to this

Player quests can offer XP as a reward

You can trade for things you don't like to do in-game

 

I would like that one is able to simple drag XP from its adventure or crafting XP pool to a container. So, that it can be used exactly for this purpose.
It would be nice when player made quests can reward players like Port. made quests. With gold and XP.

There is already a XP item in game, some relase ago someone made a bug report. Because XP was given as item to the inventory and not added to the pool.

 

There is a big difference.
With the power leveling services you still have to be logged in and partied while that xp is being earned. This takes time to accumulate and during that time you will be getting build / deck advice from those who are earning you the xp.

This is very different from sending $1,000 through paypal, drinking a few potions and becoming adventure level 100 in 10 minutes.

Most gamers are fickle and once you reach a certain point in a game you essentially "win". There are no more worlds to conquer, your character isn't going to make any more meaningful advancement and you have explored everywhere and done everything. Once people reach that point they move onto something new in another game. Many of us are already at that stage but stick around because of what we have invested so much time already and we call it home. Introducing pots for the people who can afford it is the very definition of pay to win.

 

While I'd be vehemently against Portalarium selling "xp" for "cash" (ie, changing a number in a database and marketing it) I'm less averse to something like this because as Spung says, 'someone' had to grind that XP. It could be seen as any other service - player A spends time doing something and player B pays them for it. I think if that's the case though, we should leave the add-on store out of it, because if for nothing else, the perception. If you sell the empty vial or whatever for $1, and it holds up to say, a million XP, then while yes there's the service element of someone having to fill the thing, you end up with a complicated system that isn't actually pay to win but looks pay to win to someone casually passing through the shop seeing "xp phylactery" or whatever. Of course, without there being a revenue component there's little motivation, I reckon, for something like this to be added. Classic catch-22.

Also there's thinking about, just because we CAN do something, does it mean we should? I think upper tears et al has already caused a lot of damage to the new player experience because of "powerlevelling." There are players running around at level 100 who are asking where to find Ardoris!

Its already possible to completely nullify every Tier 1-4 scene by having a new player spend just a couple hours in "powerlevel mode" - and then they realize that the gap between Tier 5 and anything bigger is going to require a weeks long materials-or-gold grind to get themselves geared up, and promptly lose interest.

 

Simple: Do something similar to what EvE does with their Aurum. Sell them through the in-game coto store. Players can visit any number of player-run coto vendors, buy the cotos there, and then use them to buy the "new Outlander Phylactory". Since someone somewhere had to spend real life money for most of the cotos, then Port has still received their money, the number of cotos it sells for would still put approximately $1-2 per phylactory into their development pocket, and you avoid MOST of the PTW perception, as all of the transactions are completely in-game.

Keeping with the EvE model, but modifying it somewhat:

• Buying:
  • Available through in-game coto store only
  • Cost:
    • Individual: 3 cotos
    • Pack of 5: 12 cotos
    • Pack of 10: 20 cotos
• Filling:
  • Require a minimum of Adv Level 55 before you can fill a Phylactory
  • Each one holds 1 mil xp
  • Must be filled from a skill (using it opens a menu of all available skills with their xp totals), and that skill cannot drop below the minimum required if it is a pre-requisite for another skill, ensuring that you have not only earned the XP, but spent time and resources allocating it.
• Using:
  • Must be a minimum of Adv Level 50 to use them
  • Pooled XP gained per use:
    • Up to Adv Level 70: 1 million (100%)
    • Between Adv Level 70 and 85: 800,000 (80%)
      
    • Between Adv Level 85 and 95: 600,000 (60%)
      
    • Between Adv Level 95 and 100: 400,000 (40%)
      
    • Adv Level 100+: 100,000 (10%)

This sets it up so that players can pretty much roll with the storyline of EP1 and get up to about the minimum required to use them, will have to invest in about 5-6 of them to get to level 70, another 27-28 to get to 85, an additional 79-80 to get to 95, and finally 120-121 to get to 100, for a total of 235 cotos to get from adv level 50 to 100. Spending (at the current exchange rate of about 8k gold per coto (I think)) anywhere from 3.78 mil to 5.64 mil gold to accomplish this. Meanwhile, Port's dev budget has increased anywhere from $112 to ~$294 from this one hypothetical player.

 

Why even have levels then? Why can't we just buy character with lvl 100+ from store?
This is ridiculously P2W.

Last time I played in online mode, others could wipe the entire scene empty and you were left without loot and mostly without xp. That means, that two even players ( playing skill wise ), other rich in real life other poor, the rich gets HUGE advantage. You can also hugely compensate your skills, if you are not experienced gamer, you can just buy more and more skills and gear to survive, with real money.

I keep logging in from time to time, but as long as this game is run with $ economy and has players "investing" in it, I don't think I play it. Add these and I for sure delete the game.

PS: power leveling services and the ability to carry player from 0 to hero is also bad thing, so bit bad comparison. Player should not gain xp in party if his level is way below others, nor he should get anything from mobs, that are hugely over his skill.

 

I don't object to your model as such, but, when you start getting to adventure level 80+, that's when you can start romping around in tears groups.
Would I really pay 3 cotos (about 20k gold, or so, now?) for less experience than I could get in around 10-15 minutes in a half-decent group? I mean that's not even a full round.
The diminishing returns on this pretty much ensures that they'd only be used to 'blitz' a low lvl character up to level 70. But really, that's the most critical time for new players and there's not really that much XP between level 50 and level 70 adventure level. After that, there's far better alternatives for gaining XP ...like...doing stuff in the game. I can't really imagine that there'd be a lot of demand for such diminished phylacteries - especially since the cost for the empty is only the beginning, you still have to pay for that million XP to a player who is willing to give it up. We can dance around and say that its all in-game-gold but a <lvl 70 player isn't going to be able to earn that kind of money in-game to support buying several of these things, unless they resort to cash. By the time they cranked out the 100k gold (minimum for 5 empties) plus however-much-per-million a player charges them, they'd likely reach the desired level and then some! Which takes us back to P2W.

I dunno . I don't object to helping others level as either a paid service or free thing you do to help your friends, but weighting it in this manner really just seems to target extremely new/fresh players. At adventure level 100, you're talking about paying out 20k + whatever a player's million xp cost is (likely significant) to get less XP than you would from killing stuff for 5 minutes in a high tier scene by yourself. Why would you do this?

You'd be far, far, far better off just paying someone to join their tears group. Or joining one for free!

 

With the current powerlevel services you have to send through paypal with these potions all youll need is ingame gold ..every new/old player will be buying/selling these xp potions on the ingame market .... Can be a great source of income for PORT with just selling the empty flasks and can really help new players catch up with the old players . But i understand the reluctance and views people have posted in this thread .

 

Catch up to what for what?

 

I think this is a great Idea Entropia Universe also has a system like this and has worked for over 13 years. People get upset when the phrase pay to win is introduced. Why is this game NOT Pay to win? You can PAY for Land. You can PAY for Gear. you can PAY for leveling services. You can PAY for anything you want in this game everything is about paying for it. How you choose to pay for it is your decision. Some people like to take the Journey and enjoy the moments. Some like to get to the end as fast as possible. Some like to mix it up. That is the Beauty of SOTA you can play it almost anyway you like. Best thing of all now you can make an account and play completely for free and anything you have after day 1 is profit. It has always been about PAY TO WIN since the first day it was introduced on Kickstarter.

 

More game and less RMT is a good thing !!!

I like to see more player driven / made quests. So a XP reward is a good thing for that.
May following limits are set to prevent abuse:
- One Account can only drag upto 1 million XP from XP pool to an XP item per month / release.
- One Account can not add more then 1 million XP from XP items to the XP pool per month / release.

An XP item can be stored in a container. Once it is dragged to the inventory or double clicked to XP is added to the avatars XP pool. A XP item may looks like this: XP[1000] weight: 1 value: 0.
This relativly low limits should allow player made/driven quests thats include XP reward without supporting the RMT needs.

 

I like this idea as well. I just think it is so silly the Taboo about RMT. Without RMT in anything in virtual or reality we would have Chaos and Anarchy