Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Dual character training

One of the new features of the next patch of EVE is dual character training. You probably already know that for a PLEX it will allow training of a second character on that account. You probably also know who are targeted: those who need a 2-5M SP alt for some purpose (cyno, scout, manufacture, research, hauling, trading...). Such alt won't need training after completion, so giving it a permanent account is pointless. Without the new feature, you either had to stop your main from training or train the alt on a different account and then transfer. The transfer cost 2 PLEX-es, but you could recruit-a-friend yourself playing 51 days free. So the new feature saves you 1/3 PLEX and the hassle to manage the account, the APIs, the transfer, making it a welcome change.

I want to talk about two things that were not mentioned: the first is the effect on PLEX prices. It's hard to tell, exactly because people used to do the training on a throwaway account that ate PLEX-es, along with the transfer. The new feature will be just a quality of life change for them. The question is: will this feature create new trainings? I mean people who choose not to start a second account and wait with the alt can now choose to start the alt, eating up PLEX-es. There surely will be, but can't tell how many. Also, the feature saves 1/3 PLEX for those who used to use a second account. So I wouldn't take this as an "Oh my God, PLEX will skyrocket, buy, buy, BUUUY" frenzy.

Secondly I'd like to tell that - despite I'm literally swimming in billions - I've never used the character transfer feature. I listed my characters on my 1 year EVE-birthday and you could see that many accounts have more than one character. Yet, I've trained them without transferring, simply stopping other characters on the account. While it was sometimes inconvenient, I did not regret my choice to wait.

You see, an account gives the ability to have a character trained and to have one more logged in. The transfer-train and the new second character training only allows you to use one of the features, losing on the other. If you don't want to have one more logged in characters, you only play a PLEX for the service of getting skillpoints now. The question is, does that character have the utility that worth 2-3 PLEX-es to train now, instead of waiting until the other character can stop training? Or alternatively, does your main really needs to train now so hard that it worth you 2-3 PLEX-es?

In the case of a business pilot, the answer is numerical. Does accounting 5, broker relations 5 saves you 250M before your other characters on the account can be stopped training? If not, then don't train them. Do the extra turns with the smaller hauler, the extra jumps to go to the station instead of setting remote orders cost you so much time that multiplied by your ISK/hour it is higher loss than the cost of the character training?

Remember! One day there will be nothing (that makes sense) to train on your account and you'll be paying only for the ability to log in and your training will go into some obscure nonsense 5. So by enough waiting, you can train all 3 pilots to anything. Since you surely pay to log in, you get the SP for free then. The question is: is the waiting bad enough to warrant paying? I already gave my answer: for me, no. I always choose waiting and did not regret it. Also keep in mind that people who can wait have bank deposits, those who can't wait have loans. The dual training feature isn't from the Devil, but think before you jump on it!

3 comments:

Sam McGraw said...

Training your 2 extra slots to do your PI will pay for those plexs in very short order.

How short?

Depending on how you do your PI we are talking less then a year for most players. For those of us that have been playing since beta we can see the huge benefit from a little feature like this.

Anonymous said...

For people such as myself who have multiple active chars per account, it is handy for when you need to get them both to a new V skill, but would normally have to choose between which is more important, that final JF skill, or the final T2 invention skill.

For making new alts it is handy for the cyno or PI alt, but overall, I dont think it will make a huge difference to plex prices in the long term

Anonymous said...

Its going to get me to buy a plex for the first time. As a combat pilot that makes his own hulls in low sec, I was debating between getting t2 medium projectiles or training for a blockade runner to get my minerals from high sec more efficiently. Now I can buy a plex to train an alt to fly the BR and continue to increase my range of ships faster.