EVE Online Removes Prospector's Pack from Sale, CCP Vows for Community-influenced Decisions on New Packs

With the EVE Online community deserving of its reputation as both dedicated and intense in its feedback and opinions, CCP has released an official statement in response to one of the latest controversial decisions getting pushback: the Prospector's Pack being put on sale.

The pack, with the ship and skills to pilot it, as well as extras, was targeted at new players to help them get a good start on their adventures as Capsuleers, but the community was wary because  monetization of this kind could disrupt some of the value of ships in game. Monetization is obviously important for a game to survive but concern was that selling things like this, especially fully fitted ships as a ready to go package, could impact prices of ships in game. This stretches to move producers out of the way since if you could just buy ships without investing time and resource gathering into making them a reality, why would some of the community want to do that work? 

In response to the pack’s sale being met with heavy negative feedback opposing the sale of things like fully fitted ships, CCP will be integrating players into the process of determining what should go into new player targeted packs like this going forward. The changes will take some time to put into place, and there will be more at Fanfest. 

“One of the topics for Fanfest is a new project that we’re in the middle of developing, that will transform these and any future packs - a paradigm where packs of this type will be supplied by players, ensuring that any ship we offer to new players through sales, will have origins from actual player work in New Eden: Made for new players, by veterans. This feature will also not only supply each ship from the player base but allow the community to influence which ships will be put in these packs. Additionally, the CSM will now have a quarterly meeting to discuss specifically these types of packs and other commerce topics. Not only to be in the room and have discussions on future packs but also to share feedback that the community desires.”

And if fully fitted ships become just another transaction, the concern was that there would be more of them, and tilt the balance away from the community and player-driven core. 

You can read the full CCP statement over at EVE Online.