Ghost training — Reloaded.

[This is part of the fix for this cosmic screwup]

Ghost Training is good: for the players, for user retention, for CCP's income.
Ghost Training is bad: for CCP's wallet, which doesn't get as much lub as it wish it would, and from a design standpoint because it is a flipswitch and imbalanced feature.

Here's a fix.

The new ghost training is largely similar to the dead one, except it now works as a time credit with a timer countdown:

• it automatically kicks in whenever your account lapses and there's a currently training skill,
• it stops when the skill is complete, the account is reactivated, or the ghost training credit runs out (whichever comes first)
• ghost training credit decreases as used, and increases when credited by a subscription recharge (see below).
• unused ghost training time credit doesn't expire or decay over time, but the high-limit on any skill training time prevents one from ghost training for 6 months in a row.

Ghost training credit recharge system:

• 1-month plan subscription credits your account with +5 days of Ghost Training.
• 60d GTC credits your account with +10 days of Ghost Training.
• 3-month plan subscription credits your account with +20 days of Ghost Training.
• 6-month plan subscription credits your account with +50 days of Ghost Training.
• 12-month plan subscription credits your account with +120 days of Ghost Training.

Make it retroactive, yet only as far back as the ongoing payment period at launch date.

As a side note, there's a hidden benefit coming from training your own toons (as opposed to buying them) in that Ghost Training credit is account-based, and thus not transferred with a character.

Finally, a configurable email reminder service about account expiration (accounting for GTC pre-paid time and credit cards expiration dates) sounds like an easy enough addition to the account management service.

Announce it on Monday with a nice "Sorry about the mixup" wrapper, launch on Wednesday, and presto: you de-suicided EVE income and made a bunch of happy campers.

There, there…