EVE General Discussion

EVE is hard. Also, long training times mean I can log out for a week to go on vacation or spend time with my wife and child, and still accomplish something.

It's interesting mechanic for older players compared to standard 1-week leveling time in other MMOs: you always have new skills to train and there are always ships you can't fly. At least for first 7-8 years. This make game more attractive on the long run - you can always find and train something new.

Also longer train time = more money for the company obviously.

To expand on one of your questions, corps often set an SP minimum for the simple fact that it takes some time to get to know EVE. More SP generally means more time playing and getting to know EVE. If you join one of the alliances that Lucy Ferr mentioned you will soon find yourself with some good experience and 5 mil SP.

First, of all, in case you haven't found them already and just to set the stage for how it works before we look at the “why”.

The formula for SP requirements to reach any given level of a skill is is 2^(2.5 × [lvl -1]) × Rank × 250.
You acquire SP at a rate of [Primary attribute] + [Secondary Attribute / 2] SP per minute (often expressed as (Primary + Secondary/2)×60 SP/h).

The reason it takes long is for the decisions to train higher levels to matter and to create a massive form of diminishing returns. Not only does the next level take more than five times longer to train than the last one, the relative benefits from training that level also decrease. Eg. it takes you a little over half a day to get a ×1.20 bonus from a rank-1 / 5%-per-level skill, but it takes you half a week to get a ×1.25 bonus from the same skill. It's a massive increase in time taken, and all you get out of it is a 4% higher multiplier. For some skills and levels, the decision is made a bit trickier (or in some cases easier) because that extra training time unlocks more skills and equipment that provides more direct value for the bonuses, or indirectly just lets you use completely different things that are of value to you.

Another reason for why it takes so long is to make your decision of attributes matter. Between the worst possible rate of learning (25.5 SP/minute for a 17/17 attribute combo) to the best (45 SP/minute for a 32/26 combo) lies a decision to focus exclusively on one set of skills and let everything else rest for a loooong while (at least once you've used up your free remaps). Again, it's a matter of weighing benefits against gains — is that near doubling of the training speed worth the lack of flexibility I can have in my training plan?

Whether it's the matter of the attributes or the chosen target skill level, the core principle is the same: your decisions are meant to matter, and they're meant to be ever so slightly hard.


…but to your initial musing, the answer is a bit different. The reason you need some specific amount of SP to get into a corp or alliance has (usually) nothing to do with the skills — it has to do with the time. Here, SP is simply a measurement of time played, and they want people who have been in the game for a certain amount of time based on the assumption that after this amount of time, the player will be familiar enough with the game that he can take care of himself and have a level of self-sufficiency that the corp can deal with and make use of. Increasing the training speed would only make those corps increase their SP requirements to match the new speed. Sure, as a measurement of game experience, it's somewhat imprecise — someone who only ever logged on to set a skill queue will be as dependent and unknowing as a completely new player, whereas someone else who spent every waking hour in the game might have acquired knowledge and “street smarts” to match players that are years old, but it's a starting point at least…

Training times are long, so that no one can do it all. You are not meant to train everything. You're supposed to either be decent at a lot of things, but not mastering any of them or specialize in a few areas and suck at the others. This encourages people to fly in groups to achieve things or make them get more alts. Both are good for CCP, since other people are what make players stay with a MMO for years and more alts means more money. It also creates long term goals for the players and usually makes them very attached to their characters and their individual history.

The formula is also designed to be somewhat noob friendly. This is because the benefits of skill levels scale linearly, but the training time grows exponentially. Meaning it's always easy and fast to start a skill and get playing, but mastering skills is very inefficient use of your training time. You only do it when it's a prequisite for something you want or when you really want to specialize in that skill. This also means, that a few million extra SP for a veteran might get a few extra levels in few skills, but the change in performance might not even be noticeable. For a new player those same SP can get dozens of skills trained to a decent level and provide a huge boost in performance.

As for why it's real time based, it lets people play the game instead of playing to level. It also allows people with lives progress their characters at equal speed to no life basement dwellers. Naturally people who play more gain other advantages and can use them to buy a highly trained character and alts, but there is a limit to what that can get you. It also creates a reason for people to stay subbed even when you know your actual time playing the game will be limited. Naturally this is also good for CCP finances.

i understand your point. We take minimum 10m sp.
The reasons behind this are very simple. We would have to do half of your work for you and this is without explaining you the real basics for mechanics in high, low, null and wormholes. And i have left out the different branchs you can go to and all the knowledge that comes ith pvp. I can tell you that even today i learn something new in eve and my character is like 4 years old.
Try out RvB. But you are gonna be forced into a pvp.
YOu may want to try eveuni cos even when you apply to a corp and say you did th eveuni training, it counts alot hen applying for a new corp.
best of luck!

Tippia already mentioned it but I want to emphasize again that skill training works as a "fun now" vs "efficiency" trade-off.

I started training a fresh alt exactly two months ago (May 3rd) and as I have no intention to undock it at least for the next year I can afford to optimize solely for training speed.
The character currently has > 4.2m SP and has been training at an average of 2.840 SP/h over these two months (cerebral accelerator ftw).

In contrast my main is training whatever skills I feel are most useful at this moment and has to take the cost of implants into account as he gets podded frequently - he has been training at an average of 1950 SP/h over the past 3.5 years.

Welcome to "instant gratification" flame war territory!

Training times are not realistic at all. Real classes and training take LESS time than the fake clock-timer EvE skills.

A while ago, I posted a comparison of my atmospheric physics class (fulfils B6 science requirement at Cal State East Bay) to Advanced Planetology:
1a) Both require many prereqs so we can ignore the time for those.
1b) At the time of the comparison, my main had +4 implants and was optimized for Perception and Willpower.
2) Atmospheric physics is 6 in-class hours plus about 8 hours of home work per week for 10 weeks
:: (6 x 10) + (8 x 10) = 140 hours (4 hours of that is eaten up by exams but I won't agrue about that.)
3) Making a conservative guess, Advanced Planetology V (an x5 multiplier) will take ~14 days X 24 hours/day = 336 hours.

So, 140 hours for a real skill that is on my resume versus 336 hours for a fake skill only usable in EvE. That's a ridiculous difference even accounting for an unoptimized brain mapping.

This is not about instant gratification. I simply don't think fake skills should take LONGER than real college level science. I'll go out on the flame war limb and state that skill times should be cut in half. This opinion is based upon starting a new character at a time when the skill timer was faster for noobs, and it actually felt like the correct training speed. ~45+ days for Gallente Carrier V ? Really? Training times are nutz.

Deal with it.

You can train to be a useful pilot within days, look around for some guides, depending on what you want to do. Once you are doing that thing, spend some time on the boring but critical support skills.

As to the problem of corps demanding minimum SP, you've already found a few examples of newbie friendly corps. There are plenty more.

Head over to the recruitment forum and do a search for "new players welcome". I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.