EVE General Discussion

No choice, no fun.

Interesting idea.
I think EVE would become a much more casual game, sort of WoT in space.
Since players wouldn't commit so much time to the game anymore, I guess major powerblocks and industry would slowly wither away.
People would be much less attached to their characters, all characters would be easily replaceable, thus we would probably see even more Alts in the game than right now.
Vets would cry out in pain when suddenly new players could fight them on equal grounds.
But the long time motivation would slowly decline and I think in the long term, it would kill the game.

The player driven economy would collapse. Skill requirement for high tier manufacturing is what keeps supply and demand in check, without those we would have a situation like WOW where raw materials actually lose value the more they are refined /processed.
Without people building ships anymore, CCP would need to have NPCs provide them at a fixed price.
The general unwillingness of the average player to grind for isks would cause CCP to lower ship prices to a level where losses become meaningless.
And again, the game would die.

That about sums it up.

Might as well play Forsaken again, if that's what i wanted.

Not really, no.
ISK is trivial to come by (and would be even more so with the skills removed), so there's very little choice there.

The decision what to spend your time on to acquire more skills lies at the very heart of the game — it's the decision that makes people have to rely on each other rather than just do it alone (and no, alts do not disqualify this statement — it just further proves its validity). My choice between going for lvl V or for 5× lvl IV makes for a far more interesting and engaging distinction between characters than how much ISK I'm willing to grind. Large parts of the game are designed around the notion that, no, you will never have all skills at V, and this means that you will always be at a disadvantage to someone.

Remove skills, and that variable is gone. The choice is gone. The planning is gone. The progression is gone. All that remains is a grey morass of character sameness.

As a new player (about a week), I honestly have to say I don't know if I will be staying in the game much longer. At first I was really impressed with the huge complexity of the game. But after I started training skills and saw how long it takes, and realized that I need to train so much just to be able to even open up a lot of the game content - well it is very demotivational to say the least. It really makes me miss games like X3, that have a lot of game content, but don't actually put so strict restrictions on accessing all the content but forcing you to literally just wait , and wait, and wait, until you somehow magically gain the skills to use it.

At the very least, they could modify the system so that it takes experience and experience using each system actually gives you the skills you need to advance in that system.

That is pretty much already the case. The only activity that even remotely requires some time is flying capships.

Also, your decision on what you do will rely solely on ISK — i.e. time spent grinding.

Quite the opposite. Sameness would be further reinforced as competition forces everyone down the same FOTM mould — something that is now possible since there is no restriction in what people can and cannot fly or do. If X is the best right now, everyone will do X, and no-one will have to adopt a plan Y to compensate for skill gaps that prohibit them from doing X (and at the same time, capitalise on skill sets that X-users might not have).

Claiming that removing the variable of infinitely variable skill sets keeps the variables the same is just silly.

Somehow magically? Um no, it's NOT magic. You wait like everyone else did.


Great another new player already telling us how CCP should change the game to make them happy....

There is lots of other stuff to play out there....

On what basis?
How does removing a variable keep the variables the same?

What they do is keep many setups viable and useful at the same time, so while there might be some “main FOTM”, it will not be the only sane way to play and there will always be pressure to move away from that FOTM. Without the limitations, there will be only one and no reason to change it beyond balance patching.

The opportunity cost of choosing one skill over another is one of the core dynamic drivers in the game.

What?

Because their would be new variables to being in competition with people who could rapidly adapt.


And yet setups and counter setups change all the time. By cost, easy of use and effectiveness. I doubt your stale vision of EVE would be a reality, instead ships would change more frequently as a counter.


Yes but there would be less time to do so without alts as well.


Training like current EVE doesn't and has never existed, it's a hypothetical discussion on a different EVE not a proposal to change the current game.