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SP game breaking for new players. Please take your time to read this CCP.

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Ace Uoweme
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#441 - 2013-03-30 01:23:00 UTC
Govind wrote:
Ace Uoweme wrote:
The skill time doesn't need to change in itself, just some tangible reward that's worth the wait....5% off a setback is pretty difficult to wait on


The problem there sounds more like OCD. It's a diminishing return for which each player must make a cost-benefit analysis of if it is worth training. You don't NEED to train all of your skills to 5 even for your primary role. If as you said the reward of training something to 5 seems like it may not be worth it then DON'T, save it for when you feel you have nothing better to train.

The only changes I see as benefiting the EvE training system is simply more education for new players about prioritizing their skill training plans. If, as you mentioned, a two month player is training a lot of 19+ day skills they are not prioritizing well and are only holding themselves back.


You do need to have the skills to level 5 or pay for it with a steady stream of losses.

A skills based game is about more skills = being more powerful. A level 1 skilled player is going to be blown out of the water by a level 5 skilled player.

The reward is the skills.

I don't want the length of the skill grind to change (when WoW changed Blacksmithing to easy leveling @ 90 that's when I quit. Tired of making that easy and having little to show for hard work [or in EvE the wait]). But this new generation of gamer isn't going to wait, they have a steady diet of 8hr games, and staying inflexible isn't helping attract *and retain* more players.

"5mil SP required!"

"10mil SP required!"

Says, yeah, SP does matter.

Just need a way for players to see the benefits of the wait, not be told either sink or swim (why would they want to sink when 10001 other games cater to them, anyway?). When the market changes, games have to change with it, not bury their heads in the sand with meme defenses.

Do you want ISBox to be the way to play EvE? Or having 50,000 more real humans playing? I prefer the latter and hope they'll stay.

_"In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." _ ~George Orwell
Leetha Layne
#442 - 2013-03-30 01:34:25 UTC
Bigger Swords.
Seraph IX Basarab
Outer Path
Seraphim Division
#443 - 2013-03-30 05:02:22 UTC
Getting from level 1 to 4 takes less time than it does from 4 to 5....you'll be alright.
GreenSeed
#444 - 2013-03-30 13:11:42 UTC
SP is fine, l2play.
Korvus Falek
Depraved Corruption
#445 - 2013-03-31 01:00:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Korvus Falek
Hefty TheFirst wrote:
It is a great aspect you are right there.
But it has been grocely expanded.

Out of 5 people in my experience 4 quit.
That's a really bad number. I love this game but few people are going to drop big $ to buy a pilot in the bazaar.

This has to be the biggest issue in the game right now.
If dealt with the game could MASSIVELY expand... Once more if you misread MASSIVELY expand.


EvE is not for everyone. Im happy with a 20% retention rate if it means getting quality over quanity in my fellow players.

Edit:

To clarify more; SP does matter, but not to the extent that some people are making it out to be. The required sp levels (5mSP, 10mSP ect) are the same as level requirements in other MMOs (level 40, 50, 60, ect). Also, Im not going to link it, but CCP has mentioned once or twice that training to level 5 for a skill should be specilization in that skill rather than just training to 5 to have it. Level 3 is average, level 4 skills are above average and 5 skills are specilist level skills.

With this in mind, you dont NEED every skill to level 5, not even close. You can be a competent pilot with only a few hours of training skillpoints. What matters most, IMO, is you willingness to seek out knowledge of the game, in game and out. Gaining this knowledge by scouring forums, fitting tools, and youtube videos to see what people are doing right and wrong and adapting those things to your own playstyle.

Adaptation is extremely important, and by training many skills to level 3 or 4 will leave you much better able to adapt than training only a few skills to 5 in the same amount of time. Again, IMO, EvE is all about adaptation.
Leetha Layne
#446 - 2013-03-31 01:37:42 UTC
Just reading this thread, I've gotten to level 5 in Gunnery.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#447 - 2013-03-31 11:53:37 UTC
Korvus Falek wrote:
Hefty TheFirst wrote:
It is a great aspect you are right there.
But it has been grocely expanded.

Out of 5 people in my experience 4 quit.
That's a really bad number. I love this game but few people are going to drop big $ to buy a pilot in the bazaar.

This has to be the biggest issue in the game right now.
If dealt with the game could MASSIVELY expand... Once more if you misread MASSIVELY expand.


EvE is not for everyone. Im happy with a 20% retention rate if it means getting quality over quanity in my fellow players.



Well, it doesn't, unless you count patience as the predominant quality among players.

The success of (really ridiculous) scammers alone shows a lot about the playerbase...

Quote:

To clarify more; SP does matter, but not to the extent that some people are making it out to be. The required sp levels (5mSP, 10mSP ect) are the same as level requirements in other MMOs (level 40, 50, 60, ect).


I agree to some extend. And where would WoW be, if you needed 1 month for lvl 10, 3 months for lvl 20...and 2 years for lvl 90? They would have retained 90% of their first year subsribers (at a lower scale than they were then, because less would have been willing to suffer that), simply because people would hesitate to give up their 'investment' or the advantage they have over everyone newer - at the cost of negligible growth. Hint: The majority of WoW's growth came with the 2nd and 3rd expansion...

Quote:

Also, Im not going to link it, but CCP has mentioned once or twice that training to level 5 for a skill should be specilization in that skill rather than just training to 5 to have it. Level 3 is average, level 4 skills are above average and 5 skills are specilist level skills.


That's a totally empty statement if you have a playerbase where a sizeable number of players is old enough that they have simply trained skills to 5, because they had everything else trained already - not because they wanted to 'specialize' in that activity.

To put things in perspective: With a fixed max amount of SP (achievable in a realistic timeframe), calling 5 specialist skills would indeed make sense, since you would have to give up something else for that specialization. (Comparable to the old WoW talent trees, where you had to optimize to some extend - especially if you went somewhat exotic)
Korvus Falek
Depraved Corruption
#448 - 2013-03-31 15:24:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Korvus Falek
Your comparing apples to oranges. In WoW, you gain levels by the amount of time you put in grinding XP. In EvE, you gain SP as long as you have a skill in the queue. In WoW, when you die, you dont lose anything other than a few seconds. In EvE, when you die, there are consequences. WoW has also been in decline for a few years, while EvE has had continued growth every single year (with the exception of Incarna debacle). I dont hear Blizzard or WoW devs talking about their game "in the coming DECADE", like CCP has laid plans for EvE in such a way. CCP is planning for even more growth over the next 10 years, while WoW is only planning for the next year of developement and in five years, going into maintence mode the same way EQ1 did.

People need to stop looking only at the small % of boosts a level 5 skill gives over a level 4 skill. On paper, it might seem like alot, but in actual practice, its entirely more likely that the person with more level 3 and 4 skills spread out will win over the person who train thed same amount of time to get a few skills to 5. Thats the trade off that everyone refuses to see. The extra training time IS specialization when you can train more general skills in the same time as that one skill training to 5.

I dont want a fixed max amount of SP. I want to have an ungainable amount of SP so it forces me to make choices in what to train with consequences for training or not training certain things. Having the ability to get everything and do everything at maxed out skills with one character is rediculous and always has been to me. Make alts if you want to do it all. Its a choice with a consequence.

Also, I hate your WoW comparisons because I dont want a WoW clone in space, let alone ANY game that even tries to copy WoW at all. Every game that has done so has failed in trying to capture lightning in a bottle again. If anything, developers need to copy EvE instead of catering to every ADHD numbnuts idiot calling themselves a gamer.
ScoRpS
Moist Wanted.
OnlyFleets.
#449 - 2013-03-31 17:24:27 UTC  |  Edited by: ScoRpS
From a PVP point of view.

I would advise a new player that specialising earlier is actually the best way.

I can imagine that new players are overwhelmed at the sheer diversity in Eve and could be forgiven for wanting to try a bit of everything. Then they will end up in a state of mediocrity from where they don't really shine for quite some time. Not a good experience.

I guess deciding earlier on what they want to do leads to a more fulfilling experience. This is largely because specialisation is capped much lower. For example you can, with 15-20 mil well planned sp, take on much higher sp'd players with a decent chance of success. If of course they have the right ship and fit for the job.


  • Decide on which ship and role takes your fancy and why.


  • Learn tactics and fits and more importantly viable target types. This is not intuitive and one will suffer losses learning.


  • Work out a skill plan to accommodate it.


  • Become proficient in its use and repeat for another ship.


Knowing you have maxed a certain ship type is gratifying, boosts confidence and does not take as long as you may think.
Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#450 - 2013-03-31 18:11:31 UTC
ScoRpS wrote:
From a PVP point of view.

I would advise a new player that specialising earlier is actually the best way.

I can imagine that new players are overwhelmed at the sheer diversity in Eve and could be forgiven for wanting to try a bit of everything. Then they will end up in a state of mediocrity from where they don't really shine for quite some time. Not a good experience.

I guess deciding earlier on what they want to do leads to a more fulfilling experience. This is largely because specialisation is capped much lower. For example you can, with 15-20 mil well planned sp, take on much higher sp'd players with a decent chance of success. If of course they have the right ship and fit for the job.


  • Decide on which ship and role takes your fancy and why.


  • Learn tactics and fits and more importantly viable target types. This is not intuitive and one will suffer losses learning.


  • Work out a skill plan to accommodate it.


  • Become proficient in its use and repeat for another ship.


Knowing you have maxed a certain ship type is gratifying, boosts confidence and does not take as long as you may think.


Fine in theory, but it conflicts heavily with the attribute mapping concept of EVE.

I.e. it's a sound plan after covering ALL the I/M based basic skills OR at the tradeoff of having a lot worse growth long term

I'm biting the bullet with my FW char, where i'm applying that concept, just so I could hop straight in, but i'm constantly aware of and annoyed at the less than optimal SP gain.
Winter Archipelago
Autumn Industrial Enterprises
#451 - 2013-03-31 20:26:21 UTC
Hefty TheFirst wrote:
Just to be slightly effective it takes about 1.5 years of training.
Then you have some of the basics and can still not do anything special.


Hah. I've been having loads of fun with a <900k SP Rifter pilot. Made a new account, capping out the PvP char's skills at about 898k SP (free clone for life!) and am putting the SP into the other two slots for PI alts.

It may take a year to a year-and-a-half of training to get your char well-skilled with a capital ship, but if that is the only thing you want to do, well, it takes time to get to Level 80 and all the best gear in WoW, too.

You can be a tackler in a day, a passable frig pilot in a week, a good frig pilot in a month, and a solid cruiser pilot in two months. Solid character skills with battlecruisers and battleships will come in 4- to 8-months' time.

The specialty ships -- logi to black ops and everything inbetween -- will take 6 months to a year, during which you'll have quite a bit available in the lower classes of ships (which you should indeed put to use, just so you know what you're doing when you get up to your billion- and multi-billion-ISK ships and fittings).

A year to a year-and-a-half? Sure, go ahead, keep on believing that. My "don't-give-a-****" <900k SP PvP char took 16 days to train up (using only a single one of the three remaps available to new chars), and I'm having a blast with it.

For the Newbies: The 8 Golden Rules - The Magic 14 Skills - Finding the Right Corp - EVE University Wiki
Kahega Amielden
Rifterlings
#452 - 2013-04-02 19:25:29 UTC
Quote:
The specialty ships -- logi to black ops and everything inbetween -- will take 6 months to a year, during which you'll have quite a bit available in the lower classes of ships (which you should indeed put to use, just so you know what you're doing when you get up to your billion- and multi-billion-ISK ships and fittings).


Blacks ops, maybe...but ewar, logi, etc actually takes significantly less time to train for than equivalent combat ships. T2 cruisers are just another ~month or so.
digitalwanderer
DW inc
#453 - 2013-04-03 02:42:00 UTC  |  Edited by: digitalwanderer
Now that i'm fast approaching the 200 million skill point mark( and playing for 10 years straight), I actually have no challenges left in the game to speak of, as I've done pretty much everything that is possible to do in the game, so if anything, I actually want more skills to train in the game.



This is a game that has always required patience to get anywhere, and many of the younger players are lucky since CCP made the game considerably easier to both train skills faster and earning isk much more quickly than they did when the game was launched when I started.


No lvl 4 missions.
No attribute implants.
No double speed training to 1.6 million SP.
No battleship spawns on any kind( even in 0.0 space).
One was lucky if he/she could make 5 million isk a day in those early days.
No anomalies.
No officer spawns.
No T2 of any kind, be it modules or ships.
No sleeper space at all.
Roughly 70 skills to train initially.
No hardwires.
No drugs( AKA boosters) of any kind.
No capital ships.
No GTC's to make isk by selling them on the eve market after having bought them from CCP( shame on you CCP to implement a pay to win scheme like this, even if there's skills to still train up).
No POS's or outposts in 0.0, so we were always fighting for the same NPC stations in 0.0 space, fountain being at the top of the list since it was a small region with only 3 entry points( easy to defend basically), but with a lot of NPC stations and awesome minerals.
Server crashed or was rebooted 2~3 times a day on average.
3000 people logged in on average, and 4000 to 5000 on weekends, so you were on your own most of the time given the 5000 systems in eve( not counting sleeper space of course).


Game had serious issues with balance and module stacking and no penalty to it like an Armageddon with 7 damage mods, or ships with multiple MWD's or battleships with incredible lock times, tracking no sig radius penalty and torpedos that did full damage to frigates....The list can go on and on, but if some here think the game is screwed up now, you should have seen how it was in the early stages of it's release.
Angelique Duchemin
Team Evil
#454 - 2013-04-05 00:54:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Angelique Duchemin
Skill points is one part of the equation. It works well with the existing learning curve.

For example you can take Evemon and put in a Carrier and add all skills required to master it and you will end up with a plan of a little over 1000 days but that doesn't mean you sit in the station for 1000 days and train skills.

You start with a regular combat fit frigate. Then in about a week you move up to a T1 logistic ship. A month later you will be competent with the T1 logi and 2-3 months later you will have mastered it.

A few months after that you move on to a T2 logistic ship which will in itself take about 6 months to master. As you master your logi skills you also advance your drone skills at the same time for combat support.

So after about a year to a year and a half from your starting point you mastered the T2 logi. This is all the same skill path as the Carrier and the same type of work as well. You are now ready to take your first steps as a Carrier pilot. You will be able to fly the Carrier "okay" at this point, fly it well after about 2 years and master it in about 3 years.

Chances are that you will branch off in any number of direction on the way like drone boats, Nagas, drakes, cov ops or even some mining.

Or take Dreadnoughts for example. Turrets or launchers come from cruisers and then go with you all the way. This all leads up to the Moros, then the Phoenix, and after ,mastering those two you move on to the Nagelfar.

It's a massive learning curve and rarely are you better as a pilot than the skills your character possess.


When I first started EvE about... 5 years ago I believe. First thing I did was a buy a 70 mill Carrier pilot. I literally went from Ibis to Thanatos in like 2 weeks. And I was a crap Carrier pilot because I knew nothing of the skills or the piloting that made up what being a Carrier pilot was. I only played the game for about a year and was mostly away for the later 9 months of that.

I returned to the game recently. Sold the pilot I had bought and started over properly. Doing it right from the start and I have no complaints about the skill training time. I'd be lucky if my own skills advance to match the in game skills in speed.

The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.

Chi'Nane T'Kal
Interminatus
#455 - 2013-04-05 08:19:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Chi'Nane T'Kal
Angelique Duchemin wrote:

[..skilling for carrier..]
So after about a year to a year and a half from your starting point you mastered the T2 logi. This is all the same skill path as the Carrier and the same type of work as well.


Flying a T2 logistics on the way adds about 25 days to your skillplan for every race yo wish to fly because of racial cruiser V.
(You should be IN/ME mapped at that point of your skillplan, if carrier is the goal)

Quote:

Chances are that you will branch off in any number of direction on the way like drone boats, Nagas, drakes, cov ops or even some mining.


Thus exaggerating the difference and introducing attribute mapping problems.

The point remains that if you can afford to skill up your capital pilot as an ALT that is never played until finished, he will be finished a whole lot earlier. That's just terrible, terrible game design.

Quote:

It's a massive learning curve and rarely are you better as a pilot than the skills your character possess.


I cannot stress enough how overrated i find the often quoted 'learning curve'.

There are a few mechanisms that are a bit counterintuitive, but once those are learned everything is pretty much a question of paying attention, common sense/basic math and patience.
Lost True
Perkone
Caldari State
#456 - 2013-04-05 12:07:39 UTC
Hefty TheFirst wrote:
[first post]

So what do you think will keep the noobs in game?
Actual ideas?

Because they're boosting the noobs every year, but looks like it's just making the game easier while the noobs still quit.

the solution IS SIMPLE, BUT NOT EASY.

Make this game interesting, fun for the newbies. Well, for example there could be more INTERESTING PvE content, some are combat-oriented, some are not.

So the newbies will have good time for the longer time. And not just the newbies, i'd like to do something new too :)

It's not about SP... Anyway, you can still find the fun if you are a low-sp. Find a friendly, or a good newbie corp an you'll be fine!!!
If you think that you need 2 years of training to have some fun, or the "real game" is there and right now you have to wait... You will be very dissapointed because after those 2 years and a few mastered ships there will be no big difference. Yes, you'll be very happy to sit in the cool ship with finall all skills for it at 5... But only for some time, maybe the month...

in 2007 i've thought it's a sci-fi simulator, not an "e-sports" game. I'm not a teenager, how would i like it much?
Oska Rus
Free Ice Cream People
#457 - 2013-04-05 23:36:44 UTC
Oce you get the grip of some game mechanics youll realize taht training alt to perform one particullar task can be done in quite short time. Problem is that aquiring knowledge about that some game mechanics takes a year or two...
ShahFluffers
Ice Fire Warriors
#458 - 2013-04-06 04:52:05 UTC  |  Edited by: ShahFluffers
I'm going to throw in my 2 cents (which will most certainly be lost in all the rabble here)...

Ace Uoweme wrote:
You do need to have the skills to level 5 or pay for it with a steady stream of losses.

No... you don't. This is an outright lie.

Keep in mind that...

- only a limited number of skills affect any one ship, module, weapon system, and specialty at any given time.

- getting a skill from level 4 to level 5 only adds on an extra 2% here, 5% there (exceptions apply).

What this means is that if you simply train up all the skills within a specialty to level 4, you will find yourself flying at about 80 to 90% of the effectiveness of a multi-year veteran with those same skills in that specific specialty (provided they are at level 5... which is not always the case).

Ace Uoweme wrote:
A skills based game is about more skills = being more powerful. A level 1 skilled player is going to be blown out of the water by a level 5 skilled player.

Yes and no.

If the low and high skilled players are flying identical ships with the same fittings then yes... the person with superior skills will win. But that almost never happens because things are not decided strictly by skillpoints alone. There is always something... a ship, weapon, mod, or external circumstance that will put the odds more in favor of one side or the other.


Ace Uoweme wrote:
I don't want the length of the skill grind to change (when WoW changed Blacksmithing to easy leveling @ 90 that's when I quit. Tired of making that easy and having little to show for hard work [or in EvE the wait]). But this new generation of gamer isn't going to wait, they have a steady diet of 8hr games, and staying inflexible isn't helping attract *and retain* more players.

Then that's a problem with the players then... not the game. Why should something have to cater to the lowest common denominator in the name of "profit?" A line has to be drawn somewhere.


Ace Uoweme wrote:
"5mil SP required!"

"10mil SP required!"

Says, yeah, SP does matter.

Corps that do this are one of two things.

1. They are idiots that are screening people using SP as a metric for how long they have played... not how effective they are. Basically they want people who have played the game and understand its mechanics to apply... which they believe skillpoints is indicative of (but isn't).

2. They are bad corps and shouldn't be applied to


If a corp is doing the first point then a player can easily get around SP restrictions by directly talking with the diplomats/recruiters and showing that he/she is competent.

Ace Uoweme wrote:
Just need a way for players to see the benefits of the wait, not be told either sink or swim (why would they want to sink when 10001 other games cater to them, anyway?). When the market changes, games have to change with it, not bury their heads in the sand with meme defenses.

By that logic... every singer out there should try to be more like Justin Bieber because he (or is it "she") sells tens of millions of records more than any other vocalist. Or that all Mexican restaurants should be like Chipotle or Chevvy's because they have more patrons than "traditional" Mexican restaurants.

Personally speaking... the market, while good in many ways, is sometimes a terrible thing as it lowers the overall quality of a product or interest that people find popular for that moment. And when the market moves on to something else... said product or interest is often a shadow of its former self for the people that were originally invested in it.

How did you Veterans start?
Jonah Gravenstein
Machiavellian Space Bastards
#459 - 2013-04-08 00:00:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Jonah Gravenstein
OP has long gone, thank god, now if only the rest of the people that think like him would follow.

Newbies have it considerably easier now than they have at any time in the past, the only things that SP bring are variety and expensive clones. A 3 month old alt, with an experienced player behind it, that has specialised in frigates is more than capable of taking on someone with 80 million SP in a similar ship, because 95% of the 80 million SP his opponent has will be irrelevant to the ship he's flying.

Level V skills are a toss up between how much time you wish to invest vs the minimal gains you get. The only level V skills that any of my characters have are the ones required to progress onto T2 weapons and ships.

Actually I lie, I've taken advantage of the upcoming skill changes to put all 3 of my characters in the position of gaining the 4 racial BC skills at level V, for the time investment of the current BC skill at level V, because it would be silly not to, for me the gain outweighs the opportunity cost.

In the case of my Amarr Trade/Indy character I did it because a laser Ferox/Cane/Brutix is hilariously bad Big smile and being able to fly a BC on that character will let me gain faction standings slightly quicker, which helps with refine rates etc.

TL;DR there is no skill wall, there is a learning cliff, but there are plenty of tools out there to help people climb it. If Eve was easy, I'd have gotten bored of it 3 years ago.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

New Player FAQ

Feyd's Survival Pack
Fairren
HellrisCorp
#460 - 2013-04-08 02:42:28 UTC
digitalwanderer wrote:

No lvl 4 missions.
No attribute implants.
No double speed training to 1.6 million SP.
No battleship spawns on any kind( even in 0.0 space).
One was lucky if he/she could make 5 million isk a day in those early days.
No anomalies.
No officer spawns.
No T2 of any kind, be it modules or ships.
No sleeper space at all.
Roughly 70 skills to train initially.
No hardwires.
No drugs( AKA boosters) of any kind.
No capital ships.
No GTC's to make isk by selling them on the eve market after having bought them from CCP( shame on you CCP to implement a pay to win scheme like this, even if there's skills to still train up).
No POS's or outposts in 0.0, so we were always fighting for the same NPC stations in 0.0 space, fountain being at the top of the list since it was a small region with only 3 entry points( easy to defend basically), but with a lot of NPC stations and awesome minerals.
Server crashed or was rebooted 2~3 times a day on average.
3000 people logged in on average, and 4000 to 5000 on weekends, so you were on your own most of the time given the 5000 systems in eve( not counting sleeper space of course).


Did they have learning skills then?