Skill Discussions

Yup, but only the basic learning skills, as the advanced ones didn't exist either( not in 2003 anyway) and for the record, when I started playing, it was with 8000 SP and a velator frigate, which took me a month of hard core mining to get into a vexor cruiser, and then another 3 months mining in groups with other players that were still in the starting NPC corp, to get into my first battleship( Armageddon).


This game was so much harder in the early days and I loved every second of it.

for every time throughout this thread that you've stated you're a game programmer and/or that you could just apply to ccp for a job - do it, or do not ever mention it again. same thing for "o if you only knew who i was, you'd be killing yourself to help me." - move on. you have no idea who most of these posters are in this thread - NONE.

so, for starters - get off your high horse that on ANY level, you are better than ANYONE online - ever. you are what you show yourself to be, online. would your mother be proud of your behaviour in just this one thread? not if she were a lady.


you keep going on about your three questions in the op, yet you continue to deviate from those to rant about everything under the sun. awesome.



So all I am asking is what is being done about this huge problem EVE faces?

you mean things like getting rid of all of the learning skills?

i guess about the same thing that's being done about having to lvl to 90+ in wow, grinding out faction/reputation with 30 or 40 different groups to max (new ones with every expansion), running a crapton of "starter" max level dungeons in order to get a piece of "starter" dungeon gear every half a dozen runs and then after getting all that taken care of, AND (and this part is completely a mandatory) being part of a GUILD; then, you can start on the larger "end game" dungeons, until the next expansion... then get 5 more levels, rinse/repeat all the above.

is this huge problem because you can't simply powergame in a month, to max level? i wouldn't call that a problem.

all MMOs (with few exceptions) talk about the need to belong to a group; in SOME mmos - being group/friend-LESS is far more of a detriment than in other mmos. aren't eve university, and other similar corps, still around? people who spend a lot of time teaching the ins and outs of the game?

this huge problem. how many space games are there out there, mmo-wise? star wars is pretty wow-ish - and been sucking wind since day one. how about star trek online? you can powerlevel through both of those in a few weeks/couple of months time AND do it solo pretty much.


Who can I talk to about this to make it apparent?

have you done any searches on the forums, for pretty much THIS topic, and variations thereof? after you HAVE so done, do you really feel this is a valid question? failing the search - have you contacted the staff at ccp? you know, those people you've mentioned you could easily get a job with...


This game is truly great but how does any new player have a chance at experiencing that greatness?

idk. ask goonswarm. didn't they ALL start as noobs? wasn't it a something awful kinda thing, them starting eve online and all? yet, how many of them, if any, felt the need to go and purchase toons, vs playing the game with what they had just created?


how do you experience it? you play THIS massively multiplayer game AS it was intended - you play with a massive amount of people.

OR you bide your time and you learn the game on your own and pick the skills that better help you with whatever project you're working on.

OR you find a corp that takes in new folks and takes the time to teach them.


you're not coming from some place higher than the rest of us, where you, in your limited experience in/with THIS game, know a ton more than all the people replying in this thread.

YOU might be surprised, and groveling, if you knew the real life people behind a number of posters in this thread.

this thread was 100%

Well i'll give you an example....When CCP introduced the castor expansion, which was the first one after the initial release in 2003, they added NPC battleships in 0.0 space which was a boon to isk earning but far more dangerous than the 6 ship spawns we see today.

They used to be 15 to 20 ships warping in almost point blank(15~20 kms away) and had both webber and warp scrambler support along with a fair amount of cruisers and 5~6 battleships and more than enough to destroy anyone trying to do them solo.....At the time we had to make our own bookmarks 100+ kms away from the spawn site and shoot in groups of 4 ships( usually battleships), and that's not considering that the NPC ships spawned faster over time to the point where a fresh group of 15~20 ships spawned in less than 5 minutes after the last spawn was destroyed.....Eventually, we couldn't keep up and had to retreat to another belt and start it all over again....


Many lost their ships destroyed repeatedly and stated it was just simply too hard and I had my own ships in hull and on fire on many occasions( more than I can remember), and I was eventually busted down to a cruiser and had to work for nearly 2 months to not only get a battleship back into 0.0 space, but also a second one that stays in high sec empire as a fall back plan, which is a practice that I learned the hard way back then, and still use even today, especially with the insurance program having been seriously nerfed for the larger ships.






It's all relative since in those days, fleets and gangs were seriously smaller than they are today and and took days to organize such an operation( there were only 4000 people logged in the game), so it was rare to see a fleet that had more than 50 ships and most of those were cruisers so each player was more on his own....Yes the SP difference counts, but if there's several dozen ships focusing fire on me in a large scale fight that has several hundred ships on either side, i'm just as screwed as the guy that started playing the game right now, so it's all relative to the type of fighting you do....Small scale, ambushes on gates, roving gangs with cheap and easy to replace ships, large fleet battles for territorial conquest....There's many ways to PVP here and with different end goals.

This. Had a friend start on buddy trial and join FW after almost a week of training for a noob pvp frigate fit and finishing all his tutorials. I was told FW was a great start for new players so I didn't discourage him from it. Maybe that was my mistake.

His first two experiences were: losing a ship to a 3-4 ship pirate ambush. Losing another ship to a pirate that hit him from 30 km where he couldn't even shoot them back ONCE before the ship popped. At least he was smart enough not to get podded, still. He said that's the worst experience he's ever had in any game ever.

Lost 5 mil in less than 2 hours as his first experience in the game. I had to talk him out of quitting right then. And I haven't enough isk to lend him much more so if he doesn't start making isk somehow and not losing ships every 20 minutes of playtime just because he has so much less sp than the enemies do, he's going to quit and I'm not going to be able to talk him out of it next time.

So how do you have fun in pvp with a week old character when all the enemies are way more sp? I'm going to need to be able to tell him something the next time he loses another ship... which he will... probably within 20 minutes after he logs in again and buys a new ship and fittings...

yeah im pretty sure same thing would have happened (albeit a bit slower) even if he bought a character with 50m sp

EDIT:

It's the same with any game. Take WoW for example, the most spoonfeeding, non-consequential one of the lot. You sign up for a battleground when you hit level 10 and you don't have the "heirloom" gear (items you can only obtain with a max level character and traded to alts) you will get crapped on, most likely 2 hit before you can even respond.

However I did play a few alts without heirloom gear (like I had a choice, I moved servers) and you actually can outplay people sometimes if you know exactly how to counter them.

I knew from the beginning that this was somehow, going to be, a stealth WoW thread.

I have yet to see a serious discussion where there is no reference to a common baseline.

From a business point.. Cut skill time by 50% across the board = double of the population = more $$ for eve.

this isn't fussing at you, it's just kinda pointing out what all else IS involved in wow grinds.


in 2-3 weeks time, you might could go from lvl 1-90

but you won't have either ranked pvp gear (which takes a TON of wins in pvp battles, and time), or tier XYZ dungeon gear (which takes tons of dungeon runs through dungeon a, then b, then c, then d, then e, f, g, h, etc, and time), and have completed your reputation grin with all the factions that have a trinket, or ring, or helmet that you need for that next dungeon or pvp gear build.....


wow doesn't have one thing you can 'conquer' of consequence. there's no huge islands that you can take over and build your castle and sail your ships out of, while gathering super rare ore/flowers/etc for those epic craftables. where YOU build and maintain any type of infrastructure.

if you've leveled from 1-90 in 2 weeks... did you enjoy ANY of the content at all? or did you just rush to the end to start grinding dungeons and raids?

plus, you don't have to be part of a wow guild leveling, not really until you hit max level, and then only for the nonstop dungeon/raid grinds... and you won't REALLY have any ill effects in wow pvp / open world - vs, if you refuse to join a corp until you've got 20 million sp+, you will probably have issues in pvp / open world stuffs.

plus... if i'm doing my dungeon/raid grind in wow -- can someone else just pop into that "instance" and jack me? how many safe areas are there like that in eve? that's the whole point of all the grinding happening in 'instances' - total safety.

the only comparison i make is that to get ALL the shinies - you have a LOT to do in wow aside from leveling - reputation grinds, dungeon grinds, raid grinds, much less to get all the groovy mounts (the baron's skeletal horse much?), pets, battle pets, upgraded farm... you simply AREN'T going to be competitive in rated pvp if you're solo/pug, and without getting great gear, which you don't just BOOM you got it - and heirloom gear isn't "hey i did stuff on my max level character for a couple of days and here's an entire set of heirloom gear". no. that's another HUGE timesink. and yes, a full set of heirloom gear CAN take weeks/months, easily.

if you do grind out from 1-90 in 2-3 weeks AND you have heirloom gear - you need to count all the time and effort and frustration that went into obtaining that set of heirloom gear (or even just the one or two pieces you picked up)... THEN, you have to count all the time grinding to get to tier X pvp / dungeon gear. then, are you one of the classes that makes up half your guild population? and you only have two groups "geared" for the next dungeon? how long DOES it take for you to progress from one tier dungeon gear to the next?

what aren't they fixing/addressing all those problems in wow?

if i'm not competitive in eve for a few months; that's the same as in wow EXCEPT that at a couple of months, i actually CAN go on the "big raids" in eve... vs waiting in line and having to replay dungeon X a couple dozen times, whenever i can actually get a group from my guild (if i'm not stuck pugging)...

wow is something to compare to, just for the sake that a LOT of western folks play/have played wow. and a lot of them seem to forget ALL the grinds involved in getting to max level AND the appropriate gear in order TO do the next dungeon/raid... or all the grind involved in getting one piece of heirloom gear, much less an entire set.

wow is nothing BUT timesinks.

again - compare that to day 1 characters, literally, being able to join a nullsec corp and their entire experience being out THERE...

Should have been 5/5.


/thread