Player Features and Ideas Discussion

exactly this:

this is meant to be complex, and one who wants an effective training would need to plan accordingly (not talking about implants here, it is another subject imao)

the curent system is not deterent to pvp at all, a player can be combat efficient in 2 weeks or so, and i've seen new player hoping in frigs and being part of the big scheme.

of course, they had **** DPS, and made some mistakes, BUT they were in the middle of a fight, and appeared on the kills of toons playing for years, in ships that, at that moment, they can only dream of.

so this is clearly not an issue pvp-side fo the noobs

the whole eve idea is about specialisation, and specialisation requires planning, time and dedication, and the current attributes/ skill system is exactly this, and is the main reason most of the players enjoy this game.

we enjoy it because everything has consequences, but also everything is possible.

it is hard, complex, unforgiving, but if you plan correctly, show yourself smart / patient, and learn (both in SP and player skills), you can achieve everything you want within eve.

eve is one of the last game were pushing a button to receive bacon is not possible, and require that you work for it, that you think well ahead, that you be patient.

and i personally hope this will stay the longest possible (even if what CCP does to exploration doesn't make me confident about it)

say NO to dumbing eve down!

Remove them. Do it yesterday. In fact, time travel back and never implement them in the first place.

I know you all are crying about choices and consequences. I agree that attributes have consequences for the choices you make. But in this case I would say the choices and consequences really are not beneficial to Eve. It is like clone cost: A relic of times past that really needs to go away because it doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. The consequences are.. You are slower at training. That IMO is not a very meaningful consequence. Meaningful consequences are bad business choices and now you are bankrupt. You attacked the wrong guy and now his gang is killing you. You forgot that hardener and now your mission boat is dying to rats. Those are meaningful consequences for choices. You want to train a skill off what you are mapped for so it will take longer to train is not very meaningful.

Imagine a system where you get a flat 2250 SP/hr. It accrues in a similar way to Dust: it is dumped in to a massive SP pool. When you want a skill you select the skill and use up some of your pooled SP to get it. It is very easy for anyone to understand. It is so simple it would be crazy hard to screw up or make confusing. The added benefit is you can get rid of training queues. No more logging in to get that skill changed. No more freaking out about being somewhere you can't log in to Eve because you need to change skills. Oh noes! The sever is being DDoSed and I can't change my skill! That won't be an issue anymore.

Now off course you may want to put a cap on the pool of say 5 or so mil SP. Imagine people selling characters that have a 50 mil SP pool. Cool for customization. But kind of detrimental to those who have spent SP and want to sell their toons. I will leave CCP to decide if this is needed and if so how much.

As far as learning implants go... Get rid of them. So many people are stuck in highsec where they have +5 learning implants just waiting for skills to be trained instead of having fun. This toon I am posting this on is doing exactly that right now. The only other solution is to have an "implant" that isn't destroyed when you are podded which removes a lot of the consequences. Cool idea. But there isn't a downside like there is right now. If you can find a downside that is meaningful, but doesn't make people choose safety in highsec over doing things then go for it. Until then I vote for a full removal.

Fair enough. Misunderstanding was on my side. And to some extent I agree. As I stated in #2, attributes don't change game much. If they were removed, which I think they should (or rather, they shouldn't have been added), there wouldn't be much difference, which is argument both for and against removal:

For, because it's game mechanics which adds complexity but doesn't add many strategic options.

Against, because since removal would have negligible effect and devs' effort could be rather great. So it's better they spend their time doing something really useful or fixing something really broken.



This is because of how skills work, not because of how attributes work.


Again, it's because of skills. Attributes have little to say about it.


Yep, skills again.

But you are free to present scenario when someone through careful and masterful attribute planning and management got much better results than someone else who left his attributes at default values.


Welcome to the elite club of people confusing dumbing down with making things simpler.

EvE is supposed to suck. Wait . . . what was the question?

I support a rework of the skill-system all-together, the tree-shape of the skills make everyone carbon copies of each other and it is a feature all MMORPG's have to my knowledge. There's probably some obscure ones that have something else, but usually its a skill-tree. And usually you don't have to train just one branch because it would probably ruin the game if you had to forever commit to one branch of skills.
To first define what is better so we can make "better" happen: I define what makes a game good as "endless variation where player-input is necessary to win". You know, like when you play tennis, you hit a curve-ball and the opponent can counter your curve-ball if he/she stays cool and concentrated, you then manage to counter the opponents different delivery if you stayed cool and concentrated, and is quick about it, and so it goes until one outperforms the other. Right now its like two ball-machines being rolled out on the tennis-court, and each opponent just turns his on and hope it scores points faster than the enemy (by just flying over the net and hitting the court before going off the court). One could argue that this is quite exciting, and it is, but there's potential for more.

So your argument is that attributes are too complex, which makes them "suck"?

Attributes give players the option to speed up their skill training in order to reach their goals faster. Sorry, but I don't really see how removing this option would make the game any better. Same with training implants, it's an option available to everyone, albeit with much less dramatic effects than attribute remaps.

You don't have to remap or use implants. It's your call, perhaps you enjoy that simplicity. Taking the option away from others doesn't improve the game for them.

Attribute implants don't discourage PvP any more than having 3bil ISK ships do. If you can't afford to lose them, don't plug them in.

Honestly I think all the fuss about "choices and consequences" is missing the point -- "choices" by themselves are not necessarily a positive thing.

What if we forced every pilot to "choose" a ship class, and forbade them from flying any other class of ship for a year? You pick frigates because you like FW or whatever, great, you only get to fly frigates. For a whole year.

See, that's a "choice", and it has "consequences", but we all agree that it does not add interesting gameplay. It's a stupid choice. The same is true of remapping attributes to train faster -- yes, sure, okay, it's a "choice" that has "consequences", but it's still not a very interesting choice gameplay-wise and it does more harm than good.

Nobody is arguing that we should "dumb down the game", we are only arguing that lame and uninteresting complexity should be simplified away to make room for much more interesting and fun complexity.

Be happy you don't have a tier of learning skills. Be even happier you don't have a second tier of learning skills.

The attribute system is not hard or complicated. It takes a little thoughtfulness before you randomly start clicking your mouse over s**t. As for implants, having implants is not a valid excuse for this thread. You want a set of +5's in your head? Great. You want to pvp but are scared you'll lose said implants? Clone jump out of them or play in low sec where you have to be dumber than a box of rocks to get podded (we're all dumb as rocks from time to time). I also read mention of higher skilled players being scared to undock to pvp because of expensive clones. I'm going to have to call bs on this one too. I cringe when I get podded at close to 120 million sp's, but it certainly doesn't stop me from pvp'ing. Eve is a risk vs reward game. Eve is supposed to be complicated and in depth. Take the time to think and plan out your training and you will have no problems.

Lets take two players who created characters at the same time. Assume they burn their bonus remaps early:
P1 decides to try out activity a and configures their attributes for it. Then they find out they don't like it, so they start training for b with a suboptimal attribute config.
P2 starts off by training for activity b. So they configure their attributes for it.

On the day he starts training for activity b, P1 is behind P2 by the time he spent training for activity a. That's fair enough. But, because his attributes are for the wrong activity, the attribute system drags P1 further behind because P1 tried something he thought he would like until he tried it.

How many times have you been like P1 and thought something sounded fun, only to find out it wasn't after you tried it ?

But there are at least two options- to follow a strict skill plan that benefits from attribute remaps, or go with balanced attributes and train whatever you feel like. I've used both, had level attributes for a year while trained skills from all areas, after that I've had two attribute-oriented training plans.




Sure it does matter, you wasted a remap and trained skills slower than you meant to. Don't you agree that it's a rather nicely designed mechanic, as your failure to think ahead doesn't stop you completely from progressing? :)



No, that's just the other side of the coin. They also accelerate character training when done right, opening up new gameplay for players.



So obviously the best choice here for P1 is not to remap until he is sure about his goals. He made a bad call, he should have tried first but instead acted like a lamb. And it's also true that attribute remap clearly benefited P2. This is why attribute remaps are meaningful choices.

P2 won P1 in EVE, got laid and lived happily ever after. P1 got depressed, lost his job and now lives in a basement, too ashamed to walk in daylight again.