Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CONTINUED
Interesting facts about how much time it takes to learn skills per section.
With minimal prerequisites from other sections, prerequisites learned without remaps, one remap for the bulk of the skills in a section and without Cybernetics V. Rounded off to the day. Calculated with EveMon 1.8.9:

• Armor (12.8M SP total) = 296 days, 237 days with remap, minus 59 days with +5 implants.
• Corporation management (7.5M SP total) = 175 days, 138 days with remap, minus 35 days with +5 implants.
• Drones (24M SP total) = 560 days, 450 days with remap, minus 112 days with +5 implants.
• Electronic Systems (20M SP total) = 462 days, 383 days with remap, minus 92 days with +5 implants.
• Engineering (10.5M SP total) = 243 days, 194 days with 3 remaps, minus 49 days with +5 implants.
• Gunnery (50M SP total) = 1155 days, 924 days with 4 remaps, minus 231 days with +5 implants.
• Leadership (15.9M SP total) = 380 days, 293 days with remap, minus 78 days with +5 implants.
• Missiles (24.1M SP total) = 557 days, 445 days with remap, minus 111 days with +5 implants.
• Navigation (17.1M SP total) = 396 days, 323 days with 2 remaps, minus 79 days with +5 implants.
• Neural Enhancement (9.3M SP total) = 217 days, 172 days with 4 remaps (attribute requirements are all over the place!), minus 44 days with +5 implants.
• Planet Management (4.4M SP total) = 103 days, 87 days with remap, minus 21 days with +5 implants.
• Production (18.2M SP total) = 421 days, 340 days with 2 remaps, minus 84 days with +5 implants.
• Resource Processing (23.4M SP total) = 541 days, 434 days with 2 remaps, minus 108 days with +5 implants.
• Rigging (7.3M SP total) = 172 days, 137 days with remap, minus 31 days with +5 implants.
• Scanning (7.2M SP total) = 166 days, 133 days with remap, minus 33 days with +5 implants.
• Science (47.9M SP total) = 1109 days, 896 days with remap, minus 222 days with +5 implants.
• Shields (10.5M SP total) = 243 days, 194 days with remap, minus 49 days with +5 implants.
• Social (5.2M SP total) = 123 days, 95 days with remap, minus 25 days with +5 implants.
This is a game about ships. Spaceship command borrows a lot of skills from other trees. Hard to make it look pretty with remaps. Sorry!

• Spaceship Command (141.4M SP total) = 3275 days, 2758 with perception-willpower remap, 2884 with willpower-perception remap, minus 655 days with +5 implants.
• Subsystems (6.9M SP total) = 159 days, 146 days with 2 remaps, minus 31 days with +5 implants.
• Targeting (3.9M SP total) = 90 days, 72 days with remap, minus 18 days with +5 implants.
• Trade (9.5M SP total) = 226 days, 181 days with remap, minus 46 days with +5 implants.

Time to do these calculations: 2 hours of my life.
I didn’t calculate how much it will take to learn all the skills because planning remaps and queuing all the skills for max effect would be a PITA.

IN NO WAY DO I SUGGEST THAT ANYONE NEEDS ALL THOSE SKILLS. I just feel that levelling is slow. That's it.

Proposed non-cosmetic solutions:

1. Faster skill acquisition through lower SP requirements for all skills across the board. How about an amount of SP that needs only two years or so to master with 3-4 characters? A wild guess.

2. More free or paid attribute remaps per year. At the moment I believe that new players don’t understand the true value of these and spend them easily early in the game. Giving more attribute remaps would be good. If in the end CCP intends to sell them, sell them in packs, please. Although the calculations indicate the effect will be low. Still not having to worry about proper attributes for learning a skill will be pleasant.

3. Selling premium packs with 20M SP or so for players to distribute at will after creating a character. The price should not exceed the price for a regular buy to play AAA title. Some people may be attracted by the proposition of getting into the game with a good head start. Although I wouldn’t like CCP to offer specific skills, an amount of skill points to distribute sounds better. 20M SP would also give a sense of achievement and will drive new players to get better because they have achieved so much and surely the game from now on will be only bright and joyful.

4. Skill point acquisition multipliers for sale. However, I don’t like current prices for multiple character training. The total amount of real money I’d have to pay for a trained character would be too much if it needs a year or several years of training.

5. Giving +1 or +5 attribute points to players after a certain level like 5M SP perhaps? Something else? Like a +15 to all attributes booster that will work for three months or more similar to the ones that are bundled with starter packs but for adult characters this time? That feature would keep players subscribing for the game.

Before anyone tells me Eve Online is not a pay to win game I can say these propositions only open up options, they don’t foreclose anything. And nothing can substitute the years of practice that old players have had in the game. Besides, even with all the skills learned, there is always something interesting that can be done in the universe that is Eve Online.

*Snip* Please refrain from discussing forum moderation. ISD Ezwal.

I think you fail to understand that the longevity of game depends on the inability of players to reach endgame too easily.

Spreadsheets or not you need something.

Indeed, it was wasted. The skill system is imperfect but it is fair. No pilot in any way needs to learn every skill to full level to be effective. There is a reason this thread gets locked every time it comes up and that's because the system works as is. I'm sorry you wasted two hours

Don't let that put you off proposing ideas but read the regular sticky threads first to save the incoming inferno that such ideasas this will bring...

*hands OP fire proof suit*

Trust me - you will need this.

Also, no. The skill system in Eve is one of the few parts of the game that's fine the way it is. You don't need to train every single skill int he game to enjoy playing it. There is absolutely no reason that you need to be able to fly every single ship and use every single module (unless you're just OCD that way).

Let me repeat that, just to make sure we're clear: THERE IS NO REASON YOU NEED THE SKILLS TO FLY EVERY SHIP IN THE GAME.

And while it may seem like us "old guys" have a vested interest in keeping the new guys from "catching up", that's really the source of the misconception. There is no concept of catching up in the Eve skill system. Once you train any given skill to level 5, you have caught up to every other person, young or old, who has done the same. And since only a small subset of skills actually applies to any given situation or ship, you can be just as effective character skill wise as an old vet in a farly short time by choosing a certain area (like interceptor pilot, ewar, production) and focusing your training.

Player skill is a completely different matter of course, and no amount of skill points will help you catch up there.

1. No thank you. We have already had the skill tree pruned recently making it more rational and reducing the time it takes to get into different classes of ship. Acquisition of the skills for a new ship should be a real landmark not an afternoons casual pursuit.

2. The new player experience needs a lot of work that I agree with but PLEX for remap is not a good idea, it would favour rich players over new players and devalue the choices you make when planning your skills.

3. No pay2win, not now not ever. Give the pay2win lobby a lever and this game won't be worth playing in a year.

4. Again no pay2win now or ever, the current skill system is one of the few reasonably fair and equal things in EvE and is as far as I know not exploitable or gameable. Wrecking it for everyone simply because someone hasn't the patience for it is not a well considered idea.

5. Buy learning implants. Although I think you'll find a fair few who would rather see them removed from the game altogether. Any other way of accelerating training especially for cash is unacceptable to a large number of players.

Finally while I'm sure you believe what you are suggesting would be good for the game I must state that I sincerely believe if your suggestions were to be acted upon there would be no EvE left in a year or two just a failing SpaceWoW wannabe waiting for the server to shut down.

So all in all not supported.

I think you may have hit the nail on the head here. Some people are so used to the way that theme park MMOs do things that they just can't wrap their brain around the idea of an MMO that doesn't reward constant grinding.

I actually know a guy at work who refuses to play any MMO where he can't grind to "max level" and have an absolutely perfect toon in under one month. Personally I am glad that such people are not inclined to play EVE.

These two statements are contradictory. You do not need anywhere close to "all V's" to be able to use any particular ship or module well. Nor do you need to be able to use all ships or all modules in the first place. Why would someone who enjoys PVP train for exhumers or a Rorqual?

Posting my usual Skillpoint spiel.

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- All skills cap at level 5. No matter how many years you have played the game, you cannot exceed that limit. And lower level skills (ex. [Racial] Frigate) are very quick to train relative to more advanced skills (5 to 7 days for frigate level 5? Try getting cruiser to level 5. Or Battlecruiser. Or battleship. Those are 30+ day skills. Same applies for all their respective weapon systems too).

- Only a limited number of skills affect any one ship, module, weapon system, and specialty at any given time.
Ex1: Someone you are facing has about 20 million SP, but how much of that overall SP is actually combat related? He/she could be a HUGE industrial player with limited combat skills.
Ex2: A veteran player has just trained up the skill Large Hybrid Turret to level 5. That skill in no way affects the skill Small Hybrid Turret and thus the veteran will be no better or worse than before at the frigate level.

- Getting a skill from level 4 to level 5 only adds on an extra 2% here, 5% there (exceptions apply). If you simply train up all the skills within a specialty to level 4 (which takes ~20% of the time to get to level 5), 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 at level 5 (which is something that can be easily overcome with the right module or tactic).

- Getting a skill to level 5 is supposed to be a painful train. Many players (yes, even veteran ones) opt to avoid doing it and instead train up other skills to level 4 (again, because it's faster).

- Ships and weapons have been balanced against one another.
Ex: A battleship can potentially instapop a frigate... but the frigate can fly very fast, making it difficult for the battleship's weapons to track, especially at very close range... then again, the battleship can deploy drones to deal with the frigate... and the frigate can shoot the drones down... however the battleship might have a Large Energy Neutralizer fitted to nuke the frigate's capacitor power every 24 seconds... in which case the frigate could use a Small Nosferatu that sucks out capacitor from the battleship every 3 seconds... etc. etc.

- High end skills (specializations) and equipment (ex. T2, Faction, Officer, etc) will not confer a player "I WIN" abilities. They simply give a player a linear edge at an exponentially higher cost.
Ex: A group of two or three T1-fit frigates that cost about 500 thousand to 1 million ISK CAN kill a faction frigate worth about 50 to 100 million ISK... provided they are using the right mods in the right configuration and know what they are doing.


tl;dr...
- the point of the skill system is to force you to learn the game's mechanics and nuances in cheaper equipment and ships... that way when they DO gain access to more expensive equipment and ships, you know HOW to use them properly (and won't cry as much when they die).

- by having your skill growth "throttled" you are forced to work with ships and equipment that may not be exactly ideal for what you want to do... forcing you to be creative with how you fit a ship and use it on the field (or not use it at all!). This translates to more dynamic thinking and gameplay later on as you realize that there is more than one way to accomplish any task.

- the skill system is designed specifically so you CANNOT do and fly anything within a timely fashion... forcing you to team up with others who can compensate for your lacking skills or enhance your already existing ones.

- you DO NOT NEED to have level 5 in any specific skill to be competitive. Having level 5 in a skill is simply an edge (exception: when it is required for something else).

- more SP or "age" is not indicative of a pilot's ability. It just means that the pilot may or may not have more options in what he/she can do. This means that it is completely possible for a 6 month old player to wipe out a multi-year veteran.

- no one ship is superior to everything else in the game. Even Titans, the largest ship in the game, has an Achilles heel; smaller ships.

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Personally... I do not see a problem with it taking 20+ years to max out every skill in the game. It makes the game more interesting because there is always something to strive towards.

Training for Exhumers is going far beyond the starting point in the mining profession. Most people who want to pvp don't even bother to train for the Venture. They go from noob ship to T1 frigate to destroyer/cruiser, jump into missions somewhere along that path, and then move into into pvp shortly thereafter.

And still there is always at least one reason why they havent been implemented and why those threads have been locked.

I am neither saying that I am happy with or not happy with the current skill system, I'll pass public judgement and suggestion when they are well sorted out (for me). In the meantime, research, learn, think of every exploit possible, then post.

I for instance do have some ideas about changes, but the impacts are so miner and probably subjective as the impact on teh rest of the game not totally clear that I refrain from blasting them over the forum.
I do understand passion about a subject, as you will notice with my stubborn Rattlesnake discussions, but general things as skill, certain balance issues are easy to follow by proper researching previous discussions and reading between the line and using every argument given towards your idea, if not direct, then in principle.

Skillpoint considerations are not easy, because they imapct every aspect of the game and all balance of every item that one can interact with. The subjective observation that the skill system feels strange or 'off' somehow can always be counterbalanced by active gameplay as is ... and has been pointed out.