Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In Crius the Starbase Defense Management skill had it's requirements reduced to Anchoring IV.

The issue I and some others are having with this change is that the Anchoring V skill now provides no additional benefits for a corp management character or any character that doesn't specifically need Large Mobile Warp Disruptor II or Outpost Construction.

The result is that players who have trained the skill for a specific purpose are now left with effectively useless SP. I do think this is a bit of a special case, that is to say this "problem" would not arise with most other skills. This is because Anchoring V unlocks things that are rather unrelated. With most other skills though, the unlocks are similarly related to one another. As such training RandomSkill to V will still likely be somewhat useful even if one of the usual unlocks is reduced to IV.

As an example: They could reduce the requirements of Marauders and Black Ops to IV, but the LVL V skill would still be beneficial for all battleship use. They could nerf battleships or the bonuses from the skill, and the LVL V skill would still be beneficial albeit less. Anchoring is a different beast; the lvl V skill is completely useless for one of the core reasons it was trained in the first place (corp management).

In it's current state, the only way Anchoring V is useful is if you actually use the other 2 skills it unlocks. The skills however are unrelated to the goals of the characters who trained Anchoring V for corporation management purposes. Without any prior knowledge of this change (anyone who trained it before the Crius patch notes), it is reasonable that players trained it to V with the expectation of it being useful for corporation management. As we stand here today, that usefulness has been removed entirely.

This is not a cry about nerfs, the Crius changes are great! Null needed that buff, and solo highsec players needed that nerf. I am also happy to see the requirements of SDM reduced. It's all wonderful and I am as tired as anyone with all the whiners complaining that their precious high-sec incomes have been nerfed by a tiny percent.
I'm just not sure if leaving Anchoring V in such a state is balanced. All training is done for a specific purpose; if you mess that up, your problem. If CCP changes it on the fly, I think that's a different story.

The question remains though: Can they do anything about it?
I am of the opinion that CCP rather agrees with all this, but can't exactly do anything about it. Let's suppose they decided I'm right and any player who petitions Anchoring V can have it refunded and reduced to Anchoring IV, provided they don't have any of the Anchoring V skills injected. Could they actually do this? I get the feeling that CCP are in fact technically unable to reduce the skill of a random character from V to IV. In similar cases they have always given unallocated SP to deal with such issues, but in this case they cannot reasonable do so without the ability to also reduce your skill.

If such is the case I think players this affects do need to HTFU and just accept it. If such is not the case though, I do think a *gasp* refund is in order upon request as described above.

NOTE: I am aware that the last thread on this topic was closed due to ranting. I have tried my absolute best to ensure that this post contains no ranting & respects all of the applicable forum rules. If an ISD feels this post breaks any forum rules, I ask you please edit out those sections instead of closing the thread. My intent is purely to create a discussion about this topic.

While you have a valid point that the skill is no longer useful, that does not mean it was not useful in the past. When you (or others) trained it before the patch, they received use from it. This is the same argument used for other skills, and other aspects of the game that have been changed. At the time it was useful, so you trained it, and thus got an advantage (albeit for a limited period of time).

I very much doubt that CCP is technically unable to adjust skill points. However, doing so would (has?) lead to a slipery-slope of people feeling entitled to a refund/respec every time something is adjusted.

So you trained to lvl 5 as well. And now CCP changed so you only need lvl4. Terrible indeed. My world collapsed really. CCP making a mistake like that, only to correct it so late!

I feel entitled to a million SP emotional repair payment. I'll keep the skill tho. Large t2 bubbles.

…and tbh, if that's what has happened, it happened the instant the character in question injected Starbase Defense Management. The subsequent change in prerequisites did not in any way affect how much (or how little) use the character has for the Anchoring skill.

What if Anchoring V permitted the anchoring of tech one warp disruption field emitters outside the shields, yet on the grid of player owned starbases, everywhere?

You need Anchoring V for T2 Large Bubbles. Stop your whining.

ccp is supposedly working on pos and starbase rewriting, its possible that they lowered starbase management requirements to make space for something new they are working on.

You aren't going to get any sympathy here. There's a strong attitude from the people who have already posted in this thread that things should always be a certain way because they have always been a certain way.

I find that argument to be one of the weakest possible ones. But so it goes.

The rationale as it stands now is this: if a skill has a consequence, then that is the consequence you chose when you trained the skill. Regardless of what the consequence was when you actually trained the skill. That choice that you made? Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that the skill does something. If it does something, that's worth something, and that's what you chose.

It's a completely absurd argument, but so it goes. I once thought that CCP was really convinced that this was a fundamental principal. I'm not so sure. CCP has cited the difficulty of writing the necessary DB scripts to make these adjustments happen. So I'm kind of thinking these days that it's more they don't want to spend the time than it is that they really think things should be a certain way.

I'm willing to be wrong about that. But, you know, I'm a database application developer. I spend my professional life doing things like what we're talking about here. It is absolutely not particularly that time consuming to test and script DB changes like this, unless CCP is really really short on staff.

So I am of two minds about this. One is that CCP says it's hard to do it. I believe a lot of what CCP says. I know for a fact that when CCP says that rewriting EvE for multi-threading support is hard, I know that's true. Because I know Python, and I understand the problem with the GIL. And I know that CCP devs are actually major contributors to a project called Stackless that does a very good job of maximizing cooperative multitasking performance on single cores.

But then CCP says x is hard to do because database scripts, and I don't really believe that. I find that a lot less convincing. CCP is good enough at figuring **** out to basically run the Stackless project, but aren't good enough to write DB scripts efficiently.

That makes no sense to me.

Welp, there you go OP. If you don't want your stupid skill anymore, I'll pay for a character transfer and use it myself.

Glathull is spot on.

Recent skill changes IMO have been pretty sloppy. When a skill is modified fundamentally like this, players should be given the opportunity to put the skill points toward something else instead. The only decent argument against something like that is the "it's too hard" one, but I also don't buy that either.

And yes, this forum is full of people who enjoy replying to threads like this (and really any change idea/suggestion thread) with "HTFU", "too bad", "more tears", etc. while generally contributing nothing useful to the discussion.