Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I do expect criticism for this for fairly obvious reasons, and I don't expect it to end up in the game. But I'd like to add my voice to the chorus, and maybe give another track of thought to an old, old idea.

One of my major reservations about starting to play EVE (again, in a sense; I've gone through the trial period in the past but never subbed) is the certain knowledge that I am years -- nearly a decade, at this point -- behind the most experienced players of the game. And unlike a level capped MMO or a "gear slot" styled game, that advantage isn't just significant... it's unbridgeable. If skills were, say, bought with ISK, I could hope to catch up by getting really good at some aspect of the market. (Note: I am not suggesting that skills be bought with ISK. I am aware of learning implants, which have a similar effect, and Cybernetics V is actually going to be my first level 5 skill. Nonetheless.)

This is a significant deterrent to my interest in PvP. I have virtually zero interest in PvPing with anything less than a smallish fleet backing me up, because I almost certainly will not win. In theory, the linear scaling of skill benefits compared to their multiplicative time investment required means that I ought to be able to get *close* to highly experienced player skills within a single class or small group of ship types... but the tiered nature of skills means that I will have to train through V in many, regardless of the benefit or lack thereof.

But this is a core part of the EVE experience. If the entire development team went crazy tomorrow and let players buy skills for PLEX, or gave EVE a level cap, or whatever, every new player joining for the opportunity would be matched by a half-dozen existing ones leaving. (Actually that's not entirely true -- new players could theoretically buy an older character on the market, which is relatively similar in effect. I don't think that feature has driven all that many people away from the game, but I could be wrong. But I'm not really interested in exploring that sort of system here.)

That's really the heart of the issue, isn't it? Opportunity. Without that, ambition is pointless. The market must be in a state of continual unfolding to draw in new leaders and dedicated subordinates.

And yet, as I play, I notice that many other established players show a definite interest in attracting and keeping new players; freely providing isk, equipment, information, and other assistance. This is wise, even if they only want them around to serve as pawns later. And I am curious... how far does this enlightened self-interest extend?

Would you, an established player, voluntarily give some of your SP to a new player to keep them?

Well, maybe not. That sounds a little risky to game balance, if it can just be done willy-nilly (I for one would probably train up six characters, and after two months donate all their sp to my main. Free year of training!). But what about the next best thing -- having available a skill or set of skills whose training is to the exclusive benefit of other, new (or otherwise under-trained) players?

That's the gist of this suggestion: allowing corporation heads to train skills that affect the learning rate of players under a certain age, under a certain sp total, or under certain skill levels (eg, "Corporate Training : Electronics" would benefit corpmembers until they reached V in certain specific Electronics skills) in their corporation. These "corporate learning skills" ('corporate teaching skills'?) would in fact take longer to train than whatever they are boosting... the ROI would come only if the corporation recruited many new characters. There is some fairly obvious "abuse" potential here; existing players would use training corps to train up alts, possibly to sell them to impatient or under-informed newbies. But... that's the nature of EVE. I see that less as a drawback than another form of opportunity. Really, I would find it a little unsettling if a feature were added that could not be somehow exploited to the benefit of established players.

And to the inevitable objection of the blatant carebeariness of this suggestion, let me ask: Without carebears, who would you kill?

This.

You're mistaken when you say that it's impossible for you to catch up with older players. Yes, you might be unable to catch up with their total SP in everything they do, but it only takes 3-6 months to completely max every skill that's relevant for, say, a Rifter. After that point, you can fly a Rifter as well as or better than ANY pilot in the game (their levels of Capital Ships and Drone skills don't do anything for them in a Rifter).

The reason is that Eve does have a level-cap system of sorts. It's not a level cap on your character, it's a level cap on the individual skills. It might not be possible to catch up with older players in everything, but it's definitely possible (and common) to catch up with them in a specific type of ship; older players just have the versatility of maxing out more things.

There's also the fact that you don't even have to max all of the pertinent skills to be competitive. Because of the way skills work, getting a skill to lvl 4 is close enough to the bonus to having the skill to 5 for pilot skill to be the deciding factor in a fight. If they have Surgical Strike 5 (3% bonus to turret damage per level), but you have the skill to fly well and reduce their damage by 20% and roughly equal EHP, you will win the damage race. Piloting skill has a large impact on the outcome of any fight.

No, that's just you reading it how you want to suit your own sense of entitlement. You think you should have someone else give you their sp just because you don't see the point of waiting. What I said is that sp aren't the only thing that make pilots good at what they do, as they train those sp that allow them to use mechanics in the game, they also gain experience of how the game actually works and the finer details that maybe aren't included in most tutorials.

I'm actually helping some new players right now, they're benefiting from my experience in the game rather than my sp since I understand how the game works and can explain to them clearly how to achieve certain goals and how to access certain elements of the game they may not know about or understand.

Most of them have only been in the game for little over a week or two and most of them are way ahead of the pack that started around the same time as them. At least they appreciate that it takes time to learn skills.

Why should I have to apologise for the system, it's you that feels you need to be equal with those that have been playing for longer. I didn't feel that I should be given skill points so that I could be equal to players who had played for much longer than I had, I figured that I should train them like everybody else in the game does and wait for those skills to train.

Perhaps you might get an idea what I'm trying to get at if you read this story about Scius and the Dreadnaught, but I'm not holding my breath.