Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Six years and 100mil SP later -- yes, it's fine. Please don't **** with it if it isn't broken.

Edit: if you were looking for specific reasons why each idea is bad, here goes:

1. Skill training is just as fast now as it was before learning skills. Remember that across-the-board attribute boost we got? That compensated for [very nearly] all of the lost attributes from learning skills.
2. Making it faster for higher-skilled characters to train is a pretty odd choice. +6 and +7 implants that require additional skills would just pull us back into the learning skill dilemma where that skill would be seen (rightly) as a grind that was required just to keep up.
3. Handing out free stuff at arbitrary SP totals is arbitrary and silly, especially when said free stuff just allows for even more SP accumulation.
4. As for skill point gain for playing, see the thread still on the first page "Extra Skill Point gain while playing, good idea?" for many, many reasons why extra skill point gain while playing is most definitely not a good idea.

Fly with 2 +5 implants - even if you get podded the price wont be as bad.

I do and so does anyone else with enough isk to laugh off those kind of losses, unfortunately most grunts out in nullsec can't afford 200mil + clone cost every night on top of their ship expenditures. Those players don't deserve to be training slower than the player who's running missions in highsec, but they are.

It's pretty damned simple really. EVE is about risk vs. reward. Attribute implants quite literally reward avoiding risk by allowing you to train more efficiently without repeated investment.

Risk averse Mission Runners in High Sec being able to amass SP more "efficiently" non-shocker.

What are they going to do with that "excessive" amount of SP? Fit Bling Boats and go pwn those poor scrubs in 0.0?

I don't think so.

Also,


In EvE, nobody "deserves" anything.

tl;dr: Attribute enhancers are fine. You either use them, or you don't, and which ones you use is entirely up to you.

The only further change I would support to attributes and skill training time is there complete removal.

removing the learning skills was a great move and improved the game for most players.
there is still what could be considered an unfair discrepancy between PVPers whop run with +3 implants due to the cost of replacing them when they get podded, and the high sec incursion and mission runners with the +5 implants with no risk to lose them. NPC's do not shoot pods even in incursions.

I would say give everyone 25 points in each attribute across the board and remove all attribute modifiers from all implants. maybe leave 10 points or so that can be remapped but no implants with attribute modifications. They would make sense if attributes affected combat performance, but they do not. they only affect skill training time. What is the point.

Good observation. Maybe something relevant in your next post, huh champ?



So why give that advantage to either player? Rewarding the avoidance of risk is a stupid status quo, if you're defending the status quo simply because it is the status quo, you've really got no argument at all.



Why is that a compelling or interesting choice?

Sounds like you've made the connections already, what more needs to be said?

LG implants see more use, HG implants make more sense as well, young nullsec/wh pilots are not punished for frequent participation in pvp where they are certain to loose pods, and on the whole one more ancient game mechanic that rewards risk aversion is removed.

I'm sure there is a minority in the player base for whom choosing which attribute implants to use is a meaningful choice, but for the bulk of us who are either too rich to care or too poor to get a choice in the first place, it's no choice at all.

Your logic for this is flawed. Your comparison would and should mean the removal of all implants from the game as according to the logic that:


Obviously in this same scenario LG or HG implants also have the same risk/reward, with or without their attribute component, and also affect the rate at which rewards can be gained.

You're trying to justify that players who PvP train slower than people who PvE. This is not the case. You have chosen to train slower because you dont want to spend the money not because PvP made you train slower. If you feel that you are being slighted on your training time, use +5's, if you're worried you will lose them from being podded, dont pvp. It's simple. You're just trying to take some of the risk of loss out of PvPing because you're being cheap.

TL;DR
If you're so concerned about our skill training speed, stop pvping and crying about your implant losses.

+5's dont give a passive benefit in station. Its a static benefit it doesn't matter where you are you get it. Also CCP clearly sees the benefit of LG/HG implants requiring a tradeoff in attributes on the bonus. If your argument is to just give everyone the attributes (whatever form they are given in) and do away with the implants then yah, you just want to dumb the game down and dont like taking as much of a risk.

I don't think it's exactly the same argument. Let's look at this from the post-remap pre-learning removal era and compare it to the current situation.

Learning skills were de facto required because of their inherently high bonuses (+9 or +10 depending on how dedicated you were). The tradeoff between having them -- and thus sinking a huge amount of time before you could train "real" skills -- and not having them was immense and created a barrier to new player entry. This forum was overrun with posts about optimal training plans, which order to get learnings up (and yes, those plans factored in Cybernetics as well), and payoff times for advanced learnings to 5. It was boring but it was quite necessary for any character that was to stay competitive for more than a few months. There really wasn't a tradeoff at all; either you trained optimally or you screwed yourself in the long run for very minimal short term gain.

On general remap, the difference between not having learning skills and having them to +9 was a 100% difference in training time. On a specialized remap, it was 64% on the primary attribute. There were times when over half your learning speed came from learning skills.

So how does this compare?

Attribute implants give a comparatively small bonus (effectively +2 for LGs, +3 for cheap clones and HGs, +4s for intermediate clones, and +5s for expensive clones). On a general remap, the difference in learning time between not having implants at all and plugging in +5s is 22.7%. It's still significant, but it isn't an absolute requirement. The difference between plugging in LGs and +5s is only 12.5%. All of these figures are reduced by optimal remaps. Now it's an actual tradeoff.

Not only that, but training Cybernetics to 5 is pretty piddly, and from there you get access to the full suite of implants. Learning implants are no longer an absolute barrier to entry but can actually be viewed as icing on the proverbial cake. They do, in fact, involve tradeoffs and choice.

So no, the argument isn't the same. Learning skills were crippling. Attribute implants are just cumbersome.

That's not to say that attribute implants should stay; I'm actually more and more taken with the idea that they could be scrapped. But claiming that this discussion is just the same as the old learning skill debate is disingenuous.