Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If having access to the whole game at peak ability ends the game for you, what does that say about the game?

…and the fact remains that they are just fooling themselves. Anything they can do after those skills finish will be no different from what they can do right now. If they don't feel like playing right now, they will not feel like playing afterwards either.

Allowing them to have their stuff earlier will make zero difference because it's the exact same thing: they will still not be happy and will just move the goal posts further down the field.

It says that there is something as “peak ability” and that there is an “end-game”. Fortunately for EVE, it has neither. You are suggesting the introduction of both, or rather, you are assuming that both exist and are suggesting a way to get to them more quickly. In EVE, all there is is the voyage, and you're asking for a way to skip that voyage, leaving nothing.

The problem you're trying to solve doesn't exist. The actual problem lies with perception and expectations that EVE work like any other game out there, where you have to get to point X before the game really begins. Changing the mechanics (or, as in this case, breaking the mechanics and injecting willy-nilly the one thing that has any value in the game) won't solve that problem because it doesn't actually address any of the causes: the perceptions and expectations will be the same and they will be just as false as ever.

There is at least one game billed as an RPG that has no character progression, and most FPS games have little to no character progression. These games all rely on player skill, just like most of EvE does.

The parts of EvE that a new player can access are closest to FPS games already, which is why a new player can actually work well with them.

So skill points are redundant at the same time they are so important that allowing people to buy them (by any means, look at every other thread on this topic) would break the game.

This contradiction indicates that allowing people to acquire skill points more quickly (even instantly) wouldn't actually change anything at all but making it clear to people much more rapidly if EvE was a bad fit for them as a game.

You're confusing two separate issues.

Buying SP breaks the game because it bypasses a number of important mechanics and it lets you inject unlimited amounts of the one thing that is valuable in the game: time. Time is what gives a sense of progression, of goal-setting, and of planning.

SP don't matter because this is not a level-based game where higher is inherently better — this is why the solution isn't needed: because the problem it's supposed to solve doesn't actually exist.

There is no contradiction between these two unless you keep making the false assumption that SP = XP, and higher “level” is better than lower “level”. Remove that assumption, and you'll notice that both are actually close to being the same thing: it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and in the process breaking the mechanics that cause the problem not to exist.

Skill points aren't redundant, they are incredibly important, but our point is that beyond a certain point they are redundant for ships that allow you to play the game.

For example a new player can get into an assault frigate pretty quickly, allowing them to PvP effectively. They can also get into T3s and HACs quite fast, probably faster than it takes to really learn to use them properly.

In this way skill points are not particularly important, a new low SP player can be very good in an AF, HAC or even T3 and through these ships have access to most of the content in the game. Similarly the tier 3 battle cruisers were introduced specifically with new players in mind, they were intentionally not released as battleships for that very reason. (Also, because four BS per race = meh)

The difference is that whilst SP in this regard is not particularly important, it is important when it comes to capitals. It allows us perfect production, perfect mining, jump freighters, super capitals, titans.

This game simply would not work if everyone had access to titans, super capitals, jump freighters etc. Already the issues caused by these things becoming to common is starting to be felt, as I said earlier the OP's suggestion merely accelerates this process to the point where the proliferation of these ships, and the streamlining of logistics/mining/industry, would very likely kill Eve.

Other games have died in the past due to unlimited resources/XP becoming freely available and saturating the market, I'd rather not see it happen to Eve.

Either way, it's a moot point. CCP won't implement it.

QFT.

The choice to buy "SP" already exists anyway, so why invest dev time on it... theres already a market set and the prices are there to those that can afford them.

Can you no longer do a portrait swap?

Yeah but only poses. I would pay real cash to be able to change a charactrer completely including gender.

This is absolutely correct - Pay to win would destroy EVE, and the Char Bazaar is slowly going that way and needs to be removed.

Please biomass yourself OP; may I suggest self-immolation? (in-game, of course)