Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No, it's not hyperbolic because there is no penalty large enough (other than “you lose all SP”) to stop people from abusing it. There's a huge difference between SP and attributes: you do not gain more attributes over time and they don't actually change what you can do in-game.

Remapping SP means you can go from doing one thing do doing something completely different from one day to the next, and if you can do that, then skills might as well not exist. They're there to do the exact opposite: to make you pick a path (carefully) and live with it. As it happens, the way the EVE skill system works, there is never any need to remap those SP. If you want to do something else, you can just do it, but you still have to make that choice: do you really want to do that over something else? Remapping SP devalues or outright removes that choice. That is a bad thing.

It also means attributes (and their implants) no longer matter because it means you are no longer really training skills — you're training SP, which you can then remap for the skills you want. This is why planning and goal-setting goes out the window: because you are now just a pile of SP rather than a (more or less) carefully selected combination of skills.

No, it's not irrelevant. It's one of core design decisions of the game: you pick your skills and you live by them.

Until this game is 19 years old, there will still be differences between what players have chosen, and these differences have meaning and value. Erasing them for no good reason makes no sense.

No-one ever offers any consequences… so that's a pretty reasonable assumption to make.

Moreover, it makes no difference for new payers since guess what: everyone made those mistakes and when you're new, they're so small as to not matter — they're just learning experiences. There are tons of resources out there to teach new players what to train and what to hold back on. New players can do what everyone else already does: pick a different set of skills to train.

Completely incorrect. It is, in fact, impossible not to catch up. Why? Because total SP doesn't matter. With skill remapping, suddenly it does. What matters is what skills you've chosen and how well they work together. Those skills all have a maximum level that you can reach, and once you've got that last level, you have caught up. It is almost inevitable.

Again, skill remapping transforms characters from being a collection of skill decisions into being an amorphous pile of SP, and guess what happens then? That total SP value — which previous had no meaning whatsoever — suddenly becomes a measure of how powerful the character is and what he can do. Suddenly, total SP matters, and total SP is the only thing a new player can't catch up with. In every other respect, catching up is automatic and inevitable to the point where the concept has no meaning in EVE.


The whole idea hinges on EVE working like other games where picking one path locks you out from picking another, and on a deeply flawed thinking that “catching up” is somehow relevant as if SP were the same as XP in a class/level-based system. Neither are true, and this attempt at a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist only creates the exact problems it's supposed to solve. The solutions are already inherent in the skill system — there is nothing more to “solve.”

My very original statement was open ended on there being some sort of significant consequence or limitation. The op's idea is his own. I'm just curious about the topic as it could have saved me some headaches and an entire character when I first started way back.

Its not that I don't understand the points you're making, its that there has to be a reasonable comprise here to satisfy both camps. Whether it be a time or even an account limitation. Much like limiting neural remapping to 1 year prevents exploitation, a similar limit would provide similar contraints to SP remapping. A way to limit it to prevent exploitation while retaining character uniqueness but still offering some measure of convenience to the customer.

If it was limited to once a year for example and you could not remap any skill that was trained to level V? The time limitation would prevent FOTM'n and the skill level limitation would retain uniquness. Once you commit to something you're stuck with it for life. Players trying to use it to FOTYear would never be as effective as the ones that committed to their descisions.

My main issue is that as long as the new player experience is so honestly awful, there's a need for a "Now that I know better" method of revisting your early desicions. Hell, it could even be only once per character per account. That would satisfy 95% of the complaints I've seen on the forums. The other 5% of FOTMers, so fark them anyhow. ;p

Conversely, the NPE and learning curve of the game could be drastically improved. But until it is, there's going to continue to be requests for some sort of skill remap mechanism. CCP has to fix one or the other to be honest.

People don't need their skills remapped at all, not one single bit. There is a comprimise though. It's called never remapping any skillpoints to prevent exploitation.

People don't need SP remapped. They want something? then train into it. Deal with the consequences of your decisions. Made a bad decision? Live with it. That's the life we live in now, why do you expect something different in a game?

I agree though, newbies do need a better learning experience.

…and I'm responding to the OP's idea and why it will never happen. The only limitation that would make this idea work is one that ensures that it is never used, making the whole thing pointless to implement to begin with.

Don't tell me you ditched an entire character…
There is never any reason to nuke a character because of the skills it has trained. Never. That is the whole point of the skill system and why this idea is never needed: because you can always do something else if you choose to. You are never locked into a single path. If you want to do something, you can just go and do it.

Not really, no. The only reasonable ”compromise” is that those with OCD can delete skills and lose the SP forever. Anything else and that entire list comes down on your head: the removal of planning; the FOTM-chasing; the removal of attributes; screwing over new players. You also can't compare SP remaps with attribute remaps for the reasons I outlined: they are not nearly the same thing. Your attributes do not provide you with any abilities, nor do you gain or lose them.

Not really, no. The time limitation is what would create FOTMs and the level limitation would remove uniqueness since everyone would be at lvl IV.

Yes there is: train other skills. That solves the entire problem before it even exists. This is not a new-player problem — it's a “I'm assuming EVE works like other games in terms of how it limits character building”-problem. It has to do with incorrect assumptions and flawed perceptions, not game mechanics.

The only remotely connected problem is that there are griefers sitting in newbie support and newbie NPC corp chat telling new players that they need to train for lvl IV and lvl V skills and get this that or the other before they try any given activity. That's also not a mechanics problem, but a people problem.

There quite literally is no problem to solve as far as the skill mechanics are concerned. The NPE problem you mention have to do with educating those new players so they understand how the game works, not changing the game so it works the way they assume it will.