EVE General Discussion

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/11/a-more-flexible-approach-to-skill-points.html

How might the act of skilling in EVE change, such that the core mechanics of how we acquire skill points does not change, but that the system becomes more flexible for the player?

Instead of adding skills to a skill queue, why not just amass skill points, which can then be spent on skills.

The system would still retain five attributes: memory, intelligence, perception, willpower and charisma. Depending at what rank each of those attributes are at, taking into account our current mapping and any learning implants we have plugged in, each attribute would accumulate points over time. I would suggest a rate of about (attribute value x 30) points per hour per attribute. We then take those attribute points, after some period of time amassing them, and spend them on skills.

Every skill has two associated attributes. Gallente Battleship, as an example, has perception as the primary attribute and willpower as the secondary attribute. We use a 66/34% ratio in determining how many points per attribute are required for skill purchase. Gallente Battleship V, requires 4,000,000 skill points total, thus 2,640,000 perception points and 1,360,000 willpower points.

How does this make the system more flexible?

Let's say you're in a lowsec corporation, and they want their pilots to train into dreadnoughts. You decide, sure. But after creating your skill plan, you see that it's going to take you nearly two hundred days to get into a Gallente dreadnought effectively (the spaceships skills, the capital weaponry skills, the siege module skill, etc.) You decide, to be safe, rather than sorry, that you'll spend 200 hundred days amassing all the attribute points you'll need, but you won't actually purchase any of the skills until you can purchase them all at once.

Then tragedy strikes. At around 100 days into your skill plan, your lowsec alliance fail cascades. It is no more. You're homeless. After some soul searching, you decide that you'd like to move to a wormhole, and you soon find a great new alliance to take you in.

Dreadnoughts were never a ship you were super keen to fly anyways, and now that you're soon to be living in a C3 wormhole you really need to train up strategic cruisers and those damned scanning skills. Under EVE's current system, that's pretty much 100 days of wasted skill training you'd have completed towards dreads, a ship that you're no longer interested in flying, and probably no longer interested in training towards.

Under this new flexible skill point system, and because of the decision you made not to buy any of the dreadnought-related skills until you had amassed all the attribute points required, you've a lot of flexibility to do something else. Now that you're in wormholes, you can take those 100 days of attribute points that you've amassed and can immediately start purchasing skills that would be far more useful in a wormhole environment. You haven't wasted 100 days of training at all.

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It's an idea. I'm not pushing for this as a change needed for EVE. The current system is certainly inflexible, but it's by no means terrible or bad. Perhaps this new system isn't appropriate to EVE, for one reason or another. At any rate, it's a discussion that can be had. Would this new system be appropriate to EVE? Is being forced into early decision-making important to EVE? Or is flexibility something that should be worked into the system?

Flavour of the month is such a crock of **** argument in EVE. There are some ships that are better than others ... but you definitely do not see players migrating to single hulls en masse over all other hulls (other than capital ships.)

Plus, I'm sure CCP would love for you to have a number of extra active accounts, even if all they're doing is amassing attribute points.

Its a nice idea but you will learn in this thread that when EVE players say that they are mature its alll ****.

People will say no simply because they spent years doing it the hard way and its not fair that newer players wont have to.


I would like it if we had an unlimted skill queue but the argument against it is the one above.

EVE online is just the WOW crowd pretending to be grown ups

Please censor all profanity. - CCP Eterne

This post makes me wonder what people who trained for supercaps or titans for a bit longer than 200 days and just finsihed at the exact day the were nerfed into ground did...

Hmm yeah that could work

the SP needs to be universal cause if all 5 attributes slowly gain SP then a bunch of guys will end up with a bunch of charisma they never use.

Have universal SP that is spent based on a added cost modifier from the skill and a cost reduction modifier for the remap/implants to cancel it out.

Monster D:

Speaking as an individual ... you can take my SPs from my cold dead fingers

Lol I think the SP would burn hole in my pocket, much like RL money does, that's just me though.

That's true, you almost never see a mission runner in a drake or tengu. You almost never see blobs of them in pvp either. I'm sure with the ship changes, you won't see people en masse figure out which is the best ship, and move to it either. If there's one thing the EVE playerbase isn't, it isn't a bunch of min-maxers with spreadsheets and even more spreadsheets breaking down which thing is the best.

But if we fix the problems, what can we complain about?