EVE General Discussion

If you're finding the gap between experienced, prepared and knowledgeable pilots versus young, naive and ignorant ones, perhaps you should strive to fill that gap rather than bemoaning the reality of it.

In Eve, your own knowledge of the game's mechanics, your skill at applying that knowledge to the situation, and the decisions you make are far more important than the end result of some random number generators calculating damage based on various statistics.

In the situation you're describing, assuming identical ships with best-available equipment on them, there is one situation where the younger player will win: The one where he makes the better decisions.

Depending on the types of ships, that decision is often "Don't engage", but there are often times when better ammo selection and range dictation would serve to let the younger player win the fight too. More commonly though, the situation is not identical ships, but two very different ships with different roles. Learn those interactions and even the lowliest frigate or cruiser pilot will be killing pimped battleships.

tl;dr:
If you think the game is too out of balance, or that superior character skills and ship equipment wins every time, you've got a lot more to learn.

That being the case then the mechanical advantage provided by skills, implants, and equipment is irrelevant. It should be done away with entirely.

Negative.

When two experienced pilots come together and make all the right decisions, the one with better skills, and better gear should have an edge.

It isn't. It is only irrelevant to you, because you find it hard to gain these advantages.

Some players are good at technical things, know how to create a good fitting and while others don't. It does not make fittings irrelevant.

Some players are good at leading and know how to create alliances while others only play solo. It does not make alliances irrelevant.

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you have no strengths at all. It is however not the game's fault. One can learn the virtues needed that are required to play EVE. It is why we play it!

Warkitten said its irrelevant because real skills trump mechanical advantage. I agree with her. And with you that fitting is an art and one that takes time to learn, and that managing a fleet is a real skill that takes time to learn. These skill give older players more than enough advantage, you don't need to have a ship thats 4 or 5 or 6 times as good as a new pilot to beat them.

I don't wear implants because I like the handicap and I like the freedom it gives me to explore dangerous territory. If you didn't have all that expensive gear to worry about you might enjoy the game a little more. Yet another reason to do away with them. It might get the conflictophobes to loosen up and interact with the game world a little bit.

You don't have a good understanding of mathematics, which is why you keep drawing a bad picture of multiplications.

One uses multiplications when two variables are independent from each other (like the sides of a rectangle), and only when they are not independent does one add them. This has nothing to do with the game. It is a very old mathematical principle.

This principle is being used throughout the game to create diversity by keeping skills independent from one another.

The human mind is not very good when it comes to recognizing differences. Many of us are unable to tell the difference between a car travelling at 50mph and 57mph without looking at the speedometer. It is however a difference of +14%. In order for a game to be fun and to stay fun does it require for players to make regular gains at such values, at least 10%-15%, and more.

Because of the need for independence between skills and gear are multiplications better than additions. It also explains why the gains by many skills are rather small with 2%, 3% and 5%, because these are being used in multiplications.

It is a well thought of design, which you haven't yet understood. Once you do will you see the beauty of it and how it makes a better game.

…oh, and pop quiz:
Guy A has 10M SP and has trained all his skills to V.
Guy B has 5M SP and has trained all his skills to IV.

Who has the better bonuses and stats?

"In Eve, your own knowledge of the game's mechanics, your skill at applying that knowledge to the situation, and the decisions you make are far more important than the end result of some random number generators calculating damage based on various statistics.

-----War kitten"

Take it however you want to.

We could always get rid of all the ships except noobships, and all the weapons except civilian weapons, and have ourselves a game that is based on actual player skill and not on skillpoints of learned skills or isk spent on ships. Nope, would still cause too much butthurt.

True. It is also doing it without hitting the 500k subscription mark, and many, if not most, of the existing subscriptions are alt accounts.

That is nothing to brag about to hoist up on a flag. Consider other MMOs - WoW with its current 10 mil subs (most of which are NOT alt accounts), with a high of 13 million, after 8+ years? Now that's something. Or Aion, when it was paid, reaching roughly 4 mil? Or GW2 in its early access weekend (pre-orders only) reaching 400k concurrent users. Compare that to EVE's peak of 68k? Yeah...

Look, nobody's claiming EVE is dying. But you'd be silly to say EVE is doing fine. It's stagnating, and has been for years. And arguably the only reason it even lasted so long is because it had virtually zero competition in the sci-fi spaceship area. There really haven't been (m)any games of this type. With strong competition the likes of which fantasy genre MMOs experience, the game could have been dead five times over.

Are subscriptions growing? Yeah, probably, albeit very slowly. Are they growing due to new people, or just more alt accounts? CCP knows, but they won't tell you. And let's face it, not even 500k after 10 years? When other MMOs have 4-22x more? Nothing to shout from the rooftops about.