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Dev blog: The great ship skill change of summer 2013

First post First post
Author
Rommiee
Mercury Inc.
#561 - 2013-02-08 22:43:45 UTC
James Amril-Kesh wrote:
Chi'Nane T'Kal wrote:
Rommiee wrote:


You are dumbing the game down once again. There should be a requirement to invest time to be able to fly the next level of ships.

This investment of time should be significantly greater before Capital ships become available. Reducing the Battleship requirement to 3 is plain crazy, it should stay at 5. I realise that you are trying to make the progression between T1 ships uniform, but Capital ships should be excluded from this, they are a special case. It SHOULD be hard to get into this ship class.


For capital ships quite a few days of navigation skills were added, which should compensate somewhat, especially since it's on another mapping entirely.

Also it makes no sense at all to compare the times used to ENTER a ship. There's a ton of skills required to actually fly a ship and those don't change at all.

So what if the lvl 1 skill for Armageddon Navy Issue was reduced from 7 days to 3 days?
Only a moron or a desperate person would fly that thing without at least 100-150 days in support and gunnery skills and to fly the ship efficiently you would also need the BS skill at least at IV, better yet V, which takes longer than BS1 in the first place.

So you're looking at a change from something like 144-184 days to 140-180. Big deal.

Where the new system really shines is if you already have all the support skills and need to change to another race's shis due to guild doctrin, as it severly cuts down on training time.

Well actually I can see part of where they're coming from.
Whereas part of the skills required to fly the ship have been removed, some of the skills required to fly the ship well have been added to the requirements. So it takes the same amount of time to get into the ship, but it takes less time to train the skills necessary to fly the ship well.

So training to fly an Archon now might take 140 days, but I will only have JDO 1. Training to fly an Archon after the patch will take 140 days, but I will have JDO 5, JFC 4, and JDC 3. I'm actually significantly closer to being able to fly the ship at its full potential.


Exactly my point.
Freighdee Katt
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#562 - 2013-02-08 22:48:05 UTC
Karl Hobb wrote:
After the expansion, the requirements on Commands Ships drop to {racial} Battlecruiser V and Command Ships I. This means that I can sit in every Command Ship, since Minmatar Cruiser IV, Caldari Cruiser IV, and a lack of Logistics skills are no longer holding me back. Furthermore, since I would have injected and trained Command Ships before the change, I would not have to train the various {type} Warfare skills.

Sounds like quite a deal to me.

Assuming you've got all Cruisers to III, which is trivial to get if you haven't . . . yeah, you will clean up. It's arguably more of a bonus that cloning the racial skills, since you get to not train stuff that's required today, and not train stuff that will be required tomorrow, and yet you can still fly all those ships that you couldn't even sit in before.

EvE is supposed to suck.  Wait . . . what was the question?

Freighdee Katt
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#563 - 2013-02-08 22:51:46 UTC
Jonas Sukarala wrote:
Well a shield fleet doesn't need the armoured warfare skill or necessarily the bonus from the skirmish and information warfare.

Shield fleets "don't need" Hull Upgrades, Signature Analysis, or Evasive Maneuvering either.

EvE is supposed to suck.  Wait . . . what was the question?

Merouk Baas
#564 - 2013-02-08 22:55:41 UTC
Command Ship prerequisites made sense to me. You fly Command Ships in order to provide boosts / buffs to your fleet. And to install links. Just like nobody will take your Logi ship to an incursion or PVP fight without good skills for it, nobody will want your command ship unless you have the Leadership skills trained and the appropriate boost modules installed.

Leadership takes a long time and sucks because it's Charisma primary. It wouldn't be so bad if CCP made it Willpower primary. But, that's their choice.
Rommiee
Mercury Inc.
#565 - 2013-02-08 22:56:49 UTC
Grath Telkin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:


Maller > reduced from 2 days to 18 hours
Navy Augoror > reduced from 3 days to 21 hours
Oracle > reduced from 4 days 3 hours to 1 day 16 hours
Abaddon > reduced from 8 days 19 hours to 2 days 19 hours
Armageddon Navy Issue > reduced from 7 days 9 hours to 3 days
Orca > 49 days to 17 days


Thats funny, none of the times that anybody else comes up with are anything close to yours. In fact many t2 ships actually take a bit longer to train into after this change, and by a bit, some are significantly longer.


Those times were taken from the Dev Blog, and I can't see any T2 ships in that list. Maybe it would be an idea to read that properly before commenting on it here.


Grath Telkin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:
The support skill requirements you have added are pointless, as any Cap pilot would be training them anyway. Having them as a pre-requisite is completely meaningless.


If they need to be trained anyway why do you care if they add them in as prereqs?


I will quote some one else's reply to illustrate the point...

Whereas part of the skills required to fly the ship have been removed, some of the skills required to fly the ship well have been added to the requirements. So it takes the same amount of time to get into the ship, but it takes less time to train the skills necessary to fly the ship well.

So training to fly an Archon now might take 140 days, but I will only have JDO 1. Training to fly an Archon after the patch will take 140 days, but I will have JDO 5, JFC 4, and JDC 3. I'm actually significantly closer to being able to fly the ship at its full potential.
Rommiee
Mercury Inc.
#566 - 2013-02-08 22:57:11 UTC
Grath Telkin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:
If you dumb the game down any more you will have a bunch of 3 month old characters flying around in Carriers. Like we need that.


Why wouldn't that be good for the game? More young pilots in caps means more isk leaving the game as they explode, theres too much money in the game now, it has almost not point. Anything that sucks it out thats not related to stupid clone costs is a good thing.


From your point of view, there would be no need to aquire skills for anything. Just let players of any age fly whatever they want, that would sort out your ISK sink. Eve has been known for being hard and not pandering to the casual player who wants everything now. Being able to fly caps SHOULD be hard and take time. The changes to Cap requrements are just dumb.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#567 - 2013-02-08 23:10:53 UTC
Rommiee wrote:
Grath Telkin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:
If you dumb the game down any more you will have a bunch of 3 month old characters flying around in Carriers. Like we need that.


Why wouldn't that be good for the game? More young pilots in caps means more isk leaving the game as they explode, theres too much money in the game now, it has almost not point. Anything that sucks it out thats not related to stupid clone costs is a good thing.


From your point of view, there would be no need to aquire skills for anything. Just let players of any age fly whatever they want, that would sort out your ISK sink. Eve has been known for being hard and not pandering to the casual player who wants everything now. Being able to fly caps SHOULD be hard and take time. The changes to Cap requrements are just dumb.

What gains are there behind adding strictly non beneficial time, which shouldn't be confused with adding difficulty, to getting into a ship?
Callor
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#568 - 2013-02-08 23:11:35 UTC
Assuming that the clone changes that CCP has mentioned in passing aren't included in this patch can we get compensation for the clone upgrades that CCP is making us purchase. I have a perfectly good clone I paid 20M for and after this patch I will have to pay another 30M in order to pay for the next level. This cost is a direct result of game changes and due to the severe consequences of not upgrading I have no choice but to pay the money.

CCP has indicated they will be making the effort to ensure players remain whole from a skillpoint stand point and it is only fair if they also make sure we are not impacted financially. Automatically upgrading everyone to the next clone level during the patch would also be acceptable.
Unkind Omen
State Protectorate
Caldari State
#569 - 2013-02-08 23:17:37 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Unkind Omen wrote:
Nevyn Auscent wrote:
Unkind Omen wrote:

1) Your problem is that I have invested 1.5 mil SP a year ago, and after this change I will just get them back as I dont have gallente cruisers trained. Meanwhile I will still get 3 racial BC's V(4.5mil SP total) literally for free. At which point does that looks fair to those who will come into the game after skill change?



With regards to 1. No you don't. You get your 3 Racial BC skills, but you get 0 free SP.
Your current BC skill just gets converted into the 3 racials.
Because you have at least one of the racials, you get no refund. The refund only occurs if you have ZERO racials.


I would like to see any confirmation from CCP about this point. I doubt because I cant imagine a char that has no racial frigate skills at level 3 but destroyer skill trained. Same goes for battlecuisers skill. Which makes literally no one eligable for skill points refund if your POV is correct.

This has already been confirmed in the blog as well as other clarifying posts.


Ok, I found it. Nice idea to post that in a new topic instead of answering here or at least giving a link in OP. However I am even more disappointed now, because the amount of people who will be left behind will only rise with no SP reimbursment.
Josef Djugashvilis
#570 - 2013-02-08 23:19:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Josef Djugashvilis
Lfod Shi wrote:
Think I just slipped off that learning curve cliff again. Gonna have to read that blog 8 or 10 more times. blblblblblblblblblbl Shocked


It will be how it will be.

As someone who teaches basic literacy to adults, what I find really interesting is how hard it is to communicate clearly and effectively just using the written word.

This is not a signature.

Debir Achen
Makiriemi Holdings
#571 - 2013-02-09 00:25:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Debir Achen
Rommiee wrote:
Whereas part of the skills required to fly the ship have been removed, some of the skills required to fly the ship well have been added to the requirements. So it takes the same amount of time to get into the ship, but it takes less time to train the skills necessary to fly the ship well.
The problem is that some of the skills "needed to fly the ship" are not at all "needed to fly the ship". Jump drives on WH carriers being the most egregious example.

IMO, for the tech 1 ships:
(1) go back to IVs
(2) stop pre-req stuffing. If I want to fly my dread without siege mode, that's my problem.

I really don't get the logic of going to III if you're worried about qualification times. Dropping from V to IV already reduces training times by 5.6, reducing the base "I can sit in the hull" to about 20 days (although caps are sorta tech 1.5, having additional pre-reqs beyond the simple skill progression). Dropping to III reduces it to trivial.

Also, the argument sorta rings hollow when BS don't have extra pre-reqs, and can now be qualified for in two days or so. Under the existing IV-IV system, a new player going it alone will be able to meet pre-reqs long before they can afford the hull. Under the new system, the only people who really get to shortcut pre-reqs are alts.

Meanwhile, alts being rush-trained into caps for a very specific "traditional" role are rewarded, while everyone who wants to organically move in and try things out is told "no, if you aren't going to train to fly the ship THIS way, don't bother".

Yes, it's sorta nice to make cross-training cheaper, but the new rules make it trivial. For carriers, the is NO functional barrier to training all four once you train one. For dreads, you still need the racial guns, at least.

You've said "the new rules will make it easier to specialise" (but maybe harder to generalise). The carrier changes do the exact opposite: they reward power-blocs chasing the metagame and yet provide no assistance to newer players training carriers for niche roles.*

*Technically, training time doesn't increase, but you've moved the pre-reqs from spaceship command (which is in the same attribute sequence as all the other spaceship skills) to navigation.


Don't stuff pre-reqs for T1 ships. Figure what time you want for the hull (not the role, the hull - stop telling us how to fly our ships), and let the support skills figure themselves out.

T2 ships I have less of an issue with, as they are supposed to be "specialist", and thus it's not unreasonable to expect someone to master some skills before starting. If you are getting rid of the chained pre-reqs, make sure you put the same back in (ie assault cruisers should require the same pre-reqs as assault frigs do now, maybe plus extras).


tl;dr - new cap ship (specifically carrier) pre-reqs are a huge buff to mega-alliances while not giving much to anyone else.

Aren't Caldari supposed to have a large signature?

Rommiee
Mercury Inc.
#572 - 2013-02-09 00:35:10 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:
Grath Telkin wrote:
Rommiee wrote:
If you dumb the game down any more you will have a bunch of 3 month old characters flying around in Carriers. Like we need that.


Why wouldn't that be good for the game? More young pilots in caps means more isk leaving the game as they explode, theres too much money in the game now, it has almost not point. Anything that sucks it out thats not related to stupid clone costs is a good thing.


From your point of view, there would be no need to aquire skills for anything. Just let players of any age fly whatever they want, that would sort out your ISK sink. Eve has been known for being hard and not pandering to the casual player who wants everything now. Being able to fly caps SHOULD be hard and take time. The changes to Cap requrements are just dumb.

What gains are there behind adding strictly non beneficial time, which shouldn't be confused with adding difficulty, to getting into a ship?


The concept of skill progression is what EVE is built on. I can understand the reason behind some of the changes, even though CCP have contradicted themselves in the Dev Blog, but that's another story.

You mention non-beneficial time being compared with adding difficulty. I have no idea what you mean by 'adding difficulty'.

I do not believe that retaining Battleship 5 as a pre-req is non-beneficial. Most Cap pilots will also be flying Battleships from time to time, and this level of BS 5 will be beneficial to them in these cases.

It is not the same as being a Super pilot, where the skill set only applies to that ship, as you cannot leave it (unless you use a holding char).

Merouk Baas
#573 - 2013-02-09 01:03:26 UTC
Well, they removed the Battleship 5 requirement specifically for Super's. A Super alt doesn't care about battleships; the requirement is just a frustrating delay. On the other hand, carrier pilots who want to fly battleships can voluntarily train Battleships to 5. Nothing's removed from the carrier pilot's capabilities, and some training time is removed from the Super alt's training plan.
Debir Achen
Makiriemi Holdings
#574 - 2013-02-09 01:39:53 UTC
OK, here are the take-home effects of these changes

(1) Racial ship skill as a pre-req is basically a non-issue.
(2) Characters are encouraged to specialise in a class of ships, not a race.
(3) The intent is that the hull pre-req skills are skills you would want anyway, which means that total training times have been reduced across the board, especially for cap ships.

Is this "working as intended"?

Major beneficiary: specialist alts

Disadvantages and issues:
- characters are not encouraged to spend time building proficiency in smaller ships of a given race before moving to larger
- Carrier pre-reqs don't reflect reality of WH carriers

Other features:
- characters are only encouraged to specialise racially when working toward T2 ships, or by factors such as weapon types. For ships with no racial weapon dependency (carriers, haulers,etc), there is no encouragement to focus on a single race's ships.

Is this "working as intended"?


Side thought: it would be interesting if carriers (and maybe all drone boats) had a bias towards their own race's drones (eg extra +5% over the skill-based bonuses). Of course, this would require that some of the less impressive drones (*cough* Amarr *cough*) be made more comparable.

Aren't Caldari supposed to have a large signature?

Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#575 - 2013-02-09 01:41:51 UTC
Rommiee wrote:

The concept of skill progression is what EVE is built on. I can understand the reason behind some of the changes, even though CCP have contradicted themselves in the Dev Blog, but that's another story.

You mention non-beneficial time being compared with adding difficulty. I have no idea what you mean by 'adding difficulty'.

I do not believe that retaining Battleship 5 as a pre-req is non-beneficial. Most Cap pilots will also be flying Battleships from time to time, and this level of BS 5 will be beneficial to them in these cases.

It is not the same as being a Super pilot, where the skill set only applies to that ship, as you cannot leave it (unless you use a holding char).


I mention that it isn't adding difficulty because you mentioned eve should be difficult. Having long prerequisites doesn't do that. Adding skills that ensure some measure of efficiency could be argued as a reduction in difficulty, as it means using the ship while not being able to draw upon it's capabilities would be a thing of the past, but that has nothing to do with a reduction in barrier of entry.

And the benefit of BS V is extremely questionable in both capitol and supercapitol specialist characters. The current proposed skill tree seems designed with that very thought in mind. Working your way to a hull now concentrates training time in improving that hull rather than requiring battleship specialization just to board other classes of ships which function very differently and draw no actual benefit from the specialization.

For those that do want the benefit of being proficient in both BS and capitol ships the option remains, but the fact that it may benefit them is not a good reason to force BS specialization.

Skill progression as I saw it was about taking the time to choose a goal and how to proceed towards it. To me it seems logical that if that goal didn't require other irrelevant prerequisites then it's not an intelligent decision to do them. Yet for some reason the argument is being made that those same irrelevant skills being mandatory somehow enriches the pilot.

To be honest I'm all for low prereqs and hard lessons for not being really ready for a ship but piloting it anyways, and in allowing real room for true specialization rather than the last level in a skill only specialization that the current tree supports and caps didn't support at all.
Dinsdale Pirannha
Pirannha Corp
#576 - 2013-02-09 02:03:43 UTC
What I just love about this skill revamp, and a bump of 6 million SP to me, is it HURTS, not helps me.

I have 97M SP.
I can already fly all the ships in question at level V.
I gain no new abilities to fly any ship.

So exactly what does that 6M SP get me?
It gets me into a more expensive med clone about 3.8 months faster.

Thanks CCP.
Not only are you dumbing the game down, closing the gap between the new and old players, but you actually PENALIZE the high SP players.

I am sure some marketing class will do a case study on this debacle as an examination of how to **** off your longest standing customers.
Akturous
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#577 - 2013-02-09 02:04:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Akturous
CCP Ytterbium wrote:
There also shouldn't be such thing as "the best tech1 industrial"


Fuc k me mate you are a little slow aren't you?

Currently all industrials have their advantages based on different cargo space and training time, as well as tankability to avoid sploding to a single Nado.

The Itty V was the most cargo for the most training time, Bestower was the good 'train a hauler alt' and the Badger II is the best suicide prevention tanker.

What your doing with the skill change is making the itty V the best hauler full stop. Unless you do the teiricide right then and there, it's going to be that way until you do it soon*.

As said before, the CS prerequisites are bloody stupid, I never fly links, but I love Sleipnirs. A new player to CS is going to have the same training time as before IF they never ever wanted to fly t2 cruisers (so about no one), but instead will have a bunch of useless skills to V they will probably never use. Oh the JDC III and JDF!! IV gets me, of course fuel conservation is more important when flying a capitol than range* sarcasm.

Take your head out of the sand. Nice one not putting this in F&I so we could throw back ideas, instead straight into THIS IS HAPPENING. I mean you even changed all the prereques from IV to III without any discussion at all. Fire yourself and hire someone that understands game mechanics.

Vote Item Heck One for CSM8

Lors Dornick
Kallisti Industries
#578 - 2013-02-09 02:09:55 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:


The skills that are being added to the command ship skill prereqs all give bonuses to your fleet even if you don't fit any warfare links, and are therefore all very valuable for any character that wants to sit in a squad command position, command ship or not.


This is exactly why my Orca pilot has all 4 warfare at V.

CCP Greyscale: As to starbases, we agree it's pretty terrible, but we don't want to delay the entire release just for this one factor.

Akturous
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#579 - 2013-02-09 02:11:40 UTC
Merouk Baas wrote:
Command Ship prerequisites made sense to me. You fly Command Ships in order to provide boosts / buffs to your fleet. And to install links. Just like nobody will take your Logi ship to an incursion or PVP fight without good skills for it, nobody will want your command ship unless you have the Leadership skills trained and the appropriate boost modules installed.

Leadership takes a long time and sucks because it's Charisma primary. It wouldn't be so bad if CCP made it Willpower primary. But, that's their choice.


You do realise there's an entirely separate line of CS called Field Command right?

They're basically T2 BC's which just happen to get a bonus to links, no one actually puts links on them. They do lots of dps, have great tank and great resists.

Vote Item Heck One for CSM8

Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#580 - 2013-02-09 02:25:10 UTC
Akturous wrote:
Merouk Baas wrote:
Command Ship prerequisites made sense to me. You fly Command Ships in order to provide boosts / buffs to your fleet. And to install links. Just like nobody will take your Logi ship to an incursion or PVP fight without good skills for it, nobody will want your command ship unless you have the Leadership skills trained and the appropriate boost modules installed.

Leadership takes a long time and sucks because it's Charisma primary. It wouldn't be so bad if CCP made it Willpower primary. But, that's their choice.


You do realise there's an entirely separate line of CS called Field Command right?

They're basically T2 BC's which just happen to get a bonus to links, no one actually puts links on them. They do lots of dps, have great tank and great resists.


You do realise CCP months ago said that 'line' distinction was vanishing as well. And all the Command ships are being set up to allow for three links, as well as to allow for DPS on all of them when not fitting links.
The two different CS for each race will now fit different weapon systems instead. Trading on the two primary weapon systems for each race.