Skill Discussions

I knew you'd fail to see the missing link.

The miner's minerals have a market value. He ignores the opportunity cost.

The time spent plexing only has a market value if our test subject finds someone who is willing to pay him for doing something he enjoys as much as plexing.

http://tinyurl.com/bjmmv22

You just reduced quantitative valuation to a qualitative comparison based exclusively on which action is more fun.

It's like we're playing chess and you just asked me to king you.

Again, this is dunning-kruger in full force. You're too incompetent to know you're incompetent, and to such a degree that you lack even the foundation for it to be explained to you.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't observe how we've now gone from:

"New players CAN'T COMPETE with older players!"
To, "New players CAN'T BE IDENTICAL to older players!"
and now we're onto, "New players CAN'T BE IDENTICAL AND USE ISK TO PAY!"

But, no, you haven't moved the goalposts at all.

I quite presciently predicted this many pages ago: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2713186#post2713186

And I'm sure once it's been beaten into your head that, no, Eve is not a F2P game, you will contrive some new reason why it's unfair to new players.

And that's what's really important here, right? Your predetermined conclusion that Eve is unfair to new players.

Starting with that conclusion, you're now working back to find something, anything, that actually supports it. Every time it is illustrated that whatever "unfair" aspect of the game you've latched onto is actually quite fine, you jump to another one.

"Mining is SO unfair for new players!"
"Well, no it's not, here's the math."
"Well.. Combat is SO unfair for new players!"
"Well, not really, there are a ton of variables at play and PvP almost never comes down to a simple statistical comparison."
"Well... well PLEXES are SO unfair to new players!"

We get it. You're bound and determined to feel like new players are at a disadvantage, and are going to whine, ad nauseum, until someone agrees with you. That is obvious.

This is pretty much entitlement in its most elemental form. Frankly, I apologize for indulging this nonsense as long as I have.

You're getting more ridiculous by the minute. The ONLY reason the discussion is being dragged into detail after detail is because YOU, the preservationist faction didn't accept the simple FACT that there ARE newbies who quit because they see a (subjectively) unsurmountable SP wall.

So we gave examples of WHY SP make a DIFFERENCE - i.e. why for people who wish to compete based on THEIR skills as a PLAYER, the situation MIGHT be problematic.

Your answer was denial of the FACT that SP make not a minimal, but actually a HUGE difference. So we had to go through the hassle of proving it.


We further theorized WHY the perception of a SP wall might exist among new or potential players based on the FACT that the information about PLEX is out there, there are valid reasons to AIM towards playing via PLEX and the most obvious path towards that goal involves skilled battleships.

You went into further denial of facts because they don't fit into your concept of how people SHOULD approach the game.


And THIS is at the core of it:



It shows how deep your lack of understanding is, because the majority of this threat was aimed at showing WHERE the existing PERCEPTION among a lot of new players, that EVE is unfair to new players, is COMING FROM.

Denial of the fact that the perception exists does NOT help.
Denial of the reasons that we SPECULATED could be at the core of that perception does NOT help.
Dragging arguments out of context does NOT help.


Accusing me of underlying motives helps even LESS.
It may not have occured to you given your brain damage and all, but I am quite obviously NOT a player who quit, as you would not be able to troll me, if I had.

I'm on the side of there are problems with the skill system for new players, mostly because I'm a month old player who has problems with the skill system. With that said, I don't believe it's a problem of how much SP it takes to do something or how I'll never catch a ten year old toon in SP. In fact, not too long ago, I was happily bumping someone in my Stabber Fleet Issue, when they decided to complain at me about how they had 100 mil sp. I responded by bumping them out of mining range with my measly month old toon. I get that low sp characters can still have use.

My problem is that the skill system is arcane and esoteric to the point new players have a hard time figuring out what they want to do. The mission system could probably use better progression to help guide new characters into career paths.

Some folks just seem to enjoy feeling like victims. Their life's work.

I assume these are the three questions you talk about.

1: From the rest of you post i am assuming you talk about this "SP Brick Wall" you mentioned. Now from my point of view, being a 1.5 years old noob this is not a problem at all; I still do not have the skills do what i wanted to do when I picked up this game, but to me the goal was not so crucial as the way to that goal, speaking in your term I enjoy the game from 1 to 90 too. If you feel that the wait is too long just take a break and keep the skill que running in the meantime.

2: You are talking to the people you need to make this aparent already, you can always try F+I forums but the guy there are smart too, so you should prepare a bit if you really think a feature like SP, which has been in this game for 10 years, are ruining the game.

3: From what ive read this is the problem for you and your friends: You didnt have a gameplan, sure, titans are nice, but no successful business have ever gone straight to sucess, planning how you are gonna reach your goal and what to do in the meantime defines those who stay and those who dont in this game.

I hope this answered your questions well enough for you to not attack me personally.

SW:TOR is F2P now, isn't it? And so is Aion, I believe.

TOR was certainly well under "1M" when it went F2P. I vaguely recall it went under 250k.

I... what?

This, in no way, resembles the core concept of the OP.

The OP had absolutely nothing to do with the learning curve, and had everything to do with the simple time consumption involved in increasing skills.

I mean seriously, did you even read it?

Here's the "core concept" of the OP, with all of the bullshit removed:



He is not describing a scenario where, gosh, I just don't know what skills are important and what I should train and it's all so overwhelming. He's literally saying, "Gosh, you just can't do anything in this game without 20 million SPs".

There is a certain level of filtering that I would argue is necessary for the community of this game. By and large the people playing this game show a level of intelligence greater than I have found in other online games. I'm fairly certain this is because EVE requires a higher amount of neuron zappiness in your head meats, in order to play. You don't need to be Mensa level by any means, but you at least have to have functioning grey matter. If someone new walks away from the game for any reason, including but not limited to:

• Fear of blowing up and losing money
• Overwhelmed by a large number of skills to sort through
• Inability to "grind" their way to "max level"
• Unwillingness to fly smaller ship classes or T1 variants before accessing bigger or T2 hulls
• Inability to weigh or process opportunity costs between hulls or weapon systems

Then it is entirely possible (but of course, not a certainty) this is a person you wouldn't want in the game. The tutorials can still be made better, but they are pretty great as they are now, honestly. Newbie chat also seemed to work very well, or at least it did when I was a newbie and could access it.

Now some of you have friends that have walked away from this game. You may feel angry that I've indirectly insulted these people. Oh well, deal with it. What, were you expecting me to placate you right there? Ha!

SW:TOR's sub numbers apparently went up quite a bit with F2P, last official number i found was 1.3M.

I couldn't find concrete numbers for Tera and TSW, only that their subscriber numbers multiplied after going F2P.
They might be in the 1M category as well.

This is all evidence that the perception a game is free is a strong lure.


SW:TOR is also an excellent example of doing something RIGHT (in a sense of learning from it), btw. They invested a lot more effort into the game experience for NEW players (first 20 levels are awesome - almost enough to overlook the fact it's a technically insufficient WoW clone) than in the rest of the game.

Thus the game had a very high conversion rate from trial to finished product but could not maintain subscriptions over a longer period.

This is one of the reasons why i feel so strongly about CCP failing to sink the hook into new players to make them play long enough until they can see how awesome the game is beyond the initial eye candy. And why the SP-wall-of-Quit driving away potential new players is such a terrible thing.