EVE General Discussion

What new variables would that be?

Cost is already a non-issue. Ease of use goes away with skills. Effectiveness becomes equalised. It'll all just be numbers. “They bring N + M so we bring N+1 and M+1”. Since everyone can fly everything, there will never be any lack of available, adequately trained pilots for the job — only a lack of pilots, period.

There would be more alts than ever. Push button, receive equally-trained-and-just-as-effective-a-character — instantly doubling your productivity? Yeah, people would do that. A lot.

…and the people who are willing to train into that kind of niche role will still be less valuable. The FC can just dictate what to bring (viz. more of everything than the enemy) rather than have to choose, plan, and think about what to do with what's actually available.

SP and skill sets is an economy and an ecology, just like the market/industry. What you're suggesting is essentially the same as removing items and ISK (and industry and the market) and just have people pick a class, Battlefield-style, to get their equipment — only in a different area of the game.

How does it change from every other game out there? WoW requires you to be a specific level for gear, for instance. Most (all?) games have content where you have no hope of achieving if you aren't a high-enough level. How is that any different than in EvE? Just treat each skill level as a personal character level, and ships as gear; you have to reach a certain level on a certain path (warrior, mage, cleric, etc) before you can you specific class-related gear.

"How long it takes" you say? It's like that for 99.9% of the games on the market (and 100% of all the big-name games), is it not?

More than anything else; EvE taks patience. Whether that is short term, wait a few minutes for someone to stumble into your gatecamp, mid term wait for x skill to train so you can update your fit, or long term weasel your way in to power waiting for the perfect chance to steal everything a corp has and dismantle it.

There's stuff to do while waiting usually though. A fully tricked out T2 fit battleship is a nice goal, but in the mean time there's lots of other stuff you can do. Frigates, and small equipment takes minutes to train, fill up your queue before going to bed and you can step into a low skill cruiser fit. Also, while equipment and ships are locked behind a skill wall, there are very few activities that are behind the skill wall. You can PvP right from the start, and you are likely to be trained to fly a decent cruiser fit long before you know enough about PvP not to just be wasting ships. You can get started immediately on mission PvE and mining as well. Manufacturing only takes a couple of hours, and research even less.

I would say the only thing really locked out to new players would be Wormhole space. Everything else, a day 1 newblet can do if (s)he brings a few friends; that's why finding a good corp is so critical.
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As for OP, I think that would be a profoundly bad idea. THe scarcity if players who can do X or Y in your corp and is on RIGHT NOW, plays in to the metagame quite a bit, and even more to the root of things the opportunity costs bring depth to the game. If nobody had to specialize because everyone could do everything, it would be a very boring game. It would also remove a major source of goals, and that's no fun.

On the contrary; it worked out perfectly. Grinding for skills is so antiquated. Who wants to do a boring, repetitive task over and over in order to get better skills? Not me.

Personally, I'd rather grind for tangible assets rather than a skill.

I understand that element, it is very prevalent in EVE now. The herd effect is big in EVE currently. People and Commanders who would not adapt would be swept under by those who do just like in EVE now. They just would be able in theory to do so without SP chains.

But we already have SP with out waiting, for the RIGHT amount of isk, based not on CCP setting skill cost but on demand.
Go and look at the character bizarre.

If you dont want to wait to train and you are clever enough to make loads of isk, and by loads i mean billions. Dont tell me you need ANY in game skills to make billions, because you don't. In game skills are needed to make millions. To make billions you either make millions for a very long time (not what i would call making billions) or you use player knowledge, understanding of the game and the market to make billions. There is many examples on the forums of vets starting a new character and with no seed from alts, only the knowledge in their heads they make billions in the first month.

So with your idea everyone can do everything in no time, and therefore there is no specialisation, becuase with no specialisation there is no niche to carve out for yourself, therefore no one needs anyone as they can do EVERYTHING themselves (does not sound very MMO-ish to me, if you want that go play X3). To combat this CPP have to make skills MUCH more expensive, this means you still have wait to skill, because you have earn the isk. This then hurts the causual new player much more than just waiting, it maybe helps the hardcore new player, but if you are that hardcore earn the isk and buy a char from the character bizarre.

So in all i think an interesting thought experiment, but the outcome is a worse game.

KIA

Edited to sort out some grammar

So if this is not an idea it is a poor troll, but i´ll take bait and try to leave you the hook

Game is here to do two things, provide CCP with cash to keep it going and to engage people enough that they continue to pay for it.

As a piece of blue sky thinking it is fail, no drivers behind game play apart from psychopathy when all is said and done if you actually have enough depth to think about it.

Are you a psychopath?

I agree, but what I meant in the post above was that people still grind for assets.

Maybe, I've never played X Universe. It's a open ended space jet fighter game right?

Part of the fun is in flying that noobie ship years later and realizing just how much more powerful you have become. In waiting for that next skill and seeing your missile hit a bit harder. In opening up a new ship, taking it out, losing it and realizing that just because you can fly it doesn't mean you SHOULD be flying it.

In short, taking skills out would take some choice out and in turn would make the game less fun.