Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I guess my immediate response is

CORPORATION CONFIGURED CERTIFICATES

So you know, corps and alliances can configure certs for their key doctrines, and then they'll want players to display them. And having Elite in skillsets your alliance expressly desires will afford meaningful bragging rights.

They are nice. I get a warm feeling when it pops up and says I have a new certificate. I used EvEMon to try and work out how I could get the most Certificates in one go once by doing a REALLY stoopid skill queue - (I think I got 7 at once or something).

But other than that - Certificates need a game play function to get used more. I've never seen someone displaying their certificates - except for pirates listing industrial sounding certs for lols.

Information is power in EVE - and Certificates give power away. If you see me in a Hybrid ship - well - I don't want people to know I have virtually ZERO hybrid weapons specific skills - etc.

And I can't think of a way of introducing Certificates into the game mechanic that will not give a bigger advantage to higher SP players. . . . .

I mean - If you had the A++ Ship Parking Certificate - you might be able to get slightly reduced Insurance Premiums?

If you ever Expand WiS - and this is a brain fart idea - but you could have "Clubs" that you could only enter if you have say Elite Cert in this or that ? - but it isn't really Game Play that's vanity stuff

Maybe - Certs could get you access to different Clothes from the Nex Store? - Maybe you could get different haircuts or tattoos or something.

Nice.

So I'm imagining here certificates that are created by your corporation/alliance, and can be made visible to only your corp/alliance so they can see what their pilots can do.

A finesse would be a Corp Certs View, that lets appropriate officers get the count of pilots with each of their custom certs. So they can see how well prepared they are to fly given doctrines (and can use that to plan new ones).

Reuse the certificate system and transform it into an achievement system, then you can make it public at will.

...But if achievements is something that will not happen, my recommendation is:

Their main focus should be about guiding someone to choose the skills that needs to fly a ship x, so instead of having this complex matrix of certificates you have today, drop them all.

Create flight certificate for each ship that lines up all the different levels of training you need to fly it (basic, standard, elite) and that is it.

Then you should be able to drag the basic rifter flight certificate (example) to the skill window and this window fills up with all the rifter skills and plans for its training even if it goes above 24 hours and this is the only exception to the 24h max, you choose or drag and drop a certificate to the skill window and the skill queue will follow it to the end.

That will be cool and will bring certificates back to being a useful tool.

PS: if the skills are not injected, if they are in a hangar that belongs to the user, inject them automatically, if not, bypass the training.

i have 2x 2003 toons and a 2004.

one is indy mostly, one is a mix and one is mostly pvp.
if i am on my miner/drone ratter, i dont want anyone looking to see my missile skills are crap, gun skills are crap, i have good gallente bs and max drone skills, maxed mining and manufacturing skills. they automatically assume they can take my toon and it aids them by encouraging them to stalk me down.

now, if i am playing possum in my pvp main, i dont want someone to look in my cert planner and see i have 132 rank 5 combat/pvp skills but i am flying an itty 5... can you say "A TRAP!" ?

BUT HEY, WHAT DO I KNOW?

ccp seems to be making this gme so that the stalkers can prey on those who wish to play. if i wanna pvp, i want it on my terms. i want to dictate who does what and when. i dont want someone flyin around checking certificates to see who they could easily gang and who to leave alone. personally, i assume everyone who comes into nul sec is ready for war and the know their shyt.
i dont even check their planner. i check corp history to see who they are with. goons? i suspect someone else lurkying around the corner. noob corp? they are a cyno for a hotdrop.

the concept of making these planning tools was good. it "should have helped" newer people. to me, they are still kind of conflicting. one doesnt need ALL the skills of a certain tree to be effective in a certain style ship. with the tools we have now, one can tailor make a toon to be just as lethal as mole is in 1/16th the time (in a particular type of ship). now, the benefits of being old is i can jump in ANY sub cap and almost be maxed out. time in game...
certificates almost did their jobs, but evemon and others help more.

to force someone to display his training invites trouble for the someone.

if you want to do that, please allow the option to give ALL certificates back. to me, they were a novelty item.
but i do not want someone sable to gain ANY info on my toons what-so-ever until they start taking damage and realize that they should have stayed in station.
"oh crap! this isnt the indy toon!"

What value add does certificates add to the game? Right now the are pretty much useless and I think the question you should be asking yourself is what you are trying to accomplish with certificates. The certificate system provides almost no value add because they do not line up with the skills to fly ships for doctrines.

Personally I would like to see the certificate system scrapped and replaced with a tool that allows mentors, CEO's, and FC's to help newer players out. When i want to determine the capability of a new pilot and how they fit into my fleet, I have to look at the various pre made fits and see what the pilot can fly. The certificates tell me very little. With the API I can pull all the the pilots skills and determine 1. Can the pilot fly the ship and 2. How appropriate it is for the pilot to be flying the ship.

This about this. A pilot just joins a corp and is looking through the corps fittings. In the list of fittings he sees 1-5 pips (much like skills) next to each one letting him or her know how well they can fly that particular fit. The FC can tell them to pick a fit that you have at least X number of pips in. In addition in the fleet composition window, the FC can see the pips next to each ship so if someone shows up in a ship that they can't fly really well, he can fix it (by either having them switch out or kicking them from the fleet).

This is just an example but it illustrates that we need a system that allows for more streamlined interaction between players. The certificate system is a solo feature. We want something that helps use organize our corp and fleet members. Please put your development and design resources on that.

currently certificates have no value except telling your enemy how much sp your character may have based on wether you made them public or not.


a cool thing would be (as already mentioned by others in this thread), if certificates would be given to you by other players, e.g. the CEO of your Corp.
they could still be skill based:
for example to satisfy the requirements for fleet doctrine certificate ABC the player needs skills abc+xyz
once the player meets those requirements it can be awarded to the player by the ceo of his corp or whatever.
a nice window in corp managment could for example show which dudes still haven't caught up with the doctrines your corp has.

they could show that you mastered a certain style of gameplay
e.g. certificate in fast tackling. awarded to players who have proven a dozen times, that they know how to use an interceptor or whatever. it could additionaly show how much game time you've spend e.g. tackling and or in how many kills your tackling resulted. that may be a good addition for the corp applying process. having something like a résumé-page where your accomplishments are listed.

maybe a combination of both?

either way
certificates should be a player-controlled feature. if a certificate would show, who issued it, there would be actually an incentive to create a "market" for certificates. Corps like EvE-University would profit a lot from a feature like this. Depending on who issued the certificate they could mean more (or less).

Make Certificates display in your CC on a wall or holographic display on your coffee table.

The certificate is useful for new players. Help them know the name of all the related skills if they want to improve their gunnery, cap, etc.

Stop saying certificates are useless!

I'm still using it to follow my skill progression on my alts and it helps in the process of long-term skillqueue planning. It's not useless it's just outdated a little bit.