Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Certiwhats? Delete the things and quit wasting time on this useless feature.

Nope to the automatic display of certificates in any form, I like my enemies to work for their intel. I got certs but I only make them public when they get to elite status in order to intimidate my enemies. It might not work though as they might also be elite.

Superb training aide though.

tl;dr
improve certs (extend to modules)
DO NOT make any cert/skill information public by default

certs are decent for quickly giving a noob a refrence on what they might want to look at. in the raven it says i should have active shield tanking.

when you look at the cert, it shows what ships it is recommended for.. why not turn that list into a 'tree' and have ships for one section, and modules for another.

in the active shield tanking for instance, shield amps, boosters, and hardeners should probably be listed. for the higher tier active shield tanking cert, maybe add the ancillary shield boosts.

note: i also agree to NOT showing any skill information by default. if that were a good idea, we'd probably already have a SP amount shown on character info.. giving more info to the potential adversaries without control options for the individual is like facebook by default geotagging every 'post' you make, and some levels of information would be like if facebook checked your gps info periodically and automatically posted an approximation of where you live. the information can be figured out, just look at late night posts and approximate their location, but the same could be done in eve for your 'home' by seeing where you do the most combat.


a better metric for how much certs are used should probably be more of a 'how many people have large numbers of certs that they're just one or two levels of a skill away from?' not 'how many people have their certs private?"

'nother option, add the choice to have certs made public to your PERSONAL contacts based on standing. and make it a 'check all that apply' (shield tanking, show to -10, -5, 0, 5, 10) NOT a 'show to everyone above/bellow x standing' - who knows, i might want my enemies to know something that a +5 shouldn't know, in the hopes of intimidation, heck, i might use 0 standing to control what a corp i'm trying to infiltrate sees...


yes it's long, yes it's rambly.. get over it.


EDIT:
the post above mine, that +10. (corps/alliances defining their own certs)

EDIT2:
this could also be used by CCP to see if there are recurring certs that many corps make, and could incorporate those into the default certs listing. thereby providing certs to new players that other players are saying are important.

EDIT3:
an idea someone came close to, instead of using certs to say 'these skills make you good at this' howabout something that says 'these skills effect this module' - or in the skill info, have a page that says 'this module is effected by these skills'
that way, if i want my missiles to be more effective, i can look at the skills that specifically effect missiles. if i want my guns more powerful, i can see that controlled bursts would reduce my cap usage. - take it a step further, and have the ability to right click on a stat in the fitting window and ask what skills would effect that (in the case of a ship with guns on it, controled bursts would be listed. a ship that has all missiles wouldn't need to display that skill)
^^ this idea would be VERY resource intensive, and the last part would be highly costly as far as dev time goes.. so it's just a base idea, not something i'm asking for - though if anyone who works on the fitting tool in evehq is reading these, i'd love this last idea in there..

CCP Ytterbium,

Certificates are not interesting at all, because they don't really show your skill capabilities towards a task. The skill list show it better. They are too generic. Don't say if you are a good explorer, a good combat pilot, or a good miner. And definitely don't show if your skills matches the required for some corp to accept you.

So, I suggest you to take all this certificates out, and make new ones that actually show how are the character skills towards all EVE tasks and ships and situations...

But if you guys are going to plan all the certificates, and all the meaningful variations to cover all aspects of eve, you will have to hire hundreds of DEVS just for it... or you will end up with a frustrating feature in hands...

So I will give you the best option, Make certificates like the real life certificates (ISO 9002 for example), this certificates are not made by the govern. And Eve Certificates should not be made by CCP.

Put it in the hand of corporations!!!!

Allow corps CEO and directors to assembly custom Certificates, so corp members(or in case for an oppen certificate everyone), could click on them and check if the certificate is compatible with their skill, If so, they can claim and it becomes visible to the corp members. And the certificated pilot can post on chats to show it. If the corp CEO change the certificate people will have to claim it again.

I bet that EVE University will be the corp that will certify most of pilots with open certificates. and as most corps trust on them, this certificates will have value! (other then the current system)

also some big corps will need its pilots to train for their certificates.... or will only accept certified pilots, so probably the Director will only allow players certified by them to join.

What is your oppinion on this CCP Ytterbium? Don't you think this save your time and gives a good feature?

litterly takes 2 seconds to claim certificates. then your done.

I've no interest in certificates, sorry. They're quite useless as far as I'm concerned and mine will always remain away from public view. I can't even see any good reason for sharing in any of the formats suggested in the OP, I'd always rather talk to newer players about training than get them to follow a prescribed certificate training route, they're a poor element of the game.

Certificates provide nothing meaningful to the game.

Remove them. Also delete this thread.

I find it insulting that you are putting resources into updating a "feature" that provides nothing towards gameplay when there is so much that still needs desperate attention.

For Example...

Hybrid and Laser Ammo.... where is the update for this you promised years ago
Rigs...... Most rigs are utterly useless and their drawbacks tend to be completely counter intuitive.
Drones.... Their UI and AI is awful

1. Remove certificates from game.

2. Change skills so they made sense and were laid out as a tree (similar to that seen for DUST at fanfest 2013) so they are easy to use for new people and not Fugly for old timers.

3. Allow people to easily share the top level view of the tree if they need to (call it a certificate to reach a certain branch if you really need to have these things to saving face) or you could just do 2. and make everyone happy.

Hell you could just do 1. and people would cheer.

[Edit to answer your actual question]

'what information would you feel worried about if it was displayed as public by default and why?'

None of it what kind of stupid question is this, do you play eve? I don't want people to know anything about any of my toons unless its an API check / sale (Hence 1. still applies )

Wouldn't that be a worse scenario of a "long Bio" problem?


Any information, that is not othervise readily available.

Here I thought that certs. were a curious thing to develop in the first place, good to know that the powers that be also deem them rather unsatisfying/useless/pointless/superfluous/etc.

The question you should ask yourself (and us) is what is the purpose of certificates?

Without knowing where you want to go, choosing the correct path or indeed mode of transport traps you a never ending circle of doubt and second guessing. Zen navigation can be good if you have the time to burn, even fun when in unknown territory, but somehow I doubt either is the case here

The way I understood them when they were implemented, was that they were primarily to help incoming players climbing down the skill tree towards the top and/or branch where they would feel 'useful' to themselves and others.
Second objective was to provide an alternative to API's for recruitment purposes.

First failed because the relevant data is buried so damn deep that the incoming will have to go elsewhere to find out what/where to train. Much better to simply have a comprehensive wiki page about the various paths and synergies between skills, the "DING!" moment does not really exist around here but if that is part of what you want then increase the fade-out timer on the little pop-up/notification on skill completion and include a link and/or descriptive text of what has been 'unlocked' and at key points which paths are viable/possible.

Second failed because of SPAIZ!. Recruiters need/want near full disclosure of finances and relevant history for them to be able to spot discrepancies that might indicate that a person is of the less than reliable sort. API provides all of it in one fell swoop courtesy of the eternally awesome EveMON thus rendering anything in-game such as certs. irrelevant.

So again, the question is what is the purpose?