Skill Discussions

Players who would take the hardest hit would be those that are less than 6 months old, a brand new player would not know any difference, it would be just part of the game, when I started playing captain quarters was just introduced, I had no knowledge of ship spinning and therefore had no care or understanding about the anger resulting from the loss of it. Players would adjust to this kind of a change, some would get angry and quit, but as I have noticed players who get angry and quit when core changes are made, generally would have quit due to any unfavorable change.

You are suggesting that a new player would have fun after maybe 4 hours of actual game time, let's face it nobody plays for 24a hours straight, then being thrown into what what has already been posted as the most challenging part of the game, while lacking the core skills to survive more than 30 seconds in the fight?

He's suggesting that that new player would have more fun after four hours because he could actually have train part of those core skills under the current system, whereas under the one suggested here, he wouldn't even be finished with a single skill in that time.

While I agree with you in the last part of your statement, about getting into a ship quickly, and not knowing how to fly it.... forcing players to got from frigs the cruisers then battelships is not conducive to EvE's playstyle. I know of people who have 40+ million SP that have never even trained battle ships at all, and other characters that only have trained cruisers, with the minimal skills into frigates. If you want to specialize, you can, and get to the start of your specialization quickly. If you want to generalize, you can do that as well, but every skill will take a very long time to master, just like the real world. With all the "unbalnaced" or "broken" things in EvE, skill training has always been pretty good. A few months in, it's understandable that you might find parts of EvE easy.... but I know of no one that plays for a long time that can't find something that is enjoyable and endlessly challenging.

One thing you say here, I will agree too. And that is as a new guy doing missions, you have to thread the beaten path aimed at doing level 4 in a Battleship.

I remember it oh so well, I thought Assault Frigates were sexy, and Heavy Assault Ships even more so. Then I got an Assault Frigate, what could I do? I was done with level 1 missions, and with Level 2. There was no point doing these, as level 3 were so much better. I could do level 3 in a frigate, but as a new player, the advanced ship was just so much worse doing this than in a Battle Cruiser, and the risk was too big. Same with HACs and level 4 missions. I ended up using my Assault Frigate for hisec belt ratting while I trained up BC skills. And after that BS skills with all the support. Needless to say it took a long time before I was any good in an Assault Frigate. And regarding HACs? Yeah I can fly a HAC if I need to. I never became the HAC specialist I wanted to become when I started out.

This is something I find to be a big design flaw by CCP. That I can't make a living as a new guy if I want to be an AF pilot, and not a BS pilot. All the cool special ships that are the selling point of Eve, have no PvE scenarios of their own to perform in, but need to be wedged into scenarios where they almost always will perform worse than the intended mainstream ships.

I once proposed that they made new missions. So that the ones we have now would get a bronze star. And the new missions would get a silver star, and were meant for Tech 2 ships. Level 1 silver star mission; you need a ceptor or an Assault Frigate. Do a beefed up version of World Collides. They should pay well enough to make you not need to do level 4 bronze missions. Level 2 silver star missions: meant for HACS. Level 4 silver could be on par with the last Enemies Abound for example, or the Angel Extravaganza bonus room.

If they introduced gold stars it could be missions for groups of a certain ship type.

It's not too late CCP, everybody would love to put their favourite ship to the test.

All levels are not equal.

Example:

Salvaging.

Level 1-4 gives you 5% better chance using the T1 salvager.

L1 = 5%
L2 = 10%
L3 = 15%
L4 = 20 %

Level 5 lets you use T2 salvager. T2 salvagers give you 7% chance per level.

L5 = 35%

So level 5 is a roughly like getting 3 levels worth of the skill when compared to the others.
Why should/would L4 to L5 be the same gap as L3 to L4 when these aspects exist.

That big jump can also make the need of salvage rigs or number of salvagers reduce which can add to other aspects like cargo or more beams. You get the idea. Time is money and in this example having L5 compared to L4 for a mission runner who salvages can pay off big.

Then add in the fact that high level of this skill allows you to access better salvage ((complexes, T2 salvage)).

If you ask the question of what is the isk per hour gap between L4 and L5 if both are being used to full potential you may see that the isk gap can be very close to the time gap needed in order to train.

…unless the 50M SP character has applied his skillpoints cleverly and the 25M guy has wasted them all on L5s, in which case the 50M SP character is probably three or four time as good. Or vice versa, in which case the 25M SP guy can easily be twice as good as the 50M SP guy.

This is not an XP / Level / Class-based system, so any line of thinking that uses assumptions from such a system will almost always turn out to be entirely false.