Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Bumped because it is a good idea and more feedback is always good

Yes I like this idea, this would help "balance the books" so to speak (if you see what I did there ).

Back to Page 1 you go for more comments. This needs to be thought-out as it's a fantastic idea and brings more to the "we make all da tings dat makz da bling-a-ling" in EVE...

Do it yo!

I don't think it makes any sense that someone who only has a skill to lvl 1 can create a document from which someone can learn the same skill to a higher degree. I'd say that a character MUST have the skill to level 5, plus the associated "teaching" skill to level 5 in order to create the skillbook.

The training time mod on the skill should also be a creation time mod for the skillbook.

I think any idea that moves in-game items out of NPC suppliers to players is a good thing.

Call it "Instruction" or something. The only other option to the lvl 5 on the skill to be published would be to add a crap ton of books to the game, but that only allow training the skill up to the level of the person who published it. I think that's a mechanic and coding hassle we'd all like to avoid.

I write Procedures and Work Instructions as part of my job, and it's very tedious and thought invoking to sit down and be able to write out a task step by step in such a way that someone else can not only understand it, but implement it and do the task as well as you can, without asking any questions.

I realize the skillbook mechanic can't reliably be compared to how people learn IRL, but it just made it seem to me that a skill in "instruction" would be needed. That skill could be combined into the publishing skill, though.

Free titan skill for everyone

I'm not sure do I like this idea or not... but CCP needs isks sinks... well the game does too so maybe no.

As skills would come realy cheap realy fast I see that this might have an effect to the character bazaar also and the people there don't like people messing with their isk sourse.

It wouldn't be free though it may cause a change in the cost of certain skills but that can be balanced by the Isk/materiel cost, PI goods, Moon goo, etc. Perhaps a new expendable item - Publishing License - as a consumable for each publishing job.



I like that idea, as I said in my OP new skills could be found through exploration among other options.

After reading this thread I am pretty intrigued by the general concept and the discussion you have going. It does leave me with a few questions, and a few thoughts of my own, and I am eager to see responses and "counter"-thoughts.

Would this create problematic skill bottlenecks? Skillbooks right now are effectively limitless, but if they become player produced you might have skills that are distinctively hard (Or maybe near-impossible) to get regardless of price. Imagine a Titan 5 pilot - would you rather have him in a titan, or creating new -racial- titan skillbooks? Obviously this is particularly a problem for supercapitals or SP-intensive 5's that are somewhat limited in use (Empire Control or Diplomatic Relations under corp management, for quick non-cap examples), but then think of Advanced Weapon Upgrades, PI skills or the T2 ship production Science&Mechanics skills - or the T2 spaceship command skills? Not that these are that rare, but as 5's I think they can be rare enough to effectively limit the amount of skillbook publishing and thus training opportunities for newer players.
Cutting to the chase, I don't think there should be a situation where no skills are available.
Your idea of tying time into the skill level instead of requiring 5's is better here, I think, but it does not do away with all the issues I could see cropping up (More on that later).

Would this remove an important ISK sink? Namely, would it make inflation rocketing? If a books production/publishing price is reasonably tied to the skill multiplier, it will be better. Make it so it can't be produced much below (Say, 90%) todays skill prices, then some skills will have that price, some will be around the price today, and some will be more expensive. I'm not sure we should use the shift to PI as the better example because apparently prices skyrocketed there, but production prices around 90-110% of current prices for low multiplier books (1-5x), 100-125% for medium (6-10) and 110-140% for higher (11+), with a profit margin of some 5% does not sound too outrageous.
A quick example would be a carrier skillbook of 500M. It's a 14x multiplier so production prices could be between 550M and 700M, and land a final price of 577M and 735M - Jitaprice.
That last word in that sentence is probably my secondbiggest beef with the proposal. Let's say it again:
Jitaprice.

Would skillbooks be accessible throughout Empire as they currently are? Not just in Jita, Amarr, Rens, Dodixie and Hek, but all the newbie systems and several places beyond that too? In short, would it be possible for a Braver&Newbier director to say "damn, we're out of skillbook X in hangar, I'm popping over to Hadaugago (RMS station system near Hek) to get some new" - rather than "I'm going to Hek to see if they have some, if not I'll ship from Jita" (Examples all around)?

To expand on this, I think it's important that newbies can get skills. If they get them through tutorials or because a select number of "basic" skills are for sale from NPCs is less important, but unless this ties in with a total and radical overhaul of the NEP I don't think newbies should be told to train something (By Aura) that they cannot get access to for a reasonable price.
This is vital. I can't see this idea being implemented if the NEP is not taken into account too.
Skillbooks should still be generally accessible, and some skills should have clear, competitive prices (Compared to their current prices).

To tie this in with the bottleneck issue I foresaw, I think CCP has to have a built in failsafe. Whether current skills are also "seeded" through exploration content (I think that would qualify for a large part), or whether they monitor and dump some hundred skillbooks of various kinds every once in a while, I don't think CCP can allow the skillbook market entirely into the hands of their players. Like PLEX to a degree, and like blueprint originals are, I think CCP should build in a pressure valve.

The last part is more a question as to how you think this can be implemented. Should the publishing skills be seeded first, and then later the whole array of changes are brought live?
What about prototype Inferno modules where both BPC's and skillbooks are currently found through exploration?

There are probably more to say, but for now I'll say I enjoyed reading through the discussion and I hope my questions and thoughts can be used to improve the idea overall, or at least avoid pitfalls.

+1


Seconded. That's a great way to tie into exploration as well.

More player created stuff is almost always better.

I like the ideas of being level V to create a skillbook of that type as well as creation time multiplyers that echo the learning multiplyers.

Issues you need to address:

1.) Skill books are a MASSIVE isk sink in this game, that help balance the influx of isk from ratting, incursions, blue loot, etc. Without this balance, inflation becomes more problematic. How do you plan to accommodate this crazy change in the isk balance?

2.) This is a major boon to older players, as they have massive amounts of LeveL V skills, and the proposed scheme, at its core, moves isk from the new players (who need skills) to older players (who have the skills). I don't think this is a good thing, as it perpetuates the stereotype that veterans have it good, while noobies suffer.

3.) There are many skills which are rare-ish and extremely expensive (5 billion isk Titan skillbooks, for example). I think this creates a bad situation, where acquiring some of these skillbooks become about who you know rather.

To be frank, if CCP implements a player creation mechanism for skillbooks, this mechanism needs to be balanced not towards Veterans or Specialized individuals, but towards players activity (ideally in space). I don't see this represented in your idea, not to mention it comes across as oblivious to the massive economic impact this will have on the game. As such, no....

-1.