Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The time sink should not be so heavily concentrated in early skills. I don't remember the exact number, but it would take a long time to max out all skills (more than two decades). Even at 140m SP, my current skill plan goes for another 2+ years. There is plenty of content in this game for long term / short term goals. To me, it seems more exciting to choose between "train Caldari Frigate V now? Or try out Minmatar ships?" than it is to decide, "I'm going to train up my core skills for the next 100-130 days so I have a solid foundation for all future playing, and in the meantime, I'll fly my Drake in level 3 missions until my eyes bleed. Once I get all those core skills done, I can respec to perception/willpower and train more fun spaceships." Give the new player that solid foundation upfront.

I know that not everyone (or anyone), including my corpmates, agrees with me on this, but CCP will go in this direction at some point in order to improve the new player experience and increase retention.

QFT.

I'd rather see longer training times getting into new ships and specializing than spending time training fittings skills like engineering and electronics.

My friend just started playing this game last week. His capacitor amount + charge / speed + maneuverability / shield + armor + hull / fitting capabilities are SO much lower than mine that it really is completely unfair.

There is no way in hell a ship he can fly will beat any t1 frigate I can fly, even if I fit all tech 1, regardless of how he flies it.

This is why I think the OP has some merit.

Again, I don't like the idea of removing some of the time required to effectively specialize, so I'd propose longer training times on the rest of the skills and less with these "core" skills.

Not at all....did you read what I wrote?

It doesn't matter how well he flies (provided I don't completely derp), his ship is weaker in so many ways that he has no chance. I can perma run an armor repper while he can't; I can fly faster, with more agility, deal more damage from farther, track better, rep faster and longer, with significantly more armor / hull / armor hp; this doesn't include being able to fit the same ship in far more ways with far better modules (not tech 2, just different combinations of weapons / prop etc).

It just seems like a little much to me. I prefer having specialization / ship progression take longer than these core skills that are a requirement to truly compete at a high level.

Granted, it's not impossible for him to have a ship setup that beats another ship setup given he flies perfectly, but man is that unlikely. But PvE wise, he's weaker in every possible regard.

Lets not...

If you don't want to train them you do not have to. Train something else they are not needed in the game if you do lets say pure science.

I think the core skills are a good idea. They reinforce the importance of certain aspects of the game. I know it takes time to train them but the effect is large. While the "learning skills" only affected the speed at which you could train skills the core skills actually have an effect on the stats / possiblities of your ship.
I know that it might sound drastic but I think they are part of what makes EVE unique compared to all the other games out there. You do not get a bouquet or roses once you start the game - you work your way up. Finding a balance in training those skills is a skill in itself and each player has his or her own strategy as how they go about their training.
A compromise might be not to let people start out on "0" on the support skills / core skills but on lv. 3. That way they can improve upon the skills and min/max their fitting possibilities while still giving them a chance to get into other skills a bit earlier.

Is this the worst idea ever?
I think so.

I think EVE should be more like Galaga. Everyone has the same skills, and there's still only one butan to bonk, and the only fitting you ever need is to stick another ship next to the ship you're already in for twice the firepower.

Sounds good, OP!

This basically. No game has ever , imo, ever solved the riddle of mixing noob and vet very well. Eve however has the best happy medium I think.


Other games solutions I have seen include tiered pvp and buffing in the pvp "lakes".

Tiered pvp....use the warhammer model. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 30 on up instanced pvp. Solved the level 40's smashing noob problem....however the noob can't roll with his friend till noob levels up or vet rolls a new alt.

Buffing....the level 21 is buffed a bit stat wise to run against level 30's. Sort of what this idea in this thread is. doesn't really work though. Yay you have buffed stats but are missing a few casts on the toolbar the higher level has. Depending on MMO, those casts are real frigging nice. Our noob has has boosted ehp and such...still can get their ass handed to them.


Enter eve. No tiers and while the noob may not want the job in a short time frame can roll with his friend as a tackle/scout. This role does not need cores maxed out. Not a glamorous job but eseential. No fast tackles in the fleet, stuff is getting away more often.

For the buffing....when this didn't even work in other game there was always noob zerg rush. 10 level 30's fair a better chance of bringing down the level 40. This works in eve as well. 10 half competent noobs should bring down an average player in a bigger ship.

After we wake up from the dream of fair 1 v 1 pvp in eve we get the bitter reality its just not common. Also the bitter reality ccp can never balance skills based on 1 v 1. When the dust settled....we'd have almost no skills left in eve. I playing devils advocate could say its unfair as a laser or hybrid user I need a gun skill to reduce cap use for guns. Pull it and now everone is capless weapons. Or I have to train falloff skill harder than minmatar to squeeze out falloff they get naturally. Or minmatar has this skill to boost natural ship bonuses. Sooo....we pull trajectory analysis to make me happy.

My market alt doesn't need those skills.

My invention alt doesn't need those skills.

My mining & gas harvesting alt only needs some of those skills.

Training all those skills makes clones more expensive.

Learning how to fit ships with low skills encourages people to think outside the box.

My point is that training those skills is a choice that has consequences.