EVE Information Portal

Looks nice, but I like cliking the "Get certificates" button. Not a *critical* issue, but it feels rewarding when the message pops and says "certificate earned".

Shouldn't the master level navigation certificate require armor rigging 5 instead of astronautics rigging 5? It doesn't really make sense that a skill which reduces the armor penalty of rigs that are rarely used on any combat ship larger than a frigate would be required to master a battleship, or to master navigation at that.

Some sore points after reading the devblog (in no particular order):

The "Skill Requirement icon" (last screenshot in the blog) could use some work. They do not convey a progression and when looking at them individually (as opposed one next to the other) I'm not sure I'll remember what each one means. If you are going to go and use color, why limit yourself to gray/red/green/green. Please use more colors or better yet, redesign the little things so they look more cohesive and related to one another.

I will also miss the feeling of achievement when I went and claimed my certificates. Now it will all happen in the background with no sense of progress or success. Even something ala "skill level completed" notification would be nice.

How can I show how pro am I if all certificates are going to be private?? Checking through the API is ok for recruting directors or such paperpushers, b ut for the common folk that is waay to complicated.

Overall I like the changes! Keep them coming!

The new certificate system, especially with more fine grained notions of competence at flying a given ship, seems like it could be extraordinarily useful to new players. It seems to be a framework that could solve many of the problems with the current certificate system, namely the extremely coarse grain of the recommendations and the inability to tell until you are an older player which certificates might actually be useful.

Unfortunately, in the screenshots shown, many skills which are largely irrelevant are being labeled as useful, and often suggested to be trained to 5, largely negating the point of such certificates. As an example, take the suggestion to train "Astronautics Rigging" to 5 in order to have top level competency in Megathron piloting, as shown here.

I am not sure I have ever seen a Megathron with an astronautics rig fit, even on an ALOD-style killmail. Looking through the list on that sample, there are other similarly irrelevant or overkill skills, this is just one blatant example. The usefulness of a certification system lies not in the breadth of what it suggest you train, but in the specificity.

It seems that this issue draws out of the decision to link a ship against a list of other certificates, rather than pruning them to what might be recommended or useful for the ship, e.g. there is likely just a "Navigation V" certificate that the Megathron cert is suggesting, which has a number of useful things, and also some not useful things. While I'm aware it might be a bit of a pain, or take some time, I think it might be more useful to make per-ship lists of skills, and categorize them by which of those other overarching certificates they are from, rather than just wholesale pasting the certificates in. For example, in the case of the Megathron, you'd know that if you had Navigation V you'd fill useful requirements at the high level, but if you opened it up you would not see the whole certificate listed. For example, you would likely see Acceleration Control to 4 or 5, but not Astronautics Rigging at all. If you selected skills that were from different levels (e.g. if you suggested MJD skill to 4, but Acceleration Control to 5) you could just pick the higher level of the certificate to display. In this system, the first display would be a list of certificates which are sufficient, but not necessary, and then when you drilled down you would see the precise skills that are useful for that hull. This would allow players to still easily determine what is useful for a ship, while at a glance being able to tell which broader certificates would be useful across multiple hulls at a glance.

I'd like to see this system succeed, but if the skill lists in the dev post are any indication of what is actually intended for release, I would like to suggest you take a hard look at pruning the certificates to something more reasonable.

Outstanding devblog. These changes look REALLY solid!

Um is it just me but @CCP Devs, you guys got weird gun requirements, they do not match up even though they take the same training to complete.

If you look in the primary skills the Beam weapons need level V for the primary skill but the Hybrid and Projectile both only require IV...

This doesn't really seem like a good idea to me. At the moment there is a notable tradeoff (isk value notwithstanding) when selecting between faction and T2 guns - one of them gives you more selection on projection, and one gives you more damage (at a pretty big price tag in most cases). This seems like a nice decision to have people make when fitting ships.

On to the next blog

I hope that Pirate ships haven't been overlooked.
The lack of certificates on ships such as the Nightmare or the Vindicator is quite silly.
Oh, and thanks for the turret skill requirements changes.
It was about time.


EDIT: Silly me, I just noticed the VIndicator being mentioned together withe the Navy Dominix and the Megathron, I guess it is getting some certificates.

Since this will break third-party apps, can we have a preview of the data dump/API so we can start preparing for this?