Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP Ytterbium. 2 skills I hope you will take a close look at, for their relevancy in certs. ...to avoid certifications being relegated to "forever incomplete" status :

Multitasking V

and more importantly,

Tactical Shield Manipulation V

Multitasking V can be used after fitting modules that increase a ship's max locked targets limit past 10. One case that comes to mind is on T2 cruiser logistics, which are capable of locking a complete squad of 10 plus squad leader and another logistics, for a total of 12. or, every ship on the alliance tournament team. but needing 12 locked target capability is a very unusual case, and many people are not aware of any uses for Multitasking V whatsoever, and I suspect it will be [strongly] recommended against by most players.

I think Multitasking V belongs on a Logistics Elite certification, but not on a broader, Targeting certification.

as for Tactical Shield Manipulation V: a little bleedthrough is arguably better than none, for the purpose of keeping shields closer to their optimal recharge.

I agree that "for vanity" is a good enough reason to establish Elite certs. I also think it's OK if your intention for them is in part to create SP sinks while enticing players to maintain subscriptions. but in the case of TSM V, you would be suggesting it by default, and punishing the players who make an informed decision to forgo it.

I think TSM V should be left out of certifications completely, and remain purely optional.

edit: I just took a look, TSM V is not currently on Shield Tanking cert V. please excuse me if it is because you've already considered it.

I noticed that I have no levels of mastery on any of my characters for the carriers they can fly, because I have not trained Advanced Drone Interfacing. Please realize that those who fly carriers in cap fleets have no use for this skill. It is, to my knowledge, only used by those who rat with their carrier. In a fleet, you have better things to put in those slots, like remote reppers, remote energy transfers, drone link augmentors, smart bombs, energy neutralizers or a cloak.

Please reconsider this requirement if you want capital pilots to take it in any way seriously.

Signal Amplifier II will increase Max Locked Targets +2, bringing T2 cruiser logi to 12

Looking at masteries for hound these are problems i saw

-Cloaking 5 for the lvl 5 mastery on bomber is worthless. Cloaking 5 is pretty worthless unless your cloaking ships a lot without cloak bonus
-Only need the specific sensor comp
-Are shield comp skills really necessary for bombers? I dont know anyone that fits resistance amplifiers to a bomber
-Micro jump drive 5

imo the T2 cruiser cap logi ships can spare the low slot for a sig amp

I mostly agree with you, that advanced target management V shouldn't be on an elite cert. I just get the impression CCP Ytterbium intends to see it put on something

I agree, the ship tree is a bang up job, nice one CCP. However, there are some issues with the current iteration of the mastery system. Most of these stem from lack of individualization. Ideally this system will be used as a guide for new players to train into and for older players to change roles/cross train. If Master lvl 5 is achieving all relevant skills to fly that ship superbly, than one would also assume that Mastery lvl 1 would be the basic ability to fly said ship.

Take for instance the drake, Assuming I am a newbie and have got that far I will be looking at the mastery system to determine what to train, because I will assume that those are the needed skills to fly the ship well. Although T1 BCs CAN fit warfare links, they aren't really needed to maximize ship usage. In either case you need to be able to fit a warfare link just to have lvl 1 mastery. So you spend tons of time getting the 4 types up to lvl 5 and than the specialized types to lvl 1. The time to get Mastery lvl 1 for a drake is insanity. Once you have lvl 1 going to level to is insanely quick.

Most people flying a drake will have earned 7 of the 8 certs for lvl 1 and two mastery but will lack in warfare links. So they actually train that last; however, the time it takes to train specialized warfare skills to lvl 2 is not that long. As a result you literally achieve lvl 2 mastery of a drake having only got lvl 1 a few hours ago. Yet it took you about 48 days just to get lvl 1...that seems a bit off tbh.

Battle cruisers would stand to have a better progression to make it feel like progress rather than a **** ton work and than soar through the levels in a month. A solution to this issue could be this:

Lvl 1 mastery Armored, Information, Skirmish, and Siege Warfare lvl 1.
Lvl 2 mastery - Armored, Information, Skirmish, and Siege Warfare lvl 3.
Lvl 3 mastery - Armored, Information, Skirmish, and Siege Warfare lvl 5 AND Each of the 4 specialized to lvl 1
Lvl 4 mastery - Armored, Information, Skirmish, and Siege Warfare lvl 5 AND Each of the 4 specialized to lvl 3
Lvl 5 mastery - all 8 skills to 5

This would promote a sense of accomplishment and space out the awarding of the mastery levels in a timely manner.

Now onto individualization. Perhaps it would be nice to create a certificate for each ship type and place in there all the relevant skills needed to fly that ship.

I will again pick on the drake. You could create a certificate labeled: "Drake Operation" (as an example) and list the following skills required for that certificate:

Caldari Battlecruiser level 1
Spaceship Command level 3
Caldari Cruiser Level 3
Caldari Destroyer Level 3
Caldari Frigate Level 3

Essentially the pre-res skills need to fly the ship. You can make this certificate a requirement only for drakes mastery level 1-5 If you have it at lvl 1 you can fly the drake and because you have completed it you need not worry about it for the other 4 levels. PLUS this means that if you have all the certificates for mastery level 2 of a harbinger but dont have the actual skills to fly a drake than you wont have mastery level for a drake.

Because to be honest there are ships on this tree that shows I have mastery 2 with them but I cant even fly the flippin ships, this is sending confusing signals and could easily be resolved in the example I used with the drake but applied so that every ship in the game has its on unique cert.

Manufacturing Certificate

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You really need to change the Production Efficiency requirements, I would suggest a strategy something like the following

Level 1: Experimental, can manufacture T1 items inefficiently (Production Efficiency 3)
Level 2: Can manufacture T1 items efficiently (Production Efficiency V)
Level 3: Can manufacture T2 Components and most T2 Frigs (Frig Construction IV)
Level 4: Can manufacture all T2 Frigates and Interceptors (Frig Construction V) and most T2 Cruisers (Cruiser Construction IV)
Level 5: Can manufacture all T2 sub capital ships

Your main problem to me is actually you want to give the certifs only to the ships.

If you want to fly a frigate you need either afterburner or microwarpdrive and in some rare cases both but for most of the frigs you can't say if you need one or the other it depends what you want to do with it. This means the the "afterburner" part of the navigation certif should not be linked to a ship but to the afterburner module itself or to a fit which uses it.

In my opinion it would be really nice to have the different requirements liked to different objects like on a gun here is what you need to be good with this gun. Saying you need those gunnery (for example) skills on that ship doesn't really make sens and produces nonsense like having all weapon certifs on the gnosis.

On the ship please concentrate on the essential part of the ship like as example :
- bs have higher fitting requirements than frigs.
- Bs need to be able to target further away than frigs
- Bs need better cap skils

If after that you can "compile" the different certif from the different modules/rigs/ship of an fit and generate here is what you should have to fly this fit mediocre, normal or "to his best". Then, I think, you would have something useful people would use.

I have looked over the spreadsheet and I have two general criticisms to make.

First, I do not think that using level 1 skills, even for cert level 1, is usually appropriate. Skills increase in cost geometrically with a factor of 6. So every single skill is fast to train to level 1 and 2. Level 3 is fast for most skills, and even level 4 is not unreasonable for some.

Of course there are some skills which apply to a cert based on not on their bonus, but only on unlocking certain parts. For a skill like that, level 1 can be fine.

We should think of the newbs. I remember being a newb. It did not take me long to notice that level 1 and 2 of a skill were usually super-fast, whereas level 5s seems prohibitively long. We want to send a consistent signal with the certs: training to 3 is almost always the right idea. And 4 if you are at all serious in that skill.

So, let me take as an example Core Ship Operation. Level 1 is full of level 1 skills. CPU Management. Power Grid Management. (EVEMon does not know "Energy Systems Operation"; I assume you mean "Capacitor Systems Operation.) Level 1? No: these skills are some of the most useful in the game, and easy skills to boot. So even for level 1 cert, require skills at level 3. (In fact, this is already done for most of them -- all characters start with level 3 in most of these skills.)

What should Cert 2 be? The Cert 1 skills at level 4. Additional skills (i.e. Weapons Upgrades) to level 3. Cert 3 should be initial skills to level 5, any newly-unlocked skills to 3, skills to 4 that at Cert 2 were 3. Etc.

OK, second criticism. It relates to the first. I find the progression here off in terms of training time. Your Cert 1s are almost all much too easy. Total training time is in minutes or a few hours at most. So Cert 1 is in essence a wasted level of cert. In part because of the waste of level 1, the time required to advance a level of cert jumps radically.

I would prefer that the levels of cert, other than 5, follow a more skill-like progression in terms of how much time they take to train. The skill progression is geometric with a factor of 6. I.e. level 2 takes roughly 6x the time of level 1. Certs cannot work quite the same, since at higher levels most of the skills that make them up are already maxxed out. But I think at lower levels (1-3), the progression in time should be fairly close to skilling, that is, a factor of 6. This should drop some at high levels.

So let's take Core Ship Operation again, and use EVEMon to show how long the training time is for each of the 5 levels.
Core Ship Operation 1: 8 minutes, 20s
Core Ship Operation 2: 5 hours, 41 m, 40s
Core Ship Operation 3: 16 days, 2h, 1m
Core Ship Operation 4: 74 days, 2h, 23m
Core Ship Operation 5: 108 days, 13h, 3m
Note that level 1 for this particular cert is deceptive; the cert calls for level 1s in several skills that you start at level 3 with.

Leaving aside CSO 5, we can see the progression in time is very non-uniform and imbalanced. 8 Minutes is too low; nobody will be at CSO 1 for more than a few hours. And the jump from CSO 2 to 3 (as well as 1 to 2) is radically off of what we might expect.

Now let me show how the time progression looks if, as I suggested in my first criticism, you require skill level 1 or 2 only for "part unlocking" skills. The lowest level for a progressively useful skill is 3, and it goes up one level per cert level. (This is a rough approximation, but I think pretty good, and would be easy to apply across the spreadsheet without too much thought.) I'll call the changed requirements Core Ship Operation':
Core Ship Operation' 1: 4 hours, 26m
Core Ship Operation' 2: 4 days, 10h, 32m
Core Ship Operation' 3: 26 days, 23h, 59m
Core Ship Operation' 4: 74 days, 2h, 23m
Core Ship Operation' 5: 108 days, 13h, 3m
A much smoother progression. And it would be more if we accounted the full amount for starting skills.

Well I have been avoiding this forum because of not knowing how to respond about certificates with out insulting CCP more so then I do on any good day.

CCP take a look at the web site www.fleet-up.com then load a fitting in to the web site and see how effective your toon is in that ship. Look at the amazing work put in to calculate how well you are in that ship.

Right now take what you seen and imbed it in to game as certificates or the Mastery lvl on the ship. Much better and more useful. then put in a system that if I was assisting a fellow corp mate in fitting a ship that when I link up my fit he/she can see how effective they would be in that ship.

The system for this is already around and you really wouldn't have to actually do much work to bring it in to game.

as for certificates as they are and the 'Mastery' system your introducing they suck balls as according to the test server my alt is lvl2 mastery for a few battle cruisers such are the drake.

Slight problem........He doesn't have Caldri Battlecruiser trained???? shouldn't I be able to fly the ship as part of the mastery? FAIL!