EVE General Discussion

and for gallente energy grid upgrade , to master ships , please ccp ...
and all 4 drone specialization to master a drone boat NO one use calda or amarr drone !!!

Those are good points, I'm looking at Certificates / Masteries right now and changing them not to give you guys inaccurate information. I've seen from a Reddit thread that industrials and logistics ships require WU and AWU despite having no use for weapons, I'm also looking at removing that (for those with accounts there feel free to link that post to them).

Why do i have a tree ?


[url]http://imgur.com/SikQrQW[/url]

+ ISIS makes it easier for people to see the progression tree and all the awesome stuff how to fly, along with what they need to fly it.

- Some choices there are just plain misleading and bad. An example would be that the Nemesis ISIS field advises... armour compensation skills. On a two-lowslot stealth bomber. Others are just dubious, like medium turrets for Arazu (it has some merit to it, but implying someone actually needs a gun to do his job in an Arazu well is misleading.)

Other than that - really good system, vast improvement from old certs.

opened ISIS and found that i can use Command Ships without Leadership skills!

Love this toy

Yesterday was the day i stopped playing Eve to play Isis...

I love it...

I had high hopes for ISIS, but the final product has me deeply disappointed. Rather than creating genuinely useful skill paths for players to train, CCP has bloated the system with unnecessary skills that often have little relation the the ship that the player wants to fly. I realize that there will never be complete agreement between CCP and players (or even between players) which skills are most useful for which ship, but it seems CCP hasn't even tried to make ISIS relevant. In its current form it is merely more bloat to the game and is marginally useful at best, and actually harmful at worst. Don't get me wrong, you've obviously put a lot of effort in it, and it's very good looking, but ISIS's actual content needs work.

Since Interceptors are very popular right now, presumably a lot of players will be turning to ISIS to learn which skills they should be training to fly an Interceptor. For my argument I will be using the Ares mastery as an example, though the arguments themselves are applicable to many, if not most ships.

I have the following complaints against ISIS:

1. Mastery levels do not include ship skills:
The mastery system ignores the importance of ship skills to being able to fly a ship. In my Interceptors example without Interceptors trained to at least III (really it should be IV) you are essentially just flying an overpriced T1 frig. It doesn't matter if your Mastery is all the way to V, without a decent level in Interceptors you'd be better off sticking to the T1 variant! If ISIS were genuinely useful it would reflect that fact by encouraging a potential Interceptor pilot to train Interceptors III/IV right off the bat.

2. Mastery levels are bloated with skills that are marginally useful at best:
Lets look at the Ares. At mastery level V you are encouraged to train all armour tanking skills to level V. OK...I suppose you can, in theory, armour tank an Ares. But that ignores what the Ares is, what it's for, and how players actually fly it.

As a fleet Inty the Ares is essentially a point with a micro warp drive strapped to it. It is usually only tanked with a damage control, and rarely with a shield extender. The Ares mainly relies on speed and agility to survive which makes armour tanking a bad idea (fit nanos or overdrives instead). Rather than recognizing this CCP arrogantly ignores how players fly it, and insist against all reason that it's an armour tanker!

A newer player interested in flying an Ares is now encouraged to train skills that are useless for the ship that they intend to fly. Yes I know it's only a 'guideline' but not every Eve player is a EFT warrior. Some players just want a simple guide, and you've gone and done the opposite. Worse yet, your status as the game's designer legitimates these bad ideas, so that a newer player will simply trust ISIS and waste months of his time training unnecessary skills.

3. Mastery levels don't adequately distinguish between high priority and low priority skills:
Among other things Ares mastery V includes Repair Systems V and Signature Analysis V. At mastery IV these skills are all at IV etc. What's the problem here?

As I've argued before the Ares is not an armour tanker, so having Repair Systems V is already a bad idea, but OK, somebody might armour tank an Ares, so it isn't completely irrelevant, right? That said, the Ares is a fast tackle ship. I tell prospective Interceptor pilots to training Signature Analysis V right away because it reduces the lock time to get a point on another ship! It is an absolutely essential skill for a tackle pilot (and a short train at that). Signature Analysis V should be II-III mastery skill, yet CCP puts it all the way in mastery V! Worse yet, this vital skill is stuck in mastery V with Repair Systems V. For an Interceptor pilot those two skills are NOT equal. Yet ISIS makes no distinction that one is much more important than the other.

Conclusion:
The ISIS system is promising, but ultimately fails due to a) CCPs refusal to make realistic certificates based on how ships are actually fitted and flown in Eve, b) the inclusion of lengthy, but only marginally relevant trains that will have new players spending months training without actually becoming much better at the ship they intend to fly and c) not distinguishing that some skills are more important to certain ships than other. Certificates and masteries should not be 'bling' that players train merely so they can say they did, but genuinely useful guides for new players, and more experienced players training into unfamiliar ships.

Either improve this system, or allow corporations and alliances to make their own certificates masteries. As it is you are hurting, not helping, players who will be relying on this system.

Don't do it you'll summon th-

DANGER ZONE!

I warned you.

1. Mastery do not include ship skills by design, since they are tied to Certificates, not Spaceship Command skills. Again, the whole point is to allow the user to see which hulls he could fly with good skills even if hasn't trained the main requirements for it. For instance, if I have trained for the Incursus, I know I may be good in Catalyst or Federation Navy Comet without having them unlocked. It allows the user to set high level goals.

2. Mastery V are supposed to be elite. Having all the skills that are even marginally useful maxed is the whole point of them. It's at this point we want the user to feel he / she has completed everything tied with the ship he's flying, including things like all Tech 2 drone specialization for drone ships for instance. It isn't supposed to be fast or easy to reach - EVE is not about instant gratification. For new players or even mid-term users, Masteries 1-4 is where the meat of the content is I agree some skills aren't needed though, which is why I'm tweaking them as we speak, but Masteries V aren't supposed to be easily reached, so train harder.

3. That is a good point, may want to look into that.

As mentioned above, ISIS and the new Certificates are meant to be a guideline for new players, a progression tool for the average Joe or a completion tool for maniac OCD people like me. It cannot be made to tailor every single need for the advanced user in all cases, unfortunately, that's what Corporation Certificate would be for. We aren't planning on working on those straight away, but they definitely are in our to-do list.

No worries, your feedback was constructive