Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just a thought I had today with regards to queue's that people let go idle accidentally, maybe because you had to make an emergency trip out of town, or whatever - it happens to all of us and we get back and say "dammit I thought I had a longer skill in training!"

I propose that if your skill queue happens to go idle (as long as your account is currently active,) you accumulate SP at a lower rate in the "bonus SP" that you can apply to whatever skill you wish. Now, of course one would need to take measures to avoid abuse and I feel like this abuse could be avoided in this simple way.

Restrictions:

• The ammount of SP gained does not take into account any implants you may have
• It would produce no more than 15 SP 5-10 SP(not certain on a specific ammount) per attribute, regardless of your current neural mapping. (For clarity the default mapping as a new capsuleer gives you 17SP per attribute)
• In addition the SP Pool accumulated while your queue is idle would count towards your clone cost.
• Edit 1: In the case of most players having multiple characters on one account, the SP would pool on the character that most recently finished training. In the case of multiple character training, it would go to the two characters who most recently completed training, until the bonus time ran out then it would continue to pool on the one that completed most recently.
• Edit 2: Pooled SP would cap out at an amount determined reasonable by CCP perhaps 250,000 SP

This way if you forget to plug in a skill or you have to go away for a few days and your skill queue goes idle for a bit you come back and have a little bit of SP to dump into the skill you would've otherwise trained at your regular SP rate. I don't really see a downside, but I'm sure you all will be happy to point them out to me.

Edit: Example of the actual numbers of SP Gained actively, and during an inactive period.

• Active queue using +4 Implants and "Ideal" remap gains 40,320 SP per day
• Idle queue using 5 SP per attribute as the baseline to pool gains 7,200 SP per day

It would take approximately 34 days of not training at all to cap out the pooled SP, and takes approximately one week of Idle training to equal one day of active training.

For those curious about how much 250,000 SP actually equates to here's a list of some example skills and how much SP is needed to max them.

Mechanics (x1) - 256,000
Hull Upgrades (x2) - 512,000
Armor Layering (x3) - 768,000
Assault Frigates (x4) - 1,024,000
[Racial] Cruisers (x5) - 1,280,000
[Racial] Battlecruisers (x6) - 1,536,000


Of course there would be no need for something like this if you are diligent and always able to update your skill queue on time.

Flame away F&I

Edited to include suggestions to improve the Idea

Not a bad idea really, seems to coddle the lazy/forgetful, but would be a decent qol improvement. I will admit I have definitely forgot to update my skills before a weekend out, and been a little bit frustrated with myself for doing so.

This has the knock-on effect of eliminating the need for CCP to worry (as much) about those people who forget to put in a long skill on patch days when the unthinkable happens and we can't log in for days at a time. I don't miss these days one bit.

The main concern is most likely the Flavour of the Month instant training that could possibly happen.

Although the concept is probably risk vs reward at heart anyways.
- Decide to train for X, X gets nerfed in patch :( wasted training.
- Decide to not train, wait for patch, instant train into new FOTM fit. :) although wasted potential max training.

make it quite a serious reduction in training rate and it COULD work as a balanced idea..... and maybe put a hard limit on how many sp you can gain a year like this - say the equivalent of 15d of queue? (numbers plucked out of air, but the point is to make it VERY difficult to train FOTM fits like this)

This whole training thing is a circumstance unique to EVE. While I understand that some careers may demand your time in big chunks, or in the form of continuous travel, or in some other way that hinders you from logging in regularly, planning out your training really is the least amount of effort demanded from a game. In any other subscription-based MMOG, you get nothing if you forget to log in, as there is no training going on while your account is offline, and you still pay your subscription whether or not you level up your character.

The skill queue was already implemented because newer players felt it was difficult to juggle their training time between short skills (while playing) and long skills (when you log off for the night).

With the skill queue feature, you are now able to train any skill under 24 hours long, provided that you are able to log in once every 24 hours, or you put a long skill at the end of your queue to soak up the extra time when you won't be able to log in.

Without intending to sound mean, I would suggest thinking about the possibility that maybe EVE is not for you if you find it impossible to keep your skills queued up. But give it a month or two, and you will see that it becomes much easier to manage as the skills you train become longer, and you have more leeway to push that 24 hour period (where your 30 day skill finishes) back and forth by throwing in smaller skills at the start of your queue whenever you do have time to log in.

EVEMon is also very helpful for this, as it can help you plan your skill plans, shows you in almost-real-time the progress of your training, and comes with lots of pings and pop-ups and warnings you can turn on to remind you that you have free room in your skill queue.

If you travel a lot and you have a laptop with you, you could install EVEMon on it, and it will remember what your character is training and when it finishes, what comes next in your skill plan, and so on, even when you're not connected to the internet.

I'm sorry. I made a faulty assumption of your viewpoint judging from your employment history. You'd be surprised how many beginners post "feature ideas" on FAID which turn out to already be features that they didn't know about, or features that were reviewed and rejected in the past, or simply not viable (or maybe you wouldn't be surprised, maybe you come here a lot).

Indeed, I am familiar with this mechanism. I have played games in the past that have had such a feature, and it's normally a bonus that equates to roughly one play session, so that you can miss roughly a day and get a bonus that will catch you back up to your friends by roughly a day.

But I think that this is already what the skill queue does. It lets you put a long skill on top of a short skill as a buffer, and I think this is more than adequate.

I think the only system that would make sense in terms of letting busy businessmen keep their queues from idling would be something like:

• Feature / change: The skill queue can hold up to two skills, even if the first skill exceeds 24 hours.
• Impact: This removes the necessity to log in within a specific 24-hour period at the end of a skill queue, or to add short skills to the front of the skill queue to push back the 24-hour window.
• Impact: Potentially add one 30-day skill on top of another 30-day skill. May be viewed as an abuse.

Perhaps, but I think your idea with bonus points and multipliers and "only for this long after the last skill finished" and so on is overcomplicated.

I think it would be worth going through the motions of figuring out the possible pros and cons of a more simple idea, such as what I suggested above; "you can always queue up two skills".

Alternatively, simply extending the queue to 48 hours.

If one still can't figure out how to log in once in a "48 hours +/- short skills you can add in front of the queue before that" time window, then one really ought not complain about losing a few hours of training time.

Maybe a simpler way of accomplishing the same goal is to have a longer training queue allotment. I agree that the hustle of Real LifeTM, sometimes makes skill queuing difficult or impossible. A 3 day (or 7 day) queue would certainly help those of us with active real life schedules.

Wow, I'm a little surprised (not really) at people dragging there feet on this suggestion, it's actually half decent. Extending the skill queue is a bad idea, no matter how you slice it, the idea has been brought up and shot down so many times in the past it's not even worth digging up the dead threads.

This idea of an accumulating idle skill point pool, on the other hand isn't too bad, it's well thought out and seems to cover the issues brought up. The only issue I see that's not covered is Julius Rigel's superiority complex, who seems to be saying "You are clearly bad because you can't login every 24 hours, hurr durr." (Loose translation)

I cant see one bad reason for extending the skill queue. I travel 4 days every week of the year. I dont come home every day at 5 and log on while making dinner, then while away the evening playing eve. Under these circumstance, I cant plan a long train every week like I could if I were taking a vacation. I have only missed a skill queue once or twice because of this before I got in the habit, but even if I only have 8 hours in the hotel and am thoroughly exhausted, I have to drag out my computer and make sure that my queues are all filled. Then go get some sleep for another grueling day. Extending the queue even a little like 48 hours can not be abused in any way and benefits everyone who is in similar position as I am.