EVE General Discussion

I started playing Eve a long time ago on and off, as my understanding of the game has grown my desires in-game have changed.

My skills are a cluster of clutter from mining to a plethora of various random skills. For instance mining, it was one of the first things I trained and have regretted it ever since. I would love to be able to put those skill points into something else.

I propose a skill remap, possibly a one year timer on it, and it would cost roughly 10% of your skill points as the remap is rather dangerous and memory loss has been known to happen. I believe this would balance out the remap and only the most desperate like myself would use it. Eve Online is a complicated game, and brutal on the newbies, this would go a long way to help some of us out who made a lot of bad decisions early on.

We currently receive 2 bonus remaps for each character.

If we instead changed that to a skill point loss to remap, we would lose these right?

If this became the mechanic to remap, what would happen each 12 months. We still get a free remap, or do we have to pay skill points each year to remap?

Why have remap at all? I can't change my expertise or IQ/EQ in real life without growing and studying, so why make it possible in game?

Neural remap and skill point remap should remain exclusive of one another. I'm not asking for a change to neural remapping, just the addition of a skill point remap. But I don't believe it should be free, a 10% loss in skill points sounds balanced to me.

Seems illogical to me.

I don't want to be a scientist anymore, I want to be a plumber.

Please don't make me study, just convert my scientific knowledge into plumbing and local planning knowledge.

Doesn't really work as far as I'm concerned. Sorry.

It's like, you've already spent the time learning an established amount of skill points. You've earned the right to that amount of skill points through time invested. You should be given the option to reassign them to other places. You've earned it.

Alright. Challenge accepted.

How does a neural remap sound logical to you? A humans brain is hardwired during the early years of life. To say that I've always been strong with mathematics, and all of a sudden I'm going to undertake a neural "remap" to lose my mathematical prowess, and assign that mental prowess into something entirely different is just as illogical.

But that's okay, because it's a sci-fi video game.

It removes the point of having skills to begin with.
False, this does not remove the point of having skills to begin with.

It removes the point of having attributes.
We can already remap attributes, would you say that this removes the point of having them as well?

It removes attribute implants from the game.
How does it do this? There will always be something to train.

It removes variety and instead encourages FOTM and cookie-cutter setups.
Once a year at the cost of a % of your skill points?

It removes the uniqueness, history and "character" of your character.
A characters "uniqueness" doesn't derive from how you spent your time training as you were AFK, doing real life things, etc.
Your actions in the game derive a characters uniqueness.

It removes planning and choice and consequences.
I would argue that the real consequence should come from actual in-game choices, like gameplay. But there is a reason I want a 12 month timer on this.

It removes goal-setting, progression and any achievement in those areas.
Same as above.

It kills character trading.
Character skill points would still be there, if anything it would make high skill point characters more valuable

It massively boosts older characters over new ones.
At the same time, the people that are newer to the game will have an opportunity to play with the veterans if they so choose to without worrying about a fake progression wall.

It introduces "catching up" as a concept in EVE and instantly makes it impossible to do.
How is this "catching up"? This isn't a free allocation of skill points. They still need to be earned.

1. The point of having skills is that if you train it, you have an ability that I don't and I have an ability that you don't. You choose one thing and forego another; I chose the other thing and forego the one. If you can just remap, the choice is reversible and no longer matters.

2. Since attributes are meaningless, remapping them is meaningless as well.

3. Attribute implants are only meaningful if attributes are meaningful. Your idea make attributes meaningless.

4. Once a year is about how often the FOTM changes and the cost is insignificant compared to what you gain.

5. Again, skills and the choices of where the training time has been spent is what sets one character apart from another. The ability to wipe out those choices removes that distinction.

6. Skill choices are still choices of a strategic nature. Remapping removes all consequences of that choice and negates the need to choose to begin with.

7. Being able to finally do X or fly Y is a common goal that people set up. Reaching that goal means giving up others for the time being. Remapping this removes all such goals since you no longer have to choose. All you have to do is amass SP and it'll fill in for anything you'd ever want.

8. Character trading is about builds and now wanting to wait to get a build you didn't choose. Since the choice is gone and you can have anything you like, builds no longer matter and there is no longer any need to wait — just build what you need from what you already have.

9. No, new players will not have the SP buffers that give the older players their flexibility. Remapping gives older players even more flexibility and gives new players absolutely nothing since they have to sit around and wait for their own pile to accumulate.

10. With remapping, the choice of skills are no longer relevant. The only thing that matters is how large your pile of SP is because that — rather than your history of choices — is what decides what you can and can't do. Right now, the only thing that new players can't “catch up” with is the size of their SP pile, but as luck would have it, right now the size of that pile is meaningless. You are asking for that to be completely reversed. It's the fact that the SP still has to be earned that makes it impossible to catch up.



Your idea is old, and no matter how often it has been suggested, it has always been awful for the exact same reasons: it removes crucial game balancing mechanics; it turns the game into a design it has deliberately and exquisitely avoided; and it solves absolutely nothing. If you want a game where older is inherently and unavoidably better than newer, go play a grinding game; if you want a game where you can do anything, pick one without character building. One of EVE's greatest benefits is that it offers character building without the grind and without the insurmountable old-vs-new imbalance — removing the latter and introducing the former is not beneficial to the game.

Which would then lead to the demand for the game to decline, propably leading to a total loss for ccp.

If you want new skills, why not just train them? You don't need all lvl 5's to be effective.