Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One thing that many players complain about is having a skill trained rather high that isn't a very important skill to have. CCP does a very good job of fixing this issue by finding such skills or items and rebalancing them so that they become useful. But it only serves to undermine such work if a change causes an already useful skill to become useless.

I am making this plea to alert CCP to one such proposed change. In this devblog by CCP Ytterbium, he mentions that the intention is to change all module reprocessing to have a base yield of 50% regardless of other reprocessing skills, and for the scrapmental processing skill to grant a maximum bonus of 20% yield (which places the final yield at 60%). Please don't misunderstand me, I wholeheartedly agree with the decision to enforce a singificant loss when reprocessing functional objects. But once such a change is made, such reprocessing will cease to be a major trade and instead will be what people do when they are taking the trash out. Industrialists aren't going to produce loads of modules with the sole intention of reprocessing them again.

Why does this matter? Because it means that training Scrapmetal Processing to level 5 only to glean a small amount extra from your garbage is going to feel like a waste of skillpoints. A lot of people already have that skill trained to 5 because at current, it's pretty useful. I don't know what would be a more reasonable amount, but I'm thinking if the base reprocessing value were 40% and the scrapmetal processing skill maxed at 50% yield bonus (the final yield being 60%) that should about do it. Also perhaps there could be an Advanced Scrapmetal Processing skill introduced, and maybe the 60% ceiling can or should be raised.

These are all things I want you guys to discuss here. I want to hear your thoughts on this, and what you think is the right amount for Scrapmetal Processing and why. Do you think I'm on track here? Do you think CCP's method is best? Let me know in the comments below!

I see no issue with CCP's current plan. Level 5 of a skill should be a long train for a small percentage increase. Those that already have it trained (including myself) will adapt to the change.

from the view of someone who only trained it to I, looking in.....
I think that since it doesn't offer the ability to use mining crystals/etc, it should perhaps have a higher bonus per level, with the base reprocessing percentage nerfed so that the outcome at lvl V is the same as the changes will currently serve...

I vote refund the sp

I would say no to refunding SP, you train a skill and have use of it as payback...so it has already been worthwhile for players to have trained it. Start refunding SP when skills change in usefulnes and we'll have a round of refunds (and subsequent upskilling to current FotM) every time CCP change a ship during rebalance, change anything in S&I, or pretty much change anything that could be detrimental to any player.

I am not saying the skill wont have a use. It was barely worth the train to me as it was. I finished it just about a month before they announced the change.

What I am saying is that with its new and much reduced return it is no longer worth training through the prereqs to get to. Those are skills that applied in no way to my playstyle, and only got trained to get to scrapmetal. I do not begrudge the points spent on scrapmetal itself, but those other processing skills were useless to anyone not interested in industry as it was, and are now just a barrier to entry on a skill hardly worth its own train time, much less the not inconsiderable time spent getting to it.

If they dont, I am sure we will all live through it and the sun will also rise. I may one day find a reason to use the extra skills I suppose.

I agree with lowering the prerequisite but not refunding the difference. Skillpoint refunds are bad. If the skills you trained to get to it aren't benefitting you on their own, then either petition CCP to rebalance them or find a way to make them useful.

Did you disagree with the mining barge prerequisite change? Having the skill at 5 is still useful even to people who don't use an exhumer, but now you can fly the Covetor and Retriever at skill 1. Do you think they should have refunded the mining barge skillpoints for the people who didn't want it trained higher than 3 or 4?

We're not talking about skills that are only good as prerequisites. These skills have their own benefit. Advanced Refinery Operation is going to help you reprocess minerals and Metallurgy is going to help you research blueprints faster. I feel that the benefit of having Metallurgy is pretty small, and I might petition that, but I wouldn't call for a Metallurgy refund just because some people trained it to get to Scrapmetal Processing. They didn't have to train it but they went for it anyway.

That's why I feel that there is no need to refund skillpoints on this. You are free to disagree with me.

Hi all

Just like to add to this as i think it might have been missed with it been in another dev blog, also I've not run any numbers yet but you'll need to take both changes on board.

So changes are:

• Reprocess dropping to 50%
• Extra materials being rolled back in to material cost

So at the minute we have an item made up of x (base materials) and y (extra materials)

Total material used x + y = Tm

Reprocessing = x * ~100%

After changes

Reprocessing = Tm * ~50%/60%

So even thought the per cent recovered is lower the total pool that can be recovered is higher, which will mean the total loss will not be as bad as first thought.

Any examples of what materials will be spared now that weren't before?

That is an interesting tidbit.