EVE General Discussion

That dog won't hunt. Such an argument could be used to justify deleting all your skills tomorrow with no reimbursement.

"Well, you got to use them yesterday, so HTFU."

Or maybe he trained the skill earlier.

In any case it's only about 11 days of training time advantage maximum that people who trained only SDO 5 get over those who trained both SDO 5 and CDO 5. That's not a big deal, especially when you consider that having trained SDO 5 and CDO 5 before the change you have about 5 days advantage over anyone training DA 5, LDO 5, and MDO 5 after the change.

True enough, and yet my butt still feels sore. Why do I always, always seem to end up in CCP's 'complaint zone'?? (to borrow Tippia's term)

Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Sounds like a mess to track, to be honest.

Incorrect. If scout drone operation is higher than combat drone operation, it will be use to determine the level of all three new skills.

http://eve.beyondreality.se/pics/Kronos/DroneSkillTransition.png

I've underlined the relevant part in what you quoted, as I think what you said is already considered in that part.

That's not how it works. It works because the skill changes are designed so that skill requirements after a change will always be met by characters who met the requirements before. There is no keeping track of who met the requirements before because this would require extra data to keep track of and could easily get convoluted and buggy over time. It's a really bad idea and it's inelegant, no matter how good of a programmer you are.

Notice that the skill requirements/prerequisites for other skills/items/ship are merely the highest tier of skills listed under requirements, not every single skill. For example, listed under the skill requirements for the Zealot:
Amarr Cruiser 5
--Spaceship Command 2
--Amarr Destroyer 3
----Amarr Frigate 3
------Spaceship Command 1
Heavy Assault Cruisers 1
--Energy Grid Upgrades 5
----Power Grid Management 2
----Science 1
--Weapon Upgrades 5
----Gunnery 2
--Spaceship Command 5
--Capacitor Management 4
----Power Grid Management 3

I don't have Energy Grid Upgrades, but I can fly the Zealot. Why? These skill requirements come from after the skill change last summer, where among other things the requirement for HAC did not include EGU 5. I trained HAC when it did not require EGU 5. When the skill changes were made, I already had HAC 4, and the only top-tier skills listed are Amarr Cruiser 5 and Heavy Assault Cruisers 1, both of which I have.

The above rule has two exceptions - the great skill change of summer 2013 included a change in the requirements to fly navy battleships from racial BS level 1 to level 2, which meant that some people could no longer fly them since they only had the skill at level 1. The other exception would be in the upcoming skill changes - T2 sentry drones will now require their respective racial specialization skill at level 1, so anyone that doesn't have those will find themselves unable to use the T2 sentries. Given that the training time for both of these is on the order of hours maximum it's not terribly painful to lose either.

I wonder if there was anyone logged off in space in a navy BS when the skill changes were made last summer, and what happened when they logged back in...

First of all, Max is my real first name and it slightly disturbs me that of all the names you could have chosen for your example, you had to pick this one ;)

Good point though. I did not notice the requirements changing and this might actually be the real reason why CCP Fozzie proposed the second change, instead of new players being affected like I assumed in my previous post.

It also makes more sense now when people say that Combat drone operation is essentially being removed. In this case, I see two prominent opinions:

Beofryn Sedorak who says that we trained those skills ourselves and we should not have done that based on just a devblog.


Audrey UntzUntz who says that it's weird that ignorant players who did nothing come out ahead of the players who keep up with the news.


Beofryn has a point, but just like Audrey, I hate it when the people who pay attention get punished and the people who did nothing get rewarded.

This solution would treat everyone equally:

• Refund all Combat drone operation SP
• Base the new skills only on the level of Scout drone operation

Everyone would gain the same amount of SP (devblog readers and non-devblog readers), assuming Scout drone operation 5.

Leaving it as is would be the most HTFU solution. Devblog readers are screwed, but this is the risk they took.

It is a shame that some people are seemingly unable to grasp simple concepts put over by their fellow eve players and have to resort to inane trolling.

I think most people agree that this skill transition is a bit of a hash. And the facts are that in many cases CDO will be irrelevant when transitioning these skills. People generally train skills and pay money to do so in order to gain an advantage over other players. When that advantage is automatically given to other people who have not spent the time and money training for it, then it is bound to leave hard feelings and be seen as slightly unfair.

As in if everyone suddenly gains max gunnery skills, then rightfully, people who had spent millions of SP in training gunnery skills previously would feel unhappy about it. It is this same principle that most people expect to be upheld when choosing to train a skill which I feel this drone skill transition breaks.

Just one tiny problem: no-one gets punished and no-one gets rewarded.
People who pay attention to the dev communication can do some speculative training and come out ahead of where they were; people who don't will come out the same as before.

That's a pretty daft assumption. It's also a perfect example of the silly entitlement going on here: “waah, I was just given a week and a half of free training, to make it fair, I should be given another week!” How does that even make sense.

Devblog readers aren't getting screwed, though, and leaving it as is provides the smoothest and easiest transition where no-one needs to HTFU.