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Pushing the limits of "test" in test server

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Laendra
Universalis Imperium
Goonswarm Federation
#81 - 2014-07-24 22:50:59 UTC
I myself have come across this "training" issue while testing a number of times. I can easily get Outpost Construction finished training to level 4, but there is probably little chance of me ever training it to level 5, even on the test server, because it could barely be trained between mirrors. This prevented me from testing various scenarios for outpost upgrades during the workup to Crius, which required Outpost Construction to level 5 to build the 3rd tier upgrade platform after I had built them all up to level 2 from empty space.

My suggestion: Provide a script whereby players could request a skill bump for a particular skill. You could limit it to having to meet the pre-reqs for the skill. You could only have, say, 3-5 skills bumped at one time, without dev intervention. You could earn more by participating in Mass Tests, providing good feedback on this forum, or providing good bug reports. This would provide a good incentive, I think.

So, we could do something like this.

SET 'Outpost Construction' 5

You can always reset a previously bumped skill, adding 1 back to your counter.

RESET 'Outpost Construction'
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#82 - 2014-07-25 04:14:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Decarthado Aurgnet
New twist on old idea: during the mirroring process, give players who do not have a minimum threshold of SP's (say, 60-80 millon or something) the difference between their actual SP's and that threshold in unspent bonus SP's while also doing a free-form reset or skill reduction thing in one manner or another. We might also consider a minimum bonus SP pool size, too. 5-10 million sounds reasonable.

This would give new players the ability to see what all the fuss is about with regards to things which would be currently waaaay beyond their abilities on Tranquility while also giving the system some leeway in keeping notes on who attends mass tests and adding additional permanent credits for those who assist either on Sisi or by making good suggestions in the forums or maybe by clearly going above and beyond in storyline events. For the storyline event part, it'd be nice if there were a right-click option on Tranquility so CCP staffers can '+1' the action of a guy and leave a kind of invisible note in his character profile which would be waiting as a bonus on Sisi during the next mirror ... or sooner.

For those players who do not generally choose to assist in various ways but who like to use the test server anyway, reducing their skills could just dump their SP's back into the unspent pool so they can enjoy some flexibility while also not getting as much as those who actively try to help out in various channels. It'd be nice for everyone in general to get some SP's for just logging in at least once per day on Sisi since keeping that training queue active just isn't a real priority. Testers of any sort would get at least a little something, but people who really contribute would get more. As far as I know, there's no established rule which says doing things on Tranquility can't give you some kind of perk on Singularity.

Also, just so it doens't sound like I'm backtracking ... this incentivization for attending tests business is apparently a big deal for a number of people. I think it's silly, but it is what it is for you-know-who-you-are and I thought I'd try to come up with an idea which a person with this attitude might endorse as a thought experiment for myself.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Laendra
Universalis Imperium
Goonswarm Federation
#83 - 2014-07-25 12:16:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Laendra
Another nice little enhancement would be to have a script that we could call to set index levels of a system...


something like:

SET NOL-M9 strat 5
SET NOL-M9 ind 5
SET NOL-M9 mil 5

or
SET NOL-M9 all 5
hellswindstaff
Syndicate Enterprise
Sigma Grindset
#84 - 2014-07-25 16:53:55 UTC  |  Edited by: hellswindstaff
Decarthado Aurgnet wrote:
New twist on old idea: during the mirroring process, give players who do not have a minimum threshold of SP's (say, 60-80 millon or something) the difference between their actual SP's and that threshold in unspent bonus SP's while also doing a free-form reset or skill reduction thing in one manner or another. We might also consider a minimum bonus SP pool size, too. 5-10 million sounds reasonable.

This would give new players the ability to see what all the fuss is about with regards to things which would be currently waaaay beyond their abilities on Tranquility while also giving the system some leeway in keeping notes on who attends mass tests and adding additional permanent credits for those who assist either on Sisi or by making good suggestions in the forums or maybe by clearly going above and beyond in storyline events. For the storyline event part, it'd be nice if there were a right-click option on Tranquility so CCP staffers can '+1' the action of a guy and leave a kind of invisible note in his character profile which would be waiting as a bonus on Sisi during the next mirror ... or sooner.

For those players who do not generally choose to assist in various ways but who like to use the test server anyway, reducing their skills could just dump their SP's back into the unspent pool so they can enjoy some flexibility while also not getting as much as those who actively try to help out in various channels. It'd be nice for everyone in general to get some SP's for just logging in at least once per day on Sisi since keeping that training queue active just isn't a real priority. Testers of any sort would get at least a little something, but people who really contribute would get more. As far as I know, there's no established rule which says doing things on Tranquility can't give you some kind of perk on Singularity.

Also, just so it doens't sound like I'm backtracking ... this incentivization for attending tests business is apparently a big deal for a number of people. I think it's silly, but it is what it is for you-know-who-you-are and I thought I'd try to come up with an idea which a person with this attitude might endorse as a thought experiment for myself.


It might sound silly but tbh nobody would attend mass tests if they was just giiven everything. CCP would end up with 30 guys in a test. Because the general attitude would be "why bother I got free sp" Its not a big deal for us as players it IS a big deal for CCP when they go to stress test something and 9 people show up. And are you saying if I have 155 million sp it should be reduced?! Pretty sure I paid for my 155 million sp over the years.
Darth Behelzebhu
Lair of Demons
#85 - 2014-07-25 21:35:48 UTC
Decarthado Aurgnet wrote:
New twist on old idea: during the mirroring process, give players who do not have a minimum threshold of SP's (say, 60-80 millon or something) the difference between their actual SP's and that threshold in unspent bonus SP's while also doing a free-form reset or skill reduction thing in one manner or another. We might also consider a minimum bonus SP pool size, too. 5-10 million sounds reasonable.


Again, this is excesive, taking everybody to 80mill SP

However, the idea of EVERYBODY getting a little amount of SP at start of every mirror, the 5-10 you said, sound way more reasonable.

Let's say we fix that amount in 5mill, an average calculation is about 1.7mill sp per month that you can train, so this will be the equivalent to 3 months of training, which could give you a nice advantage on making a good training plan for TQ; will allow those that because of timezone can never attend a masstest to have a little preview, while still giving the ones that do the same reward that has been proven efficient for years; also for those persons that come a bit later into the mirrors and see they don't have they recent skills which they wanted to test the ability to put them current, and do their test, hopefulla this also will help reduce the complaints against long mirrors, as 3 months is about their average life, and if a mirror run longer can always be applied a bit more.

Recently you also say that the resseting skills seemed easier, is not; there's already a script or a way to give SP to everybody as they have done it in TQ sometimes when there has been a problem with deployments (i still have about 100k unallocated sp on TQ from last time this happened), so this will also be the simplest solution that will need no extra coding or work to CCP and they can keep their eyes in making the game better instead.
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#86 - 2014-07-25 22:37:16 UTC
I've more or less said resetting skills as a function and then just adding up SP's to be tossed into the unspent amount would be easier than making up whole new sets of commands or new interfaces. What might be done isn't up to me, but I'm also not the one who determines how much time to put into things like this.

It's fine if you don't like what I say, but at least repeat it correctly.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
hellswindstaff
Syndicate Enterprise
Sigma Grindset
#87 - 2014-07-25 23:05:47 UTC
At the end of day free sp = no one helps out in mass tests.....equals 458 bugs going live on TQ
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#88 - 2014-07-26 04:01:57 UTC
I could debate with you all night about that opinon, but I won't. Instead, I'll give you a short personal story which you can interpret however you like and then I'll drop the subject regardless of whatever you may choose to say in return.

At this place of employment, workers are given the option, not the requirement, of working extra hours on the premise that forced overtime is worth less because actual output per worker will be reduced when people don't want to be around for more than the usual shift. Despite the fact that the amount of volunteered overtime is taken into account during annual reviews for each employee, a considerable number of people consciously choose to never work a single hour of overtime while knowing they'll get a severely reduced per-hour raise. Those who work more know they'll get more, especially in the long run, and no amount of coaxing those who do not contribute more has managed to convince them to change their habits. The actual production ability of each of the two types of workers does not seem to be a factor in this difference.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Jake Noble
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#89 - 2014-07-26 06:36:01 UTC
Just want to start by saying i didn't think a lot about this, and its just an option so please Nomad or hate replies about how I'm dumb because your idea is better. thanks

I didn't read a lot of this thread because most of it seems to be a lot of back and forth between the same two people, but an idea would be during the mass tests give everyone max skills or even possibly 0 - Max Million SP where they can pick and choose where they want to inject it, so they can fly and test what they want. This will be an even bigger incentive to log into SISI during mass events. After a few days when the SP from participation is given lower every ones skills back down to original levels but with the addition of the 2m normal SP addition that we get for participating already.

I doubt this will be easy since they would have to log every ones current SP before the mass test on SISI to lower it back down after all is said and done and may be too much work to be a realistic option but

This would give those who want to fly everything or " Test " a few days to get into the ships they would like to test barring what isn't seeded like Titans and supers IMO those should be earned and would prevent the Mass test from becoming Titan blob.. It also allows the industry and logistics side of the community to test new features such as the crius expansion for few days at a time if they don't have the skills to test it normally and then reverting everything back to the normal SISI environment where if you want to test it, you have to have skilled it yourself, but you will get an idea of what is the necessary skills to train once you figure out which skills are the most important for the activity you are interested in since you have had a chance to see them in action maxed out.

A disadvantage to the everyone gets maxed skills is that not everyone is going to want to test with max skills since in a lot of cases some skills are not worth skilling to 5 on TQ and any testing would not give a realistic view of what you will be doing on TQ, so maybe even an option to OPT out of the max SP at any time when its given but preferably just give X amount of SP that will give most players a lot of testing options that they can inject themselves leaving the Tester to pick and choose how he wants to participate for the few days.