Skill Discussions

The attrition rate of players is so high that CCP, despite having made that grand announcement about them a few years ago, simply don't feel the need to introduce more of them for the minority that has stuck with the game that long.....We're basically already considered a solid user base that sticks with the game no matter what, but I can tell you many have left the game.


When I started, there were about 30 000 EVE accounts, with 3000~5000 logged into the game depending on the day and time, but usually the highest numbers are on weekends, now supposedly we have 500 000 accounts( more than 15x the original amount) and struggle to hit 40 000 players actually logged in....Many just log in, change skill and log right out.


I've tried all T3 cruisers, and they're about as good as T2 command ships in both tanking and damage output, so a T3 battle cruiser might be as good as a T2 marauder and heaven forbid what a T3 Battleship would be damage and tanking wise...In any case, the argument would start again that some will be able to train the skills right away, and others would have to wait to get the pre requirements done, so the old farts get to enjoy the new toy with it's higher capabilities and the younger ones wait, even if they have the money to buy them.


This is eve boards and there's about 72 000 user accounts in total( 1000 entries per page and 72 pages) and granted not everyone is signed up there to keep their skills a secret,but the funny thing I see there is that there are only 140 people at 200 000 skill points or above and pretty much all of those are from 2003, but there used to be 30 000 accounts in 2003...Yup, a lot of people have left from the first generation of 2003, or are really anal to keep them a secret which is baffling since a lot of them have a lot of skills at lvl 5 anyhow and can't take it any higher.

http://eveboard.com/fullranks/1-skillpoints/p1/

I kinda like you, actually. you're like the magic 8 ball of player opinion. CCP should hire you full-time as a consultant.

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something about you seems off. what you're saying is that official, public policy is the only thing you'll agree with. that makes you a blind supporter, which is something you'd only expect from an employee of a company. I'm wondering whose alt you are, and I'm starting with a particular alliance to see if your born date coincides with any of the characters in that alliance.

...found it. I saved time by starting with a short list of likely suspects.

your post from earlier in this thread sounds very different in this context. that you are a plant. owned by none other than...

well, i'll leave that up to the opinion of anyone who bothers to go looking like I did.



"I'm hiding among the players, and you can't tell me apart from one. I have just as much credibility as any one of them" ...not anymore.

now back to my chart to breathe new life into this thread

wait, that sounds like what happened (and I recall, I trained all learning skills fully), but why is left to interpretation... reducing the SP rift?

Untrue in current iteration for the logistics ships. Each has as a primary requirement racial cruiser 5 and logistics 1, which means you can't fly them without cruiser 5.

part of the package deal of T2 ships is the requirement to train the prior hull class to 5, in return you get a nice L5 bonus and bonuses on top of that from the specialized skill, much like how T1 gun skills apply to t2 guns

OP, first off salutations for training twelve mains. Your commitment to Eve deserves that at the very least.

My tuppenceworth:

Eve is a very visual game. To that end (and PvP apart where such information is useful if not vital) I as a noob remember caring not a jot about how another player's ship was fitted; only that they could fly it at all. To this day I remember a friendly pilot undocking his Moros in Beke and me gawping at the size of it, thinking "one day.."

Seven years later this char can fit, fly and owns a Moros. The satisfaction I get from knowing I've the support skills and pointy power to make it a properly beastly ship means a great deal, but that I had to wait so long to even fly one at all means even more. To me, Eve is about that sense of achievement, through careful planning and patience.

OK yes, it's a cap ship and not the best example. But the first ship I lusted for was the Ishtar. So consumed was I in desire for that boat, that I bought a shedload of PLEX for cash and bought this char because he could already fly one well enough to run L4 missions and later 8/10 plexes in null..

Do you see where I'm going here? Eve needs to retain pilot aspiration because it equals continued income. For most pilots under two years, that aspiration comes in the form of skilling for a particular, scrumptious ship to fly; support skills at level 4 are enough. Ships should be and always will be the primary skilling goal.

As I look back over 7 years of playing Eve, I can honestly say my skilling progression has been enjoyable. Weeks or even months punctuated by many moments of "YESSS! AT LAST!" as I've brought another racial ship type into my pilot's log and hangar.

Those moments of satisfaction represent patience and persistence. Eve rewards them. Often, sadly, real life doesn't though we dream that it should...

Take a more esoteric view, eh?

EVE's longevity is due in large part to how the skill system works, there's always a carrot at the end of some longer stick. There should be.

The reason all online subscription gaming have these gates/locks/thresholds is to always gove the player something to desire that only time doing something can grant them. Virtually all of the ships that requires V's in one or more skills to even sit in are specialty ships based on purpose, faction, fleet role, whatever.

Skill reqs have gotten easier imho, and player expectations and money reqs have gotten harder, even with PLEX. The game says I need ~40d to sit in a Scimitar. Any decent incursion fleet in New Eden says I need maybe another 90d to fly it properly according to what they expect out of a solo shield rep Scimitar pilot. CCP, btw, has nothing to do with the massive time difference between "can sit in it" and "can have API key verified and invited to fleet with it."

The only people who are "hurt" by requiring V's for specialty/advanced ships are the folks with the BPOs for those ships and their fittings, since allowing PLEX'd n00bs more freedom to build, fit and undock them would seriously crank up demand, what with all the debris and wreckage that would be floating around Jita.

Is that it? You have a bunch of specialty/advanced hull BPOs and are trying to whip up demand for your wares? Seems to me to be the only upside of making it even easier to sit is serious hulls without proper skills.

lol. guys don't get stuck on possible motivations of mine. I'm only asking because it doesn't make sense. I'm not a builder, but yes, more demand is something that would result from more participation.

I'm not asking for me or anyone I know, I promise. I have all the SP I need. I'm bringing this up because it strikes me as a difficulty spike with no solution other than time. trust me, I'm on the winning end of this situation.


hey that's one of my points.

Your point is a moving target. It started off as why are there skill bonuses per level for skills that must be 5 minimum, then meandered into "we should examine it because if we don't examine it we are thralls to CCP" and I am not sure what the point is now.

If the point is that a Scimitar (using one specialty ship/role just as example) should be unlocked with Minmatar Cruiser I and Logistics I, with Logistics I being unlocked with Long Range Targeting I and Signature Analysis I, then I restate more clearly and directly my earlier disagreement.

Specialty/advanced ships should require some sort of commitment other than ISK. In EVE, commitment is the opportunity cost of skilling one or more things to V to the exclusion of skilling a bunch of stuff to I-IV. It also presents the "should I make alts to cover all the skill bases, or do I grind away forever on this one character" choice.

You can fly a lot of stuff without Vs in anything. Maybe not T2'd, but undocked and underway. All that stuff can be played while waiting for the next milestone in the skill queue. I mean for real, you can undock a fitted faction battleship on your 4th day of playing. Granted, it will be the SS Gimp, but it'll be undocked and floating in space.

Why the angst on having the "V-lock" on specialty ships?

But time is one of EVE's primary opportunity costs. You can get around some of the time sinks with alts and PLEX, but some stuff, like specialty ships that requires Vs in various skills, or 5.00+ faction with an empire to do an epic arc, or how long mining takes no matter how awesome your mining skills are, etc....that stuff says nope, you're going to invest time and that's that. One way or the other, if you want to do it all in EVE, you're going to invest time to do so. That said, there's not much that a specialty ship can do that a lesser ship with far less time commitment can do, the specialty ship just does it better and requires an "all or nothing" commitment the lesser ship doesn't.

You want to be a shield repper, a Scythe lets you do it on your first day in EVE. Look at the bonuses on a Scythe, and there's a case to be made that you don't even need a Scimitar unless you are truly interested in specializing in cap stable, solo shield repping to the max amount possible. On your way to Long Range Targeting V, Signature Analysis V, and Minnie Cruiser V, that Scythe is functioning exactly as the incremental upgrade you describe for the specialty ship. Essentially, you end up incrementally maxing the T1 version, and with an extra skillbook or two once the T1 is maxed, you get an extra bonus here and there.

Pick any ship out there, and it has a lesser, easier to get in and fly, incrementally improved lesser version. So uhm...it seems like your original requirement is already satisfied in the game, you just have to pay for another hull and better gear once the training is done.

Guess maybe I am not seeing the problem, per the original post and initial comments.