EVE General Discussion

Not anymore.

EDIT:


The new player training boost has been gone for a while (believe ever since the learning skills were deleted).

However there is a booster that increases your attributes as a new player and thus gives you a training boost, but it's not by default anymore as it used to be.

Posting my usual skillpoint spiel.
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How does the skillpoint system work?

- All skills cap at level 5. No matter how many years you have played the game, you cannot exceed that limit. And lower tier skills (ex. [Racial] Frigate) are very quick to train relative to more advanced skills.

- (*this is the important one*) Only a limited number of skills affect any one ship, module, weapon system, and specialty at any given time.

Ex1: You are a newbie facing someone with about 20 million SP... but how much of that overall SP is actually combat related? He/she could be a HUGE industrial player with limited combat skills.
Ex2: A veteran player has just trained up the skill Large Hybrid Turret to level 5. That skill in no way affects the skill Small Hybrid Turret and thus the veteran will be no better or worse than before at the frigate level.

- Getting a skill from level 4 to level 5 only adds on an extra 2% here, 5% there (exceptions apply). If you simply train up all the skills within a specialty to level 4 (which takes ~20% of the amount of time it takes to get those skills to level 5), you will find yourself flying at about **80 to 90%** of the effectiveness of a multi-year veteran with those same skills in that specific specialty at level 5.

- Getting a skill to level 5 is supposed to be a painful train. Many players (yes, even veteran ones) opt to avoid doing it and instead train up other skills to level 4 (again, because it's faster).

Example: I personally only have the T2 specilizations for all weapons at level 4. That's puts me at a 2% disadvantage in damage against someone who has the same skill(s) at level 5 (assuming we are both using the same ship with the same fit)... and only gives me a 8% damage advantage against someone who doesn't have the weapon specialization skill.

- Ships and weapons have been balanced against one another.

Ex: A battleship can potentially instapop a frigate... but the frigate can fly very fast, making it difficult for the battleship's weapons to track, especially at very close range... then again, the battleship can deploy drones to deal with the frigate... and the frigate can shoot the drones down... however the battleship might have a Large Energy Neutralizer fitted to nuke the frigate's capacitor power every 24 seconds... in which case the frigate could use a Small Nosferatu that sucks out capacitor from the battleship every 3 seconds... etc. etc.

- High tech equipment (ex. T2, Faction, Officer, etc) will not give a player "I WIN" abilities. It simply gives a player a linear edge at an exponentially higher cost.

Ex1: A basic T1 Adaptive Armor Plating gives ~10% omni-resistance to damage for only ~100 thousand ISK... a T2 Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~15% omni resistance to damage for ~1 million ISK... a "deadpsace" Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~19% omni resistance to damage for ~15 to 20 million ISK.

Ex2: A group of three or four T1-fit frigates that cost about 500 thousand to 1 million ISK CAN kill a faction frigate worth about 50 to 100 million ISK... provided they are using the right mods in the right configuration and know what they are doing.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39793460/ (Condors caught me and ground me down... I only had time to kill one of them)
https://zkillboard.com/kill/38239838/ (all the Breechers in this KM were T1 fit... I could only kill two of them before being nuked)


What does this all mean?

- Having more skillpoints is not the "end all, be all" point of the game and there is more to most activities than just "open window, click, press F1- F9."
There are a plethora of factors that can decide success or failure and many of them are purely abstract in nature (see: planning, meta-gaming, friends, short-term allies, making deals, psychological warfare, etc).

- part of the idea behind the current SP system is that you can't "powergrind" to success. You MUST learn how to utilize what you have first... which requires you to use your head and be creative. This helps you later on when you can finally use "better" ships/equipment... because you have hopefully familiarized yourself with the underlying mechanics that most Tech 1 ships/equipment utilize.
Example: While you may not be able to pilot that sexy Interceptor right away it is certainly possible to slap together a super fast ship that does something similar... allowing you to experience what it is like to fly one.

- once you have your "universal" core and support skills near or at maximum (which takes about 2 or 3 months of mostly focused training) the gap between you and an older player begins to narrow quite significantly.

- Just because you are limited in what you can do (as a newbie) it does not mean that your contribution to a team is meaningless and/or without weight. Being a "tackler" in PvP might indeed be suicide if you have limited skills and knowledge... but even half-success can mean the difference between catching or losing a target... or everyone escaping or dying in a fire.

F

Too bad that doesnt mean they train faster.


That means they train quicker. Both skills have the same SP/h (given we talk about same attributes etc) and thus train as fast.

A skill will take the same amount of time to train, no matter how old a character is.

So character age has nothing in advance on how quickly you train something.

My advice on training:

Pick a skill plan to get into a specific ship. Wait a few months until you can finally fly it and start to see the fruits of months of labor. As soon as you start to enjoy your plan being complete, notice your corp mate flying a completely different ship that you now think is awesome. Instantly regret the last few months of your training.

Rinse and repeat forever.

That is how real players play.

But less sarcastically, this is as dumb as saying "hey, let's buy SPs for PLEX"

You can make 100 pairs of leather boots to up your skills once you are done killing 15 pirates and bringing back their underwear.

(I still hate Blizzard for not letting us skin humans)