EVE General Discussion

Oh and to clarify my position.

I think the attribute allocation/remap system is unnecessary baggage that adds nothing to the game, and encourages rookies to delay training essential skills for them to function in combat *right now* because they are remapped away from them.

I think that destructible implants which speed up training of certain classes of skills, and that offer a wide variety of risk vs reward options (dirt cheap +1s, fairly priced +3s, legitimately expensive +5s) add to the game. However, the present implementation provides a significant incentive to stay in areas of space where you are unlikely to lose pods (i.e. low and high).

I don't have the solution overall.

Just because you want them does not mean you need them. I want to fly my megathron in every fleet I enter and that requires rather expensive implants. Both of us are making a choice.

The problem with learning implants is that they don't contribute to in game activities. Having them active means you are less likely to be doing something else which other people can interact with. So when I'm in my +5 learning I'm not in my snakes, or industry, or whatever else.

Encouraging people into learning clones rather than 'interacting' clones is bad game design.

Attributes themselves aren't especially relevant.

But removing implants is just not a good idea. They are a big aspect of risk vs reward, the more you have in your head the more you stand to benefit, but the more you might lose.

Implants should stay, that shouldn't even be in question.

I enjoy the planning aspects of attributes and learning bonuses from implants, and they are major factors in character development which already is pretty shallow area in this game.

I've never seen any good reasoning for their removal and can't support this direction.

If you think newbies need some help, make better tutorials and monthly remaps for the first year.

Please don't dumb down the gameplay.

It seems like CCP is once again at dumbing down the game. It is their game so I do not argue their right or ability to do so. I do question their motive and execution.

I wonder if CCP has an educator or a corporate trainer on staff? I know at one time they did employ an economist to help them keep their in game economy on the right track. Perhaps a great deal of the difficult learning curve of EVE could be resolved if experienced educators or trainers instead of talented game designers and programmers took a shot at revamping tutorials and perhaps made some online tutorials to supplement game play for newbies.

Getting the hang of how to fit your ship is never really explained anywhere in game that I have found, and that is pretty darn important. So taking out stuff to make the game more accessible to newer players might not be the best idea.

Perhaps a better more effective way to teach and indoctrinate new players in the ways of New Eden is what is required.

So I say before you strip away anymore of the game we like, try seeing if you can make what you already have more accessible and user friendly.

Then again, it's really a matter of perspective- SP isn't valuable per se, and training time without implants is normal, plugging them in simply increases it.

The problem is choice, or the removal thereof. I don't care about pod value.

This isn't about "streamlining" anymore, this is becoming "lets remove choices that may have consequences because players told us they don't like consequences". Some people choose to train fast, others choose to train slightly slower but at a lower cost per pod loss. Again others might go for pirate implants because that suits what they're doing at that moment. EVE is about making choices, pro active ones, to adapt and overcome the situation at hand.

See, the logic of "well doesn't every want to train fast, we mighty as well make it baseline" is of course something most people will agree to for their own personal benefit, not because it's good for the game or fitting for the game. If you'd ask people "would you want to start new characters with 100 bil isk" you'd probably get the same percentage of positive answers as you get to this change. That's how much value you should put on test groups like that: none at all.

On top of that, the logic of "lets remove them because everyone wants to use them anyway" can also easily apply to Slave implants. everyone wants to have those, might as well remove them and make it baseline. Everyone wants to scan faster, might as well make it baseline. Everyone wants snakes, might as well make them baseline. It's such a terrible logic it's beyond words.



Removing learning skills made good sense, they were terrible in a "you won't be playing the game for the first 2 months" and while technically they were of course choices realistically they were not, at some point you'd "choose" to train them resulting in zero "useful SP gain". No learning skills = good luck with that. Medical clone removal was logical, they didn't give one any sort of choice that would benefit players in different ways. No medical clone upgrade = good luck with that. Learning implants are not in that same realm, they ARE choices. One of many actually, all competing for the same slots and that is a GOOD thing because it forces the player to make intelligent decisions based on his situation, which can have consequences. Even more so with the ease of jump clones there literally is no valid reason other than "many players told us they don't like to have to make choices".


I can see various reasons why one would want to ponder on removing learning skills:

- make missions, a main source for learning implants, less important and worthwhile. Easily solved by making implants drop from exploration, there's already precedents for this
- open up those implant slots for funky other options. Making more and funky implants does not somehow mean that others need to be removed, it just means players have more options. More options = good, less options = bad
- players are non-effort, lazy and really don't like how there's risk or planning involved in things. I doubt this will need explanation

It's the same argument, you didn't have to do the learning skills, sure would be silly long term if you didn't get them trained but no one forced you. Same with the attribute implants. Not to mention the attribute implants were added to make up for the bad learning skill mechanic in the first place.

Up until recently high grade implants were +3 not +4. That 3SP/m would total to 11m SP for the 7 years I have had +5's plugged in.

The learning implants are hardly engaging though.
More people would no doubt be using entire low/mid grade pirate sets instead for the stats.
Myself amongst them.