Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey everyone,

I've been playing for nearly two years now, but on many occasions I still feel relatively like a newbro in terms of my ability to do what I'd like to do. Especially for PVP, I wish I had a little more room for error as a new starting player. You may recognise the problem too. You want to fly something that you like, but you're not effective because the whole process of skilling up is pretty hard for new players.

Since CCP is trying to improve the New Player Experience, I was asking myself why we're not able as new players, to reroll a character's skillpoints within a certain timeframe or other constraint. Why can't we learn by making mistakes, and then after we get used to the game a little, make it possible to rectify some of our newbie mistakes without needing another 5 months to get it all sorted.

To this end, I want to propose and/or discuss the following idea:

1. Make it possible for a new player to remap their skillpoints once per account to rectify mistakes that have been made.
2. Limit the maximum amount of remappable skillpoints to X. (I recommend 5.000.000 skillpoints or similar)
3. Require an active subscription for at least Y months.
4. A remap would not work for transferred characters.

Now, why would this be an interesting idea?
It would take away the big gap for new players between other people, and allow the newbro's to make mistakes without directly feeling the consequences. As it is a one-time thing, they will need to decide consciously that this is something they want to do. As an advantage, I expect it to be more easy to have people retain interest in the game and not get stuck in one playstyle that may not be enjoyable to them at the start of the game.

Now my question for you is:

How would you feel if this would be a potential feature, and what would you like to see different if you have any other suggestions related to this?

Perhaps people will not like it for now.
However, I truly believe from my own experience as well as newbro's that I've spoken to that the barrier to keep playing is very high, especially because of the complexity of skill training. An absolute newbie will not have a full and deep understanding on day one. Rather than telling them only to go research, I think it's beneficial to the newbro to have a little (and limited) safety net for their first X weeks of playtime, on one character only, so they can get better acquainted with the game.

There is no such thing as "wasted skillpoints." Merely skillpoints that you are not utilizing at the moment.


Example: when I was young I trained up MINING skills. I was pretty good at it and had a decent skillplan incorporating mining with PvP skills.
Then one day I realized that I really do not like mining in any serious way and did not want those skills to be on my PvP character. So I abandoned the skillplan and focused purely on PvP.

Fast forward a few years... I have near perfect subcapital PvP skills... but the mining skills remain... a remnant of a different stage in my evolution in EVE.
Then mining barges were changed/buffed. I took a look at them... and I saw the Procurer.
If ever there was a bait ship, that was it. Tanky, could fit full tackle, everyone underestimated it, and it also had the capacity to kill "small threats."
I got 3.
Now I sometimes sit in a low-sec belt... mining... using those same skills that I had abandoned because I hated them and found little use for (at that time).

tldr; you never know when you will eventually come full circle and work on those skills that you made "mistakes" with. And you made those "mistakes" for a reason; you thought those skills could help you in some way.
Guess what... they still can!

No thanks

The underlined part is merely a perception bordering on myth.

Allow me to post my usual speil regarding the skillpoint system (if you want the tldr; go to the last point).


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 have the T2 weapon specializations at level 4. That 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)


- Ships and weapons have been balanced against one another.

Example: 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 Armor Adaptive 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)
http://ifw.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=27040341 (about ~20 Thrashers (T1 Destroyer) warped on top of my groups' 7-man Confessor (T3 Destroyer) gang... we eventually killed all the Thrashers, but not before losing 3 Confessors. While my group may have won, we lost WAY more ISK than the Thrasher gang did).


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 "get enough skillpoints, 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 share with Tech 2/3 and Faction ships/equipment.
Example: you may not be able to pilot that sexy Interceptor right away... but that doesn't mean you can't slap together a super fast frigate that does something similar.

- Once you have your "universal" core and support skills near or at maximum (which takes about 2 or 3 months of semi-focused training) the gap between you and an older player begins to narrow quite significantly. You can find these skills in the "Engineering" section of your character skillsheet.

- 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" or cheapo Ewar-support 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... everyone escaping a bad situation or dying in a fire.

What I would ask you then, Shah, is how you would help alleviate the potentially daunting start even for people who love the idea of the game? Do you feel there are ways to improve those situations, and perhaps put more emphasis on something?

Do you even know where you are? Do you understand what game this is? Do you have the slightest flickering clue?

I am very aware of where I am. With two years of playtime, I do very much realise the points people mention here.
What I am trying to look into is to make the learning process a little more gradually, to the point where it's not a big cliff to climb right away, but feels like it's more accessible while retaining the level of difficulty. Perception is everything.

As there is now a stickied thread made especially for discussing this and similar subjects, this thread gets a lock.

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