Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In what way are those points you invested into Exhumers preventing you from learning Torpedo Skills now? At the time you profited from having Exhumers 5 so those points were not wasted, that you are not using them now is irrelevant.

Given the removal of Clone Grades there is less reason than ever to allow remapping, as you are not punished by increasing clone costs for increased skillpoints.

I have seen many threads on this idea over the years and every reason for has boiled down to nothing more than "I want it", which in my opinion is far from a compelling argument

You fail to answer the question, in what way does Exhumers 5 prevent you from learning Torpedo Specialisation? You also failed to address that you profited from having Exhumers 5.

I didn't deny that "I want it" is a powerful force, I do deny that it constitutes a reason to fundamentally alter and invalidate the whole Skill Training system.

Again you beg the question.

You are able to learn any skill in the game, since the Clone changes you are no longer penalised for growing your skill base. Skills you have learned in the past do no harm, and have in most cases benefitted you, whether you use them now or not. Should you be too impatient to learn a new skillset on your current character the Character Bazaar exists to exchange PLEX for a character more to your liking.

Skill remaps are a solution in search of a problem, they dilute the variation of characters in favour of a FOTM blandness. They destroy the rewards of Specialisation by enabling anyone to specialise for anything, at will, instantly. They also favour older and wealthier players vastly over new players. Like all others before you your argument is I want it because I want it.

"Effective and Efficient" is nothing more than code for I want it, and I want it now, and next month, if I want something else, then I am entitled to have it, because I want it.

You have demonstrated no need for this service, it offers no value other than to pander to the Instant Gratification and FOTM Chaser crowd, neither of which are in need of pandering to.

Not serious at all, this is called debate, where you defend your idea from criticism. You don't get to tell me to shut up and let you push a position that I believe is detrimental to the game because you don't want to defend that position.

Incidentally, the definition of dialogue isn't you talk and everyone agrees with you.

There is every difference in the world between the Character Bazaar and Skill remaps, though the end result may look the same to you.

A Character bought on the Character Bazaar has been trained under the same ruleset as every other character in the game. It is a seperate entity to your current character, when you buy it there remain 2 characters with different skillsets. To use your example, both your Perfect Miner and Perfect Golem Pilot still exist after the transaction.

Under Skill Respecs, 1 character potentially has every skillset. A Perfect Miner one day, a Perfect Golem pilot the next, a Stealth Bomber FW pilot the day after, etcetera.

I get that you feel that you wasted your time training Exhumers, I just don't share that opinion. You used those skills, you profited from those skills, therefore they were not wasted.

I currently have close to 50million Skillpoints, of which I use maybe 20million on an everyday basis. I am currently training toward Recons and then Black Ops, toward which 30miilion unused Skillpoints would go a long way. I stand to benefit a lot more from a Skill Respec than a 6month old character, yet I still oppose them.

Because those 30million or so Skillpoints that I don't use are not useless to me, I can get into any Frigate or Destroyer in the game and be confident that while my personal skills may not be up to the task, my character skills are.

That includes Mining Frigates by the way, and the only mining I have ever done was for the Tutorials.

1 Character is not identical to 2 characters, no matter how much you want it to be.

As far as I can see, you are advocating not only trading your lovely characters uniqness(sic) and experience by arguing for remaps, but throwing them out altogether.

You would go from being "Tiddle Jr, former Miner turned Golem Pilot" to "Identical Perfect Golem Pilot #15423, until next week when I get bored"

Following your logic i could start buying every week a barand new character. Based on my weekly desire.

The prevailing sentiment in this thread (and elsewhere) is to prevent instant gratification. I entirely fail to understand why this is seen as compatible with the abomination that is the character bazaar. Is there anything more instantly gratifying than throwing a few hundred dollars in PLEX at a character that has the skill set you want?

"But, someone had to train that character for real over the past few years, it's more real than bought SP"
* irrelevant from the PoV of the buying player.
"But, you have to accept deficiencies like a crappy name or infamy or an only partially decent skill set"
* yes. hence me calling the bazaar an abomination: the player's spending metric tons of RL money, and still getting rubbish.
"But, what about all the people that are currently invested in the character bazaar?"
* I've no sympathy for people that make money off bad systems.

Now, I'm no proponent of a system that allows you to directly and instantly convert PLEX (or aurum, whichever of the two we'll still have in a few years' time). But the ability to accelerate a training queue makes vastly more sense in a non-instant-gratifying way than the character bazaar ever will. Essentially, we already have this in additional training queues (at the same cost of 1PLEX / 30 days), but in this case, you'd pay a PLEX for 30 days of accelerated training. Whether this should be a 100% speed increase, or somewhat less, can be debated. In my humble opinion here, 100% is not unreasonable, since the two competing options have additional benefits of their own:
* an alt character on a separate account has the ability to be logged in simultaneously;
* an alt character on the same account has the ability to be converted into an alt character on a separate account.
Items like the cerebral accelerator can be converted into consumables that grant a certain period of "accelerated training" as well.
Also, I'm sure CCP can manage to find a way to tie this ability into the lore surrounding new Drifter-derived tech (like what they're doing with the Entosis link).

Similarly, skill remaps also seem to go against the anti-instant-gratification mood. But lets face it, we all have our OCD moments, and I fail to see any reason why people shouldn't be able to dump (parts of) a skill (lets say for argument's sake "no refunds at all"). The only thing that needs checking is if the skill is a prerequisite for another skill the character currently has. If so, the skill can't be reduced below the level that still matches the prerequisite (this includes skills that the character doesn't actually already have at necessary prerequisite levels, due to skill tree changes). If the skill is reduced to 0 SP, it gets eliminated from the stat sheet (no skill book refund).

Now, combine above two systems into skill remapping functionality that doesn't involve instant gratification: refunds don't directly involve SP, but instead give you additional "accelerated training" time. Whether this is at a 1-for-1 ratio or less, whether this should be at an additional cost, can be debated. Here too, in-universe justification can be found: the untrained skill points could be seen as a "clearing of the mind" or as an area of "pre-formatted brain" which accepts new training more readily (but not instantly).

This system would probably greatly benefit from an uniform training speed (i.e. one decoupled from the attributes of the skill being trained), to avoid gaming the system (and to avoid effort being spend to prevent gaming of the system). Some effort should be spend on examining possible alternate effects for attributes, but if nothing elegant presents itself, just eliminate them outright already (and the attribute-only-affecting implants with them). As a side effect, you'll finally be able to swap clones without having to pause your training queue!

tl;dr
* implement the ability to accelerate the training queue for a certain period (similar interface as additional training queues).
* implement skill untraining that either provides no refund, or is refunded in accelerated training queue time.
* decouple attributes from skill training speed (and drop them completely if no alternate use is found).
* never (ab)use the viability of the character bazaar as an excuse not to do any of the above 3 things.

It's probably been suggested before but giving everyone a flat attribute distribution such as 27 in everything and getting rid of Remapping alltogether would go a long way to fix the current issues.

Implants would remain usefull, so it won't please those who advocate attribute implants removal but it's a step in the right direction (like the unlimited skill queue).

Hmm Hmm hey mom maybe you stop bothrring to resd this thread ?

I've never understood the mantra of 'no pay to win', when today you can at this very moment buy PLEX with cash and buy any ingame item, or even fully skilled toons from the character bazaar. Today. Already.

Now with regard to neural remapping. A neural remap change does not grant actual skill points, it reduces (or increases) potential training rates. Potential, as in 'will accumulate', not existing skill points cha-ching. So again, my confusion at peoples resistance to paying for neural remaps chanting the 'no pay to win' mantra, when a remap itself doesn't grant actual skillpoints -- the person still needs to grind their acquisition.

In short, the issue of neural remaps is not substantively a 'pay to win' discussion, furthermore so if said remaps can be funded by ingame ISK-to-PLEX and not just Cash-to-Aurum.

tldr;
Calm the frack down, and make it so.

F