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Skill injection changes, goal based learning and the training queue
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Silvia Nova
Submarines in Space
#1 - 2015-04-25 21:13:52 UTC
o/

I suggest changing all skill books to no longer require skills to inject them. The requirements should only apply to skilling, not injecting. This way you could (as an example) already add specializations to the queue as long as the other required skills will be done first.

It can also enable some interesting new features like 'goal based learning'. Let's say you are a new player or want to skill a new toon. You have an idea of what you want to do, like: 'I want my toon to be a hauler and fly a freighter' or 'I want to enhance the performance of my Merlin'. Now you have to start figuring out which skills you need, which ones to buy, in which order to train them and so on. I find this rather complicated. ISIS and the ship mastery UI surely help but they could be approved upon. They could provide a right click option 'skill this ship' or 'enqueue this mastery level'. If skills are missing the game could just hand you a shopping list. Buy all the required books, inject them, click the button, done. You just have to wait now. This can also be applied to other non-ship oriented activities like, trade, industry or planetary interaction.
I know there are external tools to help you plan out stuff like that but I think that ingame means can assist you much quicker and much more directly than any external tool ever will.

Additionally the skill queue could get a new button 'optimize', sorting by remaining training time. This gives you the most skill-ups in the shortest time possible. I have seen many new players creating awkward training queues (like level 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 instead of 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4) making them feel blocked in progress just because they don't know how to operate their skill queue efficiently.
Iain Cariaba
#2 - 2015-04-25 22:47:58 UTC
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue, for every skill in the queue. The current system of checking for prereqs when you inject is simply, well, simpler for the game.

Secondly, your request for an in game system to plan queues, instead of the third party applications, is doing nothing more than asking those players who donated their time and energy into coding those applications to throw it all away.

Lastly, whether you train 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4; or any other combination, your total train time will be identical for a given attribute set. The order in which you sort them is a matter of preference, not a matter of efficiency.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#3 - 2015-04-25 23:29:00 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue, for every skill in the queue. The current system of checking for prereqs when you inject is simply, well, simpler for the game.

Secondly, your request for an in game system to plan queues, instead of the third party applications, is doing nothing more than asking those players who donated their time and energy into coding those applications to throw it all away.

Lastly, whether you train 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4; or any other combination, your total train time will be identical for a given attribute set. The order in which you sort them is a matter of preference, not a matter of efficiency.


Agreed. As for optimization if you have a goal in mind the only place for optimization to occur is with your attributes and how you remap them. Maybe if there were no constraints on the Devs time this could be something interesting as it stands I agree with the previous poster.

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Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#4 - 2015-04-26 14:17:53 UTC
In a general sense I am against this change.
Think of it this way the skill you want to inject is a square peg, the hole you are trying to inject it into is round.
Training the pre-reqs is like taking a file and making that round hole square so the square peg will fit.

Besides that a little creative planning aided immensely but the higher limits of the current skill que and this whole thing becomes a non-issue.

On the other hand, if CCP chooses to make this change I would not complain about it.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#5 - 2015-04-26 14:27:47 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue, for every skill in the queue. The current system of checking for prereqs when you inject is simply, well, simpler for the game.

Secondly, your request for an in game system to plan queues, instead of the third party applications, is doing nothing more than asking those players who donated their time and energy into coding those applications to throw it all away.

Lastly, whether you train 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4; or any other combination, your total train time will be identical for a given attribute set. The order in which you sort them is a matter of preference, not a matter of efficiency.


Good game design should look at things like Evemon or EFT and take it as a challenge to fill the demand signal with a better, in-game solution.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Xe'Cara'eos
A Big Enough Lever
#6 - 2015-04-26 17:46:12 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue, for every skill in the queue. The current system of checking for prereqs when you inject is simply, well, simpler for the game.

Secondly, your request for an in game system to plan queues, instead of the third party applications, is doing nothing more than asking those players who donated their time and energy into coding those applications to throw it all away.

Lastly, whether you train 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,1,2,3,4; 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4; or any other combination, your total train time will be identical for a given attribute set. The order in which you sort them is a matter of preference, not a matter of efficiency.


I would disagree,
if you train skills 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 - you get 1 skill bonus in 2 mins, the next in 10 mins, the next in 2 hrs, the next in a day, the next in 2 mins .... etc
if you train skills 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4, you get 1 skill bonus in 2 mins, the next in 2 mins, the next in 2 mins, the next in 10 mins, the next in 10 mins ... etc
if you skill shorter skills first, you get the bonuses quicker, and are thus more tanky/ganky/zippy/whatever, and can thus more effective at what you do. Therefore that is a more efficient use of the skill queue.
If you happen to decide that getting gall frig to IV before you even start upgrading your guns is more important because of the wide variety of bonuses it gives.... well, that's your call, and the whole thing moves into a grey area.

For posting an idea into F&I: come up with idea, try and think how people could abuse this, try to fix your idea - loop the process until you can't see how it could be abused, then post to the forums to let us figure out how to abuse it..... If your idea can be abused, it [u]WILL[/u] be.
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#7 - 2015-04-26 20:49:27 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue,


No, it would just have to do the check when you are attempting to train a skill to level 1. The programming aspect of that isn't hard. And unless everyone starts spamming their skill queues at the same time, it shouldn't be a server load issue either.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.
Iain Cariaba
#8 - 2015-04-26 22:40:19 UTC
Hopelesshobo wrote:
Iain Cariaba wrote:
No.

As it currently sits, the checks on skills are only made when you try to inject the skill. With your idea, the checks would have to be made every time you adjust your queue,


No, it would just have to do the check when you are attempting to train a skill to level 1. The programming aspect of that isn't hard. And unless everyone starts spamming their skilt be a server load issue either.

Yes, but it would have to check every level one skill in your queue, every time you changed the queue.

Let's take the skill "Large Artillery Specialization." This skill requires the following to inject.
Sharpshooter 5
Large projectile turret 5
Gunnery 5
Medium projectile turret 3
Small projectile turret 3

The skill "Sharpshooter" requires Gunnery 5.

So, with the ability to inject Large Artillery Specialization without its prerequisites being met, the server would have to check that you have them all in your queue every single time you make any adjustments to your queue, because you will have the ability to remove needed prerequisites from the queue before the skill they are needed for is trained. In the above example, you would have the ability to pull a prerequisite required to train two of the skills to level 1.
Cade Windstalker
#9 - 2015-04-26 22:41:13 UTC
The problem with this, as I understand it, is that the way the skill queue works at present relies on this initial injection check. If you have a skill it's assumed that you can train it.

Also this completely removes the need to move skill books around. Just jump clone to a school station, buy up all the books you need and inject them, then jump out the next day.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#10 - 2015-04-27 00:02:03 UTC
Hopelesshobo wrote:

No, it would just have to do the check when you are attempting to train a skill to level 1. The programming aspect of that isn't hard. And unless everyone starts spamming their skill queues at the same time, it shouldn't be a server load issue either.

This breaks certain changes CCP made recently to skill pre reqs however. Where they said if a skill was injected already you could train it. Since you had met the pre-reqs at some point in time.
You are proposing changing that so a change in Pre-Reqs can actually lock someone back out of a skill.

What would be a better approach is allow 'ghost' injecting in the skill queue. So if you are at a location with the skill book in cargo when it comes up in the training queue, then it injects that skill book without you needing to manually do it.
This them means you have to pay attention to geography, i.e. where you left the skill book, or carry it with you in cargo hold, isk at risk in space. But achieves the uninterrupted training without forcing you to put some other skill you don't want right now but might later in to take the time up.
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#11 - 2015-04-27 02:55:32 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:

Yes, but it would have to check every level one skill in your queue, every time you changed the queue.

Let's take the skill "Large Artillery Specialization." This skill requires the following to inject.
Sharpshooter 5
Large projectile turret 5
Gunnery 5
Medium projectile turret 3
Small projectile turret 3

The skill "Sharpshooter" requires Gunnery 5.

So, with the ability to inject Large Artillery Specialization without its prerequisites being met, the server would have to check that you have them all in your queue every single time you make any adjustments to your queue, because you will have the ability to remove needed prerequisites from the queue before the skill they are needed for is trained. In the above example, you would have the ability to pull a prerequisite required to train two of the skills to level 1.


And how often are you changing your skill queue and actually hitting apply? I mean your client itself can do the check when you are building the queue and then have it submit the request to the server when you hit apply for the final verification.

Nevyn Auscent wrote:

This breaks certain changes CCP made recently to skill pre reqs however. Where they said if a skill was injected already you could train it. Since you had met the pre-reqs at some point in time.
You are proposing changing that so a change in Pre-Reqs can actually lock someone back out of a skill.

What would be a better approach is allow 'ghost' injecting in the skill queue. So if you are at a location with the skill book in cargo when it comes up in the training queue, then it injects that skill book without you needing to manually do it.
This them means you have to pay attention to geography, i.e. where you left the skill book, or carry it with you in cargo hold, isk at risk in space. But achieves the uninterrupted training without forcing you to put some other skill you don't want right now but might later in to take the time up.


It wouldn't be the first time that CCP has changed their stance on something they have previously stated. But they could even make it where once you have 1 SP in a skill, it doesn't do the check anymore. But anyways, my stance on the OP isn't really of support or being against it, I'm just playing devils advocate to the people saying that this just wouldn't work.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.
Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#12 - 2015-04-27 06:24:56 UTC
Hopelesshobo wrote:

And how often are you changing your skill queue and actually hitting apply? I mean your client itself can do the check when you are building the queue and then have it submit the request to the server when you hit apply for the final verification.

If it causes serverload and can be used offensively to cause Tidi or lag, you can rest assured that people like CFC will undoubtedly do just this to gain advantages in battle. They already do it with launching/recalling drones repeatedly or jumping big fleets in and out of systems.

That aside, no. The current system requires you to transport skills to your preferred destination and you can lose them on the way. You also have to potentially fly around to get new skills which moves you out of station into space where you other players can engage you. Such a change would remove all that completely.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.
Amarisen Gream
The.Kin.of.Jupiter
#13 - 2015-04-27 07:24:10 UTC
I am all for a change to the skill book system.
It like much of this game is old and outdated.

Lore states that they have FTL communication. Basic skills should be at least buy able from the skill planner.
More advanced or skills that drop only from NPCs should be limited to markets.
Plus I am all for sorting options in the skill planner - if CCP won't do it -then hopefully a third party dev will -then at least we can import the skill plan after this update.

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Dustpuppy
New Eden Ferengi
#14 - 2015-04-27 09:41:31 UTC
Silvia Nova wrote:
o/

I suggest changing all skill books to no longer require skills to inject them. [...] Now you have to start figuring out which skills you need, which ones to buy, in which order to train them and so on. I find this rather complicated.


Hi, if logging in once a while to inject skill books together with using one of the many third party programs which help you optimizing the queue (plus giving detailed information how the queue is affected by imps or remapping) is to complicated for you then you should switch to a different game.

Pro tip: never look at ship fittings if you believe the skill queue is too complicated. Stay in a shuttle.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#15 - 2015-04-27 11:08:51 UTC
Silvia Nova wrote:
o/

...Additionally the skill queue could get a new button 'optimize', sorting by remaining training time. This gives you the most skill-ups in the shortest time possible. I have seen many new players creating awkward training queues (like level 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 instead of 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4) making them feel blocked in progress just because they don't know how to operate their skill queue efficiently.


That's what the mastery thingy is for.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

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Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#16 - 2015-04-27 11:11:58 UTC
Amarisen Gream wrote:
It like much of this game is old and outdated.

The skill system is outdated? How so? It is perfectly in line with gameplay goals that want to force you to leave a station and fly around in order to shoot at and get shot by other players. Removing elements that force you out of station is nonsense.

There are also already skill planners around (EVEMon has already been mentioned), there are even full skill plans available on the internet for various things. For the rest, you can ask knowledgeable players and socialize in a meaningful way. That is also a thing that -- in your opinion -- lackluster skill system encourages. Or you can just think about skills on your own after you gathered some initial information. For instance, it could occur to you with a bit of invested brain effort that Evasive Maneuvering V or Navigation V is a good skill to have as a Freighter pilot. The latter will be included in muster skill plans, the first not necessarily as it has nothing to do with actual freighter piloting.

Nothing here is outdated. The system can be augmented with a couple new features, but the only inappropriate thing here is support for laziness, convenience and spoon-feeding. And these things are aspects that have been way too prevalent in contemporary gameplay development.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.