Player Features and Ideas Discussion

We just to need your posts on why people stay in NPC corps for super-redundant play the way I want you to posts.

no from me (even tho there are some skills i regret training or ship reworks made useless *looks at orca not needing barge 5 any more*)

u can always buy skill points via character bazaar the fact u have to settle for whats available and what ever terri bad name or if lucky decent or good name. that makes it some what fair

and like others have pointed out every one will just min/max their skills around what ever the op meta of the month is.

i would accept something like allowing people to un-train a skill taking the same amount of time it took to train it not sure if it should replace active training or be alowed along side it that is debatable.

but pay to just reallocate would be just to op they can go buy a char.

...

Skill Points

Lately on EVE's subreddit there has been a ton of talk about newbros and the Sp requirements to "play" the game.

There's a lot of validity to the discussion talking about how for your average new player the required amount of SP is still pretty steep for someone learning the ropes. Lets look at a fairly simple example. The Tristan.

The Tristan is a T1 Gallente Frigate that for the most part is a drone boat but also uses guns as well. For a newbro to hop into a Tristan and get a decent feel for it they'll need to train up Drones. This skill simply lets them use more drones and serves as quite the barrier. A 3 hour wait time is pretty long to someone who has never trained skills before. You'll also need to inject Light Drone op and train that to 1. While both are x1 skills, that's a lot of idle time to try a T1 frig out. Not to mention at this point you're still only using 3 drones, to use your full 5 that'll take another 5 days.

You've also got the ship skill, Small hybrid turrets, and lets not forget about the various support skills you need to have: CPU Management, Weapons Upgrades, Cap Systems Operation, Mechanics, Hull Upgrades, Sig Analysis, Target management, Long range targetting, and the list goes on.

How do we fix this? An extremely simple way is by flat out giving new players room to play the game, and let them worry about training stuff be a secondary concern for a week or two. Give them more skills right off the bat. Let them have some basic ship fitting skills like CPU Management 3/4, Hull upgrades 1, Racial Frig/Destro 3/4, some support skills. A new player coming into the game shouldn't have to wait hours to test out EVE. The learning curve for our game is steep enough, lets not hamstring them by making them wait to try the most basic ships in the game.

Implants and Remaps

On the mantra that was preached when we did away with clones, remaps on a whole provide very little choice. For many players there are so many different skills to train using remaps is less than ideal. If you do use a remap however you're stuck into a plan for over a year. Why are we locking our players into a year long plan that quite honestly provides very little choice. This is all in pursuit of SP. Yes, remaps are voluntary but when you're new to the game you're wanting SP as fast as possible, and with good reason.

How do we fix this? Lets get rid of remaps, sure they're useful but do we really need to force our players into making year long skill plans and sticking to them? Lets get rid of learning implants and give everyone higher base attributes. Give the players the freedom to train what they want at a decent level, ~2500 SP/HR and allow your players to not have their hands tied by a remap. A year is simply too long of a time period for many. Bonus remaps while helpful don't lend themselves to new people very well as there is a lot of different skills you have to train as a new player. Many players aren't going to have the dedication, knowledge, nor SP that allows them to take advantage of the current attribute system.

Learning implants are essentially the same and guess what, they too require a skill to use. All of this is for extremely marginal increases that really only make sense over elongated use. Plenty of math has been done to show how long it takes implants to actually make sense to train Cybernetics to 5. It really isn't advantageous for a lot of people to spend two weeks training a skill, spend hundreds of millions on implants, trying to train up skills a little faster.

With removing remaps and giving higher attributes to players lets get rid of learning implants as well. There isn't any use to have them at this point, but I believe it's still great to have implants like Snakes/Slaves that offer pilots real choice in what they want to fly. By doing this we're still allowing players to choose implant sets they want to use but not forcing them into using learning implants to train skills faster.

I really don't think this is a good idea.

You're already paying $15 per month, lets not allow/force people to buy SP because they want to progress. A broken system isn't and shouldn't be fixed by more real money being spent.

I have removed one reply that was off-topic.

Hello,

Sorry for the back-to-back post, but this popped into my head --

I don't know if this has been suggested -- but what about implants that would enable players use to use certain T2 modules (e.g. T2 guns, T2 ammo, etc.) despite them not having the required skills? Maybe with a timer on it so it disappears after a few days?

I wouldn't go so far as making implants to allow players to fly ships they wouldn't otherwise be able board, but maybe a limited number of T2 modules (i'm thinking small & medium guns/missiles, prop modules, remote reppers, and maybe e-war)?

So you're not getting skills for spending ISK. You're just temporarily able to use some T2 modules for which you current'y do not possess the skill requirement.

-Z

Hm, probably. Come to think of it, my suggestion isn't that much different than using faction modules (which for the most part are as good as T2).

Finding a way for newer (active) players to catch up to older (non-active) players is super hard. Would probably have to boil down to an artificial barrier (i.e. new players can do X, but old players cannot), which isn't very sandbox-y.

You are basically saying that skillpoints aren't an issue for new players because they shouldn't be, since they could as well be doing something else while getting those skillpoints.
"Do something else" is an inherently unhealthy way to look at game design.

While I agree that getting into a corp is the best thing for most new players to do, basing your entire design on the concept that somebody does this one specific thing pidgeonholes the entire game in a way that is radically opposed to the sandbox aspect of EVE - some people just don't like social interaction or want to have the feeling of having accomplished something all on their own.

I'm saying do something else in the game whilst waiting. Most people train say combat skills to run missions. So run the missions whilst the skills train for the higher level missions. Waiting for scanning skills? Then train them whilst running the missions for ISK.

Whatever, I had no problem with finding things to do in the game whilst waiting for skills to train. It doesn't even take that long to train all relevant skills for a career path to level III to try it out.