Skill Discussions

There were no remaps. At all. You were stuck with your starting attributes, which you set during character creation. Furthermore, it wasn't fully customizable, but locked you in to certain parameters based on your race and bloodline. For anyone claiming that the current system is hard because you might not know what the ideal attribute spread is for a given training path: chew on that. My mem/will roll sounded great from an RP perspective (don't judge!) but turned out to be fairly awful for anything but drone training.

That, mind, was on top of the lack of a queue. Missed skill changeovers took another solid chunk out of my early training.

But hey, 176mil now. Eventually things balanced out. That said, I have an alt under 18 months old that already has 60mil. Training is simply shorter now than it used to be.

THIS is one epic wall of text. Having said that, there are some ideas in here worth exploring and others that at least deserve comment.

I'll start with my standard disclaimer on these discussions: I actually do want to make NPE easier. New blood is good for the game, and retaining new blood is obviously easier than generating it.

But let's start with this: passive progression, love it or hate it, is a core part of Eve gameplay. Part of the appeal of the game in the first place is that it doesn't set you behind to walk away and do something else. There is no grind for skills and that's an incredible part of the appeal for many, many players. The day that goes away a great number of veterans walk. I'm fairly sure I would. I specifically don't play other games because I don't have a predictable amount of time to grind away and certainly don't want to be locked into an activity I don't like in order to later do things I do like. In Eve, I can set skills for something I want to do, keep doing whatever it is I'm doing now, and wait a bit to open up new content. There is absolutely no design flaw here; it's actually a huge feature that keeps accounts subscribed over the long term.

As for the assertion that an "all 4" generalist will always fall to an "all 5" specialist in some sort of elite one-on-one PvP: somwhat likely! To a certain extent, that's the whole point of the skill system, right? having said that, if I take a buffer Thorax and EFT's all 5 character I get something like this:

[Thorax, armor buffer]
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Damage Control II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Small Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 100

Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Hybrid Ambit Extension II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

The ship was chosen nearly at random, by the way. An all-5 character pushes out 432 DPS to 1.9+6 without drones. That all-5 character has 20,418 EHP (using EFT's calculation here). It also goes 1767 m/s.

In the hands of a theoretical all-4 character those stats do indeed drop (of course). DPS is down to 378 (12.5% decrease), range is down to 1.8+5.8 (4% decrease), and EHP is down to 20,324 (0.5% decrease). Speed is down to 1669 m/s (5.5% decrease).

None of these individual factors will matter more in the fight than player skill and positioning. If a "good" all-4 pilot catches anything but a superlative all-5 pilot the match is at least very close. If two all-4 pilots find one all-5 pilot and get position it's all over for the all-5. The odds of him taking even one of the others down with him are slim at best.

So yes, there are multiplicative advangates to skills, but let's not overstate them.

Gated content and player options, though, are more complex and I think open to some changes. I do think that Eve currently gates too much gameplay from truly new players. The (relatively) new change to make the destroyer and battlecruiser skills racial was a big problem here from what I can see. The fact that so many T2 modules require level 5 skills also bothers me at times.

I'd even be open to the idea of opening T2 hulls at level 4 skills. Granted, a player would be missing a huge chunk of hull bonuses, but so what? If you really, really want to fly a modestly upgraded ship, sure, why not. Balance could be an issue here; currently T2 hulls are very much designed around the assumption that base skills are at 5 and might end up grossly underpowered under that level (but again, player choice, so I can't really object).

As for alts: don't touch them. The extra revenue CCP gets from alt accounts is huge. I have three right now and am considering dropping to two and I'm small-time. Touching anything here would seriously upset the whole revenue model.

They're also just plain not that onerous. Lots of people play without them and it suits them just fine. There are, in fact, only a few playstyles that truly require alt accounts (capital and super pilots, any large scale industry, etc). For a basic combat setup, one player in a gang might want to log in a booster alt but that's about it. They simply aren't the scourge you're making them out to be and the benefits to CCP are enormous.

Wisdom is and always has been my dump stat.
I knew binary's name looked familiar... she was rocking out battleship kills in a t1 frigate shortly after joining our band of miscreants.

I know the SP thing can seem frustrating and overwhelming to start with. The thing to keep in mind is that each ship class is just like a class in other MMO's in a sense. The more SP you dedicate to that class of ship, the more you can get back out of it. Core skills are helpful too. Each module related skill opens up new powers you can use with your ship class.

This may seem dreadfully slow to some, but it serves the purpose of also giving you time to learn as much as you can about that class of ship before stepping into another ship category, while still leaving a relatively quick route into other nearby classes (such as destroyers and cruisers). There's no rush, as all classes of ships have very valid gameplay forms that are fun.

It also serves to put something of a brake on the minimum amount of ISK worth of ship and modules you need to undock with to utilize what you know. For newer players who don't have a tremendous amount of ISK to draw off of, a loss of the biggest ship they can fly can be devastating.

And finally, before I shut up, there is this one other tidbit. EVE is unlike ANY other MMO out there in that what the PLAYER knows how to do is FAR more important than the stats of their character. An experienced frigate pilot in the cockpit of their favorite baby can do some pretty amazing stuff. Same for dessies and cruisers and so on and so forth all the way up to battleships and beyond... Understanding the capabilities and learning to utilize the tactics available is not something CCP grants you.

I'm approaching my 1 year EVE birthday and sitting on around 16 mil SP I think. I'm an all 4 generalist in Cruisers down, and currently fleshing out gun supports to 5 before getting my first Cruiser to 5 (mmmm Nomen, here I come baby). Do I sometimes wish I had more SP? Sure, but it's most certainly not limiting, or hindering my enjoyment of the game. As Omar mentioned above, EVE is far more about knowing what you're doing than your stats. The stats help of course, but it's more about leveraging your stats into a position to wreck the other guy's face before he wrecks yours.

I solo killed a 2 year old player in a Navy Comet with a T1 fit Tristan with T1 Hobgoblins after around 6 weeks of play. I'm by no means an amazing player, but I did have more experience in lowsec PVP than that vet with who knows how much SP after those 6 weeks, I put myself into an advantageous position and exploited the hell out of it. More SP wouldn't have saved him, and all more SP would have done for me is make me able to break his tank a little faster. Big deal, I can wait. I get a new shiny level 5 skill to play with every week or two. I pity you vets who have everything you could possibly want trained already, every other week is EVE XMAS for me.

Please read the ENTIRE post before hating. ;)


What I haven't seen much of in this thread is new players weighing in. I'm about 40 days old, with approx 1.45 m sp on this toon as well as having put in about 700k towards a miner I bought on char bazaar. My thoughts on this matter are..... mixed.

Bad Idea

Let's start with what I think is a BAD idea. Giving huge attribute or sp/hour bonuses to new accs/chars is not, imo, workable. Nor is a pool of unallocated SP. Here's why: If I'm a new player, and I get +6 implants or 2m sp, for example, do you know what I'll probably do? I'm going to train a racial battleship to 1. Then I'm going to become very sad when I lose that bs, because I don't realize I can't actually use the heavy guns on it. Clearly, if some kind of bonus should be given to new players, it needs to be given in a way that encourages responsibility.

Good Idea

That in mind, here's my suggestion: allow 1 character on new accounts to choose a "skill path". Then, for a limited period of time, allow 2-5x skill training time to that char on that skill path. For example, say I chose amarr light vessels. I would then, for, say, 1 month, be able to train armor tanking, amarr dessie/frig, and small projectile turret and gunnery support skills (light drones?) at an accelerated rate. Alternatively, you could choose medium hulls for a certain race, giving medium turret/missile bonus, racial cruiser, weapon type support, etc.

In addition, there would be the option to choose a 2 month accelerated training plan for non-combat paths. For example, mining, training towards barges, exhumers, and mining turret/strip miner/gas/ice/deep core at that 2-5x rate. Or, industry, with reprocessing skills and science skills. Other options might be trade, pi, etc.

Restrictions

Naturally, there need to be some restrictions to this. One should be a cap on sp/hour, so people don't stack implants on remaps on bonuses. Then, there are account restrictions. I propose the following: 1. In order to use this feature, an account must have a paid sub. 2. In order to use this feature, an account must not have been active for more than a year. 3. In order to use this feature, an account must have no character with more than 10m sp. 4. In order to use this feature, an account can never have participated in a char transfer. 5. The char that uses this feature can not be transferred for 1 year of active sub time since the feature was started.


Thoughts?

I think you quoted the wrong post. My suggestion will just make it more fun for everyone as you can train whatever you want when you want and not feel speed penalized. Sure new people can train "wrong" skills but at least they do it at full speed.

I don't think I did misquote, but I do think I misunderstood. And I actually like the idea.

I've never understood the, frankly terrifying, number of people who actually say they like the EVE SP system. It's been an asinine waste of time for over a decade - and yet there are multiple celebratory threads dedicated to "I've been consistently giving my money to CCP, here's my number as proof!".


You're exactly right. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people who leave EVE because of the SP system are simply never heard from again, leaving only the people who preach "HTFU". So beyond all reason, you end up with multi-page responses of "Bro, the SP system is fine. I survived it, why can't you?"

The game is constantly reminding you: "You can't fit this for X days", and "You won't be able to compete with your neighbor for Y weeks". That's ridiculous. The last time I looked at my SP plan and saw a 3 month gap between now, and being able to do whatever it was I thought I wanted I dropped EVE for 5 years. In fact, my main is from Dec 2005 and I broke 11M SP about a week ago. Do the math on that one.

I'd love for the game to restrict you based on what you can afford to fly, and what you can figure out how to accomplish. The extra gate of "How long have you been paying your membership dues?" is silly, misguided, annoying, and rewards logging off. Just dump it. It's a tumor in the game's design - treat it like any other cancer. Change the attribute system if you want to build a way to differentiate pilots, there's enough potential there to make it so Pilot A is good at this, and Pilot B is good at that. Just get rid of this stupid "You can't do X until you've paid CCP enough cash" system.

I understand that this is the case in most other MMOs. I like the fact that I don't feel any pressure to log in to keep up with the Joneses or have to camp that named for days to get an uber item and frankly I coundn't do that anymore. Also you get rewarded for playing. For example I was happy when I learned to flawlessly execute the MWD+cloak trick.



You will not always lose against an "All 5" pilot as an "All 4" pilot. That's a fact. The outcome depends on a lot of things like numbers, experience, location, ships, fitting, mistakes made, skills etc. Skill points are just one of the things effecting the outcome of any given fight.



Since the invention of PLEX dedication and cunning are not the only to gain ISK. Therfore it is discounted as a gate. The SP threshold is not gateing content by offline time. SP as a gate are an indicator of experience. Of course there are old players who never learned a thing and new players who know the pilot handbook and all lore by heart, but it's close enough as indicator.



The switch to armor/hybrid will take much less time than your first set of ships as you can reuse some of the skills you already know (engineering, navigation etc.) Even if building up from scratch it will take much less than 5 years to fly any races ships reasonably well. You are really doing yourself a diesservice in being deliberately stupid.



I don't understand why this would be contradictionary. In fact I doubt that such a word exists. I don't even know what it is contradicting in your opinion. It is quite common for people to try out several races/classes and combinations in MMOs. Eve is different in that ordinary people - and not only hardcore gamers - are able to play several characters at the same time. but still there are a lot of players with a single character on a single account.

All in all I think the skills are set progressing well. There is always a goal to work towards and in the beginnings it's easy to competently fly a certain ship or do a certain task (trading, producing etc.) quite well.

There's so much wrong here I can't split the quotes up. I'll just have to put the replies in bold.