Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's been a long time since I was a 'new bro' and I am lucky to have plenty of SP to partake in many aspect of eve ( when I have the isk :) ). Still though I feel I can at least add to this conversation by talking about areas that I feel might help the NPE and more importantly grow population.

Skills System

Going back to the early days, the skill system was touted as an alternative to the common RPG grind for experience. The idea was that you, who had to get the kids up, go study, work or whatever wouldn't be disadvantaged in the game world to those players who had lot more free time. Great so I don't have to grind to get my experience I just have to wait, oh!

Here are some of the perceived positives:

• Allows for players who are time poor to be on equal footing with players who are time rich.
• Accumulation of SP's out of game rewards player loyalty and active account subscription.
• Provides market demand for items that enhances rate of SP generation.

However the system also has I think quite damaging negatives especially for low SP players:

• SP are non refundable, once they are spent they are spent.
• The rate of SP generation is arbitrarily tied to the skill currently in training.
• Active play in no way increase SP generation, nor does it discount SP cost of skills.
• SP can be lost under specific circumstance ( T3 Cruiser ). It was worse when clone insurances was a thing.

I don't feel that there is much positive aspect from the current system, its also debatable that it maintains equal footing between players. I could spend all day grinding mission and then use that isk to buy character of the bazar. They by circumventing the original core principle.

What I think might be better?

• Players have a SP pool where their passive SP generation accumulates without player input. I.e you don't train skills just accumulate SP.
• SP in your SP pool can be assigned to skills you own, each level having a minimum required SP to unlock, this keeps the skill tree intact. Including difficulty modifiers.
• I should be possible for player to increase their SP generation when they are actively playing the game, i.e undocked.
• SP should be under certain circumstances be refundable.

So how does this help the NPE?

• New players get x amount of account SP refund tokens, these token should be limited and also not full SP refunds.
If the skill points levels are all factors of each other the one high level refund might allow for 3 low level selections. This is to allow new players to switch basic careers without incurring the time penalty which is a massive turn off. I hate mining I can take mining SP and put it in my missioning skill setup.


• I would give new accounts extra refunds if they sub for the next month ( 2 months max ) as incentive.


• When new ( and old ) players are playing their passive SP income is increased by x% Ok that means the guy/gal who plays all day gets more of a benefit but it is at least quantifiable and control able ( from game design pov).


• SP implants are not simplified you can have two slot types ( passive and active ) and then tier them. i.e %5 bonus to passive SP generation for 1 week. %5 to undocked active SP generation.


• Also having a pool based system does away with training queue, and makes getting that skill have the instant gratification without actually been instant. You log on in the weekend, open up you skills chart and spend your weeks of SP before you head out for a night of PewPew.

Having a skills pool simplifies other manipulations. Lets say you running faction missions how about SP discount for faction related skills? Could even have Corp items that give sp reductions. So you get Caldari Navy SP Docket, that allows you to reduce SP requirements for any Caldari ship/module skills. Or Ore docket for mining skills etc..

As for us bitter vets? I got a few million SP in areas I no longer use can't I get that moved around? I don't see why not.

but lets be sensible about this or the world would burn.

• Have a special station service only in a Jita station for the purpose of SP refunding.
• Have a cooldown timer for SP refund per character. ( could base this on amount of SP refunded time it took to train )
• Have a reasonable upper limit to the amount you can exchange say 2m a time.
• Have a steep isk and SP price say 200m for 2m sp - 10% SP lost.
• Require non criminal standing.

My overall point is in the beginning of your eve career you need to explore and make mistakes, the training system is too rigid to allow this for new players. You can't help feel like you ****** up 1 week in to playing this new game and you not sure if you next choice is going to be just as good.

I seen similar suggestion to this in the thread and it certainly not an 'original' idea. When you new you got little SP so you should have more flexibility as your character get older, you have more SP so you should have less flexibility to alter you course.

many people here seem to want NP's to receive the 'cold harsh treatment' without any special treatment. personally i disagree, i think its worth giving NPE special treatment because its like the difference between nullaec and highsec, they are two different worlds.
But it got me thinking, if NPE didnt receive any special treatment what sort of drastic measures would be required to change NPE for the better:
- rookies would need their own territory to protect
- rookies would need some kind of valuable resource that cant be found anywhere else "noobobtanium"
- rookies would need to be able to fly different ships so they can participate in the conflict and have something to bring to the table
- rookies would need to be able to mine/extract this valuable resource for personal profit or to help the cause (fighting against invaders)
- rookies would need to have defence advantages over capsuleers that invade their territory to steal their resources

P.S....
There needs to be a Rookie recruitment channel where spams and scams are not authorized (just as ganking is not authorized in rookie hubs)..... There also needs to be the fall back of either training the rookie on how to identify the corp friendly fire setting and what it means, or that awoxing a player recruited from rookie recruitment is against the rules.

Probably better to go with option 1 (training them to identify friendly fire setting) as this is important information to have.
Rookie recruitment channel needs to be an auto chat channel they are placed in upon first log in.

Also centered around time zone, so if you're from the US, you're put into US rookie recruitment.

Newbros need to have a place to go in order to find corps that will support them.
Again, this chat channel can be used to train rookies on identifying whether a corp is suitable to their tastes.

The only one I would agree with is the rate of SP gain. But that's more to do with attributes and how it penalizes new pilots when they try to specialize. Which CCP agrees with and is looking to fix.

The rest is not a negative.
The game isn't like other MMO's as you have already pointed out. So SP refund is not required. We are not tied to any specific class, we can be whatever we want in Eve. It's just a matter of adding another skill or two.



Also damn right activity doesn't increase SP. It should never be made into a grind based activity. It's not a case of if it would be abuse, simply when. Eve had it, it was removed for good reason.

And T3 loss is a rank 1 skill. They do not suffer because of it and I and many other agree with it. They most definitely are not underused because of it. Plus I'd argue it has little to do with NPE.


In regards to attribute removal.

I was against it early on, but after consideration of the subject I understood they do more harm to new players than good. If there was ever one change that breaks Malcanis Law, that is one. Why?
Well I'm a high SP vet. I now train for the sake of it and hadn't for many years remapped my atts. I simply trained Perc and wil for years instead.
But new players, well there are different skills to learn with lots of different primaries and secondaries. Three remaps just doesn't help them if they wish to specialize. It only highlights how poor the system is, when it actually penalises them.

So let's give everyone a flat SP gain rate and at the same time remove implant atts. Then we can look at making atts into a bonus system linked to new clones, unrelated to skill gain. They could even be a part of the OGB change so many seem to want.

Just want to say something about the prospect of increasing the starting SP of new characters. I've always liked starting with new characters - there's something about humble beginnings that appeals to me. Starting off with almost nothing and building from there is a satisfying achievement. Having said that, eating skill books for the first few days is quite tedious, especially just to acquire the skills needed for basic fitting.

My suggestion is to keep the SP fairly low, but start each character with level 1 in a lot more skills: shield skills for caldari/minmatar, armour for gallente/amarr, industry and/or mining skills for industrial school backgrounds etc. Don't overwhelm a new player with a vast list, but pick useful and relevant skills to assist them in the early days, and hint at the sorts of things a given race is good at, much like how you did it with rookie ship bonuses.

I think the idea of focusing the character in the creation phase is a good one; like how the old system worked. This way the new player can roll three different characters using the three slots their given, and get a chance to be fairly proficient right off the bat at their chosen activity.

From their initial choice you can direct them to the appropriate career agents which should give them the ships and items they will be using in the path they have chosen.

Giving new players a jack of all trades skillset at the beginning will not only overwhelm and confuse them, but will also mean they aren't particularly proficient at anything either.

For example, they could have a choice from professions such as; Industrialist, Mercenary, Fighter, & Explorer.

- An industrialist would be directed towards industrial activities and be given skills in mining and manufacture.

- A mercenary would be directed towards mission running and would start out with core ships skills,

- A fighter could be directed towards FW and would start out with some combat skills focused towards small ship PvP.

- An explorer would have higher scanning and exploration related skills.

Of course this still leaves the door wide open for them branching out into other activities later on, but it means they will get a more focused experience initially with having decent skills in their chosen activity, and also being directed to the appropriate career agents to get them started. So if a player comes in wanting to be a fighter then you are not boring them with mining, trading, and manufacture, but instead are giving them a couple of relevant skills and ships so they can go out and pvp to some degree of proficiency right away.

Ya know what... Was in game arranging skills, to focus on training another logi ship, as well as putting a bunch of focus into drone related skills.

What I discovered is a group of skill that I feel are literally nothing but barriers to Newbros and being able to build a competent fit.

Just remove all the Engineering skills. Literally...
There's only a few skills in there that aren't required to train, and are for advanced piloting.


Energy Pulse Weapons
Nanite Interfacing
Nanite Operation
Thermodynamics
Capacitor Emissions
Capital Capacitor Emissions


Those are the only skills that are optional as they focus on piloting tactics that are optional to use.

All the other skills within the Engineering Category are mandatory.
No skill should be mandatory unless it's down your optional training path.

IE - If you want an Amarr laser boat BS, you've gotta train the required skills, but it's optional whether or not you take that path.

Other skills that fall into the Mandatory catagory need to be removed as well, as they fall into the same realm that learning skills did back in the day of not being optional, which is why they were removed.
Examples would be

Warp drive Operation
Target Management (debatable, but advanced target management would remain)
Drones (the skill not the whole group)


There are also some pointless skills that are literally a barrier required to train the skill barrier, have a small bonus, and serve no valid reason to exist.
Examples would be

Mechanics
Gunnery
Leadership
Missile Launcher Operation
Navigation
Science
Jury Rigging
Spaceship Command
Advanced Spaceship Command (arguable, but it serves no purpose other than to add yet more barrier between sub cap and cap)
Trade (also questionable.. Does it need to be there, or is it just a barrier to more useful skills?)


Most of these skills are low training times, but stop a Newbro from being able to get a ship and have a decent fit.
Again, much like attribute skills back in the day, these are mandatory skills just to be able to train the mandatory skills for your optional path.


Someone else will have to do the math on how many days worth of training all these skills are, but I would state that it's not such a significant amount that it hinders what Eve is.

I would also like you to note (if you do list out the amount of training time these skills would take) how many of those skills you think need to be trained before a Newbro should even consider getting into combat.
(all the listed engineering skills I mentioned, gunnery/missile operation, jury rigging, space ship command, etc. etc)


I feel that removing these mandatory and/or so to say "skill buffer" skills will give a significant reduction in the amount of time it takes a newbro to become a functional pilot...
It might also be mentioned that these specific skills are the more difficult ones to explain.

I mean, you try to tell a new guy to train for a ship/fit that you gave him, which is fairly simple, until you get to these skills.
Then you have to explain
"well, you need gunnery before you can train to use guns, spaceship command before you can train to use a ship; You're also gonna science, jury rigging, and mechanics in order to train skills to fit other modules; Oh, and there's a blob of skills you need in order to effectively fit these ships, one to be able to even warp across a standard sized system, one so you can target more than 3 ships, one so you can field more than one drone(as you should have 5), and some other random crap thrown in there to spice things up."
It's always nice to hear their reply over TS... "Uhhh, what?"

Telling them they need light and medium guns for large guns is easy.
It's explaining to them the rest of these skills that's annoying.

Not to mention, that's a huge part of the learning curve.

I've been saying that for years. Always been shouted down. Maybe CCP will listen. Maybe they won't. Time will tell.

I think starting new players with about 1-2 million sp in the core skills (engineering, navigation, maybe the drones skill) is a great idea but I think that they should also get say a 20-30% bonus for the first 30 days then a 10-15% bonus from day 31-60 that way they are able to train a lot of the basic skills very fast and try more parts of the game that require skills that don't necessarily fall under that core skill list.

So, just because the average player does not any longer possess the necessary brain capacity to comprehend goals and benefits behind training certain skills, we need to remove these skills, roll the benefits into the characters themselves right from the start and then ...? Where does it end? If they do not understand that you need to train Spaceship Command to gain a basic understanding of spaceship functionality (similar to the theoretical part of attaining a drivers license), and then branch off into the different specialization skills for ships (DL for cars, motorcycles, ebikes, trucks, busses, passenger transport vehicles, trams, trains, etc.), how will they understand the long train for caps, the need to understand small and medium guns to understand large guns or T2 guns? Catering to laziness and unintelligent people is not a solution. Approaching the problem (in my opinion, there's no problem to begin with. It's just in the heads of the players and in their wrong expectations and demands) from this angle is not going to lead to any good result at all.