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How would EVE break if we removed skills altogether?

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Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#41 - 2015-07-31 07:32:07 UTC
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Here's an example: suddenly skills are removed and everyone can do everything. Now loads of pilots go and run my favourite sleeper caches and the entire market for the loot from those disintegrates (except for the fixed price blue loot). The same would happen in every area. 100's of perfect inventors flooding the tech 2 market, perfect miners and refiners flooding the ore and minerals market etc etc.

It would literally destroy the heart of the game as it stands as chooces and planning would have very little meaning anymore.


Why isn't everyone over 60M SP already doing all those things?

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#42 - 2015-07-31 07:35:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Mara Rinn
Kaarous Aldurald wrote:
FT Diomedes wrote:

Mara was not making an ad hominem attack.


Yes, they were. They were attacking me, not addressing the statement I made. Which is typical of the OP, I might add.


"Typical" of me is to confuse CODEdot with CODE. You know, the miner bumping folks. I was not intentionally accusing you of being a hisec content provider.

My question was actually sincere: how would removing skills change the way miners, gankers, or white knights behave? There are more issues than SP at stake when it comes to gankers using blaster catalysts for suicide ganks.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#43 - 2015-07-31 09:03:56 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Here's an example: suddenly skills are removed and everyone can do everything. Now loads of pilots go and run my favourite sleeper caches and the entire market for the loot from those disintegrates (except for the fixed price blue loot). The same would happen in every area. 100's of perfect inventors flooding the tech 2 market, perfect miners and refiners flooding the ore and minerals market etc etc.

It would literally destroy the heart of the game as it stands as chooces and planning would have very little meaning anymore.


Why isn't everyone over 60M SP already doing all those things?


Most likely because they made their own choices to specialize into different areas of the game. And the key thing is they had (and had to make) the choice to specialize or not. Remove skills entirely and they *would* be able to do all of those things along with those that they chose to train into. Likewise I would be able to perfectly accomplish the tasks that took them 60 mil SP to perfect.

Removing skills would remove any choice and consequence from the game in terms of character progression and value. It would allow everyone prefect access to everything which would remove any value a pilot has built up in specialist areas. It would also most likely crash the market as any player would be able to have perfect miners with perfect booster alts, perfect inventors and reverse engineers for tech II and tech III stuff, perfect PI alts spewing out ever more goods.

In short giving everyone access to everything with no progression, no relevant choices and no barriers to entry would be very very bad.
James Baboli
Warp to Pharmacy
#44 - 2015-07-31 15:00:58 UTC
I can put a new player into a t2 tank and support moduled incursion battleship in about 30 days from a clean fresh off the press character. It really is a matter of just needing to know where to specialize and what to leave at 3/ 4 until you have more sp and other things are no longer the low hanging fruit.

Talking more,

Flying crazier,

And drinking more

Making battleships worth the warp
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#45 - 2015-07-31 15:45:03 UTC
Lady Rift wrote:
Everyone is always looking for more hero tackle.
Because nobody wants to be suicide tackle. And if somebody wants to seriously do that job, they go pick an actual tackling ship instead of a Rifter with a Meta 0 scram.
Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#46 - 2015-07-31 16:18:48 UTC
My take on this....eve will get very boring quickly and people will leave it.


Why? I call it console cheat effect. Pick one of my fave games. Fallout New Vegas. I have beaten it normally many times for all the endings. it is fun to do this. Or I get a wacky idea for a new theme build....grind up its abilities, see and overcome challenges. This keeps my interest.

I have also whipped out console mode, gave myself say guns 100, sneak 100, etc the best weapons and armour not even 5 minutes into the game. And not even hours later go this is...ummm....boring as hell. See deatchclaw...smack it around and call it my biyatch and feel hollow on the inside.


Eve's SP progression I find gives that sense of anticipation. And those challenges along the way that should be looked at as worthwhile when you overcome them.

For a pve oriented player this game will get boring fast. I am there with several years of game play and fly anything I damn near want (I can't do supers/titans....nor do I have any desire to tbh)..I am reduced to pve only since rl sucks ass for me (I will not be dead weight to a corp to waste their time as I can't say for sure when I can log in pretty much at this point). Going back to my FO:NV example...I walk around all skills 100 eve style. its not thrilling most times. Smashing rats not a surprise, its expected really.

PVP this is just bad. it be like a game of poker all cards wild really. not seeing many be the better person and not claim a royal flush every damn hand really. Current pvp fine in this regards. I know many lower sp players who can and will own my ass in the fairest 1 v1 possible. They may be lower sp...but know how to play poker better than I do all the same.
Umino Iruka
#47 - 2015-07-31 17:08:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Umino Iruka
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Aerasia wrote:

Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
I started just over 2.5 years ago and was running level IV missions alongside a corpie on my 3rd day in my incursus (great fun too).


Let's be fair here. It would be far more accurate to say you tagged along and watched your corpie do L4s, while struggling to salvage the wrecks they couldn't be bothered with.

...


Incorrect, I took out the frigs and destroyers before moving on to cruisers and adding my feeble dps to the BS kills at the end. I did my job in the frigate as I would in a roam to protect the battleship and sped up his isk/hr speed by a non-trivial amount due to him not having to task his sentries onto pesky little things. I also assisted in gathering the loot much more rapidly by zipping around and bringing it in to a central spot.

He was grateful for the assistance and it gave me some nice isk whilst having fun. By discounting what a low SP player can do to help in such situations you are doing them a dis-service and *that* is what would put players off more than anything else.



See, for some reason that is known only to you, you keep deluding yourself - YOU DID NOT HELP HIM, that guy was helping YOU, you were nothing more than a drain on his profits, especially if he was using sentries (sentries blap mission frigates very, very well).

The entire profit you two made was split evenly while he was in a battleship, doing all the heavy lifting with range and dps, while you were flying around pretending to be useful. Being a partner to a combat pilot who is making money through either missions or anomalies or whatever is when you have a proper ship to bring in to help out, when your dps and damage application are at least similar, not when you're in a t1 frigate.
Nasar Vyron
S0utherN Comfort
#48 - 2015-07-31 18:11:23 UTC
Umino Iruka wrote:
See, for some reason that is known only to you, you keep deluding yourself - YOU DID NOT HELP HIM, that guy was helping YOU, you were nothing more than a drain on his profits, especially if he was using sentries (sentries blap mission frigates very, very well).

The entire profit you two made was split evenly while he was in a battleship, doing all the heavy lifting with range and dps, while you were flying around pretending to be useful. Being a partner to a combat pilot who is making money through either missions or anomalies or whatever is when you have a proper ship to bring in to help out, when your dps and damage application are at least similar, not when you're in a t1 frigate.


His friend was being nice letting him tag along. He was obviously helping Corraidhin make more isk than he could on his own. More damage in a site is more damage no matter how you look at it so it was speeding him up kind of. Some people let maximizing their profits go out the window every now and then to help a new player or friend. I am guessing you are not one of those types of people.

EVE as a whole would be a lot better off with more players like his friend there to meet new players. A lot more than these ideas of removing skills/implants or allowing for reallocation of SP. EVE is a social game, yet most of the people left are so anti-social we just scare off any new players telling them they're not good enough or will never be as good as a vet when that's not at all true.

To perfectly fly any particular sub-cap does not take more than a couple months. Vets will never get any better than 5s, nor will the rookie player. And in small gang/solo roams that 2% difference between 4 and 5 is made up for simply by who shoots who first.
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#49 - 2015-07-31 18:20:12 UTC
Nasar Vyron wrote:


His friend was being nice letting him tag along. He was obviously helping Corraidhin make more isk than he could on his own. More damage in a site is more damage no matter how you look at it so it was speeding him up kind of. Some people let maximizing their profits go out the window every now and then to help a new player or friend. I am guessing you are not one of those types of people.

EVE as a whole would be a lot better off with more players like his friend there to meet new players.


Completely agree with this. When I was a new player, my RL friends were perfectly happy to let me tag along. We would joke that I was like a slightly more responsive drone while I zipped along in my Catalyst shooting at little things. That was easier back then because rats did not switch aggro.

The way many people treat new players, both on the forums and in games, is really quite awful. It's either completely condescending, dismissive, outright wrong, or toxic. There are a few shining exceptions, but for many in this game, a new player is simply another mark or target to be used up and thrown away.

Nasar Vyron wrote:


A lot more than these ideas of removing skills/implants or allowing for reallocation of SP. EVE is a social game, yet most of the people left are so anti-social we just scare off any new players telling them they're not good enough or will never be as good as a vet when that's not at all true.

To perfectly fly any particular sub-cap does not take more than a couple months. Vets will never get any better than 5s, nor will the rookie player. And in small gang/solo roams that 2% difference between 4 and 5 is made up for simply by who shoots who first.


I agree that once you have the core skills taken care of, learning to perfectly fly any sub capital ship only takes a couple of months. New players certainly can catch up with veterans in individual ships - they just cannot match the variety of ships a veteran can fly.

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

Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#50 - 2015-07-31 18:25:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Corraidhin Farsaidh
Nasar Vyron wrote:
Umino Iruka wrote:
See, for some reason that is known only to you, you keep deluding yourself - YOU DID NOT HELP HIM, that guy was helping YOU, you were nothing more than a drain on his profits, especially if he was using sentries (sentries blap mission frigates very, very well).

The entire profit you two made was split evenly while he was in a battleship, doing all the heavy lifting with range and dps, while you were flying around pretending to be useful. Being a partner to a combat pilot who is making money through either missions or anomalies or whatever is when you have a proper ship to bring in to help out, when your dps and damage application are at least similar, not when you're in a t1 frigate.


His friend was being nice letting him tag along. He was obviously helping Corraidhin make more isk than he could on his own. More damage in a site is more damage no matter how you look at it so it was speeding him up kind of. Some people let maximizing their profits go out the window every now and then to help a new player or friend. I am guessing you are not one of those types of people.

EVE as a whole would be a lot better off with more players like his friend there to meet new players. A lot more than these ideas of removing skills/implants or allowing for reallocation of SP. EVE is a social game, yet most of the people left are so anti-social we just scare off any new players telling them they're not good enough or will never be as good as a vet when that's not at all true.

To perfectly fly any particular sub-cap does not take more than a couple months. Vets will never get any better than 5s, nor will the rookie player. And in small gang/solo roams that 2% difference between 4 and 5 is made up for simply by who shoots who first.


Exactly this. Did he need me there? Of course not, but I didn't take anyof the LP or mission reward because I didn't feel I'd earnt it but every now and then split the reward. I did indeed speed up his missions as I took out frigates etc whilst he kept his heavy guns on task with no need to swap out drones. He was surprised himself about how useful it was to have someone along (and the banter did help a lot too, social interaction in an MMO? Who'd have thought it!)

He benefited greatly by fitting one to two more missions in each session. I benefitted from better meta crap to fit on my ship whilst I trained up and also learnt about my ships and skills in a significantly more dangerous environment for a noob than level 1 missions would provide.

I got lucky with my first corp mates. Because of them I learnt how my ships and skills worked. Because of them I advanced much more rapidly than I would have expected. I was building control towers after 8-10 weeks, how is that not having a useful impact in the game no matter how small?

The key isn't to remove skills, give more SP or give more money. They key to this game is social interaction and that is where player *and* CCP focus should be to draw in and retain new players.
Iain Cariaba
#51 - 2015-07-31 18:39:13 UTC
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
The key isn't to remove skills, give more SP or give more money. They key to this game is social interaction and that is where player *and* CCP focus should be to draw in and retain new players.

This, oh so very much this.
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#52 - 2015-07-31 19:35:01 UTC
Nasar Vyron wrote:
His friend was being nice letting him tag along.
And that's all I want. Just keeping us grounded in what's actually happening in that situation.

But consider: what do we lose if instead of having a 3 day old frigate tag along, the corpmate says "Hey, you're new here. I'm not going to trust you with a blinged out Raven, but here's a well fit Rupture. Help me blap some rats."

Does the newbie miss out because they didn't have to pay for that cruiser? Will they quit EvE because they didn't grind through mission standings to do their own L4s? Does the entire concept of earning things go out the window if we don't make people wait for at least 2 months to get their core skills, fittings and weapons in order?

If you get rid of the skill system, then what a player can contribute is entirely down to what they know how to do and can afford to fly. Suddenly you can have players participating in EvE as quickly as they can grasp the mechanics, instead of having to "pay their dues" playing Skill-Queue Online. You want social interaction? Prove you know what you're doing, and join a corp willing to pay the bills. Your ability to 'progress' in the game can literally be a function of your willingness to socialize.
PAPULA
The Chodak
Void Alliance
#53 - 2015-07-31 19:43:08 UTC  |  Edited by: PAPULA
Xequecal wrote:
It's not an RPG anymore without skills, if everyone can fly and do everything from day 1.

RPG = Rocket Pocket Gun ?
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#54 - 2015-08-01 00:20:34 UTC
The real problem with NPE is the attitude that veteran players pass on to new players. Mainly the concept that you must have a minimum amount of skills to participate and that until you have that amount of skills, you might as well never undock.

Coming from a different angle, I am an industrialist. This attitude would have me telling new industrialists that the only way to mine is in a Mack, and that you must have a slew of level 5 indy skills before you install your first BP. Linking up 2-3 months worth of skills with this attitude will definitely chase away new blood. But if I were to tell that same pilot that he can start in a venture, train for 2 weeks for a retriever, get some moderate industry skills, buy some cheap BPO's (or donate some) and teach him the ins and outs of research and manufacturing on stuff that will be a minor loss, then work his way up, he can spend that same 2-3 months learning and earning and deciding if industry is really what he wants to do.

The true purpose of SP is to force players to earn real gameplay experience before they commit all their resources to a set task and lose it all.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#55 - 2015-08-01 00:38:21 UTC
Lugues Slive wrote:
Coming from a different angle, I am an industrialist. This attitude would have me telling new industrialists that the only way to mine is in a Mack, and that you must have a slew of level 5 indy skills before you install your first BP.


Well, it's pretty much accepted that you need PE5 before attempting to manufacture stuff, for example.

Lugues Slive wrote:
The true purpose of SP is to force players to earn real gameplay experience before they commit all their resources to a set task and lose it all.


Well, I would suggest it works the other way around: you have to commit to a particular aspect of gameplay (by training SP aka spending time) before you get to learn the "real gameplay experience."

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#56 - 2015-08-01 01:17:56 UTC
Once again, you are looking at it from the wrong attitude. You may not be very good at it without all those skills, but its not impossible to play and you will still learn from it.

I could build T1 ammo or Frigs to learn how to gather resources, research a BPO, find skills to maximize profits, search markets for good places to sell my wares. All of this is "real game experience" that does not require PE5 to do.

This is the same as any other aspect of the game, even in PVP. You may be a suicide tackler for the first few days, you may just be added dps to small ship roams for a bit, but you will still learn how to successfully take down targets. You may lose alot of cheap T1 frigates to learn that lesson, but its better than paying to skill up then spending a few months losing T2 frigs to learn the same thing.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#57 - 2015-08-01 01:49:51 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:


Well, it's pretty much accepted that you need PE5 before attempting to manufacture stuff, for example.


Except that's wrong & outdated advice, that CCP specifically changed because it was 'required' to compete on the market.
Now it no longer gives you any materials advantage, so it's not needed.

Though they did replace it with a massive refining skill bottleneck instead that says if you aren't in Null LOLZ you can't make a profit refining. But given the mineral stockpiles in Highsec that won't be an issue for a few years to come still.

So yea, such 'must have' level V skills are bad, and CCP has acknowledged that already. And removed your specific example.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#58 - 2015-08-01 02:58:10 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
Well, I would suggest it works the other way around: you have to commit to a particular aspect of gameplay (by training SP aka spending time) before you get to learn the "real gameplay experience."

That depends, in the case that a player does nothing with their current capabilities while waiting for the skills to train, yes, you are correct; the "real gameplay experience" doesn't happen before capabilities are gained.

Conversely, if you exercise your current capabilities now they will tend to apply to the tools you get access to later.
Umino Iruka
#59 - 2015-08-02 21:16:20 UTC  |  Edited by: ISD FlowingSpice
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
Nasar Vyron wrote:
Umino Iruka wrote:
See, for some reason that is known only to you, you keep deluding yourself - YOU DID NOT HELP HIM, that guy was helping YOU, you were nothing more than a drain on his profits, especially if he was using sentries (sentries blap mission frigates very, very well).

The entire profit you two made was split evenly while he was in a battleship, doing all the heavy lifting with range and dps, while you were flying around pretending to be useful. Being a partner to a combat pilot who is making money through either missions or anomalies or whatever is when you have a proper ship to bring in to help out, when your dps and damage application are at least similar, not when you're in a t1 frigate.


His friend was being nice letting him tag along. He was obviously helping Corraidhin make more isk than he could on his own. More damage in a site is more damage no matter how you look at it so it was speeding him up kind of. Some people let maximizing their profits go out the window every now and then to help a new player or friend. I am guessing you are not one of those types of people.

EVE as a whole would be a lot better off with more players like his friend there to meet new players. A lot more than these ideas of removing skills/implants or allowing for reallocation of SP. EVE is a social game, yet most of the people left are so anti-social we just scare off any new players telling them they're not good enough or will never be as good as a vet when that's not at all true.

To perfectly fly any particular sub-cap does not take more than a couple months. Vets will never get any better than 5s, nor will the rookie player. And in small gang/solo roams that 2% difference between 4 and 5 is made up for simply by who shoots who first.


Exactly this. Did he need me there? Of course not, but I didn't take anyof the LP or mission reward because I didn't feel I'd earnt it but every now and then split the reward. I did indeed speed up his missions as I took out frigates etc whilst he kept his heavy guns on task with no need to swap out drones. He was surprised himself about how useful it was to have someone along (and the banter did help a lot too, social interaction in an MMO? Who'd have thought it!)

He benefited greatly by fitting one to two more missions in each session. I benefitted from better meta crap to fit on my ship whilst I trained up and also learnt about my ships and skills in a significantly more dangerous environment for a noob than level 1 missions would provide.

I got lucky with my first corp mates. Because of them I learnt how my ships and skills worked. Because of them I advanced much more rapidly than I would have expected. I was building control towers after 8-10 weeks, how is that not having a useful impact in the game no matter how small?

The key isn't to remove skills, give more SP or give more money. They key to this game is social interaction and that is where player *and* CCP focus should be to draw in and retain new players.



Helping new bros is not the subject of this, you are just trying to divert the subject once it became clear your argument had no foundation in reality.

And for your information, I helped a lot of people during my eve career, -snip-
Avvy
Doomheim
#60 - 2015-08-02 21:28:36 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
Here is my opinion at this juncture: EVE would be different, but not broken, and the market for characters would dry up except for people whose skill is in sculpting particularly attractive avatars.

Take, for example, people who participate in industry of one form or another. There are a bunch of skills which act as "soft" barriers to entry into the profession, but the real barriers to entry are the hard barriers of "knowing what the heck you are doing," "planning three months in advance," and "being able to carry out the plan." The knowledge of how to set up processes in-game, model those processes, and include the externalities such as logistics, to generate a profit from the time invested, are the real skills required for doing industry. Skill points in appropriate skills are a trivial impediment.

There's a rule of thumb that you don't even bother trying industry until you have PE5. I figure this is the same kind of "hurry up and wait" scenario as learning skills were back in the day. Why shouldn't a new player be able to participate in industry? They are going to make many mistakes as they learn the ropes: why should they be punished even more with the inability to compete even when they know what they're doing, unless they wait a month or so for PE5 or buy an industrial character?

What about the combat pilot who flies in an alliance? There are currently artificial barriers to entry: "you must have this exact skill set, be able to fly this exact ship and fitting". That pilot also has to know how to not derp their way through a red gate, target the right target, shoot on cue, etc. Skill points in appropriate skills are an impediment.

There's a rule of thumb about training "support skills" such as Engineering, Electronics, yada yada. Would the game really be broken if, instead of simply gifting new characters these skills we took the skills away completely?

With skills gone, the choices of modules for ship fitting come down to fitting capacity, financial capacity, and availability. There are still decisions to be made, but no longer will you end up flying a meta-3 fitted battlecruiser simply because you didn't have the skills to fly a tech-2 fitted navy cruiser yet.

Some people will miss the little reward of "Skill training completed." Perhaps people will feel cheated out of some illusion of "character development" which they have been conned into from playing single-player RPGs for too long. You don't have levels in Quake, but it's still a fun game. You just get better weapons, and harder enemies. EVE is not an RPG, it's a sci-fi simulator attempting to provide the world an Objectivist reality: you are the product of your choices and efforts. You are poor because you are bad.

Why let an outdated paradigm such as character skills get in the way of people discovering just how bad and useless they really are?



It would change the nature of the game, it wouldn't be a character building game any longer.

With PLEX it would be more of a P2W as the main barrier for PLEX being a pay to win is the skill tree.

Everyone would be traders with what would have been the max trading skills, in fact everyone would be able to do everything leading to no diversity in character builds.

So no, that's a terrible idea. You would be better off just making a new game as EVE as it is would no longer be EVE.