These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

How would EVE break if we removed skills altogether?

First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#61 - 2015-08-02 21:57:15 UTC
Nasar Vyron wrote:
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.
I hope you aren't pinning your "couple months" on getting your skill to 5s. There's a big set of subcaps that have "All V" skill plans that take more than a year. Last I checked the T3 Cruisers are somewhere north of 3 years to cap out all the relevant skills.

Actually, I've got a Int/Mem mapped alt handy, let's go have a look:
Apocalypse: 184 days to Mastery IV, 727 days to Mastery V (2 days to pilot)
Eos: 251 days / 940 days (101 days)
Tengu: 245 days / 1,287 days (47 days)
Vargur: 195 days / 735 days (93 days)

So, any one of those is basically a 2 year "perfectly fly" plan.

"But!" you exclaim, frantically pushing goalposts, "Those are also big ships. Battleships, and BattleCruisers and Cruisers (those are still big... shut up)."

Confessor: 103 days / 413 days (9 days)
Harpy: 113 days / 416 days (18 days)
Tristan: 137 days / 627 days (0 days)
Rookie Ship: 125 days / 479 days (0 days)

If you look very closely, you may find a reason hidden in these numbers which explains a new player's lack of competitiveness.
Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#62 - 2015-08-02 23:08:34 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
Nasar Vyron wrote:
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.
I hope you aren't pinning your "couple months" on getting your skill to 5s. There's a big set of subcaps that have "All V" skill plans that take more than a year. Last I checked the T3 Cruisers are somewhere north of 3 years to cap out all the relevant skills.

Actually, I've got a Int/Mem mapped alt handy, let's go have a look:
Apocalypse: 184 days to Mastery IV, 727 days to Mastery V (2 days to pilot)
Eos: 251 days / 940 days (101 days)
Tengu: 245 days / 1,287 days (47 days)
Vargur: 195 days / 735 days (93 days)

So, any one of those is basically a 2 year "perfectly fly" plan.

"But!" you exclaim, frantically pushing goalposts, "Those are also big ships. Battleships, and BattleCruisers and Cruisers (those are still big... shut up)."

Confessor: 103 days / 413 days (9 days)
Harpy: 113 days / 416 days (18 days)
Tristan: 137 days / 627 days (0 days)
Rookie Ship: 125 days / 479 days (0 days)

If you look very closely, you may find a reason hidden in these numbers which explains a new player's lack of competitiveness.



Is your target combat AT? Here, yes, you would need perfect skills. Good at teams are all level 5. especially with the lockdowns on shiny mods and combat drugs these days.


Real everyday eve there are many venues where a less than perfect noob can and will meet and fight other less than perfect noobs. Now if going man of lamancha attacking windmills and charging a PL fleet in with a low sp fleet yeah I foresee some issues. Lower SP may want to think about that action before hand.

Or just jump in say screw it. I have sometimes had more fun and learned more in lost cause fights than fights I went in knowing it was going to be a win.
Nasar Vyron
S0utherN Comfort
#63 - 2015-08-02 23:17:40 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
Nasar Vyron wrote:
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.
I hope you aren't pinning your "couple months" on getting your skill to 5s. There's a big set of subcaps that have "All V" skill plans that take more than a year. Last I checked the T3 Cruisers are somewhere north of 3 years to cap out all the relevant skills.

Actually, I've got a Int/Mem mapped alt handy, let's go have a look:
Apocalypse: 184 days to Mastery IV, 727 days to Mastery V (2 days to pilot)
Eos: 251 days / 940 days (101 days)
Tengu: 245 days / 1,287 days (47 days)
Vargur: 195 days / 735 days (93 days)

So, any one of those is basically a 2 year "perfectly fly" plan.

"But!" you exclaim, frantically pushing goalposts, "Those are also big ships. Battleships, and BattleCruisers and Cruisers (those are still big... shut up)."

Confessor: 103 days / 413 days (9 days)
Harpy: 113 days / 416 days (18 days)
Tristan: 137 days / 627 days (0 days)
Rookie Ship: 125 days / 479 days (0 days)

If you look very closely, you may find a reason hidden in these numbers which explains a new player's lack of competitiveness.


I hope you aren't training all those skills Int/Mem or else that may be why your training is taking so long. Not anyone's fault but your own if you train in the least efficient remap possible.

Like I tell every new player I come across and try to bring to this game. Leave yourself with a balanced remap until you are done training all your core skills and basic gunnery/missile/ship skills. Once you have most of your skills to 4 and feel you have a decent grasp on the game then you can consider doing a specified remap to finish those skillsets to 5 as that is where the bulk of their training time will be.

Now on my alts I obviously go for specific remaps from the get go, but that's because I'm not actively playing them as they train. My friends are, as such a balanced remap that allows them to swap skills around as they wish is best. It's not the most efficient, but it's better than having them waste a remap and change their mind on what they want to focus on a week later and be stuck.
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#64 - 2015-08-03 00:12:23 UTC
Zan Shiro wrote:
Is your target combat AT?
I assume so. I was just responding to Nasar saying that vets can't outgun newbs because perfect flying only takes a couple months.

Nasar Vyron wrote:
I hope you aren't training all those skills Int/Mem
A lot of the core skills are still Int/Mem. But yes, a perfect skill plan will shave time off this. I'm not sure it'll shave enough time to make 245 days 'a couple months' though.

If you want to say you can get solid competency (e.g. Mastery IV, or similar) for some of the low barrier ships within 3-4 months, then fine. But trying to say there's even one sub-cap that can be "All V" in less than a year is untrue.
_____________________________________________

The really sad part for the newbro is that getting Mastery IV usually applies to most ships in the faction. If you take that 130-ish days to get the Tristan up to speed, then you've got almost every other drone boat the Gallente have done too. All that time spent waiting gets frontloaded to when you don't have anything else to do.
Caleb Seremshur
Commando Guri
Guristas Pirates
#65 - 2015-08-03 00:41:24 UTC
It may be my origins in arena shooters etc but as far as progression based systems go I've always enjoyed it the most when I have nothing left to unlock and can instead focus purely on playing. Like the difference between BF2 and BF2142 was a magnitude of more unlocks to pursue that left new players limited via their options. It burnes people out and left them chasing the rat race instead of playing to win.

I am not advocating the removal of skill points but I am questioning the value of having 16+ years worth of skill training for people to chase when essentially they will never ever have the time or energy or ve in the right location to perform more than 2 or 3 functions in a single day. The removal of sp loss on being podded was a good first step towards pushing players in the direction of playing and not grinding.

I don't believe grind is a necessary evil of MMOs. The truest limitation in EVE is an individual's money. That's a social problem backed up by the shoddy mechanics underpinning the market window.

It's very hard to say what would compel many players to do greater works but a first step might be introduction of more strictly group content such as increasing the number and types of incursions. What initially seems like a massive pain in the ass can become viewed as a bonding exercise and an opportunity to make money. Right now you can rat in anoms and that's essentially the same thing just on an individuals scale.

Before I go further down this sequitur I will say that SP is a hurdle, it's not the biggest hurdle when compared to the readily accessible data that much of eve provides through leaky API and the ingame map. Ask yourself this: would the removal of kill API data improve the game.
ISD FlowingSpice
ISD SYAD
ISD Alliance
#66 - 2015-08-03 00:50:18 UTC
Quote:

2. Be respectful toward others at all times.

4. Personal attacks are prohibited.



Cleaned up some posts.

Let's play nice, aight?

Vice Admiral

SYAD - Systems Administration

Interstellar Services Department
Avvy
Doomheim
#67 - 2015-08-03 05:23:27 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
It may be my origins in arena shooters etc but as far as progression based systems go I've always enjoyed it the most when I have nothing left to unlock and can instead focus purely on playing. Like the difference between BF2 and BF2142 was a magnitude of more unlocks to pursue that left new players limited via their options. It burnes people out and left them chasing the rat race instead of playing to win.

I am not advocating the removal of skill points but I am questioning the value of having 16+ years worth of skill training for people to chase when essentially they will never ever have the time or energy or ve in the right location to perform more than 2 or 3 functions in a single day. The removal of sp loss on being podded was a good first step towards pushing players in the direction of playing and not grinding.

I don't believe grind is a necessary evil of MMOs. The truest limitation in EVE is an individual's money. That's a social problem backed up by the shoddy mechanics underpinning the market window.

It's very hard to say what would compel many players to do greater works but a first step might be introduction of more strictly group content such as increasing the number and types of incursions. What initially seems like a massive pain in the ass can become viewed as a bonding exercise and an opportunity to make money. Right now you can rat in anoms and that's essentially the same thing just on an individuals scale.

Before I go further down this sequitur I will say that SP is a hurdle, it's not the biggest hurdle when compared to the readily accessible data that much of eve provides through leaky API and the ingame map. Ask yourself this: would the removal of kill API data improve the game.



This game is supposed to be a character building strategy game. The reason the skill tree is so big is you are not supposed to train it all, it's so that characters have more diversity as to what they can do.

The main limitation I see in EVE is time not isk.

There's enough PvE content in-game already, what's really needed is some more meaningful PvP.

I still think newbros need a bit of a boost though, but at least CCP are looking into that.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#68 - 2015-08-03 07:03:14 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
Actually, I've got a Int/Mem mapped alt handy, let's go have a look:
Apocalypse: 184 days to Mastery IV, 727 days to Mastery V (2 days to pilot)
Eos: 251 days / 940 days (101 days)
Tengu: 245 days / 1,287 days (47 days)
Vargur: 195 days / 735 days (93 days)

So, any one of those is basically a 2 year "perfectly fly" plan.

"But!" you exclaim, frantically pushing goalposts, "Those are also big ships. Battleships, and BattleCruisers and Cruisers (those are still big... shut up)."

Confessor: 103 days / 413 days (9 days)
Harpy: 113 days / 416 days (18 days)
Tristan: 137 days / 627 days (0 days)
Rookie Ship: 125 days / 479 days (0 days)

If you look very closely, you may find a reason hidden in these numbers which explains a new player's lack of competitiveness.


Note that larger ships are more forgiving since they have more base stats to okay with in the first place. A cruise raven is easier to fit than a HML drake, is easier to fit than a HML caracal, and so on down the line. So new players should fly the largest hull they can, until they have the skills to fly the smaller hulls.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Avvy
Doomheim
#69 - 2015-08-03 07:09:58 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:

So new players should fly the largest hull they can, until they have the skills to fly the smaller hulls.



So flying battleships before frigates, rather an odd way to do it.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#70 - 2015-08-03 07:47:41 UTC
Avvy wrote:
Mara Rinn wrote:

So new players should fly the largest hull they can, until they have the skills to fly the smaller hulls.



So flying battleships before frigates, rather an odd way to do it.


That is the way the skill levels and ship fittings make it. Larger ships are more forgiving of poor core skills. It is easier to compensate for inability to fit a T2 tank by fitting more tank on a battleship, for example. A frigate doesn't have the luxury of just fitting more modules, mostly because you only have a few slots to start with.

On a battleship, a rookie can fit more tank modules and cap boosters at the expense of DPS. You can't really do that with frigates — the Tristan might cater to that, since it uses drones.

So a rookie flying a rifter is going to be gimped on DPS and tank, and learning some bad habits that their low skills basically force them into. You can't exploit falloff when your optimal+falloff is less than the other guy's optimal. Sure, you can have fun with peop,e flying turret cruisers, but you really need to pick your fights very carefully … which a rookie can't do. They don't know about strengths and weaknesses. Drones and missiles versus turret weapons, expected fittings for ships they encounter, etc.

A rookie market trader can have perfect knowledge of the market all over New Eden but they will suffer a few percent higher taxes just because they are new.

SP are basically a loyalty reward.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#71 - 2015-08-03 15:08:12 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
SP are basically a loyalty reward.
Pretty much. It's a long con, but SP are effectively P2W.
Kaarous Aldurald
Black Hydra Consortium.
#72 - 2015-08-03 22:17:37 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
Mara Rinn wrote:
SP are basically a loyalty reward.
Pretty much. It's a long con, but SP are effectively P2W.


There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to start.

"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

One of ours, ten of theirs.

Best Meltdown Ever.
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#73 - 2015-08-03 22:40:57 UTC
Kaarous Aldurald wrote:
There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to start.
It's not like SP cannot be gained other than through cash purchase, and gives an advantage over other players correlated with how much you spent on them.

Err, Wait...
DaReaper
Net 7
Cannon.Fodder
#74 - 2015-08-03 23:06:59 UTC
Removing all skills is utterly stupid.

Removing attributes however, could have some benefits. Skills.. not so much.

OMG Comet Mining idea!!! Comet Mining!

Eve For life.
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#75 - 2015-08-04 01:55:37 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:


That is the way the skill levels and ship fittings make it. Larger ships are more forgiving of poor core skills. It is easier to compensate for inability to fit a T2 tank by fitting more tank on a battleship, for example. A frigate doesn't have the luxury of just fitting more modules, mostly because you only have a few slots to start with.

On a battleship, a rookie can fit more tank modules and cap boosters at the expense of DPS. You can't really do that with frigates — the Tristan might cater to that, since it uses drones.

So a rookie flying a rifter is going to be gimped on DPS and tank, and learning some bad habits that their low skills basically force them into. You can't exploit falloff when your optimal+falloff is less than the other guy's optimal. Sure, you can have fun with peop,e flying turret cruisers, but you really need to pick your fights very carefully … which a rookie can't do. They don't know about strengths and weaknesses. Drones and missiles versus turret weapons, expected fittings for ships they encounter, etc.

A rookie market trader can have perfect knowledge of the market all over New Eden but they will suffer a few percent higher taxes just because they are new.

SP are basically a loyalty reward.


It takes 3.5 days to train into a BS, assuming that you put your core skills on hold until you are flying a BS (BS with frig guns?). But I would hate to learn basic gameplay in a 100m isk ship as opposed to a 100k isk one, just me.
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#76 - 2015-08-04 01:57:36 UTC
Aerasia wrote:
It's not like SP cannot be gained other than through cash purchase, and gives an advantage over other players correlated with how much you spent on them.

Err, Wait...


I truely hope you are trolling, by this mentality every subscription based game is P2W since every new player is behind the existing players who have paid any form of subscription fee.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#77 - 2015-08-04 02:33:29 UTC
Lugues Slive wrote:
Aerasia wrote:
It's not like SP cannot be gained other than through cash purchase, and gives an advantage over other players correlated with how much you spent on them.

Err, Wait...


I truely hope you are trolling, by this mentality every subscription based game is P2W since every new player is behind the existing players who have paid any form of subscription fee.

Not quite, here there is a hard cap on progression of 2700SP/H necessitating a certain minimum amount of time for any skill related goals. On the other hand many other sub games allow some manner of grind, allowing the active to overtake the inactive in character progression.

They also tend to have a more vertical progression making comparison hard.
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#78 - 2015-08-04 02:52:26 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:

Not quite, here there is a hard cap on progression of 2700SP/H necessitating a certain minimum amount of time for any skill related goals. On the other hand many other sub games allow some manner of grind, allowing the active to overtake the inactive in character progression.

They also tend to have a more vertical progression making comparison hard.


The only reason that this comparison makes sense is because most MMO's have a level cap. Eve's level cap would take more years than the game has been around, and is continuously growing. If Eve had 5 years worth of skills, than any player could eventually hit that cap and be on the same pace as someone who started 10 years ago.

On any one ship, there is a defined level cap (and its not Mastery V because half of mastery is a joke) which any new player can still hit and be on par with any other long term veteran, in that same ship.

Most games need some form of controlled progression to keep people playing. In Eve this is SP, since ISK can be bought and sold legitimately through the PLEX system. If you remove SP, all first day players can be sitting in Titans, doomsdaying each other and dumping more PLEX on the market until RMT becomes an issue again. And at some point the market would collapse and the game would finally die.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#79 - 2015-08-04 03:00:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
Lugues Slive wrote:
Tyberius Franklin wrote:

Not quite, here there is a hard cap on progression of 2700SP/H necessitating a certain minimum amount of time for any skill related goals. On the other hand many other sub games allow some manner of grind, allowing the active to overtake the inactive in character progression.

They also tend to have a more vertical progression making comparison hard.


The only reason that this comparison makes sense is because most MMO's have a level cap. Eve's level cap would take more years than the game has been around, and is continuously growing. If Eve had 5 years worth of skills, than any player could eventually hit that cap and be on the same pace as someone who started 10 years ago.

On any one ship, there is a defined level cap (and its not Mastery V because half of mastery is a joke) which any new player can still hit and be on par with any other long term veteran, in that same ship.

Most games need some form of controlled progression to keep people playing. In Eve this is SP, since ISK can be bought and sold legitimately through the PLEX system. If you remove SP, all first day players can be sitting in Titans, doomsdaying each other and dumping more PLEX on the market until RMT becomes an issue again. And at some point the market would collapse and the game would finally die.

Most MMO's don't have a static minimum time to achieve that level cap. Some of the games in the MMO genre can allow a player to hit that cap in less time than it takes to get a level 5 frig with T2 guns. Most before doing the same with a cruiser. Not that I see that as an issue, but it's hard to make a decent comparison when most games can end progression before getting too far from the start here.

Especially when as you point out, they don't really need to.
Lugues Slive
Diamond Light Industries
gold fever
#80 - 2015-08-04 03:08:17 UTC
Tyberius Franklin wrote:

Most MMO's don't have a static minimum time to achieve that level cap. Some of the games in the MMO genre can allow a player to hit that cap in less time than it takes to get a level 5 frig with T2 guns. Most before doing the same with a cruiser. Not that I see that as an issue, but it's hard to make a decent comparison when most games can end progression before getting too far from the start here.

Especially when as you point out, they don't really need to.


But do you really want Eve to be an "end game" type game? I personally hate the idea of finishing progress in a few hours of gameplay, then grinding day after day for that one fit that everyone else has.

And I am not quite sure what you mean in your last line