Player Features and Ideas Discussion

During the Vegas keynote Seagull mentioned that skill trading is an idea in which she feels will benefit the game, but also understood that this is a fundamental change to the game and so asked the playerbase for feedback / suggestions on how to go forward. With this in mind after some time to fully reflect on the consequences of the change, I offer the following constructive suggestions and criticisms of the proposal below.

To consolidate my criticisms of skill trading I will link to the relevant thread, and then post my ideas on a better solution below:

Issues with the Skill Trading Proposal


SOLUTION


Skill Remapping

I have always been against this, but if this will help newer players by making the skill system less unforgiving, then upon reflection if it is implemented in a moderate way then it shouldn't be too bad. So here is my suggestion.

You buy a Neural Modifier from the market (or Aurum store) which comes in the types below:

Basic Neural Modifier - allows character to reallocate up to 3m SP - cost 1 PLEX - cool-down 1 year.
Enhanced Neural Modifier - allows character to reallocate up to 5m SP - costs 2 PLEX - cool-down 1 year.

To stop the kind of exploitation which you would get with the instant reallocation of unallocated SP in the skill trading proposal, the skill remapping would have a cool-down period of one year. You could reallocate during the cool-down period although you will get diminishing returns. So in practice the reallocation would only confers the full benefit if you wait for one year after the previous reallocation. If you reallocate for instance 6 months after the last reallocation (50% of the cool-down period) then you would get 50% of the benefit (1.5m or 2.5m SP).

These prices are still high for a newer player (who will be the one who needs them the most), and so to make the skill system is even less unforgiving for newer players (and due to the malleability of a new player's brain) they would have the opportunity to reallocate their SP more freely during their initial stages. As a result all new characters would come with 2 free Neural Modifications which would allow them to reallocate 2m SP each time for no cost and with no cool-down (this would be fixed to the character and could not be traded).

I believe skill remapping would make the skill system less unforgiving as choices could be undone to a limited degree and at a cost (again would be much more favourable to a newer player). This would achieve some of CCP's goals without introducing the type of grind you would get with trying to buy skill packets, and all and possibilities of exploitation that come with that.


Cerebral Enhancers

Another of the issues that CCP mentioned was that newer players were quitting because they didn't feel as though they could speed up their progress. I think this is also a fair point and newer players should be able to speed things up to some degree, although very importantly they should not be able to just completely skip straight to 50m SP if they have the out of game money.

The exception to this is obviously the character bazaar, although with another method in place to speed up skill training though I believe newer players would not feel so inclined to take the jump and buy a character from the bazaar. I don't believe that using the CB is a good gameplay experience for a new player (and usually doesn't end well) so offering them a valid alternative should give more choices to a new player and hopefully increase retention. The CB should be more of a tool for advanced players wanting to trade highly specialised character, and genuine new players will be catered for by the proposal below.

Cerebral enhancers would come in the 2 variations below:

Standard Enhancer
increases SP gain by 100% for 7 days.
Estimated market price - 1/8 Plex (150m)

Advanced Enhancer
increases SP gain by 150% for 7 days.
Estimated market price - 1/4 Plex (300m)

The effect of the enhancer is modified based upon the SP total of the character it is used upon.

0 – 10 million skillpoints = 100% effect (150% increased training speed - 6750 SP hour max)
10 - 25 million skillpoints = 75% effect (112.5% increased training speed - 5737.5 SP hour max)
25 - 50 million skillpoints = 50% effect (75% increased training speed - 4725 SP hour max)
50 – 80 million skillpoints = 25% effect (37.5% increased training speed - 3712.5 SP hour max)
80 + million skillpoints = 20% effect (30% increased training speed - 3510 SP hour max)

Using cerebral enhancers which heavily benefit newer players over older players would mean that if newer players chooses to do so then they could speed up their skill training for a reasonable cost . As this proposal is not as exploitable as the instant unallocated SP you would get with skill trading, I don't see this being quite as desirable to veteren players (particularly considering they benefit they would get is only 1/5 of that which a new player would get). As a result the market would reflect a price that is attainable to a new character.

So, while I am 100% against SP trading, I will ask the question of;
Where will these accelerators come from?

How about you post in the feedback thread?

The big thing I see is the question of how a newbie will afford it. If the answer is "sell plex", it's back to that p2w thing.

But CCPs proposals aim to replace the character bazaar not boost training time... does it not?

I agree with you there. I'm not sure if you've been keeping up with current events though but CCP seems set on ripping up the skill system to help new players - http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/exploring-the-character-bazaar-skill-trading/

If they are going to rip it up then I'd rather they follow a less destructive proposal such as the one I listed above than the one mentioned in the blog.


I do not believe so, they will still be keeping the character bazaar as far as I know.

I say we allow characters to convert SP directly into ISK at some sub-par rate. This should cause some ISK inflation of the economy but also would inflate the value of characters in the bazaar.