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Skill Points remapping/buying™: Ideas, Discussion, and Proposals

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Lady Rift
His Majesty's Privateers
#661 - 2015-10-22 20:23:51 UTC
Lis Aivo wrote:
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Short term will likely see some gains, but I think it's a poor idea long term.

We already have an issue where a new guy feels he must have skills x, y, and a to a certain point before he can begin having fun with the game, and cries that time is a barrier to that fun.

Now we will instead be like all those pay to win Facebook games where you can speed up progress with the direct application of cash. Sure, you don't have to pay, but for just a few bucks here and there you can do more.

This will be followed by updates with op new ships, weapons and other goodies that all require new skills, and skills probably at max levels to use.

If it was all pure ISK, I would be fine, though that introducing a semi-mandatory grind. But it's not. It's Aurum, and that's the more cancerous aspect.

This is the wrong direction to go. Make stats more meaningful, not less. Provide actual trade offs.

This system will devolve the game into a short term, instant gratification cesspool of power creep to keep up the justification of buying all the skillpoints.

This will kill the game in exactly the same fashion as microtransactions have killed every other serious game on the market. Only goofy Short term instant gratification games are 'successful' with this model.


Are you aware of character bazaar? Because you can already pay to speed up progress with direct application of cash.



you cant on new skills.
Lis Aivo
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#662 - 2015-10-23 09:34:00 UTC
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process
Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#663 - 2015-10-23 13:08:39 UTC
Lis Aivo wrote:
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process

But it does neutralize the consequences for poor decision making, in the context of picking character skills to train.

A well rounded character becomes embarrassing, as it seems the player is too lazy to clean up their un-needed skills and re-invest points in a more focused manner.

Did not like that skill?
Dump it, keep it, whatever, just buy the points in the skill, that hindsight demonstrates you should have picked.

Competition is LESS interesting when everyone has effectively perfect assets, that is when things get unpleasant.

Corp XXX can now insist you have these skills trained to level 5.
While this is not unheard of now, with the ability to effectively buy the skills it will be more common, as it will appear far more reasonable to insist upon.

Upgrading Local to Eliminate All AFK Influence What if Local Chat changed, Hunting the Cloaked...
Shiva 113
Yggdrasill Corporation
#664 - 2015-10-23 13:25:41 UTC
A big no.

Why play a game where everything you can achieve through being good at it could be bought by any rich loser for money – what would even be the point of beginning if that was the case?
Lis Aivo
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#665 - 2015-10-23 13:29:03 UTC
Nikk Narrel wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process

But it does neutralize the consequences for poor decision making, in the context of picking character skills to train.

A well rounded character becomes embarrassing, as it seems the player is too lazy to clean up their un-needed skills and re-invest points in a more focused manner.

Did not like that skill?
Dump it, keep it, whatever, just buy the points in the skill, that hindsight demonstrates you should have picked.

Competition is LESS interesting when everyone has effectively perfect assets, that is when things get unpleasant.

Corp XXX can now insist you have these skills trained to level 5.
While this is not unheard of now, with the ability to effectively buy the skills it will be more common, as it will appear far more reasonable to insist upon.



well rounded characters are not desired already. They are sold for less than any other focused character. nothing new. They will get less worthy after this probably.

As you mentioned Corp XXX already insist you train those skills. Right now your only options are to either train them wait for years.... or go grind isk like crazy and dump like 30 billion isk for a character. Which is not a pretty option. But after this at least people can dumb only few plexes. compared to 25-30 bil its doable.
Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#666 - 2015-10-23 15:16:58 UTC
Lis Aivo wrote:
Nikk Narrel wrote:
....



well rounded characters are not desired already. They are sold for less than any other focused character. nothing new. They will get less worthy after this probably.

As you mentioned Corp XXX already insist you train those skills. Right now your only options are to either train them wait for years.... or go grind isk like crazy and dump like 30 billion isk for a character. Which is not a pretty option. But after this at least people can dumb only few plexes. compared to 25-30 bil its doable.

Well rounded characters may not be desired on the character bazaar, but quite frankly they are MORE functional in the game itself.

The 100+ million skill point character is more likely to be useful in unexpected circumstances, and more players would be willing to undock using them when these appear.

If we theory craft an ideal character under new logic, they will have few enough invested SP, so that they can quickly plug in unspent SP in whichever FOTM shows up, most efficiently.
That means having SP below the level where return on investment reaches cost breaking numbers.

Great for blob fleets, I have no doubt. That designated fleet fit will have perfect pilots with max skills where needed.

Just don't expect them to be as useful outside of that fleet, the same way many of today's characters are.

I feel this is pushing the game away from skilled players, to those instead with more time or real life money.
This concerns me.

Upgrading Local to Eliminate All AFK Influence What if Local Chat changed, Hunting the Cloaked...
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#667 - 2015-10-24 20:03:33 UTC
Lis Aivo wrote:
Nikk Narrel wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process

But it does neutralize the consequences for poor decision making, in the context of picking character skills to train.

A well rounded character becomes embarrassing, as it seems the player is too lazy to clean up their un-needed skills and re-invest points in a more focused manner.

Did not like that skill?
Dump it, keep it, whatever, just buy the points in the skill, that hindsight demonstrates you should have picked.

Competition is LESS interesting when everyone has effectively perfect assets, that is when things get unpleasant.

Corp XXX can now insist you have these skills trained to level 5.
While this is not unheard of now, with the ability to effectively buy the skills it will be more common, as it will appear far more reasonable to insist upon.



well rounded characters are not desired already. They are sold for less than any other focused character. nothing new. They will get less worthy after this probably.

As you mentioned Corp XXX already insist you train those skills. Right now your only options are to either train them wait for years.... or go grind isk like crazy and dump like 30 billion isk for a character. Which is not a pretty option. But after this at least people can dumb only few plexes. compared to 25-30 bil its doable.


Or buy PLEX which is how I bet many do it.

If you can make 180 million/hour to get to 30 billion requires 166.67 hours.

Or you could buy 25 PLEX (assuming a price of 1.2 billion/PLEX), or $498.75. Which if you make $20/hour after taxes is about 25 hours of work.

You do the calculus...

Which do you value more:

1. 166.67 hour of leisure spent grinding ISK,
2. 25 hours worth of after tax income?

And 30 billion is a bit high, IMO (that is about a 60 million SP character). Getting a character that has good logistics skills so you can fly logi and a few other doctrines would probably cost quite a bit less.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Lis Aivo
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#668 - 2015-10-25 11:45:04 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
Nikk Narrel wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process

But it does neutralize the consequences for poor decision making, in the context of picking character skills to train.

A well rounded character becomes embarrassing, as it seems the player is too lazy to clean up their un-needed skills and re-invest points in a more focused manner.

Did not like that skill?
Dump it, keep it, whatever, just buy the points in the skill, that hindsight demonstrates you should have picked.

Competition is LESS interesting when everyone has effectively perfect assets, that is when things get unpleasant.

Corp XXX can now insist you have these skills trained to level 5.
While this is not unheard of now, with the ability to effectively buy the skills it will be more common, as it will appear far more reasonable to insist upon.



well rounded characters are not desired already. They are sold for less than any other focused character. nothing new. They will get less worthy after this probably.

As you mentioned Corp XXX already insist you train those skills. Right now your only options are to either train them wait for years.... or go grind isk like crazy and dump like 30 billion isk for a character. Which is not a pretty option. But after this at least people can dumb only few plexes. compared to 25-30 bil its doable.


Or buy PLEX which is how I bet many do it.

If you can make 180 million/hour to get to 30 billion requires 166.67 hours.

Or you could buy 25 PLEX (assuming a price of 1.2 billion/PLEX), or $498.75. Which if you make $20/hour after taxes is about 25 hours of work.

You do the calculus...

Which do you value more:

1. 166.67 hour of leisure spent grinding ISK,
2. 25 hours worth of after tax income?

And 30 billion is a bit high, IMO (that is about a 60 million SP character). Getting a character that has good logistics skills so you can fly logi and a few other doctrines would probably cost quite a bit less.



i dont get the reason of doing this comparison. Whats the point ?

I dont care if people dump that much money to buy plex. Dont think many people would do tho. In fact many would benefit from this since plex prices would go down.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#669 - 2015-10-25 13:13:11 UTC
There will be zero benefit to doing this in the long run.

None. It's been tried in dozens of games, and it has absolutely ruined any kind of long term viability for every last one of them.

It takes one of the few actual unique aspects of this game, and adds mandatory skill grind. That *will* happen. Anyone who does not have that absolute 100% perfect build will be required to get it to do anything with a group. Anyone that dies will assume it's because they lacked some skill their opponent had, and will feel they have to earn ever more ISK to "keep up". New modules, ships, and skills will come out, and it will take a month or more to make them shine and people will feel they have to have that right away too.

It turns one of the best things about the game into golden ammo.
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#670 - 2015-10-25 13:21:20 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
There will be zero benefit to doing this in the long run.

None. It's been tried in dozens of games, and it has absolutely ruined any kind of long term viability for every last one of them.

It takes one of the few actual unique aspects of this game, and adds mandatory skill grind. That *will* happen. Anyone who does not have that absolute 100% perfect build will be required to get it to do anything with a group. Anyone that dies will assume it's because they lacked some skill their opponent had, and will feel they have to earn ever more ISK to "keep up". New modules, ships, and skills will come out, and it will take a month or more to make them shine and people will feel they have to have that right away too.

It turns one of the best things about the game into golden ammo.

While it seems less than accurate that anything will be "required" for fleet doctrines (fleet size is often more helpful than a specific fleet comp, especially with ECM, Logi, and other roles), it does seem an interesting idea what other games have are being mentioned?

I've responded to some relevant points here which might further the discussion.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.
Vypera Blackneck
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#671 - 2015-10-25 14:10:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Vypera Blackneck
o7
First of all please, forgive me for my poor English.

I really like this new feature. Obviusly I'm not the first who has the next concern about the SP Trading stuff.

Ok. So if someone has "waste" SP to sell that means the char has at least 500k SP to "unplug" and sell for reasonable chashish... that's sounds lovely, isn't?!

I see two reasons to rip and sell SP.

1st: for pretty money... ehm, what kind of ISK really?
A char with let's say 30m SP, can unlikely be messed up that much it couldn't get the price of a PLEX in a month.
In average you get about 1 million SP per month yes, but you need those SP right there. Unless you constantly messing up your training queue.
So how much would I ask for? SP is a valuable stuff. Being a bit greedy and lazy make it up at least to 1 PLEX for 500k SP. Why is that high? It's business we selling it for profit. If it was low, there wasn't enough on market so the price would go up because of higher demand, right?

Let's face it the older chars have the riches they can buy such luxury for own use or for re-selling ergo no cheap SP for newbies.
Even if they could get the ISK for... that would be all they work for, farming all day long to get their skill little closer to the older players. So they work hard to be on 5mil SP instead of 4.5mil.

Great they are still crap and now poor too. That's not much benefit for the newbs.

2nd:for "re-training" the char... if I had wastes and I fancy to train for something else... yup, we always do. But there is a loss on SP trading, a part just disappears from the system so as the ISK paid for.
So hello! If I want to re-buy my "wasted/ripped" skill points, I will sell the "waste" on the highest price as possible to cover the loss. Higher the price more newbs will suck on again.

They need to get in a price-fight with the older accounts. New players have no chance... apart from buying shite-loads of PLEX from CCP this is discriminative and will make ppl angry (and would inflate the price of PLEX).

If it was possible to extract SP and then re-inject that to the same char with a loss (or on the same account, or the owners another account) there were no SP on the market so no benefit to Newbs here too.

My concern is, who can extract SP will not do it for charity, but for reasonable profit. Since CCP have no control over market the price expected to be high which makes it nearly impossible for a new player to get a real benefit from this.

So, that's what I wanted to say.
Thanks for reading it hope it makes you think.


Fly safe! o7
Vyp
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#672 - 2015-10-25 14:16:28 UTC
Less than accurate? Have you played any mmo's?

Other games have different dynamics, but the underlying principals remain the same, and are in fact magnified by the fact that in EVE you lose whatever you had in space when you die.

With a mechanic in place that allows straight up instapurchase of skillpoints any build not up to spec of the chosen doctrine will be frozen out, period. Null Blobs, incursions, camps of all kinds... Unless you run it yourself you will be required to field the exact build some 'genius' has cooked up.

Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#673 - 2015-10-25 15:22:57 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Less than accurate? Have you played any mmo's?

Other games have different dynamics, but the underlying principals remain the same, and are in fact magnified by the fact that in EVE you lose whatever you had in space when you die.

With a mechanic in place that allows straight up instapurchase of skillpoints any build not up to spec of the chosen doctrine will be frozen out, period. Null Blobs, incursions, camps of all kinds... Unless you run it yourself you will be required to field the exact build some 'genius' has cooked up.


It's based on nothing. Fleets are more than flying 10M SP ships.

Dror wrote:
You're arguing to extremes.

There's no reason to say that newbies would have no place in the sandbox. A huge niche is shown pretty evidently with a certain hierarchy of motivation -- protip: it's benevolence and unity.

Strategy is fun. If that includes recruiting newbs, and literally any that would pay for the game, magnificent!

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#674 - 2015-10-26 04:00:37 UTC
If your own argument held any water at all, there would be no need for this change and the idea itself would never have been given any serious consideration, much less development time.

The only good side to this is that if a newbie gets in good with a group they will give him the skill packs to enable his participation.

That does not change the fact that this sort of pay to win strategy is equivalent to giving hard drugs to an addictive personality. It's going to make him happy for the next day or so, and then it will beat his wife, Rob his kids of their future, eat his life savings, and destroy everything of value in his life. Or... You know, maybe he will be that one in a million guy who can handle his drugs and keep everything else balanced too... I mean, it's happened to at least one or two addicts, right?
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#675 - 2015-10-26 04:14:02 UTC
Lis Aivo wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
Nikk Narrel wrote:
Lis Aivo wrote:
So it doesn't change the fact that you can still dump money to speed up the process

But it does neutralize the consequences for poor decision making, in the context of picking character skills to train.

A well rounded character becomes embarrassing, as it seems the player is too lazy to clean up their un-needed skills and re-invest points in a more focused manner.

Did not like that skill?
Dump it, keep it, whatever, just buy the points in the skill, that hindsight demonstrates you should have picked.

Competition is LESS interesting when everyone has effectively perfect assets, that is when things get unpleasant.

Corp XXX can now insist you have these skills trained to level 5.
While this is not unheard of now, with the ability to effectively buy the skills it will be more common, as it will appear far more reasonable to insist upon.



well rounded characters are not desired already. They are sold for less than any other focused character. nothing new. They will get less worthy after this probably.

As you mentioned Corp XXX already insist you train those skills. Right now your only options are to either train them wait for years.... or go grind isk like crazy and dump like 30 billion isk for a character. Which is not a pretty option. But after this at least people can dumb only few plexes. compared to 25-30 bil its doable.


Or buy PLEX which is how I bet many do it.

If you can make 180 million/hour to get to 30 billion requires 166.67 hours.

Or you could buy 25 PLEX (assuming a price of 1.2 billion/PLEX), or $498.75. Which if you make $20/hour after taxes is about 25 hours of work.

You do the calculus...

Which do you value more:

1. 166.67 hour of leisure spent grinding ISK,
2. 25 hours worth of after tax income?

And 30 billion is a bit high, IMO (that is about a 60 million SP character). Getting a character that has good logistics skills so you can fly logi and a few other doctrines would probably cost quite a bit less.



i dont get the reason of doing this comparison. Whats the point ?

I dont care if people dump that much money to buy plex. Dont think many people would do tho. In fact many would benefit from this since plex prices would go down.


Jesus ******* Christ on a Pogo stick...

Opprotunity cost...for **** sake. Roll

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#676 - 2015-10-26 08:07:24 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
If your own argument held any water at all, there would be no need for this change and the idea itself would never have been given any serious consideration, much less development time.

The only good side to this is that if a newbie gets in good with a group they will give him the skill packs to enable his participation.

That does not change the fact that this sort of pay to win strategy is equivalent to giving hard drugs to an addictive personality. It's going to make him happy for the next day or so, and then it will beat his wife, Rob his kids of their future, eat his life savings, and destroy everything of value in his life. Or... You know, maybe he will be that one in a million guy who can handle his drugs and keep everything else balanced too... I mean, it's happened to at least one or two addicts, right?

If you have a problem with SP trading as "P2W", you have a problem with SP completely. There are already character bazaar options.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#677 - 2015-10-26 08:45:21 UTC
Sorry, you don't get to make my value judgments for me.

I don't have a problem with SP. There is more to SP than simple Time=SP.

This game does not have levels. One of my favorite things about this game is that progression isn't tied to how many things I kill. If real life intervenes in my game time, it does not matter other than lost time doing something, I don't log in and suddenly can't do things with my friends because they outleveled me in a few nights.

Real time training is an amazing feature, and while it's not technically going to go away, it will realistically cease to be a factor in character progression. It will be a minor little detail next to the overall grind for ISK and throwing dollars at the screen for the AUR to make the skill packets.

Consider the ramifications for the upcoming capital changes. When they go live, each cap pilot has some decisions to make.... Bring up skills for tech 2 cap weapons, train for the new class of cap, train for the other new cap sized modules, etc. You should see a shakeup in the metagame, possibly even the shape of the blue doughnut will waver as the fallout from the changes work their way into the game.

Except that with this change a day later you will see a horde of farmed characters disassembled, money for AUR tossed in CCP's lap, and all or most of the bigger alliances's cap pilots will have all of that, instantly. No long term strategy, nothing but some insta-baked max skilled characters dominating anyone without the cash both in game and IRL to match them overnight. By the time those without catch up all the shake up of the meta will long since be over and done with.

You can't buy that effect off the character bazaar. Nor can you correct for opportunity costs unless the exact thing you want happens to be available.

I am a busy man IRL. I have 2 kids that I raise myself, a job with long and inconvenient hours and a long commute, and a few social obligations. Without the real time training I would long ago have allowed my account to lapse, because I often go weeks at a time without even the opportunity for a couple hours shooting rats. I am not the only one. This will cost those subscriptions. Both because there is no point if I can just buy the lost time back, and because it instantly devalues any dedication to the game.
Mag's
Azn Empire
#678 - 2015-10-26 08:49:52 UTC
Well said Mike, well said. Cool

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Dror
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#679 - 2015-10-26 08:55:34 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Sorry, you don't get to make my value judgments for me.

I don't have a problem with SP. There is more to SP than simple Time=SP.

This game does not have levels. One of my favorite things about this game is that progression isn't tied to how many things I kill. If real life intervenes in my game time, it does not matter other than lost time doing something, I don't log in and suddenly can't do things with my friends because they outleveled me in a few nights.

Real time training is an amazing feature, and while it's not technically going to go away, it will realistically cease to be a factor in character progression. It will be a minor little detail next to the overall grind for ISK and throwing dollars at the screen for the AUR to make the skill packets.

Consider the ramifications for the upcoming capital changes. When they go live, each cap pilot has some decisions to make.... Bring up skills for tech 2 cap weapons, train for the new class of cap, train for the other new cap sized modules, etc. You should see a shakeup in the metagame, possibly even the shape of the blue doughnut will waver as the fallout from the changes work their way into the game.

Except that with this change a day later you will see a horde of farmed characters disassembled, money for AUR tossed in CCP's lap, and all or most of the bigger alliances's cap pilots will have all of that, instantly. No long term strategy, nothing but some insta-baked max skilled characters dominating anyone without the cash both in game and IRL to match them overnight. By the time those without catch up all the shake up of the meta will long since be over and done with.

You can't buy that effect off the character bazaar. Nor can you correct for opportunity costs unless the exact thing you want happens to be available.

I am a busy man IRL. I have 2 kids that I raise myself, a job with long and inconvenient hours and a long commute, and a few social obligations. Without the real time training I would long ago have allowed my account to lapse, because I often go weeks at a time without even the opportunity for a couple hours shooting rats. I am not the only one. This will cost those subscriptions. Both because there is no point if I can just buy the lost time back, and because it instantly devalues any dedication to the game.

Challenging your idea of SP because you list it as P2W (more specifically, as correlative with winning in any manner) is nothing about it as a progression method. Without SP, there would be no "behind" at all.

That's the point. Characters do get out-leveled, and under nothing but money paid. So, if getting out-leveled is a deterrent for you, how much the same for a huge percentages of gaming? "Nothing but some .. max skilled characters dominating anyone without the cash both in game and IRL to match them." That's already how it is.

"SP is helpful for the game?" Here's all of the research on motivation -- it says the opposite! What purpose does it serve, then? Starter corps are non-competitive. Sov is unchallenged. "Fix sov!" you say? Remove SP.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#680 - 2015-10-26 09:54:02 UTC
You fail to understand the importance of diminishing returns. Choose to master a frigate and a 12 year old character with all his millions of SP over you will be on the same footing, unless it's something truely new, in which case you are already equal. Until the change, then all that will matter is who has the most money.

Currently there is a progression based on time invensted via sp. That will go away, to be replaced with who has the most cash. Currently sp isn't a pay to win, instead it's time spent, priorities decided upon, decions made.

All of that is going to go away. It takes money to get time, but there is little you can do to maximise your time. Eve is about the long haul and choices having meaningful consequences. After this change it will be about spending money to perfect your build...Until ccp decides to change a module and thus get another injection of cash.

The reasons you don't like it are exactly the reasons it's important to keep it this way.