EVE General Discussion

Oh my god, one of the absolute BEST things about Eve is the fact that I am training all the time. CCP has made that even better by extending the skill queue.

Someone was whining about a 120 day queue. My character has a 180 day queue and that's only because I'm too lazy to set up a plan and fill it. I tinker with it fairly regularly. If I was to set up an actual plan, it would be a full year.

I remember playing MMOs where you started off killing rats, bats, and bugs (and dying to them) in the newbie area, then graduated to dogs, then bears, then ..... The lack of a level grind is one of the things that is awesome about Eve, not a negative. Skills are NOT levels. Star Wars Galaxies - shooting ******* rats with blaster guns - repeatedly - as a newbie is one of the dumbest things ever.

Seriously new players. Get off your butt, interact with the other players out there and go have fun. The promo videos (This is Eve) aren't filled with many scenes of people out mining or running combat sites solo. It's filled with fleets of ships throwing down. Small / Midsize gang fleet fights are the most fun and they are certainly a place where new players playing smartly can contribute.

As a sometimes wormhole FC, I lust for scouts- not just players that go out and scan down chains, but that can get on grid, and get a fleet in on the target. It's harder than it seems. Wormhole fights are won first through intel - without it you'll lose more often than you'll win and only 2nd through blasters, beams, and missiles. Honestly, some of my best moments were dropping a fleet onto a target while never decloaking my ship. This is an excellent and exciting role for new players to really contribute.

The reason so many of the veteran players are saying "It's not the game, it's you" isn't because they care about you getting accelerated skill training. It's because changing that will not fundamentally change the fact that you're complaining about not being able to do things or experience things that you most certainly CAN do and experience. Unlike [insert MMO here] there is NO end game content that you have to train to level 200 and be wearing the best gear to experience. You literally can undock a ship in the first few days of the game and take part in whatever you want. You can make enough isk to plex your account in the second month of play. I have seen dedicated and smart players do it. Yes, it takes effort, and it may take a bit more than a higher skill point character, However, that doesn't change the fact that if you're willing to learn and put some effort into playing, you can immediately take part in whatever you want as part of a team. You can be a very important part of that team.

If you want to hop into a Paladin and go run C4 Anoms by yourself, then you're gonna have to put the training time in or buy a character. However, if that's what you want to do, go find a single player game. I hear Minecraft is kinda fun though I haven't tried it.

I play Eve as much for my friends, corp mates, and alliance mates as I do for myself.

o7

-Fi

Oh, no question there. The tutorial missions were always absolute shite, in no small part because they used the mission templates as their building block, and there's a reason why the NPE has been a constant sore point in equally constant need of refinement.

And sure, if the game tells you that as a newbie, you'll react the same way as when another player says the same nonsense – you do it because why wouldn't you? The reason for my asking, though, is that I hear the same thing so often in relation to so many activities where waiting is not even required. At that point, I wonder where the impulse to wait comes from.

The worst kind is the “levelling my Raven” variation: someone who has unlocked L4 missions and who's now “waiting to train for a Raven”… The confused question in response to that is always: why wait? Wait for what? He's been running missions so far, and he's going to run missions afterwards, so why not… you know… keep running missions? It's all the same.

With PvP, it makes ever so slightly more sense, but it really comes down to the same thing: why wait? Just because you might lose in the beginning doesn't mean it's not something you should “wait until it passes” because it will never pass without that initial loss — waiting just means the losses will be more costly and more difficult to analyse and learn from.

Because it not just defeats, but inverts the entire purpose of the suggested change: to reduce the presumed “gap” between newbies and veterans. You are creating the very problem you're trying to solve.

Going back to the original post in this thread, it's a common concern of new players that they will never be able to compete with older, established players:

"My issue atm stems from the fact I feel like the mature players have such a leg up in every possible way and even with a year of play time it seems near impossible to even enter their playing field.... help bring new players more quickly into the greater Eve verse."

It's a relevant concern, but one that many of us feel is based on misunderstanding of how the skills work in Eve (but that aside).

So, if the game changes to provide faster training for new players, so they can more quickly catch and compete with older, established players, then that will actually give older, established players a greater advantage than it gives new players and the gap will actually increase more.

Older, established players generally know how to train alts for specific purposes and know what alts they need for certain purposes.

So while a new player will train faster, unless they have good contacts, support and advice around them, they are likely to train faster into a character that lacks focus and therefore doesn't have all the skills they need to compete even after the period of faster training expires.

Meanwhile older, established players will have more alts that far out compete the new players of the same age and also still have their old mains. They'll still be earning ISK faster, be more competitive in PvP, be less likely to derp blingy ships to lossmails; while having newer players present easy targets for them.

It's only from gaining game knowledge through experience, or from the help of others that you really understand how to properly craft a character and that creates a double edged sword in these proposals.

No one here is against new players, nor against new players being able to compete. We all support that. Many of us just have a different view about the fastest way to achieve that where we see gaining knowledge as a player first as more important than training skills faster. At the moment, there is kind of a natural balance that actually works out well when you can see it in hindsight.

You know, when I asked if you wanted to pick something new to be wrong about, I wasn't being litteral…

…and yet, there you go.

This is flawed logic. Like I have stated before in the thread about the SP packs: "EVE works with hard caps on skills". Basically this means that a newbie who bought skills packs to get the all skills affecting a tristan to V, will be just as efficient as a 8 year old character in flying the tristan SP wise.

What you mean is that the 8 year old character could undock a perfect skill RLML caracal and blast the tristan of field, but this is something else and does not change the fact that skillwise the SP gap can be closed faster with skillpacks than without.

I see no where it was stated that the intent of skill packets was to close the SP gap on for example titans or the bigger ships? Skillpackets would make it possible for newbies to be competative faster in frigates, which is fine for me. If the newbies have one ship they feel they fly okay´ish early on it might help retention.

it is kinda reminiscent of the real world tragedies that occur when people give a 17 year old rich kid with no road skills access to a Porsche or Ferrari.

I think a lot of newer players see arguments against them getting a cr@pload of SP early as some sort of unfair restriction on their play.

Thing is people could just say "who cares let them go stuff up if they want" but it is actually a good thing for new players and good for player retention if they "do the ropes".

Dumbing down and accelerated progression in the past in other games has resulted in churn with people racing to some mythical end game and then quitting.

Sure there is. It just depends how smart they are.

Close, but not quite.

People look at the game and notice that you accumulate SP through some odd-ball process that relies almost entire on time, with the obvious (and for the most part accurate) conclusion that older players have more. They then immediately jump to the conclusion that more is better, because that's how it usually works, and assume that there is a direct correlation between time and “power”. This flawed assumption then creates the incorrect perception that there is a gap in [ ability | power | awesomeness ] between old and new players that the new players can't overcome, and which therefore has to be addressed.

In actuality, this perceived gap doesn't exist, and what differences there are in SP are trivially overcome, either the hard way with time, or the clever way through proper use of tactics.

You mean the part where I said “I know. That's what makes it such a boneheaded idea”? No, I didn't ignore it. It is in fact central to why the gap doesn't actually exist, and to why the skill packets will only give old players additional competitive advantages: because they know about those caps and how to spend the SP in a way to circumvent or counter the marginal improvements as you get closer to them.

At the same time, it is precisely this unawareness of this feature of the skill system that creates the perception of a gap — a gap that pretty much all proposed “solutions” to this perception will actually increase for much the same reason.

No. It's pretty much a fact. I mean, sure, if you're a very slow learner, you'll probably end up with more SP than you'll need, but that just reinforces the concluding question: what is there to boost?

But more than that, though, you realise than nothing of what you then go on to say actually contradicts what I'm saying, right? Learning from failure is central to the process. You are always in charge of your own choices, so it's only ever there that the problem can really lie. And while there's nothing to say that new players must be protected, it doesn't really make much sense to give them more ways to screw themselves over, especially not in exchange for giving old players a mechanism to give them even more of an edge over those newbies.

No, it is directed at anyone who feels their special hobby horse deserves something special. I don't give a **** what it is really, SP, solo PvP, AFK cloaking, new players, etc. It is all bullshit special interest nonsense.

Oh so you don't want to grind, even for ISK? You just want everything handed to you on a silver platter?