Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a rethinking of how the skill levels should be reworked to give newer players a faster approach to the game, while not breaking any current game mechanic, neither ruining the older players experience.

Everyone already knows how the actual skill levels work, so i will pass over it and go directly to the proposal:

Changing the number of skill levels from 5 to 10 without changing the max amount of sp in the skill and obviously halving all the level related bonuses on skills and ships.

First approach: Half Way skill levels

Using the same formula from the actual method we get the levels as:

• level 1 - 250
• level 2 - 1415
• level 3 - 8000
• level 4 - 45255
• level 5 - 256000

and applying the exact half of sp needed for the next skill level, making the even levels to be like the old levels (actual level * 2) and the odd ones 1/2 sp needed ((level+1 - level-1)/2+level-1), we will get:

• level 1 - 125
• level 2 - 250
• level 3 - 833
• level 4 - 1415
• level 5 - 4708
• level 6 - 8000
• level 7 - 26628
• level 8 - 45255
• level 9 - 150628
• level 10 - 256000

The cumulative time training the same skill in the actual and the proposed method doesn't change and the time spent training from the level 8 to level 9 is the exact half of the actual method from level 4 to level 5.

eg:

Rank 1 skill for a new player (primary 20 secondary 20 so 1800 sp/hr)

Training from lvl 4 to 5 in the actual method will take 4d 21h 4m 49s

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the half way method will take 2d 10h 32m 26s

Second approach: Skill Points redistribution with 125 sp entry level

Instead of adding Half Way levels we can redistribute the skill points according with a new formula:
Rank * 125 * (2*(4^1/9))^Level-1

• level 1 - 125
• level 2 - 292
• level 3 - 681
• level 4 - 1588
• level 5 - 3704
• level 6 - 8641
• level 7 - 20159
• level 8 - 47032
• level 9 - 109728
• level 10 - 256000

The cumulative training time is still the same but it's faster to train up to level nine.

eg:

Rank 1 skill for a new player (primary 20 secondary 20 so 1800 sp/hr)

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the Half Way method will take 2d 10h 32m 26s
Cumulative time from lvl 1 to 9 will take 3d 11h 40m 56s

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the Redistributed method will take 1d 10h 49m 52s
Cumulative time from lvl 1 to 9 will take 2d 12h 57m 36s

Third approach: Skill Points Redistribution with 250 sp entry level

Like the precedent approach but starting from 250 sp like actual method with the formula:
Rank * 250 * (2*(2^1/9))^Level-1

• level 1 - 250
• level 2 - 541
• level 3 - 1167
• level 4 - 2520
• level 5 - 5444
• level 6 - 11758
• level 7 - 25399
• level 8 - 54864
• level 9 - 118512
• level 10 - 256000

Starting from 250 sp it's a little bit slower but faster than the Half Way Method.

eg:

Rank 1 skill for a new player (primary 20 secondary 20 so 1800 sp/hr)

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the Half Way method will take 2d 10h 32m 26s
Cumulative time from lvl 1 to 9 will take 3d 11h 40m 56s

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the Redistributed with 125sp entry method will take 1d 10h 49m 52s
Cumulative time from lvl 1 to 9 will take 2d 12h 57m 36s

Training from lvl 8 to 9 in the Redistributed with 250sp entry method will take 1d 11h 21m 35s
Cumulative time from lvl 1 to 9 will take 2d 17h 50m 24s

The differences between the 125 sp entry and the 250 sp entry become more consistent with higher ranks.

In all the proposed methods and the actual one the cumulative time to max the skill will be the same of 5d 22h 13m 20s.

Further enhancements:

All the skill entry levels can be changed to (actual level *2 -1) so level 9 will be the max needed skill to progress further. Level 10 would be the specialization level (although it gives a little bonus, but we already have lvl 5's that give only 2%).
For non progression skills (like Jury Rigging) the entry levels, aside the first, can be changed to (actual level * 2).
Although every skill should be balanced on a case by case basis, favouring a lot the progression on frigs/dessies, less on cruisers/bcs and maybe staying as it is on battleships/capitals.

Taking as example the mining skill:

In the actual method a new pilot trains Mining to level 4. It takes him 1d 1h 8m 30s and gets a 20% bonus. To get a better bonus he should train it to 5 and get a 25% but it will take 4d 21h 4m 49s more. It is a lot of time, pacing down the progression of the character.

In the Half Way method the same new pilot trains Mining to level 8. It still takes him 1d 1h 8m 30s and gets the same 20% bonus. But the better bonus (and the next progression line) it's only 2d 10h 32m 23s away. He gets a 22,5% bonus and access to Modulated Strip Miner IIs. Subsequently he can train the remaining 2d 10h 32m 23s to get the full 25% bonus.

In the Redistributed method training mining to level 8 will take 1d 3h 7m 42s but the 9th level is only 1d 10h 49m 52s away. And finally the level 10 will take 3d 9h 15m 43s.

Conclusions:

This way a newer pilot can access skills, modules and ships faster that in the actual method and be and feel useful shortening the skill time. And finally, when the pilot is established and confident can gain the last bit of bonus to get an edge over it's adversaries.

Implementation:

I don't know how much the bonuses are hardcoded into the game, and that can be so much work to change.
But, if as I think, all the data is stored in the main database and character database, a couple of iterating scripts should do the magic.

Maybe a bit of work for art department, changing stuff on the character sheet and other stuff to reflect visually the changes.

You realise this is an overhaul of the entire skill system and every bit of text and programming associated with it. Masteries, ship traits, the skills themselves, isis, 3rd party softwares etc etc just because of instant gratification?

Not necessary. If the entry barrier for tech 2 stuff needs to be lower we can do it without all this, and if we want to make skills more incremental we can split them up (see targeting and advanced targeting).

Edit-The other thing that can be done, taking your mining example, is to increase all mining laser yields by 10% and then half the skill amount to 2.5 or 3%. That would be much less work and is kinda what happened recently with drone interfacing.

Not needed, You train the first few 4 levels of most skills within a day for newer players. They got rid of learning skills and just gave more attributes. New players i think can still get the cerebral accelerators, they can also buy skill injectors and soon ccp is going to be giving away 10,000 free SP away each day for the first NPC rat kill you get.


new players have a lot of ways to get SP in this game pretty fast and thats not including +1/2/3/4/5 implants

It's not about "Instant Gratification" but faster progression on the early days of the game.
As I said in the OP the modification should be aimed towards the smaller ships and core skills.

You say that the first four levels train fast enough, and you're right, but sometimes isn't enough and you have to train lvl 5 to progress further, effectively pacing down the percieved speed of the game.



As I said, i don't know how much the skill levels are hardcoded into the core engine of the game, but if the data is stored in the database and subsequeltely everything is relation-dependent, shouldn't be impossible to apply some modifications on it and the rest should adapt automatically.

Much like when they change the dependencies of a skill, or the requirements, or the attributes of an item.



But lowering to lvl 4 the entry barrier for tech 2 in most cases is too fast, hence the idea of adding more levels.
And no, no more splitted skills, i think the game need less skills not more.



This is an intelligent approach, but the problem of progression still remains if i still need lvl 5 to progress further.

Honestly, this is a good thing. The pace of the game isn't fast. We shouldn't pretend otherwise.



I think you're horribly, horribly wrong. But this does shed some light on the rest of the proposal.



I've never much liked this approach either. No, skills shouldn't be required to be effective, but they should also be, you know, noticeable enough to make a difference. Dropping the benefits down too far makes them simply min/max games instead of actual progression.

your right a part of the game that affects everyone is not worth dev time they should get back to killing capital ballance

I agree. Lets get one thing straight, I don't think every skill in the game needs to be marginalised. The op just doesn't like waiting.

But if CCP did decide that they did want split a skill up, there are ways it can be done without overhauling the entire thing.

Came to read about removing learning implants.

Leaving disappointed about a textwall to make skilling more complicated.

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