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The delivery of this blog was pretty bad, Please dear god run this stuff past the csm. Surely that's what they are there for.....

replacing bc 5 with all racial bcs 5 is an acceptable solution but I would then strongly urge you to look into clone costs as you are talking of a 6m + sp injection.

Tiericide is one of the best things you can do and sooo glad to hear that you are pressing for it :) :) :) :)

Slightly concerned that you are dropping the prereq for capitals. One thing we don't need in this game is even more caps running around.


Overall fairly promising news just make sure people aren't required to re-train skills

I am excited at the prospect of a Drone/TD Amarr Battleship.

Dear CCP Ytterbium / CCP Soundwave (if you see this),

First, thanks for the "heads up" and development direction. After reading the devblog post, I understand that this is a part of a renovation of the current ship system. That answers my "Why this?" question. The next patch coming answers my "Why now?" question.

My remaining question is this:

As stated, the extra training time to get into a battleship is undesirable. (Personally, destroyers are a waste of my time.) Right now things do branch out, but only at the final capital level. Doesn't this seem imbalanced and top heavy? My hope is that this leads to new ship paths, but I doubt that is what you are ready to start thinking about. That said, what should the next logical step after battlecruisers be?

My advice is this:

Yes, this means I'm suggesting even more radical changes to the ship paths, but I think you should start with roles and work down from there. You are retrofitting a good idea onto a very old one from days when Eve was a fresh, new, and (in ways) derivative game. It has grown into a game that others now mimic. If the game were new, and you knew what you knew now, what you have done differently? Wouldn't you have role skills and then ships that used them?

In terms of roles, I believe that what helps to make T2 ships have such defined roles it their extra bonuses. I think a third bonus would make it easier for you to define the roles of T1 ships. As for T2, already you are seeing ships with extra bonuses beyond the basic 4. Even T1 ships are getting role bonuses. What if role skills determined role bonuses (unrequired to fly, but useful if you have it)? Such skills could span ship classes and even races. Just my personal thought, but also an observation.

Beyond that, I really hope you factor in cross-training. Right now, these changes will remove racial links and create racial divides. The simplicity of your diagrams mask the complexity of what people actually fly. I really would like to see some new ideas here (such as the role skill). Right now I just want you to be aware of the deeper problems this will be creating.

Several things going on in that post thus I have mixed feelings.

1- Removing the tiers for T1 ships (aka: Buffing hulls that no one flies) = good and would hopefully bring a greater variety of hulls in space.

2- "Re-balancing" ships reads like nerfing popular ships to me. IE: T3's (make them worse than faction cruisers?!?!) and other well performing hulls like the Drake. = BAD BAD BAD

3- Making the training tree more clear = mostly good (BAD if we have to train all the races BC and Dessy skills!) Sounds like it's time to make sure I have the Frig & Cruisers for all races to at least 4... /sigh

4- Making it take longer to train into some ships = Bad-ish. EVE is already a timesink skill intensive game for "new" players. Pushing training up even higher seems counter-productive to bringing in more new players.

5- Not too sure on the new skills for "Ship Lines" especially if these new "Ship Line" skills have no meaning beyond T1 ships. Or will they just tack on more requirements for T2/T3 (IE: Interceptor requires Attack & Support) There is already a ton of support skills for Capacitor, CPU, Armor, Shields, Guns, Missiles, etc needed to maximize a ships potential. I don't see a benefit (other than a timesink) for these new skills. Again, this seems counter-productive to bringing in more new players.


TLDR:
- Making the skill paths more clear and intuitive =good (Though it's not that bad now really)
- Making it take even longer to train = bad (From a vet point of view it's more or less 6's)
- Buff under performing hulls without nerfing ones that do perform well

I really don't like this term 'progression' I see a lot in the blog. There shouldn't be a 'right' way to play Eve. I prefer the skill system to be a bit quirky, requiring more thought and planning, as opposed to 'progressing' to the next ship I'm supposed to get into.

This is my point. There is no "making everyone happy" on this one.

I can appreciate that this fixes one of the weirdnesses of the skill tree and probably does make the job of totally new players understanding the skill progression easier (the only valid reason to do this I've thought of so far), but am really not sure that justifies the chaos and butt-hurt that this is sure to cause.

And to reask my question (apologies if its been answered in this torrent of comments)

Was CSM consulted on this and what did they say?

This thread has led me to a horrifying medical conclusion:
Prolonged exposure to large EMP smartbomb radiation at or near the Rancer gate causes brain cancer!

Acute symptoms in 100% of the posts by "the united" in this thread should be statistically significant and proof enough. CCP, you're messing with the health of your customers here. Fix this ASAP!

The problem i see is here:

People are always talking about the dispairity between vets and noobs.

Won't new players now have a longer training time, thus taking even longer to skill up for things?

To be honest, i think that idea is a step in the wrong direction

A better solution might be having different bonuses apply to ships (bonuses not requirements)

Say for example a raven requires caldari battleship 3 to fly.

However, it gets a bonus from each level of caldari battleship
It gets a bonus from each level of caldari cruiser
It gets a bonus from each level of caldari frigate

yes, ships will have more bonuses, but you could mitigate them. Example, maybe the frigate bonus is a 2% to say agility, or missile velocity, or w/e.

Furthermore, i think there should be less "manditory" skills to train to level 5
Obviously fitting skills and such are always important to train to 5, but i mean requirements.

And no, i'm not saying that t2 ships should have reduced ship requirements (i think recons should require racial cruiser 5 for example)

What I'm talking about is skills like "advanced spaceship command"
Why is advanced spaceship command 5 a requirement for capital ships?
Would it not make sense to have the requirement at 4? or even 1? or not at all?
The point is that its an extra 30 day skill that everybody flying carriers and dreads has to train, that doesn't really change anything (as everyone gets it) its a pointless filler-skill.

Similarly, jump drive operation.
Jump drive operation 5 is a requirement for JDC.
Fleets will NOT let anybody fly with them without JDC 4 (although JDC 5 requirement is becoming more common).
Its another needless 30 day skill that has no progression (you really don't have an extra 30 day skill that EVERYBODY needs for ALL capitals)

And lets be clear here. I think capitals are a good thing. Capitals are great ships. Capitals are fun to shoot. Capitals are easilly kill-able by BS fleets.
Its SUPERCAPITALS that everyone hates.

Freighters will be more common since you only need industrial IV under the proposed system. Which could have an interesting effect on the market.

This is so asinine it makes my head hurt. I have an idea, lets start all walking on our hands for a change. It's a change so it must be good. Just because something isn't broken doesn't mean that it is 'stagnant'.