Skill Discussions

The problem isn't the time it takes for a new pilot to get into the game, it's the perception of how long it takes to be useful....... sadly this is hugely skewed by many corporations stating that you need to be in ships that are not effective or flyable from a new pilots perspective.

New pilots can be hugely beneficial in the right ships and circumstances.

Regards

Barrak

I have actually never seen a thread quite like this one. I think "giving" those skills to level V might be bad on some level, but I can't pin it down atm.

I general, I feel like I trained them, so evey one else should put in the time as well. BUT: If they went away, all I would really want, is the skill points re-imbursed, as done with other skills.

How could it be bad? EVE is about specializing your character. CCP are even making skill changes in order for specializing faster into 1 race...

All of these skills are the non-specializing skills which makes new EVE players quit because it takes half a year before the basics are somewhat decently trained.
In case they specialize right after they get into the game they'll still be left with amazingly bad basic skills.

If I wanted to invite some friends to EVE It'd take them 1 year before they would be useful at my level of playing. With this change it would only take 3-4 months.

5's matter on these skills to be competitive.

As someone who has only just barely gotten over that 12M SP hump somewhat recently OP, I disagree. I think teaching patience and wise skill choices is good for new players. Also it isn't like you need those skills at V in order to fly cruisers around and do lv 2 or 3 missions.

Tiericide wasn't a relic, it's a response to a relic.

Also, we can all tell you didn't put in much time thinking about this.

Exactly.
The reason why learning skills was removed are because they simply De-gimped your training time while at the same time denying new pilots getting into fun and shiny shiptypes - Remember the feeling of : "ohhhhhh a Battleship! I want to fly that!" ???... but then you had to train learning skills in order for you to train your skills faster? That really was not a satisfying feeling.
To bend you over even just a little more CCP added basic skills just to make sure it would take you a long time to have fun in your new and shiny, but heavily gimped ship.
Basic skills deny new players to unlock Shiptypes and Equipment at a critical stage where they are choosing wether or not this game is worth playing.

I made it through that first year of training Learning skills/Basic skills- But for 7 years in a row I have been unable to recruit any longterm players of my E-friends to EVE - they all quit after getting super bored because they aren't able to be useful to another pilot in EVE while at the same time flying their new and shiny ship.
There's a reason why many PvP corps got 10-20mill sp limits - It's not because the player behind the screen don't understand PvP - its that their character can't do "enough" because most EVE players with less than 10 mill skillpoints mainly got their SP in Basic skills.

I like how CCP advertise their game with being a sandbox - It's a place where we can make a wide variety of things that will eventually fall apart and be reassembled in another way.
When I was a kid and played in my sandbox, I got to learn the basics of playing with sand pretty damn quick - if It had taken me 8 months to learn how to play with sand - trust me, I wouldn't have been playing with that stupid sand. Trolol.

It's a general approach so far that would certainly need finetuning if implemented. But it's a really good discussion starter IMO.

For instance I'm not sure eWar skills should be in that list and some skills are really high on my priority list for lvl IV, but very low for lvl V. That however is mostly due to inconsistencies regarding T2 requirements for stuff where T2 is clearly superior than any metas (shield extenders and invuls come to mind).

With learning skills you had a similar situation. The investment for lvl 4 was ok, lvl 5 was pretty much long term, however neglecting it was problematic in the extremely long term.
CCP decided not to give everyone lvl 4 but to remove those skills altogether - IMO a good decision.

Cybernetics is another very problematic skill in that regard. ISK aside, I once calculated that it would take about 2 years to recover the SP invested into lvl 5 from the bonus compared to lvl 4 implants alone. At that time I didn't even know (and I still can NOT say for certain!) if I would still be playing the game 2 years from starting. Clearly NOT an incentive to make that investment.



Generally I'd recommend CCP to take a look at skills that 90% of pilots past a certain SP amount have at V and among those identify the skills that do nothing but increase numbers. I'd strongly recommend setting some of those skills as baseline for all pilots and refund the SP invested, as the difference to learning skills is really just of cosmetic nature.

Why stop there? Give everyone all skills for free at lvl V. Unlimited isk too. We wouldn't want noobs to feel left out.

The majority of the skills you listed are niche skills. All the ewar skills are useless for noobs. Tactical Shield Manipulation is actually worse at V than IV. Warp skills are pretty useless. Other people have listed more detailed examples.

As for new people not being able to participate: tackle is the most important role in fleets besides maybe logi. And a noob can now get into a t1 logi in 2-3 weeks easily. DPS? 2 week old alts blow up hulks and suicide gank all the time, obviously they can deal dps. Go join red vs blue and tell me noobs do no damage or can't participate in fleets.

You want noobs to be able to tank and dps and ewar and more all at once. Eve is about specializing, the one benefit older players have is that they can fill multiple roles at once. Noobs simply have to choose 1 or 2 to start off with.

Tell me one role besides absurd stuff like capital ships that a noob cannot fill after 1 month of training if he focuses on it. You can't.

For the heck of it I googled 'Hurricane pvp newbie fit' and imported it into a blank evemon character.

Result: 5 days 4 hours. That includes all the basics: MWD, point, 2x LSE, rigs, DCU, Gryos, TEs and 2 utility neuts. Of course some support skills are needed, but all in all it still lands squarely below 1 month training time.

Now call me old fashioned, by I wouldn't recommend bringing 60m ISK worth of ship into your very first PVP fight two weeks into the game anyway. So where is the problem?

---

Edit: Memory flashback. My first 'pvp fit' was within the first eve week. Something to tag along in our corporation's high-sec war. It was a catalyst with two different types of railguns. Me to fleet: 'So I can fight both long and short range!'

Thankfully I wasn't shot that evening and the next time corpmates gave me some fitting help.

Good old times. *sigh*