Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Once a player is done all of these there should be Career Agents for each level, I to V expanding on these and also becoming specialized into certain things. As some suggest, certificates for specialized hulls ie. Stealth Bomber, Interdictor, Heavy Assault, Cruiser, Mining Barge; the best part is CCP already has the functionality to make these missions with acceleration gates that only those hulls can go into.

Sisters’ of EVE Epic Arc and all others Arcs; provide certificates for completing the missions (and get x3 or something next to it for completing it three times!). COSMOS missions should also be a no brainer, give certificates for completing them, they cannot be repeated every three months, or ever again.

Pirate Faction Certificates; A few certificates might spawn a group or corporation of players work for a pirate faction to get achievements plus the goodies they provide already...

So that covers the “Epic Journal” why stop there? Certificates for completed Expeditions and Incursions, and someone said achievements for killing or doing things in unique ways… This gives players goals to try solo and in fleets, or get a corporation or alliance certificate for doing something as part of the entity. Also statistical certificates for completing/killing/mining/producing/researching X number something, level 8 standings with NPC corporations, you get the point.

Now to explain certifications…

To start, what is the purpose of the Certification Planner? As take from Aura’s tutorial, “A certificate is a collection of skills that will make you more competent within a particular field.” Unfortunately as many have stated, taking the skills will not make YOU more competent in your field, it will make YOUR CHARACTER more able to fit, equip or simply be able to use more “stuff.” If you, the player, don’t know how to fit a proper tank then the trained skills do little good. Yes there is some very good basic information on some certificates (Missile/Turret Control), but most of them just say that you have the skills and therefore the competence (EWAR Operator). Also stated several times, some certificates are plain useless (Starter Professions - cut them), or incomplete; Planetary Interaction you don’t need all skills at V to be elite, Business and Industry missing a few skills from certifications entirely, there is no Corporation Management or Social certifications at all, and you seem to cut off at battleships, what happened to the capital certifications?

This is where the relevant Fanfest video will fit in nicely. Around 16:20, you can read their goals and they are good, however, they only show and talk about the progression tree of skills for flying the ships and going up in size. The new look I totally enjoy, see 32:00. Suggestions about the holograms and trees; make the colour of the T2/T3/Navy/Faction hull holograms different than T1 (and for the battlecruisers and frigates where you use the same hull twice… Use the more logical hull ie. Myrmidon for the Eos and Tristan for the Ishkur); also the camera does not need to move so much, (the focus on the middle can be a zoom out option to see all trees and see every ship you can train) by default have the character looking at their racial tree of ships, then they can “spin or roll” left or right to see the factions and other races like a wheel, probably have emblems along the bottom to click on for ease. A note for the faction trees, they should be merged between the racial skills they require so when “rolling” over to Gurista from Gallente tree, it fades out/removes everything except frigate, destroyer, cruiser, battlecruiser and battleship from the Gallente and fades in/brings up the same for Caldari, the lines now connect from frigates, cruisers and battleships to show the Gurista ships requirements. If this ship skill tree is all they implement off the start, that’s okay… but there is more to do.

There are three major issues; first, they do not break down the roles or progression of hulls within the same group, they will need to make this ‘code’ as they say modular, and be able to put in several more major “trees” or webs. They SHOULD put in an option for ship lines with similar bonuses, ie. Attack and Combat being the most complete T1 wise, but they need to include T2/T3/Navy/Faction here as well.

For the list of required skills it would have two circles connecting to it, Doomsday Operation I & Racial Titan I, both circles would then branch out to show all the required skills get those two skills. There should also be an option to only show the next skill(s) in line that your character can train just to simplify for the much larger modules and ships. This is where the minimum and maximum truly come into play, once trained and able to use the Doomsday, you have the minimum or “Basic Certification” for that module, then CCP can set-up standard and elite certifications for the module giving everyone a benchmark, and knowing when you have maximized the potential of the module. Standard certifications should represent the most appropriate median between performance level and skill training time, while elite remains max potential of module. For the Doomsday Device there is only one skill that can be trained to keep improving performance or fit, Doomsday Operation, and it gives 10% increase in damage per level, minimum is 10% bonus, maxium is 50%, based on the training time to power increase per-level, a standard certification could be extracted giving the optimal training time/level ratio (I’m not doing the math but I would guess level III would be standard certification). For a smaller modules, like a turret, there are several Gunnery skills that will continue to improve fitting and performance.

If CCP can set-up the certification based on the skill network I just explained, they should be able to combine it with the tools I am about to describe. The fitting tool designed for the character, corporation and alliance level with ship fit certifications, corporation recruitment and skill certifications, calendar sign-up and fleet role certification, management role certifications.

The fitting tool, right now its use is to store 300 fits, (100 personal, 200 corporate) and all it gives is a check or cross to the modules for fitting, this needs to be improved. EFT and Battleclinic have great resources to support the EVE community, and we need to build the in-game functionality to make the community stronger and more knowledgeable about fittings. I believe in the video mentioned above they thought about having in-game public fittings being voted up or down. If there is a way to allow or post fittings publicly it would be an interesting and dynamic idea. Back to the point, one thing is being able to fit ships in game, right now you can only fit the ship you are in, with skills and implants affecting your hull and modules, EFT allows you to work around this, and that’s fine (Power to the EFT Warriors!), but if you have a fit in your folder, you all have the skills to use all the modules, I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to ask to be able to fit an assembled ship in your station(or corporation) hanger. If you want to limit that though I would check against implants and skills to see if everything can be “online” however that does not stop us from fitting modules right now. Which brings me to another function, the fitting tool should tell you with your current skills and implants if you can have all modules online for a fit. For full functionality it should show all the attributes of the fit like you were in the ship, ie Capacitor, Offense, Defense, Targeting and Navigation plus PG, CPU, Calibration, Drone bay, ammo, and if you could add in mining yield and remote emissions numbers for remote energy, shield and armor please. Note for Capacitor, if you could incorporate the functionality in the fitting window between active and non-active modules in-game, would be great.

Once the functionality is implemented, you should be able to set basic, standard and elite certifications on the fitting as a whole based on hull and modules equipped. Back into the certification window you now have your list of fittings showing the ships with all the modules equipped, you select your Rifter PvP fit; it will then bring up your Rifter, the top skill circles will then connect around it for every skill needed at minimum to fly and fit that fit. If in a corporation or alliance fitting folder it will show the corporation certification level by default. How to set your own, corporate or alliance certifications will be based off the minimum, standard or elite certification developed my CCP, you can then modify any skill within the network up to V or down to the minimum required to fly the ship or use the modules applied to the fitting. This will allow any entity to make an awesome fitting and then modify the potential of it by reducing/increasing the training time to a more practical goal (and not train every skills to V until you have balanced all of them to the standard you make for yourself or your corporation or alliance has provided.

Corporation Recruitment and Skill Certifications. “We are a type A only corporation, what relevant skills do you have?”

True EVEMon will give you everything, but the idea here is to deliver informative concise data to the recruiter, the API check will still be around for a while don’t worry, but imagine if directors and recruiters could check applicants in-game for against a list of desired ship hull, industry, leadership, tanking, weapon groups, electronic warfare or support skills? It would tell you how useful they will be in the beginning and once accepted they could use the information and plans you provide to plan out their training to become a better pilot for the corporation.

Maybe use Certificates as a filter in fleet finder (?)

I had to chime in on a "certificate " thread.

1) We need to discuss general certificate issues here not just should they be visible.
2) Make certificate LEVELS make more sense. Only 3 types: "BASIC, IMPROVED, ELITE"
2b) BASIC is having level 2 of the skill(s).
2c) IMPROVED is having level 4 of the skill(s) (adjusted for unlocking most T2 items)
2d) ELITE is having level 5 of the skills (keeping in mind this is major gloating - ie. Advanced Battleship Autocannon Specilization Certificate comes to mind. Who really trains Large Autocannon specilization to 5.
2e) But this keeps things more realistic doing it this way. That 4 tier thing was overly complex.

3) Make MORE certificates and adjust the current ones so they make sense.
3b) Corp certificates.
3c) Certificates like on STEAM - Stuff like A PVP certificate - Your first kill and "10 kills - Unstoppable" :)
Certificates for completing all the Cosmos Tag missions (as mentioned here) or Running a corp or Epic Arcs! The list goes on and on as others have shown.

4) Leave the Visibility options as is - JUST FIX THE INTERFACE.

Hope this helps. I noticed there is NO CCP feedback in this thread. I hope they read this. : (

i only use them to show i have the ability to Hull tank. like a boss.

i was teaching a some new players and tbh i found the certificates more of a pain in the ass as they got warped up in them and then asked if this was a better thing to do here or their or is The Standerd Indy skill something they should aim for ect ect

in the end the only ones i used on the certs are core and defense with wepons left to what they wanted with a quick explination of the support skills are king then the damg aplications after that.

updating the skill in the menu and add in training times from 1-5 and a total training time on the cert its self with more corrected linked skills and clear understanding of their use and value would probly be better lot of work but would help ^^

- Temai

EveMon is such an awesome program. I use EveMon every day for checking required skills for new blueprints, material requirements to research/copy/invent/build. Certificates tab on character info page has always been useless to me.

I do not expect or even need certificate tab changes since EveMon already helps me manage my character. CCP could change the certificate tab to be an in-game version of http://eveboard.com/, buy why? Why not remove the certificate tab altogether? What does not benefit me may benefit others in the game, so I say just leave it as is. Or improve the functionality to make it intuitive, useful, and awesome. Otherwise, why even bother.

The "compare" option mentioned in the opening post has merit. Certs are useful when counselling new players on training regimens. Incenting people by offering payouts etc for say hitting core competencies also happens. But the conversation is a lot shorter and easier by pointing to certs. Being able to quick compare is valuable too. A picture is worth a 1000 words, etc.

An global rule that would make all certificates viewable, would prevent certain player actions:
con artists, lying, evil behaviour. . .
And ultimately restrict free will, such that the option should be "option-able" by each player.

Lets keep this universe,
from becoming a clone vat,
of exactly similar players and player behaviour,
due to "such" restrictions

Lets stay away from creating rules defined by
a general hive of whiners,
that demand game-destructive flaws as rules,
so that they can feal comfortable in their ashed nest.

Thank you for asking.

Back to the actual topic of this thread . . .

Item 1 would not cause much real pain, but it's in there now, so might as well leave it. If it takes away code you no longer have to maintain, sure, then lose it.

Item 2 sounds nice, but unlikely to generate a whole lot of love. If it's easy, sure, do it.

Item 3 sounds useful on paper, but it's not going to help much unless it does something really neat like also showing a skill plan to bridge the gap between the toons compared. If that skill plan was copy-pastable in some standard text format (i.e., a format that EveMon would accept), then it could possibly the great. Otherwise, if it only drills down to the cert level, it's fairly useless.

Item 4 sounds somewhat more useless than just making certs publicly viewable, which is already pretty useless. If someone already did it, then whatever. Otherwise, what's the point? With the exception of characters who have been idle for most of their lifetimes, I could tell almost as much about a character just by looking at his or her age (in other words, very little). If you do add this, just make it so we can CHOOSE whether to expose it or not. A lot of the recent new ideas are neat, but they'd be a whole lot neater if you remembered to include an OFF button with them.

As far as "what information we worry about exposing," the answer, as always, is "all of it." Any of this information that we can select to hide or reveal should remain hideable if we want to hide it. Even if you add new options for exposing it, the option to not expose it should remain.

Don't force certificates to be public that's way too much intel.

The starter career certs are way outdated.

Looks like the consensus is to keep core certs and weapons system certs, then have some kind of custom certifications people can create and share. That'd be really cool.