EVE General Discussion

Focus your SP for about 8 months into support (for one of armor or shield) skills and one racial frigate (with one weapon type) (get everything to 4 except where needed for T2, get the quick skills to V), and you'll be pretty much end game pvp ready for frigs and dessies.

Basil- this is in fact an amazingly useful question! It is also a stupendously difficult question. It seems there are several ways to answer it and in fact many are included in the thread. The most consistent answer seems to be that we (because I am a noob and so actually in the same condition) might need to think about the entire game and what it means to be 'good' in a very different light.

If you can read back in the thread (and the many other similar threads in the forum from new players) there are a lot of specific pieces of advice... All sooooo much better than any advice I could possibly offer.

I would say for starters though, actually take that guy up on his experiment, even though as you say it is completely artificial. Why take him up?
1- it will constitute your first successful scam. \0/ (one way people play that has nothing at all to do with SP)
2- it is likely to be great fun to do and this helps dissolve envy since it places your attention on what 'is' instead of what is 'not'
3- you will meet people and make enemies! Very important in EVE and again something that does not require skill points, but has many advantages
4- make him spend the money.... Try to make it cost as much as possible for him! Figure out how to do that exactly. Heck, cheat by getting other players to make it last and him have to replace ships until he is broke or quits. I am sure he will thank you for the opportunity. Remember, no good deed should ever go unpunished in EVE!!!! :)

After you have done this, regardless of what the experiment proves or not, revisit your relationship to the problem you have raised.

This is all that comes to mind about the immediate, but my guess is that if you do something like this, even knowing it cannot possibly 'fix' the condition you (and I) are suffering, other things will come to mind... Heck... You could design your entire EVE experience around attempting to punish those high SP bastards through as many devious ways as possible having nothing to do with the SP axis of the game... Do this for a while and soon you will find that you have enough SP that someone else is envying you.... For example. It's kind of a relative thing, ya know.

There are lots of people with better suggestions... Some useful, some perhaps... Erm.... Not so useful, but very colorful.

You optimist you.

I'm not clueless about eve, it's just eve is clueless about pvp. As a matter of fact, it doesn't have any.
As I said, i'm not going to quit - too much invested to just dump it.
But eve is extremely boring contentless game, so I gotta find a way to enjoy it. Which is near-impossible without player interaction, which in eve is extremely poor.

LOOK AT ALL THE REASONS THIS GAME SUCKS, but you're not going to quit.


That would make you an idiot.

Obviously you are, player interaction is what Eve is all about, without it you may as well be playing a single player game.

Now tell us once again how SP=Win, because obviously you are right and the rest of us are wrong .

I think you may find yourself living in interesting times in the very near future.

Late 2011 player checking in, no problem in pvp. Guess it's just you.

Facts and valid examples have no place in the OPs world, our efforts are wasted upon him.

OK, this is for the one newbie who might be reading this thread, and doesn't understand what we bttervets mean by "SP don't matter". SP gap is actually an argument I hear from non-EVE players as a reason to not join. Here goes.

Each type of ship you fly is going to have a cap on which skills are effective in flying it. For example, you're flying an active shield tank autocannon frigate, then only the skills applicable to active shield tanking and autocannons will apply. An older char my have training in, say, missiles and armor tanking, but those skills won't really help in flying the active shield tank autocannon frig. Level 5 is Level 5 in a skill, no matter if the char was created a month ago, or 10 years back.

More SP gives you more OPTIONS on what you can fly or use. Specialization versus generalization. After 6 months, you may not be able to fly as many ships as my 7 year old main, but you'll likely be able fly the subset of ships you specialize in just as effectively as I can.

OPs argument is absurd for the following reason. Take two chars born on the same day. Char A starts training gunnery, Char B starts training industry. By OPs logic, Char B will never be able to compete with Char A, because Char B started training a non-combat skill, and is now in a deficit.

1 month into EvE and you can be the guy emptying your alliance hangars