Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello All,

The idea is simple. Let us manufacture skill books that we have already trained.

How it would work. Allow a player a new skill or set of skills (Publishing Skill/Set of Skills) that allows for the publication of skill books that can then be sold on the market. There are two options that I can see.

1) Only allow publishing of skills to be available if a player has level 5 in the skill they wish to publish. This is my preference as it gives level 5 skill holders more of a benefit for their time spent training than just the bonus of that skill and it feels right but that's just my gut talking.

2) Allow for the publication of a certain skill so long as you have at least level 1 trained but use the level trained as a modifier for publication time, e.g: -

lvl 1 in Caldari frig => 1hour to publish a Caldari frigate skill book.
lvl 5 in Caldari frig => 15mins to publish a Caldari frigate skill book.

Numbers can be tweaked obviously. This way opens up the Publishing 'career' for more people.

As a final point on how publishing would work. Some balance would have to be worked out on the time it takes to publish different skill books. A Frigate skill book would be produced quicker than a Battleship skill book and a Titan skill book would take much, much longer.

How to Publish a Skill book. I currently see this as a way to introduce more Isk/materiel sinks to the game. The potential methods of production could be as follows: -

1) Similar to manufacture of any other item but through a special Publishing set of menus. The menus would ask what skill you want to publish along with how many copies you want and then give a readout of the materiel costs and skill requirements. Then you would let it get on with it and collect the skills once they are complete.

2) It could work in a similar way to research agents and have it as a passive income thing. A player could collect however much materiel they require and then trade it for a published copy of the skill they want. This way new skills could be seeded in the game by these Publishing agents giving missions with skill book payout rewards.

Or new skills could just be NPC one time only market orders but it is a bit messy that way.

So the Publishing skill. Made so that level 1 allows for the publication of tier 1 skills that have no pre-requisites of there own, up to level 5 which would allow the publication of top end skills such as capital ship skills, t2/3 item skills etc. or perhaps it could be broken down into standard publishing skills and advanced publishing skills...?

Why? I have often wondered why the NPC market should be left in control of supplying skills. Implementing this would enable players to drive the skill market with all its benefits and drawbacks. This way we do not have to rely totally on NPC market orders or rat droppings. Also more Isk/Materiel sinks in the game is a good thing.

Any thoughts?




Edit - Altered original post with new ideas and for clarity.

Maybe I missed something, but I don't see how this would cause imbalance in the game. It is simply taking something out of the hands of the NPCs and putting in the hands of the players.

Plus this would have to be a gradual process until the devs believe there are enough players producing skills to support the skill market.

Yes that's it, manufacture of existing skills so the NPCs (eventually) don't have to. I just liked the sound of 'Publishing' them.

Ah right, I can get behind that as I love the fact that almost everything in EVE is manufactured by a person rather than NPC. I'd suggest an amendment to the OP and remove the "own skills" and "create" words so that it's clearer.

A fantastic suggestion from more mineral\PI\Moon Goo sinks in the game and more player control. It might even introduce some better trading options in the Skill group category as currently it's static with NPC's seeding the market.

Once the OP #1 is updated I'll throw a "Like" on it. Nice idea Goti.

EDIT: Also the Skill to produce them could be "Publishing"...why not eh!
What about a "Proof Reading" Skill to be at Level 4 before you can train for "Publishing" or "Commercial Training Production".

I see a lot of potential here for new careers\sub-careers and time\ISK\ingredient sinks. People like E-Uni would be all over this if they don't hand out skills already and maybe even RvB as well to name a few.

EDIT 2: Even if E-Uni and RvB do hand out skills it still costs them so maybe they could run these out at cost or at least below the "Player Manufactured" Skill price.

That was also my first reaction but the OP is refining his #1

Ah now the trouble there is that not many people go to Level 5 unless they really really need that extra bit so that might kill this idea.

As for the "Publishing" Skills to enable Player Manufacturing of Skills they could be seeded by NPC's just like COmmand Centres are for PI. You don't have to have everything done by players but this is one way to get around it.

The only concern I have with this is exploitation of new players. Many Tier one skills are required in the early hours of the game. And *Ehem* enterprising members of New Eden might find there's money in charging high fees for books at player start points. This could have a detrimental impact on the game. Also, supply and demand might make low level books rise in price, thus making it difficult for new players to skill up. Its a great idea in concept, but i'm not sure if we can really implement it without damaging the necessary 'game' part of EVE.

On this point doing the Tutorial Agent missions garners a wealth of Skill Books (not all required for the Tutorial Missions) and quite a few ships along with a good 20-25mil ISK (that's before selling the mins\ore from all the hidden belts they get access to in these missions). If you took it all into account I guess at about 50-100mil. Now that's not bad

Noobs aren't poor these days and I'm sure the less advanced a skill the less price we'll see. We may even see more noobs joining Corps for Skills and mentoring through this along with "Charity" Corps starting up to hand these out.

So many options it's such a great idea.

The only problem I see with this is that it would benefit older players the most, as they are the ones who have invested the highest amount of SP.

Thought I would just give this a bump to get more feedback.

Edit - Had a thought, instead of requiring the skill to be trained to level 5 in order to start the publishing process of that skill, it could be that your level in the skill effects the time it takes for the publishing process to complete.

lvl 1 in Caldari frig => 1hour to publish a Caldari frigate skill book.
lvl 5 in Caldari frig => 15mins to publish a Caldari frigate skill book.

Numbers can be tweaked obviously.