Skill Discussions

From what I understand this can basically be done in WoW. And its part of what makes WoW terrible.

I hope Eve never falls to the "Instant gratification, I want it now" crowd but if it does maybe it will be known as "EvE"

You aren't making much sense here. How does the current skill system and the fact that most players like it imply that radical changes to T2 ship skills are coming? If anything this premise indicates that radical changes to T2 ship skills are not coming.

The only things that make major changes happen are CCP's vision for EVE, which I doubt that you really understand any more than anyone else here that does not work for CCP, and player majority opinion as backed up by clear, logical, and well articulated arguments, which you have not presented.

So I ask again. Source?

Honestly, the OP is on to something here.

However, I would add this.

All T2 ship hulls have no bonuses whatsoever if you have no Mastery levels in it. Roll up the Role bonuses, Racial Hull bonuses, and Ship Class bonuses together and tie them to Mastery instead. Essentially, you are just sitting in an expensive piece of metal at Mastery 0 (or just make it until you can't sit in the ship at all until Mastery I). Every level of Mastery would give you more bonuses until the ship is finally worth the cost. The point at which it's worth the cost is up to you.

Let's take the Paladin:

Mastery 0 bonuses: Nothing (or you can't fly it yet until Mastery I).

Mastery I: 30% damage bonus, 5% cap recharge, 7.5% optimal, 7.5% Armor Repairer amount, 20% tractor beam range, 14% MJD delay reduction.

Mastery III: 90% damage bonus, 15% cap recharge, 22.5% optimal, 22.5% repper, 60% tractor, 42% MJD delay

Mastery V: All bonuses maxed (as if you currently had Amarr BS V and Marauders V).

This would mean that you actually get more improvements periodically and puts skilling up to V at the END of the grind rather than right up at the beginning.

Meanwhile, with T1 hulls, stay the same as is. They improve with Racial Hull abilities so maxing out the bonuses for keeping them is much quicker. And since we are using Mastery to unlock everything for T2 hulls, we can just lower the rank of racial hull abilities to make them go by faster as they are no longer just the barrier to enter T2.

To accompany this, we would need an overhaul of the mastery requirements to adjust the T2 the time sinks and make it an interesting choice to max out a T1 early on or to slowly grind the T2 mastery up instead.



The end result would be that T1 hulls would still be more desirable to people until they get enough skills to make the T2 ship worthwhile since T1 hulls can be maxed out fairly quickly. And it makes skilling up that Paladin less painful because you don't sit there for ALMOST A MONTH waiting for one crummy skill to complete out of many others that you've already waited an eternity for. And it would even retain goals for long term Paladin pilots because Mastery V still takes forever and a half just to get that last 30% damage increment for the bittervets.

I dunno about you, but I still wouldn't be sitting in that Paladin for a few months if this is done correctly. The T1 battleships and faction battleships will perform better for me at first and take a small fraction of the time to max out. However, I would be getting small bonuses left and right as I skill up and it would feel much more rewarding in the end to feel like my Paladin got better than when I first took it out on its maiden voyage.

It's a rough idea and would need tweaking, but the primary goal is to prevent turning off newer players by making them wait forever with no improvements to their character at all until the end of the grind and to make having a T2 hull a constantly rewarding experience as you skill up through the masteries and gain little bonuses here and there.

Thoughts?

It makes no sense to 'master' something and then specialize in a matter of hours or days. Large blasters, are a specialization to the large hybrids. If you want them you need to maximize the potential with hybrids first. Your character needs so spend the time to understand them and learn how to use them. Once your character has mastered them, he can start using the more specialized equipment that comes from them. It makes perfect sense.

This whole thing, your whole thread kind of reads like a whine about having to spend XXX days to unlock Y ship/module. It's one of those typical entitlement threads.

Actually read what people are saying, not the strawman you want them to.

The "90 days" is not the meaningful thing

The meaningful thing is that by choosing to spend "90 days" in pursuit of Marauders, you by definition are not spending that time in pursuit of some other thing

a choice between mutually exclusive things is a meaningful choice, because otherwise, if you could have them all, why wouldn't you?

The main argument against change is not a bad one. It's essentially that you have to wait because then when you do have access to all the shinies, you've already invested in the game enough that you won't just be think "Okay, mission accomplished" and unsub. However, my main argument is that if a newbie does want to train for T2 hulls early on, it's not good for morale or retention to lock it behind nothing except Racial Hull V and some other stuff that takes forever to get to V that you normally wouldn't level until year 2 or 3 of your game sub. Character growth early on should be littered with little milestones. Not 26 static days of nothing.

And also don't forget that isk and properly balance ships already make for interesting choices for new players to decide what they fly on what occasion.

Are you saying the ISK cost of a ship balances who can fly it? I hope not because there's plenty of spoiled kids out there that can put 28 PLEX on their moms credit card no questions asked.

The bottom line is Eve is about making choices for what you want to fly. You can spend that 60 days training for a Marauder or an Exhumer. Yes some people would like to be able to fly both but IMO that's "I want it all" rather than having to choose.

I wouldn't mind if bonus SP was gained by using mods that require skills. For example, kill something while using a light missing launcher > +100 SP to LML's.

Maybe add a new metric like Expertise. Using a mod/ship gives expertise, after x amount of expertise is gained "advanced"(t2) items are unlocked.

Handing over t2 items with no barrier other than isk will ruin the game.

WoW runs into this issue every patch. Players finish the content and have nothing else to achieve after a month or two and unsub. Nothing to work towards = no reason to play.

Dear god no. This would be exploited so much it wouldn't even be funny.