Test Server Feedback

The value of this skill, at level V, is this: 72 minutes per day per line. If manufacturing lines are kept going 24/7, it's a valuable skill. For a small-time manufacturer who does not keep their lines going 24/7, the skill is already at zero value. Even at my peak, running my lines twice a day (once before work, and once after), this skill would have been utterly useless to me. Now, running a few lines once or twice a week? I am not exaggerating when I say that I believe it will be the most useless skill I have, because I will have zero utilization of it.



Nerfing a ship isn't quite the same thing. A closer consideration, I think, would be the Navigation skill:

What if all ships of a similar type and class (attack BC's, EWAR Frigs, etc) were given the same speed as the rest in their type and class, and then the Navigation skill, which gives a 5% bonus to sub-warp velocity, were changed to give a 1% boost to warp speed?

Yes, the skill would still be useful, but only to a limited number of people, and in limited use. The mission-running pilot, for example, would have no use for it, as it wouldn't save them enough time to run an extra mission while they were online, but a capital pilot (including freighters) might find it incredibly useful.

Similarly, someone who generally flies smaller ships in a fleet would probably have no use for it, but the battleship pilots in that same fleet might enjoy having it, though it would only matter if they all had it.

It's a skill that, while still being useful, isn't going to be useful to everyone after the change, whereas everyone could put it to use previously. Some people who had Navigation to V when it affected sub-warp speed may have no need for it at all when it affects warp speed.

The change from Material Efficiency to Advanced Industry is similar: a person who has their lines going 24/7 will find it useful (as it saves 72 minutes per day per line), but a person who has any more down-time than that on their lines will see a greatly-reduced value in the skill, quickly trending towards having no real value at all.

768,000 skillpoints is no small time investment. Considering the replacement skill is next to worthless I believe a refund would only be fair.

While I understand the concern surrounding a "mandatory skill to 5" that ME currently is, it is that undesired mandate that is why pilots trained to 5 in the first place. Removing the feature of a skill that reduces how much money it costs to build a single item should come with a compensation in SP spent on that feature.

Someone decided "I want to spend time reducing the materials that this blueprint needs" and acted upon it by training a skill. They didn't train to get their item faster. Faster build time doesn't reduce the amount cargo space I need to get my materials to my production home. Removing the feature of one player being able to perform actions that reduce the material cost for BPCs is just what it looks like: removing a feature. It's just the same as removing a feature that allows someone to perform actions that reduce the time it takes to train another skill.

I understand that reimbursing SP reduces the perceived value of SP. But you're completely removing a feature that had a skill associated with it. You're not devaluing this feature, you're eliminating it altogether. You're completely removing what used to be a motive to train a skill. The new "replacement" skill isn't anything close to the same thing, either.

I believe that with the removal of the feature to reduce material cost, skills trained to support that feature need to also be refunded.

You "decide" to train Material Efficiency today as much as you choose to breathe. It's just not possible to compete without it today.

Could a replacement skill modify or interact with the multi-run discount to offer more options for competition there (ideally options that allowed casual industry to focus on per unit efficiency at a greater time cost and heavy industry to focus on throughput)?

Problem is, the skill was mandatory. For all the people who already trained it, which is just about everyone who seriously devoted themselves to industry, having that skill forced upon them in its new form will still be mandatory.


As above, people have already jumped through hoops. Not refunding the SP is only going to force industrialists and bazaar traders to keep jumping through more hoops by playing SP catchup and re-adjusting sale values for a now far less useful skill. Skills are also supposed to be about player choice, not retroactively enforcing unwanted specialization.


Repurposing skills into less worthy iterations also devalues the perceived value of skillpoints over time, especially when CCP is sending the message that any SP you already invested may suddenly change in operation and hence value with every new patch.


Even so, this still demonstrates a highly flawed development and release schedule that did not properly accommodate for testing and customer feedback. Saying "We've already spent too much effort accelerating this car to 160 mph and it's going crash in the next minute regardless of whether we wanted to slow down or not (which we don't)" still makes you a reckless driver.

In short, an iterative and incremental development model is not a carte blanche excuse to do less planning and be more callous towards preventable product faults. Regardless of how you've shaken up your content release schedule to make it 'more agile' or what have you, if the result is a loss of customer satisfaction, then you're doing it wrong.

You speak of this as if it was a new thing. This has been the general contract between player and MMO designer since time immemorial. Things get nerfed. A line of acquisition or skill in which occurred heavy investment is suddenly for naught. There are precious few ways to make meaningful change in an MMO without this sort of potential.

We're dissatisfied with how USELESS the skill is, unless you're building caps. For Level 5 in a Rank 3 skill I should get more. Furthermore since it is now impossible to saturate a facility a time reduction doesn't gang me anything, just increases the time in which my industry POS will be sitting idle.

Up thread I proposed an alternative repurposing of the skill to reduce the cost of lines, possible just production, possible all type.

Facility Efficiency - 5% reduction per level in research and production line costs per level.


this would be a meaningful reward - specialized industrialists can make a profit in more active systems (most likely closer to trade hubs) for example, or by specializing and staying in the boonies they see a lower (but still real) benefit from the skill.


This is similar to some of the Trade skills that make traders more competitive.

Of course it's not new, but it is hypocritical when CCP is using this line of reasoning to justify doing the exact opposite. If you don't want to devalue the perceived value of skillpoints accumulated over time, then don't rework old spent skillpoints in a way that makes them completely devalued.

I am all for these new industry changes, but taking something as important as this skill was and making it a joke (99% of time) is seriously flawed. I think this is definitely a case where a skill refund is required.