Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You said "because everything else (and even that one)" is exploitable, "that one" being in reference to how it's currently done. That's what I was responding to.


I agree but that's not quite what you seemed to be saying.

There would be a big downside if CCP did that. Specifically, many players would rage and simply stop playing. New players would be at such a disadvantage, combined with bad PR from existing players subs would almost certainly drop.

Changes that are good for the game and generally make players happy are usually good from a business standpoint as well, provided they aren't too costly (e.g. difficult) to do. Relating back to this - unless writing the reimbursement script is really difficult for some reason, there doesn't appear to be a significant downside here.

That's most likely too general to reimburse - CCP would need to make a blanket reimbursement (e.g. all skills related to missiles) for the very rare case that someone actually would not have trained those skills had they known about the upcoming changes.

Can you think of an example of this though - where the skill is actually not useful for your purposes at all anymore and shouldn't be reimbursed? If a change to a ship/weapon system is so bad that it makes your skills completely useless for the original purpose, I'd argue either against that change or in favor of some reimbursement.

Another example would be booster alts. If CCP eliminates off-grid boosting, they really should reimburse those pilots who trained into that. But, that's not easy to do because often booster alts are only booster alts, and how do you reimburse those characters in such a way that doesn't cause them to want to unsub the alt? That's one of the big problems with the removal of off-grid boosting.

Making an absurd argument via hyperbole does not hurt the case Tippia is making, nor does it strengthen your own.




No, it's not.

If an industry skill is changed, but remains a benefit to industry, then it is still valid.

If a navigation skill is changed, but remains a benefit to navigation, then it is still valid.

And so forth.

The fact that we don't have an efficient mechanism for handling grey area cases does not mean we should just decide that they don't exist and that we actually live in a completely black and white world.

You need to make up your mind what you are actually arguing. At the bottom of your post, you reaffirm a general statement, which is what I am saying is absurd.

You are telling me that pointing out that your general statement makes no sense is hyperbole.

And you offer support for that by pointing out the precise weakness in your argument: that you feel very strongly that your own logic would be broken if my counter example happened. Guess what, that situation is allowed by the rule you have proclaimed is the end of the story: that if you could use it before, you can use it now. There is nothing in that statement that prevents my "hyperbole."

There is only your blind assertion that things have always been this way and ever shall be, as though that has any relation to a reason for why they are.

Changing a skill used to pilot combat ships into one to improve mining yield is not reasonable. In fact it's patently absurd.

Changing skill requirements for Starbase Defense Management is perfectly reasonable. They wanted to make it easier to access.

Now, if Anchoring V literally did not provide any access to anything else, you would have a case. But you can't just claim that because what it does provide after the change isn't exactly what you want that you should get a buttload of free skillpoints.

I honestly don't know why I'm bothering with you, since this won't happen. More extreme cases than this have gone by without reimbursement, and CCP stood firm on those as well. The game is full of stuff like that.

You can't just bleat "customer service means they should kowtow to my every demand!", either. That's just laughable.

You have no argument besides "skills changed and I don't like it so I should get free stuff", and that's transparently obvious to everyone here, including CCP.

Off Grid Booster alts are a broken mechanic. We should welcome and expect a nerf to these changes. Furthermore, if your character can use links and fly t3/CS's, it is ridiculous to not train the weapon skills to fully utilize these ships on grid. No reimbursement should be given. If you unsub your alt account because it can no longer be easily used to abuse the game mechanics, oh well.

If this was truly why CCP was not fixing OGB's, then it shows a very flawed mentality where greed is dominating over game balance.

Quoting for emphasis.

If Anchoring V is "useless" to a character now because they don't anchor bubbles or build outposts, then it was useless to them as soon as they injected the Starbase Defense Management skillbook. The outrage here isn't about their skillpoints spent on Anchoring V being "useless"; if it was, it would have started long before Crius. No, the outrage is about pilots being able to acquire the same skill for fewer invested skillpoints. It's the same outrage that industrialists with "perfect" blueprints experienced when they realized that upstart researchers could now do the same research in a fraction of the time. It's the same outrage that anchoring corps experienced when they realized that all that time grinding faction standings was no longer going to be necessary to anchor towers in hisec.

The new kids on the block have it easier than the old-timers, and that makes the old-timers mad.

This is jealousy, plain and simple.

Get over it.

EDIT: I say this as an old-timer with my fair share of "useless" skills.

CCP does not sell SP. They sell game time. SPs are gained (or lost) based on what the players do with that game time. The only time CCP reimburses SPs is when they are lost through no fault of the player. Removing the Anchoring skill from the game would warrant SP reimbursement. Changing the benefits it provides does not.