Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The SP situation is two-folded.

- for beginners, the SP system is felt as unfair. They can do all that they want, they will never ever reach the SP potential of 5-6 year old accounts...
- for older players, they feel that giving a way to newer player to "catch up" a little will devaluate their characters, they see their SP advance as a privilege that would be degraded

So, there must be a balance between the ability to get new players AND KEEP THEM and not making the older one mass-leave...

IMHO, this completely rules out "one-sided" solutions like bonus SP when you begin (accelerated SP training for a limited time or other) and Pay to Win solutions (SP buying)





About the remaps
The ability to buy extra remaps for money (ISK, AUR or PLEX) should not be without constraints. Being able to remap "at will" would definitively ruin the implants and be of P2W nature...

Allowing to use money to remap once/year (giving 2 remaps/year) seem to be the maximum acceptable... it'd profit more to players who want to change their orientation or to beginners as when you advance in skill-tree training time increases.

Locking remaps for the 1-3 first months of an account (not character) could prevent new players to waste their first remap AND one remap bonus (to return to correct mapping) because they don't have a clue about the good working of the skills... (or, at least, a warning and confirmation request)





About in game activity having an impact on skill training
As some pointed, care must be taken to avoid exploits. but I think that it's possible... and making the reward SP-based and not percentage-based will help new players to get ready...

To make sense, bonus should only be given if the skill in training is related to the activity.

One possible suggestion is to limite gain to specific non-automatic events.

For example, when using guns, extra SP should only be given when a ship is destroyed. This would prevent the "infinite duel" situation. Normal SP gain is about 1SP/second. Giving 1 extra SP when killing a Frigate, 1.5 or 2 for a Destroyer, ... (more for T2) will be a very small bonus that would still reward active players.

Mining don't need specific safeguards as the asteroids deplete over time. Same for reprocessing, researching (takes time, consume datacores or BPO to research), producing (consume materials), ...

For armor/Shield, the same system as for guns could be used : the combat needs to be finished (either way, win or loss) to have the extra SP awarded.

For ships, you'd need to be flying in a corresponding ship and engaged in an activity that would bring the bonus.

Some sklills may also have no bonus (Corporation management for example), ...

The most important thing is that to have a skill increase, something MUST be "used", "depleted", ... a ship killed, an asteroid (or other) depleted, a site hacked, ...





About unlearning
Well, I'm in favor to the ability to unlearn skills... with no counter parts... You just forget about it... The only counterpart I'd find OK is returning the skillbook. SP definitively lost.

You'd need proper safeguards... to make sure you are not making a mistake (something like typing the "I AGREEE" or other in a box to confirm).

What use would it be ? mostly Roleplay I'd say... who would do it ? probably very few people...





Is rewarding activity unfair ?
When you play, you've several roadblocks, skillpoints is only one of them. The other one are your money (ISK) which is already P2W-like because of the PLEX and the corp/alliance you're in (POCO, POS, Moon material mining, availability of high-end ships like Titans, ...)

The most unfair is clearly the ISK/PLEX situation. If you've much (real) money to throw in the game, you can afford any ship that you want, any equipment,... and deadspace stuff is an obvious benefit that money can buy).

Having activity have a minor impact would indeed give an edge to players who play more... But traders who play more already earn more money on the market without leaving the station and noone complains about it or ask that BO/SO should be locked for 4h after a change...

Rewarding time spent ingame would be much less unfair that the current PLEX situation... and it would reward something that is good for the whole community (having more people online)...

The only thing I would like to see changed in relation to SP remapping is being able to bank your annual neural remaps that you get once a year, so that you are not really losing out on a remap if you have a 13 month skill plan followed by an 11 month.

I don't get it, the entire subscription model of eve is pay to play...

Remove learning implants and those players will start moaoning that the cost of ships/ammo/PLEX/beanie hats/whatever is stopping them from PvP. I wouldn't be averse to jump clone changes though and hope this is part of the continuing clone rework

So don't buy the expensive ones until you can afford them, same as anything else in eve. The training time difference between +3's and +5's on new player skills (those with low multipliers) is minimal so a new player shouldn't even consider the expensive sets, or should learn to not lose their pod in hisec/losec

If they are in a null alliance someone there should be explaining thingas like this to the new player.

EDIT: Upon further consideration, I have realized that my proposal would inadvertently render attributes and attribute remaps effectively irrelevant.


In order to fix that, remaps would have to be restricted to moving skill points between skills of the same attribute distribution, and that seems ungodly complicated for the limited benefit. I will leave my post below for reference and discussion, but I no longer support it in its current form.



Currently, players can remap their attributes on a yearly basis, with new players given a set number of "bonus remaps". There are limits to how much you can remap (i.e. caps on attributes) so you can't completely specialize in one area at the expense of all others. You cannot buy remaps with PLEX or ISK, and if you decide the day after your remap that you don't like your decision, you're stuck with it until another remap becomes available.

I would be okay with implementing a similar system for skill points, but only with the same kinds of limitations. Here's how I think it should work:

1. One skill point remap per year, with new players getting a set number of "bonus remaps".

2. No mechanic to purchase additional skill point remaps with PLEX or ISK. I think we all agree that "Pay to Win" on this level is bad.

3. Skill point remaps are permanent until your next one. No "undo" button. You have to live with the consequences, just like attribute remaps.

4. Any re-allocated skill points must go into a skill that you already have injected. For example, if you wanted to remap skill points into Defensive Subsystem Engineering, but didn't have it injected and didn't have Nanite Engineering at IV yet, you couldn't do that on a single remap; you'd have to train Nanite Engineering up and inject the skill first. This would prevent players from producing new skill point distributions that are too radically different than what they have now.

5. You could not reallocate any points out of prerequisites for skills that you currently have. Using Defensive Subsystem Engineering again, you could not reduce Nanite Engineering below IV as long as you have any points in Defensive Subsystem Engineering. This would prevent players from forming "empty shell" skills, where you have the skills maxed out, but all of the prerequisites at zero.

6. There would have to be limits on how much you could remap in terms of skill points. Just like you can't remap your attributes to give yourself 40 base Perception, you shouldn't be allowed to entirely re-write your character's skill history with the push of a button. I'm picking a number out of a hat here, but I think a 10% limit per remap seems appropriate. So, for example, I currently have ~69 million skill points, so I would be limited to 6.9 million skill points per remap. This would also prevent players from too radically altering their skill point distributions.



Why is any of this a good idea?

A. It gives players, especially newer players, some degree of flexibility to try new things, while limiting the ability of older players to completely re-invent themselves.

B. It doesn't grant players willing to throw PLEX or ISK at the game any more advantage than players who aren't.

C. It allows older players the opportunity to adapt to changes that CCP makes to skills over time (Anchoring V anyone?) that are still useful, but not as useful as they once were.

D. It still imposes consequences for player choices, but it wouldn't force players to be permanently stuck with skill points that they may never use again.



Thoughts?


EDIT: Blerg. Typos.

And there is the problem...there is no such thing as a skillpoint gap in the end. You can only train a specific set of skills to level V to max out any hull, weapon system or career path. Everybody can get to the same level depending on their focus they just do it a bit faster or slower depending upon the implants they are willing to risk for the reward of slightly faster training.

The idea of somehow catching up to older players in SP is a fallacy. Firstly you never need to and secondly why should you? Someone with a 10 year older character should always have a lead in total SP as they've been here longer. It is their reward for loyalty. Ultimately however they will have the exact same maximum applicable skills in frigates for instance as a 1 year old player who purely focused on small ship combat skills.

That is why I advocate keeping the current system. It is player perceptions and attitudes that are off kilter, not the system.

The current system cannot be gamed.
The current system rewards risking high cost implants with marginally faster training.
The current system always allows any player to catch up to another player ultimately in any applicable sub-set of skills.

Again, the choice of words.

You - "I think CCP have identified a problem..."

The first sentence of this thread
"As some of the more veteran members of the forums may be aware, the topic of SP remapping and/or buying is a very common one"

The only problem I see is the risk averse trying to create an issue and constantly making posts.

This is actually being discussed? Really?


Pathetic.

I do agree that attitudes are off kilter in a great many areas not just this one, but I do disagree that perceived issues or actual issues are things to be ignored while CCP aren't doing great financially.

If clone costs were still a thing I'd agree with you on your other points, however vets have good reason to undock now clone costs are gone, but young and those who think they really need a boost to skillpoint gain are crippled with costs not proportionate for those gains. The vet who is already skilled is empowered, and in many cases can fit a decent sized catalyst fleet for what they would have paid in clone costs per month. I refuse to accept that there's a risk vs reward thing going on here when vets can pretty much do what they want for no cost while a new player looks at ISIS and sees mastery of a rookie ship taking 602-785 days, thinks 'cybernetics is a thing,' then stays docked up playing skillpoints online for a high cost and then gets bored and quits. It's simply bad business from my perspective.

We aren't going to agree so I'll leave it here. Thanks for making your points politely even though we are opposed - I really appreciate it.