Assembly Hall

I propose free clones and module insurance as well.

Hell, why not just respawn a player in his ship at the nearest station upon death.

That'll be more friendly to new players, never a bad thing. All those week old players refusing to respond to a cta cause they're running incursions in +5's. Shame.

Hey, he probably has a very large one, so if asses are anything like brains, it would be a very smart one.

Speaking as a new player, I agree that losing +4/5s I can't afford to replace is a significant deterrent to hazardous behavior. Assuming the appropriate mentality is risk vs reward, the 'risk' weight jumps way up any time I consider anything remotely dangerous. Still, there seems to be an excessive amount of hyperbole present.

It is to everyone's benefit, especially serious PvPers, to encourage new and relatively unskilled players to enter the game, play actively, take risks, and ideally to accumulate possessions worth taking from them. A pool of sharks needs fresh fish. Conversely, EVE does not and is not intended to appeal to everyone. Catering to newbies just because they are newbies will not sustain or grow the population; it will at best temporarily boost it with, lacking a better term, "spoiled brats." They'll leave for the next game quickly whether or not their demands are met.

With that in mind, I think the question isn't "How can we protect newbies from risk?" (which I don't think the OP was asking anyway), but instead "How can we encourage newbies to take risks?"

Some people have suggested lowering the timer on jump clones. I actually support this, but as a skill that branches off Infomorph Psych III or IV. It actually *is* a risk-avoidance rather than risk-mitigation strategy, since at a short (hour or less) cooldown there is simply no reason to ever risk one's expensive implants. I support it because it makes jump clones more interesting, and would suggest a rank 3 to 5 skill with a 10% reduction per level. If we really wanted to make experienced players truly galaxy-hoppers, a second, rank 8 branching skill could be added that reduces cooldown by a flat two hours per level. I would strongly discourage this because it would look attractive to new players, creating another logical barrier to play. Still, it would be fascinating if some way around this could be developed.

Someone else suggested "learning boosters." I think this is fairly interesting; it could actually be turned into a fairly robust system, with the effectiveness of the booster decreasing the more total skill points the character has (so a sub-million SP character might get a +4 boost from a cheap booster, but a 20-mil one would need an expensive booster to have an effect). It would be an option if learning implants were simply dropped from the game without adding to characters' base attributes. Like all boosters, these would be lost on death, making this a risk-mitigation (since they would presumably be cheaper than implants currently are, especially for low-sp characters) rather than risk-avoidance strategy.

The OP's suggestion is actually fairly good, by my metric. If implant slots I-V were replaced with 'career implants,' they could provide an immediate boost to newbies (so they would still risk ISK on them), but would only be beneficial to players who were actively engaging in the game. In particular, I would find useful implants boosting:

• mission rewards (perhaps one for each category - sec dist and mining)
• mining yield (folded a bit in the above)
• ship speed
• cargo space
• Trade skill effects
• Tackling (an obvious choice for newbie implants, really)

That would leave me much more free to focus on training core skills.


Lastly is the idea of clone insurance. Allowing characters to insure their clones would encourage them to take more risks with those; even a relatively small upper limit on insurance packages, such as 15-35% of market value of implants, would dramatically encourage risk-taking since the perceived loss is much less (some compensation is infinitely more than no compensation). I think the best option would be a flat value per level of package, plus 15/20/25/30% of implants. The cost per package level would be dependent on how frequently the character has recently died, with a cap of 75% of the cost of the package's pay-out. The pay-outs should be calibrated such that dying and re-purchasing the appropriate level of medical clone is always a net loss.

Terrible Idea. Only people with agendas would want to do this

What agenda, if I may ask?

The issue that I see with removing jump clone timers is that a large alliance like Goonswarm would be able to have its members place jump clones strategically and have at least one combat ship at each of those stations, allowing us to quickly form up wherever we want - that'd be overpowered.

I don't consider implant loss a "risk" in nullsec. It's a certainty - for example, I have two +3s and a couple of hardwirings plugged in. Their combined cost is less than 30-40m - I need the hardwirings for my Scimitar, and the +3s are nice for the long skill I'm training. If I get popped (and heh, A-name in a Scimitar, ask me about getting primaried) don't get podded, I'm probably self-destructing my pod to quickly reship and get back on a titan.

Removing bubbles or making cynojammers block covert cynos would make nullsec "safer." Taking away learning implants from the game would take away something that I personally view as a vestige of the days of learning skills.

Bad idea.

I always have minimal +3's in. Have 2 clones, one with Perc and Will and other with Int and Mem. Depending on what I train I switch JC.

Goonies are always yapping howmuch ISk they have/make. If they can't afford to lose +3's this game isn't for them.

Just like the saying goes:
"Don't fly what you can't afford to lose"

Same applies for implants.

By heading null sec you also accepted the fact you will get into battle and run the risk to lose your implants. Now all of a sudden the Goons don't want to lose their precious implants anymore.

That last quote is a positive claim that you are making. Do you have a proof that it is true, or is what you say self defeating?


Anyway, you can look up the historys of these items yourself. I did and there are allot of them sold for allot of isk.

Or you can refuse to see if what you say about "reality" is true, and continue to try to talk out of the wrong hole. Its your call.

Implants have never been a problem for me when it comes to PVP, but I see the point you're making in the thread and I support their removal. I think this could lead to more mayhem, and that's all that matters to me.

And it doesn't address the issue with other slots, which can be much more expensive to lose. The fundamental point remains, if the cost of loss is too high for my wallet, I'm not taking the risk. It's the first rule in EVE: Don't risk what you can't afford to lose. It's a good rule in place for a good reason.

Replace learning implants with job implants is pointless. What does it change? You're going to need them to be competative, so every noob doing that profession will be encouraged to get them making them feel mandatory again, so everyone will get them. Leading to a situation where people don't want to go out and fight, because they don't want to risk their mandatory implants, that in most cases are useless in PvP anyway. Hello point where we started from, glad to see you again.



While this would get slightly more people to PvP it misses the point once again and introduces a massive ISK faucet to the game already suffering from too many of them. Insurance is a massive ISK faucet in this game. Implants don't cost nearly as much ISK, often non at all, as you would get from losing them. Their market prices can be counted in the hundreds of millions per implant, so losing your pod would turn from a minor ISK sink to a huge ISK fauset. And for what? Knocking of the top few bricks of the wall?

I can only answer this from my perspective, but I wouldn't be any more willing to risk my expensive clones in combat even with insurance. It simply doesn't cover the loss in any meaningful way and I wouldn't want it to try because of the ISK faucet it would cause. The simple fact remains, I'm the one who chooses what kind of risk I'm taking and that isn't going to change no matter what. Either you change the mechanic, so that I can easily do that when there is PvP action about or you accept the fact I'm not participating, if I'm in a non-PvP clone at the time. I would like to participate even during those times, but with how things are now, I can't afford to chance it and consequently won't chance it.