Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I really think you guys should reconsider your timers on a lot of the tech two ships, one of the long complaints with eve has been its immense training time. As game developers we understand the importance of retention rates, and the like but i would like to advocate for a few changes to the current training policies.


- Reduce All tech two ship requirements to Level 4 of the hull class, or reduce the hull train time on level 5.
Largely i feel like "Hac's, logi etc" have an insane train time, and with the current meta you are focusing most
players a 3 month duration to be competitive. It would be better for the game and economy if you pushed these timers
to a reduce rate.

For me as a new alt, it takes me 5 days level 4, and 28 days level 5. I would like to see a reduction in cruisers, and destroyer based ships to 5 days, and 8 days. This will help improve the training direction of players into tech two ships faster, help improve the tech two industry, and also promote better training principles in the player base.

In short, It takes people to long to get into tech two ships, and it would be great if you pushed all of the tier 5 training times on sub-cruiser classes to a max of say 10 or 12 days, while keeping things like command ship plus, to a min of 90 day train time.

Additionally, please dont forget about the industrial side of things two, it'd be great to see more easily accessible training on things like cloaky transports.

At the moment with default attributes, it takes 65 days to train for HAC (not counting weaponry).
I think this is fine as cruisers are incredibly powerful in their current state.

The only ship which I think needs it's training time reduced is Battlecruisers.
I have however trained the 115 days for a Marauder, which I personally think is the waiting time worth.

Explain how pandering to instant gratification promotes better training principles.

So you'd rather see new players using T1 guns on T2 ships rather than the current system which does things the other way around.

I'm not sure if it's better for player retention to have new players rush into ships they don't understand, die and then quit because they suck at Eve, or to let them rush into the shiniest ships and get bored of them before they really understand what they're doing with them.

I find conversations like this often have people with your point attacking the position "instant gratification" (which is proven to be successful in gaming btw, not just that but highly)

Whats interesting about this is people who advocate against this, are you not advocating for your own version of that, by one shotting the noobs?

Your never going to change the nature of rushing.. Player always and will always do the efficient thing. We developers work very hard to make awesome really near content but time and time again see you guys sit in the same spam spot spamming blizzard over and over and over.

Players are efficient is what they do, and if they think "the biggest best thing" is efficient they will drive with that unrelenting.
The only thing this is doing is helping them get to that point where they are in the area of being competitive with you.

To put it in perspective number values

28 Days + another 7 for level 5 cruiser. This is 35 days.

I advocate for a reduction to 13 days (specifically this high drop on cruisers since they access so many different types of ships, ie hics, logi, hacs, recons etc).

lets assume tech 2 specialization takes 8 days to train. I then advocate for an increase on that to something like 12 days (+4 days).

and tech 1 and two variants are not so massively different to be honest, they do have a noticeable effect, but i think a tech 1 hack is in the area of competitive with a tech two especially if it has a faction mod or two on it.

This change is more or less needed to allow the alliances that grow and try to live on newer alts and players to be competitive with the few larger more skill point alliances around.

How exactly does a shorter training time "promote better training principles in the player base"? The basic principle in EVE is that the better your stuff is, the longer it takes to train, the more ISK it costs and the narrower are the benefits over less powerful elements. How does your shorter training time match these fundamental principles? What you are basically asking for is a complete reversal of these for cruisers while keeping them up for everything else, which would create a major inconsistency in skill training (and other things) for no good reason.

Different players seek different things.

Delayed gratification and progression based games have proven to be at least as successful. Funny how instant gratification games like COD and BF adopted progression mechanics like levelling up.

By making things quicker and easier to get into you cheapen the achievement of getting there. So whilst your saying 'think of the noobs', it would devalue the experience.

You want instant gratification, go play a MOBA. Many EvE players do when nothing is happening in EvE.

EvE is not, nor has it ever been, an instant gratification game. Turning it into one would make it not EvE.

The reliance on Ishtars has nothing to do with SP accrual rates. It has to do with the toxic meta and Ishtars.

Assault Frigates and particularly now tactical destroyers are quick trains, and find homes in lots of set ups. There is definitely that first few months when everything seems impossibly far off, but as time passes, skills compound and multiply their utility and the hulls one is able to properly fly.

Honestly the clumsiness of the attribute system and remaps is probably the first thing that will go and let you get what you want faster and easier.

After being in nullsec for several years, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've heard a FC tell some newbie in a t1 frig that he can't join the fleet.

There is nothing wrong with the current skill train times for most ships. It helps later in game when you learn to fly right before they get into the more advanced ships.