Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Add up the training multipliers of each set of skills.
There are far far more ship & weapon skills than there are Tank skills. So training the ship & weapon skills off map costs you more time penalty than training the tank skills off map.
Which is why attributes are bad, and should just be removed. There is no good reason to keep them.

I support easing the learning curve for newbros. However, unless you give EVERYONE 2m SP, you're going to have folks like myself (9m SP and struggling to get into the ships I want to fly) upset for not getting the same boost.

Rather - make a few newbie/fitting skills cheaper in terms of skill points, and more advanced skills (e.g. the advanced weapon specialization) more expensive. Do it in a way that cancels out for advanced players who already have advanced skills.

I don't see how giving more SP up front fixes anything, or how deleting a bunch of skills does either.

It is not just about training time, but the flavor of training and why you want it or need it.

Like me for example, to use your example...i have done just fine training wpns and ships...but I am a poor choice for leading squads or wings into combat skillwise.....because i simply do not have the skills to properly give boosts.

That is a choice i made.
Now lets go back and use my idea...i would of gladly put most of my pts into perception....which wold of made me even weaker now because i would still be playing catch up...if not for implants.

So who cares the about mapping....the point is to allow players to roll a toon and then let them specifically set that pilot up into a singular direction...trade offs between strength and weaknesses. some weaknesses will be mitigated by implants.

Point is, the choice to do so....the choice to fly a certain way and be the best in that category.
It would be easier my way than current.
And if you dont like that then how could it be done without removing attributes and implants?
they are a part of core eve...and core eve is why i play and have stayed the past 5 yrs.

It's amusing as the thread has descended into bickering about what skills should be removed, how much SP should be given for free, and the removal of attributes. All these things you are talking about removing are aspects which I and many others have derived enjoyment from, and have added complexity and depth to the experience.

What you are suggesting is like the doctor chopping off your arm to treat an infection in the hand. Do you really think chopping out the skill system is some kind of magic bullet that will fix new player retention.

Give new players more content by enabling older players to create this content, and also by providing a solid starter experience which will equip new players with the skills and hook them into the universe. This new opportunities is just bland and uninspiring and so I am not surprised at all that it has failed to increase retention.

My solution is give players a focused experience, let them choose their career path upon character creation initially like how it used to be in the good old days. This way you can give them the relevant skills and items they need to get started through the NPE without bombarding them with every possibility and countless free SP which they have absolutely no idea what to do with.

(someone mentioned I should post this here, so copy/paste from there)

As a fairly new player to EVE (I've had a subscription for a short while (~8.5m SP), but only been actively playing for a month or two now), here would be my suggestion to help reduce the learning curve for new players. When creating a new character, there should be an option on first-login or character creation where you can select your skill level - "I've never played", "I'm learning with an experienced friend" or "I'm a veteran / I know how to play EVE". The game could take you through tutorials based on your experience selection. "I'm new to eve" could take you on a more individual, solo-based tutorial. "I'm learning with a friend" Could instead let you roam free with a friend, but still give you plenty of useful hints/tips, as well as a slightly-guided tutorial. Something you can do with your friend, allowing your friend to explain the more in-depth mechanics of eve, while the game itself introduces you to the basic concepts. Optionally, there could even be some team objectives in the tutorials to allow you to play with your friend while learning. Selecting "I'm a veteran" or "I know how to play EVE" would disable tutorials, as you would select it when creating an alt, or a second, third, etc, toon. You would already know how to play the game if it's not your first account, generally speaking.
The tutorials could cover the following things (from a new player perspective, this is where I feel we could use the most help)

• Movement: We don't need to be spoon-fed here, we're not fools. We just don't know the options. Double-clicking moves your through space, or click on something -> align to, approach, etc. In a quick, basic way go over the movement and basic interaction.
• The Map: What is a system? How do you get between them? How does Autopilot work, and what are the drawbacks? How/when should I use it?
• Security systems: Hi-Sec, Low-Sec, Null-Sec - what are they?
• Security, Continued: What's the difference .5 and 1.0? what about .1 and .4? 0.0 and -1.0?
• The in-game market, and it's unique properties. How do buy/sell orders work?
• Common ways of earning ISK: Exploration, P.I., Mining, PvE, PvP, etc. Basically - *What do I DO in EVE?*
• Factions: Which faction do I pick to start with? Each ones' strengths/weaknesses in an easier-to-read and understand fashion than Lore. Why should I pick Caldari over Minmatar?
• Fitting a ship: What modules are common, what modules do, the advantages/disadvantages to certain weapons/tools. (MWD vs webifier vs Aux. Power core, etc)
• Fitting, Continued: When certain modules, guns, damage types are useful in what situations. (Knowing about them is nice, but what damage types are most useful against Gursitas? Blood Raiders? Basically, how do I indentify what modules I'll need.
• Skill queue: recommended skills to train (based on what method you plan on making ISK). This could be presented as you play. Also, how does the skill queue and SP work?
• Skills, continued: A nice little intro into how to look for the skills you want would be great. I know there are cool skills that do X or Y, but what are they called? What if I'm looking for "mining skills" in general. A little tutorial explaining how to look through equipment you might want to use, checking the "requirements" tab, etc, and getting a little introduction into looking for the right skills would be great. Basically, how do I know not only what skills to use, but what skills do I look for, and how do I look for them?
• Implants: What are they and why do I care about them? Which ones should I get? How important are they? (I still don't know how worth it is to have them, so I only have a couple right now)
• Attributes: If they plan to stay, what does each one do? What is a remap? How often can you remap skills?
• Ship classes: Just because you CAN fly a destroyer, doesn't mean you should. I definitely made the mistake of training my Spaceship Command skills in order to fly the coolest ship around, when really I couldn't fit it.
• Player Agression: What causes it? What can I do with kill rights? What's a bounty? What sort of actions should I avoid?
• Player Interaction: Eve is a player-centric game, more than any other game I know of. Instruct new players about common scams, and how to avoid them. Namely, teach about how player interaction is unique in EVE (Markets are with other players, not NPC's; scamming people, while unethical, is (to the best of my knowledge) allowed within the terms (to a degree)). Make sure they know that while the fun part about EVE is that you can be a scumbag, the bad part about EVE is that you can be a scumbag. PvP is very fun, as long as you're on the winning end.
• Corps: The advantages/disadvantages of joining one, as well as the responsibility of starting your own (I started off by making my own because that would be soooo cool, but really it's a lot of work and management. Also fairly pointless without a decent group of people).

Extended post over on Reddit (not enough characters here on the forum to post the whole thing)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3cdnu5/in_light_of_the_upcoming_possible_changes_for/

I've trained a lot of players - including several RL friends and lots of in game friends. The skill barrier is the biggest challenge they face (we can teach them systems, etc, but their toons are limited by skill points).

A few things I think should happen as it comes to skills:

1) Let players choose their initial starting skill specialty.

I recently started a toon I wanted to turn into a builder. Going through character creation I selected choices (school/ethnicity/etc) that I thought would be good for building, but was surprised when I got in game that the toon didn't even start with the industry skill. Conversely, if I start a combat toon, I don't want industry plugged into my head.

So there should be 4 tailor-made specialty choices in character creator (Combat/Industry/Harvesting/Jack-of-all-trades) that players can select to get a jump on their play-style, while making clear that these are not classes, just a head start on that play-style.

2) Eliminate early training roadblocks.

Advanced weapons upgrade is a necessary skill in order to fit your ship well. But you have to train weapons upgrade 5 to get to it, and it's a painful rank 2 skill early on. I would change the requirements for AWU to weapons upgrade 4. And look for other early training roadblocks and adjust them as necessary.

3) Attributes

Remove attributes, don't worry about replacing them. Change attribute implants to be a straight +SP/Hour, based on brain lobes. (Frontal Lobe training implant, Side Lobe training implant, etc)

4) Opportunity bonus

When completing opportunities, grant a small sp bonus that goes into the sp pool to be distributed as the player chooses. This will help them get ahead and encourage players to try out more opportunities which will result in players finding more out about the game.

That's the kind of warm fuzzy carebear idea that I like enough to want to see it happen, while I still disagree with giving starter SP. What do you think about giving injected skills, instead of SP.

That would require them to know what they want, to be knowledgeable about any activity in the game. Henceforth, this would require a lot of text to read and information to digest. I doubt that newbies, who apparently can't even be asked to train a couple of hours worth of skills to "start the game", will be able to use this.

You should not base your idea on your experience of "starting a toon". You know what you want to do. Newbies (in most cases) do not. They are overwhelmed by the already existing plethora of opportunities, possibilities and information hammering them. Your 4 categories (and here it already starts to get messy) aren't really covering all the things or are too broad. Where are the Explorers? They are not strictly combat, not strictly Harvesting. Traders? They sell industry and harvesting goods, but need none of their skills. They are too special to put them under the JOATs and don't really fit into the other categories without lots of explanations.

You do not need advance weapon upgrades to fit ships properly. You need AWU lvl 3-5 for some high skilled tight fits, that a rookie won't be able to fly anyway. Well not well, unless you need just another null blob that needs more f1 monkeys.

One of the things i enjoyed doing was turning these "master fits" into cheaper and often almost as good fits for my skills. Places like bombers bar and Spectre have a ranges of fits for bombers for the lower skilled pilot, and yet your only looking at a 10% DPS nurf or so compared to the L33T fits.

That is the problem... The dogma that unless your ships does at least 500DPS/100kEHP sort of thing you shouldn't fly. That is just stupid. How often is 10kEHP really going to matter in a fleet? And even solo, the point is you... YOU. You deal with the imperfections of the character. Low SP pilots can and do do well, when they just get out there and get it done.

bonus skill points won't change other players DOGMA.