EVE General Discussion

This idea is god awful and spawned from the minds of peeps that have no clue how this sht works.

Closing the skill gap between new players and older players is a myth and will end up someone losing an eye.

You see it every time someone that is just starting has the mind set of "Bigger and Better", and buys their way into a "Character",(it is not a friggin TOON, it is a CHARACTER, ffs) and falls flat on their face screaming HAX!! because some dude with half the SP that took the time to stick it out whoops his/her/it's ass.

You see it everyday, someone with 100+ mil sp bought character, and has no friggin clue how to play the game let alone fit a ship properly short of selecting all in the hanger and pushing "Fit Ship".

The only idea that remotely might make sense to me is using the tutorials to give levels in ship skills. Not just the actual skillbooks. But where you must accomplish something related to the field to gain L1-3 in certain fields matching what youd like to do or are interested in. These tasks shouldnt be too long but long enough that they might be prohibitive to using them to level vet toons quickly. Mostly out of sheer boredom for the vet to do mundane tasks. They should come with some instruction as well as to some of the basic mechanics of the game.

I used to play Falcon 4.0 years ago. Its an F-16 simulator. The manual for the game is hundreds of pages long, extremely technical and designed to mirror the actual experience of flying the real fighter. The complexity of it is vast and huge and the manual was partly written by a real F-16 fighter pilot. Doing the tutorials is quite a lot like flight school.

In Eve what we fail to realize is that our characters, long before they dreamed of being capsuleers, lived in a world and reality that had all this tech and abilities. Even before you thought of being a capsuleer you would learn about your world and its mechanics as related to space travel. It would be a normal part of growing up. Nevermind the fact that before most people wouldve gained a ship or access to fly it there wouldve been a training time necessary to understand more basic flight training and game mechanics.

Tbh if done right this ground school would be a perfect avenue for avatar gameplay coupled with actual space flight. Tbh if you made it in depth enough you could make this a hand holding program for those that want it. A very rigid and structured environment, very "themepark" if you will. Where you could answer questions on game mechanics in avatar classrooms against NPCs or even other students. To "graduate" at the top of your class. Using a mix of avatar classroom and real world testing in Tranquility you could create a means of giving players an in depth understanding of game mechanics as they apply to Eve as well as interesting or fun things to do. With the rewards being SP levels (L1-3) and the prestige of place in a class.

To some vets itd be boring enough and take enough time that the grind through it wouldnt be worth the time or effort SP wise. Others might even learn a thing or two they might not have known.


Just a thought

The point of this thread is suggesting a reduction (and not eliminating) the skill gaps as the technologies of ships in Eve continue to increase.
It is not about getting cyno alts faster or anything to that effect. In fact if steps can be taken to limit the interest of this for already established players, so much the better.



I do not disagree with that. Educating new players is critical.
But doing something about the skill gap is more about perception. More oftne than not, it is perception that matters. If at some point the perception for new players that competing with older players is so hopeless, then the game will wither from lack of newcomers.

The solution of accelerating skills time for some basic skills is also viable, as well as the ones about only getting these skills increase via the opportunities system. These are good thoughts to address this evergrowing gap.

This...I have four accounts right now, ranging from 25 mil SPs at the highest to 3.5 mil SPs at the lowest. I have the most solo PvP kills on my newer, low skilled pilots than I do on my 25 mil SP account, simply because I understand the game mechanics and now know how to optimize training for certain ships.

Not angry in the least, just "Oy vey" about this whole thing, this subject has been brought up over and over and the new players get more and more crap and yet it never seems to help. (Adjust your reading tone)

At some point, it has to be evident that cramming them full of goodies right out the gate, does not help them.

There has to be a better way o approach this.

Giving new pilots, say, 1M skill points worth of skills instead 50Kish, certainly wouldn't hurt.

Because you don't start with those entirely essential skills injected, nor do you have the isk available to buy them. They're also not optional skills. They're entirely required to pilot basically any subcapital ship effectively and propulsion jamming is the skill that essentially differentiates a PVP ship from a PVE ship. By not starting out players with that skill you're undermining the "You can be useful in PVP as soon as you start playing!" line people like to use. In reality you can't because you have to buy, inject and train a bunch of skills that are literally requirements for you to be of any use whatsoever.

It's a totally pointless barrier.

I agree that giving a new player more SP won't help ( in fact it may just make things worse as they lack the understanding of why they have those skills and what their purpose is ), giving them the ability to earn SP through tutorials and instruction ( Opportunity ) was what I was saying would benefit them more, also using a dynamic mapping for the first few months would help with picking up all the skills a bit quicker during that "new player" time frame and help pick up the pace as well as having a foundation before a remap is available, it's hard to keep new players interested when they can only orbit an asteroid while they wait for some basic skill to finish.

I'm not against the skill point gap, it is needed and totally pointless to dispute, a 10m SP character can wreck a 100m SP character as long as the 10m SP is applied to skills suitable for the ship they are flying, a 100m SP player just has more options.

As for a better way to approach this, there definitely must be. At this point tho, the best approach I can think of is to have additional SP earned through instruction so they understand more about the skill system and to go with a dynamic mapping while they train up the base hodgepodge of skills ( drones, ships, engineering and such )

Actually, there should be a a tutorial written by some one (or group) that is very well versed in PvP. Not CCP but from the community. Garner some dece pilots, write it up, add video instruction and poof there you are. Because it is obvious these newbears have no idea where Google is and or not capable of finding instruction videos from solid members of the community with titles like "How not to suck at Eve" etc etc.

Prototype Cerebral Accelerator: +9 to all attributes. Lasts for 14 days.

Comes with a Starter pack ( and only works for 14 days from when you create the character )