Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Eve is a game yes? I'm going to assume that the answer is yes. Given that (assumed) answer, we can safely conclude it could be analyzed using game theory. Seeing as game theory is used to analyze non-games, using it for games (where it is originally developed) should be be controversial.

• Is Eve a repeated game--i.e. is play repeated over and over? I'm going to say yes.
• Is Eve an infinitely repeated game--i.e. is there a known end stage/date, if not then it is an infinitely repeated game? Again, I am going to answer yes.

Now, with just these two bits of information we know one thing. We know, with certainty, that the number of equilibria in the game is very large. This is why CCP is constantly tweaking, adjusting and changing things about he game, IMO. They think some change will be fine, then it lands on an equilibrium they did not foresee (because there are so many) and it is a problem from their perspective (and often that of many players too).

So, could removing skills/SP be a great thing? Yes. Could it be a horrible thing? Yes. Could it be balanced? Yes. Could it be unbalanced? Yes.

What is the downside if it is balanced and good? None.
What is the downside if it unbalanced and not good....?

This is why I think this idea is dubious and urge caution. We need to quantify the downside risk. Trying to argue there is no potential downside (as per the Mara Rinn, Aerasia, and Dror) is moronic in the extreme (it is as stupid as the **** heads on Wall Street who argued "housing prices can't all go down at the same time," while failing to notice that if they are all going up at the same time....). Admit it, and then argue why the downside is not that big or extremely unlikely.

I do not know about you but I felt kinda accomplished, great and competent when I was able to participate in a Tengu fleet in my "early" days be resorting to a faction RC instead of the T2 RC. I never had the experience to being able to only learn 5% of the game when I started and moved through the skills as I set them. I felt on par with other people in some extends and sub par with them in other aspects, as it is naturally the case because I was a new(er) player. I definitely felt that my creativity and my motivation to overcome my limitations made the difference between boring sitting around and entertaining gameplay. I also felt a lot of need for self-motiviation and experienced the rewards of this by overcoming the obstacles that I faced and this gave me a very satisfying feeling. I expect the same psychological approach from everyone else in the game.

What do you want to tell me with the screenshots? The first one shows the ship progression that you unlock step by step while playing the game. You learn to fly a base version, train into an advanced version and know how to use the advanced version when you get there.

Yes, this is a development issue, but it has little to do with the game itself and rather with the developers needing to cater to a certain kind of player in order for them to play their game. Their design philosophy is influenced by the market and the demands of the market. Facebook games are not only mobile, they are also played a lot on desktop computers and were primarily browser based games in the beginning.
Skills do not inhibit the idea of limitless potential, they rather give you orientation in this ocean of potential. This is not uninteresting, as I have demonstrated with my personal experience time and again. If you chose to ignore, dismiss them and rather stick to your unrelated scientific studies, go ahead. Your studies not only support skill-based learning systems, my experience in the game also supports what your studies find.

So be it. My experience, however, are very delicious cherries that I have harvested from 4 years of growth in EVE. That you cannot produce the same experience is not of my concern. Again, what you see as limits are nothing but guides on your way to harness the limitless potential of the game. Your perception of skill, however, seems to be too one dimensional too realize that.
The game also does not require L5 skills in many departments in order to provide a fun and engaging experience. But this is also just another cherry that I picked after 4 years of growth and nurturing. L5 skills certainly push the ship or module to the limit, but the difference between I to IV is a lot bigger and more influential than IV to V.

I see a lot of options in that screenshot then. Not sorry to disappoint you.

Apparently there is, as my linked case demonstrates. If a developer needs to think about putting a 100% insurance reimbursement into a competitive multiplayer mode centered around destruction of assets, the objective truth is that the developer sees a need to provide an extensive safety net for some people so that they do not feel a loss. There is no such thing in EVE. Thus the number of people interested in this kind of game diminishes with every game development like the one that is potentially into MGS V. This should also answer whatever question you tried to ask in your internet population quote at the and of your last post.
I am also not too worried about that you cannot see the answers to your questions in my posts. You demonstrate a significant creative potential in dismissing and downplaying anything that does not coincide with your opinion on the matter, regardless how relevant it actually is in terms or relation to EVE. To this post, I am convinced that I have given more than enough examples supporting anything the studies claim -- while maintaining the skill system.

It's actually an interesting idea, playing the neutral role and figuring out another option for the PCU except what're the obvious and relevant motivation keypoints. Can't figure anything out yet, though.

I appreciate your time on this suggestion, I like the point that you're making with many of the skills providing unnecessary barrier entries to professions, but I agree with a previously made postulation that this suggestion would strip much of the individuality away from characters that exist. I think that skills could provide a more gradual progression that could remove some of those barrier levels.

I also think that T2 modules should function in a similar way to their rigging counter parts where you can equip them and use them regardless of skills, but with the bonus of mitigating their drawbacks and fitting requirements by training the skills for them. Advanced Weapon Upgrades can probably be re-purposed to do that.

I looked at the post you linked and I missed it before. It is totally and completely wrong.

"The problem is, EVE's skillz don't differentiate characters much. If you train a skill to level 5 you might get a +20% bonus or +25% relative to someone who hasn't got the skill at all, or sometimes less."

a 20-25% bonus on your guns means the other guy dies way before you all else being equal. 20% on your reps whether shield or armour does exactly the same. This is a pretty big differentiation between characters. The same applies to any of the industry stuff. The gameplay benefit is that you can choose to train lots of skills to mid levels and do pretty much everything in the game. I did just that and about the only thing I haven't done so far is moon mining because I have no interest in nullsec.

Many characters can do many things better than I. There are also areas that I have specialized into which means any conflict there will come down to player skill. The skills differentiate the characters to a very large degree, they promote interaction between different players with different interest. It also promotes interaction between those who share skillsets. It is the ventral thread and core of EvE.

It isn't in the slightest nitpicky, cherrypicky or any kind of picky. It's the very heart of the proposal. Skills differentiate between characters. They are driven by the choices you make and give persistent consequences to your actions and decisions. Characters already can get into production pretty much immediately. They need to train to be able to build higher tech gear but that means that a character who focused on those skills gets benefit from them whilst being more vulnerable in other areas. Similarly the character who is a combat pilot will have advantage over the indy character in any combat, ganking etc.

It provides choices, it provides difference between characters, it provides reasons to interact with other players and it provides all sorts of opportunities between those players. The skill system is woven through the very fabric of the game, through the game engine, through the character system and through the progression system within EvE. To remove this is in some way literally changes the game into something completely different. Something most definitely not EvE.

My concern with asking the original question was to find ways that the game would break for everyone, not just cherry picked examples.

In your case: flying a Tengu (a skills-intensive ship) with modules where your limit was skills in particular lines helped you feel accomplished because you were able to tweak the fleet doctrine to suit the specific challenge of not being subscribed long enough to use all the modules required for a fleet doctrine. There are equivalent challenges based on ISK supply and market availability, which are still imposed by the game but not in the form of game design directly imposing itself into your decision-making process. Removing SP/skills from the game would have shifted your challenge from "what can I fit within my SP limits" to "what can I fit that I can afford, that won't require flying around the cluster in order to collect?"

There will still be challenges and rewards available, they just won't be system provided ones of "ding! you've levelled!"

It turns out that the timer-based rewards—which are basically a form of loyalty reward, "thank you for staying subscribed for 2 years 5 months"—are important to some people. Or at least some people perceive these rewards as important. I can't help but imagine that these people are all suffering a form of Stockholm syndrome though: "the game experience was so bad that I had to find solace in the certainty of skills progressing while I wasn't playing the game."

If a player wants to fly a covops frigate, they're pretty much stuck flying a non-cloaky ship for the duration of that train towards being able to use a covops hull and then be able to fit a covops cloaking device to it. They have a choice taken away from them, and they are not able to apply themselves to learning how to fly covops. Sure, the Stockholm survivor will rationalise this by suggesting that the new player can learn how to be sneaky in a non-sneaky ship such as a Heron. Learning to use a screwdriver by using a hammer.



I've found the opposite: progressing from IV to V is the difference between being able to fly a ship "properly" or having to make-do with meta-4 modules or switching down a calibre of weapon. Sometimes I was simply unable to participate in a particular style of play simply because I hadn't been subscribed long enough to have the necessary skills trained.

So SP are a limiting factor, not a "guide" on my way to "harness the limitless potential of the game." I can understand how some people will see things that way: each time a new skill is trained they gain access to more potential arenas for play. Eventually a participant might come to believe that they are a better player simply because their character has been subscribed long enough to unlock capital ships, for example.

"Why did I have to wait this long to be able to fly carriers?" one asks themselves subconsciously.
"Because you had to become a better player first," they post-rationalise to themselves.
"The game is taking care of me by preventing me hurting myself," claims the Stockholm syndrome victim.



There are a lot of options, but they are options in terms of what to choose to spend the next few months training towards, not in terms of what a player can actually do in the game. Even once the skills are trained, the player has to know how to get the ISK to fund a particular play style. Some players are happy to buy ISK with real money, others are happy to farm ISK to pay for game time. The players farming ISK will invest some of their income to increase their production capacity: this is capitalism at work. There are choices in terms of opportunity cost and invest-or-spend.

When a player is not given the option of learning from "the school of hard knocks," are they really given choice? Why shouldn't a player be able to learn some hard lessons such as, "don't fly what you can't afford to lose"? The SP requirements to fly certain craft mean that brave players aren't able to find out if they can actually fly and fight as well as they think they can.



The purpose of insurance in EVE Online is to provide a system where the buy-in to a particular play style is expensive but the replacement costs aren't so high. CCP Chronotis touched on this in "The Circle of Life" devblog, 2010-03-30.

There are challenges that are inherent in the game without the artificial gating mechanism of SP. A player can feel accomplished without using "length of time subscribed" as a measure of how good a player they are.

Any comments on the rest of the post? Do you think the pleasure gained from hearing "Skill training completed" is pleasure at new choices becoming available, progress being made towards a goal, or having an artificial constraint removed?

In my case, each skill trained is simply more of the game board becoming available. I guess it's also a case of whether you're a "glass half full," "glass half empty," or "there's room for 100% more stuff" personality.

How is the criteria useless? It contrasts emptily implying that skills prevent no gameplay vs. real issues with the design just being implemented on button press.

What's obvious about the idea and AWOXing is corp security rising to the demand. At worst, for fleets, it promotes more small gang cliques. Yet, it's an MMO. Most of these cliques would entertain the idea of recruitment for their niche and location and interests. Beyond that, the idea allows any sub to recruit any crew, for their assured security, from wherever. That's a very profound effect on both that sub's interest and advertising potential.

There's an economy example in that reply that seems less than analogous. What's the simile for bailing a company? There's no bailing out corps from a development control point.. It's almost completely laissez faire until something profits too much. As stated in a development post, game accounts can only hit zero.