EVE General Discussion

ALL ships takes 3 months. We gain 1.3 million skill points per month (with +3 implants and no remapping the even attributes), and you're talking about some 180 skills to be trained to level 3 (8,000 points) and they're low rank - I figure average rank is 3.

You were talking about "unlocking" though, and not keeping newbies away from gameplay, and to just "unlock", some ship and quite a few support skills can be at just 1 or 2. "All ships" is also less "reasonable" than training just 2 racial ship lines (maybe all 4 frigates and cruisers but the bigger ships aren't that different from one another to warrant training all 4). "Unlocking" takes 1 month, as some high rank skills are removed or reduced, bringing the average way down.

I've done this, by the way. It takes a year to get "all skills at 4", and I'm guessing it will take another year to get "all T2" ships at 4 with relevant skills at 5, which is way past "reasonable". That's because training each level of skill is 5x longer than the previous. When CCP reduced the skill requirements from 4 to 3 they didn't do a 25% improvement, they did a 45,000 / 8,000 = 5 TIMES reduction. 1 year got reduced to 2 months. It was a drastic cut in the time required.

Also, "all ships" = all possible roles = all possible classes (warrior, rogue, healer, mage, druid, necro, etc.) in 3 months. No other MMO gives you that; you typically spend 3 months to get 1 character up and leveled.

On point 3: rats are never dangerous. Ever. Having more in high sec attacking you randomly will only create tedium. As for isk in nul, the point of the higher rewards is because it IS more dangerous. So your point three is solved by one simply going to nul.

What you are doing there is quite simply to move the goalposts. If I say "I want to do X, and cannot do that because I lack SP", then you answer "but you can hang out with people while they are doing X, and perhaps even by your actions enable them doing X, even at low SP". Not even that is true for literally everything, but for the sake of argument let's pretend that it is. It remains the case that I cannot do what I want. I can just participate in the sense of watching or enabling other people doing what I want. I can live vicariously. It's like saying to someone who want to play the striker in a football match that hey, unfortunately they do not have the skill to actually be fielded, much less in that position. But here are some water bottles, and they can hand them to the players in the breaks, including to the strikers. So that way they will "take part" and realise their dream of being a striker.

Well, maybe that satisfies you, but to me that is just ... sad. Mind you, not that I'm opposed to support roles. In fact, I think I would be quite happy to play for example as a logistics. (In fantasy terms, I like playing as druid/cleric.) And I doubt that I would even want to have the responsibility of say flying a Titan. But I will do the "lowly" jobs because I want to do them, not because that lets me admire my betters doing the things that I really want to do. I'm not playing this game to be on anybody's cheer squad.


If you want to make that comparison, then EVE is more like offering two or three "basic" classes (fighter, magic user, religion user) from the beginning, and each and every specialisation into a "proper" class (e.g., fighter to warrior, or berserker, or thief, or ...) takes you several months. Exploring the entirety of all "proper" classes in a meaningful manner (your character is playable in that role in most situations) will take you a year or two. And then there is at least one extra level of "enhanced" classes (e.g., fighter to warrior to paladin). Training all the way into an "enhanced" class will take you a year or two all on its own, so if you try to make a character that can literally do everything "enhanced", then that's a project for many years. Something like that...

Maybe that all sounds fine. The first problem is that the way you qualify for these roles (at least in terms of the game mechanics) has essentially nothing to do with how you play. You cannot really accelerate down some path, you simply have to wait a set time for every step along the way. If you are keen, then that is immensely frustrating. The second problem is that unlike for the fantasy themes, most beginning players do not really know what they want to play, and it is also not particularly easy to get a feel for the available options early on. So people end up going down the wrong path ("wrong" in the sense of what they would really enjoy), and then the static training mechanics means that it takes a long time to re-align.

All this of course would get much better with skill packets. The keen would be able to accelerate by pouring in money (real or ISK via grinding). Those who made wrong choices out of ignorance would be able to correct them more quickly and fluidly. It is a wonderful idea, too bad CCP has to tread so carefully in introducing this.

This game does not have bind-on-equip purple TIERED gear. In this game, once you have the skills trained, you gain instant access to the purple ships. So, a fair comparison would be how long it takes in this game to get the relevant skills trained to 5/4 vs. how long it takes in other games to get max level + raid purples, for 3-4 characters.

Having played other games about as casually as this, my times for a single character were 3 months to level to max, and another 2 months for the gear (first do heroics to get the bottom tier purples so you can survive in the raids, then join a raiding guild and do the raids and hope you win on the DKP rolls sufficiently to gear yourself up relatively fast). So about 1.5 years for the capability to do all the major roles.

I think this game is comparable. It's just that all the skills are presented in bulk on the market, and with no artificial limits such as "pick a class", people want to train everything on one character, and don't keep in mind that 1 character here is NOT the same as 1 character in any other MMO.

EDIT: And, by the way, "try out" or "unlock the class" doesn't mean "get max level and purple raid gear"; in most games you can certainly form an opinion by level 30 or so. I believe your definition of "try it out" for this game is skewed; there are T1 ships designed for tackling, scouting, probing, exploration, DPS, tanking, and even remote repair, you don't need to be able to fly the T2 version to "try out" any role.

Sorry, forgot to bookmark this thread.

The major issue preventing older players from bringing newer players into the fold is not skillpoints, but attitude and intrigue.

Why should you get a 2/3 year jump in SP? You started later and deserve to catch up? Really? So because I paid 3 years worth of subscriptions , you think you should only pay one? Interesting.

Take a deep breath, step away from the keyboard and breathe.

IF CCP decide to change THIER game to do what you suggest, I can either suck it up or leave. I'll probably suck it up because I've gone through the bitter vet stage to the "accepting and mostly amused by the attitude of people coming to eve lately" vet. CCP will decide on the way forward for their game, not to satisfy your sense of entitlement, but to keep the money flowing in to their coffers, and quite rightly so.

You two would make a great couple ...
... but he's shy, so you better make the first step. ;)

Also, it's controversial, but I wouldn't mind at all if CCP created an "Advanced PACK" option where you pay $60 (as for a new game in a box), for an already-activated new account with, literally, ALL skills plugged into your head and trained to level 3, and 15 million ISK so you can afford the market tax required for trading a PLEX (if you want to buy one). I think the price would be fair, since it's several hundred million ISK worth of skills to buy, and, as discussed earlier, a few months of training, and it would make CCP some money and possibly attract some new players.

But mostly, I wouldn't mind because EVE really is about attitude, and not about skills.

No use, though, because someone will come and demand more.
Just like with security.

It's never enough, there'll always come an even more self entitled clown.

It's never enough.

Never.

Yeah, but we can point to it and demand silence.

SWTOR did offer "level 60 character" with one of their expansions (this is not max level, it's just skipping past the newbie levels, and no extra stuff like equivalent gear or standings or anything like that), and I think WoW did it too, so I guess it's a thing in the MMO world.

I wouldn't mind if CCP did it; the skills are pre-assigned, and it really is only a couple months of training. For new accounts only, one character only. And level 3 mastery isn't "win" by any definition of the word, it's just a bit of a jump start. Make the newbies feel better about being able to "catch up", they're always so worried about that.

$60.

EDIT: The game changes no matter what, Sol. Newbies, CCP's vision / whims, lack of newbies, our exploits... Trying to keep the game frozen is pointless.

So, I figure, why not.

Progress != giving in to people who feel entitled to play this game although they hate it.