To be honest, it’s an apples to oranges comparison. 1 vs many invalidates any skill argument, unless the side with the mechanical disadvantage ends up winning.
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yes, it does, but there again that’s just adding another set of goalposts.
Eve’s a sandbox. The goalposts are somewhere off to the side, with a dead capsuleer impaled on them as a testament to their failure. When comparing fairness, one needs to look outside of Eve and said goalposts and provide hypotheticals that any competent Eve player would never actually allow to happen.
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You’re sorta right.
I make about $22/hr, real life, average and adjusted for cost of living.
I’ll tell you. I don’t sit there and let you make my life hard. in this stupid game.
I buy, for 32 minutes of real work, what you guys do in 3 months of game wages.
It’s not a hard choice.
That’s a freebie.
Of course SP matter.
Errr…no. They help determine what kind of ships and modules you can use, but they can’t ensure you use them effectively. There are aspects of the game where tacit knowledge acquired via “learning by doing” plays a role as well.
Actually it does. Unless you have very deep pockets, either in terms of ISK or in terms of RL cash. Keep in mind that there decreasing marginal rate of return on injecting. To catch up to my main on a brand new character you’d need about ~1,150 injectors or about 1,036,672,000,000, or (if I did the math right) ~$12,500. Can it be done? Yeah, sure but it will cost you quite a bit.
Of course, all those SP have to come from somewhere and to the extent that it comes from “high SP” characters if there is a negative skewness to the SP distribution then it is possible that SP trading helps address this. That is, it move SP from a “few high SP” characters to “more low SP” characters.
Further, there is also the issue of how many SP are in play in any given instance. My main has lots of SP. There are not many ships he cannot fly. However, when we are out roaming around in Ares ceptors I am not much better, SP wise, than a player with a fraction of my SP. Why? Because my laser, cruiser, recon, carrier, and BS SP are actually kind of useless in that particular instance. Sure I can reship, but when we are 35 jumps from home what does that mean? Not much.
Hell, I’ve been on fleets where I have more SP In spaceship command than the FC has total SP. And the FC in turn relies on scouts who have loads of SP…maybe in areas the FC doesn’t. The idea of “winning” is nebulous and ill-defined in this game. I’ve had a ton of fun even when I knew I was going to end up losing my ship. Did I win? Not if one goes by a KB (although, if I get on more KMs that are worth more than I lost is that still a loss) or did I win?
And this whole conversation is so limited to ship-to-ship PvP. Yeah so some guy who injects and has a huge limit on his credit card “pays-to-win” to having lots of stuff and starts and alliance. There is nothing preventing a “low SP” player from gaining his trust then robbing him blind and “winning”.
To listen to some here in this thread I must be like Conan when I enter system…merely by having more SP than just about everyone in system I “…crush my enemies, see them flee before me and hear the lamentation of their women.” 
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Thats ok because i can make 11$ in 32 minutes of gameplay, adjusted for cost of ammo and slave labor.
But remember that you are sharing the sandbox with people who dont have that much of disposable income, or simply do not want to spend so much real money.
1 vs 1 Bahhhh you would not stand a chance in hell.
And if a guy like that is willing to pay to win, then next time your fleet meet him he will have 3 Carriers and an AUX fit all for high end pvp, and you will probably loose.
He could also hire mercenaries to help.
Make his own fleet and run multiple accounts.
He can pay to win.
It’s only a question of how much money a person can and is willing to use.
Try engaging some billionaires kid with no regards for money and a power trip.
HAHAHA Could really mess things up and CCP would love it HAHAHA. 
same storry every week different guy … getting boring
JuuR
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Lol…
Paying for all that when I don’t even do pvp? Sure, it’d be possible, and stupid. I really just PLEX enough to, like I said, not let you guys make my life overly difficult. I don’t lose quite enough ships doing missions and exploration, and my ego does not require that I beat you at your own game.
Even if I could afford it, the slot limitations, I think, would prevent my pve fits from beating your pvp ones…
I’m exactly the same myself, i never did any pvp and i would never spend more then just subbing my account.
All I’m trying to say is, it can be done.
Your assuming that the game will go on forever, or even f it does, that the population will stay. Which is very unlikely considering most games have a 10 year live expectancy.
Eve isn’t most games. It’s been around since 2003.
I know, I have been here since it started.
No, I’m assuming that pilots are already perfect at their intended role. And by “assuming” I mean “I know there are”. Not everyone has perfect skills, but it’s not at all uncommon to say “I’ve got a perfect X pilot” where X can be frigates, dreads, fax, titan, carrier, cruiser, blops, you name it. If you inject yourself up to perfect status along with them, then great… but if you keep injecting you won’t get any stronger. You’ll just be better at other things like PI or hauling or whatever.
As for the 10 year bit… we’re already 6 years past that and going strong enough to last another 10 years if they keep it updated.
This is not the case, there are many new players.
The argument “skill trumps skill points” is valid, and i agree upon it. However
If you say “Skill trumps skill points significantly” I will not agree.
I believe the ratio is probably around 60% to 40% (respectively, skill, sp).
This being stated, a perfect skilled toon in a specific area (like perfect gunnery skills) has a significant impact on the combats outcome.
For example,
Assuming you can spiral perfectly, math dictates that you will at best obtain 58% dodge rate. This means you gain a 58% DPS advantage (as they will have to hit you 58% more then they would of to kill you). This is mathematical perfection done by advanced equations, so its unlikely a human will obtain this 100% of the time, but lets say for the sake of argument you dodge half (50%) of the attacks to make this example easier.
Assuming the above is true.
@ 5000 EFP
@ 150 DPS
Effective survival time is about 34 seconds (33.3) @ 100% hit rate.
@ 50% hit rate, this increases to 68 Seconds (rounded)
With out factoring other more advanced parts of the math, like crushing, glancing, default rates, etc this would mean that Piloting grants around 50% more effectiveness in combat (use implementing spiraling perfectly for example).
Im not looking to make this a spreadsheet pvp instance, but basic math above will show that skill is definitely superior to skill points, however, there are situations this is not true (for example if you are webbed and fighting a player with perfect gunnery, vs being webbed vs a player that does not, you will die significantly faster, and you will not get out of that web unless you get support (jam, etc), Know how to hit the web with angular velocity to inertia out of it, or kill him first.
In this case, the game is clearly “pay to win” and there is very little you can do.
There are many old players. You can’t say “he has more SP so he’s more powerful” when he is in fact not more powerful. Any pilot, regardless of whether they inject or train is “objectively stronger” than a pilot with less SP. They’re just as strong whether they train it or inject it though. To assume that age has any relationship whatsoever to strength is ludicrous though.
You make it sound as though “skill has a limit”. It doesn’t. Consider this acquaintance of mine. Easily one of the most skilled players I know. Back in the good old days when he ran with us, he’d FC roams and although they’d take like 5 hours, they’d be outright loaded with kills the whole time.
Want to know the real kicker? He did that in an alpha clone ship because he’s sort of taking a break from Eve. He showed us this kill in discord. It wasn’t some afk-at-the-gate fight, he literally just beat this dude by himself. And I know that the proteus isn’t the best of the T3C, but there’s no way under the sun that pilot should have lost.
Skill has no limit. Don’t believe me, look at the rest of this dude’s killboard.
Consider your example… 5000 EHP, 150 DPS, etc. What was their transversal? Were they kiting, was it an optimal encounter, etc. Skill determines all of these things. SP doesn’t make a lick of difference when you get out-piloted.
So, having debunked your entire belief that skill points (he was an alpha clone in an alpha-fit thrasher) are a massive contributor to combat effectiveness, what now?
Regardless, of pilot skill, the objective strength of a pilot is not related to their age. All pilots will, with sufficient training, cap out at the same strength. No part of that strength requires injectors to reach. Getting stronger faster is moot when you’re still just another fish in the ocean. Even when you’re the biggest kind of fish, you can still get eaten by any other fish.
When it comes to game design, the very definition of power is numbers. Literally, Skill points make your numbers bigger, Ergo, More Sill points is more powerful.
It does.
We refer to this ask “Player Skill Cap” in game design
Do it a few more time to prove to us he was not afk. we do not base our positions as developers on “one kill”.
Not if your alive you dont. Literally whales in the ocean live because of the sheer size. That size gives them advantages (like diving to the deaths where things cannot hunt them).
And yet, failing to use them effectively is pointless. As I keep saying, objectively more SP is stronger than less SP. Injectors, however, do not make Eve P2W because at the end of the day injectors don’t give you anything you can’t get without them. At the end of the day, there’s an upper limit on SP. Just because you can put out bigger theoretical numbers than someone with less SP doesn’t mean you’re going to win, and it doesn’t mean you somehow got an advantage over the playerbase.
There’s literally no limit to skill. Over the course of any pvp encounter, the number of variations on what they can do are effectively limitless. While I can agree that there’s a theoretical upper limit, it’s kind of like saying “the universe isn’t infinite”… true, but so utterly irrelevant on the scales we’re concerned with that may as well be infinite.
So why then, when “you as developers” (which games have you made by the way, given your incessant need to bring this up as some kind of credential I wish to validate it as meaning something) choose to look at more than “one kill”, do you specifically limit your P2W argument on new players injecting to beat new players that don’t inject, when those kinds of encounters are statistically likely to be few and far between?
And like I said, have a look at his kb. It’s full of high skill kills, recently all in alpha thrashers. That’s more than “one kill”. It’s a proof of concept, repeatedly duplicated. All his kills aren’t high skill, but there are a multitude of them there. I’m literally spoon feeding you evidence.
And a lamprey has never fed off of a whale, right? They haven’t derped and gotten killed by a variety of predators, right? They literally only die of health issues and age, right? For all their advantages, they can still lose. Not that it was meant to be a literal example, I certainly hope you can put the figurative example together. But if you do need help putting that together, let me know.
Speculation. There is no skill required to push a button. Literally you turn on weapons and you have dps, which means that out side of knowing how to push buttons, skill points matter.
I think this nonsense has gone on long enough. Your position that skill points are worthless, is utterly nonsensical and just down right wrong.
Let me demonstrate to you the skill of how to ignore your unproductive, false argumentation