Dear EVE, here is why I say goodbye

New Citizens Q&A
164

Sooooooooo what I get out of all of this is that the skills in EVE need an update for the same reasons that ships needed an update back when nearly everyone flew rifters and canes.

I’ve played for 12 years now and the vast majority of my time has been helping new players learn the ropes of the game. I still occasionally have people who log back in after years look me up to see what i’m up to now.

I can tell you that the skill system in EVE is probably 70% of why people don’t stick with the game. It does take entirely too long to get into better ships and train everything that needs to be trained to fly them properly. The other 30% is that its difficult to use ones imagination in order to define your own goals and narrative but that is difficult enough without having to navigate a long list of skills on top of everything else there is to know.

^ EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE FRIENDS I’VE EVER TRIED TO GET INTO EVE SAYS THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T PLAY IT.

What I think would be a good compromise would be the consolidation of core skills in order to reduce the time needed to train them while simultaneously making them more meaningful to train.

Instead of simply starting out with core skills at higher levels which is what is done now when a new player starts they should start at lvl 1 at all skills but have a solid incentive to train to lvl 4-5.

It shouldn’t take more than a month to get all CORE ship skills under your belt. Assuming a player trained only within their starting faction In 3 months a player should be able to fly a few T2 frigates and cruisers but not all. In 6 months they should be able to start on capitals or have T2 Battleships and at a year they should be deciding if they want to do supers or if they want to fill out another faction’s ship tree. At that rate it would take 4+ years to train all faction’s sub caps and capitals excluding supers.

Skill points from the skills that are removed/combined should be assigned to the new skills to ensure their at the previously trained skill levels. With any surplus skill points being refunded back to the players that have already trained them OR all skill points should be refunded with the combined skills set to lvl 1. When the players first log in after the update they can then add their reimburse skill points to the new skills to get them back to lvl 5 and the most important part being that CCP gives tons of notice and reminders to add the refunded skill points to the newly combined skills before undocking. JUST LIKE THEY DID WITH LEARNING SKILLS when they were removed years ago. This way people who invested the time to train them get them back to increase the newly combined skills, assign left over sp’s to other skills and/or to sell them on the market making injectors even more available to new players who want a bump in training.

My suggestions on skills that could be combined are below :

ENGINEERING
CPU Management / Power Grid Management = Engineering Management
Electronics Upgrades / Energy Grid Upgrades = Engineering Upgrades
Capacitor Systems Operation / Capacitor Management = Capacitor Upgrades

NAVIGATION
Afterburner / Fuel Conservation / High Speed Manuvering = Avionics Upgrades
Navigation / Warp Drive Operation = Navigation Upgrades

ARMOR
Mechanics / Hull Upgrades = Armor Upgrades

SHIELDS
Shield Compensation / Shield Operation = Shield Reinforcement
Shield Management / Shield Upgrades = Shield Calibration

TARGETING
Target Management / Long Range Targeting = Targeting Acquisition
Advanced Target Management / Signature Analysis = Targeting Calibration

GUNNERY
Small Energy Turret / Small Projectile Turret / Small Hybrid Turret = Small Weapon Turrets
^ Same for Medium / Large Turret skills

MISSILES
Rockets / Heavy Assault Missiles / Torpedoes = Rapid Fire Missile Systems
Light Missiles / Heavy Missiles / Cruise Missiles = Long Range Missile Systems

OR
Light Missiles / Rockets = Small Missile Systems
^^ Etc. for medium / large missile systems.

**** Both for turret and missile skills keep the specialization skills for training T2 versions. This way they only train 3 base weapon skills for either missiles or guns for 6 total skills instead of 9 for gunnery and 6 for missiles for a combined whopping total of 15 skills just to use all the base T1 weapons and then specialize from there. I mean come on I’m not even counting drones FFS.

DRONES
Drones / Drone Avionics = Drone Control
Mining Drone Operation / Salvage Drone Operation = Harvester Drones
Drone Navigation / Drone Durability = Drone Upgrades

TRADE
Trade / Contracting = Trade Contracting

NEURAL ENHANCEMENT
Cybernetics / Infomorph Psychology = Capsuleer Anatomy and Psychology

RESOURCE PROCESSING
Combine Processing skills based on Sec Status = High sec ore processing skill / Low sec ore processing skill / Null Sec ore processing skill

*** AGAIN These are the skills that I believe could be combined in order to make training them less time intensive and more meaningful to new players so that we can grow the community rather than staking it on a dwindling number of people who are now in their thirties going on their forties and I’m saying that as one of those people.

165

Screw it. Why not just have one skill called “Skills”. You can train it to 1 (that’s as high as it goes) in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee and then you get issued a titan and a system in Delve to rat in. Soon as your wallet hits 100 Billion you get a nice animation and a video about how you won EvE, then you get to start raiding with your friends. Because end game content is the only content children want to play. Thank god for children with no patience showing us “people who are now in their thirties going on their forties” what games “should” be like.

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166

Eve is a crap game, all vets know this. We keep playing because of the time invested and the friends we have made. You can take your instant gratification, 2 day grind to lvl 99 right back to where it came from.

New players need to take the time to learn how to fly the ships properly, best gear/bigger ship will not win you a fight.

167

Sunk costs

If you are still playing because of time you invested, you are making a bad decision.

168

No one is saying anything like that but to get all the skills I listed up to lvl 5 it would take a new player with no implants at an average of 5 days per skill a whopping 350 days to train core ship skills. That is the barrier to new player retention PERIOD.

By combining the skills that i suggested that same training time could be done in 115 days. That is still nearly 4 months which is more in line with the amount of time it should take someone to learn basic competence with the ships they initially want to fly.

Keep in mind this doesn’t take into account ship skills or anything outside of the core skills that do things like increase your powergrid/cpu and use T2 gear. That is literally all these skills do.

Skill is still a major component to the game and wouldn’t be undermined in any fashion from the suggestions I’ve made. All such a change would do is help to ensure another 15 years of eve with a larger player base with greater player retention and much less burnout from having to wait a &#$%ing year just to have core ship skills.

If the changes i suggested were done you wouldn’t even have to touch any other skills as all other skills are used to specialize into niche spaceship roles.

Now as someone who spent a $%^&ing year training all of those skills yeah It would kinda piss me off that I had to wait a year to train them but if I got back the skill points from the skills that were taken out to combine them with other skills and could put them into rounding out the next years worth of training time I’ve got queued up now i’d be ok with that considering skill injectors are basically worthless to me on my main char with nearly a 140 million skill points. That combined with the realization that it would make it easier to get my friends interested in trying eve and help to bring in more new and returning players who quit due to the very reasons the op brought up which in turn would give us more bodies to shoot at… well I can live with that.

169

I’m not a genuine MMO player and probably older than many gamers, but my notion is that many players of EvE are remarkably “old”, i.e. they play computer games for 20+ years now. Perhaps they even play games from the 1990’ like me, so I am very happy about a game that takes it slow and rewards a long endurance. EvE itself is remarkably old…
If you sit and wait for a skill, you do it wrong - you have to play and improve your ability to use all the already obtained skills AND widen your social network. Then you will be prepared for the really big structures and ships.

TLDR: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

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170

You can fly a huge range of ships without having those skills at level 5 though. You are manipulating the facts. The 350 day barrier does not exist, unless we are talking Titans?

What are you trying to say I cannot fly that would be such a barrier to my enjoyment in the first 90 days of my EVE experience that I would leave over it?

I have been in the game for less than 3 months and I can fly Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Mining Barges, Industrials, Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships (I have said that already in this thread so it seems you are deliberately ignoring the facts).

I haven’t specialized in any particular direction other than mining so far, but the ship tree has ships in all directions that I could fly within days or weeks.

Your ‘must haz Titanz now plx or I quit’ stance is representative of you, not ‘new players’. Speak for yourself and stop insulting the rest of us, please.

Exactly this. Aside from the obvious manipulation of the facts going on in this thread, there is also little recognition of the fact that new players are too busy doing all the new things and learning all the new things to consider quitting over the time remaining until Titans are unlocked.

It’s increasinggly apparent that this is actually what is being asked for.

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171

If you want them all to 5, realistically you need them to 4 whcih would take like what about 2 maybe 3 months?

Exactly :slight_smile: so it’s fine as it is isn’t it. Unless you want all 5’s which is an unreasonable thing to want in the short term.

Come on, stop pretending people are supposed to have 5’s to make your point sound pointier. The difference between lvl4 and lvl5 is the same % bonus you get from lvl1 to lvl2 but takes LOOOOOADS longer.

That ^

(see if if you’re right you’re right Sindara)

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172

joaquin-phoenix-shock-signs

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173

That’s going to happen more and more you know.

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174

Just going to throw my 2 cents into this matter, I’ve been playing since about the 26th or so of January this year. I have just over 14mill SP and have used about 3-4-5 (cant remember) skill injectors. I rat in a VNI for a few hours a day if i feel like it, and the most i have ever had at one time is about 2.5bill. From my calculations (im not Albert Einstein) i was earning about 100mill every 4 hours, and 40 hours of ratting to get 1bill (roughly).

I have greatly enjoyed my experience so far with eve, to my pathetic fails at PVP and big wins in fleet fights. I intend to play eve for years to come as long as it doesn’t die down a ton to the point where theres no good ships or anything being sold anymore because everyone quit. Although i presume i am in the minority of new players who stay, as i found this game from my brother who got me started and encouraged me to keep playing. I do not intend to start a fight or argument, just stating my opinion/thoughts which CAN be criticized. There’s my 2 cents in the well. :stuck_out_tongue:

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175

“The difference between lvl4 and lvl5 is the same % bonus you get from lvl1 to lvl2 but takes LOOOOOADS longer.”

^^^ but that is it right there. That is the argument for consolidating the skills and making them more meaningful to train.

“If you want them all to 5, realistically you need them to 4 whcih would take like what about 2 maybe 3 months?”

^^^ No actually training all of the skills to lvl 4 would still require 6 months. Which further adds to the argument that training skills from 4-5 for marginal improvements shouldn’t take half a year of your life to train.

“Your ‘must haz Titanz now plx or I quit’ stance is representative of you, not ‘new players’. Speak for yourself and stop insulting the rest of us, please.”

^^^ I’ve said nothing about ship skills aside from a rough estimate of what I feel would be appropriate over the course of a year for someone new who specialized to expect to be able to do. As they stand now it would still take nearly a year of training ship skills and skills outside of core skills to train for titans and super carriers. Which is perfectly fine.

With regards to me personally wanting things nao… well I can already fly every subcapital in the game, yes all of them, with all T2 gear and can fly nearly all capitals and supers as well. So this isn’t about “I need shipz nao” I’ve always preferred just to have my main and at this point am merely rounding out specialized lvl5 skills before moving on to titans. I’ve only trained up alts now and then for very specific tasks none of which require more than 90 days training time. Especially now given we have skill injectors. BUT that is not the point is it?

This is about retaining NEW players not catering to people who already are aware they can train niched alts in 90 days or less because their already familiar with the skill trees and how things work.

This isn’t about keeping the people who have already determined that sticking with eve is something they’d like to do. This is about tempting the people who look at EVE and simply say no because it’s too much of a time sink and then retaining those who are at least willing to give it a shot.

Something tells me that the resistance that current players have to changes in the skill system has more to do with the fact that waaaaa I already had to wait 90 days or 10 years to get where I am why shouldn’t everyone have to wait that long waaaa when the truth is they shouldn’t have to for the same reasons that you shouldn’t have had to either.

Beyond that the changes that I suggested aren’t even that unreasonable and only reduce the over all training time for core skills from again a year to under six months. Don’t worry you still have a decades worth of skills to train even in spite of the changes i’d suggest if you want to do everything for #$%^ sake.

Again this isn’t about the existing players it is about retaining people so that the community can grow beyond those few hundred that will stick around out of the thousands that will try to get into it only to find it can become a second job. Which as much as people fondly like to joke about is too #$%^ing real for most people to bother with sticking around.

"I have been in the game for less than 3 months and I can fly Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Mining Barges, Industrials, Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships (I have said that already in this thread so it seems you are deliberately ignoring the facts).

I haven’t specialized in any particular direction other than mining so far, but the ship tree has ships in all directions that I could fly within days or weeks."

^^^ Exactly you have been playing for 3 months of your LIFE and have barely even begun to specialize in anything other than mining barges. I’m sure you can fly all those fancy ships but how many can you fly or even fit well?

Just because you can sit in the ship doesn’t mean you can use it properly. Having more meaningful training times and skill compositions would allow you to make better use of the ship skills you have trained rather than having a battleship that does about as well as a fully trained cruiser and even then maybe assuming the person flying the cruiser doesn’t know what their doing.

Also you are in the VAST minority of people who have managed to stick out that 90 day period most people look at the initial investment of time it’ll take to get what they consider meaningful progress and quit before even scraping the small surface that you’ve managed to think you’ve conquered.

Any idea of how many people play eve today? Last I head it was somewhere around half a million subs. Any idea of how many have tried it, possibly wanted to stick with it but couldn’t due to their real life time investments? Potentially millions. Even if the current number of paid accounts only doubled that would be twice the potential that CCP could put into developing the future of the game and that alone is worth cutting 6 months off a 20+ year skill train.

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You’ve avoided everything I said that you have no answer for, all the things I can do and can fly in just 2.5 months, and dodged any response to the fact that for a genuine new player, the learning curve and enjoyment of the new things unlocked at each stage of the developmental journey counterbalances the skill training times.

You are pretending that you never made outrageous claims, like the one about the 350 day skill barrier (because all skills must be level 5). Now it’s all just rough estimates of what you feel …

Pull the other one.

I’ve seen bicycles going backwards down a mountain backpeddle slower than you. :roll_eyes:

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177

Leveling a rank 16 (maximum) skill from IV to V takes 72 days with low/average implants, from 0 to V 87 days. Rank one from 0 to V is less than 6 days. But to trigger that, you need 5 - 10 seconds of your precious life time and then you can do whatever you want, even go on holidays - EvE will do the job for you.
So your actual time investment is quite low, it’s more of a question of allocation - where do I chose to spend my precious skill time :wink:
But that’s planning and trying and a nice part of the game I really like.

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178

This is where we disagree. You feel it will take a year or more to figure it out and I think most will have a solid grasp within 6 months and should have more meaningful skills to train in regards to core ship skills.

Ahh yes insults the last recourse of someone with nothing else to contribute to meaningful debate other than to disagree simply for the sake of disagreeing especially when everything debated is merely hypothetical and in no way concrete.

That is exactly my point. There are already plenty of skills that require a month or more of time in order to specialize into various roles. Combining core skills and making them more meaningful to train to lvl 5 while reducing the over all time would be a great boon to new players who’s first instinct when joining eve is to pick ships they want to fly only to get into them, die, become frustrated and quite. If instead of having to wait another 3 months and instead was only another month they’d probably be more inclined to stick around.

I should note that nothing i’m saying in what I outlined is exactly how I think it should be handled. It was meant to be an example and an attempt at addressing the issues the op originally stated about why he decided after years of playing the game and then trying to return decided not to.

My main point is that if skills were combined and made more meaningful to train while reducing the over all time it takes to get core ship skills compared to what it is today it could make a noticeable difference. A difference that could probably encourage new players and even returning players not to give up before they even get started.

For a game where people constantly make the point that player skill makes the difference in fights, not skills or the ship, people sure get testy about the time it takes to acquire both.

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I never said anything of the sort. :thinking:

No, they are because you are lying through your teeth, avoiding issues, manipulating what people have said, flat out making things up and generally shifting the goal posts every time you post. I hate people who do that and then call it ‘meaningful debate’. You don’t know the meaning of the phrase. You are no better than a common troll.

Again, no. I am disagreeing because I disagree. :roll_eyes:

The implication that disagreeing with you is wrong by default is just because you are an egomaniac who never had any intention of listening to what anyone else has to say anyway.

This is hilarious. :rofl:

That is not exactly your point. It is the exact opposite of your point. It is my point, and the point of several other people here, specifically:

Which is just a differently worded version of what I have said all along. That you can’t even see this just about says it all.

The above comments should make it clear what I think of your version of ‘meaningful debate’ and further interaction with you would only be pointless. You carry on talking to yourself as you have been all along.

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180

I agree with the OP. It isn’t a smart business move to make people wait months and months to do content that is rated mid-game. I understand and appreciate taking 6 months to access endgame content. But I can’t get ANY of my friends to play this game. Even now that it’s free to play noone stays around past the first few days.

You should quickly be able to fly a good frigate or destroyer or cruiser. You should quickly be able to focus on which damage type you want to do. But in this game, you can’t really do all of that.

And for people that say they know new players that can make hundreds of millions, stop it. That is not the average player. The average player won’t just start this game and automatically know how to make that type of money.

Actually LOVE that the game has sooo many categories and skills. It’s one of the main draws to the game for me. It’s sooooo deep. However there is no reason for a skill, a single skill that gives a 2% increase to a stat to take 20 - 30 days of REAL LIFE time. That is crazy. Why would the average gamer want to invest the cost of a full AAA MMO into 1 skill that gives no realistic advantage but gates the way to other skills, for that cost.

It all could EASILY be fixed if they simply added xp to activities like the OP said. A small skill point payout at the completion of missions would encourage active play and would allow for meaningful grinding while making money and learning the game. Right now, other than spending real money there is no way to progress quickly. You literally HAVE to wait months and months.

Noone is talking about carriers and tier 3. I’m talking about simply flying the ships you want and doing the content you want. Then after that getting better versions. It should not take a month to be able to do any activity that isn’t considered end game.

Also the other major drawback for me is that I can’t use alts. I can make 3 alts but they can’t progress their skills. Only 1 toon at a time. That is silly and is a clear money grab. Especially since it already takes years to master 1 race. Why can’t I have 3 different toons of differing races and professions and playstyles if I choose. Well I can’t, not without spending money.

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181

Maybe you should read some of the replies. The 2% skills are to allow for extremely “tight” fits on ships in many cases. For example Advanced Weapon Upgrades. Training this skill to 5 will actually give you a considerable edge even though the direct bonus is only 2%…it isn’t the direct bonus, but the combination of modules it allows you to fit.

Basically you want a bunch of stuff that the rest of us have basically had to pay for…you are sitting there saying, “I want a discount or I’m going home.”

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182

I think the problem lies here. I think there is NO endgame here.
I have chosen EVE because it is NOT about endgame. It is about the journey.
If you do not enjoy the constant development, if you want to reach the dreamed level fast, than you will get bored and burnt out fast too.
Also in a fleet smaller ships have meaningful roles too. It is not like wow where low level characters can’t join high level raids. Here lower and higher skilled players can join the same fleet and fly together in different roles, at least, this is what some corps and alliances offer to new players.

Also there will always be a harder, faster, bigger, better ship or a bigger, better fitted fleet, or a shinier system or more rich player or someone with more 10.0 standing or a funny designed medal you have not even imagined before etc. There is NO end to it. Endgame is where you place your “This is my endgame” sign for yourself. And then you can shoot it through with your next level ship’s gun and overcome it, to never place it again.
Tell your friends that so they can get rid of that endgame concept and start enjoy the game itself on their own level, on EVERY SKILL LEVEL, because every step of it can be fun if you start looking the forest instead of the single tree.

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183

100% true. But some people don’t understand what sandbox mean and try make from EVE another crap game of this days.

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