Level 5 takes considerably more time than level 4. And higher tier skills such as capital ship skills take considerably more time than frigate skills, which means players can catch up to relevant levels in a fraction of the time, after which they can spend years getting tiny advances such as ‘training a month for a less than 2% damage increase in one specific subtype of one specific weapon system’.
More SP doesn’t always mean an equal increase in power. The earliest SP levels give the biggest increase in power, after that you need to spend increasing amounts of SP to get decreasing amounts of extra power.
We would train that skill at the same pace. I remember you saying you had around 100mill sp recently? I’m around 70mil. And if a player with 10mill sp were to train it ……… same time.
Those are constants and not the mechanism that govern progression. They are like the feats you pick when you level up in other games
The actual mechanism is sp / time. Which has a base rate which is not linked to total sp. When you add to that wealthy players being able to afford implant sets…… understanding remap mechanics then I’d argue that sp / time mechanics favour established players……. Who already have the millions of sp in the bank advantage.
I’m currently running a 40m implant set for training. Two +4s, because I’m only training per/wil at the moment.
For an implant set that shouldn’t undock, I wouldn’t think this is particularly expensive. And for half price you can get +3s.
I do see how new players might feel like they’re behind. But on the other hand, that’s just a matter of perception. Am I behind people with 250m+ SP with my 100m SP? Yes. Does it really matter? No, because I can fly lots of ships I enjoy and in time I’ll be able to fly even more ships.
For new players steadily unlocking new ships they can learn to fly and use is what matters, not that they can immediately fly all sorts of Marauders perfectly, as well as bring all four types of T2 command bursts to a fleet.
Fair enough……. But if we make the assumption that newbies can remap and can afford implants then we still have a situation where they gap cannot be closed. The best they can do is essentially equal the veteran player in rate.
Hell even if they did get a boost to sp/time it’s not like they ever would “catch up”. Or even need to. It’s a pointless objective and irrelevant in game.
It’s a perception thing. It’s newbies seeing a system that doesn’t feel stacked against them for no other reason than they found the game 15 years after someone else.
The sheer magnitude of the time involved to train everything is overwhelming so what’s the harm in letting them have a 50% boost to sp over time that tapers off to zero on reaching 50mill sp for example (at 10mill reduces to 40, at 20 mill reduces to 30 etc). I gave zero thought to actual numbers and thresholds here so a little latitude please :). I’m essentially spitballing as I type.
It doesn’t in my eyes impact established players and maybe/hopefully it makes eve feel a bit more accessible to someone just starting out. Happy to be proved wrong on that though if I’m missing something
I guess it makes training ganking alts easier or whatever. But that’s going to happen regardless.
Put yourself in a newbies shoes. This is eve. The same people telling you sp doesn’t matter are the people ganking you, the people scamming in jita local.
Perception matters. Especially when considering new players. CCP can polish the NPE all they want but if they arnt addressing core mechanics appearing to be skewed against those new players then there is a problem. Regardless of whether the established player base agrees or not.
Agreed! The perception for newbies that they have a chance to catch up is important.
As a newbie I was really glad injectors existed, as those allowed me to ‘catch up’ and spend my ingame time earning ISK in order to catch up even faster.
As a result I rarely had much ISK in my wallet and at about 50M SP I figured any more injectors wouldn’t be worth my ISK anymore (due to diminishing returns) and that I had more than enough SP to do a lot of fun stuff in the game while I would slowly train SP to unlock more over time.
For sure. I even splurged on a couple of large injectors last night at the diminished return because I wanted a skill to improve my efficiency in the event sites. Long run I’m hoping it pays off with sone good drops
This is why I but heads with a lot of vets. Because I think injectors are not just great but essential. They are a mechanic that really help new players progress faster in exchange for time/isk/grinding.
But I’m not sure it’s enough. Coming back to perception to a new player 125mill, or whatever a small injector currently goes for, may as well be 6 months of grind.
The perception of value for new players is another topic and one that they can easily solve themselves by exploring various parts of the game.
Learning to make your first 1 million ISK, then 10 million ISK, then 100 is all part of the start of the game (which is also why I don’t think it’s good to donate large sums of ISK to newbies at the start, it removes that sense of accomplishment and the feeling that you have found a way to stand on your own legs in this hostile universe).
I agree that injectors are essential for the game, if only to give newbies the impression that they can catch up, and that their current form works well.
I guess in summary my main contention is that IF CCP are going to overhaul the skill system or change things up I’d like it done in a way that gives a leg up to new players.
I don’t think simply delivering a quality of life feature to established players is sufficient justification or anywhere near ambitious enough.
Removal of attribute remaps would be my main improvement for the skill system as that is the biggest hurdle for new players who cannot afford to only train one type of skills for months on end.
Attribute remaps offer about 10k SP daily to players who stick to a plan as opposed to using a generalized attribute map.
New players will not be able to stick to a plan consisting of only support or only gun skills, they need to train all sorts of skills in the first few months to unlock new playstyles, so they’re training 10k SP per day slower than veterans who have the luxury of training only one specific set of skills.
Removal of attribute remaps will benefit new players and (other players who do not wish to stick to a plan.)
*Note that I’m talking exclusively about character progression, and not player skill progression.
Okay, thanks to things like:
SP injector penalties
higher level skills taking exponentially longer to train
ship skill ceilings (which seemed stupidly high from the perspective of a newbro, but now appear to be relatively modest to me)
and specialization
it’s possible for newbros to grow in power at a tremendous rate when compared to vets. However, as many will point out, vets have the advantage when it comes to player knowledge and resources. So, if newbros have a mechanical advantage, and vets have a practicable advantage, who ends up being the big winner?
Well, I’m sure many will bring up mechanus’s law (spelling?), and assert it’s the vets. However, I disagree. I assert that it’s neither newbros, nor ancient vets, but “emerging vets” who grow the fastest (i.e. guys that have been playing for a year or two). They still have mechanical advantages, but also have the knowledge and the means to actually to capitalize on them.
So, I think this brings up two questions:
Do you agree in my assessment that it’s actually emerging vets who grow the most in terms of character power?
And, is this a bad dynamic for Eve to have?
Meh… I dunno. But here are some things to consider:
Fast middle game progression (slow early and late game progression) advantages:
Slow early progression makes milestones (like unlocking new ships) feel extremely rewarding and exciting
Slow early progression incentivizes cooperation and social interaction (i.e. get a friend/corpmate to help you run an escalation or do harder live events)
The fastest progression occurs when players already know what they like in terms of activities, roles, ships, and play styles, and know how to prioritize training in order to get the most benefit.
Gives players plenty of progression goals after the initial novelty of the game has worn off, which can help keep them engaged (for example, at around 40mil SP, I figured I should probably pop as many injectors as I could before I hit the next level of injector penalties. And I kept eating them like candy until I hit 80mil SP).
Slow late game progression prevents older vets from pulling ahead of the rest of player base.
Disadvantages:
Slow early progression dramatically limits toys that newbros can play with, which can be disappointing
Slow early progression can increase perceptions for newbros that they will forever be behind the vets
So, I agree 100% with this, but that doesn’t stop a lot guys from feeling like they are forever playing catch up to the vets. So, I was wondering if diminishing returns might help with these perceptions, and maybe even level the playing field a little bit more.
For example, what if, in addition to the exponential growth in training times, we also added diminishing returns? So, instead of each rank of a surgical strike giving a 5% damage bonus, it would instead go I-7% / II-6% / III-5% / IV-4% / V-3%. Thus, you’d ultimately end up with the same bonus to damage, you’d just get more out of early levels than you would out of later levels. Of course, this would have balance ramifications (i.e. alpha capabilities, PvE difficulty, and better isk efficiencies at “lower level”), so it shouldn’t be done lightly, but it would help close the gap between newer players and vets and help newbros to feel less like the deck is stacked against them.
Oh, and I think it’s a change that won’t piss off to many players. No one would lose any power, and a lot of players would get buffs. Of course, I’m sure it would still piss some people off (i.e. the guys who think that alpha ganking is a huge problem).
Well, SP totals are a metric by which you can judge character progression, but each point of SP does not result in an equal increase in power for all players. For example, 20 million SP will make a huge difference to what a newbro can fly, and how well they can fly it, but give a much, much smaller advantage to a vet that is polishing things like weapon specialization or ewar skills.
And then, of course, the simple fact of the matter is that Eve, like all MMO’s, has player churn. So, newbros aren’t exactly competing in a sea of antediluvian vets of incredible power. Sure, there are older players out there that have accumulated a lot of advantage in terms of things like SP and wallet size, but they most certainly don’t represent what the average player looks like. And, if all that wasn’t enough, the biggest factor in determining outcomes remains player skill. And there are no mechanics that limit how fast newbros can progress as players.
Oh, and in spite of my wall of text, know that I’m not actually opposed to something like a newbro bonus to training speed. I just can’t pass up an opportunity to “ackchyually” someone.
Many people don’t realise, but most skills already have diminishing returns.
For example, getting a 10% damage increase by training a skill to level 1 is great. But when you already have level 4 in that skill and are training to level 5, in other words from a 40% to 50% damage increase, your damage is only increased by a factor 1.5/1.4 = 1.07, or in other words, 7%.
So not only does level 4 → level 5 cost you about 4 times longer to train, it also gives you less of a boost than the earlier levels.
(A rare exception is for example the Logistics Cruisers skill which, because it is a reduction of capacitor usage for the relevant ships instead of some increased value, is progressively more effective for higher levels in the skill.)
Fair enough, but what about increasing diminishing returns in the way I described? It would increase the effect of diminishing returns, and make it more readily apparent to people other than math nerds that there are diminishing returns.
P.S. there is also an exception for skills that increase resistance.
Perhaps CCP could permit applying SP to skills via the Eve Portal mobile app and/or the ESI API? The downside is no free login reward if you don’t actually log in to apply the SP.
