New Filter Request for Skill Menu (Newbro Friendly)

[Hyperionus_Iapetorii]

For the sake of all the people who have ever asked what skills they should train up, or who have hunted through the various categories looking for that one fitting skill they’re missing…

Please let us filter skills by what applies to our active ship. (EDIT: Please let us filter by what applies to our active ship and fit. Perhaps even by a simulated fit in the fitting window.)

Training plans are great, but they’re geared towards building around a specific fit/doctrine for a large number of people. For all the newbros who get fits ingame, through web apps like eveworkbench or through social media like the forums and discord, this would be an amazing help.

Learning skill distribution is frustrating and time-consuming for new players. It’s counter-intuitive, having to go through EVERY skill and read the fine print to see if maybe it would help you out. It’s taking time away that they could be spending in space. It’s compounding inefficiency on an already complex system and causing unnecessary frustration and confusion.

Please. Help the newbros stick around. Give us a filter that will only show skills which apply to your current ship/fit, regardless of whether you currently have them injected.

[Gerard_Amatin]

A list of skills that apply to your current ship, you say?

[Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras]

Slightly off topic, do you need more duct tape for your rickety looking ship

But yes mastery is the best way to see what skills you need for your ship

[Hyperionus_Iapetorii]

Like I said… the current system is inefficient, confusing and frustrating. I’m not saying there aren’t currently tools; we also have pyfa, which is far preferable to both the mastery system and fitting window imo. I recommend it to people all the time. That doesn’t mean improving the current UI is pointless.

The whole point of revamping the UI was to make things clear and uniform. If jumping back and forth between the current mastery UI and the skill screen feels more intuitive to you than just filtering the skill list based on current ship/fit, more power to you. To me, the mastery screen holds too much info. If I’m fitting a RLML gila for abyss, I don’t need to know about the prereqs for HAMs and ECM drones.

By the number of times I’ve had to tell newbros about that one skill they’re missing to fit something, I’m going to say it’s not universally clear.

[Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras]

@Hyperionus_Iapetorii

I’m fitting a RLML gila for abyss

You didnt specify that. You said

@Hyperionus_Iapetorii

Please let us filter skills by what applies to our active ship.

[Gerard_Amatin]

Oh, so you’re looking for insights for newbies in the currently active ship fit?

I thought you meant the current ship the player is in. To see all of the skills that affect your currently active ship, the Mastery tab tells you all you need to know.

If you wish to see how your current skills and modules affect your ship fit, you can look at the other tabs. For example, if I want to see what skills and modules affects the CPU of my ship, I can see that in the Fitting:

The value is green, so it’s higher than default. In this case my CPU is increased by both CPU management and one of my rigs.

Or did you want to see which of my skills affect my damage, or application of my damage? Attributes tab to the rescue:

EVE is complex, has a lot of information in a lot of places.

I understand that it’s hard for new players to find it all, but the information you’re asking for is already all there in the ship information window.

[Hyperionus_Iapetorii]

Again, not saying this doesn’t already exist to some extent…

I’m saying that having to chase the info across several different tabs/screens isn’t enjoyable. I love the complexity of eve. I love theorycrafting in pyfa, I love hunting for lore in the item descs, I love learning about the finer points of mechanics so I can better fly my ship. Complexity definitely has its place, and if eve made a serious push to get rid of its complexity I would probably quit playing.

That said, there’s also a case to be made that complexity doesn’t belong in some places. I’m making the case that basic skill info is one of those places. You shouldn’t have to go hunting to figure out why a fit doesn’t work.

Additionally, it’s my understanding that those tooltips only list the skills that are currently active. If you don’t have launcher rigging injected, for example, it won’t show you that it’s modifying your CPU. I’m not positive on that, however.

Ideally, you would be able to filter as well by whatever ship/fit is currently simulated. Whatever is active in the fitting window at this time, or else whatever your pod is currently sitting in.

[Hyperionus_Iapetorii]

You’re right, I didn’t state what I was thinking with much specificity. I want to be able to filter the skills list by the currently active ship and fit.

Understanding how skills interact with your ship isn’t a form of player superiority. It’s a form of gatekeeping that tangles up new players and prevents them from engaging better with the game.

I’m not saying don’t make new players understand the skills; I’m saying give them a more clear-cut way to find out what matters to them at this moment.

EDIT – I’ve edited the main post to clarify ship and fit are meant

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Hyperionus_Iapetorii

Additionally, it’s my understanding that those tooltips only list the skills that are currently active. If you don’t have launcher rigging injected, for example, it won’t show you that it’s modifying your CPU. I’m not positive on that, however.

Correct, in the attributes only affected values are shown. Only the skills that currently apply to your ship, not the skills that could also apply to it but currently do not.

If you want to also see the full list of all of the skills that could possibly affect your ship, but may not yet do so, the list is shown in the Mastery tab.

What it seems you are asking for is a list of skills that could affect your ship, but not all of them, because Mastery apparently shows too many skills.

What selection of skills do you wish a newbie to see of all the skills that could affect their ship?

[Hyperionus_Iapetorii]

If I am sitting in a cormorant with no mods, no rigs, no drones, nothing in the cargo bay, the skills in Engineering would be the following:
Capacitor Management
Capacitor Systems Operation
CPU Management
Powergrid Management

Missiles, Gunnery, Rigging and Drones would all be empty.

Spaceship Command would have the following:
Caldari Frigate
Caldari Destroyer
Spaceship Command

Navigation:
Evasive Maneuvering
Navigation
Warp Drive Operation

Armor:
Hull Upgrades
Mechanics

Shields:
Shield Management
Shield Operation
Tactical Shield Upgrades

And so on.

Now if I fit a battery and an afterburner, the following skills would show up as well:
Acceleration Control
Afterburner
Fuel Conservation
Energy Grid Upgrades (a fitting skill that’s often overlooked)
Nanite Interfacing
Nanite Operation
Thermodynamics

If I fit an Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I then I will also see these…
Weapons Upgrades
Advanced Weapons Upgrades
Gunnery
Controlled Bursts
Motion Prediction
Rapid Firing
Sharpshooter
Surgical Strike
Trajectory Analysis
Small Hybrid Turret

If I fit a target painter, then I’ll see:
Frequency Modulation
Long Distance Jamming
Signature Focusing
Target Painting

These last obviously wouldn’t be included in the mastery since there’s seldom a call for target painters on cormorants. It doesn’t show up on the vexor’s mastery either, though, and it’s a fairly common addition there for pve. Nor could you find them on the ship’s fitting tab. You might be able to find them on the target painter’s attribute tab, but only if you already have them trained. If not, then you’d find out about them by reading through the fine print on each skill. And I don’t consider that especially intuitive, especially because “Long Distance Jamming” doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with target painting.

Why are you so adamant that the current tools are sufficient enough as to bear no improvement? Do you really enjoy walking newer players through all the different tabs they have to check to see what skills they might be missing? And then having to caveat that with “but if you don’t already have it trained, it may not show up on any of these anyways”?

(Quick edit to adjust Thermodynamics/Nanites to after a mod is added, for better clarity in this example.)

[Gerard_Amatin]

I see what you mean.

Yes, I think it could be a helpful addition to the skill window if new players could toggle to only see the skills relevant to their current ship and fit.

[Alua_Oresson]

The big question is whether this is worth the time spent to code this in. It actually seems like it would be more complex than you seem to think it is to implement.

[Gerard_Amatin]

Indeed.

Right now the skill window only pulls character data. And this data is mostly static, as it only updates whenever you finished a skill.

Implementing this filter means the skill window would also have to pull data based on the ship you’re flying, pull data about the modules attached, have a whole bunch of new filters based on each type of module in the game, and combine it all to update the final filter in real time whenever you modify your ship.

It’s a pretty complex addition. Doable, I guess, but it will not be simple.

[Alua_Oresson]

I think the big problem is that each time you open that screen it will hit the database. I’ve seen Eve with an overloaded database, it’s not pretty.