Skill Training - Just a set of artificial delay timers?

Communications Center Skill Discussion
43

honestly i think this says more about how bigger isn’t always better, you have a 200+ million SP 10 year old player, who is only NOW deciding that he wants to train into a titan… and thats probably because he’s starting to run out of other things to train.

I’ve been playing for nearly as long on and off, my old main was around the 70-80mil sp mark and was FAR from ever flying any sort of cap, my new character is almost at 50mil and i’m just now starting to train capital skills after almost a decade, because frankly, you don’t NEED to fly a cap, and there is more than enough fun to be had with subcaps.

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44

This is the same dude that thinks we should have generic slots (no high, medium, low), and evolution something something.

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45

Not true… Waiting for the plants to grow is a grind. It is no different than waiting for an eve skill. You plant the seed and wait. You can do other things while you wait and many skills can be accomplished with just level 1-3, which is quick. Still, it gives you time to research and prepare for when the skill finishes.

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46

You forgot that he also needs to learn the skills related to Weeds in order to keep his Garden effective.

While the Garden (ship) takes little to learn, you then need to learn about the Weeds (modules) and over time you get better in taking care of those the more you learn! Then there is the variety of flowers and plants (ship related bonuses) to learn about as well!

image

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47

I think that just may be the most factually incorrect post seen to date on any of the eve forums.

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48

Ok I’ll experiment. As I said I’ve already played with the arrow keys (not in combat) so I’ll have ago at your recommendations.

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49

Why mind blowing? Maybe he didn’t want to fly a titan. Can you dock them yet?
Doesn’t take ten years to make a dedicated titan pilot does it?

Also if new players come into the game wanting the biggest ships, which is a fair goal, wont they need to earn the isk to fund them and replace them (if they are going to use it), also they will need a second account if they don’t want to rely on others etc or Only fly a titan, so why is it a problem that they can fly lots of smaller ships with increasing ability as they do their support skills for said titan…

cause you need like billions??

50

This is a moot point, Alphas can’t fly Titans or train the skills for one.

What would your “friends” do with a Titan anyway? Go Titan-Ratting?

51

yea i guess so … you skilled level 1 you can use a low level T1 ship … you keep leveling up and then you can use the T2 version … in the time you use the cheap T1 in (lets say) pvp it doesnt hurt that much if you get killed … and its like school … it needs time … if you dont have time to wait you can buy injectors or just dont play eve …

JuuR

52

trust me someone that’s trained and played for 12 years at 210m sp, and now I have less than 1 month olds with more sp because they have a creditcard. all of my skills I train take for the most part 1-3 months, only a few take a couple of weeks. its disappointing.

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53

You do realise that if they use real money to get those SP, even if there was no diminishing return after the first few millions they would still pay far more than the 12 years of subscription have cost you to get even remotely near 200mil?

But the point is there is a diminishing return so they have to pay way way more than the 12 years of subscription and you know what? They don’t get the 12 years of omega time, just the SP.

I always said that SP extraction is stupid, but because how it may look to new players, exactly like the OP described training now appears to them like an artificial paywall which is just there to force them into purchasing SP. I predicted this in the very first SP extractor announcement thread.

And now like always, people will try to explain to me how this is not the case because… “bla bla bla it is a subscription game… blah bla…” But that is not the point, the point is how newer players perceive this and no amount of historic explanation is of any interest to them if they can’t even get invested into the game before the quit out of disgust because of what seams to them blatant P2W.

54

I think an awful lot of you are missing the point.

The timed skill process, unlike “grinding” in other games, is completely divorced from the actual thing you’re learning to do.

At least when I’m grinding, I’m learning to do that very thing (albeit at a lower level). Doing more of it increases that level.

I’m not learning to use doomsday devices by spinning my ship in a station waiting for a timer to count down now, am I?

55

TBH a lot of “grinding” in other games is also not really related to what you will be doing.

But the beauty of Eve’s timers is that you don’t have to do anything. Sure (without subscribing, and paying extra) you can only train one toon in an account, but you aren’t limited in how many accounts you have (as long as you don’t play them at the same time). So as an Alpha you could easily create four (one for each race, or more) accounts that if you just log into each one each day to keep up the training queue will be playable in different ways in no time. Also, jumping around multiple accounts let’s you hone your basic skills while trying more of what Eve fully offers.

-Anjyl

56

But that is exactly how it does work. From EvEUni:
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Skills_and_learning#Training_Time_Multipliers
The first four levels of a skill only take 17.7% of total training time. The last level takes 82.3% of the total time.
Just in case, I’ll show you.
45,255 / 256,000 = .17678 x 100 = 17.7%
( 256,000 - 45,255 ) / 256,000 x = .82322 x 100 = 82.3%
Please identify the ship classes that have as prerequisite lv 5 of the previous ship class.

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57

This post says it all. I agree (particularly with core fitting skills) the early grind sucks big time and needs a change but the way skill points exist works for eve. Skillpoints can be bought, big ships have to be bought (and they will be lost), and pilots too can be bought.
If you cannot afford to buy a pilot or the skillpoints the chances are you cannot afford the ship either. Even if you can afford the ship you probably cannot afford the loss.
Skillpoints are a barrier to entry you must overcome with either isk or time. If you choose time then chances are you already have a way to generate isk.
There are newbro friendly corps that will empower you with content btw which is my final point.
For Eve the content is pretty accessible regardless of skillpoints. For a long life in Eve you need content not skillpoints 07

58

You can literally view everything systematically this way.
It boils down to atomic particles of light generating an electrical signal to our brain, to which is just more tiny atoms moving a certain way.
The key here is how we enjoy it when these particles dance for us.

All video games are stupid when you really think about it.

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59

As the others have said:

This is an MMO.
MMO’s have 2 grinds: cash, and XP/levels.
EVE has cut away the grind for XP/levels, it’s a straight time delay.

Yes, this means that if you can play 10+ hours a day, grinding your ass off, you’ll advance faster in WoW, SWTOR, or similar MMO’s, compared to EVE. However, if you’re a casual who only plays on weekends, and/or absolutely hate grinding dailies, you’ll “XP / level up” faster in EVE.

Other MMO’s have classes and class limitations, EVE lets you train all skills / no limitations.

It takes 3 months to for a semi-casual to train a class to max level with some purple gear in WoW / SWTOR. If you want to make an account that has: 1 tank, 1 AoE DPS, 1 single target DPS, 1 healer, 1 Crowd-Control / Support, and 2-3 top level crafters, it takes 21 months (2.5 years), GRINDING XP all the way.

In EVE, each ship is a role. Some ships take 2 weeks to train, others take 5-6 months. There are some “support” skills (engineering, navigation, armor, shields, targeting, rigs, etc.) that are useful for all roles and can take 1 year to train, but in general once you have those, individual ships (or classes of ships) are a few months. A character can focus on a single role (cov-ops, rogue-like, for example) and excel within 3 months, and otherwise at about 2-3 years your character has unlocked several of the roles above, with “with some purples” level of performance.

Bottom line, EVE is equivalent to other MMOs in terms of time required. It just doesn’t require you to grind skill points.

The problem is that other MMO’s have hard level caps that you can’t bypass. Everyone aims to get to max level, and then that’s it, no more can be done, no use complaining. EVE is a bit more subtle, and a lot of people don’t realize it: you CAN max out every skill, but we’ll laugh our asses off if you do it, cause that’s stupid. You’re supposed to stop yourself at “good enough”.

A lot of newbies aim for unlocking all ships, and they get frustrated by the time delay. The game lets you do it, but you’ll spend several years sat in station waiting for all your skills to be perfect. And then undock, get a bounty for no reason, shoot the guy who bountied you, and get killed by Concord for being a “criminal.” “Ruin” your character. Meanwhile, the other guy gets his Alpha character into a destroyer within 3 hours, straps some weapons to it, ganks a bunch of miners and steals their ore, scams a little bit in Jita, and makes 100 million ISK on day 1. Trains for a decent versatile cruiser (every race has one), joins some 0.0 group, and has the time of his life with nightly fun ops and hundreds of millions ISK thrown at him. Ship Reimbursement Program replaces his ship for free every time he loses it.

First he scouts, then he becomes really good at baiting others, appearing to be a clueless newbie in a cruiser, gets good at recognizing ships and their threat at a glance, tries his hand at fleet command and discovers he’s decent at it, and makes a name for himself. Enjoys the game for a couple years. Alliance buys a titan for him and gifts it, because he’s built up the trust and track record, and they all trust him and love his fleets. That’s how it’s done.

Capital ships are not solo ships. Their purpose is to be used in large scale wars. You need a whole fleet for escort, and your ship that’s worth billions can be tackled and killed by a small-ish fleet of cruisers / battlecruisers / battleships, worth 1000 times less ISK. You need multiple accounts with cyno-beacons to even move the ship around safely. They can’t enter high-sec, some can’t even enter low-sec. Literally they’re ships that are stuck in null space, and very vulnerable unless your corp or alliance has the support fleets to protect you, and the stations to let you dock. They need to trust you to do that, and building that trust takes more effort than grinding the ISK to buy one of these things. YOU need to trust them otherwise you’ll never undock your ship for fear of awox.

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60

You are simultaneously correct, and yet missing the point. Sometimes there are more mechanics in a game which by themselves are bad, but which in the greater context are good. A good example of such a mechanic would be training caps(5 per level) in an Elder Scrolls game. As is it seems rather arbitrary, but it serves a purpose of making it so that your playstyle decisions are not completely divorced from your character progression.

Eve’s skill timers are similar, but serve an entirely different reason. In eve, specialization is one of many ways that individuality is defined. To be good at everything would take like 30 years or 10s of thousands of real world dollars. Rather than the race to the top of other MMOs eve is about choosing one of MANY divergent paths and wandering in that direction carve your own niche. It’s not about delay timers. It’s about making you choose one path from many.

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61

The fallacy of individuality, where everyone think’s he’s unique despite them all being almost exactly the same. Thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, following the same goals.

Specialization is for ants.

edit:
BOBDAMMIT, NECRO AGAIN, WHEN WILL I LEARN TO CHECK! :angry:

62

Didnt read all the replies to you OP.

But here is he magic of the Skill Training Que.

EvE Online MMO: Skill Points are acquired for a skill and can be que’d to train, this EXP will accumulate even while not logged in.

Almost every other MMO: EXP is acquired by Killing and doing things, you can not acquire EXP unless logged in and actually playing.