Yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that.
The reason I suggested that is to promote 2 things:
- Increase Omega subscriptions.
- Allow new players faster access to game content.
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No worries.
Yes it could work for those reasons but there are other considerations and outcomes too that might or might not come with such a change. Just worth considering and maybe discussing how other factors might influence the outcome. Nobody can know for sure of course but worth discussing nevertheless.
Not sure how true that claim is about players who get ganked early in their career tend to stay for longer. I never trust stats posted by CCP… I mean CCP 
so not sure about it but interesting to consider either way that some harsh gameplay might discourage some (who might quit or be discouraged sooner or later anyway) while might encourage others (who are better fit to the EVE gameplay anyway).
This is my concern whether giving even more than already is a good idea or not. To be honest I started playing as Alpha and aside of PLEXing my main to train the full expanded alpha skillset with in-game ISK mostly stolen from wrecks in Jita I never needed any Omega time for my playstyle so am an Alpha still on all my accounts. Back then originally you only had the ~5 mil SP cap and that was it for an Alpha experience and it was already very generous in my opinion and either could go for a sub or use in-game ISK to get beyond the limits or if it’s suitable can stay as Alpha without time limit like in the past with the trial version.
Personally am not convinced the expanded alpha features were a good thing, though not convinced they were not either. More capable Alphas mean more content not just for them but Omegas to interact with as well while also it might also discourage to go Omega if your playstyle doesn’t require those features. So there are at least those two factors to consider and probably many more.
But in short I think even with skills and training time in the game one can handle himself pretty well and EVE is not really meant for the impatient either so maybe not much is lost as is nor would be gained even if more skills were free at the start. That is my personal view as a fully Alpha player.
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Yeah, brand new Alpha characters come with quite a few skills already injected with a few levels trained up. That’s better than how it was at the start of Alpha and definitely better compared to when I started back in 2008.
However what I was originally referring to was the Core Fitting skills with Frigate and Destroyer Spaceship Command skills. Not sure how many skill points that equals but it’s probably close to 5 million. That would let brand new players jump into game content on the very first day without waiting on those important skills to train up.
Having another 15 mill SP’s available to inject that apply only to Alpha skills is just CCP going after quick money. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just that it deters Alpha players from getting subbed as an Omega. If brand new Alpha characters came with Frigate / Destroyer and Core Fitting skills trained up, maybe those extra 15 mil SP’s should only be applied to basic Career path skills.
In my opinion, Alpha’s should be subbed as Omega for further progress on skill training to access T2 skills, ships and modules.
What i like about Eve is unlike other games you also dont have to make 20 characters to learn all the different crafting professions nor do you have to spend hours upon hours to level up to gain access to those crafting skills either.
To be fair, none of those are typically associated with “new player” activities.
while trading may not be “new player” in your eyes, a lot of newbros do go straight into either trading or mining upon entering game.
incorrect… The ONLY skills that correlate with reducing fees, is Broker Relations/Advanced Broker Relations…
Now, there are other things that have to be done in game to reduce those fees, like getting as high standings as possible with that particular corp/faction of the trade hub.
skills progress the way they do, so you can learn as you keep raising the skills higher and higher, and opens up more mods/rigs etc that you can put on ships or opens up what you can or cannot trade/how far you can or cannot trade etc. it starts you off small so you can build your empire… who the ■■■■ is going to give a new person the keys to a multibillion dollar industry if they’ve never done it before… you have to start small and build your way up.
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Agreed, and some people like Oz_Eve have plenty of content showing how to do it well even as an Alpha. Having hundreds of orders and and maximizing profit through skills and standings isn’t new player, since you have to understand the market in the first place to take advantage of that.
Mining solo does suck, can’t argue that. But a new player in a fleet can still be valuable.
I think sometimes new players get wound up on how valuable they think they are based on limited skills, etc., vs. how valuable they actually are when they act as force multipliers in fleets.
Wow, none of you guys get it.
You don’t instantly become billionaires without the skillpoint system, you don’t instantly inherit the keys to a multibillion-dollar industry without the skillpoint system. New players still have to make isk when they log in for the first time. they still have to learn how the game works. It’s just that without the skillpoint system, they can do it at their own pace.
You will still have to start small and work your way up as a new player without the skillpoint system, so I really don’t get why you keep thinking the skillpoint system is necessary, unless you’re the kind of people that are trying to gatekeep eve, and you want new players to “know their place” and “get in line”.
Or… since you’ve invested so much time and money into the skillpoint system, you’re affected by the sunk cost fallacy, and believe that since you yourself invested so much time and money into it that everyone else should have to invest so much time and money into it.
Every refrain you guys have come up with is either “it’s a gatekeeping mechanism forcing new players to take their time to learn the game,” or “It’s better than other XP systems”, or you try “Where are you getting that data?” to shut me up.
How many times do I have to reiterate: Eve is an economy simulator, it doesn’t need an XP system? In fact, as I’ve said before, the skillpoint system system is warding off new players, and dragging the game down. I know this because I experiance it myself twice.
None of you have tried to pick apart that statement, and instead have repeated those earlier refrains, so it seems that none of you are able to come up with a reasonable reason why the skillpoint sytem is a good thing.
One could argue that since they invested so much time and money into these ‘skills’ that they think they should actually be ‘skilled’, but they arn’t because the skillpoint system is actually incremental game.
What if a new player is an economist, and joined the game because they wanted to play in the economy simulator, only to find they have to wait for all these skills to tick up?
Poor arguement, my friend.
skillpoints are a core part of EVE, it would take them months if they ever wanted to get rid of it, but looking at changes to the skill UI would suggest that is not the case.
skillpoints don’t hold down newbros from playing the game, its holding back those who don’t have the attention span to learn to play the game.
So it become a question of whether it’s worth the time invested to remove it.
I would suggest that Alpha players be asked to complete a poll on completion of the new player experiance on what they consider the greatest obstacle to their continued play time is, and whether that obstacle would prevent them from continuing to play.
That way CCP would have real data on why new players keep quitting. I’m fairly certain that it’s the skillpoint system, but it could be something else.
If it turns out that it is the skillpoint system, CCP would then have a good reason to either downsize or remove the skill point system.
The problem is a lack of data, All I have is my own experiances to go on, but CCP needs real data to go on.
I don’t agree. Anyone going in is probably going to know that Eve is a complex game, and so will likely have longer attention span than what you’re saying. But new players are quitting soon after they start the game, I don’t think people having a short attention span is a good enough reason for why so many new players quit.
If you could fly whatever you want, we would have more players quitting the game due to rushing into a battleship or even a capital and then dying to NPC’s or a single other player as they don’t know the mechanics. It happens even now with the skill-system slowing down the progress (on purpose). Letting you fly whatever you want, whenever you want would only cause more people to ragequit the game than they would stay on.
The single biggest reason for the skill-system being what it is, is slowing down your advance on purpose, so you are FORCED to learn the mechanics of the game and not just try to skip to the end of the line, dump all your isk into one basket and then ragequit when the inevitable happens and you lose it in a stupid way.
Almost everything in the game can be tested out with only a few hours of worth of skill-training. Once you find out what you like, you can train up your skills while learning the basics of the gameplay for your chosen playstyle. Sure, you won’t get battleships, freighters or capitals within your first week, but you are not supposed to. Those are long-term goals that you need to develop both your characters skills as well as your player-skills. If you drop the character skills, you also lose the player skills and would end up as food for well, everyone. The experience would be worse than it is now.
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I think the kind of people what would rush to the end to get battleships, are the kind of people that know what they want and are working to get it.
The avarge new player is an alpha clone, and if the skillpoint system didn’t exist, they probably wouldn’t be able to fly battleship anyway as alpha clones would still be restricted in in what they can fly and fit. They would would have to cough up 15 bux to become an omega clone, and even then, they wouldn’t have the isk to fly a Battleship.
If they wanted to get a battleship right away, they’d have to cough up another 15 bux to invest in plex to buy it. I don’t believe that the vast majority of new players are willing to pay 30 just to fly a battleship.
For the rare few that are, as you said, they’ll probably try to fly their battleships in null or low sec, and lose them right away. But you must remember, these kinds of players have already invested 30 bux into the game at that point. They’re already invested, and they have at least some idea of what kind of power they could wield.
They might rage quit, like you said, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing, as since they’ve already invested irl money into the game, it’s more than likely they’ll come back, and do proper research into how the game works.
However, I would like to point out that we’re dealing with a minority of players. Most new players will probably stick with being alpha clones until they have reason to invest into become a omega clone. Given that’s 15 bux a month, I think the vast majority of them will built up their pool of isk through traditional means instead of plex.
That is objectively untrue. Isk is still a limiting factor, and people will learn how to play the game while building up isk. If people end up as food, well they end up as food, but that’s a learning experiance. You only have to be ganked once to learn that you can be ganked, even in high sec.
Except we already have examples of this happening thanks to skill injectors and PLEX and then ragequitting out. Making ISK in Eve is relatively easy even for new players. Faster than learning how to properly fly a large ship for example. Skills are good for the game overall. If skills were really an issue, CCP would have deleted them long ago. I think this is a “me” issue and not a “we” issue. If you really enjoy playing Eve, then you are there for the long-game and not for getting whatever you want, whenever you want. Eve is a harsh, long game that takes patience to learn and master. There are other games that cater to the “I need everything now” -crowd.
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Maybe it is, but in the same vein, I would say then that those players may need to make a more educated decision on knowing what audience they are a part of. Regardless, places like YouTube are littered with videos of new accounts successfully participating in the economy. You’re just starting smaller than the bigger players, and if you follow the advice to not try and compete in Jita, you can make things work.
This is a subscription based game, and so the basic business model is to keep player’s subscribed for as long as possible and one of the major mechanisms of EVE does that with is the skill system. It just so happens that the progression of skills also roughly aligns with when a player who is engaged in the game also arrives at a point where they can affordably fly what they are now skilled to be in.
I don’t think the skill system is any more of a factor in people quitting than it is in any other progression based game and that’s just my opinion.
I personally feel the bigger issue is when players find a way to afford to fly something before they know how to fly it well, lose it, can’t afford to replace it, and then rage quit.
I think that player would have a significant learning time in finding trade hubs……. Understanding what sells where and for what.
And creating spreadsheets
All of which will take time to learn through trail and error as skills clock up.
It’s not like you rock up on day one with 10bill isk to speculate on the market and understand what the value of components and modules are and to buy an item in y to sell in x for a profit.
Hell I’d wager someone would still be learning the markets of eve long after the skills have trained
Except we already know that model doesn’t work, the vast majority of new players quit before they even subscribe.
My argument is that the vast majority of new players think of the skillpoint system is a brick wall that’s hard to get past. It’s the rare person that sticks with it, and we already know that the concurrent player count is going down.
Right, and it’s my opinion that it is a factor, a huge factor. I guess there we will have to just agree to disagree, but I would like CCP to have players complete a poll after they complete the new player experiance, a poll which will question whether they intend to stick with the game, and if not, what their reasons are for leaving.
I don’t think that’s an issue at all. The kind of players what will rage quit after losing their ships are not the kind of players that would stick with Eve in the first place, regardless of if the skillpoint system was there or not.
People are gonna rage quit over losing frigates, and that’s just the kind of people they are, it’s impossible to acheive a 100% player retention rate. Instead the goal should acheive a retention rate of between 35% to 75%.
Rage quitters are gonna rage quit regardless.
Right, but the still need to do that even if the skillpoint system wasn’t there, and broker fees would be determined on fraction rep, not skills.
What data do you have? Do you have proof that it is the skills that is the problem?
Exactly my point. The fact that there is a 30 or 60 day train is irrelevant. So the train is a non issue.
This is going to put all the anti gankers on edge. Surely skill requirements can’t be worse for player retention than ganking lol.
That can’t be right. Can it?
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