Correlation and causation are two different things.
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This.
I got mastery 4 in that ship not because I was training the mastery skills, I got mastery 4 in that ship because I have been training all the different weapons and support skills to easily fly any doctrine my alliance may call for. That I now happen to have both shield and armor skills, missile and artillery skills, decent targeting skills and sensor compensation because of flying logi, good drone skills because I enjoy drone boats and that all happens to give me mastery 4, does not mean training mastery 4 is an efficient way to train into the ship Iâm currently flying.
Itâs a terrible estimate.
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To expand on Mastery being a terrible estimate:
- Itâs assuming all skills are equally important. (Spoiler: theyâre not!)
To advance to the next mastery tier, you need to have all the listed skills at level 2. And then at level 3 for mastery 3. Often itâs a better idea to get the important skills to level 4 or even 5 before you bother to train the less-relevant or completely irrelevant skills.
- Itâs listing many irrelevant skills.
Mastery assumes some ships are flown in a certain way, for example with armor tank, while people commonly use them shield-tanked (Ishtar, for example), or other examples like that. It can suggest people to train that one skill to get an extra target, even though the hull already has reached the maximum targets you can get!
- Itâs missing many important skills.
That Loki I just mentioned, has zero mention of the most important skills (Minmatar Strategic Cruiser, subsystems, command bursts) that I use when flying that ship in the list of Mastery skills.
- Mastery gives a single estimate in days, which can be disheartening for new players when they see they need to be training for years, even though the real queue with only the relevant skills to a decent level can take a fraction of that time.
Please, stop assigning any value to mastery levels.
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So, got my new guy past the tutorial - which appears to be the same as it was last time I ran it over a year ago. Still better than previous ones, but also still kinda clunky, awkward, and apparently still pushing mining careers on newbies. And the pop-up âbuy nowâ offers arenât as good as the last time I ran one.
Hereâs the training time for Caracal Mastery I:
Other than âTacklingâ skills, seems like a pretty trimmed-down fit, suitable for launching in a Caracal. Not much âwasted skills, terrible estimate, canât look at this no way man!â in there, but hey take a look at one and pick it apart if you like!
Hereâs Caracal Mastery II:
Again, pretty reasonable set of skills, decent estimate of time. It lacks any drone skills at all so is quite a bit shorter than it should be for a âwell-roundedâ build, but itâs in the ballpark.
Hereâs Caracal Mastery III:
Once again, decent list of skills, good group of support skills. Relevant skills trained to rank 3 or 4. Not a lot of useless fat in there. Still has zero drone skills though so remains too short for accuracy - at least to the actual situation described rather than the strawmen you folks keep making up to argue against.
My gosh what terrible estimates these are! Unbelievable that they would actually add all the support skills that I said were required but you guys keep ignoring, huh? I totally get why you want to brush them aside though, since they really arenât helping your points any.
(Feel free to take the Caracal Mastery lists and indicate all the skills you think are âterrible fitsâ and âcompletely irrelevantâ.)
I havenât had time to check the Gila yet but Iâm pretty sure the estimates werenât too far off there either.
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But you are arbitrarily using a level of Mastery 3 on everythingâŚwhich is really not how things actually happen in Eve. No noob sits in dock waiting for Mastery 3 on their entire ship. Most noobs donât even realise how pathetically outgunned their 21 DPS noob Condor is. I recall being chuffed just to get it to 40 DPS. That same Condor is now 150 DPS ( despite missile skills being my least trained ). You can get one to 200 DPS or so, but no noob is gonna sit in dock waiting for that before they undock.
Nobody joins Eve and on day 1 of noobness immediately buys all the parts for a T2 Gila and then sits there for 72 days ( yes that is the Mastery 3 training time ) twiddling their thumbs. With all my ships it has been a case of evolution over time. I start all my noobs on a T1 GnosisâŚ350 DPS or so. I donât let them sit in dock for 3 months because you âcanâ eventually get a Gnosis to 850 DPS with T2 skills. Thatâs just not how Eve works.
In reality a person will go out flying with Level V in some skills and Level II in others. Heck, if I had to wait for âproperâ mastery of every ship I fly Iâd still be docked in noob station at Bourynes and never have undocked.
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Quite a few skills for Mastery 3 are outside Alpha reach to begin with, itâs already âmax alpha and beyondâ and you donât NEED it. Some of them are plain stupid like Energy Upgrades, then you have tons of skills that are ânice to have after you got the important stuff doneâ, like the actual skills that make the ship work just fine which doesnât take as long.
YES, to get it to (near) max performance itâs going to take time, but ânear max performanceâ is a silly direct goal to have. Itâs literally the fcking same as âget magic all magic 14 to lvl 5 otherwise youâre badâ.
Stop being dumb.
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No it isnât. For my Omega noob it says just 44 days for both the Arbalest version and the Heavy Missile Launcher II doctrine version AO use. Basically 44 days for a T2 Caracal. Of course you âcanâ add a whole bunch of additional âsupportâ stuff to pad the skills queueâŚbut the fact is you can undock and pew pew in that Caracal in just 44 days.
Weâre not the ones inventing spurious 111 day skill plans. âSupport skillsâ is a red herringâŚbecause you can invent any level of ârequiredâ support that you like, just to inflate the skill queue. First time I flew a Nightmare it only had T1 weapons rather than the doctrine T2âŚbut that didnât stop me going out in it or the FC accepting it in the fleet.
When CCP markets the game as âEve Foreverâ Iâm sure they meant that today, just like the old forums of 10 years ago, we all would still be arguing about masteries.
Some things are timeless.
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Sorry kids, but I outlined the situation quite clearly in the original post, and youâve all been tripping over yourselves trying to prove it âwrongâ ever since.
From pretending Mastery is padded with nonsense useless skills (not the case here), or moving the goalposts (using basic âget flying fastâ builds when full build with support skills was specified), to Altara somehow deciding that using Omega accounts to cut the time in half made for a valid comparison.
Letâs face it - to todayâs proficient gamer, who follows gaming websites and regularly checks âbest in classâ builds and how to go about getting them, EVEâs artificially slow âjust pay us money, fill your training queue and wait for months for the timers to count downâ can be a turnoff.
Thatâs the only point here⌠an antiquated system that was CCPâs idea on how to keep players subbed for years (because it sure wasnât gonna be the content doing it) isnât holding up so well in todayâs gaming world.
Iâm not even talking about adding systems to the game⌠âearn more SP for doing thingsâ has been in the game for years now. CCP is just a decade late with a half-assed implementation of it, as usual.
Earning SP by engaging more in the game and doing more active play in the game would be good for EVE. Despite the nonsense arguments of all the âchange is bad!â naysayers.
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I think youâre missing the purpose of the skill queue in EVE.
While EVE does it different than many MMOs on the market, every single MMO out there has a form of progression for players, a way to stop players from instantly accessing the end-game (and becoming bored), a way to gradually introduce the game mechanics piece-wise by slowing down player progression.
Progression, unlocking new things, new things to look out for, it keeps players engaged. The opposite happens when you have a game where you have unlocked everything. Playing with cheats in a single player RPG to unlock everything is fun for a moment, but then kind of spoils the game as thereâs nothing else to strive for.
While most other games stop players from getting âthe best buildâ at the start by making them grind repetitive tasks to âgain experienceâ and âget to max levelâ to unlock their new skills, EVE has a unique system that also gives players a form of progression, but does not require players to spend time grinding. In EVE, progression happens automatically over time.
You say that this system in EVE is bad and âantiquatedâ because it âartificially slows down progressionâ for new players, but what would you propose as alternative?
Let players do repetitive tasks to âlevel their skillsâ, like most other MMOs on the market? 
Or do you want to get rid of progression at all for EVE?
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Youâre more out of your mind than we thought, it also disqualifies any sort of reasoned debate.
Progress in all MMOâs is a thing, is why people play. Most MMOâs get progress through active grinding, they also change the goal posts ever so often so that all progress thus far is now meaningless and the first quest you do in the new expansion gets you better gear that you could have dreamt off before. Itâs quite literally carrot on a stick and most of those MMOâs havenât lasted 20 years. EVE has its own goal posts and goals but at least they donât move ever so often and donât make your previous progress meaningless.
Itâs completely fine to not like EVEâs system (I would assume that most people donât) but that doesnât mean it needs changing. Thatâs like telling Dali that if he just would paint more mainstream stuff, and perhaps also mass produce it, he would appeal to so many more potential customers. No!
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Sorry, already covered your points and answered your question in earlier posts. Not my fault if you canât keep up with the convo youâre in.
Donât worry, a lot of people fall back on ad hominems once theyâve been shot down. Guess you also missed all the earlier posts that talked about adding progression to EVEâs systems, not taking it away. Or that these systems are already in EVE, just poorly implemented.
But hey, when it comes to the âpost ad hominems without understanding the argumentâ, at least youâve got lots of company.
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Well⌠for the most part the game doesnât move the goal posts.
The player sure as hell will. 
âGadget gets bored sometimes
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Itâs almost as if EVE is a player driven game with player created content, instead of a carrot on a stick content&goals grind MMO 
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No I read that: XP for grinding. I already stated it to be ânot EVEâ.
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Grinding repetitive tasks to level up, or in other words,
Sounds like any generic non-EVE MMO out there, right?
Iâm so glad EVE is a true sandbox that does not tell us how to play and what to do to progress.
I can explore, I can shoot ships in my bomber, I can spin my ship for hours and still I will progress towards unlocking new skills. I really donât understand why people want to replace that system, which requires 0 grinding, with a system that makes people waste time completing game-defined tasks in order to progress.
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Sigh. Youâve forgotten your own posts, in which you were the one who claimed that you pointed out to the guy that Omega halved the time.
Thatâs about as arbitrary a definition as it getsâŚand I love how youâve just plucked that out of the air when it was nowhere mentioned in your original account of what the alleged noob wanted.
Whatâs more, most people join Eve knowing full well they are not going to fly a Paladin on day 1. Or a T2 Gila. Itâs not like your noob had some potential wait that nobody else who is up and running in the game has not had to endure. So it is rather ironic to see longer term people arguing that this puts people off the gameâŚas it clearly didnât in their case.
It will take my new Omega noob the best part of a year to get to where Altara is now. But that doesnât mean they are going to wait a whole year to undock.
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Indeed I do.
@Minin_alnigh_Lon I have no excuse, I apologize.
I donât like change either so I can understand. I just thought they wouldnât want to play in a half-empty mmo but Iâm starting to understand that a half-empty mmo is a great advantage for long-time players as they have so much SP they donât know where to spend it anymore while all saying that SP isnât an advantage.
Anyway, Iâm cool with a half-empty mmo too. New Eden isnât so big where 5000 players would be too little a number to still have fun.
PS: Iâm starting to change my mind about that player retention stuff. First of all I donât see why I should care that CCP loses players and canât attract more of them and second Iâm starting to see the appeal of a mmo with 5 to 10k players only.
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People donât generally realize it, but thereâs a lot of motivational psychology study in an industry where encouraging a player to drop a few more quarters or another monthâs sub can add up to millions of dollars per year.
I donât get into this much because if youâre not already aware of it, people rarely believe it. But hereâs the gist of it: people typically donât know âwhyâ they enjoy something, they just know this feels rewarding, that feels meh. This feels progressive, that feels like a drag.
Some people will point out âthose âgrind to progressâ games donât all last 20 years like EVE hasâ, but in fact thereâs a lot more âgrind to progressâ games that have lasted longer than EVE, than there are EVE-style games at all. âGrindâ is their loaded term, because itâs actually âtake positive action to improve your relative standingâ in motivational terms - a beneficial attribute.
Turns out people are very good at calculating their âposition of relative advantageâ with regards to other people, and they maneuver to improve their relative standing at a practically subconscious level.
Design-wise, EVEâs progression scheme is actually a Ponzi-style setup, where everyone whoâs been in less time than you is lower on the ladder, and everyone whoâs been in longer is higher (in general terms).
This attracts a certain specific type of player who figures if they just keep paying and hanging in long enough, theyâll be âahead of the packâ in some fashion. And it leads to exactly what you see on the EVE forums⌠an insane amount of âgo away, EVE isnât for youâ responses in a steadily declining game, as well as outright rejection of any method or change that would allow anyone else to âpull aheadâ of their relative standing.
It doesnât even matter if the âgain SPâ suggestion applies equally to everybody - if someone else might take more advantage of it than you, then itâs bad and must be rejected.
New players who can put 2 and 2 together and get the correct answer, come fairly quickly to the conclusion that theyâre far behind, theyâll always be far behind, and they pass. Better games with better outlooks elsewhere.
Sure, any new player can succeed if they put in about 3 times as much effort for half the reward as in other games, but only an extremely small niche of them stick around for that.
All these vets pretending having 120 million more SP than new players âreally doesnât make a differenceâ and saying âHey why should anyone new have it better than I did?â are basically just aging dinosaurs hoping to leech a little more advantage from their Ponzi scheme before it collapses.
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Yeah, the niche that plays eve. Thatâs the group we want here. Thatâs the group that builds the amazing story arcs and flys across the world to meetups in Iceland.
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