Some Interesting Thoughts and Ideas on Passive Skilling

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

hi all, so a while ago CCP mentioned about getting rid of passive skill progress within the game.

first of all i’d like to say that this is a VERY bad idea as it is one of the games key selling points. I actually think having passive skill progression is essential especially given it’ll take something like 5 - 15 years to master all the skills in the game.
(which is why I’ve previously proposed an idea before about an alpha plus program where people pay for omega status only within a specific skill branch relevent to their desired game play)

when looking at my skill que and saw it’s about 5 years long and i’m still going to have to train other skills, i looked at it and though “holy crap, i might not even be alive in 5 years time” it did make me wonder about the idea of suggesting learning drugs and other such things to help people skill faster but i got thinking about the other aspects of the game, like bounty hunting where you can’t hunt targets who are offline for example and batted around some ideas which MIGHT be worth some kind of consideration

skills at the moment:
weather you’re logged in or logged out and depending on clone status depends on not only if your character is skilling up but also how fast.

well this could be a big factor into resolving a major issue with bounty hunting.
the issue being that when a character logs out they cease to exisit in the universe.
this is the part where it goes off on a tangent.

what i came up with:

so this is broken down into several parts.

  1. Learning Drugs: you take learning drugs, they effect your clone like the nanohuristic clone mappers (when you die the drugs effect the new clone you jump into, etc) you can then boost the speed of your skill progression and the drug duration would be based off of your biology skill. just as example perhaps when logged in you learn 2x faster. but when logged out perhaps only 1.2x faster.

these drugs could have some kind of fatuige or natural system resistence. like if your doseage is longer than 3 hours then you’re learning rate drops. but i’ll leave the balance of that to greater minds than my own.

  1. skill structures
    take the old school POS and give it a lick of paint and an upgrade, the idea is to create special corporation or alliance level “skill towers”.
    they run off normal fuel blocks
    they have a special drug bay
    the structure manager fuels the structure with blocks and drugs
    people docked in these structures then accrue skillpoints slowly over time for their characters, while doing this though their character is still active within the universe itself.

(EDIT: I forgot to meantion that in my mind, the people docked at these “skill towers” won’t get the fancy docking screen like what we’ve currently got, they’d simply disappear from grid and the camera would focus on the tower, like you were using the “look outside” or “look at” features already in the game)

this would take the player concept of skill farming and make it a tangible aspect and part of the universe and in game lore, like, you could literally fly to a skill farm, join it or blow it up.

but back to the point, it might be possible to effect this into the current structures in game via some kind of module or perhaps an expansion to the clone bay service module
(skill bay service module maybe?)

given the cost of structures i also feel like this would massively help bolster their function.

CCP will make you work hard for an instant reward, mining for example, you go out grind and insta-reprocess this is how it works when you’re logged in.

in this sense structures are a paid convenience for players because 99% of the time they’re only there for people to use the facilties, i would honestly love to see some stats to cross reference the cost effectiveness of running a structure vs the amount of time its actually being used. if you put enough fuel in it for 30 days, its not going to be used every single second of every day.

but due to the games unique design in terms of its skill points system we as players don’t just interact with the universe when we’re logged in, there is a logged out element to it too. so by bundling those aspects together you could make for some very interesting results.

it might also offer certain aspects say for example I suddenly needed to take a break from the game in for some reason, could be anything, game burnout, family stuff, health, etc. providing i was docked and these drugs were in supply my time away from the game could still then create content for players who may be seeking a bounty on me, or helping generate skill points for the corp or alliance or just simply for myself for my return.

this is only a rough idea of course and would need MAJOR refinement but i do feel that there is something too this worth considering and batting around.

2

What are you even trying to add? Just requiring people to run the client while AFK?

3

the learning drugs are only one aspect to it, perhaps if your character is inactive the effects of the drugs drop? so active playing rewards increased skill learning while afk and logged out become lesser progressive states respectively.

4

I shouldn’t have to run the ■■■■■■■ client while I’m not playing the game if I want to play optimally.

5

you clearly didn’t read what I’ve posted.

however lets look at what i’ve said and to be fair i do see a flaw in what i’ve said

a better structure for this suggestion would be something like this

Inactive = no progression
logged out = what we have now
active = faster skill progression (becomes inactive after 20 minutes of being docked or tethered or in some other form of protective field or state

this way being active will optimise your skill progression, however when you’re logged out you still get that good marketing point which people like, this COULD also be used as a factor of building teamwork elements within the game, because people are going to both want and need to be active, so you can PVE or do corp / alliance stuff.

6

So if I dock and undock every 20 minutes my skill training goes faster? Doesn’t that incentivize botting?

Honestly, if you want to make people active in exchange for skills, maybe buff the “skilling spree” daily? Maybe it could be a multi-part thing that asks you to kill NPCs in X system (where X is within a few jumps of your home station).

I still dislike the idea but that would be a lot more palatable.

7

well my natural intent would be to tie this into active activities such as mining, ratting, pi, market trading etc, this way its only when you’ve been idle it will then drop, so it doesn’t encourage botting for a simply undock and redock to get those skill points going again, you;d probably need to go do stuff in game to get the ball rolling again, this way it would only work when you’re active and reward you for being active. if you’re not going to play you could log out and continue to skill up as the game normally does anyway and come back later. but this doesn’t encourage you to log in.

Which is why i think the idea of skilling while you’ve been logged out should be done via drugs and then you can redeem those skill points and directly inject them at least that is one way to do it, if the system isn’t requiring you to log in though then you simply won’t.

not only do i know of people who log in every 24 hours to manage PI but a short while ago there was some big rewards for daily logins in fact old players started to come out of the wood works to get these rewards and rekindled their interest with EVE.

8

Just buy skill points direct from CCP. This will solve all your problems with long skill queues.

9

pay to win = No
PLAY to win = Yes

10

Essentially to get optimum skilling then, you are required to stay logged in but not docked. So we all start sitting cloaked in a deep safe spot when we are not playing.

Why should this only apply to miners or ratters… what about people exploring, or spying on a system (for spying read - sitting in a deep safe spot cloaked)
How the hell is the game supposed to know someone is market trading? and how are they supposed to do this while not docked?
What this will boil down to is the game requiring you to be ckicking keys and not docked, to asume you are being active. So we all deep safe and have a key tapper program running.

I guess i would just refer to your original post

11

the point is to be active, you SEEM intelligent so clearly you should be able to comprehend this aspect, the difference being how i have defined activity and what contitutes it through play style and how CCP define it are two different things.

we all know there is being active, semi afk and afk. sitting in space semi afk or afk is not the same as being activem i’m sure CCP in thier wisdom can see the potential behind this idea even if i do have the ratios and rates wrong, the base concept would be to reward players for being active, the more regularly active you are the better and this idea is outside of the daily logins, which are good to get people to show up, but that extra skill progression for doing stuff in game could get people staying longer, finding stuff to do because they want to skill their toon faster by doing acivities and not simply tapping a key or some key tapper program, besides if your approach to this game is to use programs to trick the system it shows you only care about the reward rather than playing the game itself.

the reward should come as a result of playing the game as intended not finding a flaw in the system to exploit.

this is a good idea however my suggested execution of it using 20 minute timers and such is what is flawed as it doesn’t cover the entire scope of the games eco system.

not only are there active, semi afk, afk and logged out aspects but there are also “safe” and “non safe” aspects to consider, being docked is usually considered being safe, while being undocked is not each activity gains its own risk and reward ratio however for engaging in activities which require you to be active should then grant you the reward for faster skilling, this encourages people to login and play the game as you skill faster from being logged out or AFK.

12

If the game were fun to play, you wouldn’t need to provide them with faster skilling in order to incentivize them to participate.

13

but the factor in question isn’t weather or not the game is fun, because it is, everyone has fun in this game differently, to find out what sort of gamer you are and where you fit into the ecosystem take the bartle test. simply having a 5 year long skill list is pretty nuts, weather or not i as a player am even alive in 5 years time is another matter.

so with that in mind i think it might be worth looking at the rates of skill progression, if i played for say 6 hours a day, mining, mission running or whatever my choice of game play is, then i don’t see why i couldn’t get some kind of faster skill progression. not only do you get the pay out for the grind or whatever the hell it is your doing at the time but you also know that even if you some how loose it all, that effort you put in has given you more skill points than normal and you’ve advanced your character then if you let it sit AFK for a week. this also on a lower level then mitigates some of the loss players will experience because of the psychological factor

“yeah i lost my ship, however i’ve had a weeks worth of fun gate camping with you guys and now i can fly that T3, let me get a fit together and lets go on a roam! i want to use my new T3!”

14

But why do you deserve faster skill progression just for playing a game?

15

i’m not saying its what we deserve however i feel as a community this could be something which is needed, the cost of game time has gone up and yet CCP want people to login and stay logged in, so if you were logged in and being active (also what CCP wants) i don’t see why we couldn’t have a faster skill rate, then when we log out we revert back to the current rate. this way it rewards the more active players. how you’d detect or define that, i do not know.

i suppose what i was trying to do earlier was to bridge the concept of the character being a permenant entity to the skill progression. making it so when you log out you can skill at a structure with a skill bay, this way you get the same skill progress we have now but your character remains in game.

I feel this could be interesting based on the social politcal nature of the game, where people come to bash your stuff because you have a clone of someone skilling or installed at your structure, this effectively prevents people from pulling a logoffski.

my thought was to re-imagine the skill system where we have different rates for different states and tie these states into needing to be in specific locations or drugs in game which in turn keep your character existing as an entity in game. this way the consequences of your actions follow you around the universe and further hold players accountable for their actions, this does remind me of the book “EVE The Empyrean Age” where the book kicks off with a ship being destroyed to force a clone download of a political figure as part of an assassination plot.

however given my suggested execution is flawed i think these things are good ideas which would benefit the game if implemented correctly, as a result in my mind it warrents investigation and talking around the water cooler, i’m sure there is a way to do it, I just haven’t thought of all the angles.

paying a high cost for the game is fine for those who enjoy the game, however if it takes 5 years to complete a skill que regardless of weather or not you’re logged in i think the real question is, why should i log in at all when i can pay for my game time and let the game progress, if the skills would progress faster for me being active in the game then it would incentivise me to be active, this then increases the number of players who are reguarly active and the more activity = more team work, more team work = more content.

it then becomes worth your time to log in to and get involved with things rather then going “look at me be awesome with my 30 accounts which i paid for and never logged in and now i can make billions of isk with minimal effort”

16

Why do folks think that having SP is winning? Eve is about YOU learning, not your character.

17

true but if you want to learn how to fly a nyx your character kinda needs the skills to pilot and use the relevent modules, you can learn faster than your character does, often you have to wait to skill up then jump in the seat of your desired ship.

combat ships offer different abilities, logi, tackle, dps,
explo/scouting depends on what ship you use and most importantly how effective you are at it, same with mining.

sure the base function of the game is to lock on and press f1 but the game is a bit more subtancially more indepth than that.

18

That’s a myth for most people, the great majority of players have no idea how to fit a capital ship (most ships tbh) or why its fit like that. They just fit like the guide or alliance forum post says.

Eve is a near prefect stepping stone skill system. Take the nyx super carrier for example, Eve is designed for players to start small to master techniques like kids in school. Grade school you learn the very basics, that would be the Tristan. Proficient basics, Algos. Advanced basics, Vexor. Mastery basics, Myrm. Then Domi, Thanatos and finally a Nyx. If you take the time to be actually competent through the steps you’ll be much better off in the long run.

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