Keywords: New Player Experience, Addictive Leveling, Active Skill Progression
Note: Gain Skill Points Each Time You Actively Engage In An Activity (mining, combat, industry, etc.)
This suggestion is to implement some sort of catch up mechanic and addictive leveling loop above and beyond what is already available in game via the passive research, the daily goals skill points, skill injectors, and login rewards. An example of active skill progression is the way Albion Online does it. Each time you craft, you gain crafting xp. Each time you kill something, you level up the gear you are using. Eve could do something similar. Each time you use a mining laser, you gain mining related skill points. Each time you shoot a certain type of weapon you can gain weapon related experience, and so on. Addictive leveling has always been something I think Eve Online could benefit from and take away from competitors if they simply added an active leveling system.
You are never going to âcatch upâ to veterans who have been playing for 20 years. Simple as that. Itâs not just a matter of skill points, but experience and time played. If CCP implemented what you are asking for, then it would work not only for new players but also for veterans, which would then make them even farther ahead of youâŚ.
So catching up doesnât necessarily mean catching up to other players. It means, getting to a desired skill point range quicker so that you can do what you want to do with the ship and fit you want. And as you said, it would not just benefit those who are behind, but would benefit those who have been playing for a while as well, so it is a win-win. I donât see a legitimate downside to something like this.
I did mention that in my original post the other ways there are available, but none are active skill point gains in which I am describing. The key is, addictive gameplay loop, and active skill gains provides that.
EVE has had the system of passively gaining SP over time since the very beginning, I wouldnât count on them ever changing that.
You donât need 60m SP or whatever to be good at something. The benefit an older character has is mainly versatility, theyâll have good SP in a wide variety of things, which lets them be more flexible about hulls and fits. A young character focused on the specific skills they need for that hull and fit will be just as good at that as an older character. Additionally you gain 80% of the benefit from a skill in the first four levels of it, which means 80% of the benefit comes from the first 20% of SP invested in that skill. In this sense EVE already has a catch-up mechanic.
To be clear, I am not advocating for getting rid of the passive SP gain, I am advocating for adding active skill gain in addition to it. Again, I donât see a downside to that unless older players are gate keeping.
Skill injectors are the âactive skill gainsâ in this game.
Any economically profitable activity in this game can earn you the ISK to buy skill injectors, which allows you to gain skill points past the maximum passive rate.
You can also increase your passive skill training rate with cerebral accelerators. These are again bought with ISK that you can earn through active gameplay.
Lastly CCP has introduced multiple dark patterns to manipulate players to log in to boost engagement numbers. Usually this involves handing out skill points. Logging in during log-in revents, doing daily tasks and completing the monthly track all gain earn you more skill points.
Exactly. This already grants you up to 525k bonus SP per month for active gameplay (10k x 30 + 225k for the 12-day completion).
Not to mention, how many times per year do we have login events with daily awards, including SP? You get 530k SP from this current event, we just had Crimson Harvest (655k SP), and the annual Yoiul Festival is right around the corner. Thatâs just Q4.
I think weâre adequately awarding active gameplay.
The problem is, we have auto-repeat modules in EVE, which means a multiboxer with 20 alts would simply go target the biggest ice roid he can find and let the lasers cycle for hours, collecting an endless stream of âmining XPâ.
If you want something like this, find a way that doesnât allow passive gains from automatically repeated actions.
The fact that EVE does not do this is actually a big benefit of EVE.
EVE doesnât require you to do mindless grinding to progress.
EVE is a sandbox in which you are free to interact with the tools youâre given in any way you like, without pressuring you to âmine 1000 rocks to get better at rock mining!â or âbuild 50 frigates to unlock cruiser building!â.
In EVE you progress automatically, so you can spend your game time however you like. You can still mine 1000 rocks if you wanted, but you could also explore relic sites to buy a new mining ship instead. Much more freedom!
The EVE economy doesnât get flooded by modules and frigates that are built âto gain crafting XPâ.
EVE has the ârealestâ economy of all the MMOs I have played. A large part of this is because there is no perverse incentive to build items that nobody needs. The market is fully supply and demand driven. There is no reason anyone would build 1000 blasters âto skill upâ in this game. People would only build 1000 blasters if there is an economic reason to do so. This is why the economy in this game is so strong and realistic.
EVE doesnât need to implement crafting-related item sinks like Albion did to get all these needlessly crafted items out of the market again.
âStudyingâ items to break them down for XP like you can do in Albion is simply a necessity to deal with the bad design of requiring players to grind skills. EVE is better than that.
Please no. I want to play EVE while I play. I donât want to have to mindlessly spend time semi-AFK with my character firing a laser on some worthless rocks in order to âimprove my skillsâ and catch up with people who have been doing that thing for years and are way past level 99 in the skill but still want more and better achievement rewards for their new tiers of experience.
Next these people who have spent the past 5 years AFK shooting mining rocks to obtain experience want to flaunt âskill capesâ for their âeffortsâ that give character extra yield bonuses.
No, I think EVE is a lot better than that. Itâs much easier to catch up here in a certain activity: skills only go to level 5 and you donât even need to spend time doing repetitive tasks to get there.
The thing I love about EVE is that it does not have the active leveling systems that I disliked about the various other MMOs I played, like the Albion you mention but also RuneScape, which also is a very grind-heavy based game.
I liked the games, initially enjoyed the grind but have seen how a grind-based game gets economic problems like I mentioned above. How a grind-based game has to incentivize players with âgood experience ratesâ to make activities worthwhile and how activities die if it doesnât offer any experience. Itâs the same flawed ISK/hr mentality we have in EVE, except that ISK is a lot more flexible and can be earned through many different ways that developers havenât even designed as any player can pay another for services. And ISK can be earned though PvP. Experience can never be as flexible, has to be determined entirely by the developers, and âPvP experienceâ is easily exploited by repeatedly killing friends.
EVE with itâs entirely ISK-based grinding and passive progression system is in my opinion the superior system.
And I understand that players would like something of those grind-based progression games and to be able to turn effort into progress.
But this is possible again via EVEâs superior ISK-based economy: turn your efforts into ISK and buy skill injectors.
I wouldnât mind some form of active skillpoint farming for low SP accounts only. Kinda like how Perpetuum (a mech MMO thatâs similar to EVE) has active skill point gains (as well as passive ones) that drop off the more points you have. There are a lot of skills that are basically mandatory (like CPU/PG Management V) and donât come pre-trained. It would be nice to accelerate accounts with, say, 5m total SP (including all characters on the account) so they donât have to spend a week training Basic Ship Fitting so they can actually use half the fits out there.
CCP could have used the Activity Tracker for exactly this. Rewarding ppl for each level, but after level V it ends.
Instead they removed the Activity Tracker because they couldnât fix it to properly track progress.
