The Magic 14 outdated concept?

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Hi,

Since the beginning of eve the magic 14 skills have been the core skills to anyone planning on flying anything. From interceptors to titans all capsuleer benefits equally from these basic skills. And that therein, I think is a problem.

As everyone basically needs them equally why do they need to exist anyway? In a way to me they remind me of the old learning skills. You could overlook them but you were at a disadvantage in the long run if you dont. The 14 to me are the inverse of that. If you don’t learn them you immediately are at a sizeable disadvantage, 25% is no small margin.

Sure you could say its only bad from skill lvl IV to V and thats its 5%. That is technically true but the skill line is a 25% increase to the baseline, and that increased 25% is basically the actual baseline. The next issue is training time.

I started a new character and put the magic 14 to (the in actuality baseline) level 5. With unmodified attributes it will take that character around 125 days on just these skills alone. So its about 4 months before you are on equal standing with most everyone else in a ship, and having these core base skills is tossed in when ship and module balancing occurs as it naturally should. What could be done?

Remove the magic 14! Woa that’s kinda crazy isn’t it, or is it? If the floor has been raised with these skills why not just simply remove them. It was done with learning skills and it worked out for the better. In this game one of the tenant is your choices matter. With these skills you have learn them or you simply cant effectively do anything in a ship or progress your combat options.

What about industrial toons? They can now fly with the new baseline skills, and so what? They won’t have weapons or specific hulls ect learned. If anything it would be easier to specialize in that from day one you can choose to go indy, miner, combat or anything combination thereof. That without having to spend 4 months to achieve base parity. The trickle down is that It would change alot including the new player experience.

A new player wont have to plan to spend 4 month just to reach operational parity. They can simply log in and say who do i want to be in eve? Then say interceptor start training guns and the hulls. Bam! No 4 month time to get popped 5-25% faster. Of coarse it would make sense to refund the xp in those skilled in the 14. In conclusion the removal of the 14 would help the game retain new peeps who may have been daunted by the training time.

This is just my opinion, what do you all think about it? (please forgive my spelling im jsut bad at it)

2

No thanks. It’s not our fault that the current generation of gamers have the patience and attention span of a toddler on crack…

3 Likes
3

Give veterans back the millions of SP we spent on the Magic 14 skills and we will still be millions of SP ahead of new players. There is no “fair” or “equal footing” in EVE. Anything you can think of to benefit new players will end up benefitting veterans even more…

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Its not a catchup mechanic but i can see how you could view it that way. Learning skills were removed and it didnt shut down the server so it is possible to have drastic changes.

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Did it though? I guess that’s a matter of perspective. Personally, I was a little salty about that when it happened (having trained the learning skills myself). It was one of the ways in which players could make impactful choices about their character, weighing short-term sacrifice versus long-term gain, and it rewarded those who planned ahead. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, and I don’t think we should be taking those kind of choices away from players just to make things simpler and easier.

2 Likes
6

You going to give veteran players back the $100 USD or so they spent on Omega sub training those skills for months as well?

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Refunding the skillpionts trained would naturally be fair like what was done with the learning skils.

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Yes, it is. You are wanting months worth of skills training to be removed so new players can be on equal footing with veterans who spent months training those skills….

9

Just hurry up and get to the part where you say “Well you just think that because real socialism hasn’t been tried yet”….

10

Why not just remove all skills?

The camel’s nose is in the tent.

3 Likes
11

Unlike learning skills there is no pressure to train these support skills first.

You don’t get penalized with lower learning rates and there’s nothing wrong if you fly with slightly lower than 100% targeting range for your first year. I mean, I think my hauling character may have been flying with less than 100% targeting range for 8 years.

The ‘Magic 14’ is a name given by players to a bunch of support skills. Not particularly good skills (besides the CPU and PG ones), just very ‘general skills’.

These skills are, contrary to what some people seem to think, not mandatory. They’re support skills just like you have many other support skills. They’re not any stronger than other supportive skills, nor more impactful for your particular gameplay than other skills.

In fact, they’re usually less impactful, because you’re going to benefit far more greatly from for example mining yield skills and mining frigate skills if you decide to mine in a Venture than you get value out of a skill that reduces the amount of capacitor you use in warp by a small percentage (magic 14).

In other words, as a new player it is a better idea to first train other skills specific to your intended gameplay than to train this ‘magic 14’.

That also is said by the people who wrote the EVE uni page on the magic 14 in red:

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‘Train other skills first’. ‘No point training support skills without first training skills to actually USE the ships and modules’.

I agree with them on that.

What I don’t agree is that they call these skills ‘important’. Some of them are, but others aren’t any more important than the many other skills we have in this game. Some may even be useless for your playstyle, like those two targeting skills for my hauling character.

I think it’s best to see these skills like any other skill in the game: they could help you improve your character.

What makes these skills special is that they are in many situations helpful, and are mostly quick (1x) skills that can give newer players who do not yet know what they want to do a bunch of quick wins.

A new player who trains into T2 equipment may realize they suddenly require more CPU to fit those. Well that’s what the CPU skill is for!

I don’t see why new players who do not yet fit T2 equipment need to start with that skill at level 5. T1 equipment is easier to fit.

New players start that skill at level 4 already, so almost maxed. I don’t see how it improves the game if new players have no way to increase the CPU on their ship with skills to make up for the increased drain from T2 modules.

No, if you ask me these support skills are good in the game.

I do not see any more reason to remove these particular skills than to remove any other skills in the game. Just because someone once gave them a funny ‘magic’ name and many players mistakenly suggest this list as ‘must have training plan’ for newbies is no reason to just remove skills.

Instead I vote we abolish the name ‘magic 14’ and please, please stop recommending these skills as a must have to newbies.

3 Likes
12

I always, when I trained newbies or met newbies who “couldn’t do anything due to training the 14 skills” that those are for when you dont know what to train after you have the skills necessary to do the soe arc or have a ship capable of doing L1 missions or mining or whatever low level activity.
Once you got a ship, then ammo, launcher, armor/shields, utility mods trained to fly a ship then every other skill can be from the m14 that you need.

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With all the SP’s and Accelerator Boosters that CCP gives away for free, it shouldn’t take very long at all to train up those skills, especially if the account is Omega…

The problem I see here is it being abused by players creating Alpha alt characters that can be trained very quickly into specific roles for free…

Course Skill Injectors can be used to quickly train up characters but then that costs money…