All of the progression systems are time-based. EVE’s system just takes more time but gives you full freedom to spend this time.
One of the things I love about EVE is it’s continuity and that I can hop back in to play without learning the meta every season.
There have been games I played a lot in the past with an ever changing meta of the last few months.
These days with less time to play I much prefer a stable game I can spend a few hours online over the course of months without having to redo and relearn everything every time. Solo games also scratch that itch, but lack the MMO part that EVE offers.
Yeah, and I’d like if they would shorten this time, significantly by adding activity-based unlocks/SP boosts and/or removing stuff like the “Magic14”. We had those discussion at another topic already. Those skills only keep new players behind and achieve nothing positive for the gameplay.
Exaggeration. Nobody ever talked about “everything”. If you don’t like a new content, don’t play it. If you don’t want to learn a new meta, dodge more or just accept that this time your “oldschool meta” is a bit behind. I mean, you have no problems with never players being behind you for years to come, so it shouldn’t be that big of a problem if you are a bit behind for an expansion or two just because you chose not to adapt to changes, right?
It doesnt matter to me. What does matter to me is yet another player trying to suggest a drastic change to a 20+ year mechanic. Im actually shocked that you would even suggest this at all.
And, in any case, five more joining would happen anyway no matter what i did….but as you said…its just an opinion.
Sounds like another issue of players not knowing what they got into when they made an account to play this game. This game is not for the average “WoW” player.
Ill stop right here with this thread. Ive said my peace on it. Im not going to get in a heated discussion about it. Ill just say that i hope CCP never even remotely considers an idea like this…period.
I think you missed my point a bit, but it’s true I didn’t elaborate on it myself.
The point behind my response was: it will feel like an accomplishment, as opposed to immediate training/unlocking which is what the OP wants. Which will never feel anything even remotely like an accomplishment. There needs to be some sort of a buffer there whether by doing something or by waiting for something, before you get to unlock a titan, let’s say. Not just log on, press an ‘‘unlock titan’’ button and immediately your character will have it unlocked.
It’s called delayed gratification in psychology. Anything you acquire immediately will feel less satisfying than when you have to work for it or spend time waiting for it.
Currently in EVE you mainly unlock things by waiting, i.e. training skills. I don’t have a problem with that, I think it’s an egalitarian approach that doesn’t discriminate between players who have a lot of time to play and those who have more busy lives. Some might prefer a more activity-based unlocking method like you described. I am completely unfamiliar with the examples you provided, as EVE is the only game I have played in my 42 years of life, so I’ll leave it at that.
In any case – immediate unlock (what the OP wants to get) is utter nonsense and should never be implemented in the game (it is by way of skill points, but at least it’s behind a paywall. So if you can’t accomplish much, you at least have to pay). But he wants a ‘‘free unlock everything’’ anyway. Which is total BS.
I can get behind Magic 14 being shortened or removed, but beyond that, I would rather the skill progression remain a similar time frame. Most ships do not require much time to skill into, shortening that time will not make for more fun. What veterans get is the ability to fly more ships, but new players can get into advanced play rather quickly.
I am not advocating for immedate training/unlocking. But rewarding active and skilled gameplay with faster progress/unlocks.
A simple example: The support skills for weaponry to max out (Sharpshooter, Trajectory, etcpp…) takes quite a while. The effect is not that much between level VI or V, but the player has basically only two options:
I skill that Level V now, basically doing what I do now and wait like 29 days for that skill to complete. To get another 5% range. Which prevents me 29days from skilling other possibly more useful stuff.
OR
I skill other more potentially useful stuff, accepting that I will be 5% behind in range in any given situation until I have skilled all that stuff AND additional 29days after it.
Now in many scenarios those 5% won’t make a difference. In some (Sniper Fleets), it absolutely does. 10 or 15km more or less can decide if you get into enemy weapon range or not.
But is that difference even nessessary to have a good game? Is it absolutely nessessary that a new player that wants to skill horizontally first to have many gameplay options available is 5% behind in weapon range for like a year or two before he finally says “okay I hate it but now I will wait those goddamn 29 days for those goddamn last 5% range…”? I don’t think that is nessessary to be a good game.
Now why can’t EVE offer an alternative, like everytime you kill an enemy within the last 10% of your range, you’d get a tiny SP-amount towards “Sharpshooter”? And if a skilled and active player runs 254 L4 Missions or Abyssals or Combat Anomalies and deliberately uses a sniping ship to train long-range engagements and how to stay outside hostile weapon range, he gets a partial amount of those 29days by just “actively training” this technique, not just “waiting to complete”. So in the end he only needs to “wait” 14days instead of 29 to complete it. Would that be so bad for the game? I don’t think so. It would be encouraging to actually go out there and train combat mechanics.
That doesn’t sound bad or incompatible with EVE. And it would give the players who have ‘‘field skills’’ (i.e. skills on how to play the game, as opposed to skillbook skills) a sense that their actions will count towards an advancement of their character. Doesn’t sound bad at all. But personally, I think a mix of the two things would be the best solution in such a case, rather than just one or the other. The training option should still be there, as, like I mentioned, some players just don’t get to log on too often, and for them passive training is a fair way to advance their character.
Absolutely, and I’d never want to totally remove that. But I would go away from the only two options to really “speed up” progress being pumping RL money into PLEX to buy skill injectors or doing ingame activities that bring money even if they are boring to you to grind ISK for PLEX to buy skill injectors.
Instead let the people do what they like to do and reward success with skillboosts. Learn to fly manually → score way more critical hits → get boosts for “motion prediction”. Scan signatures like mad because you like to do exploration → boost scanning-related skills. Hack Containers successfully → unlock Hacking/Archeology related skills faster. And so on…
Someone who don’t want to powerplay can still just wait, like now. Nothing is taken away from him. But someone who really wants to dive in deep and learn and train and is a skilled and dedicated player should have options beyond ISK grind or RL cash to max out his performance much faster than it is possible now.
Yeah, I’d be okay with that. It mirrors real life as well. You can learn about how to do something reading a book. But you tend to learn faster ‘‘in the field’’, or by going out and practicing it. Still, reading a book is often necessary to acquaintance yourself with the basic terminology and concepts of whatever it is you want to learn to do.
CCP has been making concessions on this topic for years. Alphas can play forever and not just 2 weeks. They can train several skills that lead to t2 weapons and modules, and they even made the new line of mining ships for alphas.
CCP is a video game company. Besides just spitting in the face of everyone that has spent years learning skills in game you are asking for a video game company to remove a big portion of their own income. For what?
To remake eve into a consume and move on video game?
Yes, after so many new stuff added, gating people on these are just pointless.
While I agree with @Remi_Lacroix she is missing the point we came to a future were the uncertainty about the next years put the long term compromise in check, how about we only compromise in middle term?
CCP already compromised first by making skill points tradable, then by selling SP directly and also by letting players earn SP by playing or by logging in.
So if you feel gated, feel free to buy SP from CCP, or speed up your training process in other ways with implants, cerebral accelerators, daily challenges, AIR challenges or simply by playing the game and earning ISK for injectors.
This isn’t a one-time thing: once these skills you now complain about are done you’re going to put more skills in the queue, and more. And you likely will keep having skills in the queue as long as you play EVE.
And some people LIKE that kind of grind. Some people prefer that over waiting for a trickle to finally complete a 1.5 month skill so they can finally fly a certain ship. People are different. We don’t all like the same things.
You don’t earn skill points. They trickle into your clone.
It doesn’t matter if you chug skill injectors or sit docked for 5 years on an Omega account. You don’t earn them. The only way you could remotely earn them is by doing daily activities to get the ones given as a reward.
Which is why it is nice that EVE too offers the option of that kind of progression. EVE progression no longer it is entirely passive but also has active grinding progression gameplay for players who like that sort of thing!
You can mine Veldspar ore to increase your mining skills if you wanted in EVE: get ore, sell it, buy injectors and inject mining skills. Or refine the ores, haul, build and trade the goods you built with it for ISK, however you like.
EVE’s progression is hybrid, so people who prefer active and people who prefer passive progression both have options.
Semantics.
As far as I’m concerned we all passively earn skill points at a rate of primary + half secondary attribute per minute, or half that if Alpha clone.
So if the game makes it another 20 or 30 years and add ever new things, people starting then ‘should get used to it’ that tey need to sub at the age of 16 to have a chance to maximize performance on most content when they retire at 70?
Of course I am exaggerating here, but it is totally obvious that the system is flawed. At some point in the future you’d need more skilltime than an average human’s lifespan. Or pay RL cash or grind PvE like mad. Thats ridiculous. Imho it already is.
And I am saying that from the perspective of a player who has it all, hundreds of millions in SP, trillions in ISK, an army of AltChars to do basically anything in the game with maximum efficiency and enough relations to raise whole fleets to fight for me.
This only is an issue if EVE’s progression were mainly vertical and new players had to train longer and longer before they could compete.
But as it is mostly horizontal and players just get more alternative things to choose from as CCP keeps adding new ships it doesn’t push the point new players can compete any further with time.
So no, I do not see an issue.
Now if CCP were to consider ‘super specialization skills’ or level 6 skills you would have a point: this would increase the SP needed for new players to get to a competitive point.
But luckily that isn’t the case.
I’m fine with doing neither and am fine with accepting that I cannot fly all ships perfectly yet. I’m not in a hurry and there are plenty of ships I can fly and have fun in.
Maybe you (and new players) could do the same?
But for those who do wish to unlock everything immediately and cannot wait for some reason, the option exists to do such things!
