Ryshar wrote:Learning implants are not evil or unfair. However, they are unnecessary and they give new pilots a bad first taste of EVE. Why bad? Well, new pilots immediately find out that getting into the ships they want to fly takes time. The learning implants reduce that time, and newbies will focus on getting those implants as soon as possible once they find out about them. However, they are relatively expensive for a new player and after they plug in the implants, they don't want to lose them.
For a beginner, those implants represent more than just the gametime they spent to get them. They mined or ran missions for days to get them, and to lose them would not only set them back tens of millions of ISK, it would gimp their character progression. After a new players gets these implants in his head, he becomes extremely risk averse. The idea of being podded is pretty scary to a newbie when he's carrying so much in his head.
After having learned this new behavior, a new pilot is much more likely to avoid going into lowsec or nullsec. This is generally bad for EVE. Aside from the obvious implications this has on new player experiences (they get really bored saving the damsel and killing Kruul and quit), this is not good for the EVE market. PvP is an ISK sink, and ships getting blown up creates demand for new ships.
I'm not saying that getting rid of learning implants is THE solution to getting more hisec bears out of their shells, but it would help new players be less risk-averse. Not everyone likes to PvP, but the way things are now, I don't think newbies are being given a fair chance to try it.
Whitehound wrote:It is the entire learning skills debate all over again...
Now people demand to remove attribute implants and soon thereafter they want skill ranks removed, and then they want the training itself removed but buy skills with ISKs.
CCP should never have removed learning skills. It is the fault of the stupid pre-Incarna period of CCP. And why did this all happen? Because we allowed lazy asses and free loaders into the game by selling game time for ISKs and we listen to their demands.
TL;DR: Where is my pizza for ISKs? Logic demands pizza!