Jacinta Worth
Raddick Explorations
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Posted - 2009.07.20 07:33:00 -
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You know, considering how many people make the argument that skill points mean very little I'm surprised there aren't more in favour of some other method to gain them.
My personal major argument against it would be that it takes some time to get used to the mechanics of the game. Having the ability to fly the biggest and most expensive ships in the game within the first week would lead to a lot of unhappy people when said ship got blown up. However since the ability to buy old characters is already in existence this happens fairly often anyway.
I suspect much of the reason for the length of training time is that CCP like to dangle a carrot in front of us (that is the general population who don't buy old characters) to keep us playing for longer than we would have originally planned. I have no issues with this since I have felt effective enough in a fight since about six months into the game and thoroughly enjoyed my time previous to that in any case.
Regardless, I feel like the system works as it is. I like to try and keep an open mind about changes to the skill-point mechanic and certainly don't think getting riled up because someone thinks changing it might be a good idea accomplishes anything but currently, it takes what, three months, to become really excellent at flying interceptors, at which point you can effectively participate in 'end-game' politics. And you can participate in anycase well before then. I don't see how this is worse than any other MMO out there in all honesty. How long does it take your average WoW player to be able to participate in the end game there? Two months? More? Dunno, never played it but my impression is it'll take around that long to hit max level playing an average amount a week. And even if it's less, I don't believe you could be useful in the same way a week or two week old character in EVE could be useful after the same period of time.
If you're really that desperate to, I don't know, get into a capital ship or something one month into the game then buy a character that can do that. Your main doesn't necessarily need to get in to a capital ship at all and you can continue training that up while you're in the capital pounding POSes or in your Golem doing missions. And seriously, don't sweat the 'never catching up to the old guys' thing. After a year it doesn't matter much anyway and after six months you'll have enough options to feel like you're pretty handy in more than a few situations.
Hmmm, that became a lot longer than I expected.
TL:DR? I think things are fine the way they are but I don't think it'd do any harm to have a rethink about the old mechanics every once in a while.
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