WisdomPanda
Gallente
Oberon Incorporated
Morsus Mihi
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Posted - 2010.12.05 05:56:00 -
[1]
Timeline... use your imagination
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You start here | omgwtfnewb starts here | This is where you lost the advantage from learning skills.
You finished training learning skills here |
newb finishes learning skills here
Your apparent super hax leetness only works for the length of time it takes them to train skills. You're worried about newbs having full skills at start?
 Originally by: "http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=824"
WHY OH WHY ARE YOU GETTING RID OF THE NEW PLAYER LEARNING SPEED BONUS?
Basically, we did some math and discovered that giving everyone over twice as many attribute points off the bat, and a training speed bonus, was, well, kinda dumb, in the sense of enabling ridiculously fast training speeds.
If we lose the bonus, you're obviously well ahead of people who had the bonus but didn't train learning skills. It does turn out that, in terms of useful skillpoints (ie, skillpoints not invested in learning skills), if we take the bonus away there's a class of specialized training plan, aimed at getting a particular set of easy-to-reach skills quickly, that leave you slightly better off under the old system for a period between around halfway through month one and around halfway through month two. After that, the new system without the bonus is always better.
If you find yourself repeatedly training up sub-3m SP alts for specific tasks and then binning them, this may inconvenience you slightly. Sorry. On the other hand, each one will now cost you 20m ISK less, so count your blessings there. Also, recycling alts is against the rules and will get you banned.
On the flipside, if we keep the 100% training speed bonus, you'd be able to get into a Drake - with the basic certificates for core competencies, cruiser missiles and passive tanking - in around ten days. This is silly.
For further background, the reason the 100% bonus was put in was so that when we removed a whole bunch of starting skills in Apocrypha (taking new players from ~800k SP to ~30k SP), this didn't create a huge disadvantage. It worked out that increasing training speed by a factor of 2x for a while solved this problem. With this latest change, the addition of the extra attribute points increases training speed by a factor of 2.5x before the bonus is applied. Removing a 2x bonus and adding a 2.5x bonus seemed like a fair exchange.
If you don't believe me, here are SOME GRAPHS: <graphs here>
tl;dr - While it doesn't end up being a complete swap, the new new players (as in new account post change) will have slower training as opposed to the speed bonus offered previously. This means that using the bonus to burn through learning skills is no longer an option. Obviously the bonus will not get you all the way through the skills, however they will get you far enough through to minimize the difference to the extent that you're far better of with a set of good implants vs :bittervet: with no implants.
On the flip side, we'll have a lot of people able to train for real skills right off the bat, which will mean more :gfs: all around. \o/
But if "having an advantage" really matters that much, I'm unlikely to have a reason that will make you happy.
Side note: This ignores the fact that it will take 4 YEARS before a newb can over come your "advantage", and that's only if you emoragequit then come back, 4 years later. You also have access to Lv5 implants right now, as opposed to a newb who would need to sell them self on a corner. So yeah... u mad bro?
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