Originally by: EveJunkie

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Originally by: Sorja

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Bzzzt, totally wrong.
There is NO chance for new players to ever catch up.
In fact the gap always widens.

And the bonuses are not small, they are HUGE because they are cumulative.
It makes me laugh when someone says 'look, torpedoes 5 against torpedoes 4 is only 5% damage increase'.
That is silly, because when a player has torps to 5, chances are he also has TONS of relevant skills to 5 too, which speed up his firing rate, improve his shields, cap recharge, targeting range/speed and whatnot.

And since more and more skills are introduced, the gap gets wider and wider, not even talking about new ships/modules which send older tech into oblivion.
Eve has turned into a race to power (like many games unfortunately) to keep customers interested (read: paying).

I'm living with it for my part, but I know for sure I can't beat any veteran with the same ship type in dog fight unless he makes terrible mistakes.

The skill system is poorly thought of and should give newcomers to catch up, be it with implants you can only equip below fixed total skillpoints or drugs that boost your skills when the same skillpoints are below a fixed level.

CCP should seriously rethink the learning curve if they want to attract new customers so a player effectiveness relies only on his irl skills, not how long he has played the game.

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Dont talk rubbish. New players have a whole hoast of ways to become effective faster than us veterans ever did.
My oldest surviving character made 3 weeks after release has 19.6 mil SP. A character I made over a year later (after we got implants in game) has 15.6 mil SP. My newest char made just 7 months ago has 12.5 mil SP (because we now have advanced learning skills). Theres like a year and a half difference in training between my oldest and newest and look how much ground my newest char has gained because of new game features. Because of new features in game new players train faster than the old ones ever could. The gap is smaller than you think.

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