Sweeet wrote:I see you deleted your post Malcanis? But I wanted to respond with this:
I haven't deleted anything. Maybe you're thinking of someone else.
Sweeet wrote: The very nature of the game means that the SP wall will continue to grow ad infinitum for existing players, ever increasing the gap between them and the new players. That is not a sustainable business model. Sooner or later a mechanism will have to be put into place to help bridge that gap, surely even you can see that? Maybe my solution is not even close to being the right solution, but that doesnGÇÖt mean a solution is not needed. If my experience and the experience of others in my corp are anything to go by, it sorely is.
This confirms my suspeicious that you fundamentally understand the nature of skilltraining in EVE. Whether or not you realise it, you're thinking in the "skillpoints = levels" mode, as if 1 million SP = Level 1, 2 million SP = Level 2... 85 million SP = Level 85, and so on. And if skillpoints did work like this, you'd be correct: passive skillpoint gain would be a bad model.
But.
Skillpoints
aren't analagous to character class levels. You get absolutely nothing, not a single extra hitpoint, not so much as a 0.01% increase on your chance to crit from having 10M or 100M or even a billion SP. You only get to fly more ships, and no matter how many SP you have you can only fly one ship at a time.
After 10 years, it takes exactly as many SP to take Gallente Cruiser 5 now as it did in 2003. And more importantly, Gallente Cruisers are still viable, useful ships just as they were in 2003. Indeed, perhaps now more than ever: the CFC are joyously deploying low skillpoint (or low ISK) pilots in Celestis fleets to support their battleships with devastating effect.
There's no "unclimbable wall" now; there won't be next year; there won't be in 10 years when there are characters with 300M SP.
The analogy I like to draw is with WoW; a 6 month player might have just got his Paladin to level cap (what is it, 90 now?) And assuming he's chosen the right talents and whatever, his Level 90 Paladin is as good as anyone else's. But a 6 year player might have a stable of a dozen or fifteen different characters in different classes and specialisations. If the raid needs a pally, then the 6 month guy is operating on the same level. But if the raid needs a healer or a hunter, then the 6 year guy is going to have an advantage, because he can chose a character that's perfectly optimised, while the 6 month guy will have to try and force his paladin into a role for which it is less optimised. That's how EVE skills work; you hit a "level cap" when your skills for a given ship are perfect, and after that all you can do is level cap in more types of ships. But no matter how many new ships you train for, it won't make you even 0.1% better in the ships you've already trained. All you're doing is widening the number of roles you can bring an optimised "Level 90" ship for.