Dierdra Vaal wrote:I'm also worried that this skill will go the way learning skills went.
This is a bad idea as we are using a mechanic similar to learning skills to solve a gameplay problem. This new skill being introduced will either be meaningless (in its current state) or if you raise the hours/level in an attempt to solve the underlying problem you will create a skill that everyone will need and consequently a barrier to entry in the form of forcing everyone to spend X days training this - the issue, similar to learning skills, is that there is no trade off and no choice being made, its just something you will need to do and therefore not a good game mechanic and just another hurdle that you have to go through in order to play the game.
The problem with jump clones is related to the learning implants that are currently IMO a broken mechanic in the sense that they create a link between long term decision making (what to train) and short term risk/benefit decisions (what to risk in pvp). Implants that give you advantages in pvp are cool since you get the edge from the implants but also risk more with them, so this is working fine. Learning implants on the other hand create a barrier to pvp in the sense that in order to pvp seriously you have to forcefully gimp your ability to develop your skills in the long term, thus creating a barrier for pilots that want to pvp - it is a forced sunk cost that has to be paid for by all pvpers.
The jump clone timer change has implications in terms of travel and mobility, more so if we reduce jump clone delay to 0 (per Reasonable Suggestions vote item) - I don't see a problem with this right now as it's better to have the player jump clone around and keep playing than logoff and wait for a few hours to do whatever he wanted to do, but I am not an expert and there may be situations where this may be abused.
The problem here is the learning implants. Changing the jump clone timer is an elegant way around this problem since although we may see less learning implants being destroyed and less isk sink effect from those implants on one hand, on the other hand giving players flexibility in terms of changing implant sets on the fly may increase their overall use in the game and raise the total amount of implants of any kind being destroyed, thus having a beneficial effect on the market. This on top of allowing players to play the game more, as opposed to forcing them to logoff for hours to get things done...