Nick Starkey
Southern Cross Empire
Flying Dangerous
4
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Posted - 2013.11.19 16:23:00 -
[1] - Quote
This is actually a very good suggestion that's slowly being discredited by some trolls that are grasping at straws and trying to find other unrelated aspects to refute it.
I do not believe pure learning implants(+1 to +5s) should be removed. Instead, they should be replaced by time-based booster-like effects similar to the ones you get from the starter packs, which are not lost with your pod. This actually fixes all of the problems people keep bringing up:
- Podding someone with implants is not an isk sink of any kind (like some people are saying). Material loss is not an ISK sink. The only sink you get from implants is when you purchase them in LP stores as they require you to pay a certain amount of ISK towards the shop along with LP. Turning them into boosters would both solve the OP concern as well as maintain the market supply and demand for implants (if anything, everyone will be purchasing them in a timely manner now). LP/ISK costs would obviously have be readjusted.
-Arguing to remove attributes and remaps is also a slippery slope. There is nothing wrong in certain people specializing into different activities and planning their skill growth accordingly. It is an interesting choice that diversifies character growth.
-Training skills were removed for exactly the same reason. They focused too much on passive play for an exchange of higher SP count (and more character options) in future. You could also say it was a meaningful choice of sitting around waiting now for better skills in future. It reality it sounds just as stupid as being encouraged not to risk your pod in order to advance your character, when most kinds of PVP are going to involve significant risk of losing your pod. In fact, that is exactly why most people that lose an expensive pod is usually a target of laugh and mockery. The grand majority of pods you find in low/nullsec are either empty or extremly cheap and that's because any kind of remotely interesting and not completly onesided engagement is going to suffer from eventual pod losses, especially in null.
-Contrary to popular belief, losing learning implants does not consitute any interesting or meaningful "choices". These buzzwords seem to get thrown around a lot from people that don't really know their meaning for a way to justify their beliefs. First of all, the grand majority of any risk you take during PVP will be the loss of your ship, and that's why you see empty pods everywhere in low/null. The first reason would be because learning skills have zero effect in your present combat ability. In essence, the only reason you'd want to risk your implants is to not waste the time you already paid not to waste. It's not a risk/reward scenario (using snakes/deltas/hardwirings IS a risk/reward because you're actually gaining an advantage in combat for using them).
I guess the main idea is that character progression should never be discouraged by active gameplay. If you think about it, the average low/null PVPer that switches to an empty jump clone every couple days is actually learning skills slower (by 30%!) than an alt that sits in station offline everyday. To me, this makes no sense at all. The entire point of a time-based progresson system is to be equal to everyone else, regardless of time spent online or activity, but right now it's actually rewarding those that don't do anything at all (which is why learning skills were removed). |