Balshem Rozenzweig wrote:Gap is huge and takes a lot to seal, but you might be looking at it in a wrong way.
1) every class of ships have limited SP you can allocate in it. You can be competitive frigate pilot in 2 months. You will be however limited to that ship
2) skills give only so much and you tend to loose by tens of percents not just few of them. Fights when that +5% armor matters are rare tbh. It's more of a rock - paper - scissors thing when it comes to eve
3) even really new players are good for fleets. Tracking disruptors, dampeners and ECM work almost exactly as well no matter who's using them. You don't even have to fly an ewar ship to use them (well - maybe with ECM it is needed). You join a fleet of cruisers with your pitiful frigate, and then destroy optimal/tracking of the target. It works.
4)I found that isk is more of a problem in FW zone than SP. You need cash to keep these navy frigs comming. Still - I used kestrel and condor for 5 months and lived with it. I even killed stuff solo.
P2W makes me angry cause there's no limit to that usually. I prefer subscriptions cause they are fair. Spending countless cash on gear/ammo would make me quit in literally 1 day.
Some really good points - I'll reply to them since you took a lot of time to make a solid contribution to the thread.
1) Total agree - however support skills that a non-ship-specific make a big difference.
2) Agree'd. but there isn't just 1 5% skill - there are a few dousen - especially in frigates. A small ammount of extra fitting, shield, hull etc. can all add up to a BIG advantage.
3) Real alliances run SRP's to replace expensive, high SP ships - it is frowned upon or outright not acceptable to bring something along the lines of what your talking about. Also: What if the pilot doesn't want to be a 'Space Healer'? What if they don't want to be the 'Support who wards'?
4) What you fly should be based on what you can afford - increasing your SP results in no ISK gain if you don't know HOW to earn money efficiently - that wouldn't change.
Also "Pay 2 Win" was an ironic statement: Because older players have paid for years and have a multitude of advantages that a new player doesn't have even if they had identical SP. It's actually closer to "Pay to catch up"