The lvl V skill requirement is to train the higher T2 skill.

neither one proves why skill level V is required, which denies the range of specialization...

if specialization is a goal, why does it coincide with the starting point

"Specialization" is a lack of range.

CCP has declared "thou shall train level 5 for T2 ships". There is only one exception, because CCP didn't want to hand out such a huge amount of skill points: jump freighters.

why would jump freighters be an exception for the skill point reason. It was lv4 freighter needed for along time maybe forever its not a recent change.

and it makes the ships more interesting than just having it as a flat bonus. to whatever it is.

neither one proves why skill level V is required, which denies the range of specialization...

if specialization is a goal, why does it coincide with the starting point

Can we just take away all goals so no one has any reason to play?

I don't see the logic in a game with no progression.

waiting for a skill to finish is not playing. it's waiting.

if your idea of playing is one action, followed by months of inaction, you should probably start playing savings accounts. you put money in and wait for it to grow.

as for the skill requirements, they are useful for producing artificial scarcity. if everyone could fly a jf, black frog would go out of business. if everyone could fly command ships, you might as well remove battlecruisers. if everyone had perfect refining skills, you may as well remove them entirely, and so on.

Why not just remove all skill requirements? If you don't have the skill you don't get the bonuses...

Yay day old Carrier pilots

The point of specialization requiring level V of the "base" skill is that you can't quickly specialize into a large number of things. That's what specialization means, you get really good at one thing at the expense of getting really good at other things. Choices and stuff.

that's a bad exaggeration and I hope you know it. also, this is about T2 and that does not include any carriers. lastly, plenty of people would love the idea of a day-old carrier pilot.

Of course it's an exaggeration but the point was minimum skill requirements are for a reason.

Yes skills give bonuses per level but there should be some minimum. Using your argument why level 4 requirement for a bonus per level skill? With this there really isn't a bonus from 1-4 since it's required... So for the Guardian are we just going to ask for Amarr cruiser 1 and Logistics 1?

Of course it's an exaggeration but the point was minimum skill requirements are for a reason.

Yes skills give bonuses per level but there should be some minimum. Using your argument why level 4 requirement for a bonus per level skill? With this there really isn't a bonus from 1-4 since it's required... So for the Guardian are we just going to ask for Amarr cruiser 1 and Logistics 1?

I get the "EVE is real" thing, but, how does training 25+ days for a ship give you a more solid general base of knowledge?

I get the "EVE is real" thing, but, how does training 25+ days for a ship give you a more solid general base of knowledge?

Do you oppose the change CCP did to T2 guns no longer needing the class below it in order to use them? Somewhat of the same principal right?

This isn't the same thing. As far as I know you still require your gun skill to 5 in order to train the same guns 2 weapon specialization skills. Again solid base before specializing. Or do you think I should be able to use t2 guns out of the gate? If you do then all training plans say train level 1 of the specialization skills then go train your general gun skills and that makes no sense

The general base is battleships. From any sort of realistic training you would have to know how to fly a battleship before learning how to use all the extra buttons that are there only for marauders.

In an age where capital ships can be trained without rank5 bs, I have to agree, it's kind of dumb for t2 ships to retain those requirements.

you know... the weapon size progression change from V to III is the same basic idea of what I think would make sense. ship class to III before having the option to train the T2 bonus, instead of requiring level V on the hull along with two or more random attributes at V. it changes nothing for the players who already have the skills

In an age where capital ships can be trained without rank5 bs, I have to agree, it's kind of dumb for t2 ships to retain those requirements.

when the skill structure is so bad (how skills are arranged, not what skills do), the only reason for keeping the structure is preserving the status quo

preserving the status quo is basically the sentiment that "if I had to do it, other people should have to do it too"

can you think of another explanation, other than an original dev setting those requirements for T2 hulls based on a simple sentiment "because better," and it has been around for so long that it's simply accepted by the devs, just like it is by players...? I can't tell.

one fully skilled ship with proper fittings is equal to two or three failships, so the smart thing to do is not fly a failship.

You should re-read the OP. You keep using the word specialization as if the only way to learn about something is to first read a 200 page manual rather than read the first few chapters and dive in. Specialization comes after you are able to practice and test the thing it is you are trying to learn, not before hand

You cannot specialize until you master the basics.

The mastery/specialization comparison still stands, and since you like using IRL examples so much, a heart or brain surgeon can both practice their studies before officially getting their title.



What basics are those? Patiently waiting?

Hey look , another IRL analogy. It's a good thing you only have to wait in EVE rather than study, practice and take tests to get the skill.

How about stop using analogies to justify the status quo?

frigates online... that's a pretty good one.

one thing i'm beginning to see is why this level V situation could stand for so long. you know, people have just taken it as part of 'difficult'

I don't even know why I am responding at this point. You don't want reasons or anything else. Its obvious the only answer you'll accept is to let me fly whatever I want the second I create a character. Lets ignore the ramifications this will do to the eve market both inside and outside the game (you will never need to buy a cap sitter if you can just create a new character and train titan 1 in 10 minutes).

Just tell me this, how can you fly a marauder if you don't know how to fly a battleship?

this is another version of the level V requirement: a racial T2 split, with racial Hull level III as a minimum for racial T2 level I. it's an example of the benefit put further away, without changing the effect of having it trained.

That's just unfair

you use the word "meaningful" as if minimum requirements yield a well-rounded ship

It is because of the 90 days of prerequisites that it is a meaningful choice to train Marauders, because it is the choice to not be training for, say, exhumers, or interdictors, or recons, or assault frigates or command ships or ...

ok. I guess all that's left to do is train all T2 skills to V, so that my clones will be as expensive and meaningful as possible when the racial T2 redistribution happens.

What's worse? Having to progress your skills from frigate > destroyer > cruiser > battle cruiser > battleship or being allowed to fly a battleship day one(terribly) but having to buy plex to afford it? (followed by you losing your poorly fitted/skilled battleship, then quitting the game)

Either way CCP will make money(good for them), but in the ladder the players lose....especially new characters who don't prefer to plex for a BS hull.





Maybe this conversation has gone off on a tangent. Are you simply requesting that the bonus not apply per skill level(semantics)? Or do you really think you should be able to use tech 2 ships/mods at skill lvl 3? Sorry I don't feel like reading through the thread again.

The OP is asking for the removal of the base level 5 skill requirement to fly T2 ships. All T2 ships and guns require the base skill to be at 5. I know CCP made an exception for Jump Freighters.

Imagine if in WoW you could skip the leveling process, and jump straight to the highest level. Then high SP characters would too common and the game would have no goal and no playing value

Ok, I'll give you an example why insta training and fast access to all is bad.

I have 5 mill unallocated SP points, I can log on to test server and spend the SPs to my liking.

Every now and then there is a new mirror, so I get back the 5 mill SPs and by now I have tried and tested almost all ship available in game. In fact it ruined the gameplay, the anticipation the intrigue. I have tried every available ship in game.

Thus being able to master everything at once with little or no wait time will make the game completely pointless.

Imagine if in WoW you could skip the leveling process, and jump straight to the highest level. Then high SP characters would too common and the game would have no goal and no playing value

From what I understand this can basically be done in WoW. And its part of what makes WoW terrible.

Source?

And no, a random image doesn't count.

My source is 1:the current skill structure and 2:the fact that players seem to accept it. If both of those are to remain constant through iteration changes, it would mean racial T2 skills. It's merely more of what has been done and what most players in this thread seem to support: awkward, obscure, impractical and long skill minimums. It preserves the idea of skill prestige that is apparently a good thing.

it's just an extension of your logic and your idea of meaningful. far-off = meaningful, and meaningful is good, right?

surely you don't expect the skill structure to always stay the same. iteration = change, and between moving toward what I suggested and the example racial T2 skills, which way do you think is more likely?

nevermind what I think would make sense, I'm over it. I'm just going by what players have made clear in this thread, and their idea of what it means to specialize.

it's just an extension of your logic and your idea of meaningful. far-off = meaningful, and meaningful is good, right?

Actually read what people are saying, not the strawman you want them to.

The "90 days" is not the meaningful thing

The meaningful thing is that by choosing to spend "90 days" in pursuit of Marauders, you by definition are not spending that time in pursuit of some other thing

a choice between mutually exclusive things is a meaningful choice, because otherwise, if you could have them all, why wouldn't you?

And also don't forget that isk and properly balance ships already make for interesting choices for new players to decide what they fly on what occasion.

how do you think they'll look, based on what's been done?

And also don't forget that isk and properly balance ships already make for interesting choices for new players to decide what they fly on what occasion.

I wouldn't mind if bonus SP was gained by using mods that require skills. For example, kill something while using a light missing launcher > +100 SP to LML's.

I wouldn't mind if bonus SP was gained by using mods that require skills. For example, kill something while using a light missing launcher > +100 SP to LML's.

People once thought that the ridiculous cost of supers and titans would keep them rare. People now know better. Cost is not a balancing factor.

This is already available in a very popular game

https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/world-of-warcraft

They don't have skill ups in WoW anymore. It was a pointless grind. They already have levels and gear checks and skill checks which are arguably too low on the lower end content but sufficiently high at the top end of the meta game. The skill ups did nothing to help the game at all.

so I've been told I don't know the meaning of "meaningful," "that's not how game design works," and reminded this is not WoW. the intent behind Level V skill requirements is apparently clear to those people. but they get quiet when I ask what they think skills might look like in the future, after extending their logic.

sorry, I forgot. if a person isn't CCP or omniscient, their analysis isn't worth sharing.

racial T3 skills are another indication that non-racial T2 skills is an outdated way of thinking, and that a racial T2 split would occur. A racial T2 split would also support the commonly held idea that specialization should represent a subscription time sacrifice.

Role Bonus:
5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage
10% bonus to Drone hitpoints

I'm quite pleased with what this thread has shown me, far more than the answer I thought I was looking for. quite pleased.

it exposes the reasons why people accept things, that's for sure. I also suspect people avoid venturing outside of 'what is' due to a lack of creativity. couldn't imagine it

I would agree. Plenty of people around poking holes in others' ideas but no solution or alternatives of their own.

I'm opposed to the idea but have offered my own. I think "constructive" is the word.

I have a habit of ending disagreements with a smug or trite remark. I should be clear about my conclusion to avoid doing that in a thread I started.

I appreciate the participation in this thread. Unfortunately,"because specialization" still strikes me as a thought-terminating clich+¬, and a mantra. My curiosity regarding why skills are arranged a particular way remains unsatisfied, but sometimes it's just time to move on.

I am grateful for what this thread has done to help me form a new opinion of the state of things: EVE is flawed with an imbalance not so different from WoW. The ease of cross-class skilling is back-loaded (high SP), rather than front-loaded (low SP). While long requirements represent a time commitment initially, secondary skills apply to most (if not all) ships, and after obtaining them, training into a new ship is easier for high SP characters. This advantage increases with SP.

Example: for a 50 million SP character with a fully-skilled T2 cruiser, cross-training into another fully-capable T2 cruiser is a single Rank 6 skill (1.536 Million SP), compared to a rookie who wants to train into a T2 cruiser and is faced with core skills (basically the old Core Competency: Elite cert).

EVE also has invisible level caps, if a player decides to pick between subcapitals (approximately 125 Million SP) and capitals (approximately 175 Million SP). After reaching those levels, it is possible to 'hop in' any ship with full skills in every module and role.

The result is stagnation that worsens with SP. At this point I strongly agree that general/broad skills are the root of EVE's SP status quo.

If the intent of T2 skill requirements is a concentration in a specific area, T2 ship skills don't go far enough; non-racial T2 ship skills are broad. A racial T2 split is very different from the alternative I imagined when I started this discussion, but after becoming more aware of the status quo, the advantage of high SP characters, and gaining a better sense of what players (and perhaps the devs) accept as the definition of specialization... a racial T2 split is, in my opinion, needed.

The artificial level cap and stagnation experienced by high SP characters would merely be extended, rather than remedied, but racial T2 skills would be a stronger form of "because specialization" than we currently have.

---

edit: this is a scary thought, considering the skill splits and the bloated SP and clone costs, but... race-specific core skills... (e.g. Amarr CPU Management, Gallente Power Grid Management, etc) would be a flat and fair implementation of "meaningful" and "consequence" that EVE players claim to like. Call it crazy, call me crazy, that's fine. It's pretty far from what EVE is like right now, and would take years to implement slow enough to avoid an uproar, but hey, 10-year outlook.

it would seem this is a stealth 'reduce medical clone costs' thread.

A complaint I hear a lot from newer players is that they feel like they cant catch up to the older players increasing the sp difference wont help that perception.

Sorry to oppose the "solution" but I didn't know there was a "problem". T2 ship skills are fine right where they are now.

What if I want to fly all instead of one?
I want it now!
Now I said!

This is not the point of skill. It's about setting goals and making decisions as to what you want to fly. Eve is not about instant gratification. If you want it right away there are many games that offer that.


I hope Eve never falls to the "Instant gratification, I want it now" crowd but if it does maybe it will be known as "EvE"

Ok, I'll give you an example why insta training and fast access to all is bad.

I have 5 mill unallocated SP points, I can log on to test server and spend the SPs to my liking.

Every now and then there is a new mirror, so I get back the 5 mill SPs and by now I have tried and tested almost all ship available in game. In fact it ruined the gameplay, the anticipation the intrigue. I have tried every available ship in game.

Thus being able to master everything at once with little or no wait time will make the game completely pointless.

Imagine if in WoW you could skip the leveling process, and jump straight to the highest level. Then high SP characters would too common and the game would have no goal and no playing value

You seem to be one of those folks who is right regradless of any mitigating facts and opinions.

I'll ask you this. If they reduce the requirements from lvl 5 to lvl 4 what do I get? You "I shouldn't have to ean it" folks get a lot of powerful ships unlocked. Well, I did it the hard way.... what are you gonna give me for doing it the hard way? I want free stuff too.

You can't give me the extra 5% or whatever - I already have that. Free skill points? Maybe a new ship line that you need the prerequisite to lvl 5. (I hope you can see where that's going)

And finally - it was only 1 report, not multiple. I was just watching Mammy Thule trim her mustache.

doesn't that qualify as "too fast" and "too easy"? that's the stagnation, and the problem I'm talking about. You don't like the idea of rookies having fast access to T2 ships, and call it a WoW thing, but that's exactly what is happening with higher SP characters.

what you're questioning is the essence of stagnation: the problem a player encounters after hitting a certain SP threshold, which gets worse over time.

awesome. good discussion all, high fives all around \o

o/

As for Ronnie's idea I find the Mastery system very "inaccurate" if you want to see a direct impact to the performance. Not saying its a bad idea, just saying if CCP were to go that route I would pray for an overhaul of the Mastery system.

I'm at work at the moment so I don't have many tools or time but I'm curious what the performance to time spent training ratio would be under both systems, current and mastery. I get the feeling even new players would prefer to train the racial ship skill to 5 rather than everything under the Mastery list to get the full bonus. Even getting to Mastery III would take much longer I'm sure.

Again..not against the idea, just think the Mastery system would need an overhaul.

I'm not tracking... what would cause some players to lose the ability to fly ships? what would the change be

I'm not sure either of us is understanding the other.

Is your suggestion still reducing T2 pre-reqs to less than V?

Ok

The answer remains:
It is a meaningful decision to decide to specialize in your first T2 ship
As you get older, each additional ship is marginally less of a meaningful choice
Eventually you become a bittervet

I stand by my recommendation of training (new) characters for the bazaar if you run out of things that you want to train

I'm against your idea on principle. I had to do it the long way so so should you (bittervet attitude). Now we discuss the level 5 requirement for ships, tomorrow we discuss it for turrets and this just opens the floodgates for any other item in the game that has a level 5 requirement.

That said, I do understand that SP barriers can be a bit of a hassle and traditionally they've always been a hot topic. I'm all for getting new players to their goals sooner but I don't think that making t2 ships easier to obtain is the way to do it. The real barrier new players have here is ISK, and being able to replace possible losses. You can get stuff like frigates 5 in a week, cruisers 5 in just over 2 weeks. It's really not that long. Considering a fair amount of people have characters that are years old, it's just a tiny drop in the ocean.

On the other hand, I agree with the point you make about having for example cruisers 5 be a requirement for HACs and then have a cruiser skill bonus on HACs to compliment that. Every character that can fly HACs will have the skill at 5 anyway, might as well just make the cruiser skill bonus a ship role bonus instead.

Stuff

You can't make every skill race specific. First you bring up the issue of skill barriers and then you wish to introduce a system where literally all veteran plays will get like free 20m sp. What will a new pilot do then; when he wishes to swap from Amarr to Caldari? Redo all his support skills? :x

Although I agree with what you're saying that a skill barrier for the sake of it taking time, isn't the greatest thing. On the other hand; not a single good alternative has been brought up instead.

It takes 90 days for a Marauder and 110 days for a Black Ops because of the large amount of different skills required to operate these ships.

Not to mention that these are very task specific and highly specialized ships in the first place. Aside from your wishes and needs as a player; it makes perfect sense in the EVE "lore". Your character needs time to learn the basics of flying a Battleship; before it can hop in to a specialized one. Now if they should be available at skill level 4 is another debate. Personally; I think yes. These are highly specialized tech 2 ships.

I really do see your point though and as a recently rerolled character myself, sure thing; it can take some time to train those skills. At the other hand; these are milestones. These are achievements for your character. Training BS5 is just one of those.

I don't think you should get any advantage for having more SP other than the SP itself. After your basic core/weapon skills all SP does is allow you to fly more stuff.

I wouldn't be against having some special achievement or station older pilots could dock in. If anything give new pilots a quicker skill point training. I think you used to train the first million SP faster but I don't think this is anymore. I could be wrong since it's been a while since I made a new pilot.

What we don't need is encouraging new pilots to get into ships they can't fly. For some that have a lot of RL cash they could fund this but most players will dislike the pay to win feeling. I tell new pilots enjoy the game play. Shooting stuff in a frigate is no different than shooting it in a battleship. The only difference is you'll lose more ISK when the battleship goes pop

I'm at 233 million skill points in total, and when I started in the early days there was no double speed training, no hardwires or learning implants of any kind, no advanced learning skills at all and I had 8000 SP to start with and just a little Velator frigate, and took me a month of playing pretty hard core to get into a cruiser, and 4 months to get into a battleship and couldn't really fly it to it's potential so it was restricted to mining duty since dedicated mining ships didn't exist back then.



Add the 2~3 daily server crashes and/or hot patches for the first year of it's existence, and both the word frustration and dedication best describes those who started and kept going in those early days, despite all the instability of the server and exploits available.

Many of the earlier players have left the game though, and it part, it's this player base group that keeps the game afloat

Yes we all know Eve is dying...

http://i.massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/28/eve-online-hits-500-000-subscribers-heads-into-second-decade

I've seen so many Eve players get on the forums and talk about if CCP doesn't do this or that the game will die and everyone will stop playing. These people never seem to unsubscribe because they keep posting on the forums.

Eve is over 10 years old and so far still going. Will it be here 10 years from now?... I think so.

Not entirely contradictory, but a bit of a reach I'd say. I am one of the second wave that came in late 2004 when the beta folks were already well established and bitter (it's amazing how long some people have played the game like it were a grudge) so I have heard this refrain for a decade now, yet I never actually believed it and still don't.

Content creators in all sectors of space have been recycled, sure, but there was a major changing of the old guard back around the end of the "great war," when BoB and most of it's associated vanguard was broken on the rocks of much younger players in large numbers and that same changing of the guard continued to take place at other turning-points since then. Looking outside of nullsec, there've been huge turnovers in the lowsec crowd. Much of what was once a tiny and elite pirate community is now full of younger players hunting the FW pipes. FW itself is comprised almost entirely of younger players, corps, and alliances.

Quite honestly, there's no a single area of space I've been to in all my years where I felt the presence of the very old guard was important to the backbone of the community there. Would highsec industry suffer if a large T2 BPO holder left the game? Certainly not. Would nullsec be devoid of content if Triumvirate mk. 5 or whatever number they're on at this point folded? Nope. Would lowsec cease to be dangerous if Shadow Cartel leadership handed off the reigns to their younger proteges? They've already done that in large part and no, it's still going.

Of course, this isn't to suggest that EVE should be a revolving door or that vets leaving for valid reasons is a good thing; however, it's well known that even in good times EVE causes burnout. Having fresh and vigorous blood around is demonstrably more important than keeping 10 year old account holders happy.

The new release schedule where fairly large updates will be released as soon as they're ready is pretty much stating the opposite isn't it......For the first time in the history of the game, we no longer get 2 major updates a year, but perhaps as much as 5 or 6 a year, and you think that's just done cause they feel like putting themselves under that kind of release pressure?


Add all the 100 odd employees from white wolf that were laid off when the MMO they were working on, based on EVE's carbon engine, went no where and basically CCP make no money in that investment at all, but it was publicized quite a lot back in the day.


And yes the failed walking in station updates where we only have the captains quarters and that's it.....Face it, they've had their fair share of screw-ups here.

when I started in the early days there was no double speed training, no hardwires or learning implants of any kind, no advanced learning skills at all and I had 8000 SP to start with and just a little Velator frigate, and took me a month of playing pretty hard core to get into a cruiser, and 4 months to get into a battleship and couldn't really fly it to it's potential so it was restricted to mining duty since dedicated mining ships didn't exist back then.

Of course CCP has had some screw ups. What company hasn't. That doesn't mean Eve is dying or even on a decline.

I'm honestly glad they abandoned walking in stations. Okay so I can have my pilot walk up to your pilot and give him a hug. Would that really add useful content?.. I don't think so.

With the accelerated expansion releases I'm nervous about this but so far it hasn't failed. Worse case scenario it does and we go back to two a year. I liked the old way only because you had this awesome thing to look forward to and it built new interest in the game. It's hard to build this excitement with new expansions every few months.

[...] the general policy is to not further increase the skill point gap between newer players, and the ones already established for a few years now [...]

this is new to me as a policy... officially or unofficially. can you explain this a bit more? what have you heard about this? (dev blogs?)

It hasn't been confirmed in a developer blog as such, but look at the facts, we've had pretty much Tech 2 equipment and ships for years now, and the only tech 3 ships are cruisers, which again have been out now for a good 3~4 years, and I still remember the presentation at a fan fest when they were announced for the first time, that there would be 7777 possible configurations on tech 3 ships.....The current 4 ships have 20 modules for each one in 5 distinct categories, only total 80 possible configurations between the 4 races, so where are the other 7686 ones?....That's right in other ships that have yet to be released even after all this time....Frigates, destroyers, interceptors, interdictors, battle cruisers, battleships, industrials, transport ships and all that time has passed and not a single thing released.


I have my command ship skill tree completely maxed out as far as combat ships go, even going as crazy as having all 4 titans maxed out, so there really is nothing left there to train and I focus on specific pieces of equipment to max the skill out.


Then you have the accelerated training time I spoke of earlier that doubles SP gained until 1.6 million sp, which didn't exist at all back in the day to attract new players by making the game easier, which was the number 1 complaint that EVE is the only MMO you need a spread sheet to understand...:p


Even in the first year of me playing, and barely having 10 million sp, we already had plenty of whiners complaining that they wouldn't play the game because the guys with already 1 year of play time would always have an advantage, when we see plenty of time older players getting owned by younger ones that had a ship or fitting better suited for the occasion.

[quote=digitalwanderer][quote=Rain6637]
I don't see how T3 ships have to do with SP gap between new and older players. Maybe I'm missing something?

The accelerated training was at the time of learning skills. Older players did have an advantage because many new players "wanted it now" so they didn't train learning skills.

I was one of those players complaining after my Cormorant was crushed by a older player in a Drake. The game was so unfair!... Then I woke up and realized I was playing it wrong.

looking through your post history, my impression of you is yes, chances are you are missing quite a few things. I'm waiting to see if you post your negative sentiment without proof a third time.

haven't made up my mind whether Ilshira is contrived or accidental. I may never know. Ilshira is relatively old and very consistent in the thought process behind forum posts. willfully ignorant yet strongly opinionated. as a persona, Ilshira is brilliant.

what was the reason for removing learning skills?

ignoring the time it took to train them, their function was the ability to train into new things faster than a newer character... a situation made worse by the possibility that the older character already has core skills trained.

I'm wondering how the reasons for removing learning skills would fit in with the idea of adjusting minimum skill requirements.

...and you know, trying to get a better sense of what CCP's motivations are. (reading their mind, and looking at what they do and not what they say).

The lvl V skill requirement is to train the higher T2 skill. You can then lose that lvl 5 later (podded with insufficient clone), but still fly the T2 ship. So, if you refuse to retrain the cruiser skill to 5, then you can still fly your logi, but with slightly reduced ability as penalty.

I kinda like you, actually. you're like the magic 8 ball of player opinion. CCP should hire you full-time as a consultant.

---

something about you seems off. what you're saying is that official, public policy is the only thing you'll agree with. that makes you a blind supporter, which is something you'd only expect from an employee of a company. I'm wondering whose alt you are, and I'm starting with a particular alliance to see if your born date coincides with any of the characters in that alliance.

...found it. I saved time by starting with a short list of likely suspects.

your post from earlier in this thread sounds very different in this context. that you are a plant. owned by none other than...

well, i'll leave that up to the opinion of anyone who bothers to go looking like I did.



"I'm hiding among the players, and you can't tell me apart from one. I have just as much credibility as any one of them" ...not anymore.

now back to my chart to breathe new life into this thread

Unless it's facts backed up by a link to a CCP source it should be taken as that person's opinion.

I don't think negative sentiment towards an idea requires proof. I can just simply say I think it's a bad idea.

Most people to include myself are posting their opinions on something.

I'm glad to be a brilliant ignorant person

CCP, btw, has nothing to do with the massive time difference between "can sit in it" and "can have API key verified and invited to fleet with it."

hey that's one of my points.

Your point is a moving target. It started off as why are there skill bonuses per level for skills that must be 5 minimum, then meandered into "we should examine it because if we don't examine it we are thralls to CCP" and I am not sure what the point is now.

If the point is that a Scimitar (using one specialty ship/role just as example) should be unlocked with Minmatar Cruiser I and Logistics I, with Logistics I being unlocked with Long Range Targeting I and Signature Analysis I, then I restate more clearly and directly my earlier disagreement.

Specialty/advanced ships should require some sort of commitment other than ISK. In EVE, commitment is the opportunity cost of skilling one or more things to V to the exclusion of skilling a bunch of stuff to I-IV. It also presents the "should I make alts to cover all the skill bases, or do I grind away forever on this one character" choice.

You can fly a lot of stuff without Vs in anything. Maybe not T2'd, but undocked and underway. All that stuff can be played while waiting for the next milestone in the skill queue. I mean for real, you can undock a fitted faction battleship on your 4th day of playing. Granted, it will be the SS Gimp, but it'll be undocked and floating in space.

Why the angst on having the "V-lock" on specialty ships?

I'm bringing this up because it strikes me as a difficulty spike with no solution other than time. trust me, I'm on the winning end of this situation.

This. So much this. T2 is specialization. Specialization should, and does, require training something to V. The opportunity cost this creates is a cornerstone of how EVE is designed because it creates choices.

I could have been a capital pilot long ago. But I choose to stick with subcaps instead, taking all the racial ship skills to V and training all T2 subcap weapons instead of training for capitals. This was a very meaningful choice that has had a massive cascade effect on choices I have made since then and it continues to affect how I play the game now, in both good ways and bad. Yet I can still change my mind at any time and start on capital skills. I consider this to be the pinnacle of good game design in an MMO.

If level V in something was not required to use T2 ships and modules EVE would not be EVE. It would be Orcs in space.

This. So much this. T2 is specialization. Specialization should, and does, require training something to V. The opportunity cost this creates is a cornerstone of how EVE is designed because it creates choices.

I could have been a capital pilot long ago. But I choose to stick with subcaps instead, taking all the racial ship skills to V and training all T2 subcap weapons instead of training for capitals. This was a very meaningful choice that has had a massive cascade effect on choices I have made since then and it continues to affect how I play the game now, in both good ways and bad. Yet I can still change my mind at any time and start on capital skills. I consider this to be the pinnacle of good game design in an MMO.

If level V in something was not required to use T2 ships and modules EVE would not be EVE. It would be Orcs in space.

OP i get what you're saying, and its a valid point, but getting into a T2 ship should feel like a major step. It will feel less major if you could undock the thing at day 1 as long as you bought it with a PLEX or something. Leave it alone.

OP i get what you're saying, and its a valid point, but getting into a T2 ship should feel like a major step. It will feel less major if you could undock the thing at day 1 as long as you bought it with a PLEX or something. Leave it alone.

congratulations on your gordian knot of semantic fallacies. how is it choice and mandatory