I didn't see a thread on this in the first few pages of threads, so here goes:

What does everyone think of adjusting SiSi in such a way that all pilots are set at 0 SP every time it's mirrored but they also have 100 million SP's in unallocated skill points? Additionally, how difficult would it be to give the 'move me' bot a sister called the 'reset me' bot for the purposes of resetting SP's to 0 and 100m as they would be theoretically set during a mirror under this idea?

Before you say it'd reduce incentive to participate in mass tests, I'm pretty sure people who log into the test server in the first place are already not your average players. People on the test server generally have an interest in actually testing things and shouldn't need a lot of extra motivation to join in the mass mayhem of mass tests. Besides, it'd give people the opportunity to say things like, "Okay, army A should set their Gunnery skill to 3 and army B should set it to 5 for this next experiment," or whatever they feel is appropriate at the time.

Pros and cons, go.

Server is for CCP development and testing NOT individuals flying ships they are 287 days away from

The arguments of , "This isn't the originally-intended purpose of the test server," and, "People will only test with max skills," may both have some merit, but neither of these arguments express how this change would clearly outweigh the increased flexibility of letting CCP know which new metas may be most desirable and letting people see for sure whether a skill does what they think it does before they acquire it on Tranquility. If this mentality had been adopted by CCP, then they'd have poo-pooed EFT, EVE-HQ, and other such tools years ago.

More than that, Singularity has been configured to let every player get every T2 ship and fitting practically for free on an unlimited basis. This idea would merely be an extension of that precedent and it could provide data which is at least as valuable as which currently-existing skillsets play out in exactly the same way as they would on Tranquility. So, yes, it would encourage people to compare their existing skills to what they could get if they maxed something out. It would show CCP just how far their system will stretch the abilities of characters when clearly being abused by people who are being told to abuse them for great justice and the lulz.

As for the database changes ... it wouldn't take any more time than a mirror currently takes and the script bot would only be a processing load worth noticing for people who spam 'reset me' faster than the existing anti-spam scripts will let them type. If you're worried about spam in the help channel, then a fix would be as simple as posting a notice to join the 'reset me' channel, if it even needs to be taken that far.

I don't believe that to be the case, even if CCP explicitly stated it to be so at any point in time. If it were, then we'd be limited to a truer mirror of Tranquility which includes the market, POS towers, sovereignty ... everything. None of that is really suited to a test environment and often takes as much time and resources to acquire as a good skill set. Besides, like I said, giving people a few million SP's in a test environment isn't really encouragement to join in a scheduled for-fun event. The encouragement is the fun itself, AND we're routinely handed millions of SP's anyway just to have people test the skills CCP is looking to have tested. This solution would circumvent the need for the whole process of determining who needs the bonus SP's and would serve the same purpose at all times instead of only during mass tests.

Self-entitlement? One could say the same for arguing points given to you by others. I asked for pros and cons, and all I'm hearing is why things are the way they are and that people shouldn't be allowed to have free SP's for testing purposes unless it's during a mass test.

You're also just rephrasing what I've already said about how sovereignty and pos towers and the market being copied from Tranquility are not suited to a test environment (which is why they're not copied) and you're trying to use that as a point against me. Seriously? Additionally, if EVE werent' fun then you wouldn't play it. You're not getting paid to play on Sisi and nobody's getting recognized outside of their circles of friends for it. Of course it's done for the entertainment value while also serving the purpose of helping CCP see how their code is really working and if/where they maybe made some typos or if some new feature needs rebalancing.

I'm not saying you're wrong where any of your points are concerned. Far from it, you're very right. CCP has Sisi for testing purposes, and they watch what people do in there to make sure systems work just fine before being released onto the live server. On the other hand, what I'm seeing is that you're not even trying to see how changing the system would actually benefit the concept of a testing environment in ways which have already been established as common practice.

any single suggestion I've seen feasible in a sense that it would be WORTH CCP's TIME to implement it? No.

See, this right here is a response I can live with. I can respect this opinion.

Still, assume we live in a perfect magical world where dev's had infinite time and could always write perfect code with unending enthusiasm for always getting everything just right. What then? What would you feel would be added and/or taken away from the test server?

And forget the SP we should only be testing what we are able to use / fly on TQ therefore the Skills should be the same on Sisi

So, your preference for Sisi would be that, in all practicality, the only things testable by the general playerbase should be whatever the devs are focusing on at the moment? i.e., giving people some sp's and free supercaps in the event of a supercap tweak? Would this method of execution be designed to keep people off of Singularity unless there's a planned mass test?

The test server as it stands is a way for CCP to test their new features and code improvements. For a brand new player, SiSi serves almost no purpose. All you see now is big ships fighting in the arena beacons. So what CCP does to incentize players to come to their test is give out 2M skill points if you happen to be available during 17:00 EVE time. And if I understand the wording correctly, when a new mirror comes up, you get to keep 5 of the last 2M skill points awarded, not the one you participated in, but the last five tests they did.

TLDR - Everything is affordable, except time and skill points.

I must agree, generally speaking any aspects of a test they do is usually beyond the reach of any new pilots. Though the 2m SP doesn't always cover the skills needed for the pilot to assist in the testing.

well if you are that far away that masss test sp doesnt cover it you arent flying it on TQ any time soon so the test point is kinda silly

Did you even bother reading the OP?

How about letting us put our Mass Test Bonus SP's into a pool for newer players?

Or just allow us to give those SP's to someone else?

instead of 10 moros' you would end up with 50 undocking all controlled by 1 dude.

Those guys get SP's for their alts anyway...

OK, look at it like this i have 10 toons that can already moros you to death. I have another 20 that cant. I can mass test the ten and the other 20 and give the sp from the 10 to the 20 and then do 30 max skilled. Which is an extreme example but as much as I like your idea this is what it would actually end up being used for.

That makes sense. Didn't think of it that way. +1

See, this right here is a response I can live with. I can respect this opinion.

Still, assume we live in a perfect magical world where dev's had infinite time and could always write perfect code with unending enthusiasm for always getting everything just right. What then? What would you feel would be added and/or taken away from the test server?

Honestly, i don't much care, but adding 100 mil to everyone, or having an option to select or make an all 5 pilot would be nice

If i want to test the fuel usage, I have to train JF5 and jump fuel conservation5, both are 30+ day skills - hardly have enough time to do it, especially with new mirrors and resets on sisi

Assuming that? Well let's get them working on POS mechanics and all the legacy code first, yeah?

I am in favor of the OP's proposal. It would open up testing options and have no drawbacks as far as I can see.

On a side note, people who say that players should not be doing personal testing on SiSi are kidding themselves - the server exists because of the players. It is not a privilege for us to use it, rather, it is our use of SiSi and TQ that allows it to exist.

i dont get the argument "it's for ccp not us"

why do they leave it up 23/7 then? if it was just for ccp to do mass testing, then it would be up only for that.

What does everyone think of adjusting SiSi in such a way that all pilots are set at 0 SP every time it's mirrored but they also have 100 million SP's in unallocated skill points?

everybody has the skills to be flying around in dreads and carriers just because they can now

what about those who have more than 100mill sp? Losing skills every mirror

there would not be any points for mirrors if u just log in and have the sp-s waiting when logging in

I think it might be a better idea to add say ~ 20 Mill of resetable/useable SP on-top of each persons currently trained skills - as it would be nice to have some extra SP to mess about with for trying different fittings. These 20 Mill SP could be applied after each mirror, so as you'll only ever have 20 Million more SP than your actual SP to play with. Rewards for participating in MASS Tests could be something like a faction mod in TQ - which I think would attract a lot more people to SISI for the tests.

I have posted these on other forum subjects but will also post them here so they can be included in discussions covering the possibility of shortened time between mirrors and the effect that may have on some testing'

And please no abusive replies as I'm sure they could be forthcoming.

A - At the time of the mirror run a script on TQ for all Characters with Capital Ships IV and V and on Sisi at the time of the mirror gift them and only them 1 each all Motherships and 1 each all Titans. Sisi is set so that they cannot be sold, traded, or included in contracts.

B- Fforget the SP we should only be testing what we are able to use / fly on TQ therefore the Skills should be the same on Sisi.

As Quoted before, The Test Server is in no way to affect ANYTHING on the Tranquility server, player wise.

This means:

• No Item Rewards on TQ
• No ISK Rewards on TQ
• No SP Rewards on TQ
• No Anything given on TQ in relation to SiSi

Mirrors wouldn't change in any way. As of now, mirrors just update your skills in Sisi to what they are in TQ. EVE Online has clones for 450m SP, so if they mirrored with this new idea along side it you would have your TQ skills PLUS 100m un-allocated SP

The reason I originally suggested a 100m blanket amount was because I figure it'd be easier to code a flat reset and addition of a straightforward amount of SP's to an existing variable. I like the idea of having some no-requirements resettable 'floater' SP's on top of your existing skills, but I don't know that it'd be much easier to develop than my ideal solution of creating a new GUI with + and - buttons on each skill's line item on Sisi. So, yeah. 100m seemed like a reasonable, "that should probably cover most people," kind of number. I can acknowledge that we've got some old toons like yours in the mix, but you get where I was coming from, I'm sure.

And, yes, it would be some extra work for the dev's if they choose to do this or something like it. On the other hand, there's some good things in it for them as well. They wouldn't have to worry about who gets the SP's for helping out in mass tests and they could still dictate that people should throw certain skills into their Sisi toons so the test can go off in whatever way they want. Better yet, if people are permitted to actually reduce their skills then we could work with them by having some of us intentionally go in with low, medium, and high grades of skills so they can get whatever levels they want out of us by merely suggesting that it'd be nice if some more of us downgraded so they could see more nooby skills in action.

Look, we've already got what you've been saying here.

• Sisi is for dev's only, and by only their grace are we given the privilege of donating our time to their needs.
• Our needs are pointless.
• SP's on a server designed for testing are super valuable and should not be taken lightly.

That about cover it?

So, here's the thing: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Duality

Duality serves the purpose which you seem to think Singularity serves. Singularity is intentionally designed for players to use. Any questions?

You just confirmed what I told you about Duality. Things are tested there by dev's before being deployed to Sisi. Sisi is where features are attempted to be broken and manipulated by everyone who can muster an evil giggle in order that CCP can decide whether their ideas really are good or if those ideas need tweaking.

What you, and others like you, seem to be afraid of is that people will only use maxed out everythings and capital blobs will fly rampant on Sisi. To a degree, that's true. I'd like to get in an Avatar and play around with it because I'm in the majority of players who will never get to fly one on Tranqulity. You know, for fun.

You're overlooking the greater idea of the intent of Singularity: CCP was by no means obligated to put it up in the way they did, but they wanted to be awesome and give their customer base a nod whereas fiddling with upcoming features is concerned. They've done that to a spectacular degree of success and it's worked very well for some time ... but there's no reason it can't be better. You think that removing the binders we're naturally expected to have on Tranquility will somehow destroy the original purpose of Singularity while simultaneously keeping people from logging in when CCP says to people who love to test things anyway, "Hey, we've got this new thing. Everyone fleet up and see if it breaks, please and thank you?" I fail to see how this logic of yours makes more sense than the idea of CCP telling people like us to adjust our skill sets on the fly and find out what happens. We're on the test server to test things, not to find out just how badass we already are on Tranquility based on our chosen career paths.

This already happens, you say? What's the problem with now vs the potential future? Sounds like you've already got your feared cap blobs.

Let's think of this another way. If people can use whatever they want to use for free, then odds are we'll see a spike of cap usage etc for a while. People will get in them just to derp around and lose a few. Maybe current cap pilots want to see what happens when all their cap pilot buddies all have maxed out skills. Whatever.

After that's over with, it's likely that people would use Sisi as a way to figure out what's really the best thing, which means they'd explore whatever the current meta might be. In today's case, the wrecking ball or fuckyoufleet or whatever people feel like putting together so they can see just how well it works without having to lose whole fleets themselves. Given that this is likely, CCP could take this data during player-based ad-hoc testing and use it in a way separate from their current internal development cycle's needs. They could've potentially identified CPU usage spiking due to all the drones sooner than they did on Tranquility. They could've responded sooner by doing rebalances to encourage players to do something less processor-intensive from the server's perspective.

There are a lot of good things to be said for this approach, and the main arguments balanced against them just don't seem to be quite as functional from where I'm sitting. Would you get people setting some skills to max, well ... yeah. That's kind of a given. On the other hand, you kind of already get tons of people just mindlessly blasting each other with the best crap they can buy from the 100isk store.

See, that's exactly what I'm saying here. During a mass test, CCP could dictate that people have certain things at certain levels and the people who give a crap about mass tests would be only too happy to comply. It wouldn't take anything away from CCP, but it would have a long term investment benefit for them by keeping them from having to manually administer quite so much once the feature were done being implemented. During any other time, CCP gets to see what people are flocking toward and they can use that information as they see fit. If people are allowed to get literally whatever they want on demand, then the pinnacle of one's intererests is immediately revealed in such an environment. There would be perfect data sets on what people are striving to achieve as opposed to what they can do with what they currently have. There would be much less guesswork on where development dollars should be spent based on what people love to do and what people are actively avoiding doing.

That's in large part because you're allowed to use Sisi for your own purposes. Not for CCP's purposes, but for yours.

I'm not saying every new meta will freak CCP out and make them change things, but there's no reason they can't be caught off guard by something because people who wouldn't normally be able to do a thing ... can't actually do that thing. They, therefore, can't exacerbate the symptoms of it in a risk-free environment before it might potentially get out of control and call for an emergency patch. Does this happen often? No; CCP has a very firm grasp on what people will probably do because they've been at this for 10+ years now. Just because it doesn't seem likely doesn't mean it can't be a potentially useful side effect of the whole point of this thing - Sisi is equally important for players and for CCP. To think otherwise would be foolish. To think that CCP doesn't want us to try abusing the rules of the game in a test environment is naive.

The test server rules are basically telling people not to be total jerks to each other. Don't camp gates, don't fight around stations, etc. I'm talking about people manipulating the inherent rules of the game itself. Things like finding the fastest speed tank imaginable that can still reliably deliver at least 300dps or whatever.

New twist on old idea: during the mirroring process, give players who do not have a minimum threshold of SP's (say, 60-80 millon or something) the difference between their actual SP's and that threshold in unspent bonus SP's while also doing a free-form reset or skill reduction thing in one manner or another. We might also consider a minimum bonus SP pool size, too. 5-10 million sounds reasonable.

This would give new players the ability to see what all the fuss is about with regards to things which would be currently waaaay beyond their abilities on Tranquility while also giving the system some leeway in keeping notes on who attends mass tests and adding additional permanent credits for those who assist either on Sisi or by making good suggestions in the forums or maybe by clearly going above and beyond in storyline events. For the storyline event part, it'd be nice if there were a right-click option on Tranquility so CCP staffers can '+1' the action of a guy and leave a kind of invisible note in his character profile which would be waiting as a bonus on Sisi during the next mirror ... or sooner.

For those players who do not generally choose to assist in various ways but who like to use the test server anyway, reducing their skills could just dump their SP's back into the unspent pool so they can enjoy some flexibility while also not getting as much as those who actively try to help out in various channels. It'd be nice for everyone in general to get some SP's for just logging in at least once per day on Sisi since keeping that training queue active just isn't a real priority. Testers of any sort would get at least a little something, but people who really contribute would get more. As far as I know, there's no established rule which says doing things on Tranquility can't give you some kind of perk on Singularity.

Also, just so it doens't sound like I'm backtracking ... this incentivization for attending tests business is apparently a big deal for a number of people. I think it's silly, but it is what it is for you-know-who-you-are and I thought I'd try to come up with an idea which a person with this attitude might endorse as a thought experiment for myself.

New twist on old idea: during the mirroring process, give players who do not have a minimum threshold of SP's (say, 60-80 millon or something) the difference between their actual SP's and that threshold in unspent bonus SP's while also doing a free-form reset or skill reduction thing in one manner or another. We might also consider a minimum bonus SP pool size, too. 5-10 million sounds reasonable.

Just want to start by saying i didn't think a lot about this, and its just an option so please Nomad or hate replies about how I'm dumb because your idea is better. thanks

I didn't read a lot of this thread because most of it seems to be a lot of back and forth between the same two people, but an idea would be during the mass tests give everyone max skills or even possibly 0 - Max Million SP where they can pick and choose where they want to inject it, so they can fly and test what they want. This will be an even bigger incentive to log into SISI during mass events. After a few days when the SP from participation is given lower every ones skills back down to original levels but with the addition of the 2m normal SP addition that we get for participating already.

I doubt this will be easy since they would have to log every ones current SP before the mass test on SISI to lower it back down after all is said and done and may be too much work to be a realistic option but

This would give those who want to fly everything or " Test " a few days to get into the ships they would like to test barring what isn't seeded like Titans and supers IMO those should be earned and would prevent the Mass test from becoming Titan blob.. It also allows the industry and logistics side of the community to test new features such as the crius expansion for few days at a time if they don't have the skills to test it normally and then reverting everything back to the normal SISI environment where if you want to test it, you have to have skilled it yourself, but you will get an idea of what is the necessary skills to train once you figure out which skills are the most important for the activity you are interested in since you have had a chance to see them in action maxed out.

A disadvantage to the everyone gets maxed skills is that not everyone is going to want to test with max skills since in a lot of cases some skills are not worth skilling to 5 on TQ and any testing would not give a realistic view of what you will be doing on TQ, so maybe even an option to OPT out of the max SP at any time when its given but preferably just give X amount of SP that will give most players a lot of testing options that they can inject themselves leaving the Tester to pick and choose how he wants to participate for the few days.