Soldarius
Deadman W0nderland
The 99 Percent
902
   |
Posted - 2014.12.03 21:11:31 -
[2] - Quote
As someone that has a fairly high amount of SP and has lost the maximum possible (1.4M SP) because, yes, I forgot to push buttan after death cloning myself around once, I support this change.
Tbh, I didn't even know that I had lost any SP until 2 weeks and 2 large fleets later with line members intermittently complaining they weren't getting their fleet bonuses.
It went something like this: Check skill sheet. "Where'd WC5 go? How can I possibly have FC4, and not WC5? OH SHITFUCKGODAMNFUCKMYLIFEHATECCP!HATESELF!RRAAAGGGEEEEEQUIT!!!!!!!!
There wasn't even a notice, popup, or anything. Pretty sure I didn't log in for the next week.
The consequences of such SP loss is... ridiculous. Its nearly a month of game time to train 1.4M SP even with +5s and a proper attribute map. I have lots of other things I'd rather be training than something I've already trained once before.
Here's another parable for us old-timers. Ever played D&D? Remember that feeling when you encountered monsters like Vampires, Wraiths, Shadow Dragons, and other undead that could drain your character's levels even unto death? What typically happens when you get hit and the DM says those dreaded words "Whelp. You lose x levels"?
Pencils break, dice fly, and people walk out. Why? Because it took that player a lot of time to get there, time that they will never have back. Sometimes they would even die instantly no matter how many HP they had. It also caused problems for everyone in the group because now that player couldn't perform up to the same skill level as the rest of the party.
Same principle applies here in Eve-O. Permanent experience loss is not only a bad mechanic, but one of the most hated game mechanics ever.
Because SP loss is potentially weeks lost from something someone has had no choice but to wait patiently to get, they are much more emotionally invested in the loss. Not only that, but high multiplier skills within a certain skill set (like Leadership) are generally completed after a remap, very few of which we get. They cannot be spent frivolously and only replenish at a rate one a year.
If you lose that skill while mapped for something else, it takes even longer to retrain that skill than before. I don't know bout everyone else, but I'm not spending 2 remaps just to shave one week off of a 4 or 5 week skill.
Having to pay isk for an upgraded clone to avert this loss was also an indirect time sink. Though to a lesser extent. It didn't take anywhere near as long to get a few dozens of millions of isk. But it was still a time sink, as well as an isk sink. Fortunately, isk costs were reduced enough to make it not quite so painful.
If I as a pilot were buying an actual clone that I could produce, see, and trade rather than some vaporous number on a spreadsheet that has "100M SP" tattooed on it, having a clone would become more immersive and potentially have consequences like people want.
For example: no more clones at your base or corp HQ? You wake up in hisec NPC corp station. RIP deployment for the next 30 minutes while you travel back to base. No loss of SP. But you do have to spend a small chunk of time getting back into the fight.
If the fight is under heavy tidi, you can get back into the action "sooner". But it will still take the same amount of rl time to get there.
This kind of mechanic might even make clone-vat capable ships more valuable, especially in w-space. Running out of clones should not be inconsequential. But neither should it be the rage-inducing, month-long experience in self-flagellation that is has been until now.
http://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY
|