B Glorious
Imperial Academy
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Posted - 2007.06.07 17:27:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Aramendel
Thermodynamics (rank3, -5% heat damage/lvl) is needed to overload modules.
Skill requirements got changed to lvl 5 engineering, lvl 5 energy management and lvl 4 science.
Eng 5 is pretty much mandatory anyway, sci 4 as well, but EM 5? Seems a bit over the top for a new game feature which is intended to be used commonly.
Not that I personally have that much of a problem with it, EM 5 was on my longterm training list anyway, but as said it seems a bit over the top.
I agree with this pretty much entirely. If CCP wants to try to pre-nerf or at least inhibit people from using heat too much, increasing the skill training time isn't the solution. If it turns out after release that heat is overpowered, then the long skill prerequisites only make it so that those who don't have the skills have to wait through mandatory skill training time before they can compete, and that's not good game design.
My beef is mostly with the Energy Management V prerequisite. While admittedly it is a useful skill to have trained eventually, the skill itself is not important to me now and probably won't be important for a few months yet, especially considering that at the moment I would rather train for HACs or other specialized ships. In the short term, Energy Management V would be nice, but its not going to help me enjoy the game in the short term. If this prerequisite was decreased to Energy Management IV, I could be more than satisfied, and in the end I would still train up EM V at some time.
Not all prerequisites in place are bad or unnecessary, but something like this just reeks of Skinnerean maldesign. If I wanted to slog through weeks of boredom to get a minor reward, I'd go sign up for WoW or just whip out my old diablo II CDs. I'm actually looking forward to using heat and I like the idea as designed overall, but I exhort the devs to reconsider this unnecessary prereq, as it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (don't forget about the Logistics V prereq for the Triage Module, I mean come on dude...) |