Stuart Price
Caldari
Havoc Inc
Blood Blind
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Posted - 2008.03.05 02:59:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Stuart Price on 05/03/2008 03:01:15
*ZONKING GREAT BIG LONG POST ALERT! BRING SNACKS*
An interesting idea, allow me to retort:
Currently the skill system is fine due to diminishing returns on training skill up to 5. More often than not, having a certain skill at 4 is more than adequate. In the time it takes a veteran to train a skill to 5, a newer player can train two, three, even four skill up to 4, gaining more in terms of actual effectiveness in the same time frame. The veteran will still be better in any areas where he has the skill trained to 5, but only by a small amount, around 5% better on average.
Now ship choice, fittings, tactics and raw piloting skill amount to far more than a mere 5% advantage in any given skill. This has become more relevant as eve has grown, given that balancing is getting fairer and fairer (regardless of what the Ships and Modules forum says!).
HOWEVER!
The countering factor to all this is t2, ships in particular. Just being able to get into a t2 ship requires having one or more skills at 5, let alone having any skills that, whilst not required, are SO useful that not having them is almost unthinkable. Just as you'd be silly to get into a battleship whilst being unable to use large weapons or tank mods there are certain skills you simply need to have trained to make decent use of t2 ships.
This is where newer players have problems. They have to weigh up getting the required level 5 skills against getting a broad skillbase. Before even this they have to make a decision on which t2 ships to fly without even ever having flown them! Often, t2 ships have no similar ship in the t2 lineup in terms of performance or role.
This problem simply did not exist in the days before the first t2 ships were introduced and because of this there was little incentive to train skills to 5. Consequently characters created before t2 ships appeared tend to have FAR wider skillsets than more recent characters, even allowing for the fact they have more skillpoints.
If I was starting today, I'd be overwhelmed by the sheer choice available. Choice is good to a degree but I imagine most newer players simply have no idea what to train for the most part whereas characters like mine are pretty lucky: it only takes a few skilltrains to fly almost any new ships that get introduced since we have all the 'basic' skills trained up to at least 4 already.
The prevalence of t2 ships in pvp and even mining makes this more pronounced. Now specialising can be a good thing, but how to know WHERE to specialise. What if you happend to specialise in something that turns out to be completely different to what you expected? What if you try to play 'chase the FOTM'? If they massively reduced the effectiveness of nanofits you can be sure a lot of newer players who skilled specifically for nanofits are going to be mightily ****ed off.
This is a major cause of hostility to balance changes: Players who have invested the majority of their time and skillsets in a certain ship class or style of play see it nerfed with no recourse but to train up another skillset, having only their now redundant (in their eyes) skills to do it, with no guarantee that THAT won't get nerfed later on.
Having a wider skill base offsets this problem but precludes newer players from flying many (if any) t2 ships, which are often VASTLY superior to t1. There are two solutions that I can see off the top of my head:
1. Faster training rates up to a certain skillcap, then normal progression.
2. Lowered skill requirements for t2 ships.
Neither is a particularly great solution since both have huge negatives associated with them. Unfortunately I feel that if there was an easy solution we'd have had it by now.
*AND RELAX*
"I got soul but I'm not a soldier" |