Most people here seem to be focusing on what skill reimbursement strategy CCP will be taking in response to this change. I'm not too concerned about that. I see no reason to believe that we will not be well compensated for our existing skill investment.
There is a much bigger problem with this change:
the amount of training required to fly each race's T1 ship line dramatically increases.Currently, the total amount of training required to get each race's T1 ship skills to V is 17x.
2x (faction frigate) + 0.5x (destroyers / 4 factions) + 5x (faction cruiser) + 1.5x (battlecruisers / 4 factions) + 8x (faction battleship)
Under the new proposal, training for that same ship line jumps to
23x.
2x (faction frigate) + 2x (faction destroyer) + 5x (faction cruiser) + 6x (faction battlecruiser) + 8x (faction battleship)
(More accurately, training a single faction takes the same time for each, but training each additional race adds the equivalent of an 8x skill to the requirement.)
As a result, the amount of training required to fly all races' T1 ships has increased by the equivalent of
4 Battlecruiser skills! That's unacceptable. Making players grind much more time to fly T1 ships is a bad thing for the game. It punishes both newer players and players who want to cross-train into a new race. I understand why you are making the changes and I support streamlining and simplifying the skill requirements, but you have to consider the rather massive amount of additional SP required by the players to fly the most basic ships under the new proposal.
There's a simple solution to the problem:
reduce the training time for each T1 ship skill.
Faction Frigate (1x)
Faction Destroyer (2x)
Faction Cruiser (4x)
Faction Battlecruiser (5x)
Faction Battleship (7x)
That's a total of 18x, only a single 1x skill's worth of additional SP required per faction as the result of a few minor skill adjustments.
Benefits:
- Only a very minor increase in T1 ship skill requirements per faction
- Actually reduces skill requirements for Frigate -> Cruiser over the current skill tree, which empowers new players.
- Minimizes frustration for older players.
- Minimizes skill reimbursement amounts. Even the most generous reimbursement under this plan would require only one 4x skill's worth of SP.