Silva Riley
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Posted - 2008.12.16 11:56:00 -
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Implants and learning skills are a problem in my opinion, because the only thing they do is further all the problems inherent in the Gerontocracy that EVE is doomed to be.
New players do not have the learning skills, nor the implants. Getting them slows them down, while older characters learn faster and faster. This is especially bad, because true new players barely have a chance to train effectively, unless they are willing not to play the game for the first month, while players training up an alt can do so without problems and do not have to worry about the immense cost of implants and skillbooks for their alt.
Why I think that all this is eventually a horrible problem is because it turns EVE into a Gerontocracy. Total dominance of the old with practically no real chance for any new characters to get close to the top and compete with those that came before them. Some claim it is possible, but that is not really the case. Only in freak exotic examples and even then only in a very small and endangered nieshe, or as a result of truly exceptional circumstances.
The longer EVE goes on, the more new players will feel completely insignificant and powerless. The examples are already all over the place. Newb gets ganked and even when he teams up with a dozen equally young characters, he will not be able to get revenge on the one he clashed with. Not even one or two months later. Maybe after three months and half a dozen allies, but only if his foe is all by himself. If he has only one single ally, there is little chance to do anything about it. Goon Swarm has proven perhaps the only way there is and something like Goon Swarm is as good as unique and almost impossible to repeat.
Yet as bad as I think learning skills and implants eventually are, the suggestion in the OP of this thread depicts a solution to something that is the exact opposite of the problem. In fact, the chance of losing implants and the increasing benefit of using less powerful yet more versatile implants later is the only thing that currently evens the field an itsy bitsy tiny bit. Providing a solution that makes that a non-issue would further the biggest long term problem of the game and make everything worse.
I am firmly convinced that the very moment a player can both use and afford +5 implants is the moment where he should not have any guarantee to do so 24-7, unless he is an Empire hugging carebear. The risk of losing these things should remain and never be removed.
If one thing should be changed about implants without getting rid of them altogether, it would be to provide both more incentive and more implants that make it worthwhile for an experienced player to voluntarily pick something without any learning boni at all, in favor of unique other edges.
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