EVE Online

Quick thread that explains Time based training and get a discussion going.

Good -

1. It allows you to be truly free to do what you want. You won't mind helping a friend do something. Time based Training really helped the sandbox aspect come out. Because ISK can be awarded by anyone- all you need to do is figure out a way to accrue ISK (which can be purchased with GTC, in my day 30 day GTC was cheap)

2. They used to have 'ghost training'. so if you got busy with other games and found you had no time to play. You could cancel, set a long skill, then be tempted to return to play with that new skill that just popped

3. You do not have to grind PVE, etc to gain skill points. Like I said you are free to pursue your dreams and fun activities here. And you do not have to sit around and figure out ways to maximize your XP like you would in other games. You do not have to spend time doing the most efficient grind but rather just pursue what you find fun.

 4. There is no big number hanging over your head in EVE telling everyone you're a nub. Bad news though- they can nearly guess with alarming accuracy the number of skillpoints you have accrued via your Employment history. WORSE- some might even require you to submit your API key or what have you- to determine exactly what skills you have!

5. It's almost a variant of a skill-based system. You can in theory be anything you want on one avatar. I have 1 character myself, no alts. And he can do anything form perform recon, fly a Battleship, Interceptors, manufacture, trade, etc. With time, you can learn anything you want. but it will take patience.

The BAD -

It's as bad as anyone can obviously imagine. There is a power curve and this bar constantly rises. You will NEVER catch up to vets in skillpoints. And a 5 year vet has the time to train crazy stuff a youngin' will never think to train. something like Acceleration V or whatever for that extra 5% bonus.

On the other hand- it's not as bad as you think. An Interceptor is a feared little ship. A covops ship can provide important tactical data and perform recon. There's a little rock-paper-scissors going on here. Bigger != Better. So while it is as bad as you may think in relation to pure skillpoints it's not as bad as you may think (irony)

1. Race diversity is horrible for new players. If you want to go Fighter route- your optimal choice is normally Caldari Achura or Amarr Cyberknight. Sure, over a short term and for a tight focused build, perhaps EVEHQ might recommend something like Minmatar Brutor tribe. Anyway, most new players go Caldari Achura.

I have a real life friend that picked pure Gallente for trading. However, he got bored with that route. Unfortunately, it is seriously non-optimal for him to train Fighter. So he had to make an alt. That leads to my next bullet

Even so, even if you want to be a Trader you can still go Caldari Achura and do a balanced build. The Trader skill tree isn't all that deep and many skills are low ranking.

CHA is nearly a big handicap many players wish they could offload CHA (Charisma). I'd give it all away from my Gallente if I could. Maybe keep 2-3 CHA that's it

2. In order to train Alts you need another account. In other MMOs, you can usually get a Guild to help you level and enjoy many alternate roles on one account. In City of heroes, they had 'sidekicking' back in my day in which allow vets to help newbs level fast and get caught up. The avg CoX player has bout 3-4 characters at least.  This leads to my next point---

3. You have no control over character learning speed. no matter how hard you work you can never speed up the learning process beyond Implants and Learning skills. Back in my day, if you set a long skill and became podded, your long skill will still keep going with the Implant bonus. Thats gone now. and a +4 Implant isn't cheap and a +5 Implant is very costly

4. Corps usually have high requirements to enter. I was lucky to find a 0.0 Corp to take me in as a newbie. But it was a hard life. I couldn't kill a single rat solo (well maybe the tiny ones but then I'd aggro the sansha BS rats). So most corps won't touch a newbie. But this may vary.

5. Time based Training has no skill queue in this game. If a skill pops in the middle of a busy day you are SOL here. So you need to schedule this game around your real life. Luckily my job is okay with me switching skills fast but I pitty those that cant. Gets better as you get more veteran. For vets, they have long train skills anyway. So usually only the newbies will feel this pain full force.

6. Deep skill trees. One problem is they force players to grab the L5 version of a skill before they can get to another. You won't have any idea if you will like a ship before you get into it. This is somewhat good because it builds anticipation but bad that you have no idea how well this new skill will work for you. so you have to invest a lot of time into a skill tree to unlock something. For instance, to get to Tech II Marauders you need to train Battleship V (36 days+). That is a long time to be sitting there time-grinding out a skill!

It's still a game that has unparalleled PVP depth. That is pretty much only reason I've stuck with it so long. So this is a summary.

yeah, pvp... maybe one day ccp will finally get pvp right.  lord knows they still have no idea how the actual players play.  but hey, at least they make changes TO pvp in order to try to fix it.
"

That's a pretty good summary.  The only real issue that I have with it is that no matter what you do, you are now way behind the curve.  Any PvP game that has a barrier to entry like that is not one that I want to play.  Fighting at a disadvantage, no matter how small, with no real way to close the gap... EVER, is very discouraging.

The other con to the system is that there is no tangible reward for playing (that can be a benefit as well).  There is no sense that you need to log on so you can get this, or I need to do something to get that.  Sure you do it for ISK, but it misses out on the carrot that most other MMOs have.  In those other systems, you go do something to get something and grow your character.  Without that link, you lose some of the anticipation while playing.

It's a neat idea, fits the game well... and is the primary reason that I won't play it. 

Some ways they could avoid this:
(1) Caps on skill points on a character.
(2) Any character under the max SPs trains faster, the less SPs you have, the faster you train.

Either way, they need some way for a player to catch up to people who have played from the beginning if they want to attract players like myself.  Of course the counter to this is that they are doing well on subs and don't need players like myself.

3. You do not have to grind PVE, etc to gain skill points. Like I said you are free to pursue your dreams and fun activities here. And you do not have to sit around and figure out ways to maximize your XP like you would in other games. You do not have to spend time doing the most efficient grind but rather just pursue what you find fun

That right there, EVE isn't about a destination since there IS no destination, there's no max level and no obvious game provided end goal. This means that you can actually start to enjoy the trip itself, instead  of somehow trying to rush to the game's endgoal or be powerleveld (which essentially is skipping game content), being held new carrot's on a stick time and time again.

That single point makes up for any and all bad sides of the system, since it advocates playing instead of rushing. If I wanted game goals like levels, gear, expansions, new levels, more gear, more arena stats, more honor grinding I'd play "that other MMO". Instead I enjoy the FREEDOM this skill system gives and go about my business, whatever that may be at that moment BECAUSE I don't have to worry about grinds.

That freedom is worth everything.

Originally posted by Soraellion

That freedom is worth everything.

 

I also like the fact that my character is my creation, totally unique. No will ever have the exact same skills, or in the same proportion.

When you then add all of the different items the skills can be used with the opportunity for experimentation and variability in game play is enormous.
 

Bstripp you are correct there is no direct skill cap. However, to be fair (trying to wear an unbiased cap here)- there is an indirect skill cap for each ship you pilot.

For instance, I fly a Domi Battleship for PVE. Here is a small portion of relevant skills:

Heavy Drone Op V

Drone Interfacing V

Battleship V

Large Hybrid Turret V

energy/cap skills, etc

Spaceship Command + Evasive manuevers V (for Agility and slightly faster aligns, I fly Intys so I trained these)

Afterburners, Acceleration Control

Okay, EVE has a huge number of skills in the game. But as you see, only a few are relevant to this ship. Some I've taken to L5 (like heavy drones of course) but others I have not.

Anyway, only a small subset of skills is relevant to this ship for successful operation I would say. Sure, there is a common pool of skills that will benefit any ship (like Targeting) however many only benefit that ship

Thus, this is the balance in the game. Veterans have millions of skill points that is irrelevant to the ship you pilot. Our ships that we pilot constrains our abilities.

This is why veterans get killed by newbies all the time in EVE. Due to rock-paper-scissor and ship constraints

This is also why uniqueness has become emergent. Not everyone will train the same skills to Level V so specialists in certain areas are fairly prized I would say

Originally posted by PatchDay

Anyway, only a small subset of skills is relevant to this ship for successful operation I would say. Sure, there is a common pool of skills that will benefit any ship (like Targeting) however many only benefit that ship

Thus, this is the balance in the game. Veterans have millions of skill points that is irrelevant to the ship you pilot. Our ships that we pilot constrains our abilities.

This is why veterans get killed by newbies all the time in EVE. Due to rock-paper-scissor and ship constraints

This is also why uniqueness has become emergent. Not everyone will train the same skills to Level V so specialists in certain areas are fairly prized I would say

This is the point I always make whenever this comes up - even the most grizzled, battle-hardened vets rarely have more than 7-8M skillpoints in play at any given time.  Having a bazilion skillpoints makes a character in Eve able to do more things, not (directly) more powerful.  A newbie becomes 'caught up' to the vets when he realizes this and stops being too scared to go out and actually try to do something.

As for time-based training - you either love it, or you hate it.  There's really very few people in the middle.  I love not having to grind away at crap in order to up my skills, and I like that I can take a break and keep my skills rolling.  I'm just about at 15M SPs, not a rookie anymore by any standard, but I still see people with 3-4x my SP total on occassion and they still pop because they're in a ship they're not very good at flying, they got mobbed at 5:1 odds, they fell into a trap and got forced into a fight they can't win, etc.

SPs are somewhat like Eve's 'levels', but unlike level-based games your SP total is not a good direct indicator of how good of a pilot you are.  People with lots of SPs are probably pretty experienced and know what they're doing, but a month-old rookie who's someone's alt can be just as deadly, if not deadlier because you tend to underestimate their abilities.

just as an aside...

to a rookie, 7-8m sp is a TON.

not a lot of people max ALL the learning skills; but if you do, that's 5.376m sp just on learning skills.

now, for a rookie pilot to get 7-8m sp in whatever ship they're flying... you have to take into account that the rookie is also going to probably have a couple million sp invested in learnings.

i don't know...  the "i can't catch up" thing never really hit me.

at this point, i honestly don't understand it.  to what is someone never going to catch up?

total skill points?  no, you won't catch up in total skill points to someone who has maxed all their learning skills and normally has a set of +5 implants in their cranium.  no, you won't.

what does that matter?  what affect does that have on YOUR gameplay?

ooooooo i can't fly a titan 3 days after starting playing.  so?  how long is it going to take for your character to hit max level in another mmo?  once that character is there... are they done? or do you NOW have to start grinding for gear or something?    once you're flying a titan, (right now) you're pretty much at the pinnacle of the largest monster ship you CAN fly. 

but again... that's what i don't understand.

there is no one best thing to be or achieve in eve.   can that titan pilot man the guns on a death star?  can he run a pos or have any idea of what all is involved with the production side of the house? trading? mining? hauling? exploration?  

i can get in a stealthy ship and go exploring (as in using probes) or exploring/scouting (as in flying around a spying on folks, or just seeing what is out there).  i can do that all day long if i want, for days on end.  if i'm having fun... then honestly... what does it matter if i have 1m or 100m sp?

these corporations and alliances... these are ARMIES.  every army/navy has a variety of people in a variety of positions.   not everyone flies a tomcat, not everyone drives a tank, not everyone s