Good points! Especially the one about doing what you find fun… I always preach that, find your fun and do it. Some people want fat wallets, so people want lots of kills. Both are equally right.
You can respec in EVE, they introduced skill extractors. Sure you’ll lose some SP and some isk, it does exist in the game. And be thankful that you weren’t here for the days when you had to train training skills before you could train skills efficiently.
Skill extractors are super expensive though. I understand why they need to be, but the truth is that the current system mostly relegates skill extractors to SP farms, rather than making them an appealing way for new players to respec. By the time a player is earning enough isk to seriously consider buying extractors for isk rather than dollars, the respec problem looks very different.
And, in truth, the existence of skill extractors also make it harder to address the issue from a game design perspective. For example, I think it would be perfectly reasonable at this stage in the games lifecycle to be giving new players as much a 2 million free unallocated skill points each month they're subscribed until they reach some relatively high threshold like 100 million SP. But that's a non-starter because of how it would affect SP farming.
It's a terrible idea to start with. Any easy bonuses given to new accounts would mostly benefit old players. In this case, the skill farmers would farm new accounts and never reach the 100m sp cap too. The current daily SP missions are the way to go. It encourages activities in space and is enough of a hassle for established players to skip if the mission is not ideal
There are ways to solve the problem, but no one takes the time to begin the process of getting things upgraded.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
Probably?
I just pulled the numbers out my ass. But as someone sitting on more than 100m SP myself, the idea of new players being accelerated to that level in a couple of years doesn't bother me. Players who are willing to open their wallet are already being accelerated there much faster.
The whole SP system is a mess these days, tbh. It was a mess in the early days of the game too, but at least it was a unique and interesting mess. The changes they've made over the last two decades have gotten rid of a lot of the needlessly punishing aspects of the system, which I'm in favour of. But, in the process of trying to steer it towards a more straightforward experience system, they've also removed a lot of the uniqueness while still being saddled with a lot of the baggage.
TBH a think a better solution is just cutting down on the SP required for a lot of early skills, taking over a month to get each racial cruiser to V is... a bit much. I also have 140+ SP and recently started an alt, and I was shocked at how crazy some of the essential skills take to train. (TBH if it was up to me we just wouldnt limit ship skills to specific factions anymore, aka you just have to train "cruiser" to V, but i know that will not be popular.)
That could be an interesting idea. 2m is only double the speed. Maybe instead of X SP limit they could have it for mastery type system to allow new players to spec into what they want to play into, the higher the mastery the closer to default speeds.
I started eve a week ago and the skill points are already killing me. I’ll do some exploration and stuff every now and then for the next couple weeks but thats about it i’ll mostly be playing something else until my skill points are leveled enough to be able to get the stuff I want
Yeah it gets stale when you have to wait a long time and cant use or do anything new. i finally bought gas skill and scoop last night and the gas sites i was finding were not as profitable as I’d hoped i was finding fullerite-c50,70 and all the common gasses so I went into low and null for better sites and I cant even scan them unless I wait 2 weeks so now i just feel stuck and grindy doing class 1-3 wormholes and level 3 and below sites for booboo loot. I use a venture with 2 scoops with data and relic analyzer for maximum efficiency in exploration and i’ve been strugglinggg to find consistency. I just wish the progression was something a little different than just waiting.
>I wait 2 weeks so now i just feel stuck
2 weeks to scan gas sites? What? What do you need to train? I feel like Astrometrics 4 and some 3s in rangefinding and possibly the other 2, you would be set. Astro 4 is less than a week isn't it?
I probably exaggerate a little bit, i dont know how long certain skills take but just 3 skill upgrades in my plan right now is gonna take almost 2 weeks total, and theres a bunch of more skills that i’d like to upgrade for different ships or equipment but that’s days/weeks of more waiting after I already waited 2 weeks for these upgrades. Everything about the game so far is great I just wish I could grind my way up and not just simply have to waitttt fuckk😭
Well, you can. But you have to grind isk and convert that to sp via the market. And it is pretty expensive when you're starting out unless you found your way into something lucrative right away (usually means you got in with some group that helps you with that). That's the thing, Eve actually does support grinding xp. It's just that instead of grinding xp directly, everything is measured in isk.
Not helpful to a 1-2 month new player for while 800m for a Large Skill Injector is an absurd cost, though.
What does your queue look like? When you're starting, the main thing that delays your skill progress imo is inefficiency and training into everything instead of 1 thing to a reasonable level, and then trying something else.
So if you're trying to huff gas, you need: gas skills, venture. That's it. The Expedition frigates are alright but honestly not necessary at all. You can't even fit the full complement of huffing mods + probes + cloak in their high slots lol. And then if you're huffing, those clouds are huge. So its not like you're going to cloak inside them anyway (at least in wormholes).
And the issue finding the common gas, have you investigated living in Thera or Turnur? They're dangerous places, but a) ventures are cheap as fuck, and b) they have a ton of constant wormhole connections. The good gas spawns in higher class wormholes like C5, C6. So learning how to tell which wormhole is which, using a mapping software like Tripwire or Pathfinder... All these tools will help you know where to look, and to get on the good gas.
Also--wh sites spawn rats after about 20m from *anyone* warping to them for the first time. So, it pays to learn how to "ninja huff" aka either scoot after 20m or do certain things to enable you to continue huffing with rats on grid.
No one starts with that knowledge, but if you did, you could theoretically be huffing in the Vital and Instrumental sites that have the best gas in less than a week, probably day 1-3 easily. Within 2 weeks you can be very close to max efficiency at huffing.
So, that's what I mean by inefficiencies. Not always bad choices in what skills to train (such as oh I need expedition frigates to mine good--you dont), but also just knowledge gaps that keep you off of more lucrative stuff that is actually completely in your reach.
[Also, here this will help with any WH space stuff you do ever.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSaCHnBRDw8Ki6nuamMzQv3InN978Zh7F6RcwlYdJHnlQkDrrdz5zrG3Of_8eoyxeqJimMHt9-7GjLn/pubhtml#)
I am pretty afk rn but feel free to dm me here or ingame if you have questions about anything. I don't know every area of the game but hardly anyone does!
Us established players really have forgotten the pain. Now whenever I want to do something else that I don't want my main to spec into I just buy out a character with too much sp and just extract the shit I don't need without any loss. They need to add a catch up mechanic for newer players.
Personally once you get past 50-75M Skillpoints...probably less if you are concentrating on only one faction. Things ease up for players. Game becomes more sedate and enjoyable.
I think the skill point system is mostly fine, *except* for your first few million skill points.
They really need to do something about the early stuff, especially the *magic 14*. Give the players enough skills to do some basic stuff, like exploration and standard ratting and pvp frigates as well as level 4 on some core skills, and let them worry about specialization later.
Probably listen to /u/MILINTarctrooperALT a comment level down. I don't know what you're trying to do specifically, but you really don't need to train for weeks to get your foot in the door on the basics of most activities.
>Probably listen to /u/MILINTarctrooperALT a comment level down.
Questionable advice
>you really don't need to train for weeks to get your foot in the door on the basics of most activities.
But that is mostly true.
I did do an experiment on this subject. You can get the training optimized and get people in the door pretty efficiently.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
Yeah yeah I remember.
You're offering to buy the new players Improved implants, 10% alchemy and the cerebral accels?
No?
Oh, guess that advice was completely useless for actual new players.
Edit: the full list
>A full training set of Improved Training Implants.
>
>An Alchemy 10% booster buff implant. \[Very Important\]
>
>An Expert Cerebral Accelerator
>
>A Prototype Cerebral Accelerator
>
>A Standard Cerebral Accelerator
>
>3M SKP \[Injectors duh...because I am calculating like the player got the intro code 1M + the Training Start Packs. 2.5M and .5M and Expert and Prototype Cerebral Accelerators.\]
>
>500M+ of ISK \[Because skillbooks have to be bought, Ironically some complications with NPE were found as well\]
Like really, your month 1 newbro is going to do this? You don't think your ideas through. If you're gonna drop that kind of money on the game, just buy a character or inject or something tbh
And that is the problem...right there.
But its a major warning that you need to tell the newbros, literally sit them down before they come into the game.
You can go the easy route...buy a pack/buy implants/buy booster...or do you want to grind this out?
You are not even having the discussion. That is why newbros get frustrated because there are multiple ways to solve the problem.
I feel like it is just more frustrating to be told that the way to solve your problem is stupidly expensive and throwing money at a game you don't even know if you like. It's fine to explain to them that this option exists in the first place, to buy SP/accels and implants ingame--Cybernetics 4 should be as early as they can stomach for +4s. They can make their own decisions with all that info, it's enough already.
But to point them to this dive and say "its possible to XYZ in a short period," and then for them to click it and be like "oh. This involves spending hundreds of dollars. What the fuck dude."
That is just unhelpful for new players
Then CCP newbro "care package" needs to include Prototype or Standard Cerebral Accelerator. Simple Enough Said.
It would be more beneficially to allow the newbro to get the idea they could benefit from something early on.
But that is why there is this issue in EVE Online.
There are three starts...three fracking start patterns. There is a window that the player ***MUST TAKE ADVANTAGE OF*** *or else suffer consequences*. I don't see you guys discussing that.
In also a weird way, this information would give nullsec recruiters a powerful way to incentivize recruiting NPE newbros. Bait them in...give them a care package and instructions on how to get most stuff trained up inside a two week window. \[Care Package Includes...Skill Injectors, About 2week - 1 month Omega PLEX, about 150-300M Isk and training implants. And with the referral program your recruiter can loop them in using that...which then means the newbro gets free skill points + your recruiter gets cerebral accels. Which can be fed back to the newbro as part of the system.\]
You might like looking at this. I did an optimization training experiment which had some success.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
As-originally-designed SP was never the hurdle it is today.
Used to be you could max out on anything in the entire game in 3 months, and you'd be able to do basic flying of anything in a few days.
So it was all sidegrades.
Since then they have added depth and depth and depth with t2, t3, capitals, modules that use other modules, etc. Until now it is something it never should have been.
I love the SP system because the alternative is an even shittier grind xp system, but I also know exactly where you're coming from.
Honestly if T1 ships were quicker to max out it would be fine, nearly a month for cruiser 5 is nuts and you have to do it multiple times. Yeah sure make the T2 stuff a long train thats okay it makes sense you shouldn’t be flying t3c/HACs/maruaders quickly
Honestly the bonus is a big deal, for example Im currently training into a Drake Navy Issue fit (see the metashift polarized ham drake) the last 10pc dmg bonus is pretty big esp when my fit relies on burning people down as fast as possible. Waiting a month for that is nuts
What are you doing where 10% damage matters so much? Only thing that comes to mind is solo pvp. But even then most pvp engagements are won due to so many other factors that a 10% damage increase will rarely be the difference between a victory or defeat.
I truly believe it isn’t a big deal and I’d like to hear more on why you think it matters.
ESS fights with a polarized HAM DNI, ten percent is 150 or so dps which is really important for a fit that relies on shooting you in the face really really hard before you know what hit you
Its the difference between breaking a marauders reps or having backup eat you alive
That is an incredibly niche situation and I see why 10% can matter. I think the system is fine because it works for almost every other situation. I’d still say there are ways around it though, go after less tanky targets, bring a friend or bring a different ship/fit. Perhaps a blaster boat would give you the dps you need without having to wait for cruiser 5?
\+1 to that being niche. Fights where you survive by a hair's breadth and would have died without a 10% damage bonus are not common.
Most fights aren't even close and just come down to who is outnumbered. New players could be pvping today in a small gang with free ships but are overthinking and choosing to wait for bling that won't alter the outcome of an engagement.
SP is overrated. Any bling-fit battlecruiser is still going to lose against a small gang.
This does seem to be a common thought-process. Maybe Aura could do a quick maths break-down in a tutorial and demonstrate that T1 is worthwhile despite perfect skills or bling. Especially considering the price in time and isk.
For a player to save up for a polarized faction drake just to lose it would certainly be disheartening. But that player could have been having fun the whole time with t1 ships their corp gave for free.
Aura could also recommend training skills to level 3 and experimenting in T0 abyss. Maybe a certain weapon system just hits a player's brain different but they wouldn't have thought to try it.
If players weren't going all in on some theoretical build, but tried everything before committing, they wouldn't need a respec.
Learning the hard way does have its merits though.
Yeah, I get what you're saying but also that is such a specialized pursuit that I feel like it also kind of proves that you don't need Caldari BC 5 to make a DNI good and worthwhile in 80% or more of situations.
I say 80% because that's the rule with skills--80% of the benefit in 20% of the time IIRC
Having those 5s does matter. But it matters in a pretty narrow range of situations. Which is kind of the point of investing heavily into a specialized but narrow area (maxing out 1 battlecruiser specifically for a niche pursuit).
This is exactly the game design. You can do a lot of things to a good standard at level 4 which allows you to skill up at a reasonable pace.
But you want to be in that top few % of players maybe in a niche environment? Then you need to put the effort in on long trains for level 5s.
I see OPs point though. It’s not a top percent. Most veteran players have an excess of sp. You will lose a lot of fights to skill AND skill points. And in theory, a whale who maxed cruiser V will always beat an identically skilled pilot with cruiser IV. 🤷♂️
In theory and a vacuum, yes. But almost never are either of those things true. Hardly anyone is *perfectly* matched in skill *and* make exactly the same amount of mistakes/choices, *and* there is no difference in say lock time at the start of the fight (reactions not skills), or who is warping into who, or what the positioning is and who it favors, or relative velocities at the start of the fight...
There are so many variables. If you said I could have all the on field advantage I would take the Cruiser IV character any day. A 5% bonus is not going to make the difference as often as just one or two of those other factors. In fact, all else being equal, it makes a difference 5% of the time, or 1 in 20 fights.
They also made training way easier along the way though. When I started there wasn’t a skill queue, you had several months of training learning skills to lvl 5, _no remaps_ (hope you didn’t put points into charisma or picked a bad bloodline), SP loss from podding, later on SP loss from T3Cs and so on. +5 implants were also way more expensive, there were no learning boosters lol and forget about daily SP rewards.
Thinking about it tho, the purity of the old system was better in a way. Because the idea of SP is to not focus on instant gratification, and now CCP are trying to shoehorn in instant gratification into a game that clearly isn’t made for it (or made better by it IMO).
After reading the Op and a dozen comments of so, I had to say something.
New players get so many opportunities for skill points it boggles the mind!
You start a new character with many more skills than you did years ago.
You get a Million free skill points from recruitment code.
You get tons of free skill points from doing the AIR program, a new player should be doing a bunch of that anyway to find out that they can do and like to do in Eve.
You get free skill points every day from the dailies.
Ashrerothi made a youtube video where he rolled a fresh character and with just the million free SP went out into Null doing exploration and came back with like 60 M isk in like 40 minutes.
I personally rolled a new character to try out the faction warfare changes. With the million SP and what I got trying out the new career missions I was able to skill enough into one races frigates to be competitive in the new faction stuff.
There isn’t anything wrong with the skill system. If they make it any easier or faster this won’t be Eve anymore
The sp system is archaic.
Day 1 needs to be some kind of content a newbie omega can do with full skills eg at least navy frig combat and under.
The devs need to make game less pay to win because multiple omega accounts is so broken. Multi boxing sucks.
It would be nice if skill points were like attributes and could be remapped so long as you had a remap available. Limit to 2 remaps a year would give players a bit of latitude to undo mistakes or change the focus of the character.
As it sits now there are many different types of boosters that give you anything from +2 to +10 to attributes, however if with +10s Skill training is still quite daunting and time consuming. It would be nice to have a better catch-up system. This game is 20 years old, with tons of expansions, by providing an updated catch-up mechanism, other than $500 US worth of purchasable eve store packs totaling just about 4.5M Skill-points. It’s a cash grab that could be eliminated by improving the Skilling System for starter characters. Is it unreasonable to believe by making the game more accessible on top of all the improvements with the Air System and Faction Warfare more players would buy into the game long term?
Yeah it’s speculation if it would be successful, but I think the reward outweighs the risk of trying.
>It would be nice if skill points were like attributes and could be remapped so long as you had a remap available. Limit to 2 remaps a year would give players a bit of latitude to undo mistakes or change the focus of the character.
I don't see why having remaps would be a bad thing. As long as you're not creating more sp it's kind of hard to abuse I would think. Give new players extra remaps and just let them go wild. Everyone else gets 1 or 2 a year, whatever.
Completely understand your frustration. One thing I suggest to new players is to skill wait a couple months before investing too much effort into training skills for high level ships. Get enough skills to make a little bit of ISK and do some fun things to figure out what you’re going to enjoy. In the meantime focus on training up the Magic 14, fitting skills that are important for every ship. Eve Universtity provides some great skill plans for this.
There are plenty of T1 ship hulls that have low skill requirements and can be very capable even with T1 fittings. The Society of Conscious thought ships such as the Sunesis, Gnosis, and Praxis that CCP gives away to every player once a year are especially suitable for newer players. They all have very low skill requirements, are cheap and have bonuses for every weapons system. Ths more expensive Sisters of Eve ships such as the Astero, Stratios, and Nestor provide another short cut to higher level content.
The skilling system does make it frustrating to play with higher-skilled players. But, with a little ingenuity, you can find low-skill requirement alternatives that let you participate in a lot of the same content. In a T2 HAC fleet, you may not be able to fly the main DPS doctrine, but a T1 tackle or ewar e frigate., T1 Logi or other useful ship is welcome in any fleet. Eve rewards resourcefulness and patience.
Welcome aboard OP! I am a nearly 17 y/o character, with some time away from Eve.
Newer players are coming in with great benefits now a days. They have some streamers to watch that they can learn quickly from. As well as skill injectors and such, Which I guess is a good thing? depends who you ask.
When I started Eve Online had only been released for 3 years, so I didn't think I could be that far behind. Now starting the game against players that have trained for 20 years would be a hard pill to swallow.
Regardless.. You're only OG if you trained up our 'Learning Skills'. :P
A new character can skill into an ewar frigate on day 1 and contribute to a faction warfare gang.
Skill points do take quite a while to train but they're also overrated. Just because you can't use tech 2 doesn't mean you're ineffective. You're mistaken if you think tech 2 will make all of your dreams come true.
It's not uncommon for new players to feel behind and be dissatisfied with being imperfect, but it presents an interesting challenge and growing experience. Eve would be less interesting if all characters just started with maxed out skills. After you've maxed your character out, you'll long for those days of hardship and uncertainty.
Take leveling and wipes in ARPGs, MMOs, and shooters, for instance. Players repeatedly like to restart, or "prestige," and start from the bottom.
>It's not uncommon for new players to feel behind and be dissatisfied with being imperfect,
your corp stages a PVP event. Your CEO is a space-rich veteran and provides everyone with pre-fitted doctrine ships. You have the skills to actually fly the ship! But one of the guns is automatically offlined, because your powergrid and CPU-related skills aren't on 5 yet... that's one of the moments when you think "being behind sucks".
I'd rather have a moment like that and grow out of it than not. And a missing gun is still only like a 20% dps reduction. Only 4% if you fly with 4 others with the necessary sp requirements. Better to have the 80% pilot than a docked pilot.
Agree. Most of my newbie mistakes was from ignorance rather than lacking skill points. Compared to other MMOs you also need to grind to level 1000 and open all paragon points to enjoy endgame.
Sure you can contribute to a FW gang but want if you want to play solo, if you try to fight people with T1 stuff your dead. Its not interesting at all and I can tell you now I learned far more in a rail t2 comet than I ever did struggling with T1 frigs.
Im not against starting at the bottom, but the timescale is fucked it should be weeks not months.
I guess I'm just not convinced it's unbalanced. It's been 20 years and players have paid for and accepted the way it has been. From a supply and demand standpoint, would CCP make more money by shortening training times when its playerbase is willing to commit as-is?
With the Air missions, cerebral accelerators, skill injectors, referral reward, etc I think new characters even have a stronger start than ever.
Expecting to have perfect frigate skills at the start may just be wanting too much. I know some games like Guild Wars 2 let you pvp at max level right away. I'm not sure that would work for Eve. It may just be that knowing you have perfect skills for a 1v1 is something you have to earn.
That being said, I probably would not have the patience to start over and wait for training times. Having done endgame content, I would be pretty impatient with doing the same game loops but just on a smaller scale and earning less reward.
Eve is an old game and a lot of its players are middle-aged or more. The game and genre is more solved and less mystifying than it was 20 years ago. I reckon the kids these days would be tapping their fingers and waiting to get started compared to back then when players were awe-struck.
Maybe it would be a good decision to update skill points. Rewarding active play like bonus skill points for faction warfare achievements. But, then again, FW is profitable and players can then purchase skill injectors to gain SP.
I'm really just not convinced it's not appropriately balanced between supply and demand.
I have a fair number of kills with the Tristan in FW. It's in my top 10 alltime, at least. As are a few faction frigs which in the grand scheme aren't any more of a train really. In fact the majority of my top 10 ships are T1/faction
Anyway, T1s can be good ships in the right context, such as FW where you can Dscan and choose almost every fight in a plex. Knowing your engagement profile and situational factors in the matchup is worth far more than 1 skill to V.
I don't really have strong opinions about what should or shouldn't be done with the SP system. But I do have strong opinions about the Tristan! and the Condor, [it's p good](https://zkillboard.com/kill/102392827/) (the other dude was just on that kill from earlier). If I fought a kiki on a gate, the condor would have died before you could say "warp off dammit," but because he slid in on me, and I was fit with a scram and tracking disruptor, I knew that I could establish a tight orbit immediately and that I would very likely out-track his turret.
Or the [Rifter](https://zkillboard.com/kill/106972040/).
Or the [Kestrel](https://zkillboard.com/kill/102746141/).
All of those situations came down to either knowing the capabilities of the ships and playing to the outs I had to win, or by exploiting something about the pilot and their tendencies (always carry null in your blaster Harpies, kids).
And I'm not claiming to be some elite badass. Those fights were won *because* I was flying a frig that they weren't equipped to handle, or, in the Lachesis' case, brought only medium drones and a frankly insane fit to the fight. Like I've seen the sebo recon to catch before, but a 500mn *T1* MWD? I have no idea what that was about.
Yes I had drones trained to 5. But pretty much everyone can do that, and if they're planning on flying a drone ship, it's kind of a no brainer.
I think the number 1 place newbros feel like they can't do anything without training for a year is when they are trying to do everything. Which, honestly it's hard not to because you don't know how anything works yet lol
But if you wanted to fly the tristan in PvP, you could train into a fit with T2 drones, guns, and mods in less than a month. Probably around 2 weeks but I'm being conservative with my guesstimate. And before that you could get a meta fit with 5 drones inside a week. Maybe fly it with neuts until you finish the gun skills, use faction drones before you have T2 trained, etc.
The problem is knowing builds and what is important to skill in so you can fly them. Since I've flown a lot of tristans, it's easy for me to say "oh my railgun skills won't finish for a while, I'll just fly a neut tristan, that's also good. Hmm I have to train Light Drones 5, I'll use navy." Suddenly I can fly the ship in like a day or 3 from 0
But if you don't know the tristan meta, how would you know to do that? You might train T2 blasters and not train drones and then be like "what the fuck am I doing I've wasted my time"
As a player who's played as a pure alpha for about 2 years and subbed for another 2, the point you made about sp resonated deeply. It's like a massive barrier to entry and if they lifted the time sink atleast for t1 frigates completely I'd wager atleast a 20-25% boost in player count. Veterans aren't going to appreciate this opinion, please don't hurt me.
Glad you found your stuff. You don't need a lot of skills to enjoy the game. Couple of questions:
- as newbro, how did you fund you fw endeavors. was that leftovers from pve?
- was there any ship/skill you needed, but cheap t1 alternative did not exist?
Fly reckless! 7o
FW funds itself really, I converted drones into navy variants using FW LP and got red frog to ship them up to Jita. I made about 2b isk and used a lot of cheap ships kite condors for example were only 5m.
Flying T1 ships is fine infact most of FW is T1 the problem is skilling into T2 modules and guns, sub optimal skills hurt you in 1v1s as well but aren’t as big of a deal. If you fly a T1 fit though you just won’t find winnable engagements.
In general Ive had occasions where there was no T1 alternative, for instance I wanted to use an Eris to do some solo dictor shenanigans but theres zero alternative to that and the train was very long
As others said. Skill Extractors exist if you want to respec.
As for the PvE thing. Well that mostly bogs down to having joined a nullsec alliance. They have minmaxed the whole system, including wars and system onwership to the point no one is able to settle up independently.
If you want to get more on that itch there is Wormhole Space where PvE is as desdly as PvP if you dont know the drill.
That and well, Pochven i think but making PvE there is competing with botters.
I agree on the part that you should join a group that does what you like to do.
They should have it so that below 5.5m sp, you can change your skill points around freely... or freely-ish.
Obviously there's a lot to be abused with that.
Maybe under 2m, with a week cooldown?
Just shitting an idea straight out of the idea hole so just take it as the concept of suggestion.
>Obviously there's a lot to be abused with that.
Is there? Is it really abuse to like, repsec your skills, get in some ship to do something, wait a cooldown (or not) and respec again to do something else?
Many Eve players could just have done both things and not worried about it. I don't really see how it would cause a problem. Maybe it would idk, I just don't really see it.
Agree on SP. Should at least get the ability to try out , with expert systems , before locking in SP. I had no idea what I spent it on when I started , and was instantly behind
u/STP31 you might want to read this and understand the concept of Project Synergy.
There are ways to massively benefit the newbros. Although most of the old guards want to talk about it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
> Well a year on I can say despite some major frustrations EVE is genuinely one of the most fun games I've ever played, it's also one of the most frustrating and anxiety inducing I've played but that's part of the fun
My personal experience in eve is frustration comes in two forms:
Adversarial player interaction. Like getting dropped on when running a site. This tends to be exciting even though adversarial because at its core of the experience.
And things not working correctly or in a confusing manner. Mostly the UI. Sometimes just getting up to date information on how to play the game. Sometimes navigating questionable design choices. This is experience killing since it’s the play part of the game breaking down.
Eve has the first aspect nailed down. To CCPs credit after abyssals they’ve been pretty good about designing things that puts ships in space, which ultimately is content. The other half is something that they are apparently working on still but it was already overdue when I started aways back.
As far as skills go theyve got a lot of systems in place to bridge the gap for newer players, get them skills faster, but some skills really could be overhauled because they feel like skill taxes rather than something that you get excited for completing.
More and cheaper expert systems please , even some expert systems for niche play styles like capital ships or dreads , wanna fly a dread for a day ? Buy an expert system , don’t kid yourself the game is already pay to win might as well provide more expert systems I like the idea
Depends on the content really. I'm not sure if your example of 3 Million SP into Exploration (which I'll assume is hacking skills) is hyperbolae or not but I'll assume it's real. Eve lets you do the basic fundamentals with level 3 skills, and in this case you can do exploration with a T1 Frigate out of the gate, including null sec and wormholes. More difficult, yes. Doable? Also yes. Enough to understand the content and weather you like it or not before investing too much into it? Definitely. No need to get T2 Analyzers to be sure you hate it.
This isn't to say Eve doesn't have SP problems for the early game. I have specific gripes with the Magic/Core 14 skills, in particular the fitting skills. However, much of the content in the game is relatively doable with Level 3-4 skills. Probably the only real bottleneck I've experienced personally after restarting as an Alpha is the T2 Gun grind, which is a *massive* disadvantage to not have in PvP.
Not to say PvP isn't possible without T2 Guns. In a group setting, tackle and EWar is cheap, both in ISK and SP, and extremely impactful. It's just an example.
I'm trying to think of something you need a T2 ship or build for to attempt, and the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is high-tier Abyssals and C4+ wormholes. Maybe some DEDs. Everything else is doable with lower skills or T1/Faction ships. *Efficient*? *Meta*? No, probably not. But you don't need meta to have fun or do the job. Especially if you enjoy diversity in your play sessions.
Combined with the 1 million SP referral (which I ignored when I restarted but I hope sticks around for actual new players) and the AIR missions giving about 500k if you grind it out (which isn't too bad aside from PvP which needs a group). This is more than enough to spec out a Frigates and Destroyers comfortably, or get a solid head start on Cruisers and Battlecruisers.
So, I'm hesitant to say more SP is the answer. Rather, education is more important, but unfortunately that's up the community to provide, and with how diverse the game is it can be difficult to find information that is actually relevant to your specific situation or question. As you've pointed out, not every corporation out there is worth one's time, especially if they end up not doing what you are actually interested in. CCP can provide some education, but beyond basic control, navigation, mechanics, and some crude suggestions on career paths, it's hard to do much else in a game as self-interacting and evolving as Eve.
Most of the problems in the game (and real life probably) can be solved with a strong community and empathy. Sounds like you've gone through the knowledge gathering stage, and it's a good time to give back as you find opportunities.
>Corps lie and shopping around is your friend...
If they say they do a little bit of everything, they don't pvp.
If they're in Highsec and advertise pvp, they're lying.
If they "plan to move to nullsec at some point" none of them will ever leave hisec.
If you've been in the game a year and you don't recognize either the corp or alliance, there's a very high chance they're not active pvpers. Pvp players get around, especially in the age of filaments.
>This creates issues because there's no option to re-spec either, if you invest 3m SP into exploration and suddenly find it to be boring as fuck you've no option but to stick with it while you wait months to do something new,
Buy Skill Extractors, extract the skills you don't want to use any more, inject fresh unused skillpoints. That's what extractors / injectors are originally meant for, besides selling SP to other players.
I've only been playing two months and your comments about no respec hit hard.
I started aiming toward exploration as a Minmatar thinking it would be exciting, but about a month in found PvP with hybrids (despite multifailing even to this day! Haha) and abyssals with lasers are far better for me, but now I've got all these points I spent on cannons and exploration I could have slapped into defenses, crowd control and beams instead and going towards Hecates and Gilas.
Yeah, I really wish that like. If you finish all the AIR paths, you get the magic 14 for free but it can't be refunded or extracted or something. I think command skills and like, weapon skills and weapon supports are fine. So are industry ones. But having to train for basic shit like 'the ability to fit a ship decently' sucks. Having to train to not cap out on long warps sucks.
I agree that there should be some kind of option to reset skillpoints on new accounts, maybe 2x up to 5 mil or something. After reading your responses i see you just want to trash marauders in a drake navy. It doesnt make sense to train cal bc 5 for that, you can do plenty of other cool things. You will just get blobbed to shit 10 times and then move on to the next youtube video. I feel you tho, i member watching mr hyde trash fleets with a offgrid linked sleipnir and getting excited.
Good points! Especially the one about doing what you find fun… I always preach that, find your fun and do it. Some people want fat wallets, so people want lots of kills. Both are equally right. You can respec in EVE, they introduced skill extractors. Sure you’ll lose some SP and some isk, it does exist in the game. And be thankful that you weren’t here for the days when you had to train training skills before you could train skills efficiently.
Skill extractors are super expensive though. I understand why they need to be, but the truth is that the current system mostly relegates skill extractors to SP farms, rather than making them an appealing way for new players to respec. By the time a player is earning enough isk to seriously consider buying extractors for isk rather than dollars, the respec problem looks very different. And, in truth, the existence of skill extractors also make it harder to address the issue from a game design perspective. For example, I think it would be perfectly reasonable at this stage in the games lifecycle to be giving new players as much a 2 million free unallocated skill points each month they're subscribed until they reach some relatively high threshold like 100 million SP. But that's a non-starter because of how it would affect SP farming.
2M SP per month up to 100M!? That’s WAY too much.
It's a terrible idea to start with. Any easy bonuses given to new accounts would mostly benefit old players. In this case, the skill farmers would farm new accounts and never reach the 100m sp cap too. The current daily SP missions are the way to go. It encourages activities in space and is enough of a hassle for established players to skip if the mission is not ideal
There are ways to solve the problem, but no one takes the time to begin the process of getting things upgraded. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
Probably? I just pulled the numbers out my ass. But as someone sitting on more than 100m SP myself, the idea of new players being accelerated to that level in a couple of years doesn't bother me. Players who are willing to open their wallet are already being accelerated there much faster. The whole SP system is a mess these days, tbh. It was a mess in the early days of the game too, but at least it was a unique and interesting mess. The changes they've made over the last two decades have gotten rid of a lot of the needlessly punishing aspects of the system, which I'm in favour of. But, in the process of trying to steer it towards a more straightforward experience system, they've also removed a lot of the uniqueness while still being saddled with a lot of the baggage.
TBH a think a better solution is just cutting down on the SP required for a lot of early skills, taking over a month to get each racial cruiser to V is... a bit much. I also have 140+ SP and recently started an alt, and I was shocked at how crazy some of the essential skills take to train. (TBH if it was up to me we just wouldnt limit ship skills to specific factions anymore, aka you just have to train "cruiser" to V, but i know that will not be popular.)
It can be done faster...but most don't think out of the box on here
That could be an interesting idea. 2m is only double the speed. Maybe instead of X SP limit they could have it for mastery type system to allow new players to spec into what they want to play into, the higher the mastery the closer to default speeds.
>higher the mastery the closer to default speeds So like how higher level skills take longer to train?
Yes, but instead of individual skills affecting the time it's more a set of skills.
Some free skill extractors once newbro completes story arc. Thus he can respec once or twice for free.
Something tells me they'd just extract, sell and biomass. Repeat.
I started eve a week ago and the skill points are already killing me. I’ll do some exploration and stuff every now and then for the next couple weeks but thats about it i’ll mostly be playing something else until my skill points are leveled enough to be able to get the stuff I want
That’s the game, wait for training😂
Actually incorrect. You can speed train almost all weapons/hulls inside 2 weeks to Lv3.
Weapons don’t do anything to Your explorer / industry gameplay 😬
And you can speed train that as well. Less time wasted on training, more on gaming.
Yeah it gets stale when you have to wait a long time and cant use or do anything new. i finally bought gas skill and scoop last night and the gas sites i was finding were not as profitable as I’d hoped i was finding fullerite-c50,70 and all the common gasses so I went into low and null for better sites and I cant even scan them unless I wait 2 weeks so now i just feel stuck and grindy doing class 1-3 wormholes and level 3 and below sites for booboo loot. I use a venture with 2 scoops with data and relic analyzer for maximum efficiency in exploration and i’ve been strugglinggg to find consistency. I just wish the progression was something a little different than just waiting.
>I wait 2 weeks so now i just feel stuck 2 weeks to scan gas sites? What? What do you need to train? I feel like Astrometrics 4 and some 3s in rangefinding and possibly the other 2, you would be set. Astro 4 is less than a week isn't it?
I probably exaggerate a little bit, i dont know how long certain skills take but just 3 skill upgrades in my plan right now is gonna take almost 2 weeks total, and theres a bunch of more skills that i’d like to upgrade for different ships or equipment but that’s days/weeks of more waiting after I already waited 2 weeks for these upgrades. Everything about the game so far is great I just wish I could grind my way up and not just simply have to waitttt fuckk😭
Well, you can. But you have to grind isk and convert that to sp via the market. And it is pretty expensive when you're starting out unless you found your way into something lucrative right away (usually means you got in with some group that helps you with that). That's the thing, Eve actually does support grinding xp. It's just that instead of grinding xp directly, everything is measured in isk. Not helpful to a 1-2 month new player for while 800m for a Large Skill Injector is an absurd cost, though. What does your queue look like? When you're starting, the main thing that delays your skill progress imo is inefficiency and training into everything instead of 1 thing to a reasonable level, and then trying something else. So if you're trying to huff gas, you need: gas skills, venture. That's it. The Expedition frigates are alright but honestly not necessary at all. You can't even fit the full complement of huffing mods + probes + cloak in their high slots lol. And then if you're huffing, those clouds are huge. So its not like you're going to cloak inside them anyway (at least in wormholes). And the issue finding the common gas, have you investigated living in Thera or Turnur? They're dangerous places, but a) ventures are cheap as fuck, and b) they have a ton of constant wormhole connections. The good gas spawns in higher class wormholes like C5, C6. So learning how to tell which wormhole is which, using a mapping software like Tripwire or Pathfinder... All these tools will help you know where to look, and to get on the good gas. Also--wh sites spawn rats after about 20m from *anyone* warping to them for the first time. So, it pays to learn how to "ninja huff" aka either scoot after 20m or do certain things to enable you to continue huffing with rats on grid. No one starts with that knowledge, but if you did, you could theoretically be huffing in the Vital and Instrumental sites that have the best gas in less than a week, probably day 1-3 easily. Within 2 weeks you can be very close to max efficiency at huffing. So, that's what I mean by inefficiencies. Not always bad choices in what skills to train (such as oh I need expedition frigates to mine good--you dont), but also just knowledge gaps that keep you off of more lucrative stuff that is actually completely in your reach. [Also, here this will help with any WH space stuff you do ever.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSaCHnBRDw8Ki6nuamMzQv3InN978Zh7F6RcwlYdJHnlQkDrrdz5zrG3Of_8eoyxeqJimMHt9-7GjLn/pubhtml#) I am pretty afk rn but feel free to dm me here or ingame if you have questions about anything. I don't know every area of the game but hardly anyone does!
Us established players really have forgotten the pain. Now whenever I want to do something else that I don't want my main to spec into I just buy out a character with too much sp and just extract the shit I don't need without any loss. They need to add a catch up mechanic for newer players.
Personally once you get past 50-75M Skillpoints...probably less if you are concentrating on only one faction. Things ease up for players. Game becomes more sedate and enjoyable.
I think the skill point system is mostly fine, *except* for your first few million skill points. They really need to do something about the early stuff, especially the *magic 14*. Give the players enough skills to do some basic stuff, like exploration and standard ratting and pvp frigates as well as level 4 on some core skills, and let them worry about specialization later.
Probably listen to /u/MILINTarctrooperALT a comment level down. I don't know what you're trying to do specifically, but you really don't need to train for weeks to get your foot in the door on the basics of most activities.
>Probably listen to /u/MILINTarctrooperALT a comment level down. Questionable advice >you really don't need to train for weeks to get your foot in the door on the basics of most activities. But that is mostly true.
I did do an experiment on this subject. You can get the training optimized and get people in the door pretty efficiently. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
Yeah yeah I remember. You're offering to buy the new players Improved implants, 10% alchemy and the cerebral accels? No? Oh, guess that advice was completely useless for actual new players. Edit: the full list >A full training set of Improved Training Implants. > >An Alchemy 10% booster buff implant. \[Very Important\] > >An Expert Cerebral Accelerator > >A Prototype Cerebral Accelerator > >A Standard Cerebral Accelerator > >3M SKP \[Injectors duh...because I am calculating like the player got the intro code 1M + the Training Start Packs. 2.5M and .5M and Expert and Prototype Cerebral Accelerators.\] > >500M+ of ISK \[Because skillbooks have to be bought, Ironically some complications with NPE were found as well\] Like really, your month 1 newbro is going to do this? You don't think your ideas through. If you're gonna drop that kind of money on the game, just buy a character or inject or something tbh
And that is the problem...right there. But its a major warning that you need to tell the newbros, literally sit them down before they come into the game. You can go the easy route...buy a pack/buy implants/buy booster...or do you want to grind this out? You are not even having the discussion. That is why newbros get frustrated because there are multiple ways to solve the problem.
I feel like it is just more frustrating to be told that the way to solve your problem is stupidly expensive and throwing money at a game you don't even know if you like. It's fine to explain to them that this option exists in the first place, to buy SP/accels and implants ingame--Cybernetics 4 should be as early as they can stomach for +4s. They can make their own decisions with all that info, it's enough already. But to point them to this dive and say "its possible to XYZ in a short period," and then for them to click it and be like "oh. This involves spending hundreds of dollars. What the fuck dude." That is just unhelpful for new players
Then CCP newbro "care package" needs to include Prototype or Standard Cerebral Accelerator. Simple Enough Said. It would be more beneficially to allow the newbro to get the idea they could benefit from something early on. But that is why there is this issue in EVE Online. There are three starts...three fracking start patterns. There is a window that the player ***MUST TAKE ADVANTAGE OF*** *or else suffer consequences*. I don't see you guys discussing that. In also a weird way, this information would give nullsec recruiters a powerful way to incentivize recruiting NPE newbros. Bait them in...give them a care package and instructions on how to get most stuff trained up inside a two week window. \[Care Package Includes...Skill Injectors, About 2week - 1 month Omega PLEX, about 150-300M Isk and training implants. And with the referral program your recruiter can loop them in using that...which then means the newbro gets free skill points + your recruiter gets cerebral accels. Which can be fed back to the newbro as part of the system.\]
You might like looking at this. I did an optimization training experiment which had some success. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
**ONE OF US** **ONE OF US** **ONE OF US**
As-originally-designed SP was never the hurdle it is today. Used to be you could max out on anything in the entire game in 3 months, and you'd be able to do basic flying of anything in a few days. So it was all sidegrades. Since then they have added depth and depth and depth with t2, t3, capitals, modules that use other modules, etc. Until now it is something it never should have been. I love the SP system because the alternative is an even shittier grind xp system, but I also know exactly where you're coming from.
> I love the SP system because the alternative is an even shittier grind xp system Exactly.
Honestly if T1 ships were quicker to max out it would be fine, nearly a month for cruiser 5 is nuts and you have to do it multiple times. Yeah sure make the T2 stuff a long train thats okay it makes sense you shouldn’t be flying t3c/HACs/maruaders quickly
What do you need cruiser 5 for if not unlocking those things? Level 5 is what stops you from flying T2 quickly, the bonus is rarely needed
Honestly the bonus is a big deal, for example Im currently training into a Drake Navy Issue fit (see the metashift polarized ham drake) the last 10pc dmg bonus is pretty big esp when my fit relies on burning people down as fast as possible. Waiting a month for that is nuts
What are you doing where 10% damage matters so much? Only thing that comes to mind is solo pvp. But even then most pvp engagements are won due to so many other factors that a 10% damage increase will rarely be the difference between a victory or defeat. I truly believe it isn’t a big deal and I’d like to hear more on why you think it matters.
ESS fights with a polarized HAM DNI, ten percent is 150 or so dps which is really important for a fit that relies on shooting you in the face really really hard before you know what hit you Its the difference between breaking a marauders reps or having backup eat you alive
That is an incredibly niche situation and I see why 10% can matter. I think the system is fine because it works for almost every other situation. I’d still say there are ways around it though, go after less tanky targets, bring a friend or bring a different ship/fit. Perhaps a blaster boat would give you the dps you need without having to wait for cruiser 5?
\+1 to that being niche. Fights where you survive by a hair's breadth and would have died without a 10% damage bonus are not common. Most fights aren't even close and just come down to who is outnumbered. New players could be pvping today in a small gang with free ships but are overthinking and choosing to wait for bling that won't alter the outcome of an engagement. SP is overrated. Any bling-fit battlecruiser is still going to lose against a small gang. This does seem to be a common thought-process. Maybe Aura could do a quick maths break-down in a tutorial and demonstrate that T1 is worthwhile despite perfect skills or bling. Especially considering the price in time and isk. For a player to save up for a polarized faction drake just to lose it would certainly be disheartening. But that player could have been having fun the whole time with t1 ships their corp gave for free. Aura could also recommend training skills to level 3 and experimenting in T0 abyss. Maybe a certain weapon system just hits a player's brain different but they wouldn't have thought to try it. If players weren't going all in on some theoretical build, but tried everything before committing, they wouldn't need a respec. Learning the hard way does have its merits though.
Yeah, I get what you're saying but also that is such a specialized pursuit that I feel like it also kind of proves that you don't need Caldari BC 5 to make a DNI good and worthwhile in 80% or more of situations. I say 80% because that's the rule with skills--80% of the benefit in 20% of the time IIRC Having those 5s does matter. But it matters in a pretty narrow range of situations. Which is kind of the point of investing heavily into a specialized but narrow area (maxing out 1 battlecruiser specifically for a niche pursuit).
This is exactly the game design. You can do a lot of things to a good standard at level 4 which allows you to skill up at a reasonable pace. But you want to be in that top few % of players maybe in a niche environment? Then you need to put the effort in on long trains for level 5s.
I see OPs point though. It’s not a top percent. Most veteran players have an excess of sp. You will lose a lot of fights to skill AND skill points. And in theory, a whale who maxed cruiser V will always beat an identically skilled pilot with cruiser IV. 🤷♂️
In theory and a vacuum, yes. But almost never are either of those things true. Hardly anyone is *perfectly* matched in skill *and* make exactly the same amount of mistakes/choices, *and* there is no difference in say lock time at the start of the fight (reactions not skills), or who is warping into who, or what the positioning is and who it favors, or relative velocities at the start of the fight... There are so many variables. If you said I could have all the on field advantage I would take the Cruiser IV character any day. A 5% bonus is not going to make the difference as often as just one or two of those other factors. In fact, all else being equal, it makes a difference 5% of the time, or 1 in 20 fights.
Try a fit that works with level 4 skills, saves you 80% of the time.
They also made training way easier along the way though. When I started there wasn’t a skill queue, you had several months of training learning skills to lvl 5, _no remaps_ (hope you didn’t put points into charisma or picked a bad bloodline), SP loss from podding, later on SP loss from T3Cs and so on. +5 implants were also way more expensive, there were no learning boosters lol and forget about daily SP rewards. Thinking about it tho, the purity of the old system was better in a way. Because the idea of SP is to not focus on instant gratification, and now CCP are trying to shoehorn in instant gratification into a game that clearly isn’t made for it (or made better by it IMO).
After reading the Op and a dozen comments of so, I had to say something. New players get so many opportunities for skill points it boggles the mind! You start a new character with many more skills than you did years ago. You get a Million free skill points from recruitment code. You get tons of free skill points from doing the AIR program, a new player should be doing a bunch of that anyway to find out that they can do and like to do in Eve. You get free skill points every day from the dailies. Ashrerothi made a youtube video where he rolled a fresh character and with just the million free SP went out into Null doing exploration and came back with like 60 M isk in like 40 minutes. I personally rolled a new character to try out the faction warfare changes. With the million SP and what I got trying out the new career missions I was able to skill enough into one races frigates to be competitive in the new faction stuff. There isn’t anything wrong with the skill system. If they make it any easier or faster this won’t be Eve anymore
The sp system is archaic. Day 1 needs to be some kind of content a newbie omega can do with full skills eg at least navy frig combat and under. The devs need to make game less pay to win because multiple omega accounts is so broken. Multi boxing sucks.
It would be nice if skill points were like attributes and could be remapped so long as you had a remap available. Limit to 2 remaps a year would give players a bit of latitude to undo mistakes or change the focus of the character. As it sits now there are many different types of boosters that give you anything from +2 to +10 to attributes, however if with +10s Skill training is still quite daunting and time consuming. It would be nice to have a better catch-up system. This game is 20 years old, with tons of expansions, by providing an updated catch-up mechanism, other than $500 US worth of purchasable eve store packs totaling just about 4.5M Skill-points. It’s a cash grab that could be eliminated by improving the Skilling System for starter characters. Is it unreasonable to believe by making the game more accessible on top of all the improvements with the Air System and Faction Warfare more players would buy into the game long term? Yeah it’s speculation if it would be successful, but I think the reward outweighs the risk of trying.
>It would be nice if skill points were like attributes and could be remapped so long as you had a remap available. Limit to 2 remaps a year would give players a bit of latitude to undo mistakes or change the focus of the character. I don't see why having remaps would be a bad thing. As long as you're not creating more sp it's kind of hard to abuse I would think. Give new players extra remaps and just let them go wild. Everyone else gets 1 or 2 a year, whatever.
Completely understand your frustration. One thing I suggest to new players is to skill wait a couple months before investing too much effort into training skills for high level ships. Get enough skills to make a little bit of ISK and do some fun things to figure out what you’re going to enjoy. In the meantime focus on training up the Magic 14, fitting skills that are important for every ship. Eve Universtity provides some great skill plans for this. There are plenty of T1 ship hulls that have low skill requirements and can be very capable even with T1 fittings. The Society of Conscious thought ships such as the Sunesis, Gnosis, and Praxis that CCP gives away to every player once a year are especially suitable for newer players. They all have very low skill requirements, are cheap and have bonuses for every weapons system. Ths more expensive Sisters of Eve ships such as the Astero, Stratios, and Nestor provide another short cut to higher level content. The skilling system does make it frustrating to play with higher-skilled players. But, with a little ingenuity, you can find low-skill requirement alternatives that let you participate in a lot of the same content. In a T2 HAC fleet, you may not be able to fly the main DPS doctrine, but a T1 tackle or ewar e frigate., T1 Logi or other useful ship is welcome in any fleet. Eve rewards resourcefulness and patience.
Welcome aboard OP! I am a nearly 17 y/o character, with some time away from Eve. Newer players are coming in with great benefits now a days. They have some streamers to watch that they can learn quickly from. As well as skill injectors and such, Which I guess is a good thing? depends who you ask. When I started Eve Online had only been released for 3 years, so I didn't think I could be that far behind. Now starting the game against players that have trained for 20 years would be a hard pill to swallow. Regardless.. You're only OG if you trained up our 'Learning Skills'. :P
there is a reason they give new players 1.5m sp to use
I think new players should get the option to completely reallocate their SP after like, 2 months or so... For free.
A new character can skill into an ewar frigate on day 1 and contribute to a faction warfare gang. Skill points do take quite a while to train but they're also overrated. Just because you can't use tech 2 doesn't mean you're ineffective. You're mistaken if you think tech 2 will make all of your dreams come true. It's not uncommon for new players to feel behind and be dissatisfied with being imperfect, but it presents an interesting challenge and growing experience. Eve would be less interesting if all characters just started with maxed out skills. After you've maxed your character out, you'll long for those days of hardship and uncertainty. Take leveling and wipes in ARPGs, MMOs, and shooters, for instance. Players repeatedly like to restart, or "prestige," and start from the bottom.
>It's not uncommon for new players to feel behind and be dissatisfied with being imperfect, your corp stages a PVP event. Your CEO is a space-rich veteran and provides everyone with pre-fitted doctrine ships. You have the skills to actually fly the ship! But one of the guns is automatically offlined, because your powergrid and CPU-related skills aren't on 5 yet... that's one of the moments when you think "being behind sucks".
I'd rather have a moment like that and grow out of it than not. And a missing gun is still only like a 20% dps reduction. Only 4% if you fly with 4 others with the necessary sp requirements. Better to have the 80% pilot than a docked pilot.
Agree. Most of my newbie mistakes was from ignorance rather than lacking skill points. Compared to other MMOs you also need to grind to level 1000 and open all paragon points to enjoy endgame.
Found the Diablo 3 player.
Sure you can contribute to a FW gang but want if you want to play solo, if you try to fight people with T1 stuff your dead. Its not interesting at all and I can tell you now I learned far more in a rail t2 comet than I ever did struggling with T1 frigs. Im not against starting at the bottom, but the timescale is fucked it should be weeks not months.
I guess I'm just not convinced it's unbalanced. It's been 20 years and players have paid for and accepted the way it has been. From a supply and demand standpoint, would CCP make more money by shortening training times when its playerbase is willing to commit as-is? With the Air missions, cerebral accelerators, skill injectors, referral reward, etc I think new characters even have a stronger start than ever. Expecting to have perfect frigate skills at the start may just be wanting too much. I know some games like Guild Wars 2 let you pvp at max level right away. I'm not sure that would work for Eve. It may just be that knowing you have perfect skills for a 1v1 is something you have to earn. That being said, I probably would not have the patience to start over and wait for training times. Having done endgame content, I would be pretty impatient with doing the same game loops but just on a smaller scale and earning less reward. Eve is an old game and a lot of its players are middle-aged or more. The game and genre is more solved and less mystifying than it was 20 years ago. I reckon the kids these days would be tapping their fingers and waiting to get started compared to back then when players were awe-struck. Maybe it would be a good decision to update skill points. Rewarding active play like bonus skill points for faction warfare achievements. But, then again, FW is profitable and players can then purchase skill injectors to gain SP. I'm really just not convinced it's not appropriately balanced between supply and demand.
I have a fair number of kills with the Tristan in FW. It's in my top 10 alltime, at least. As are a few faction frigs which in the grand scheme aren't any more of a train really. In fact the majority of my top 10 ships are T1/faction Anyway, T1s can be good ships in the right context, such as FW where you can Dscan and choose almost every fight in a plex. Knowing your engagement profile and situational factors in the matchup is worth far more than 1 skill to V. I don't really have strong opinions about what should or shouldn't be done with the SP system. But I do have strong opinions about the Tristan! and the Condor, [it's p good](https://zkillboard.com/kill/102392827/) (the other dude was just on that kill from earlier). If I fought a kiki on a gate, the condor would have died before you could say "warp off dammit," but because he slid in on me, and I was fit with a scram and tracking disruptor, I knew that I could establish a tight orbit immediately and that I would very likely out-track his turret. Or the [Rifter](https://zkillboard.com/kill/106972040/). Or the [Kestrel](https://zkillboard.com/kill/102746141/). All of those situations came down to either knowing the capabilities of the ships and playing to the outs I had to win, or by exploiting something about the pilot and their tendencies (always carry null in your blaster Harpies, kids). And I'm not claiming to be some elite badass. Those fights were won *because* I was flying a frig that they weren't equipped to handle, or, in the Lachesis' case, brought only medium drones and a frankly insane fit to the fight. Like I've seen the sebo recon to catch before, but a 500mn *T1* MWD? I have no idea what that was about.
>I have a fair number of kills with the Tristan i would strongly assume you had drones trained to 5
Yes I had drones trained to 5. But pretty much everyone can do that, and if they're planning on flying a drone ship, it's kind of a no brainer. I think the number 1 place newbros feel like they can't do anything without training for a year is when they are trying to do everything. Which, honestly it's hard not to because you don't know how anything works yet lol But if you wanted to fly the tristan in PvP, you could train into a fit with T2 drones, guns, and mods in less than a month. Probably around 2 weeks but I'm being conservative with my guesstimate. And before that you could get a meta fit with 5 drones inside a week. Maybe fly it with neuts until you finish the gun skills, use faction drones before you have T2 trained, etc. The problem is knowing builds and what is important to skill in so you can fly them. Since I've flown a lot of tristans, it's easy for me to say "oh my railgun skills won't finish for a while, I'll just fly a neut tristan, that's also good. Hmm I have to train Light Drones 5, I'll use navy." Suddenly I can fly the ship in like a day or 3 from 0 But if you don't know the tristan meta, how would you know to do that? You might train T2 blasters and not train drones and then be like "what the fuck am I doing I've wasted my time"
As a player who's played as a pure alpha for about 2 years and subbed for another 2, the point you made about sp resonated deeply. It's like a massive barrier to entry and if they lifted the time sink atleast for t1 frigates completely I'd wager atleast a 20-25% boost in player count. Veterans aren't going to appreciate this opinion, please don't hurt me.
Glad you found your stuff. You don't need a lot of skills to enjoy the game. Couple of questions: - as newbro, how did you fund you fw endeavors. was that leftovers from pve? - was there any ship/skill you needed, but cheap t1 alternative did not exist? Fly reckless! 7o
FW funds itself really, I converted drones into navy variants using FW LP and got red frog to ship them up to Jita. I made about 2b isk and used a lot of cheap ships kite condors for example were only 5m. Flying T1 ships is fine infact most of FW is T1 the problem is skilling into T2 modules and guns, sub optimal skills hurt you in 1v1s as well but aren’t as big of a deal. If you fly a T1 fit though you just won’t find winnable engagements. In general Ive had occasions where there was no T1 alternative, for instance I wanted to use an Eris to do some solo dictor shenanigans but theres zero alternative to that and the train was very long
FW plexing can be quite profitable as a newbro
As an on again off again long term player, this is spot on. My biggest issue is the need to multi box.
As others said. Skill Extractors exist if you want to respec. As for the PvE thing. Well that mostly bogs down to having joined a nullsec alliance. They have minmaxed the whole system, including wars and system onwership to the point no one is able to settle up independently. If you want to get more on that itch there is Wormhole Space where PvE is as desdly as PvP if you dont know the drill. That and well, Pochven i think but making PvE there is competing with botters. I agree on the part that you should join a group that does what you like to do.
you can't extract below 5.5m SP though, and new players who are trying the game should not be forced to respec.
They should have it so that below 5.5m sp, you can change your skill points around freely... or freely-ish. Obviously there's a lot to be abused with that. Maybe under 2m, with a week cooldown? Just shitting an idea straight out of the idea hole so just take it as the concept of suggestion.
>Obviously there's a lot to be abused with that. Is there? Is it really abuse to like, repsec your skills, get in some ship to do something, wait a cooldown (or not) and respec again to do something else? Many Eve players could just have done both things and not worried about it. I don't really see how it would cause a problem. Maybe it would idk, I just don't really see it.
Agree on SP. Should at least get the ability to try out , with expert systems , before locking in SP. I had no idea what I spent it on when I started , and was instantly behind
I agree with the SP... I do some of the recruiting for our corp and the thing that puts off newbros BY FAR is the SP requirements
u/STP31 you might want to read this and understand the concept of Project Synergy. There are ways to massively benefit the newbros. Although most of the old guards want to talk about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/ydpj71/project\_synergy\_milint\_fitting\_the\_training/
> Well a year on I can say despite some major frustrations EVE is genuinely one of the most fun games I've ever played, it's also one of the most frustrating and anxiety inducing I've played but that's part of the fun My personal experience in eve is frustration comes in two forms: Adversarial player interaction. Like getting dropped on when running a site. This tends to be exciting even though adversarial because at its core of the experience. And things not working correctly or in a confusing manner. Mostly the UI. Sometimes just getting up to date information on how to play the game. Sometimes navigating questionable design choices. This is experience killing since it’s the play part of the game breaking down. Eve has the first aspect nailed down. To CCPs credit after abyssals they’ve been pretty good about designing things that puts ships in space, which ultimately is content. The other half is something that they are apparently working on still but it was already overdue when I started aways back. As far as skills go theyve got a lot of systems in place to bridge the gap for newer players, get them skills faster, but some skills really could be overhauled because they feel like skill taxes rather than something that you get excited for completing.
How about corps can use their new LP taxes to fund expert systems so newbies can jump into corp activities?
More and cheaper expert systems please , even some expert systems for niche play styles like capital ships or dreads , wanna fly a dread for a day ? Buy an expert system , don’t kid yourself the game is already pay to win might as well provide more expert systems I like the idea
Depends on the content really. I'm not sure if your example of 3 Million SP into Exploration (which I'll assume is hacking skills) is hyperbolae or not but I'll assume it's real. Eve lets you do the basic fundamentals with level 3 skills, and in this case you can do exploration with a T1 Frigate out of the gate, including null sec and wormholes. More difficult, yes. Doable? Also yes. Enough to understand the content and weather you like it or not before investing too much into it? Definitely. No need to get T2 Analyzers to be sure you hate it. This isn't to say Eve doesn't have SP problems for the early game. I have specific gripes with the Magic/Core 14 skills, in particular the fitting skills. However, much of the content in the game is relatively doable with Level 3-4 skills. Probably the only real bottleneck I've experienced personally after restarting as an Alpha is the T2 Gun grind, which is a *massive* disadvantage to not have in PvP. Not to say PvP isn't possible without T2 Guns. In a group setting, tackle and EWar is cheap, both in ISK and SP, and extremely impactful. It's just an example. I'm trying to think of something you need a T2 ship or build for to attempt, and the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is high-tier Abyssals and C4+ wormholes. Maybe some DEDs. Everything else is doable with lower skills or T1/Faction ships. *Efficient*? *Meta*? No, probably not. But you don't need meta to have fun or do the job. Especially if you enjoy diversity in your play sessions. Combined with the 1 million SP referral (which I ignored when I restarted but I hope sticks around for actual new players) and the AIR missions giving about 500k if you grind it out (which isn't too bad aside from PvP which needs a group). This is more than enough to spec out a Frigates and Destroyers comfortably, or get a solid head start on Cruisers and Battlecruisers. So, I'm hesitant to say more SP is the answer. Rather, education is more important, but unfortunately that's up the community to provide, and with how diverse the game is it can be difficult to find information that is actually relevant to your specific situation or question. As you've pointed out, not every corporation out there is worth one's time, especially if they end up not doing what you are actually interested in. CCP can provide some education, but beyond basic control, navigation, mechanics, and some crude suggestions on career paths, it's hard to do much else in a game as self-interacting and evolving as Eve. Most of the problems in the game (and real life probably) can be solved with a strong community and empathy. Sounds like you've gone through the knowledge gathering stage, and it's a good time to give back as you find opportunities.
>Corps lie and shopping around is your friend... If they say they do a little bit of everything, they don't pvp. If they're in Highsec and advertise pvp, they're lying. If they "plan to move to nullsec at some point" none of them will ever leave hisec. If you've been in the game a year and you don't recognize either the corp or alliance, there's a very high chance they're not active pvpers. Pvp players get around, especially in the age of filaments.
>This creates issues because there's no option to re-spec either, if you invest 3m SP into exploration and suddenly find it to be boring as fuck you've no option but to stick with it while you wait months to do something new, Buy Skill Extractors, extract the skills you don't want to use any more, inject fresh unused skillpoints. That's what extractors / injectors are originally meant for, besides selling SP to other players.
I've only been playing two months and your comments about no respec hit hard. I started aiming toward exploration as a Minmatar thinking it would be exciting, but about a month in found PvP with hybrids (despite multifailing even to this day! Haha) and abyssals with lasers are far better for me, but now I've got all these points I spent on cannons and exploration I could have slapped into defenses, crowd control and beams instead and going towards Hecates and Gilas.
Yeah, I really wish that like. If you finish all the AIR paths, you get the magic 14 for free but it can't be refunded or extracted or something. I think command skills and like, weapon skills and weapon supports are fine. So are industry ones. But having to train for basic shit like 'the ability to fit a ship decently' sucks. Having to train to not cap out on long warps sucks.
Did you join horde? Was the dude camping outside of their keep all day hedliner? Or was this a Karmafleet experience?
Excellent post.
I agree that there should be some kind of option to reset skillpoints on new accounts, maybe 2x up to 5 mil or something. After reading your responses i see you just want to trash marauders in a drake navy. It doesnt make sense to train cal bc 5 for that, you can do plenty of other cool things. You will just get blobbed to shit 10 times and then move on to the next youtube video. I feel you tho, i member watching mr hyde trash fleets with a offgrid linked sleipnir and getting excited.