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EVE advancing system
apertotes
Member Posts: 363
On EVE i will never have the same skill points as people that started 2 years before me. i began last july, now i got 14 million sp, i am not doing bad at all, i have even surpassed some corp mates that started before me, thanks to my comittment with learning skills. but, i will NEVER catch up with people that now got 30+ million sp.
i accept it. i even think it is fair. in fact, if i decided to specialize on a single ship, or even a ship category, i could be 80% as good as the best pilot on only 1 or 2 months. to get that last 20% requires a lot of time.
now, if i start playin WoW now, i will be level 60 on 1 or 2 months also. I WILL HAVE CATCHED THE BEST PLAYERS!!!! but i will probably not have the best armor, weapons, etc... but yes, if i play enough i will catch up with even the most veteran player. does it make me feel good to know i can catch them? NOOOOOOOOO!!!!, why? because it only means that there is a CAP, a crap LEVEL CAP, that forces people to stay on level 60 for all their life (until they introduce the expansion, and then, instead of level 60, it will be level 70 
)
so, i read lots of people dont want to play EVE because they will never catch up. THAT IS GREAT!!!! you know what it means? it means there is no level cap!!!! your character will be advancing FOREVER!!!! what does it matter if some players are better than you? how many people are the best WoW or EQ player? EVERYBODY!!! everybody is the best WoW player, cause they all get to level 60, so when everybody is the best, nobody is really. i rather play a game where i know i am not the same than everybody, even if that means that someone is a better battleship pilot than me.
so, i really want to know people's opinion about this topic. why is it so hard to understand that some players will always be ahead of you on skill points, even with the skill system, that benefits new players and makes really easy to get till 80% of everything, and even when we all know that many of the players with most skill points are industrial chars, that can be defeated with a simple cruiser or battlecruiser, and the most important thing, five four-months-old characters will always beat a single twenty-months-old character.
so, do you feel better on a game where you get to 60 and then get stuck like everybody else? is that your definition of succesing on a game? is that what you believe is to be the best on that game? do you feel a better player or a more advanced character than the rest because you are level 60? do you feel like you have accomplished anything?
so, think about it. the only way to not have a level cap is if everybody can keep advancing -----> someone will always be ahead of you, and it doesnt matter how you advance, be it levels, experience, real time skill points.
so, if you want to catch up people that have been playing longer than you, you have to admit a level cap. i dont want to. thus, i prefer EVE. i will never catch up a lot of players, but i will never it a wall either.
please, post your opinions, and keep the flames in control
Comments
On the other hand, EvE (as I understand it) focus more on PvP. As such it's understandable that it doens't have a level cap. Most of the fight will be against rival corps, group battles, in which even the less advanecd player has a chance.
They are two different games with two different systems...
IMO, it's unfair to both to compare them directly.
Skill > Time/Gear
Games that have a cap but need skill to play well are good PvP games. Maybe a game where there it's twitch based or lots of strategy.
Games like EVE where you lock on, get in range, and shoot (and hope for the best) don't take as much skill. What you need is lots of time...months and years. Just waiting.
WoW needs more skill than EVE. I'm not a wow fanboy. I don't play it anymore because of end game boredom. I played EVE for a month and many days I didn't even play because I knew I had a skill going. Sometimes I would only log on to EVE to just switch a skill to something else to lvl up and maybe a chat a bit before logging off.
______________________________
"When Saddam flew that plane into those buildings, I knew it was time to kick some Iranian ass!"
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PvP in EVE indeed requires skill. There are players who are very, very good at it, much better than others. The skill involves picking a good loadout for your ship, knowing what it is capable of doing (and what it isn't), picking targets carefully, and flying it in such a way as to maximize your advantages whilst exploiting your target ship's weaknesses. If you approach it simply as "lock target, approach, orbit", you're going to be pwned repeatedly, I must say by other people who are zig-zagging around, paying attention to their transversal velocity, their web range, sig radius and the like. It takes a good deal of skill and experience to do consistently well at PvP in EVE, and contrary to what some believe, player skill is much more important than character skill points once your character gets to an acceptable base level "plateau".
The thing with the folks who have 30m SPs (I play with a bunch of them, and I have only half that) is that on any given loadout they are not using all of those 30m SPs. They are using primarily those SPs that are relevant for that ship and loadout. A character with fewer SPs, but with more PvP player skill can beat that player some of the time 1v1. But of course most combat in EVE is not 1v1, it's groups of players, and when you have 2-3 players with 6m-10m SPs they can kill one 30m SP player if they know what they are doing. In that way, EVE is very unlike other MMOs. Many other MMOs have systems were 5 level 20s could never, ever, ever beat one level 60 ... EVE is not like that at all. So when people worry that because they will never catch the EVE equivalent of a "level 60" in terms of total SPs, they're worrying that PvP works in EVE like it does in other MMOs, which isn't the case.
i prefer a game without level cap where i am not the best, than a game with level cap that lets me catch up veteran players.
so please, do not turn this into a "what pvp involves more player skill".
@apertotes: since you ask, my problem with eve skills is not the unability to catch veterans unless I specialise in a different path. As others point out, the skills offer not much improvement difference between the level 4 and level 5 so the advantage that a veteran with lvl5 skills would get over me is not so critical, specially in group PvP where tactic, coordination and setup fittings are more important.
For me it's just that some skills take too long to train. Necessary prerequisite skills that otherwise I wouldn't train. Skills that take weeks/monkts to train are too much of a time sink for me in order to be willing to pay the monthly fee.
And other problems like the pirate gank fest, or the shameless scams within poor game mechanics link. But this is another issue.
Well, you have to take into concideration that skill points don't win a fight. SKILL wins a fight. That's what makes Eve's PvP system so great. Items are fine. In any other MMO, items rule the playground. In Eve, your skill does.
Also, specialization is critical. By that I mean, specialize in missiles, or in turrets... or in mining and production... you do that and you'll be up to par with everybody else in no time.
Don't for one second think you can't kill somebody in Eve. You can, you just have to know how.
Just remember, these people had to train the same prerequisite skills as well. What is a job that doesn't require a challenge? Trivial. Pointless. If the prereq takes a long time to train, it probably opens up a load of much better skills that you can train.SobaKai.com
There are two types of people in this world - people that suck... and me.
but a lot of people dont say that they dont play because it takes time, they say they dont play because they will never be up to veteran players. that is what i find stupid.
From the RPG point of view, this answer is brilliant
So you didn't actualy play EVE, more trained skills between brief log on periods to change said skills? Based on that you review the combat syustem of EVE as lockon/shoot/pray? Well there's abit more to it than that, and I started over a year ago at the bottom of the totem pole. Now I'm 15mil+ sp with Gallente Bs 5 and an evil vampdom setup, had my butt kicked by younger players but done the same to older players.
My advice is not to fret about numbers, numbers don't mean sh*t when I'm drain your cap and my drones are tearing your Apoc a new butt hole. Alternativly when I have a younger player jamming/scrambling and webbing my vampdom and ponding her with cruise missiles from a Raven, my superior sp are worth less than an Amarr slaver in Amamake on Minmatar republic day.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
A quick list of the factors that mitigate "I will never catch up" in Eve:
(1) Players quit for good!
(2) Variety of endgame play; Traders win by having more money, for pirates it's their reputation, corp and alliance leaders fight for soveriegnty, PvPers the thrill and the killboard stats, industrialists and miners want... (I haven't a clue what industrialists and miners want actually.)
(3) Player numbers normally are the deciding factor in battles, not skill points or even type of ship sometimes.
(4) Vets run out of things to learn that can make a big difference to how they play; and they have redundant skill points that they can't reallocate. You can only fly one ship at a time.
(5) Learning skills and implants are a new mechanic that vets didn't have - but personally I think this has a real downside for people who start the game with at least a 6-month subscription in mind, they are looking at a period of skill training that doesn't enable them to use new stuff, if they want to be really efficient about their skill points. Also the best implants are very likely out of their financial reach.
To address the OP's point, basically you do advance but you advance relative to all the other players, not in absolute terms, although of course there is always one player at the top of the tree with the most skill points (guess what he does? Never leaves the station. He does production, science, refining and stuff with all his maxed out skills. But he can probably only fly a shuttle!)
What puts people off is simply looking at the time on those level 5 prerequisite skills. You think "OMG that's going to take 35 days and everyone else has done that multiple times already! They must be soooo much better than me"
The devs know this of course, so they have put a good bit of time into the tutorial, and one of the stated aims of the Factional Warfare patch is to be a link between PvE and PvP - if they can encourage new players to think in terms of point (2) above, hopefully skills will seem less of an obstacle to new players. They are introducing a limited queueing of skills too.
I think the best thing they could do though is to say up front - you're in this for the long-haul, get used to it - the fun is in the journey, not the destination.
They need to make the whole "relative" angle more explicit somehow. You discover it eventually, but if you knew from the start you wouldn't get frustrated chasing goals you have placed too much value on.
Another RP point - why not be lowly, unskilled and weak, but full of potential and ideals? That's a valid experience too. Ambition decreases when you achieve goals, you have to find something else to do. How much better to have your dreams and schemes! That is, before you are violently disabused of them, by some damn fool who is going to get what's coming to them when you rule the universe!...(I'd love to be a noob again).
hey doctor_blood, OP here
, great post. but actually i am not sure if you read my post completely, cause in fact i agree with everything you wrote, and i defend it. that was this post about.
what makes me wonder is why people are so short-sighted as to not see that the only way to have a system that lets you advance without a level cap, is a system where you will never be able to catch up older or most experienced players either.
so i find it stupid to not play a game because "i will never catch up veterans", which is the reason a lot of people give for not playing EVE, because not catching up veterans is precisely the trademark of a neverending advance system.
I realy laugh at statements such as these, well execuse me, did you know that there's something called Optimal range? Fall off range? Tracking speed? all of these combine your ability to hit your target, oh and if you are dumb enough, a frigate pilot can take out your battleship no problem.
a battleship can lock, CAN'T stay in range, and won't hit a target that moves with an AB on in an orbit, so where's the skill? it's know how to fly and adjest all of those properties of your guns to make you hit your target.
statements such as WoW needs more skill than EVE are realy hilarious, man look, before everyone got epic armor and weapons, i used to take out rogues in my paladin no problemo, now i find it realy impossible to take out one rogue with one epic weapon, so talk about skill in WoW? non, it's allllll about items.
in EVE if you don't know how to manage your capacitor ( mana or energy ) you're doomed in combat. let me tell you one story one in WoW and one in EVE.
EVE: my corp was at war with an amarrian scum corp, they invaded our home system ( was Rens at that time ) and began their gate camping, me and one member of the corp, and 2 others from our allience decided to take them out, it was a fair fight, 4 on 4, they had 1 battleship, 1 cruiser, and 2 interceptors ( realy fast frigates ), while we had 1 battleship which was me, and 3 cruisers.
now let me tell you something, a good interceptor pilot will overpower an average cruiser pilot, we had a well executed plan, and the outcome was they lost 2 battleships ( 1 came in later as an ambush and was destroyed by the police, the stupid pilot targetted a ship which had nothing to do with the fight) and then they lost 1 cruiser and interceptor, while we lost only 1 cruiser.
so where's the skill? it's in planning, executing the plan, and know how to fit your ship based on the situation you're in.
WoW: i go into warsong with my friend and other alliences, the horde were so decked out with gear, and probably had teamspeak/vent, also most of the allience had epic gear but man, the mages and shamans were nuking me for 2500 dmg, i died instantly, i'm not decked or anything, just blues, and i couldn't kill CRAP, i had 0 deathblows, well considering i'm playing a paladin, but before everyone was getting those epics i used to do very very good, specially with the old talent tree, the current paladin talent tree sucks big time, and the overpowered mages and rogues and shamans used to rip everyone off.
so where's the skill? non, it's all about who gets the better gear and is able to nuke for 2500+++ or hit for 2000+++.
you can go to video.google.com and type Grim PVP, and watch that rogue take out on 3 guys one after the other, or 2 guys at once without any problem. where's the skill? it's just jump around press few buttons, vanish backstab, press few buttons...
in EVE even if you're well decked in items and named stuff, you'll lose big time if someone who only has tech1 items and have a ship setup to totally render you off, for example, a good PVP setup for 1 VS one, i equip my battleship with 3 energy suckers, and 1 energy drainer ( they are different hehe ), and 4 little weapons whichever they are, have a bunch of drones with me, and good tanking, and movement rendering modules, now if a battleship pilot faces me in close range, he's as good as dead, because.
i will drain his capacitor, rendering him unable to activate anything except his missile launchers, and he might also not beable to warp, well what now? take him out with the little weapons slowly
how's that for skill huh? would he expect that? no one would realy, but in WoW, if you see a rogue with a glowy weapon you'd be expecting to die in 5 hits, and if you see a mage with his epic robe, you're expecting to die in 2 or 3 nukes, where's the skill in that?
Like many of the CS crowd, you confuse "reaction time" with "skill". EVE doesn't take much in the way of reaction times (although you can't be a complete lump, either), but it definitely takes skill. Skill in knowing how to outfit your ship. Skill in choosing the correct tactics to use that ship. People who know what they're doing have beaten the uber-trained, and the uber-equipped, and they will again.
Chris Mattern
To put a bit more succinctly what others have said about the WoW aspect of the OPs post:
Just because you're Level 60, it doesn't really mean you've "caught up" with everyone else at level 60.
Gear and experience will likely still be wanting for a new-minted Level 60, meaning they wont be as powerful as someone who has been at Level 60 for several months (or more).
Yes, the gap will likely be much closer than EVE, from what I've heard said about it (I haven't played EVE), but there will still be a definite gap between new 60s and veteran 60s.
Originally posted by apertotes
now, if i start playin WoW now, i will be level 60 on 1 or 2 months also. I WILL HAVE CATCHED THE BEST PLAYERS!!!! but i will probably not have the best armor, weapons, etc... but yes, if i play enough i will catch up with even the most veteran player.
No you won't, because just being level 60 doesn't mean that you're on equal footing; a character with raid gear fom Blackwing Lair and AQ can dish out around double the damage of a 60 in non-raid gear with about one and a half times hte hit points, plus there are some really nasty on-use items. Since the raid instances have a timer so that you can only run them every so often (a week for the big ones, 3 days on the smaller ones), it will take you months of real time play to gear up to the current level of the raiders, and by then they'll be on the next instance. Plus you'll have to spend your time stuck in 40-man PVE raids and dealing with loot drama.
IMO it's actually easier to catch up to someome in EVE, because there are only a limited number of skills that will help with a given ship. While it will take some time, I can max all of the relevant skills for an interceptor and be completely caught up with any higher SP total player when flying an interceptor. The other player will have a lot more options (like the abilities for other ship types, better learning skills for future training, industrial skills for money, etc), but you'll be just as good at flying your weapon of choice. Plus you can play the regular game instead of raiding.
Inferiority complex? Freud might say using games as a method to boost thier percieved or real lack of masculinity? I'd personally go with my theory of your average gamer thinking to himself "Man I'll never be able to catch up and bully everyone else whilst remaining untouchable. This game sux, it's not fair that someone can be better than me and intimidate me I want to do it to everyone else. Time to play WoW! YAY!".
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
yes, but that is simply not true. not everybody can be the best WoW player. so why do they lie to themselves? do they really think that one day they will be the best player ever at WoW?
so, yes, i agree with the OP. some people just dont think before they post, and even though they say they dont people because of not being able to catch up, its probably because they lack understanding of the game, and they prefer to be called carebear than dumb.
Probably the reason people feel this way is because WOW's advancement is more tangible, while EVE's is rather not so. While I haven't played WOW myself, I know many people who do, and they just simply won't Shut Up about what levels they made, or what epic gear they finally got, or how they used it to cream the other guy in the battlegrounds. I guess with games like WOW, progress is rigidly defined, and even have a physical representation in the game. You can equip it, use it, show it off to your guild mates, you even have a number that floats over your head to show just how much of a bad ass you think you are; and just that much more time you labored away in front of the screen to get it. Even I can see a sense of accomplishment in that.
EVE on the other hand, you are the only one who can really judge your own progress, and even then its more abstract. Its more like the way we set our own goals in real life - you need to sit back and evaluate yourself once in a while. And who likes to be their own judge anyhow? I guess that's the other side to "free, open-ended skill advancement". You are free to choose what and when you start to learn something, and free to set your own path, your own destiny. You are also free to choose just far you need to go to be satisfied, and its not as easy as a number "one through sixty".
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Don't click here...no2
well, thanks a lot for all your answer. but i am still waiting for someone to come and really say that he didnt start to play EVE because he will never be able to catch veterans, and reason why he felt that way, and how can you acomplish that on other games.
what i am trying to proof is that the only way to catch other players is with an artificial level cap.
Yes, you will never catch up to another player with the same amount of skill points. Thats obvious to anyone playing. I started to play EVE because I know I won't be able to catch up to players with more skill points then me. Unless they stop training.
EVE doesn't have levels. So some artificial level cap doesn't mean anything to EVE. EVE is a completely different game in that way.
Its a pointless exercise to prove that the only way to catch other players is with an artificial level cap. With certain games, yes you can point those out, that have artificial level caps but there is the ability for another game to come out with no level cap but still restricting those from advancing fast via other ways.
EVE's current "aritificial level cap" is the fact that to learn all the skills to level 5 would take 20+ years of real time training.
And the way to catch up to veterans in EVE is not the same as other games. One way is to specialize, another way is via tactics. Skill points make up probably 20% of the game in EVE, whereas levels in other games make up the majority of the game. 40% is probably Intel, Strategy and Tactics.
Diablo II had a level cap, but take a look at how crazy that was, its pretty much impossible to catch up to a player that is level 99 in that game. Unless you plan to spend every waking hour of your life for 6 months playing the game. So even then an artificial level cap doesn't do anything because the difference between level 90 and 99 is very small. Like the difference between level 4 of a skill and level 5 of a skill in EVE.
I would also expect a level 60 player in WoW that has played for 6 months longer than I have would be able to beat me when I reached level 60 because I didn't have nice equipment or know how to best handle the race/class/skills I picked. Same goes for EVE.
There is a lot to like about EVE's system. You don't really have to "grind," per se. The grinding is all done for the player in a sense, freeing him or her to earn ISK, build connections with agents, or collect resources. Skill advancement is not determined by how successful or not one is in the field. Plus, you don't have XP farming and such.
Yet, there is something rather disconcerting to know that one can never leave the station, and end up with a robust skillset, if they are fed books and ISK from an outside source. There is something not quite right about having more SP as a two week old player who never leaves dock, than the one week old player that has actually played.
The rationalle behind EVE's system leaves us with more questions than answers.
Who is more of a "vet?" The one who has more hours played, or the one who has more hours subscribed?
If the skill system is designed to give long term subscribers a comparative advantage over newer ones, then why should we even bother with the times at all?
Why not just pay for double a subscription fee, and let the skills train half as long?
Moreover, what is the point of having three character slots, if ony one character can train?
Many other games have a "respec" option for critical stats like attributes and skills, to make up for the fact that for many, they really don't know what they should have done, until after they did it. But that can't work in EVE. It would kill the game. Isn't there something problematic in the notion that something that means next to nothing at the outset of the game becomes game breaking two or three years after the initial decision was made to allocate stats?
If the game shuts down in two years, what are we going to tell the players who weren't in it from the start? Or worse still, what do we tell the players who subscribed one month before the announcement comes?
Its like we are all playing musical chairs, where everything is happy, until the music stops, and one of us realizes we don't have a chair anymore. In a sense, every one of us on Tranquility is sitting on a time bomb, where it isn't a matter of "if" the game implodes, but "when." I fear for this game if there ever is a sudden drop in subscribed players. Somebody, and probably a whole lot of people, are going to get screwed someday.
Someone, someday, is going to have the (dis)honor of being the last new player in EVE Online. How would you like to be the last new subscriber to EVE Online? That dude would be the most sorry MMO player that ever existed.
In a game that prides itself on the notion that players should have freedom, there certainly isn't much freedom after a certain point. In many ways, EVE is so much less free than other games. Its just that they restrict the sorts of things we take for granted as things that a player wants to be responsible for, and free us to do the sorts of things we assume would be unilaterally restricted.
I can scam, grief, and be the most unrepentent PKer imagineable. A subscriber couldn't get away with half the things allowed in EVE if it were any other game. And yet, nothing you can do as a player will make the timer tick down faster after a certain point, or bridge the gap between you, and the one who was there a year before.
There is nothing wrong with sitting here on this bomb. It hasn't gone off in three years, but that doesn't reassure me, because I still hear it ticking.
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"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I miss times my clone was still cheap.
If you specialize you will be very competive in 6 months. Just play the game and have fun in corp and advance corp goals, worry less about how good you will do 1v1 vs someone with more SP.