New EVE Online characters will initially train skills twice as fast in Apocrypha

by James Egan Mar 2nd 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Forums, Game mechanics

Massively recently mentioned a few of the changes coming to EVE Online through the New Player Experience, part of the Apocrypha expansion which rolls out next month. Of particular interest, or concern, to some EVE players is CCP's decision to reduce a starting character's skillpoints to 50k from the current 800k many existing characters began with. CCP Games apparently hopes to clarify this decision, and thus stave off any torches and pitchforks, with today's dev blog. EVE developer CCP Flatboy writes,"In Apocrypha, new characters train at double speed until they reach 1.6 Million SkillPoints. That is all."

The reason that new characters will get this boosted skill training rate is to compensate for the fact that, for simplicity's sake, new characters will begin with less skills. The New Player Experience is all about reducing the complexity that someone just starting out can find themself mired in, and having more control over how the character develops.

CCP Flatboy estimates that an Apocrypha character would catch up with one made with the current system in about six weeks, and this is without learning skills or implants to accelerate that window. He writes, "The main point here is that this will increase a new player's understanding of his skills. Today it's near impossible to remember all these skills one starts with and how they work. But if you start with less and get most of the skills while experimenting to find your own path, learning about your skills becomes much more enjoyable and you become efficient and useful sooner than otherwise possible."

The players are weighing the pros and cons of this system in a forum thread connected with CCP Flatboy's dev blog "A Virgin Mind".

Tags: apocrypha, ccp, ccp-fear, ccp-flatboy, ccp-games, controversy, dev-blog, eve, eve-online, expansions, new-player-experience, sci-fi, skill-training, skillpoints

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nicholas said on 5:40PM 3-02-2009

You have GOT to be kidding me right? Whats with all these game companies making their games easier JUST so they can make more money off the little kids that wanna play? Come on!! No kid should even BE on a computer with internet access in the first place.

Nadril said on 5:49PM 3-02-2009

I'd like to know how THIS was the one thing keeping all of those "kids" from the game, Nich. I mean, really? The hardest part of EVE online was training your beginning skills?

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction.

James Taylor said on 6:18PM 3-02-2009

Get off your high horse.

When a game is 5+ years old, it's normal for them to do something to KEEP new players coming in. EVERY game does it.

It's not "making it easier," it's fixing it. They obviously realized it was unnecessarily convoluted and difficult, so they are adjusting it. Don't see what all the hub-bub is about.

UltimateQ said on 7:45PM 3-02-2009

I can agree with OP's sentiment. However, Eve is indeed just a bit to hard to grasp. I wouldn't hold it against them if they helped ease in the learning curve.

Interitus said on 5:55PM 3-02-2009

THIS is what my biggest problem with EVE has been. It felt like such a big punishment to be a new player when others had been playing for years. New players don't need to be handed basic skills, but something to let them "catch up" a bit.

Graill said on 6:33PM 3-02-2009

Fail. CCP still will not do the hard right thing. What they should have from the start. Hardcore players and old vets alike >should< know of what i speak directly after the missile "adjustment" and collision removal for weapons in year one.

That said, EVE has NEVER needed skills, they should have been pilot only coupled with a much better weapons model/physics package.

But hey, CCP do as CCP does.

ethereal.wolf said on 6:54PM 3-02-2009

the 1.6 million skill point cutoff is pretty insignificant. you won't be taken seriously until you have at least 5 million sp. its more of a token gesture than a real exp boost.

Brendan Drain said on 7:05PM 3-02-2009

Actually, it's neither. The XP boost was designed to integrate into the new character creation process. In the old system you'd build a character and start with 800k skillpoints but for new players they really had no idea what the skills they were picking were about. The new system starts players off with very little skillpoints but lets them train at double the normal rate until they hit 1.6m, which offsets the 800k free skillpoints they're missing.

This is part of the new newbie experience which introduces players to the skills and attributes before asking the player to choose.

Benicio said on 10:49PM 3-02-2009

This also has the side effect of controlling alts who are used for dubious purposes. This way they will need to spend some time skilling them up before sending them out to suicide gank me in hi-sec.

Sean said on 11:36PM 3-02-2009

I don't understand the negative sentiment at all. This seems like a great move toward empowering a newer player and investing them in their character. They aren't getting any additional jumpstart over and above what any new character, with their allotment of 800k skill points, gets today. What they will get is some understanding of what those various skills are, how they function, and perhaps most importantly, why they need them. Compare this to the WoW Death Knight starting experience where skills and talents are introduced to the player piece meal instead of dumping them in front of a skill/talent screen at level 55 and telling them to start making what would be meaningless choices.

moo said on 5:56AM 3-03-2009

I don't get how this helps the new player? All this does is limits what they can do when they start out the game and makes them wait even longer. Atleast right now you get great starting skills to get you into Frigate PVP and combat. However when this new change comes in then new players arn't going to know what skills to train and will probably ned up training random useless crap. This will also make new players sit around even longer waiting to play the game and they'll just get bored even faster.

The current character creation gives great explinations on what everything does and I found it really easy to pick what I wanted to be. It then gave me all the basic skills I would need and I could go out and do these things straight away. Seems like the new system will have me sitting looking at a screen for a week before I can do anything.

Also ditch Learning skills please because they tell you to train these first and whats the point? They don't help new players and they don't do anything for older players, they are a waste of time.

Jerichow said on 8:52PM 3-11-2009

I like it, it does a few things that impact a lot of people in a good way that I think a lot of Eve players are overlooking or just want to ignore.

1: This helps new players understand what skills do vs just having them and not knowing wtf they have. It's like starting out in a normal console game now, you have nothing to begin with but you learn quickly and are given the opportunity to understand what you can use and thus make your more efficient from the get-go. This also gives a MUCH more diverse character setup now vs race, origin, profession which gives you a set number of skills for each.

2: This seriously slows down the alt-gangers for hi-sec, now instead of training for a day to get the skills they need to go pop a hulk, they have to train for a much longer period of time, thus, significantly slowing them down.

3: Speeding up the training is for the legit players, this way they can get into the serious business of the game sooner, thus hooking them faster vs losing them early on to the boring wait-for-that-skill-to-train problem where as they have to wait several hours between some nicer skills.

Overall this is a good adjustment, the PROBLEM is the griefers abusing this new setup. If there was a way to solve that problem this would be perfect in my opinion. It lets new players understand what they can do early on, makes the game a little easier to understand, and gets them off to a bit of a kick start vs the old setup.