Taram Caldar
Acheron Vanguard Armada The Makhai
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Posted - 2007.02.06 17:57:00 -
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Originally by: Milonia This issue keeps getting brought up by my friends that I try to recruit to the game.
They play "traditional" MMOs where you gain XP and you can powerlevel to endgame and a level cap and be just as good as older characters.
So I tell them about EVE's skill point system. They say, "So I create a character and I will NEVER be as good as the guy that has been playing for year or more? No thanks!"
How does everyone feel about this? I am new and only a month old so I kinda got dissapointed by hearing this point brought up as well.
Will I never be as good as older players? Or once someone trains skills for 6 months or a year they can start to compete with even older characters because the benefits start to get smaller with more skill time?
Like by the time people are years old all they can train are skills that take months to train and they gain a small benefit because of skills having a decreasing marginal rate of returns.
The new player is getting all the lower ranks trained quickly so they can gain the ability to do more in less time.
So they catch up in a way?
Does this make any sence? I need to have a counter to this argument.
The counter is as simple as it is complicated...
Basically you can't compare a skill based system like EVE to a level based system like, for example: EverQuest or WoW...
Why? Because in EVE your total skill points doesn't really tell the full story. You could have 3 million skill points totally dedicated to PVP Combat while another player has 15 million skill points totally dedicated to industry.
In Mining/Industry that 15mil SP player is going to be much better than you. However, in PVP/Combat you are going to be better than him. This is true in all aspects of the game. Lets take Combat trained characters, for example...
If a pilot trains their entire career around large ships (BS/Dreadnaught/Carriers) they may be very good at those areas. However, you can do the same in another area that doesn't take nearly as much skill but is still just as needed, effective, and fun in the game.
For example: there are players in my own corporation who have been playing for years and have scads of SP. but I'm a better covops pilot than most (if not all) of them. Because I dedicated to it and maxed out my skills for flying my covops ships. I'm now proceeding to finish up Recon ships as well then will move to interceptors and interdictors. Once I'm done (about 6 months down the road) I'll be as good or better than 90% of players out there in those same ship types. Why? Because I specialized in those areas while they may be more generalized.
In EVE there IS a finite ammt of skills that you can really train for any given role. So you CAN reach 'max level' (so to speak) in a given role that you choose.
No, you will never have as many skill points or be as diversified as a 3+ year veteran. (until you are one yourself, of course) but you CAN be as (or more) effective in a chosen area.
Skill based MMORPG's aren't about reaching 'the next level' They're about choosing a skill and training for it (and it's supporting skills).
Hope this helps!
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