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Skill Changes Incoming

Just some random thoughts on todays Dev Blog by CCP Ytterbium. The skill changes are out and explained in depth in a dev blog.  Changes will be in the spring expansin.  There is still enough time to start training.
I find them very interesting for two reasons:
#1 – It will be easier for people to get into ships.
The reduced cst of training. 
Along with CCP's entire ‘making things make more sense’  these changes are a lure for new players.  New players will be able to get into the hulls they want to get into in hours instead of days sometimes and days instead of weeks in a few others.  People will be able to gorge themselves upon T1 hulls.
#2 – There will be a lot of poorly skilled ships flying around.
People are lazy.  People want things now.  CCP has just handed people a jar of cookies with no milk.  They will consume the cookies and realize, after their mouths are coated in chocolate and they can barely swallow that they have nothing to wash it down with.  (I don’t like milk myself, but lots of people seem to.)
The accessibility, to me, appears to be a beautiful trap.  People are already lured into shiny and large hulls due to their accessibility.  Now, we will see week old battleships puttering around with small guns.  I also suspect, fewer T2s unless something interesting happens during their balancing to increase their appeal.  Right now, when looking at a T1 logistic ship vs a T2 logistic ship many people are not going to take that time to train into logistics V without the mandate of a fleet doctrine.
I foresee a lot of poorly, poorly skilled ships flying around in the future.  When T2 guns are in one hand and a new shiny hull are in the other many people will chase down that hull.  Or so, I think.  It will be interesting.  I also suspect new players, presented with all of this stuff NOW will wind up scattering their skill points even further and sooner.
Capitals
The spaceship skills to get into capitals are much decreased.  However, the prerequs have been changed to keep the training time the same.  The nice part about this is that instead of spending 40 some days training battleship V that time can be used to train Jump Drive Operation 5 which is already a mandatory skill for a carrier pilot so that they can train Jump Drive Calibration.  JDC is the skill that expands your jump capable distance.  Training it to 4 is a bare minimum for any jump capable ship. 
Tech 2s
The changes are putting skill training into skills needed to fly the actual ship.  Before, as with capitals, a large amount of time was burnt training skills for spaceship hulls.  Then almost the same amount of time was needed to train the various skills to use the ship itself.  The training time is reduced but made more sensible at the same time.  Instead of looking at the ship and then the modules the ships prerequisite skills will place the pilot into the area of accessibility for the modules.
This is nice but to take advantage of the changes it may make sense to plug in several skill books before the changes if they can be plugged in now but are not.  Things like command ships will require a different set of training skills in the future to reach the point that the skillbook can be injected.  That was what it took me a moment to read and understand.  If you have a skill that will change its prerequeists you will still be able to use that skill in the future.  They will not, however, be giving us the prerequists if we don't already have them.  The only skills we are gaining are the Racial Destroyer and Racial Cruiser ones.
Until the hauler changes come through Iteron V’s will become super popular as the new loot piñata.  17 days for an Orca is kind of ‘wow’ but again they will fall under my ‘not training as well as they should’ prediction.  Once these changes come through Sugar will be training to fly an Orca.  Grand Theft Orca is one of my dream situations and I need to be prepared for it.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the DevBlog link, just read through it.

    The other side of the "new players, faster" coin is also "specialized alt, faster." I don't know much of anything about the capital ship world, but it sounds like making a carrier alt from scratch just got faster. Hmm.. does that mean it is possible for NullSec stalwarts to make a Titan alt faster whose sole job will be to run jump bridges (and not hit the wrong button)?

    I wonder if anyone is going to complain that CPP violated the "if you can fly it today" rule by saying that their Navy Issue Battleship now takes Racial Battleship II and they only have Racial Battleship I. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The other issue with your "cookies and no milk" scenario is that those venturing into low/null, or even staying in pre-:TotallySafe:-hisec are going to end up shedding some particularly acidic tears when they buy a brand-new Navy Domi or Navy Raven and get it popped easily by a small gate camp, or even find themselves soloed by a well-skilled cruiser or faction frig pilot who ninjas some loot from their mission, or has a war on their corp.
    I forsee an exponential increase of tears from this, and not of the good sort (though I'm not particularly fond of tears of any sort).

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like the changes to orca/carrier. Can't fly either of them yet but when these changes hit I'll probably be able to inject the skill right away.

    ReplyDelete

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