Next major patch announced: Apocrypha

[Amarr HM]

So Amarr, the T3 basic hulls are essentially the same as their T1 and T2 counterparts?

Not at all, they are just placeholder images nobody has seen the T3 ships proper yet. It shows what skills you will need though photobucket squashed the image so apologies for the small text.

[Endie]

I notced new (I think) racial navy doctrine skills in the leadership skillgroup in Evemon (showing non-public skills).  I wonder if that is related to T3 (a command ship type module for bonuses).

[Quinton]

Yeah, I'm a bit curious what the 50k are and how painful this is going to make it for brand new players.  How long do 750k worth of skills take to train (I guess divided by two for the 2x training thing)?...

The training multiplier only effects the amount of sp you need to finish a skill, your attributes effect the amount of SP you can generate, so you could train anywhere from 10-80k a day. A balanced character with good learning and affordable implants should do about 45-50k a day.

Ye gods.  So ~2 weeks for a new 50kSP character to catch up with a new character created with the 800kSP new character system we have today.  That's pretty obnoxious.

[Thrawn]

Ye gods.  So ~2 weeks for a new 50kSP character to catch up with a new character created with the 800kSP new character system we have today.  That's pretty obnoxious.

But that new character will be much better focused with less wasted skills.  Sounds like it will be GREAT for stuff like making VCBees, POS gunner alts, Cyno alts etc...

[TripleDES]

Tell me what you want, but I don't see this agile development bullshit work out until March 10th.

[Nerf]

Ye gods.  So ~2 weeks for a new 50kSP character to catch up with a new character created with the 800kSP new character system we have today.  That's pretty obnoxious.

But that new character will be much better focused with less wasted skills.  Sounds like it will be GREAT for stuff like making VCBees, POS gunner alts, Cyno alts etc...

Yeah, it would be great for alts, but what about NEW players?  Want to make us happy with alts? Let us train them at 1/2 speed while our main trains at full speed. (Yes, I know this would kill their lucrative everyone has 4 accounts business model)

[IainC]

Ye gods.  So ~2 weeks for a new 50kSP character to catch up with a new character created with the 800kSP new character system we have today.  That's pretty obnoxious.

But that new character will be much better focused with less wasted skills.  Sounds like it will be GREAT for stuff like making VCBees, POS gunner alts, Cyno alts etc...

To be honest, if you pay attention at character creation, you really don't end up with wasted skills. Maybe a couple of level 1 skills at rank 2 or whatever but that's less than 10k skill points. I didn't pay attention when I created my main and the only wasted skill I have is mining I - oooh what a waste of 250 SPs!

[amiable]

I imagine they are doing this change to prevent folks from recycling suicide/scamming alts.

[Amarr HM]

I notced new (I think) racial navy doctrine skills in the leadership skillgroup in Evemon (showing non-public skills).  I wonder if that is related to T3 (a command ship type module for bonuses).

Evemon which should be fully updated isn't showing them for me & not on SISI either.

[eldaec]

This does mean the end of useful alts that require zero training.

Make your Matar-Vherokior market alt, and your Gallente-Intaki VCBee alt while you still can!

[Goumindong]

Racial Navy Doctrine skills have been in the Database for a long time doing nothing. They may get added, they may not. Who knows.

[Endie]

I notced new (I think) racial navy doctrine skills in the leadership skillgroup in Evemon (showing non-public skills).  I wonder if that is related to T3 (a command ship type module for bonuses).

Evemon which should be fully updated isn't showing them for me & not on SISI either.

You need to have the checkbox for non-public skills ticked.  There are always a bunch of weird skils showing, some more obviously dev tools ("Test Drones") than others.

And ta for that, Gou.

[Amarr HM]

yay T3 is coming can't wait, oh wait one sec wtf is this....



 

[WayAbvPar]

Fuck that.

[Yoru]

That pretty much kills any interest I have in ever flying one of those things. Unless there's modules to make some kind of awesome rock-raping T3 mining cruiser that outperforms a Hulk.

Still, I expect griefers will be suicide-ganking any T3 ships they can find mining, for the sheer joy of forcibly inflicting skill loss.

[Murgos]

Supposedly, it's not what you think.  The ship is supposed to 'learn' over time, that is, the longer you fly it the better certain skills will get in that ship and if the ship dies you lose those skills learned that were specific to that ship.  Sort of like, Han knowing that a particular noise the Falcon makes is the tachyon coupler coming loose again, or whatever, where as in a different ship that he isn't familiar with he would have no clue.

I would expect that training those skills is probably instead of training other skills though so it's probably a lot of a trade off.  Basically, you can learn general skills and be good in all ships or you can be really, really good in that specific hull.

[eldaec]

That was wishful eve-o thinking.

If your ship gets all blowed up, you lose one level in one of the 5 T3 subsystem skills chosen at random.

T3 bonuses are linked to the five subsystems and associated skills.

[Murgos]

That was wishful eve-o thinking.

If your ship gets all blowed up, you lose one level in one of the 5 T3 subsystem skills chosen at random.

T3 bonuses are linked to the five subsystems and associated skills.

Well, never mind then.  Loosing a potential 30+ day train means T3 ships will never be flown in combat.

[Thrawn]

Well, never mind then.  Loosing a potential 30+ day train means T3 ships will never be flown in combat.

If they are (assuming skill losing info is correct) they will probably always be primaried as well.  Who can pass up that much damage to an enemy pilot?

[eldaec]

The frightening thing is the number of people saying this mechanic is only ok if t3 crusiers can wtfomgbbq a Dreadnaught.

Personally, I think that would be a lot worse. I'm hoping t3 ships are a pile of shit that I never have to think about ever again.

Game needs more t1 and t2 options, not ever more strictly better ships that 98% of the player base will never fly.

[TripleDES]

IMO the logistics around building T3 ships are totally fucked up. Unless massive amounts of components are being poured out of rats and complexes per run.

[Nerf]

Making T3 even more expensive and inaccessible is something I just don't understand, why would they put so much effort into a mechanic that the vast majority of the population is never going to experience?  More t1 ships, more t1 modules, more shit for the everyman- this is what CCP should be spending development time on.

[tazelbain]

I figured this will give the bunch uber space rich folks that have nothing to spend their money on somethings to nash their teeth on.

[ajax34i]

CCP always pre-nerfs stuff.  Even if it hurts their game.

"Ok we're gonna cave in and finally introduce PVE and raids (cause someone else is making so much money with 11 mil subscribers), but what we're introducing is a complete catass grind for a rare piece of random drop that may...  MAY be better than the ships you have now...  nah it won't be.  Enjoy!!"

[Furiously]

But....But.... They are LEGO ships!!!!

[IainC]

Makes some sense to me, the last few expansions have been all about everyman content and noob friendly stuff like Factional Warfare, new PvE missions and so forth. There are a lot of old characters with more Isk than they can spend and a limited list of things to aim for skillwise. This adds a fairly hefty isk-sink and some fluidity to the higher end of skill training. I'm not disagreeing that there should be more stuff accessible to everyone as well but it doesn't seem like a waste of time to be throwing the guys who have four year plus subs a bone.

[bhodi]

Noob friendly? Not anymore! (Really - what are they thinking?!)

your revamped rookie – coming to an asteroid field near you! – part one
reported by CCP Fear | 2009.02.18 12:47:04 | NEW | Comments

Hello all!

Apocrypha is on the horizon and we are getting closer and closer to the final list of changes that will be popping up in March. But as usual, I get to talk about the New Player Experience (NPE).

I want to get one misconception out of the way. This blog will concern you and everyone else. If you have played for a year, 6 years, 3 months or a week, you will want to read further than this. Chances are there will be changes that will affect you! Although NPE in it‘s very existence focuses on the new player and how they are introduced to EVE, this can have an effect on older players as well. Many believe that the NPE extends only to the first 5 minutes. With some games, this might be true. But as we have all gone through the first months of EVE and often thought; „oh my, this game is too hard!"

This is something we want to help with. Our goal is to ease players into the game and not intimidate them with a hundred choices in the first minute. Start with the basics and then leave them to decide on their destiny. A true sandbox experience. Give them a shovel and a rake, and let them dig in.

Character creation

The biggest change you will probably notice is character creation. For the past few years, the process of creating your character has been a multi-step process with a lot of choices. Choices that were intimidating, to say the least, for anyone who had never played EVE before. You needed to choose a race, sex, bloodline, ancestry, career, specialization, school, and allocate free attribute points. You also had to select a name, read about the 30 skills and the 800K skill points you received from this experience.

For Apocrypha, we simplified this process. We eliminated choices that had no effect on you whatsoever and moved these choices to a more appropriate time where you could make an informed decision. You are in charge of your destiny.

We have simplified the UI, moving all choices into one screen. I think you will be quite surprised with the functionality, as it works quite well. We went through a whole fully functional "new" version of character creation before we re-did the whole thing again. These changes will be on SISI pretty soon (if they haven't arrived already) so I urge you to give it a try.

We have removed the School, Career and Specialization completely. These added quite a bit of complexity. Players were required to select these without knowing what to expect. Many times, people would choose blindly, leading them to feel let down or disappointed later on.

We have moved the allocation of the 5 free attribute points. A new player has no idea what the attributes means and, as many of you probably have done, assigned 3 to charisma because it must be awesome!

Skills received from character creation have been re-visited and removed, many of which were irrelevant to new players. Just to name one skill that a certain path could get - Who needs Siege Warfare when you are fresh out of military school? Are you going to siege a POS in your Velator?

These choices, all important, are better made once you have a true understanding of how things work in EVE. Once you know what you want to do, what you want to fly and so on, that is when you should decide on your career and skills. And it is better that you understand what the attributes do, before you start fiddling with them.

Skills and attributes

In our newest build, a player gets about 50K skill points from character creation. This might change, depending on testing. But we will be reducing the 800K quite substantially. New players should not feel intimidated by their skills, and they should be given a chance to decide, on their own, exactly what skills and path they want to go down. As a result, you will be able to create an alt which is more focused and get there quicker than before, as you can decide exactly what skills to train.

I will talk more about the skills and their effects in my next blog.

Your attributes will be very similar between the races once you start out, but now you will get to change them. A new player will have the opportunity to respec his attributes twice. This allows a new player to change previous decisions they made resulting from not knowing the system.

Once a year, you - and everyone else - can take 14 attribute points, and re-arrange them within reason. Attributes can be set at values anywhere from 5 to 15. This means, that every year, you can take all your spare charisma points and put them into perception if you so please. Or the other way around.

Careers - the sandbox way!

As I mentioned before, in the existing system players chose a career before even the first 10 minutes of play and, as with many games, it is an important choice. But with EVE, as you know, you can become anything you wish. You can move from shooting players to mining at any time. You are not bound by any restrictions by your "career." It gives the false impression that you are deciding on something, which then doesn't mean a thing in the world of New Eden.

However, you can learn about these particular career paths. As before, we will have 10 missions per career, which will teach you the basics of Industry, Business and Military occupations. These have been revamped, and are all available to you. You can go through them all if you want, or just one, or none. Your choice and your destiny.

This concludes the first part of the Apocrypha NPE overview blogs. There will be more from my design counterparts and myself in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Until then!

Important bits bolded. It's really astonishing how far out of touch they are.

There was talk of "double speed" training early, but there's no mention of it here - just removal of the solid baseline of early skills, extending the (already terrible) 'noob experience' a month and eliminating many alts for new players. Don't you think EVE is a brutal enough game on newbies? So much so that you basically have to say IGNORE YOUR FIRST TWO MONTHS IT WILL GET BETTER I PROMISE!. Well, now it's ignore the first THREE.

Let's not forget one subtle change here - that almost everyone specs so they can jump into cruisers in 3 days. I guess CCP wants to break you to the long skill training yoke early - Frigate IV for a new character is 5 days. Enjoy not being able to fly cruisers during your trial period!

Once a year, you can re-allocate skills? Once a YEAR? Seriously? Don't you think that's a bit, uh, long term? Like, so long term no one is going to give a shit beyond their initial Actura charisma-dump-stat re-allocation? You're basically going to be on the verge of your NEXT expansion by time this feature can be used!

[Murgos]

Just to name one skill that a certain path could get - Who needs Siege Warfare when you are fresh out of military school? Are you going to siege a POS in your Velator?

He doesn't even know what the skills he is removing do...

[IainC]

Once a year, you can re-allocate skills? Once a YEAR? Seriously? Don't you think that's a bit, uh, long term? Like, so long term no one is going to give a shit beyond their initial Actura charisma-dump-stat re-allocation? You're basically going to be on the verge of your NEXT expansion by time this feature can be used!

Well new players get two free respecs which I'd imagine are additional to the yearly respec that everyone gets. For existing characters the yearly respec is still infinitely better than the current no respecs ever situation. I know I'll be using it to siphon some of my excess charisma into willpower and memory, for many players it is an opportunity to balance out some extremes. For an existing player making a new alt you can also start by loading up int and memory to get your learning skills out of the way, then respec for extreme charisma to get social and leadership skills then finally respec to a more rounded build for general training beyond that - and you'll still have your free yearly respec if you want to go to a third kookie stat distribution before settling down.

[amiable]

Once a year, you can re-allocate skills? Once a YEAR? Seriously? Don't you think that's a bit, uh, long term? Like, so long term no one is going to give a shit beyond their initial Actura charisma-dump-stat re-allocation? You're basically going to be on the verge of your NEXT expansion by time this feature can be used!

Well new players get two free respecs which I'd imagine are additional to the yearly respec that everyone gets. For existing characters the yearly respec is still infinitely better than the current no respecs ever situation. I know I'll be using it to siphon some of my excess charisma into willpower and memory, for many players it is an opportunity to balance out some extremes. For an existing player making a new alt you can also start by loading up int and memory to get your learning skills out of the way, then respec for extreme charisma to get social and leadership skills then finally respec to a more rounded build for general training beyond that - and you'll still have your free yearly respec if you want to go to a third kookie stat distribution before settling down.

The stat re-allocation isn't as big a deal as the immense reduction in skill points.  This game is painfully boring to new players and re-erecting this barrier to entry is uttlery pointless.  CCP needs to encourage more folks to immediately get involved in PvP, because it is the crux of the game and the most interesting part.  The PvP is just terrible and I can't imagine any changes that they are contemplating that will make it any better.  This also sucks because:

1.  It increases the disparity between new players and the vets, seriously, how can a new EVER plan to compete with someone who has 100 million SP?  Doubling SP acquisition to 1.6 million is no where NEAR enough.   I say make it to 20-40 million.

2.  It makes new players almost completely useless to established alliances looking to recruit into the 0.0 game.  A 50,000 SP can barely fly a newbie frigate, and will be of marginal use even as a tackler/miner.

Seriously CCP, no one wants to wade through an extra month of your shitty PvE, why don't you get this?

[Murgos]

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=995241&page=2#43

Double speed will allow you to "catch up" to those pre-apocrypha in about 40 days, which is at 1.6 million SP. This is calculated at total SP though so you can go more than 40 days if you don't spend all days training.

That it is going to take 40 days of training to get to where a new player is now on finishing their character is absolutely one of the dumbest things ever.

NERF NEWBIES!!!  Who needs them!

[kildorn]

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=995241&page=2#43

Double speed will allow you to "catch up" to those pre-apocrypha in about 40 days, which is at 1.6 million SP. This is calculated at total SP though so you can go more than 40 days if you don't spend all days training.

That it is going to take 40 days of training to get to where a new player is now on finishing their character is absolutely one of the dumbest things ever.

NERF NEWBIES!!!  Who needs them!

They've decided they have enough new players and accounts, so they're going to make it FrigateFest again! That's amazingly stupid now that the numbers are laid out. 

[Predator Irl]

Its more of a case of noobies will never miss what they never had, they are Nerfing alts!

[IainC]

The stat re-allocation isn't as big a deal as the immense reduction in skill points.  This game is painfully boring to new players and re-erecting this barrier to entry is uttlery pointless.  CCP needs to encourage more folks to immediately get involved in PvP, because it is the crux of the game and the most interesting part.  The PvP is just terrible and I can't imagine any changes that they are contemplating that will make it any better.  This also sucks because:

1.  It increases the disparity between new players and the vets, seriously, how can a new EVER plan to compete with someone who has 100 million SP?  Doubling SP acquisition to 1.6 million is no where NEAR enough.   I say make it to 20-40 million.

2.  It makes new players almost completely useless to established alliances looking to recruit into the 0.0 game.  A 50,000 SP can barely fly a newbie frigate, and will be of marginal use even as a tackler/miner.

Seriously CCP, no one wants to wade through an extra month of your shitty PvE, why don't you get this?

I agree with your point that newbies should be buffed but I disagree that giving them 20M SPs is the answer. What I would say is better is to have a lot of options available for low SP characters that don't scale with SPs. Basically combat 'packages' that are useful in a variety of situations, that have a low SP investment and that don't get measurably better if you have 20, 30, 40 or whatever million SPs. This may require new ship and module types that specifically do not have scaling bonuses only role bonuses for example.

[Fordel]

I'm not sure how you can get noobs 'into pvp' straight off the bat without a sponsor or mentor, not without shitting all over their established item loss, risk/reward ideal.

"Yaa this is fun, pew pew pew *boom* I'm dead, now what? Go kill high sec rats/mine in my Velator for the next 5 hours to afford a new combat frig?"