I found it hard to figure out why the great game of EVE Online is not more popular. Sure, having consequences for your actions keep total idiots out and griefing annoys some just because it's "evil", but still there should be a much larger population. After all in many games defeat has consequences and griefing is possible even in WoW.
At the Logistics checklist post I found another reason: the EVE Offline curse. It comes with the claim: "ships are designed by ccp with all-level-5-skills in mind. fleet setups are designed, usually with level 5 skills in mind. If you cannot afford to train all relevant skills to V you shouldn't be flying the ship yet." In other words: in the first year of playing don't even bother to undock your ship, just log in to queue the next skill. OK, you can undock in a Rifter to lol around but don't even dream of doing anything worth mentioning.
The above demand is totally idiotic. The skills are usually in the form of "giving 5% bonus per level", maybe "giving 10% bonus per level". If we divide the level 4 result by the level 5 result, we get 120/125 = 0.96 and 140/150 = 0.93. Learning a rank 1 skill to level 5 takes 256000 points, while level 4 takes 45255 pt. Spending 18% of the training time gives you 96/93% of the effect. The other 82% gives you the remaining 4/7%. Clearly a new player, when faced with this nonsense will give up playing after a few months. I mean it's totally unrealistic for someone to subscribe a game for a year without playing it.
What can CCP do to end it? They already did everything they could by removing the learning skills (except Cybernetics). They purposefully made rank 5 a small increase over a large investment. The problem is not their doing, players are rising artificial barriers, just like the infamous "LFM random HC must have raid instance level gearscore" in WoW.
Why do they do it? Is it just pointless elitism saying "Just because I played a year longer, I'm so much better than you that you shouldn't even bother to undock"? No, I think it's rather based on the collectivist organization of alliances and fleets. I mean the pilots have no word in the strategy but they also have no risks and responsibilities. Their ships are given by the alliance and will be replaced for free if destroyed. It is indeed unreasonable to ask the FC to redesign the fleet doctrine and give out a free ship just to let you tag along.
There are special fleets in the TEST alliance, called kitchen sink. There you can fly whatever you want. These fleets aren't performing that bad. The infamous Laser Rokh + Retreiver fleet got nearly 50% ISK efficiency against a "perfect doctrine" fleet. How? Because the individual pilots weren't F1-drones, but thinking people who fit their ships to their strengths and weaknesses.
CCP clearly designed the game with the "every ship is useful" idea, making a uniform all-drake fleet largely sub-optimal. Why does anyone field a bad fleet? Because it's easy to mass-produce and easy to micro-manage. Practically it's equal to a multibox fleet where the multiboxing hardware is the voice comm. The statement of "Intelligent human > 4-lines bot" is obvious. "Good fleet composition > multibox" is obvious too. You don't see such fleets in the alliance tournament or even in small-gang roams.
The uniform "doctrine" fleets are optimized to a "smart FC, dumb F1-drones" scheme. Trying to break it would be a disaster. Left on their own devices, most players would get in a cheap terrible-fit (or over-pimped terrible-fit if the alliance pays the bills) and get devastated. While "Intelligent human > F1-drone" is true, "Average player > F1-drone" is absolutely not.
One can easily figure out an "easy" solution: F1 drones fly uniformed ships, smart people act on their own. However the FC asking "who are smart people here?" wouldn't be the best way to determine. How can we make that choice? TEST figured that out too: as independence always comes with responsibility, the kitchen sink fleets are not reinbursed. If your idea didn't work out (or you joined with bad FC or bad fleet) you won't get your ship back. You have to play with your own money.
I can't imagine that there is a large-fleet FC (killboard junkies are different) who would reject a pilot saying: "take me, I can keep the speed with the others and do what I can. If I pop, it costs you nothing". After all, even if he does nothing at all, he still serve as decoy, if he is primaried, he just saved someone else from being primary. I can't imagine that any FC would reject my logi just because it has 12% smaller tank and heals 8% less. On the other hand he is completely right to reject me flying his money in a sub-optimal ship at sub-optimal efficiency.
It's not the job of CCP to end the EVE Offline curse. It's not the job of the FC to redesign his doctrine and toss a free ship just to accept a special snowflake. It is your job to break it by taking the financial responsibility of your actions. Ask your FC two questions: speed and optimal range. Fit whatever you want to fly and offer your services to the fleet on your own money, without asking them to help you buy the ship or to replace it if lost.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just dumb elitism like the infamous "you must have raid gear for a faceroll dungeon" in WoW WotLK. Maybe TEST is a special place with a special culture. Then I was wrong yesterday too. If it is the case, if only TEST fields kitchen sink fleets and the victory of SoCo would mean the end of such fleets, then it is something worth fighting for. If you know of kitchen-sink fleets in other alliances, or if you are sure that this or that alliance would not allow custom ships to join even for free, please comment.
PS: My plan of learning logi is still too EVE-Offline as the logi pilot is almost 3 months old and still more than a month away from flying it. The fastest path is learning Cybernetics 4 on the starter remap, get +4 implants and learn Signature analysis and Long range targeting 5 (both needed to learn Logistics skill). Learn the rest of the support skills to level 3. These take 15 days. Then remap P7-W7, learn faction cruiser 5 and Logistics 3. That takes 24.3 days and you are ready to fly. You'll suck but you'll be able to escort someone to L4 or disappear in a blop (get MWD). Continue learning logistics to 5 (25 more days), then remap I10-M4 and pull up your support skills to 4, then 5. The reason why I did not follow this path is that I go for a carrier and I'd run out of remaps (PW, IM, back to PW for carrier, back to IM for capital support skills). My way is IM for all support to 4-5, PW for logi and carrier, back IM for capital support and lvl 5s).
Wednesday morning report: 82.7B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on logi, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 0.5 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 0.8 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
At the Logistics checklist post I found another reason: the EVE Offline curse. It comes with the claim: "ships are designed by ccp with all-level-5-skills in mind. fleet setups are designed, usually with level 5 skills in mind. If you cannot afford to train all relevant skills to V you shouldn't be flying the ship yet." In other words: in the first year of playing don't even bother to undock your ship, just log in to queue the next skill. OK, you can undock in a Rifter to lol around but don't even dream of doing anything worth mentioning.
The above demand is totally idiotic. The skills are usually in the form of "giving 5% bonus per level", maybe "giving 10% bonus per level". If we divide the level 4 result by the level 5 result, we get 120/125 = 0.96 and 140/150 = 0.93. Learning a rank 1 skill to level 5 takes 256000 points, while level 4 takes 45255 pt. Spending 18% of the training time gives you 96/93% of the effect. The other 82% gives you the remaining 4/7%. Clearly a new player, when faced with this nonsense will give up playing after a few months. I mean it's totally unrealistic for someone to subscribe a game for a year without playing it.
What can CCP do to end it? They already did everything they could by removing the learning skills (except Cybernetics). They purposefully made rank 5 a small increase over a large investment. The problem is not their doing, players are rising artificial barriers, just like the infamous "LFM random HC must have raid instance level gearscore" in WoW.
Why do they do it? Is it just pointless elitism saying "Just because I played a year longer, I'm so much better than you that you shouldn't even bother to undock"? No, I think it's rather based on the collectivist organization of alliances and fleets. I mean the pilots have no word in the strategy but they also have no risks and responsibilities. Their ships are given by the alliance and will be replaced for free if destroyed. It is indeed unreasonable to ask the FC to redesign the fleet doctrine and give out a free ship just to let you tag along.
There are special fleets in the TEST alliance, called kitchen sink. There you can fly whatever you want. These fleets aren't performing that bad. The infamous Laser Rokh + Retreiver fleet got nearly 50% ISK efficiency against a "perfect doctrine" fleet. How? Because the individual pilots weren't F1-drones, but thinking people who fit their ships to their strengths and weaknesses.
CCP clearly designed the game with the "every ship is useful" idea, making a uniform all-drake fleet largely sub-optimal. Why does anyone field a bad fleet? Because it's easy to mass-produce and easy to micro-manage. Practically it's equal to a multibox fleet where the multiboxing hardware is the voice comm. The statement of "Intelligent human > 4-lines bot" is obvious. "Good fleet composition > multibox" is obvious too. You don't see such fleets in the alliance tournament or even in small-gang roams.
The uniform "doctrine" fleets are optimized to a "smart FC, dumb F1-drones" scheme. Trying to break it would be a disaster. Left on their own devices, most players would get in a cheap terrible-fit (or over-pimped terrible-fit if the alliance pays the bills) and get devastated. While "Intelligent human > F1-drone" is true, "Average player > F1-drone" is absolutely not.
One can easily figure out an "easy" solution: F1 drones fly uniformed ships, smart people act on their own. However the FC asking "who are smart people here?" wouldn't be the best way to determine. How can we make that choice? TEST figured that out too: as independence always comes with responsibility, the kitchen sink fleets are not reinbursed. If your idea didn't work out (or you joined with bad FC or bad fleet) you won't get your ship back. You have to play with your own money.
I can't imagine that there is a large-fleet FC (killboard junkies are different) who would reject a pilot saying: "take me, I can keep the speed with the others and do what I can. If I pop, it costs you nothing". After all, even if he does nothing at all, he still serve as decoy, if he is primaried, he just saved someone else from being primary. I can't imagine that any FC would reject my logi just because it has 12% smaller tank and heals 8% less. On the other hand he is completely right to reject me flying his money in a sub-optimal ship at sub-optimal efficiency.
It's not the job of CCP to end the EVE Offline curse. It's not the job of the FC to redesign his doctrine and toss a free ship just to accept a special snowflake. It is your job to break it by taking the financial responsibility of your actions. Ask your FC two questions: speed and optimal range. Fit whatever you want to fly and offer your services to the fleet on your own money, without asking them to help you buy the ship or to replace it if lost.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just dumb elitism like the infamous "you must have raid gear for a faceroll dungeon" in WoW WotLK. Maybe TEST is a special place with a special culture. Then I was wrong yesterday too. If it is the case, if only TEST fields kitchen sink fleets and the victory of SoCo would mean the end of such fleets, then it is something worth fighting for. If you know of kitchen-sink fleets in other alliances, or if you are sure that this or that alliance would not allow custom ships to join even for free, please comment.
PS: My plan of learning logi is still too EVE-Offline as the logi pilot is almost 3 months old and still more than a month away from flying it. The fastest path is learning Cybernetics 4 on the starter remap, get +4 implants and learn Signature analysis and Long range targeting 5 (both needed to learn Logistics skill). Learn the rest of the support skills to level 3. These take 15 days. Then remap P7-W7, learn faction cruiser 5 and Logistics 3. That takes 24.3 days and you are ready to fly. You'll suck but you'll be able to escort someone to L4 or disappear in a blop (get MWD). Continue learning logistics to 5 (25 more days), then remap I10-M4 and pull up your support skills to 4, then 5. The reason why I did not follow this path is that I go for a carrier and I'd run out of remaps (PW, IM, back to PW for carrier, back to IM for capital support skills). My way is IM for all support to 4-5, PW for logi and carrier, back IM for capital support and lvl 5s).
Wednesday morning report: 82.7B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on logi, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 0.5 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 0.8 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
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