We acknowledge that the current implementation of the skill cap still isn't quite there yet. It doesn't quite allow people to choose when to play as freely as we would like, and it also adds some unnecessary complexity when it comes to using active boosters. This is why we are working our way towards a rollover SP system: instead having your pool of bonus SP being reset according to a fixed weekly cycle, you will steadily accumulate bonus SP to a pool over time that you can then empty through fighting in battles. As a result, everyone should be able to better choose when to come in and claim the available SP. Moving to such a system would have the added benefit of allowing us to make active boosters to give out a constant value over time by having them influence the rate at which SP accumulates into the pool instead of just multiplying SP received at the end of each battle.

The Alternative

It's simple really.

1) Have an active SP reward pool which is the size of a 4x week's of SP, which with the current limits would be 761,600 SP.
2) Active SP rewards deplete this pool, as they do now.
3) Each tick of 30 minutes 566 SP are added back into the SP reward pool.
4) The pool never goes above the maximum size of 761,600 SP
5) Once empty, no rewards (or a nominal reward) is given).

The Benefits
You get to combine the pros of the weekly AND the daily cap!

Pros:
A) Whether you play weekly or daily, you have the opportunity to achieve the same number of active SP rewards from your plays.
-- You can spread your 10 hours per week over the entire week, playing each day. Or you can have a marathon weekend and do it all in one go!

B) No matter how much you have played, you will always have some more SP that you can earn the next day. A full day's worth of SP in fact.
-- Even if you've earned an entire week's worth of active SP reward in the previous 2 days, you don't have to wait for a weekly reset day before it is worth playing some more

C) No waiting for a reset at down time, just wait 30 minutes!

D) It doesn't matter what the SP pool size is, the SP pool recovery rate is what sets how fast the maximum speed of SP accrual is. The SP pool could be set to a month's worth; the only affect would be how far in front players could be when comparing a full pool to an empty pool.

For the people commenting on a rollover decay/expiry :

Some of you compare to Eve subs, and referencing no progression for those not playing. Again, this is a different genre, and a different marketing style. In a F2P game, the point is to make it ALWAYS attractive to come back and play it, even if you took a break to play other games for a while. For example, all the people who stopped playing Dust to play GTAV. It's not going to be long before most of them get bored and look for something else to play. If they could come back and powergame through all the SP from these past few weeks, a lot of them probably would. That's where the difference lies, IMO. Saying "We're going to let you catch up what you missed... (but only a bit of it/only for a little while) is kind of a slap in the face, and pretty much does exactly what people complain about with the weekly cap (Forces a segregation between those who have time to play and those who do not) just in a slightly more gentle way. But consider this : If a dude who is working and can only play 1h/day and can't cap anyways, how is this delayed/limited rollover going to help him, if he doesn't have time off very often? The system introduces yet more grind for him to go through to use up all that limited pool before it expires, doing exactly what this latest 3x SP event did. (Force a painful grind that people will do even if they hate it, and hate themselves afterwards for doing it)


This is kind of rambly, but I just woke up and about to head to work. Will reply more coherently later.

You made the claim that non-proto gear was not viable and used that as a springboard for revisions to the sp system.

I refuted it with what is a familiar experience for vets(not just the elite player you mention): that many players on this forum can get reasonable results with lesser gear, primarily by playing more carefully and choosing their engagements. The implication is that new players are disadvantaged primarily by their lack of knowledge, not by their sp or gear.

I believe the answer to that is education, namely the NPE CCP provides for recent immigrants to New Eden.

There may well be issues with gear balance, but that should not motivate revisions to the sp system.

There may well be issues with matchmaking, but that should not motivate revisions to the sp system.

I thought the topic here was discussion of a potential sp rollover system.

No, EVE training queue. This game should take time to reach proto everything.

There are a lot of good suggestions and ideas in this thread!

I would like to add a few ideas.

# "catch up" mechanic(s)
First off, I am against the implementation of any "catch up" mechanic. How ever if you insist on implementing one I think it would be a good idea to only make it benefit active players.

-¦ players under 5 million SPs gain bonus SP per WP (factor of 3)
-¦ players under 10 million SPs gain bonus SP per WP (factor of 2)
-¦ players under 15 million SPs gain bonus SP per WP (factor of 1)

This will reward active new players with out handing out free SPs to the ever increasing horde of alts and inactives.

If this is not enough you could:

-¦ players gain a respec after earning their first 15 million SPs

It will allow new players to make mistakes and to learn from them with out suffering from them. It will also allow new players to "catch up" by specialising.

If you still feel like you aren't giving new players enough of an advantage over the rest of your player base:

-¦ make the boosters give 1.75x their value to player that has less than 10 million SPs

Can't really find a way to justify this but hey it's an idea and as we all know not all ideas are good.

# rollover system

-¦ 28k sp is added daily to the cap

I would prefer to have the rollover system based of a daily addition to the cap since it would promote an active player base giving them a reason to logon every day (if they chose to do so). And having the rollover system will not punish those who chose to log on less frequently.

It might also dissuade the "no reason to log on until wednesday" and the subsequent "protostomp wednesdays". A side effect will be that no one is "rushing a head". (Not sure if that is good or bad.)

-¦ cap is limited to 500k

Having a such a high cap will allow for longer breaks and/or highs and lows in play time.

-¦ cap starts with 500k SPs in it for new players

An other way to benefit new players I guess.

This system isn't without a potential disadvantage: Players not playing in preparation of "3x SP" events. In order to make the most of "3x SP" events you would have to "save cap" in order to fully take advantage of the events.

Possible solution: "3x SP" events would have their bonus applied only to the SP added to the cap that day.

Another disadvantage would be an other form of "save and grind" including the use of short boosters to make the most out of said boosters.

My only problem with "Full passive" as suggested by some, is that yeah... It's kind of an Eve thing. While Eve things aren't always bad, it's one of the only MMO's that doesn't reward you with some manner of progression every time you kill stuff.

No skill point cap at all. Whats the point? If a player earns 2500 WPs he should get 2500 WPs. with no cap we may see player count rise. I think we would have fewr players playing just to cap out each week

The thought behind the cap is that once players get every skill they're interested in to 5 interest in the game will wane and they'll stop playing. Something like that anyway.

No skill point cap at all. Whats the point? If a player earns 2500 WPs he should get 2500 WPs. with no cap we may see player count rise. I think we would have fewr players playing just to cap out each week

I'd like to link to my suggestion for a large, constantly regenerating pool of SP: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=462915#post462915



Active boosters simply increase the rate at which the pool refills (and increases the max pool size).

No cap. Reward those who play the most by removing the cap.having a cap has created a scheduled peak and lapse in activity every week. Activity overall would increase if the cap was removed. To help new players catch up to old players , have some sort of multiplier to active sp earned for new players ie. <1 mil sp get like X 1.5 active sp earned untill they reach 3 mil and from then until they reach 5 mil get X 1.2 active . Or something similar .doing so would probably end up making more people buy bossters wanting to get that multiplier back

The thought behind the cap is that once players get every skill they're interested in to 5 interest in the game will wane and they'll stop playing. Something like that anyway.

-Snip-

I like this.

There should probably still be some SP from WP cap just to account for any WP farming issues that may crop up. Just make it something that most people won't be likely to reach.

This SP system need to be revamped to all passive training queues like in EVE Laurent. The current system is not good enough for a game in 2013. It feels like a RPG skill system from the 90s. Streamline, streamline and streamline...

Like we say in Sweden: "You cannot add makeup to an old ugly Volvo car to make it look good" (Very rough translation of the saying).

A full passive system would also prohibit WP farming to gain insane amount of SP. It is the only way dust could ever be balanced SP wise between HC grind players and people with a life outside of new eden.

I'm a first hand support of the fully passive SP system. If dust was made the way i alone would want it to be, it would be fully passive. But many discussions have happend during beta and after. And Dust would be dead by now if it didnt had any active SP system.

Also, we're talking about an FPS, not a game like EVE in which time perception and gameplay momentum are very different. The need for immediate rewarding, and the possibility to accelerate your training through playing seems to be mandatory.

To be honest, i'm not even discussing fully passive anymore as i dont see it happened ever. One of the main reason being that the F2P model makes active SP a way too big source of income.



It would be balanced. But how could you balance players who already got active SP and the future players that would get only passive ? And i believe there aint just one solution to a problem.

Its simple: SP reset.

The worst part of the balance atm is not especially people getting really high SP wise. it's more about people struggling to reach a decent amount of SP. After all, when you've reached 10/15 million SP. you're pretty much just as tough in one role\weapon than a guy with 50 million SP in that same role\weapon. At least stat wise.