If it's at the same rate as you gain passive SP, why even use it in the first place?

The only time I could see it being useful would be if there was a maximum skillpoint limit... which would be terrible.

The current default Assault has two light weapons. Commandos haven't really been worked on yet, but if they stick around it's likely they'll have a new role.

Hold that thought until we see the work that CCP Z will show us.

It's less to do with immersion and more to do with discouraging FOTM chasers.

It's less to do with immersion and more to do with discouraging FOTM chasers.

The correct remedy for discouraging FOTM chasers, is not to create FOTM in the first place. To the extent CCP re-balances items, changing what we had previously chosen, our choices are rendered meaningless. Respecs are an absolutely necessary evil, if CCP is going to do any re-balancing of items. They are necessary to avoid the greater evil of treating their customers like the victims of a bait and switch scam.

Arguing that customers should be stuck with a choice they didn't make (a differently balanced version of their prior choice) is an argument against people enduring the consequences of their own choices, and in favor of making people endure the consequences of someone else's choice.

The entire "no respecs bc choices should have consequences" argument is thoroughly sloppy.

The skillback booster idea is not what you think. Here, take a look at this link that originally brought it up.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86041&find=unread

This basically allows you to remove SP from an unwanted skill book but at a pace equal to how you passively gain SP and your passive SP is disabled for the duration of the booster so you won't earn SP while removing SP. It's a fair system that appeases both the anti-respec and the pro-respec crowds.

Interestingly enough, there appeared to be quite a number of pro-respec folks who don't like this idea.

I like this idea. Keep in mind that I'm well known for hating respecs in general. That says something.

I invite you to head over to the Eve forums and ask for a refund if your Drones SP in light of the major drone changes coming in Kronos. I'm sure the community there will be very enthusiastic in their response.

I've heard that it will not be done, but I really think that you should just copy pasta the Eve Skills setup for Legion.

IMHO, it is a mistake to do otherwise.

I am not saying that It should be an exact mirror, just that it is similar enough in Dust now and it should stay this way for Legion.

If anything, you should make it more like Eve (include Leadership, Social and Trade skill trees).

My intuition says that the reason CCP Z is so inflexible on his progression system is because it's intimately tied to his monetization program.

This is not so much marketing influencing game design as marketing in full control of game design.

Still hoping for the best, tho i don't see a lot of respect for New Eden or her citizens in what we've seen so far. Maybe Rouge/Z can pull a miracle out of their hats.

Giant post incoming:

The progression system described sounds pretty terrible honestly. I've seen it described perfectly as a "WoW" like skill tree. Yes this is stupid easy to understand for new people, but it lacks any sort of complexity and depth. Does EvE box you into only using a certain weapon for a certain ship? No. You can fly a Battleship with Reps and small turrets if you want. Progression should be up to the player, and they should make their own decisions on what to be, you shouldn't make it for them. You need to take many more queues from EvE, not move farther away from it.

My vision:

Suits:
Two tiers of suits per class of suit, mirroring Eves tech 1 and 2 system. Like in Eve, Tech 2 would be about 2x more expensive, and give the player advanced capabilities in some areas, while stifling the other areas. Basically turning the dial up on the strengths and weaknesses of the tech 1 suit itself. You pay for the greater strength in the area you excel, but still have to pay a whole lot more for it, and also increase the risk with the weaknesses involved. The strength of the tech 2 suit and its cost would be directly proportional to the advantage it gives the player. If a tech 2 suit beats a equally skilled player in a basic suit 5/1 times, it needs to be 5 times the cost. That's ISK balance.

Battles:
This lobby stuff is stupid. The original idea that was pitched oh so many years ago was to have very large maps. You even see how some maps are connected now. These would be giant districts that people connect to battle in and leave once they are over, or even when they aren't over. Pushing forward and back on a much larger scale inside a map, somewhat longer battle times, yet still small enough not to be too ridiculous. These would make a difference on the planet as a whole. This needs to be realized, and the continuation of a matchmaking system isn't really the way to go. Progression should be about getting cool stuff that isn't just better then the stuff a noob gets initially, it should be about flavor and choice.

Weapons + Gear:
All this stuff needs to matter and be relevant, not just HP gear. There should be no such thing as a direct upgrade, and modules need to be balanced based on effective value. Gear should have the same tech 1 and 2 system as suits, with tech 2 gear having the same ratio of advantages vs drawbacks as tech 1 gear.

NPC interaction:
This ties into the Battlefield cleanup interaction. Once a district is taken, there should be a period of time that people can go and salvage and fight NPC drones to get salvage from the previous battle. There also should be specific drone controlled planets always open for NPC interaction and player interaction.

Passive ISK Generation:
I've heard talk of industry in Dust for a long time. I don't think it really fits. If you want to build stuff, play EvE. Game item production already exists in a whole level of immense complexity there. The drone cleanup idea introduces a faucet for passive generation of ISK however. Instead of going to a planet, you should be able to buy drones and set them up to be sent to the planets of your choosing once a battle there has been completed. Your drones would be some of the drones (perhaps more powerful versions of the drones) people fight in their PVE salvaging operations. It would be a whole new dimension of PVE, considering you are still be destroying something player owned. Obviously the amount of ISK would be very small in comparison to a player who goes to the planet themselves.

Player market:
Tie in with EvE on a small scale. EvE players should be able to sell Mercs all their gear. All production of gear should be produced EvE manufacturing side, then sold to Mercs. Mercs should only have access to this gear, and should be able to also sell this on an open market to other Dust Mercs

TL;DR: Make this game more like first person EvE with guns, and not first person WoW with guns.

waiting for :
we have to pay for unlocking skill nodes or trees

You guys seem so ridiculously deadset on the idea that your players are idiots and it's insulting. Part of the biggest problem of NPE is that they don't know where to put their SP to make a decent build and also that weapons are incredibly imbalanced.

Only part of this post that I disagree with is the part about PIG (Passive Isk Generation). There should be 0 PIG, all income generation should be Active.

Give all players the ability to Actively generate Isk and then allow Alliances/Corps to tax their membership. IMHO, Alliance tax should be drawn from the Taxes that a Corp generates.

Ex: My corporation has a tax rate of 12.5%, say that my Alliance has a 10% tax rate. If my Corp makes 12.5k in tax revenue from me then my Alliance should get 10% of that giving them 1250 Isk and leaving my corp with 11250 Isk.

Only part of this post that I disagree with is the part about PIG (Passive Isk Generation). There should be 0 PIG, all income generation should be Active.

Agreed. There is no game that I can think of today that gives you passive income generation.

Days later and I still don't like the concept of this proposed progression system for pretty much every reason people have posted. I'm definitely getting the classic CCP Dust Development vibe of "we're going to do what we want on this with the illusion of feedback."

The current skill system we have works to a certain extent but has it's obvious problems. 1/3/5 is bad. Items should be unlocked at 1 and every point after should provide a bonus. Why is this difficult?

The idea that "there's too much choice" is simply silly. Yes, at first there is a bit too much choice but this can be remedied by a certification system similar to eve's. It can give you an idea of a "vanilla" role and you can go from there.

You guys seem so ridiculously deadset on the idea that your players are idiots and it's insulting. Part of the biggest problem of NPE is that they don't know where to put their SP to make a decent build and also that weapons are incredibly imbalanced.

We want depth and customization, not progression on rails until you hit end game. Stop trying to reinvent the progression and just fix the problems the current system has and make sure weapons and suits are balanced properly.

You guys seem so ridiculously deadset on the idea that your players are idiots and it's insulting. Part of the biggest problem of NPE is that they don't know where to put their SP to make a decent build and also that weapons are incredibly imbalanced.

We want depth and customization, not progression on rails until you hit end game. Stop trying to reinvent the progression and just fix the problems the current system has and make sure weapons and suits are balanced properly.

You have a lot of people looking for some sort of manufacturing or something. I'm really not against passive ISK as long as the ISK per hour is terrible. It should be equivalent to like 1 or 2 game ISK payouts per day. Say it takes 12 hours for a drone to complete its salvage run, and you only have the "bandwidth" to have 2 drones working at once. There are various ways to limit it, and I think it would be very satisfying to kill someone else's drone that they payed for and took the time to send to a specific planet (It should obviously let you know when you did this).

Being able to open it up to fitting the drones you send to would be really cool. maybe you want one that sucks at defending itself but makes more money. Or one that is a beast but makes less money. That would be cool.



EvE Online? If Dust or Legion ever got a player market, you would see passive income generation there as well.

Corp taxes, Planetary Interaction, POCO taxes (assuming you control the POCO), and tycoon-level market trading hardly qualify as passive income generation. All of them require player effort in some form in addition to maintaining that effort. I have been playing Eve Online since 2008 and I still do. There is absolutely no passive income generation in Eve in the sense that you do nothing to earn it.

Ok, then read my original post. I basically state you need to setup everything, send drones out to get you salvage, and also putting them at risk of being destroying by players. Also stated the possibility to add fitting options to these drones to give someone more interaction and choice.

If we are defining passive income as doing nothing for ISK, how is this passive then?
(My definition would be you do something in game to setup something, leave, come back to ISK).

In that case, it should be fine as long as you have to put in the effort (not just initially but every now and then). I guess I misread it originally. Sorry about that.

Days later and I still don't like the concept of this proposed progression system for pretty much every reason people have posted. I'm definitely getting the classic CCP Dust Development vibe of "we're going to do what we want on this with the illusion of feedback."

The current skill system we have works to a certain extent but has it's obvious problems. 1/3/5 is bad. Items should be unlocked at 1 and every point after should provide a bonus. Why is this difficult?

The idea that "there's too much choice" is simply silly. Yes, at first there is a bit too much choice but this can be remedied by a certification system similar to eve's. It can give you an idea of a "vanilla" role and you can go from there.

You guys seem so ridiculously deadset on the idea that your players are idiots and it's insulting. Part of the biggest problem of NPE is that they don't know where to put their SP to make a decent build and also that weapons are incredibly imbalanced.

We want depth and customization, not progression on rails until you hit end game. Stop trying to reinvent the progression and just fix the problems the current system has and make sure weapons and suits are balanced properly.

Days later and I still don't like the concept of this proposed progression system for pretty much every reason people have posted. I'm definitely getting the classic CCP Dust Development vibe of "we're going to do what we want on this with the illusion of feedback."

The current skill system we have works to a certain extent but has it's obvious problems. 1/3/5 is bad. Items should be unlocked at 1 and every point after should provide a bonus. Why is this difficult?

The idea that "there's too much choice" is simply silly. Yes, at first there is a bit too much choice but this can be remedied by a certification system similar to eve's. It can give you an idea of a "vanilla" role and you can go from there.

You guys seem so ridiculously deadset on the idea that your players are idiots and it's insulting. Part of the biggest problem of NPE is that they don't know where to put their SP to make a decent build and also that weapons are incredibly imbalanced.

We want depth and customization, not progression on rails until you hit end game. Stop trying to reinvent the progression and just fix the problems the current system has and make sure weapons and suits are balanced properly.