hrm...
I used to think this very thing, and I loved EvE for it. Even if I drifted back and forth with subs, I always bragged about EvE-Online with my friends and it's death penalty. I loved that when you made a choice, you were stuck with it for good or bad. I loved training skills for equipment and efficiencies. If I decided to change tracks halfway in, well, then I just lost those skill points until I found a new need for them at some point. Earning skills, weaponry, ships, etc., was a sense of pride for me because I earned it. When I lost that equipment whether in PVE or PVP, it was an emotional loss because of the time spent earning it. I couldn't just run back to my body as a ghost and reclaim it all with just a repair penalty.

That feeling has begun to die for me. A month or so back I spent money on PLEX and bought a few skill injectors. I was excited by the idea of finally capping one of my drone skills instead of waiting the remaining month or so. After it was done, I looked over my training history and had a strange sensation. I felt like a who-oar.

All sense of earned pride and bragging rights for this or that suddenly vanished in the realization that nothing meant anything from that point forward. Drop some cash and here's a billion ISK. Not from a grind. Not from a calculated market long run. And not from a string of lucky encounters. Drop some more cash and you can instantly boost skill points. Meh. It was all just a single click away and it fulfilled nothing for me like losing my old Domi did years ago.

I suppose consequences are still very much a part of whatever EvE has become.

sigh.

It's a bit more than "leveling". For more than one player, choice and the consequences of that choice are important. EvE was a life sim of sorts. It was a place to login to avoid games where you could pay 10g for a spec reset and boom: everything starts over fresh making any choice up to that point ...pointless.

In EvE, I had to frigate to cruiser to battleship, etc., hopefully learning the pros and cons of each along the way. If I made a mistake in my skill path, then I had to learn how to make use of what I had until I corrected my path. On the plus side, I never lost the ability to redirect my skills at any point along the way. I was never bound to one role or another. It was all forward and compounding gain that I couldn't find anywhere else. For me, that was unique.

It's actually less about progression and more about decision-making and commitment. Also, I am not saying that is the end-all be-all of my attraction to EvE; however, it is something that made it stand out for me. Injectors water that aspect down considerably.

My post was in reply to OP, and that's my humble opinion. That does not negate whatever other or additional enjoyment players may get out of it. Just mine, due to the principles that shape my opinions.


*EDIT*
Also: life is leveling. EvE felt more realistic as a result. For me, at least.
YMMV.

Let's not forget the dark ages after the EVE Gate closed and most planets lost their technology because they did not have the infrastructure to maintain it. In New Eden you have four factions that independently clawed their way back into space. (Well, Caldari and Gallente were not completely independent in their development as they were both in the same system and could communicate.) This results if four different technological development tracks, and even when they share/steal technology from another faction they have their own take on it.

Then of course you have that fifth faction that never lost their hold on space but became extremely eccentric. (Didn't clone tech come from them?)

I like that in New Eden you can usually tell which faction designed a piece of tech by just looking at it. They have such distinctive styles of design and architecture, as well as completely different social structures.

Seriously? With all the popular stories of people "buying win" and then getting facerolled by ships nowhere near their cost people STILL won't drop the pay-to-win ****?

You can't buy win in EVE Online. I've seen dozens of people in my 8 years in EVE playing on characters with crazy SP counts that they bought off the character bazaar. They've all been childishly easy to take down.

In the most infamous story of them all, a lawyer dumped $3300 dollars on PLEX and only got a humiliating lossmail and yet another Goonswarm scam story for his trouble.

Even in non-combat professions you're just going to get creamed by people with experience. If you don't have years of practice to draw from you are going to be easy fodder for people who do whether in PvP, marketing, industry, or even exploration. There's just no contest.

EVE is not a level-based MMO. Your SP and ISO have no bearing on how good you are at managing your ship and making informed decisions.

To draw a line, I do not believe it's P2W. For me at least, that's not the issue. As you said: without the skill and knowledge gained from experience in playing the game, those skipping in line will be destroyed.

That right there is at the heart of my point. I've gained experience through the grind, or "leveling" as you put it. That experience carries with it a sense of pride and history. EvE has history. It's persistent. That spirit has always been what attracted me. The permanence of skill histories is (was?) a small reflection of that persistent universe---my own small reflection as a spec in that great universe.

Training skills does not prevent me from enjoying the game. It just opens doors to new or more efficient ways of enjoyment; however, the knowledge comes through the wait. The wait also creates anticipation. When it's over, it's a genuine sense of accomplishment that will stay with me throughout my EvE game---and all the in-game experience that has accumulated as a result. Not anymore.

That is why EvE no longer has the attraction for me that it once did. It's not up to you to argue that my principles are wrong. It's absolutely irrelevant that you don't understand. If you enjoy things as they are, then by all means enjoy it. I am not going to rock the boat. I'll just eventually stop playing if other elements of the game can't pick up the slack for me.

I'm pretty sure I've drifted far off topic. Sorry OP!

No, they were terrible! They basically became required to be competetive in Dust because they were the best way to make money. You should NEVER under ANY circumstances have magically unlimited gear that exempts you from suffering loss.

You really think he's competing with full-time industrial moguls? Yeah, he's doing what he loves with real money, but he's hardly dominating the economy or anything.

I've bought multiple Game Time Codes in the past and used them to set up ships that probably got me more than one kill against people who earned all the ISK for their fittings in-game. However in more of those cases I've lost those ships to people with more experience than me.

What I'm saying is the issue isn't as black-and-white as many people argue it is.

If the person isn't winning, then they aren't paying to win. Mobius is right, you could have all the money in the world dumped into the game, if you don't know what you're doing you're gonna get blown up. Experience and knowing when to back off are gonna be the deciding factor in eve.

Who are you to speak for all "long liners"? Lol

I've spoken to many people about skill injectors. Many of them who have been playing since close to the beginning. Most of the responses I get are that of "I don't really think it's a big deal" and "will just have to wait and see"

Ccp spent a good portion of a year hammering out details with the CSM as to how these injectors would be implemented and what stipulations would be required to prevent them from unbalancing the game. Hence the diminishing return you get as your total SP count goes up.

Also your completely forgetting that players can spend isk on these injectors to. So it's not exclusive to people who spend money on the game. I run incursions with eve uni on one of my accounts and injectors have really helped a lot of struggling newer players. What used to take two-three months for our new guys to train takes like 1 month now because as they earn money picketing/scouting for us they buy sp injectors so that they can hop into a battleship faster and really get their eve career started.

And AGAIN let's not forgetting the eve character bizzar that's been around for forever. People have been buying fully skilled characters through that for years now and the game has been doing fine.

So where did you forget to factor in the eve character bizzar and how for a very long time now people have always been able to buy fully skilled characters?

Exactly, Byte. Once you can have an unlimited supply of a certain kind of gear, it reduces your investment in the fight and also means that win or lose you still get paid substantially thanks to not having to replace lost gear.

If Project Nova were to have industry elements that blueprints could be used for, and BPOs worked like they do in EVE Online, I would be fine with them.

To be able to use BPOs like in EVE, players would have to get a hold of materials to craft their gear off of the BPOs not to mention a way of creating the gear once you get the materials (BPO + material + production cost = produced gear). This would likely add a whole other complexity to development of the game. I'd be for it but I doubt CCP would. That said, I think Project Nova would likely be best without BPOs (at least in the short term to enable time to get them to work right). The shortcutted BPOs as provided with DUST did kind of kill the point of the game.