I have been thinking about the SP issue and my thoughts are that the amount of SP's you get for active skilling should be asymptotic and by that I mean that it when you first start the game it should rise quickly, and as you progress, the SP gain should drop off (from active skilling, passive should remain the same) and it should be based on the average SP of everyone involved in the match.

Specifically (with made up hypothetical numbers) your skill point gain for activity should have a steady decomposition of about 10% per year down to a minimum of 50% (after 5 years) so that when you start the game, something that would get you 100 skill points, after 5 years of playing would only get you 50 points. Also, your active skill points would be further adjusted by the relative SP of the entire battle. So, you take the average SP divided by your skill points, and multiply your active gains by that number.

So for example to illustrate my point.

You are Uber Proto-Man (not actual Protoman, a non descript player) with like 40 million SP's and you end up in a match where the average SP of everyone is around 5 million. This means that you are 8x the average SP and thus all of your active SP gains are x(1/8) of what they would have been. Also, since you have been in the game a long long time (5 years), the active skilling is peaking and you get about 50% of the base active skilling you were getting when you started. So you have a match that would net you 100,000SP, but after the veteran penalty of 50%, you get 50,000, then you take the average (5 million) divided by your SP (40 million) and multiply that (1/8) by your 50,000 which gives you 6,250 SP. With the augment you would get 9,375.

On the flip side, you are a total NOOB. You have 350,000 SP. You end up in a match where the average is 7 million SP. (20X). You have a match that would have gotten you 10,000 sp. You are new so you are at 100% active skilling. Then take the average (7 million) divided by your SP (350,000) and you get 20, multiply that by 10,000 and you get 200,000SP for one match. With the augment for skill boost, you would get 300,000SP.

This way, even new players can feel like they are progressing while they are not good enough to really be gaining much in real terms, whereas the veteran players would be more driven by the conquest attribute of the game vice the skill point leveling.

Also, this method makes the actual SP gain curve more closely resemble the real life learning curve (steep at first and tapering off at the top).

It is important to remember that active skilling now is 4X as good as it will be at launch and it is of course subject to balancing.

I think it would be nice if they incorporate a system where low-level players gain bonus SP for taking out more experienced players, and those high-level players get less reward for beating on the cannon fodder. I'm not sure what the exact modifier should be or how to apply it, but I'm sure CCP can come up with something.

[ Vets get shafted, would take months to advance just one level in some skills.

This would only be the case when vets are in games against noobs.

Also don't forget that they would be getting passive skilling as well.

As a null sec player in Eve, I know that at a certain point, the game is less about the next shiny bigger ship and more about the next war/battle/conquest. I assume that Dust will be the same.

The Veterans who have 40 million SP + are going to be more concerned with whether their Corp/alliance is able to pull off their next big offensive in Delve, not with how long it is going to take to get that prototype turret for their HAV.

And, as I said, the way I have it written if a 40 million SP guy gets into a battle where the average is 40 million, he would get the 50,000 he would normally have gotten. Or more if the average SP was higher, which if his CORP is assaulting an equal of better CORP, it very well might be a lot higher.

If you think 10 years out as CCP are, you should be trying to figure out ways to level off the progression gains so that what decides the big battles are skill/tactics/resources and not time invested only. Thats the way Eve works.

No one wants to join a game ofter it has been out for 10 years and play for 2-3 months only to realize that they can NEVER compete with the veterans. That is bad game design. The only way to allow the new players to be able to feel that they can catch up is to have the vets slow down over time.

Most games accomplish this by having a level cap, but those are arbitrary and dumb and fundamentally not sandbox mechanics.

I think it is a rather elegant and not heavy handed solution.

I absolutely agree that noobs should be able to contend with vets, but where we differ is in how difficult we think it is to do that. A noob in full militia can still be effective as a part of a group, or if he gets the drop on an enemy, never mind if he specs into something.

As an EVE player, you should know this too; EVE noobs are able to contend with the rest of us by focusing on depth rather than breadth of skills. If noobs are provided with enough SP right off the bat to spec into some half-decent tier 1 gear, they'll be even more effective.

I do like the idea of vets getting reduced SP for killing noobs, and noobs should get more for killing vets. However, I'm thinking more along the lines of 50% reduction as the absolute maximum, or a 100% increase max for noobs. Only getting 12% of the SP you would get otherwise would just be frustrating, and punish players for playing the game longer.

Now I'm not sure how the game determines how much SP you get each battle behind the scenes, but I think that reductions should work as follows: if a player kills another player say, 10 million or more SP below them, they get a 50% reduction in SP for that one kill. At 9 million different, it would be 45%, at 8, 40%, etc. (The discrepancy would likely have to be increased for the maximum and scaled, but you get the idea)

The inverse would be true for noobs; for killing someone 10 million SP or more above you, you get twice as many SP, 100% increase. For 9 million, 90% more, etc. Again, this would likely be a higher SP difference, and scaled.

Using that system would give vets more incentive to capture and hack rather than kill, as they would get no SP reduction for such actions. Noobs would be well rewarded for vet kills, but the comparative ease of completing non-combat objectives would also promote teamwork. The end result would be vets being punished less, noobs being able to catch up more quickly and being rewarded for what many of them likely came to do in the first place: shoot people in the face. As they advance, they'll stick around; come for the pew pew, stay for the depth.


EDIT: not sure how quickly the average player will be able to acquire SP (without modifiers), so the above system is more about the paradigm than the actual numbers.

We are going to have highsec matchmaking system in place.

Give the noobs RE and its all fixed \o/.

I dont think anything needs to change because once you do get proto it dont get any better you just train other gear. Massive SP just gives the vets more gear to pick from.

We are going to have highsec matchmaking system in place.

There will be contracts out there that will be worth little.

These battles should draw in the new crowd because to them, that money is heaps.

Veteran players won't risk their higher tier gear to fight these battles as the reward for the whole contract would be worth less than a single set of their good gear.

As in EVE, just because you can fly Capital Ships, you don't give up flying Frigates.

The new guys will be playing with similar gear as the veteran players on these battles and should be relatively fair.

If you've ever looked at the actual bonuses the character skills give you, they're actually very little and just like in EVE, skills bring diminishing returns.

If some Veteran decides to bring his best stuff and die to 2 new guys with militia assault rifles, he's going to hurt a lot more than everybody else in the battle.

They might be able to easily replace it due to playing more, but that's their choice.

We are going to have highsec matchmaking system in place.