*Sigh* you guys have bickered so long that when I quote the important parts I'm down to only 2700 characters to do my own griping.

Ok, first off, this is not a new universe, this is an expansion of an existing one. Second, since this is not an FPS it should not reward like an FPS, and the same goes for it's MMO aspect. The whole game is a hybrid genre, which means that the proper balance needs to be in place for it to work. Since you are basically combining MMORPG and FPS and expecting it to work, the leveling needs to be steered towards the middle of the whole thing and not just towards the FPS crowd. Yes, FPS players will be about 60-65% of the target audience, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't compromise it's system to accommodate the rest of it's audience. The FPS players need to stop feeling so snobby and entitled about being the target audience and give a little for the rest of the crowd. I'll say it again; passive SP, small SP boosts at the end of battle based on your performance, no SP cap.

THIS.

wrong
with the lower skills passive SP means alot now
its the perfect middle ground already. u play u get rewarded u hit ur cap and u gain passive SP that is enough to get some skills up as well for those who cant play as much

wrong
this thread was created before the lowering of the skills and even with the current system its still a pain in the ass to reach a cap of you sp.

seewhatididder?

how is it a pain to reach the sp cap?
u can reach that in 3-4 days of playin casually (i consider the cap when u start gettin ridiculously low SPs)
either way this is a F2P game and u have to keep a playerbase hooked

EVEs time based system will not do that , it will not give ppl a reason to login in and play
ISK isnt a big enough reason for the masses aka casuals to login and play if they cant spend it on anything new and shiny.

and having small SP boosts wont help either because it will feel like a painfully slow grind for ppl

When was ever stated that the passive system has to take you that much longer as opposed to the active skill system?

this thread makes me chuckle

wasnt there suppose dto be some sort of horde mode for stat whoring?

and booster-ing i assume is refering to exploits and points farming right? not just the 50% boosters bought off market right? but thinking of the boosters off market, why the hell should an individual buy them if you only take half the time to reach skill cap without it? its like buying something that you only get to use half of the time. and the SP cap doesnt really stop boosters, it just reduces how long they have to actually try playing the game, can hit the skill cap in about 2-3 hours in one night booster-ing, at which point people say fuckit ill log in next week. not ot mention it is he who gets the proto rifle first has the greatest advantage, grind out for the 3-4 days that the booster already has theirs

theres no way of preventing boosting, its going to happen as long as skill points are awarded for actions taken. i expect once things go live that boosting will happen, especially in nullsec, where entire corporations will be working together in premade matches against eachother farming kills and points like its the cool thing to do. kills/nanites, recaping objectives direclty next to the enemy who just took it for you to recap, vehicular repairs anywhere. the fact that i can think of this many just off the top of my head, i see many opportunities and i knwo someone somewhere will have thought of more than i do.

and for those nay-sayers, i expect the major powerblocs in nullsec to post up private or super poor paying contracts(to prevent serious players from jumping in) for their own dust mercs to farm up in militia gear against eachother. you cant honestly expect fair play out of any of them after all the rage about blobs being lame when -a- drops 200 man tengu fleets. and you cant honestly expect them to leave the sp progression of their mercs to pubbie matches

Admittedly, I've skipped from page to page in this thread, but I think I've read the constructive posts anyway.

My vote would be with the OP on having a time / passive based SP system.
However, there is a point about having an incentive to keep people playing/active in the game.
So how about having the suggested time based passive system, but also when you are actually playing a game you earn SP at a slightly increased rate. For example, when playing you earn at a rate of 1.25x the passive rate, so if you play for 20minutes you actually earn 25 minutes of SP.
And if you want to spend your hard earned AUR on a booster, then you would still earn at a rate of 1.5 x passive rate I.e. 20mins now becomes 30 mins.

All the rewards for kills, hacks, revives etc should be ISK based though. So effectively, you get paid for performance. Get your basic wage / contract plus the bonus for actually how much work you actually did!!!

We're mercenaries it's the cash what matters!

1x level skills should all be acquired passively.

pure passive learning is the only way to prevent booster-ing illegitimately, and even then theyd still booster for iskies under the previously mentioned comments, but thats life untill they allow direct isk transfers from EVE players to their sponsored DUST Mercs.