Probably a daft idea, but why not make the skill point limit a simple multiple of the total passive SPs earned by the character to date?

If you have 1,000,000 passive SP, and the multiplier is 1.5 then you can have at most 1,500,000 total SP.

No need to track daily or weekly, no need to reset the cap. Just track the passive total and when allocating SP at the end of a match compare with passive x multiple.

How will that work with alts? It would take forever for someone to make even 2 of their 3 characters half decent.

Couldnt we just make it a better version of what is already in place? Keep the 500k point cap, keep passive SP, and simply make the SP you earn after cap higher. After you reach cap make it a max of 5000 SP you can earn per match, and you have to make over 1000 WP in the match to earn the max of 5000. If you make 500 WP you get 2500 SP and so on through the scale. It could even be bumped up to 1500 WP for 5000 SP if that seems more fair, but that way people get a decent reward for doing well while not gaining a massively significant advantage over players who play less.

How do you decide what is "fair"?

Players already get a reward for doing well, even when they've hit their SP cap: ISK.

In the mid- to long-term there will be lasting consequences to winning/losing battles as well, which will be the primary reward.

We'll need a better rationale for increasing SP rewards for fighting battles if we want to counter the drawbacks.

The rationale is....
... The reward just needs to be bigger so that people feel justly rewarded while not gaining a super significant advantage.

All that only applies while SP is the only significant reward in the game. That is not supposed to be the case; its just where the game is right now.

The rewards need to be different, not bigger. SP is a means to an end, not the end itself.

Youre not looking through the point of view of a new player though. New players have no corp, no friends, no skills, no isk, they have nothing. How do they get those things? They have to play and earn SP and ISK. The ISK I feel like is way too low as well since doing well in one match barely covers even the lowest of decent fittings, but thats another subject. All a new player will see is I need skills to do well and how do I get those skills? I need SP. Can I get the SP required for me to aquire those things? At first yes, but then very quickly that ability goes away. So what is their reason to stick with the game? Just because theyre still making ISK that they cant spend? One day maybe a good corporation will possibly let little nooby in and teach them the ins and outs of the game and then they can finally feel accomplished 3 months into the game? What is the point for them? Other more established games can give them the challenge theyre searching for while feeling rewarded and moving up in accomplishments whereas this game stagnates for them very quickly.

They'll play for the drone PvE or the faction warfare. They'll join a n00b-friendly corp (maybe Dust Uni). Or maybe they'll just go straight into Goonswarm and fight in nullsec sov wars.

They will earn SP and ISK, bit-by-bit, and get better skills and better gear.

Many of them will have been enticed by the claim that it will take several years to learn all the skills; if they find they can grind to max skills in a month or two because the beta players QQ'd about SP caps then they'll do that grinding, get maxed, get bored and quit.

Im not in any way making a case for full out skills being grindable within a month or two. But lets do some math here. Lets say that a match takes 15 minutes and the average play time for a player is 3 hours a day, thats 12 matches. Lets also say that it takes the average player 3 days to hit SP cap. That leaves 4 days or 48 matches, Ill even round it to 50 just to make the numbers pretty. If under the system I proposed a player receives over 1000 WP in every single of those matches they would earn an extra 250k SP. Thats a pretty nice reward, but its not game shattering. Especially considering the average player likely will not break 1000 WP in every game, and if they do then they deserve their 250k SP.

I lol very very hard at your suggestion players will stick around for drone PVE and faction warfare by the way. When I played EVE faction warfare was a joke and I dont think that will really change, although I could be wrong on that. But drone PVE. Really? You see the average COD/MOH player switching games to shoot at drones? Even I dont want to do that and I used to farm the hell out of some level 4 missions in EVE. It was boring. Godforsakingly boring!

So basically, the further you "level up" (or the closest you come to leveling up in DUST), the more active SP you can earn?

So someone who creates a character on day one then abandons the game for 6 months will have a huge head-start on a fresh player from passive SP and now also has access to a much higher active SP cap?

While an interesting idea, it still seems like it would suffer from the same problem as any other hard SP cap system.

What I'd REALLY like is greater transparency with regard to the active SP earned.

Don't JUST tell us "you earned 5948 SP"
Give us a series of stats:

Base SP for mission success/failure
SP from WP earned

---

Total SP before multipliers
Current SP multiplier for diminishing returns - starts at 1.00 but reduces as you approach the cap
Active Booster Multiplier

---

True Total SP earned

That's a nice idea, and I'm all in favour, but it doesn't solve the "daily or weekly cap?" problem.

It should be weekly unless there is some sort of rollover system. A daily system promotes a you must play every single day of your life or youll be worse off than everyone else attitude.

It should be weekly unless there is some sort of rollover system. A daily system promotes a you must play every single day of your life or youll be worse off than everyone else attitude.