Keep the current system and provide SP rollover for the week. Removal of the system allows for a major power imbalance based on time spent playing rather than time spent since character generation. Not all of us have the luxury of spending twelve hours a day playing Dust 514.

Why should I care about paying to increase how much SP I have, when I know that I will LITERALLY never catch up to no lifers, no matter what I do? They'll be using boosters too, and getting miles and miles and miles ahead.

And yes, I like slow progression, it's the whole reason I got turned onto DUST in the first place. SP management is a skill, and this change will take any form of skill out of that. Just farm to your hearts content, max out the stuff that interests you in a month, and then play laggy CoD in space till you get bored and move on.

Buying a SP booster with no SP cap just screams no life try hard.

Everyone is doing everything except talk hard stat numbers here. So lets talk facts.

Maxed shield skills are 10%
Max armor skills are 10%

10% of what? Well given that the average amount of health is about 150 hp and depending on uniform you wearing being shield or armor heavy lets say half and half.

So 75hp for each sound good?

So that's 7 extra hp per category. My scrambler pistol does about 47 damage a shot.....

My freaking pistol.

the fact lets say maxed out skill buddy gets top of the line Armour.

The Hp difference from top of the line armor is like 50-75 points.

So lets take our dude give him 100hp per category plus the bonus 10% and hes rocking a solid 220 hps.

Not bad I guess till you do the math that a starter sniper rifle does 190 damage. A starter assault rifle does about 35 damage (per bullet!) in a volley of I think 10-15.

Yes in a mach of two soldiers playing roshambo without any kind of outside influence sure skilled out player will most likely win.

But this isn't a game of 1v1 its a game of army vs army and if you think for one second that extra health is going to allow you to kill one guy reload fast kill the guy behind him and maybe kill the guy behind him.... your the delusional one.

Much more likely scenario is that buddy in a frount line fight gets taken down to a sliver of his life, thanks God he skilled up then fights on until either a medic is about or someone polishes him off.

Ah, I'm assuming that there will be no SP for time in match.

Two reason for that:
1) CCP said they would nerf SP gain to contain the heavy players

2) To curb AFK SP farming. If you reward even 500 SP per match you invite massive SP farming. One Chinese SP farmer with a bit of automation can keep 100 toons in the MCC and get 50k SP every 20 min. Yes each toon will take a long time to become salable, but he's working in bulk and doesn't care. His return on investment is orders of magnitude better than actually playing the game. A Chinese SP farm with each person going for WP is one thing, but one parking 100 toons in the MCC is a game killer.

With that it would probably take a player totally new to DUST about 100 days to get competitive, and that's assuming perfect SP placement. Given my personal experience learning DUST I don't expect perfect placement for the majority of new players. Further I don't expect them to know that 2.5M SP will make them competitive. They haven't gone through all the builds we have to gain that sort of insight.

I have another fantastic suggestion.

1WP = 1SP

time spent in battle gives you about 3000 sp even if you don't do anything. So cap the passive in battle sp to 24,000 or whatever. That why once you hit the cap, you only get the SP you earn by being good at the game. This allows for newer players to keep up , without allowing for hardcore players to go rocketing ahead.

If you go 1000 wps in battle, you should get 1000 sp. End of story.

The current passive sp over time from just being in battle should be capped.

Bam done, your welcome CCP KABOOM

Your thought process is sound but your numbers are way way way off. Last I checked you get 5% bonus per lvl for mechanics and shield.......basically all of your numbers are wrong but your correct in the long run these numbers arent huge monsters that cannot be overcome by intelligent playing.

The SP System is very easy to figure out tbh.

Let's imagine we've just reset and they've introduced a new system based on this idea.

22/01/2013
The SP "Pool" is currently at 28,000 SP (+25% with Booster)
23/01/2013
The SP "Pool" is currently at 56,000 SP (+25% with Booster)
24/01/2013
The SP "Pool" is currently at 84,000 SP (+25% with Booster)

So you can see everyday the Pool raises by 28,000 SP, this never gets reset and doesn't matter if its a new player or a vet, the pool will be the same. In 365 days the pool will be 102,200,000 SP, now ofcourse this is a large amount and probably wouldn't be that much, but the point is, everyday the pool gets larger and larger, keeping the no lifers at bay but still allowing players to catch up if they've been off on holiday for two weeks.

Thoughts?

What about raising the skill cap.....maybe double or triple it?!?!

Your thought process is sound but your numbers are way way way off. Last I checked you get 5% bonus per lvl for mechanics and shield.......basically all of your numbers are wrong but your correct in the long run these numbers arent huge monsters that cannot be overcome by intelligent playing.

Actually how can "no lifers" afford to buy a booster unless their parents are buying it for them? A true no lifer does not have the funds to do this. Will there be some who might be able to pull this off yes but I suspect most of the no lifers wont use a booster as they cant afford it they just play a whole lot. Thus the booster allows you to keep up with those people. No lifers who also have parents "or whoever" buying boosters for them will get far ahead but its not that big of an advantage. Once you hit 7-8 million SP you should be pretty much skilled into your specialization you choose and now your widening your abilities.

I would like to explain the reasons on why we are testing the removal of the SP cap and keep you all better informed.

The development team has been listening intently to the tons of feedback from you guys on the skill system, in particular the current skill cap implementation.

Our original aims with the skill cap were to ensure players progressed through the skill tree at a steady pace, to dis-incentivize 24/7 grinding and to maintain a manageable gap between casual and hardcore players.

After trying out a couple of different approaches, none of which were satisfactory, we have realized that the skill cap introduces too many other unacceptable compromises and we have decided to take a leaf out of AlexanderGÇÖs book and just cut the Gordian knot and remove the skill cap altogether.

Removing the skill cap opens us up to the risk of not meeting the aims stated above, so we have tuned down reward levels a little to reduce that risk.

My little brother makes about $80 a week working a couple hours here and there. He spends that money entirely on games and entertainment. He spends the majority of his spare time playing games with his friends and sitting in front of the computer / tv / whatever (though amazingly, he does still play outside). He could very easily afford skill boosters through the month, as could many of his friends who do the same thing (virtually no overhead).

They shouldn't stray from the spirit of EVE. Your max SP should be determined by how long your character has existed. If you're any good, you'll keep up with the SP. If it's all the same, and the small percentages you get don't really change anything, then what's your rush to max everything out? What do you have against a slower rate of progression?

Thanks for the reply Wang, and the only advice I can give is a weekly rolling cap.

well I do like the thought of progressing. I like being able to save up and buy things in a reasonable amount of time. I would like to in only a couple months play with my preferred specialization on my character being almost completely maxed out in that time. I dont want it to have to take close to a year or more for that same thing. I mean from the sounds of it Ps4 is coming out late this year or maybe next year and htis game will be moving to the PS4. I would like to play this game for a while before I cant play it anymore as I will be a while before getting a ps4 most likely.....plus there is no telling how life can change in that amount of time. I would like to play dust with a good character in a reasonable amount of time.

Removing the skill cap opens us up to the risk of not meeting the aims stated above, so we have tuned down reward levels a little to reduce that risk.

This is a step in the right direction CCP. There wasn't an SP cap before replication, and the game was fine.

See, what I'm hearing is that you want CCP to speed things up because you have other games to play.

I feel specialized already, and my skills are still pretty low. If they give people as much SP as they like, no one will feel specialized, because everyone will have everything. Keeping the rate of SP slow like in EVE rewards loyal players without directly punishing newer players. The better players will move out of hi security space and be filtered away from newer players, yet everyone knows they're on an even playing field, so to speak.

Keeping SP slow creates a much richer environment, and allows people who specialize to actually BE specialized.

I'd like to state my opinion.

First: In Favor of Cap Removal.
Second: Passive sp return?

The skill cap made it so that the game was a grind. I couldn't just come on and play for as long as I wanted. After a certain amount of time I couldn't gain any more SP and felt like I might as well log off. It encouraged me to maximize my SP gain by being on for certain times. That's not what I want. I couldn't just play when ever I wanted.

I want the passive SP back. It wasn't that much maybe 4 games worth but it was still nice to log off , come back on and have some SP to spend. Maybe reduce the amount of passive SP gain but please return it. Its nice to have something to spend/save up in the morning.

Um....we have passive SP now. Are you sure you're not getting the glitch where Passive SP doesn't work?

Daily SP cap with rollover that resets every week is the perfect solution.

I would like to explain the reasons on why we are testing the removal of the SP cap and keep you all better informed.

The development team has been listening intently to the tons of feedback from you guys on the skill system, in particular the current skill cap implementation.

Our original aims with the skill cap were to ensure players progressed through the skill tree at a steady pace, to dis-incentivize 24/7 grinding and to maintain a manageable gap between casual and hardcore players. After trying out a couple of different approaches, none of which were satisfactory, we have realized that the skill cap introduces too many other unacceptable compromises and we have decided to take a leaf out of AlexanderGÇÖs book and just cut the Gordian knot and remove the skill cap altogether. Removing the skill cap opens us up to the risk of not meeting the aims stated above, so we have tuned down reward levels a little to reduce that risk.

We believe that these changes will go a long way towards alleviating the problems that you guys have been drawing to our attention, but we will continue to listen to your feedback, monitor progression data and make further tweaks as necessary.

Finally, we are not removing the SP cap today, and will allow time for the community to speak their minds on this first.

We look forward to hearing from you!