A constructive discussion is always good.

Skytt (I think it was) did some math and it will take more than 13 years to max the current skill tree (well the one in Uprising that is) with the current SP system/cap without any booster. The skill tree will be expanded heavily in the future with a lot more skills, like the remaining racial suits/vehicles and new suits/vehicles among other things. It will also take 14 weeks just to get a specialised Prototype suit without any booster. 14 weeks for just the suit and no other skills.

Tbh I think that's too much. Fully specialising in just one role will probably take about 6 months without any boosters. In that case I think it will be way too long for a new player to be even somewhat competitive.

Even after the first 6 months where the new player would be fully specialised, would he then be competitive with a veteran player? I don't think so. The veteran player will be fully specialised in several roles, like Assault, AV and Scout for example. Who would pick the new player for a battle over the veteran when you in size limited matches need to have all or almost all of the players in a match to be able to switch roles in the middle of the battle?

Edit: I also recall a while back someone from CCP in IRC saying about 3 weeks to get a Prototype suit would be great.

Right now I think the problem is that we do need longevity in the game and a sense of exclusiveness with the Protosuits. CCP just went about the worst way of doing it.

I would have rather them up the SP cost of Specialized suits and left our core skills exactly the same. 5x SP for Electronics and Engineering is killer, the fact that right now with these skills maxed out I can't fit everything I want on a Protosuit makes this absurd, this is with the addition of other CPU/PG lowering skills mind you. Now Imagine how bad this will be for newer players.
Unless CCP is trying to limit us to only Standard and Advanced gear as much as possible, I don't see any reason why this change had to be made.

On top of that the SP sink in specialized suits yield hardly any worthwhile benefits besides the Racial bonuses. That is the worst type of SP sink. (Still waiting on Details of Extra Slots)

Heya peeps,

Recently there has been some ranting and raving from various people and even some people have been taking things i have said out of context.

Thats why Id like to do something that probably hasnt been done on the forums for a while; Make an opinion, explain my opinion, have a mature and reasoned debate with anyone who perhaps dont share my view.

"SP Sink"
We had a reset when we where moved onto tranquility which was about late january, people started running full proto gear as much as a couple of months later. Its now May, only 3 or 4 moths later practically everyone is running around with full protogear be it vehicular or or infantry. when you have a game that is supposed to take years to get everything, I do think that it should at least take a little longer to get to full prototype.

When i saw the tree and skill multipliers, i did think they should perhaps be lowered a bit, but after thinking on it, i changed my mind.

If anyone else woul like to have a proper debate about things without descending to petty insults then go ahead :)

It takes approximately 2.5 million SP to get into a Proto suit. If you include a proto weapon its 3.1 million, "core shield skills" add another 1.2 million adding up to 4.3 million SP. So lets round that up to 5 million SP (leaving 700,000 SP for deviations in Specialization, or for other odds and ends like sidearms ect.....). 5 million SP to run ONE specific suit/fitting. Sure some of the skills can be applied to other suits but for arguments sake it takes about 5 million SP until I would consider a person running full proto......

One week with Active AND passive boosters = 500k SP (roughly). That's a 7 day period. Now...... if its 5 million SP to get into your first "All proto suit" that would take approximately..... 10 weeks...... two and a half months. From then on will say it takes 3.1 million SP to fully proto into other suits (assuming you get another proto weapon to go with the new suit).

It takes 10 Weeks to start from Zero and get to a "full proto" suit and from then on it goes into 6 week intervals for you to unlock new "full proto suits" The build they had now means that it would have taken approximately....... 25 weeks or..... about half a year to fully unlock every proto suit and have a "full proto fit" with it. This upcoming build is (in the words of IWS) adding another 40 something Drop Suits. Atleast 5 of which should be proto level. Using the same system we have now would add another 6 months to the progression....... adding up to a year. And that's saying that the person in question whos skilling for them NEVER skilled into 1.) vehicles, or 2.) anything that isn't a weapon or shield module.......

Im almost positive CCP will be adding twice as many suits in the coming 6 months along with many many more items/weapons/vehicles. In short, I don't think a 800k SP requirement increase on All Proto level suits was really necessary as if CCP focused on putting more content out they wouldn't have to worry about people running out of things to skill into. This new "SP sink" they put in really just annoys me. I had been planning on putting my points into two proto suits and having a weapon to go into each, but now im going to have to put ALL of the 10 million SP I have into one suit because otherwise it wont work as well as the suit I have now which has maybe 6 million in it.

Heya peeps,

Recently there has been some ranting and raving from various people and even some people have been taking things i have said out of context.

Thats why Id like to do something that probably hasnt been done on the forums for a while; Make an opinion, explain my opinion, have a mature and reasoned debate with anyone who perhaps dont share my view.

"SP Sink"
We had a reset when we where moved onto tranquility which was about late january, people started running full proto gear as much as a couple of months later. Its now May, only 3 or 4 moths later practically everyone is running around with full protogear be it vehicular or or infantry. when you have a game that is supposed to take years to get everything, I do think that it should at least take a little longer to get to full prototype.

When i saw the tree and skill multipliers, i did think they should perhaps be lowered a bit, but after thinking on it, i changed my mind.

If anyone else woul like to have a proper debate about things without descending to petty insults then go ahead :)

So you stand by your words, but you don't want to be criticized for them. Sorry it doesn't work that way.

Its now May, only 3 or 4 moths later practically everyone is running around with full protogear be it vehicular or or infantry. when you have a game that is supposed to take years to get everything, I do think that it should at least take a little longer to get to full prototype.

So here's my 2 cents take it or leave it:

This game is not targeting the casual FPSer like the whining little kids that play CoD or god bless them the ex armed forces that want to relive their strategy based lives in Battlefield.

This game is targeting those FPSers that are always dedicated to their game. The ones that if possible eventually attempt to become MLG of some sort and want to learn the ins and outs of every map gun game type there is.

To do this, CCP has implemented said "Sp sink" that gives the dedicated player a reason to continue playing through each and every patch that they come up with. This game is meant to not be perfected in the first month of playing like you can do with CoD. This game is also meant to challenge your brain a little.

In my opinion this game has one extra bonus that no other FPS has ever had. It takes a bit of smarts to play this game. Not only the obvious in a challenging skill tree and knowing where to spec into for your gameplay type, but the strategies when in fights, the know how on how to survive even though you might be up against better players, or even know how to set ur squad up for success. All other FPS games have minimal, at best, amounts of ways to scheme and fight a battle. CoD has tac inserts and rushing versus defending versus somewhere in the middle of that. Battlefield has basic military strategies (which are even less now without a commander like in Bf2) and even then its more about K/D than winning the war.

This being said i don't know how the game will be perceived by others and it might lose some of the lesser dedicated members due to the expansiveness being derived from The Uprising expansion. Personally i am happy about this and can't wait to see the battles between long lasting and hard working corps and alliances of another 6th of a planet in the expansive universe known as Eve.

btw hi Jenza congrats and can't wait to catch up with u in Cronos.

All the time sinks are a simple business move. Give the player a choice, spend his time on grinding out SP for that new shiny or spend his five bucks on getting it sooner. My opinion of the SP layout is that it's A-OK. We were jumping into sets of the top tier stuff in 3-4 months, now it might be an extra month on top. That's as a free player. I don't see an issue with this at all.

What happen to the 7years of skills.....

Its now May, only 3 or 4 moths later practically everyone is running around with full protogear be it vehicular or or infantry

You either don't know what "practically" means or you don't play this game. There's very few people running around in full proto gear. I see maybe 4-6 people with a black suit in the war barge, and even fewer than that in-game. Weapons that are killing people are usually standard/militia or advanced. Hell, remember when I think it was nothin who gave us those stats in IRC on most kills per weapon type (if you were around for that)? Pretty sure #1 was GEK (hint: That's not a proto level weapon).

The fact that this is your perception is very unsettling for you being in a position to influence CCP's direction.

Really? Everyone in full proto? Sigh...

i feel like i need to chime in now....

1). Getting a basic proto suit in uprising is actually easier ...its a 6x multi instead of an 8x. So it went from a 2.4M SP skill to about a 1.8M SP skill.

2). CPU & PG skills being 5x is RIDICULOUS. You are talking ~3M combined SP for a NEEDED skill for anything past T1 suits. So it went from a 620kSP combined skill to 3M, real smart there CCP.

3). New players and people w/ say 8M SP and below may be royally screwed. Their SP reallocation will be much tighter and detrimental to how they currently run their skills tree. If dont consider racial speccing, you are looking at ~5M SP for a basic proto suit w/ max CPU&PG skills.

4). Basic core skills across the board have been increase, meaning more SP to use complex equipment (pending if needed). Ex is shield extenders went from a 2x to 3x; and changed its passive skill which now will require all shield tanked suits to run a CPU upgrade b/c of lack of CPU (as for assault suits the will be current Vk.0 stats compared to Vk.1 using now); as the passive skill brought CPU costs from 54 down to 47. So unless CPU costs were changed CCP crutch-ed all assault suits on CPU even more. As even lowering your weapons fitting req (as we dont know if its cpu or pg) wont be as helpful b/c it is now a 6x skill (moved from a 2x).

5). AR's & SMG's are the most SP intensive weapons b/c of the "need" to get SS skill

6). All weapon accessory skills are more time consuming and possibly not worth the SP investment anymore based lv2 for a few months

7). Entire game has become a sink hole, be it SP or ISK . Haven't played yet, but by looks it seems like the enjoyment might of fully been taken out of the game now for a 24/7 constant grind for ISK & SP.

I think DUST could learn a bit from Planetside 2 here, actually.

PS2 has a "cert" system similar to SP in DUST where in game performance for various contributions earn you cert points, which are then spent to unlock weapons, gear, suit upgrades, abilities, vehicle equipment, etc.

You earn individual certs very fast, say, one cert every 2-3 kills for example if you are just killing. But the average cost of an unlock runs from 250-1000 certs with minor things likr attachments for guns running 50-200 certs.

In PS2, you can unlock things fairly fast. If I grind for a a week or two I can acquire a new unlock very fast. This always keeps a nice shiny in sight to work for and gives a sense of progression. However, unlocking EVERYTHING would take a verrrryyy long time because of the sheer amount of upgrades and unlocks available.

See, thats how DUST should be. The BREADTH of it should make it complex and a time sink, not the DEPTH of it. Would you rather spend 20 hours unlocking 5 things or 20 hours unlocking 50 things? Why, the second option, of course.

If CCP would be better at releasing a huge amount of content and options to spend SP on, you wouldn't have to worry about someone maxing all skills because there are too many.

I firmly believe CCP should follow the PS2 model in this regards and stop making an artificial time sink, and intsead make a veritable flood of content instead.

If you have to train one x10 skill or ten x1 skills, the x1 skills are more fun because you feel progression and are always thrown a bone, keeping something constantly within reach. The current system takes the carrot on the stick and warps it to another district...

This would require a lot of work from CCP but I think it would be worth it and more enjoyable for everyone.

+1