So the finest minds of IRC has been working away and have decided the idea that a borderlands style levelling system would be ideal, namely that what you use you level up. So using a gallente assault nets you points in gallente assault but nothing else, and the same with all the weapons. As for CCP making money I personally think some kind of sp token could be used. An sp token would give you a lump of sp that you could put into any skill you want, helping you reduce the grind but not making any thing aurum only.

Actually it's a semi-serious idea, that a small amount of thought and time was spent on. I just wrote that and stuck it on the forums, so it wasn't lost forever in the IRC chat logs, it's a much more logical way of structuring the SP system, what you use you get better with, rather than the using a use an AR to learn how to use an LAV method we have now. I acknowledge that to do something like this would require significant time and effort, and this idea has several kinks to be worked out, but you shouldn't dismiss an idea because you deem it "bullshit handwaving". If you're going to criticise ate least have the decency to state why you disagree with it.

The point of the game is to shoot people, is rewarding people for actually using a weapon really that bad? The people you say are "pewpew'ing" away with AR's would most likely have just run about shooting people with the weapon anyway.

Passive SP doesn't eliminate the issue, it only makes it possible to bypass by waiting for excessively long periods of time which, honestly, is worse than now. Now I can use everything at my disposal, either well or poorly skilled elements, to increase my rage of useable options. Under this system I can only use the passive pool or that individual tool. It doesn't help with any of the perceived failings of our current system and adds unnecessary inflexibility.

Lastly I'd like to know what your idea of a skill tree is. How does ours not act the part?

This doesn't show failing to the skill system itself, rather that the cost of operating at the top end of it isn't high enough to be prohibitive and/or other isk related factors are involved allowing proto to be run more often than it should be.

Actually, per this the skill system is fine so long as operating at the top of it is costly enough. The one real reference here is the idea of things becoming more specific with the skills. Ironically, it actually became more of a tree, and closer to the idea of the statement quoted in the op as well. So the question still remains, what, aside from slowing down the act of being the best in a wider variety of skill based aspects, really changed? And what makes this a failing of a tree, and more importantly, what is a good tree?