You'd start in low-sec in a frigate, fighting other frigates and destroyers non-stop. Sure there's some sneaky alts in there, but overall it's fun and you've got your eyes set on a destroyer of your own one day.

By the time you get enough SP to start fitting your own destroyer out properly you're flung into null-sec to fight against Dreadnoughts. There's no high-sec to hide in, there's nothing to mine, there's no trade, there's no PvE, no production. There's just you and the other destroyers being popped ad nauseum by the Dreadnoughts. Oh, and to unlock a Dreadnought of your own you need to actually grind for 6 months every week to SP cap, you can't just let your SP accrue passively.

Did I miss anything?

TLDR - I just realised I hate the skill system and I'm glad I started early. Sometimes it feels like an SP pyramid scheme, with the protos at the top farming the n00bs at the bottom.

Just about every multiplayer has this "dog eat dog" pyramid to it. The only difference is that Dust takes it to an unnecessary extreme by forgoing any focus on matchmaking for so long. In hindsight, the academy makes it that much worse because it gives new players a false sense of security, providing an illusion of a balanced game until they get thrown to the sharks. This is supposed to be a game, it's supposed to be fun and having your ass handed to you repeatedly in order to slowly progress in a flawed skill system consisting of linear SP sinks isn't fun. I almost wish they just did another wipe for uprising instead of respecs. We wouldn't have all the problems we have now.

meh back when I suggested the academy( or something like it ) the idea was to apply a penalty to players participating in it based on the amount of sp they currently have.

so any player short of 10 mil sp can participate in a 4 on 4/ 8 on 8 academy ambush battle in a small arena but penalties would be applied.

if you had 1 mil sp you would lose 10% of your gains in isk and sp, if you had 4mil you'd lose 40% and so on, to slowly ween players into normal gains rather then straight kick them out of the academy, also any player with more then 10 mil sp can't participate.

after suggesting this though I still think it's a good idea, but I think the same effect could be accomplished better with a security ranking system, limiting the gear brought to the battle field in high sec battles. That said the academy is good it just needs to gradually ween players out rather then the forced removal and participation that it has currently.

low security battles will need larger rewards to compensate for the higher risk as well.

If Eve was Dust a shuttle could kill a dreadnought on piloting skill alone.