The simple method of doing this (I'll detail a slightly more complex method afterwards) would be to allow anyone to create skillbooks for any skill in which they are at level V. If you have Motion Prediction V, you can create Motion Prediction skillbooks for sale on the market. Simple as that.
You'd create the skillbooks in stations (or POSes), the same as you currently do with manufacturing. Request a manufacturing slot, throw in some materials and after some time, out pops a skillbook (or five skillbooks.) The larger the skillbook rank, the longer it takes to manufacture the skillbook(s). It would take longer to manufacture Gallente Battleship than it would to manufacture Gallente Cruiser.
New characters begin the game with certain skills pre-installed (as happens now). Electronics. Mechanics. Engineering. Mining. Faction Frigate. Small Weapon (depending on starting race; Small Hybrid Turret for Gallente, for instance). Cybernetics. A few other skillbooks might be offered in the tutorial missions (Salvaging, for instance), but for players deciding the skip the tutorials, there'll still be market to create and sell those.
If you want to add some additional flavour to skillbook manufacturing, then add a new skill into the game. Perhaps it is called Educational Transcription. (This skillbook would still be offered by NPCs for the first six months of the skillbook market transfer, after that it would be player controlled.) Educational Transcription I would be required to manufacture skillbooks. For every rank gained in the skill thereafter, the rank of the skillbook created is reduced by 2% (to a maximum of 8%, for the math challenged; is anyone in EVE math challenged?) For instance, a player with Educational Transcription V and Gallente Battleship V could create Gallente Battleship skillboks with a rank of 7.36. Thus players adding that skillbook to their queue would have a shorter learning time than another player using a Gallente Battleship skillbook created by someone with Educational Transcription II. This creates a more varied market, with more of a premium on skillbooks from folks who have trained Education Transcription to its highest level. To ensure that these premium skillbooks are not commonplace, Educational Transcription should be a rank 24 skill.
There should be a one month window between implementing skillbook manufacturing, and removing all NPCs skillbooks from the market. During the window, player-created skillbooks cannot be placed on the market.
To avoid hoarding -- players purchasing tens of thousands of skillbooks from NPCs before the system becomes live -- simply announce that once the switchover is made, all NPC skillbooks will be deleted from the system (this includes player inventories.) That would be the simplest solution. Or, if deleting them is an undesirable option (collectors will want one of each, I suppose), simply disallow NPC skillbooks being inserted into skill queues.
Voila. Skillbooks become the purview of the players. Let the market decide worth. Prices will likely be high initially, but over time they'll market correct. I'm not worried about skillbooks being priced out of the reach of newbies, because skillbooks that newbies will require and need, the altruistic will see that they get good value. There are many players and organizations that want to see newbies survive and stay -- charity is emergent gameplay too.
Side note: This would remove an ISK sink from the game. So, either the materials used to create the skillbooks need to become an ISK sink unto themselves (although at a lower cost than what skillbooks were costing from NPCs), or new ISK sinks need to be added into the game, or see Bel Amar's comment below.
Holy crap super good idea.
ReplyDeleteHow would that affect newbies in that initial tranition period? I imagine that would place them way out of each.
... I do like the idea. Imagine the costs of low rank, high value skillbooks. Ie- dedicated bookmakers for alliances and open market selling carrier/dread/titan etc.
no please no this is one of the few isk sinks out that it(the eve economy) would get even worse and that would screw all of us over.
ReplyDeleteI never understood why we even have skillbooks in the first place. We play a game with faster than light travel and instant communication. Any system that has Sov or an installed TCU that links the system to Concord should be able to access books/skills.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying make TCU's dockable, but make them clickable like agents in space. Then you buy the kindle version of the book. Index it to true sec like rats for cost to control for shipping the shit out.
Removing skill books from player inventories is a horrible, horrible idea. Some of those books cost 1b+. Removing legitimately obtained items from players in an MMO is never a good idea, ever.
ReplyDeleteI kinda like the idea, but not as presented. As the market currently stands with Tech 1 manufacturing, if you don't have Industry V, you're wasting your time. Educational Transcription as it stands would be the same, after a short period of time. The same way no one buys blueprints that aren't max researched, no one will be a skillbook that isn't maxed out either. There will always be plenty of people with the skill at V, so those learning would simply not be able to compete.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'd suggest moving it to a more invention like process. Remove blueprints out of the equation, but require some sort of loyalty point store item to run the "invention" process. This would keep an isk sink inherent in the process.
As with invention, your chance of success is dependant on the skills you are using. So you'd get an advantage for Educational Transcription at V, but could still make use of it at III or IV in some skills. Heck, for the matter you could remove the need for the skill you're transcribing to be at V, and let its value vary the chance as well.
Nice idea. I actually think that manufacturing news skills would be only available in the hands of Roleplayers and it should be connected to loyalty point stores, like Bel Amar said, so that members of different factions would compete with each other to create better skillbooks. Actually there might be a myriad of skills under the banner of Educational Transcription dedicated to skillbook manufacturing, each one of them dedicated to a certain sphere of skillbooks - Science, Industry, Gunnery etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso - Roleplayers would be able to gather together and set up a new version of a desired skillbook, that would require less time to learn, because their skills in Educational Transcription regarding a certain learning sphere would be able to be combined - they would be involved in the skillbook creation altogether, so that it would be better than existing ones.
There might be some complex system that estimates the skills of Roleplayers involved in the Education sphere and depending on their current skillpoints in some of their Educational skills, they would be able to manufacture/create a new skillbook with modified learning time.
And finally, I think that NPC skillbooks would remain as they are. This would allow newbies to buy the cheaper skillbooks that require more time to learn, while experienced pilots that have more ISK would be able to find superior skillbooks manufactured by players.
I think Skill Books and Blueprints kinda go a bit together as one of the last big stronghold of NPC ISK Sink in the game with both being HUGE ISK Sinks. SKill Books are a Huge ISK Sink!
ReplyDeleteWhen the good Doctor used to publish the QEN (Quarterly Economic Report) that used to be left out as a ISK Sink in raw numbers. Many used to ask how much exactly was that sink in numbers for Skill Books. I wasn't also surprised either it been left out. But i believe its one the biggest ISK sink in the game.
I think the idea of players taking over making Skill Books is an interesting one and one I'd be perplex to think CCP hasn't yet considered many times over. Skill Books would be a whole Education Economy all onto itself cut aside from everything else. How exactly to implement it all properly i'm not exactly sure or which idea at that.
One the things probably wouldn't want to happen is to implement something where players in their cunning wisdom is going to stockpile Massive Amounts of the current NPC Books to carry over into the new emerging economy and strangle the economy with it. Kinda like many players did with buying up Tens of Billions of NPC PI items cheap before PI with Guidance Systems, Robotics and lots of other NPC PI items back then.
I'd like to think that CCP would want to maintain that ISK Sink somewhat close to it's currently level or increase it above that putting things into player control. If everybody is mass producing Skill Books at various skills and levels that could just over saturate the entire market enough to drive the prices into the floor. Would that be in CCP interest to kill a major ISK Sink? Probably not.
I would think CCP would have to make the ability to come up with or produce Skill Books through some harder skill mean through some form of Encryption/lithography process of some sort. Could include a whole new set of skills (Skill Books as well) We already have the various empire Encryption for Inventions so maybe as an idea they could use something similar maybe as a template or come up with a whole new way similar to Invention using Encryption and maybe tied with actual Skills like you had mentioned at lvl V. Maybe that could work.
But I don't pretend to know the real answer here or which would be best eventually weighing all the possible effects good and bad in possible outcome. So i leave that to CCP to thinker and figure out. Its possible they could add a whole new set of skills to the game that also involve Encryption maybe, Lithography, Schematics & Publishing of some form as an idea with Invention. Many Skill Books cover different subject expertise so would you need to be subject expert to produce or a Master at V to produce? Can a specialized Auto Mechanic write a Surgeon Manual or one for flying a Black Ops ship in space? But an endless amount of Skill Books with low skill in EVE I don't think would be a good thing for the market.
Wether In the end this would all be a good idea i'm not sure. I'd sure be an interesting one i'd like to think. But It probably wouldn't be a good idea if the whole Education Industry given to player control became LESS of a ISK Sink than it is today. On the low end the affordability of lower end Skill Books to new and newer players would also be a concern and have to be taken into account as well for new players.
An interesting idea to give control of New Eden Space Program Education to the Players/capsuleers and how that could or would happen. How it would all work out in the end, i'm a bit uncertain of that process. Only have Planetary Interaction to look at and see how that has resulted so far, yet left a bit unfinished. CCP would just have to take their time and do something like this right though.
I do think its plausible it could happen at some point though. Maybe at that point we have the ability to make Blueprints too….
And yet another idea I just thought of… where exactly do you expect these new Skill Books to eventually be made? It probably most likely get mostly done in Highsec where most the manufacturing base mostly are. However i know EVE and an idea how EVE players think. If this does not benefit Null sec in some monopolistic way for them to control or gain the most benefit from there will be shouting matches to CCP about this ever happening or if it's a good idea for 1001 reasons. Unless well it has a huge benefit to Null sec at which point it becomes a very good idea to them and they have absolutely no objection at that point. Funny how that can be aren't it with things implemented.
ReplyDeletePlease no more chance based "invention". Maybe in a fantasy based game this would make sense but we can create wormholes and have FTL communication. If copying bits of data is so flawed why would anyone ever board a starship?
ReplyDeleteI do not like the idea of creating skill books of varying quality. Those would not be market tradable, for one.
ReplyDeleteMake it effect the quantity of materials required instead.
Otherwise good idea.
No. The skillbook system is already an inelegant system that masks an isk sink as progression. It is a bad gameplay feature (getting skillbooks interrupts gameplay and provides an isk penalty for progression) compounded with an immersion breaking conceit (why do I need a book to learn something from a book when I am floating in a pod full of goo in space).
ReplyDeleteYour idea, although interesting, just makes the skillbook system even more needlessly complex, and could lead to skillbooks being even further away from the new players that generally need them most. The skill system in Eve should be simplified, not complicated.
If player-produced skillbooks are only available trough the LP Store, then they would produce them in limited quantities. Probably a custom skillbook would require a certain rank or specific achievement in order to be learned. This would involve Factional Warfare, or maybe some special Epic Arcs, maybe it would be nice if the most powerful alliances would assemble a team of educated capsuleers and they would be able to improve a certain skillbook and only sell it to members of the corporations under their flag. This would involve player espionage and intelligence initiatives, roleplaying, factional and alliance wars... stuff like that. I think it would be exciting!
ReplyDeleteOh, and maybe these custom skillbooks would have their bonuses modified. For example - there might be player-created skillbooks that only have shorter time to learn, but also there would be custom skillbooks that require more time to learn, but the skill bonuses would be slightly improved. Someone would say that this would be unfair advantage, but I think that if players invest their time and resources in improving a skillbook, they would fully deserve to have better knowledge and better skills.
I have to agree with the people throwing the "science" BS flag on skillbooks, though for a slightly different reason: in-game we have the tech to "download" someone's entire brain -- collected knowledge, experiences, thoughts, feelings, EVERYTHING, terabytes of data, and transmit it nearly instantly anywhere in the known galaxy to upload to a new clone... with regards to that fact and skills, I'm kind of thinking of The Matrix -- :Neo voice: "Whoa. I know Kung Fu."
ReplyDeleteOr manufacture skill books by extracting knowledge from brains. If you get Battleships to 5, writing the skill book will drop you back to 4. There has to be a cost.
ReplyDeleteOne option is to allow NPCs to provide the brains from which to extract the skills.