In a newly released development blog, CCP has revealed an impending plan to streamline training skills in EVE Online. And it’s a really great change that should help players both new and old save time.
Throughout the years, skill training in EVE has gone through a ton of changes that have been either loved or hated by players. For many years, the accepted practice was what was known colloquially as “Skill Queue Online”. Players who wanted to train a skill would need to buy a skill book on the in-game market, inject it into their character, then wait out the training time of the skill while the game added Skill Points to their character at a variable rate. This led to an evolving meta-game about optimizing skill training times using expensive implants and other means. It was a workable system, but really needed some polish for the sake of new players.
Over the last couple of years though, the old system went through some pretty substantial changes. With the introduction of Alpha and Omega clones, and the full free-to-play version of EVE Online, some skills became exclusive to paying players. The ability to extract unused Skill Points made things more complicated. The process remained the same throughout all of these adjustments, but now it’s getting a tiny bit easier.
Now, players in EVE Online will allow players to grab any skills they need directly on their character sheet, removing the need to inject skill books for most skills. And it won’t just be single skills either, there’s also an option to add all of the needed skills, say to fly a certain type of ship, all at once.
What this all means is that now, players don’t need to waste time hunting down a skill book for the majority of skills in the game. The only exception to the “On-Demand” system are rare skills which normally can’t be obtained by NPC sellers. Rare skills that are not seeded on the market and are only available through the completion of in game content will not be available directly in the new system, but the skill sheet will provide a market link for them.
This change will have at least one minor knock-on effect which some of the community will see negatively. Trading in skill books is going away. Some traders made millions of ISK engaging in arbitrage of skill books by moving bundles of the most in-demand skills to the various trade hubs. Seeding the market hubs for most skill books is going away, so some players will have to find a new way to leverage ISK, but overall this is a good change.
And don’t worry about pricing either, as CCP is working on rebalancing the hundreds of skills and their associated ISK cost for the fist time in the history of EVE Online.
I recently got back into EVE, if you want to keep up with my escapades, check out my ongoing travel log. If you’re a brand new player and want some help getting started, why not check out our free trial offer that rewards you with plenty of ISK when you make the jump to Omega.
Source: EVE Online DevBlog
