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[lallara zhuul]

I haven't played EVE for a while.

To me it seems that at the moment all the bonuses and the tweaks of the different ships are made in mind with the fact that CCP wants the new players into as powerful ships as possible in as short time as imaginable.

Pretty much creating a shitload of inflation to all the training that the old players had to do to get the edge in the first place.

Is the edge that you gain from skills meaningless nowadays, while you can get the same edge from getting yourself a handful of PLEX and compensating with more expensive loot nowadays?

Is the only edge that the 'old guard' has is the using of supercaps and Titans effectively against their PLEX created rivals?

Is the 'old guard' actually meaningless?

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Imho, you don't get the edge by having had enough time to run your skill queue, but by going out and getting experience under your belt. Skill > skillpoints.

[ArtOfLight]

Imho, you don't get the edge by having had enough time to run your skill queue, but by going out and getting experience under your belt. Skill > skillpoints.

Could not emphasize this enough.

[BloodBird]

Imho, you don't get the edge by having had enough time to run your skill queue, but by going out and getting experience under your belt. Skill > skillpoints.

This.

My T1-named Frig will beat your T2 frig because you keep making mistakes I learned to avoid long ago.

Extrapolate to each ship category as you go along. Experience is an edge all in itself, though Lallara's concern is rather a legitimate one.

I don't think it's an intentional move ot get the newer players into 'better' ships faster though, rather this may be a side-effect of ship changes overall.

[Morwen Lagann]

Nico put it best, but also:

It's not so much about getting people into better ships.

It's rewarding new players/characters for specializing into roles and gameplay styles early on, rather than doing what the rest of us did, which was just train all the things.

[Bacchanalian]

Imho, you don't get the edge by having had enough time to run your skill queue, but by going out and getting experience under your belt. Skill > skillpoints.

This.

As evidence:

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82039
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82036
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82034
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82033

Three of my favorites:
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82685
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82521
http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=82284

These were pilots who knew their ships and the enemy ships and how both were flown and used that experience to the fullest to win fights that really shouldn't have been won.  I suppose the argument could be made in the case of the last three that rats played a huge role, but especially in the case of the first one where he killed a Tengu in a Jag, it should be noted that the Jag has a kinetic resist hole, so he went in against the worst possible damage type.

[Iwan Terpalen]

The only advantage the old guard's lost is that their old ships and tricks don't work quite the same way anymore.

[Vikarion]

I don't really see this trend. It's always been very, very possible to kill bad players with cheap, easy to train ships. Conversely, a well-piloted AF or HAC will almost always prevail against it's T1 counterpart, if not placed in a terrible situation - which is part of good piloting. I certainly think that CCP's battleship changes are mostly stupid, since they are mostly a giant nerf to a hardly-used class anyway, but on the whole, I think the changes have been good.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I'm actually going to say that there has been a shift towards getting newer players into ships that matter in the current meta (see - the logi cruisers and general buffs to smaller hulls).

This comes with 2 caveats. One Nico hit perfectly - experience matters.

Two is probably an even bigger divide in perception than the OP's question. Whenever this question is brought up in some form, I feel like the inherent underlying question not "are CCP giving better ships to newer players", but "should CCP be giving ships to newer players".

For instance, the perception that the nullsec "ring of blue" is perpetuated by nullsec veterans and 2nd, 3rd, or 4th iterations of old alliance, both of which have been through several wars and so are unwilling to kick off another war where even a victorious campaign may be filled with months of grinding; newer groups and alliances, however, have difficulty claiming and holding even small islands of null-security space, because the current meta demands vast amounts of cash to be able to field the fleets to hold even one system.

The theory, I think, goes something like "well, if we make cruisers more powerful, then you won't need the huge resources to field a capital, Tech3, or Tier3 battleship swarm."



Finally, I would suggest anyone thinking about these questions go read an article over on TheMittani.com on "Lex Malcanis", a law which states that "Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of 'new players', that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players."

It's an interesting piece and vital in understanding why changes like these very often end up benefiting veterans as much as if not more than newer players.

[Silver Night]

The edge was never really in having the skills for a particular ship to 5. That you can do in a relatively short time, and having all support skills to 5 pretty much gives you the same advantages it always has. The difference between me and someone who has been playing for 4 or 5 months is that I can hop into any ship and know I'll have perfect skills to fly it.

As always wealth (of skillpoints, in this case) gives more options most of all.

As far as a buying plex goes, blowing real money on expensive mods gives you a fairly marginal advantage that - chances are - you won't know how to take advantage of.

[Lyn Farel]

As far as a buying plex goes, blowing real money on expensive mods gives you a fairly marginal advantage that - chances are - you won't know how to take advantage of.

Except for a few cases of pvp, especially solo pvp. Ask Ava about it since she will be more qualified to speak about that (even if I have my fair share of solo pvp).

If I take a ship that I have always had some affinity with, which is the vengeance, well, the vengeance is now an AF that is outclassed by more standard DPS AFs in 1v1, even if you keep them at the good range. However, it becomes on of the most OP AF when you start to fit a-type reps on it. It can virtually tank anything and dying is less of a concern in solo fights, where other AFs can't do the same for guns (which don't have fancy shit like a-type things).

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

To be honest, Lyn, I've always had the opposite experience. The key to solo PVP has always been picking your fights, and expensive mods have never in my experience given a huge advantage there. Sure, we all remember near-untouchable nano-Crows with Gistii MWDs and pilots with full Snake sets, but (at least in the case of the Omerta killboards - we had a few of those pilots) they typically wouldn't kill anything solo that you couldn't kill with a normal Crow.

In my own experience, you usually either win a solo fight easily, or lose it badly. A big part of learning to PVP solo has always been learning to distinguish between those two *before* the fight happens. Competently fitted and flown by skilled pilots, a Taranis typically dies to a Vexor, for instance, while an Omen is a much better target for the Taranis. Fitting the Taranis with an a-type rep won't really change that.

The big exception to this is probably 1v1 fights against roughly comparable ships. Lyn's AF-vs-AF example, for instance. The AF with the a-type rep will see a huge advantage in that fight - so long as the other pilot fights on the first pilot's terms.

Which is really what solo PVP is all about, in my opinion. Making sure the fights happen on your terms, not your enemy's.

[Lyn Farel]

That's my point, Silver said that bling mods do not matter a lot, and I would tend to agree, but I merely pointed a few specific solo pvp cases where they actually do.

Making sure the 1v1 AF fights happen on your terms in my example is possible for the vengeance pilot, but not so much for the pilot of the DPS AF.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Making sure the 1v1 AF fights happen on your terms in my example is possible for the vengeance pilot, but not so much for the pilot of the DPS AF.

That's exactly my point about making solo fights happen on your terms. If you're flying a DPS AF and you're not able to dictate the fight, you've already lost. Maybe you took a calculated risk in taking that ship out, counting on running into fights you were equipped to handle - which is a valid tactic, and you can chalk it up to bad luck. On the other hand, if you simply took out that ship without giving any thought to what fights you will try to avoid... If you're not fighting on your own terms, then you're fighting on someone else's.

[Lyn Farel]

That's not my point.

Im a vengeance pilot. I used to be able to take on most AFs 1v1 before the AF boost, but not after. So yes, I was perfectly aware of what I could engage or not after a few adjustements (after that AF revamp). So usually I stopped engaging other AFs altogether, because I don't use deadspace mods (don't want to, to expensive in case of a blob, and these happen often).

My point is just that as I was answering to Silver, there exist some very specific cases where deadspace mods are almost a win button.