Compelling Argument

One of the most compelling arguments against the skill trading proposal came from Mike Azariah on the most recent Neocom Podcast called Tinfoil Reply: Selling Skillpoints. Not quoting verbatim, his major concern is that by allowing new players to skill up faster they will get themselves into more serious trouble sooner, and possibly getting in over their heads before they are experienced enough in EVE and her foibles to handle the situation.

Out of all the arguments against skill trading, I find this one resonated with me the most and took me back for a few minutes to consider it. And then I rejected it. Sorry Mike. :)

You see, starting out in EVE players get in over their heads all the time, paying for painful mistakes for months or even years after they start. I started with 5000 skill points and a terrible tutorial and worked my ass off for a year, joined a new null sec alliance, but everything I had in a Raven, tried to scout myself into null sec from high sec, and died to a gate camp. Spent weeks ratting in a borrowed Ferox to get back on my feet.

Players will get in over their heads a lot all the time but they are more likely to get in over their heads with poor skills in the core and support categories which is one reason why I think they should be given out for free to starting players but we'll not rant about that again. By keeping them in lower skill point brackets and forcing them to wait on crucial skills just to try and prevent them from getting into a bigger ship too soon is not the right way to go about it. If that's really the concern, we should change the game to force players to demonstrate proficiency in playing the game before allowing them to fly something, for example, you need a certificate in Frigates by completing 10 level 1 missions or getting on 10 PvP kills prior to unlocking Destroyers. (This is just an off the top of my head example.)

Or another alternative is to tune the ISK progression model and make it harder to afford the bigger ships, thus putting downward pressure on players to choose cheaper alternatives until they are ready for the risk of more expensive things.

And so on. But skill point progression as it currently stands is a penalty rather than incentive to new players to stay in small ships.