Struggle Street

So, you may remember how I up-honoured the Falcon a while back. I ended up recruiting the guy.

Statham Drien has been playing off and on for a few years, mostly doing hisec anoms and day trading. Due to his old corporation (mostly US/EU people) copping a war dec, he decided to try his hand at wormholes. First day on the job, honour Falcon, and loses Drake after having it for 2 hours. GG, TF.

However, not to be deterred, he's been picked upand set upon the righteus path of Holy DPS. He's been involved in a couple of ganks, some baiting, and we have started him out on doing C2 sites for ISK.

The problem is, his options with low skill in weapons (like....fuck all) and decent skill in drones, is the Gila. That's about it, really. His Drake does 130 DPS at the moment, and the Gila would do 539. I say this to illustrate two things.

Firstly, the Gila is OP as fuck. You can tell which cruisers are actually worth flying by their price on the market. Gilas are 270-290M ISk (a shade lower than the Rattlesnake), Stratios are 250-270, Orthrus are 240-260M. Vexor Navy Issues are 78M, most other navy Faction cruisers are 40-50M. This isn't just the vagaries of the market - this is collective wisdom of the Gestalt pricing these hulls based entirely o which ones are actually worth flying.

Secondly, there's been a lot made of the 450K SP starting skill point buff. Some people have brain damage when it comes to this issue - there is no issue! In fact, it should be more than 450K SP. It should be 1.5M. You should start out with all tier 1 skills at level 3, and have 1M SP's to spend on whatever you wish in order to specialise properly into whatever field you seek. It is no skin off my nose if someone gets 1.5M Sp's on day zero. It means they have the ability to buff a couple of skills to level 4, maybe go for cruiser 3 and medium gun skills in a Ruppy, or whatever.

I say this because Statham, with 15.5M SP's mostly spent in drones, mining, trading, is essentially a newbro starting out in wormholes on a DPS and tank path. He has absolutely fuck all skills in either, and he is only persisting because I can find him a role in the corporation (bait, EWAR frigate and cruiser). He can't even complete a C2 site without help.

Taking him as a typical newbro, you have to ask what is in it for people who want to start a game, make ISk, and dabble in PVP, when they literally cannot do it due to skills. Indeed, the reason for pushing for even MORE skills for newbros is to level off that initial training hump even more, open up options and most crucially, give players real options.

Finally, going back to the cruiser hull prices, the inability for even battlecruisers to compete at all with Gilas for PVE and PVP really drives home the barrier to entry of low-class wormholes. it is several weeks of training, and then you get into a Drake which still has atrocious DPS compared to other options. Forget a T1 cruiser, especially in the Gallente/Caldari lineup, if you want to do anything more challenging than a Level 3 mission (which pays nothing).

This is why ship balance is so crucial and why pathetic hulls like the Arbitrator and Osprey Navy need a strong lick of the buffing machine; severe imbalance drives people to train only one thing, because that's the ONLY sensible thing to train. In fact, it is the ONLY sensible thing to fly. The only skill in making it in EVE is knowing what to fly and not losing it before you can afford to pay it off.

For Statham and guys ike him, that comes down to luck more than anything. Sometimes the lucky Falcon swoops. Sometimes it doesn't and you get bored with playing a trading space game and being unable to progress with any ship because all the ships suck.