Eve Online like skill progression

In addition to the already excellent skill and gem system that will be in the game, I thought that perhaps you could incorporate yet another great skill system, that of Eve Online's learn in real time system.

For those not familiar, the way Eve Online works with skills is very interesting. Every skill in the game has 5 levels and the only way to level it up is just waiting in real time. The system works something like this:

Lets say I want to become a more advanced swordsman. I could grab a skill called "Sword Master" and it would have a level between 1 and 5. The first level would take me about 15 minutes of real time to learn. So from the moment I start learning, it will take 15 minutes to complete bar none. There are no actions I can do in game to make this go any faster (although it is a little more complicated, I will get to that after this initial demo). After getting the skill to level 1 I can choose to start learning level 2, and level 2 is a significant increase in time from 1. Lets just say it takes about 1 hour. So after waiting 1 hour of real time I try to do level 3, which is now 6 or 7 hours. Level 4 is a few days, and level five is a week.

Now there is a little more complexity to the system than explained above. Each skill has two attributes connected to it that you posses that will determine the amount of time it will take to learn it. Each character has 5 attributes at various levels, so depending on their base attributes it will effect how fast they will learn certain skills. I'm not sure what the attributes in POE are, but just for illustration lets say that the pseudo skill mentioned above uses Strength and Dexterity as its attributes. So if you have high str and dex you will learn that skill just a bit faster than others. So instead of taking a week to go from level 4 to 5, it might take you personally 5 days. So you will complete that skill probably about 3 days faster than your buddy who has good dex, but low str (but perhaps has high int or something).

Now to get to the next level of complexity with how these skills work. Each skill has a rank, and that rank determines how long it takes to learn. The more valuable skills are higher ranked. Let's say for illustration that rank 1 skills are worth exactly 500,000 "skill points". So when you learn a level 5 rank 1 skill you will have learned exactly 500,000 skill points. But if you want to learn a rank 2 skill, it is exactly double at level 5, 1,000,000. This also makes it take twice as long to learn everything in it. So going from level 1 to 2 would be 30 minutes now instead of 15, and going from level 4 to 5 takes 2 weeks instead of one.

This can make for something interesting possibilities, because these are skills that can only be learned by having an old character. I have an Eve Character that has been alive since 2003, very old. And he literally has skills that would take the average pilot 2 or 3 months of straight waiting to learn. That is a long time, and it makes those skills worth a lot because most newer players simply are not interested in waiting that long for a skill to complete.


Now I understand that most all skills in this game would not be under this system, but it would be neat to see certain elements fall under it. Which ones exactly? Can't be sure, but I believe you could think of something. It might give you a better reason to hold onto one avatar instead of rerolling.

I forgot to mention that most of these skills need not over power your character. In Eve the skills may take a very long time to learn at times, but that doesn't mean they will over power you. For instance, there is a skill I have that increases my damage by 2% every level. 2% isn't much, and since there are only 5 levels the most I could hope for is a 10% increase in damage. The catch is the skill is high ranked, so going from level 1 to 3 took me about a week of training, but going from 3 to 4 AND 5 will take months, and it is simply not worth the time right now. So I have a 6% increase in damage, but squeezing that last 4% is too much time.

Also, didn't mention this but you can only train 1 skill at a time. You cannot for any reason do two.


This is my suggestion, hope you enjoy!

I don't like it when things are beefed up only. I like how real world works - you start as noob, you grow up but at some point growth curve changes direction.

Translated to game, character would grow for few years since it's creation, but after that some of his stats would start going down. 5 or 10 years after character birth, he would be old - regardless of his level, same level younger characters would outperform him in "youth stats", like HP. To compensate for a less vitality and other stats older character lost over time, there would be things available only to older, very experienced characters, like:

1. chat access to Devs,
2. ability to vote on more or less important game issues and
3. being able to give out quests to other players - playing usual NPC role.

Sounds like something that would stop people playing there characters for 2 months just to level a skill.

This would be ok however if it wants things like :+12% dmg with swords and so on. Thats what passive are for. You want the player to have a sense of awesomeness when they level up.
However World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online sort of had this. However this was with guilds and leveling up your guild.If you took what they have and implement it instead into something like a time played leveling system.Say these levels all add stuff like this:5-10-15% faster leveling on all characters on that account.repair prices are 10-15-20% cheaper.The ability to teleport someone to your exact location. All these things dont directly effect your skills. They are more "handy" things.

O right the over time leveling only continues to level whilst you play that character.So you cant just create a char and leave it for 2 months.

BTW! I know there are no repairs in the game. This was just an example

eve online and POE should never be put into the same sentence. I already have a job don't need Eve aka second job. Yes i did play more than the free trial and the fantasy sci-fy was poorly executed.