On Tuesday, May 24, recurring opportunities came to New Eden, where you can gain 10,000 Skillpoints for killing a hostile NPC – rats – every 22 hours.
This has been one of the more divisive decisions that CCP has made recently, with responses ranging from calling it a “crude, unimaginative feature,” through to claims about how this is a slippery slope on the way to turning Eve into WoW, but also positive reactions such as “That’s up to 3,981,818 SP per year, I like it, a lot.” Newer players looking forward to getting into their next fit were among the most enthusiastic capsuleers responding.
The general expectation is that these will eventually expand to cover more activities than the current “Kill a rat, get SP” pattern. CCP has said that one of the first ways they will be looking to expand it will be to go into exploration and mining. This will likely come in the form of hacking a data or relic site, or mining an asteroid, in addition to the current combat-based opportunity.
If this occurs, then it may go some way to removing some of the negative feelings towards the recurring opportunities, as it would allow players to gain more SP from doing what they would do ordinarily when undocked. CCP has mentioned that it hesitates to expand this system into certain activities, for example, PvP, as the easiest way to get the SP would be to kill your own alt. Another example of this would be selling to your own alt via the market.
Expanding the range of activities that give SP will not reduce negative responses across the board, however. Min/maxers will still have the problem that if they do not log into Eve for a day, they miss the 10k SP, and those who feel that it is a slippery slope towards space WoW will not be appeased by anything CCP does short of removing the recurring opportunities altogether.
Another concern from players is the 22h timer for the opportunity. This makes it problematic for players are not always able to be on at the same time every day. This is problematic, as one of CCP Rise’s posts state that the idea is that the recurring opportunities can be performed whenever you have ten minutes, such as on a lunch break, or when you have a ten minute break in the evening at home.
If you get online late one night due to work, or stuff you have to do at home, so you log on at 2200, this means the timer does not expire until 2000 the next day, which may be after your usual login time. A timer which reset each downtime would avoid this problem, and given that CCP has said they are closely monitoring this new feature, hopefully this change will be made.
The main group expected to benefit from recurring opportunities is new players, so, I grabbed a few bright-eyed new pilots, and asked for what they thought of them.
The most interesting reply I got from a new player is that when they were training skills with a short timer, it felt incredibly helpful. When the SP was applied to longer training times, turning 1d12h timers into 1d6h, the feeling of instant gratification disappeared, and the initial motivation to do it every day began wearing off. Many new users reported that once daily rewards became more of a cumulative effect instead of immediately rewarding them with the ability to do new things through skills, their drive to complete the opportunity began wearing off, and, whilst they will still do it, they are not feeling the same urge to do it.
Until we get some data from CCP, we cannot say whether this pattern of initial interest and drop-off over time is the norm, though a large number of players will encounter rats in the course of their daily business in Eve.
CCP have said that this is not only aimed at new players, and is intended to drive people logging in and, once logged in and undocked, to get them engaged in content. At the moment, the single option for getting the skillpoints somewhat reduces the engagement, but hopefully we will see more people engaging in it daily as it expands to cover other activities.
As someone who is not a min/maxer with regards to skillpoints, the 10k SP is not in itself enough of a drive to get me to log in if I wasn’t already planning to, and the SP reward was not enough to get me engaging in combat on a new alt outside of my existing plans. It is a nice boost to SP if I am already doing the activity anyway, but I am not going out of my way to participate.
It will be interesting to see data from CCP Quant about the recurring opportunities activity, and to see what activities CCP expands them to in the future. But as of now, I feel that they are a nice to have, rather than a need to have. As such, daily opportunities may not be something that will drive people to log in.
Of course, if the reward was so good that it was practically mandatory, we would have an even bigger problem.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Rhivre.
