In a new devblog released on Feb 26, CCP announced a set of changes coming to the skill training system. The changes, called “Skills on Demand”, streamline the ways players acquire (not train) most of the skills they’ll use in New Eden.
Rather than needing to travel to school systems, or trade hubs, to by skill books off the market, now players will be able to, for lack of a better word, stream new skills. Just go to the character sheet, select the skill, and purchase it remotely. At long last, the technology that allows the vast wealth of skills already in your head to be copied from one clone to the next in the moment before your pod explodes will be used to deliver tiny fragments of that vast pool straight to your brain.
CCP supports a healthy free market, though, so SoD won’t replace the ‘go to the brick-and-pixels store and buy a real (pixelated) skill book method. It will simply supplement the old way, with a slight markup in price. This way, capsuleers can still unload duplicate skillbooks they’ve had forever to unsuspecting rubes in Jita make a slight profit selling books in their local markets. While the system will be available for most skills, skillbooks that cannot be acquired from NPC schools (like the Triglavian ship/weapon skills) will not be available on-Demand. Perhaps the Trigs have filed copyright complaints with EVEtube about that streaming content?
One thing’s certain, though: this change will make things easier for many players. Hopefully, this indicates CCP’s willingness to examine whether the complexity in their game elements is always needed.
