In a level-less society, there are few milestone indications proving you've advanced. EVE Online's
chat channels aren't caked with "Ding!" messages slathering over what
level someone's popping champagne corks over. Yet the "Gratz!" that
follow a triumphant message stating the new ship you've purchased can
often fall surprisingly limp as well.
That's because in EVE, being able to fly a certain hull type doesn't mean you can fit
that certain hull type with appropriate equipment. You could pilot a
cruiser -- a popular, high-powered ship class -- in short order: the
license is yours, have at it. But you won't necessarily have the
acumen and certainly not the experience to put it to good use yet. The
technicalities are beyond the scope of this blog, but suffice it to say
that any player can prematurely get themselves into the cockpit of a
large boat long before the rest of their gangly-youth body has caught
up to the size of their paws.
There is one method for accurately measuring a character's growth and advancement, but it surprisingly lacks ceremony...
I swung over to the always-trafficked Brutor Tribe Treasury, Rens solar
system. The Six Kin Development Warehouse -- my usual haunt where I
pick up a solid stream of missions from my security agent -- lacks
cloning facilities. I deftly slapped down the sixty-five thousand ISK
purchase at the Treasury and ding'd in corp chat that I'd upgraded to a
Clone Grade Gamma. Solemnly, as expected:
Crickets. Nothing...
They're a quiet lot by default, so I can't fault them overly much. But
that clone will retain two million, fifty thousand skill points in the
event of my demise. (Think of it as a 'save point' for my character
Billy Blame's advancement. I currently have just over one million,
three-hundred thousand skill points, and my then-current clone was
steadily approaching the lip of what it could muster. I have to imagine
that that's solid progression, since I've focused almost exclusively on
Learning skills; skills that do nothing
except increase the
number of skill points I acquire per hour. From go, I earned
seven-hundred twenty skill points per hour, according to my iPhone's
Capsuleer app. I now earn one-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven per
hour. I've nearly halved the rate at which I acquire skills. (There
is a major discrepancy between EVEMon (EVE Monitor) and Capsuleer in
reporting how many skill points I earn per hour, but I'm neither
inclined enough nor numbers-savvy enough to prove who's correct.) When
a single skill takes several days to top out at level five -- even at
my low levels -- the patience to train Learning skills pays rich
dividends over the course of a tenured career.
Regardless, my purchase of a Clone Grade Gamma was a silent and
uneventful ding, likely because there's nothing outward to disclose,
nothing showing off me piloting a new Bellicose, Rupture, Scythe, or
Stabber-class Minmatar cruiser. But it was a solid indication that my
patient training is paying off. Just as it does for absolutely everyone
in these space lanes. Which is why it's never a call for celebration.