More Queue Queue
QueQue more.
Skipping a nicely written intro that will entertain a few readers and cause others to lose interest I´ll come straight to the point:
We´re developing a skill queue. I´m expecting that the bearer of good news is praised and flattered. The CSM was happy to hear we were developing a skill queue, but their songs of praise were rather short. I expect haikus. You may want to read on and make yourself familiar with how the queue works and the early UI mock-up.
About time!
Yes, it is about time isn´t? There were good reasons why we never did it before, though.
We are proud that we are realistic and nice (or cool) enough to know that people have a life outside EVE (shocking, I know) and while they are not playing EVE you can still advance your character.
While it´s cool that you can advance your character when you are offline, we did worry that if we introduced a skill queue some players might just set a queue for a year and become less active in EVE. That´s not what a massively multiplayer ONLINE game is about. EVE is a social game and we want you exposed to other players so you can start making legends out of you or corporation and strive for domination. A long abstinence from EVE would ruin this for us.
And yet, we know people do have lives outside of EVE and you don´t really want to set your alarm to change skills, or worse lose out on skill training because you couldn´t make it home in time. And it´s always the shorter skills that fall right between a day and anything less than that which are the hardest to fit into your schedule.
So we sought a way to make the planning of skill training easier by using a queue, but without the risk of people queuing forever and not really being active in the game.
The queue
The skill training system we came up with allows you to queue skills that will start training in the next 24 hours. You can enter in up to 50 skills in a queue, as long as they all start training within 24 hours. This leaves room to start a skill that will take 6 hours, followed with one that takes 12 to complete. With only 18 hours of training prepared, the queue still has room to start another skill.
If you train a skill the old fashioned way (by activating a skill as you do now without the queue window) it will still be listed in the queue as the top skill; the skill you are training now. If you don´t add a follow-up skill then you´d have to come back when that skill is finished. You can still start training skills from your normal character sheet without entering the queue.
You can move skills around in the queue to find the optimal order for you and apply the changes. After that the queue will update to your latest changes. Your character will continue to train whatever is in the queue until a new queue is applied.
UI
We have an early version of the queue, you can see it below.
The section on the left is a screen where you can view your skills and apply filters. You can show all skills or the ones you haven´t finished training or apply other filters. You can easily select a skill and drag it to the right section which is the queue itself.
The bar above is a visual representation of the next 24 hours, so you can see how much room is left by looking at how much of the bar is filled in with colour.
Future
We are hard at work completing the skill queue and we have left room to develop the way you manage skills further. For example we could add a planning system and maybe even connect skill plans to certificates or modules. We´d appreciate any feedback you have on the skill queue and other ways to help you manage your skills. Or to paraphrase the CSM ‘ YES, OMG11!!!11CCP WeLovesyou7!!Thx!ByeKissesHUgs´.
We all love you back and all go QQ your skills.
