Forgive me on the names, but I was still a few weeks out from my third tier strip miner ship. That from the second tier strip miner. Don't get me wrong I Approve of how the skill system works. It's a passive system that reallly works to your advantage when you do not have a great deal of time to devote to the game. Though when you do, you are required to grind still. You grind for money for your skill books. Either missions, mining, or pirating the grind still exists. Certainly there are a few interesting ways to turn ISK, but there is still that forced mechanism.
Also prior to my first two weeks in the game, I did research on the skill system and really laid out the foundation for a mining/ship building. Which favored high Intelligence and Memory, which in turned helped with the learning skills. I tucked those under my belt to at least level 4 on my core skills and 3 in my off skills to improve times.
Though like you mentioned I practically had all that setup verbatim. I had initial episodes with being pod killed running the starter missions, twice. So I figured moving into this brave new world I would need a ship to defend myself. Frig 3, missile and turret upgrades, grid upgrades, shields, electronic warfare. Though doing this prevented my real goals of being a big haul miner. To me mining is "boring" in the sense you don't have to "typically" worry about being podded. Though I wanted to move further into 0,0 with my corp mates. They encouraged people to skill up to make the best of the runs. They also had a section devoted to just pvp fighting, which was nice.
Though like I said, when I'm on I would appreciate the ability to further training while I'm on. For example, I was mining in a quiet high sec area and went off to get a drink or whatnot and came back to find myjetcan had been pilferred. So I have to go back to the station my merlin is sitting in, fit it up for combat and get back. Now since I was focusing on deep core mining, I missed training up for missile launchers. So I have to wait to finish, then I can try to hunt down the guy who invaded my can. Though by this time the pirate is no longer flagged for me to kill.
It's no so much a fault of the skill progression per say, but how little some skills overlap into other aspects of the game. Deep Core mining has absolutely nothing to do with combat training so you have to start at a 10-30 minute skill, sit at the computer and wait it out to flip it over to the next hour tier etc. In the downtime between resetting, you still have to grind for the ISK for ships and more training. The open ended issue is *how* you get the ISK to do that. Though it still requires the grind mentality to get you there. It's not a ZZZZbest scenario where some nice guy flies up to you and says enjoy. You trade killing wolves for running missions, mining, or running a corporation of people doing those things for you.
I can appreciate how if done right, and you even mentioned that you *can* jump right into the pvp fray and have a respectable ship. Though if you get sidetracked by the long term goal, you are more or less forced from that aspect of the game. Or a great deal of it. It's a dual edged sword approach to me.
edit: Just for clarification I did about 3 months of Eve before I put it on ice.
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