I posted this on another thread of this exact same topic.
* Eve, specifically, does a couple of nifty things with the skill system. Each skill has a very limited number of levels (5). It is the number/diversity of skills that is more important. This means that the only big difference between a new player and a vet is the number of roles that they can choose to take on.
* The time to train 1, 2, 3, AND 4 of a skill is far less than just 4 to 5. That means that within a skill a newer player at level 4 is quite comparable to a vet a level 5 as none of the skills offer super drastic bonuses between levels.
* A player can unlock the next gameplay they want to get into while still playing their current in game role.
There is a major problem with gaining experience with doing that task, and that is human psychology. Humans are natural min/maxers. Time and time again players will create unfun grind to max a skill, even if developers never intended for it. Here is a random made up example: Skills in construction efficiency increases the more the player builds things. That sounds great because you expect that it is a reward for players being successful builders. What ends up happening is that players will just build as many uninteresting useless cubes that they can afford to min/max their skill before their Next Big Thing™. The developers can spend time creating and balancing "gotcha" mechanics to try and prevent this - not just for construction but combat, mining, and every other gameplay element, which will end up adding to a LOT of developer time. Or they can use an Eve line time based skill system and the developer time can be invested into interesting gameplay.
I really think, for a massive multi player game, that eve's time based system is incredibly elegant.
Aeon_II reacted to croxis in NO MORE EVE ONLINE PASSIVE SKILL TRAINING