I like advancement-over-time, but I am not a fan of EVE's system. It is impossible for a new player to ever catch up to a veteran (unless said veteran goes inactive) and it takes far too long to advance to what is considered a base level of competence. A large number of corporations in EVE won't consider hiring anyone with less than 5 million skillpoints (some have even higher standards). To give perspective, my 2.5 month old character has 3.5 million skillpoints.
Your statement is only true if you mean a new player can never catch up to a veteran IN ALL ASPECT OF THE GAME. As I tried to point out earlier, the EVE skill system rewards those who do the research and figure out what things matter to them, and what things don't matter. It's very possible for a new player to "catch up" to a veteran IF they have a single thing they want to accomplish. Training up to fly a stealth bomber, for example, takes only a few months. It takes quite a few MORE months to totally max all the skills involved to Level 5 (which is the cap for every skill), but realize that the difference between Level 4 and Level 5 is very small.
Also, to put things in perspective, it would take someone over 23 years to train EVERY skill in the game, even at today's much accelerated training speed (you didn't used to have learning skills, nor the ability to remap your stats to enhance learning of particular skills). No player in the game has every skill maxed, unless they're a dev or managed to find an exploit.
So, yes, veterans have the advantage of being able to do MORE things well, if you want to be the best at flying a cruiser, you can certainly catch up to everyone else in that respect. My character in EVE is approaching 50 million skill points, but I'm far from being the "best" at anything because I scattered them around all over the place. I'm a very good miner, and have very good DPS output on my battlecruiser and battleship. However, I'm still fairly weak in defense for the battleship. I have the ability to fly quite a few ships (most of the non-capital ones), but I would die horribly in PvP using most of them because I haven't trained their specific support skills (IE: lasers for Amarr, drones for Gallente). It would take you years to catch up to me in every respect, but you'd be as good as me in any one of those things in a couple months.
Your statement is only true if you mean a new player can never catch up to a veteran IN ALL ASPECT OF THE GAME. As I tried to point out earlier, the EVE skill system rewards those who do the research and figure out what things matter to them, and what things don't matter. It's very possible for a new player to "catch up" to a veteran IF they have a single thing they want to accomplish. Training up to fly a stealth bomber, for example, takes only a few months. It takes quite a few MORE months to totally max all the skills involved to Level 5 (which is the cap for every skill), but realize that the difference between Level 4 and Level 5 is very small.
Also, to put things in perspective, it would take someone over 23 years to train EVERY skill in the game, even at today's much accelerated training speed (you didn't used to have learning skills, nor the ability to remap your stats to enhance learning of particular skills). No player in the game has every skill maxed, unless they're a dev or managed to find an exploit.
So, yes, veterans have the advantage of being able to do MORE things well, if you want to be the best at flying a cruiser, you can certainly catch up to everyone else in that respect. My character in EVE is approaching 50 million skill points, but I'm far from being the "best" at anything because I scattered them around all over the place. I'm a very good miner, and have very good DPS output on my battlecruiser and battleship. However, I'm still fairly weak in defense for the battleship. I have the ability to fly quite a few ships (most of the non-capital ones), but I would die horribly in PvP using most of them because I haven't trained their specific support skills (IE: lasers for Amarr, drones for Gallente). It would take you years to catch up to me in every respect, but you'd be as good as me in any one of those things in a couple months.