EVE General Discussion

The game should drop you in null with no docking privileges on day one.

If you survive after 14 days, you're allowed to have an account.

If you attempt to enter high sec space within the first 14 days, you get concorded.

Harsh? perhaps; but at least there would be no confusion as to what this game is.

Too many people on the forums acting like the fuckin' game owes them something - it doesn't; the game gives you the right to take it from someone else and then sleep with their sister.

CCP do not care if you have been playing for ten minutes or ten years, you have the same right to kill as anyone else; avail yourself of this fact.

That's EVE.

AK

Yea but thats a misconception insecure players all too easily fall into...

You can learn so much in a battleship, flying around with skill only to IV or even III that by the time V finishes, you'll be an ace in the thing and can actually leverage it to its full capacity all the more effectively.

Experience really often trumps what on paper skill points suggest, and forum mongering all too often discourages anyone actually going out there and trying things out that others have already learned the hard way, without appreciating the values of real time experience.

Its too easy to slip into a cycle where you are sitting back and waiting for your skill points, and some a-holes on the forums say you can effectively do something, rather than just going for it yourself!

While I am certainly not suggesting, theirs never going to be hard lines that new players encounter where skill training (or isk flow, for that matter) is a cold hard wall in the face of a brilliant plan, and those barriers are often very real... All i'm saying is, you can usually set a goal, and plan it out so even while you may be stuck getting over one of those barriers, theirs bound to be practical ways that you can be out flying, and actually playing and learning and experiencing relevant things towards those goals while you wait for your skills to tick.

Never forget, this game rewards the pro-active first and foremost, and that goes for any of the arena's that one might play in.

I'm a very new player myself. You might be surprised to know that I'm not an alt, and that I'm actually posting on the forums without the help of someone else ("He found his ass without using both hands? Impressive, for a new guy.")

I've watched videos of the game before, which is great because EVE is such a cool game whether you watch it or not. Finally, after seeing some video explaining the Retribution mechanics, I decided to play and got a 21 day trial. The first day of playing, I only did missions: I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't trade with anyone, I didn't look for friends, I just did missions. Sure, the first few missions of shooting things was fun, but it got kind of boring after awhile (also, I forgot to use the Slasher I got, so I did the first 6 combat missions in a Rookie ship...)

I decided that missions or mining wasn't my thing, which probably was too hasty a decision, but found this great thing called a "Nullsec PvP Corporation" and joined up. I talked to the guys and got registered on their various fora and chat programs, and a few days in, got comfortable.

You know why I'm still here?
Because when I, a barely 3- day- old newbie, said in corporation chat, "I wanna fly a Stabber!" they didn't say, "No, you're gonna fly light tackle until you can fly a battleship and then you'll just be part of a blob." They told me what a Stabber is and isn't good for, what I might want to fit it with, and what skills would be beneficial.

Because when I ask, "Can I watch?" the people I'm with don't say, "No, we're ratting, **** off" or "Eh, I'm not really doing anything interesting right now" or, most often, "You'll probably die". They said, "Grab a shuttle and warp to us!" I get experience from watching people rat, or PvP, or bash POS's.

Because when I was moping in Jita Local that the cost of skills for a Stabber was out of my reach, some nice patron gave me a 5m ISK stipend and a Stabber cruisers! Think of it like this: for us noobs, a 10m cruiser is hideously expensive, but for a 10m SP character with 1bil in the wallet, it's throwaway money. If you give a noob a 10m cruiser he's probably going to lose it, but it's still amazing to look up at all the people in the game and realize that 90% of them regard the ships you're aiming for as toys, and to know that one day, with enough effort, you can make it to that point.

Really, what newbies want is to see spaceships exploding, and want to participate in the things that made them join EVE in the first place: the economy, industry, exploration, PvE and PvP. Don't tell a newbie to **** off until he can tackle, don't shoot a newbie in a shuttle that pops into your gatecamp because he's exploring and says "hello!" in local, don't hunt down newbies in hisec because they joined a corp that somehow attracted a wardec. If you're a **** to a noob, we're most likely going to quit: being alpha'd into pods mercilessly isn't fun when you're not trying to fight. I'm not saying to baby them, just don't purposefully single them out to screw them over.

Corporations that support newbies are important. Having people that are willing to help, rather than hurt, newbies is important. Let a noob explore what he wants to do, if you're a PvP corp and he wants to hop up to Hisec to do some missions, don't say, "No, missions suck." Give him advice on not getting killed by other people, or fitting ships, or really any help at all. Noobs are a resource, and running a game like EVE is expensive especially when more and more super- rich players stop paying and just get PLEX's.

What I'm trying to say is to show noobs EVE as they picture it. Ask them what they want to do, help them find out how to do it, and don't single them out to be killed repeatedly because you want a better K/D ratio and their shiny little ships pop in two volleys.

Demon's Souls Tutorial, but with space ships. Brilliant!

The thing that made me stick with eve is the simple amount of things there are to learn. When I just started, I had no idea what you could do, where to go, or what the hell to train. I lucked out and got accepted to a good corp, but that moment of loss is what almost pushed me away. What I would do is change the tutorials to a series of short videos, made in the style of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGplrpWvz0I trailer. Fun to watch, informative, and shows you what you could eventually become. Dangling the carrot on a stick is a tried and true business method, right now, the noobs just can't see the carrot.

I really like the idea of starting players at a random null station with their first clone at their tutorial station. Explain what's going on, tell them how to set destination and how to warp to gates. Then reward them with 5 mil or something when they get podded.

Honestly alot of the problem is it takes alot to get started. Alot of beginners wont join a corp, I'm one of them I'm a loner, wether EVE is a loner game or not is moot. I've been podded about 5 times already and I expected to be. Thank god they were cheap frigates. However its going to take months before I can go to low sec and even defend myself reasonably.

The amount of time to takes to skill up is just crazy. I can understand why the ship skills are so high. Fair enough, but why are other basic ship running skill so long? Why cant I find info on what appears to be basic ship information like the ship stats. I cant even mouse over them for info to see what exactly its supposed to do. ex: Ship sensor strength, Inertia, etc. Its not easy to learn the ins and outs of the game without really wanting to go to outside sources.

Anyways, its not a new player friendly game over all, and thats without going to low-sec to be podded by pirates/FW/joeblow who decides your cheap frigate should get out the way cause he's passing by.

Sensor Strength is essentially intended to be your ships ability to defeat EWAR or disrupt scans looking for your ship, (specifically combat probes), although information on it is limited.

Inertia is how your ship reacts to changes in speed or direction, and it affects your alignment time. That means a low Inertia multiplier combined with a specific mass will determine the time it takes to turn your ship around from a stationary position, or how long it takes your ship to reach max velocity.

It wouldn't hurt to have a proper ship view that had descriptive mouseovers either in the NPE, or better, available at any time. Also, including calculated effects might not be a bad idea, possibly with Sliders so you could change the velocity with respect to a calculation for alignment time. Maybe a bit over the top, but some of these features would probably help both new players and old.

Add to that a fitting calculator and you're gold.

Skills have perfectly reasonable training times within the scope of the game. Just remember that training them to 5 or even 4, isn't always necessary, particularly early on. Head for 3, and broaden the scope of your skills so you can cover what you need to fly a decent ship early on. Improving your ability to fly it by extending those skills to 4 or 5 can come later.

You should be able to train and fly a ship, (Frigate or Destroyer), reasonable well, with a majority of necessary support skills, within a period of 1-2 weeks I think. It's been awhile since I trained at that level, but the idea is to select skills to improve the various aspects of your ship and its weapons systems. EWAR, and various other skills can come later.

Buff armor, capacitor, shields, capacitor and shield regen, passive resistance, weapons and there range and effectiveness, etc.. and of course, acquire and train your skill for the ship you will fly early on. The same can apply to mining and related skills.

They all take time, but the lower levels offer faster returns on your time investment. More of those skills is more important than more in one of those skills.

It's coincidence that I actually had a buddy at work come up to me 3 days ago and mention that he had started playing EVE.

I was kind of having a hard time deciding what to do. I didn't want to throw him in at my level of the game. I know from my own experience it's a cliff. I had played for 2 years solo, in low sec. I was what even I would now call 'bad' at EVE. I wasn't rich, my fits were not streamed to the ships they were on but I was happy. I enjoyed EVE. After I got in to the whole social side of EVE I was miserable. I felt so fucken small. EVE really lost its magic for me when I started "playing with the big boys".

I ended up giving this guy 50 mill and so far I leave him alone. I don't want to take away the exploratory aspects of learning EVE from him. If he asks me a pointed question, I answer the best I can but if he doesn't ask, I don't tell him. I also told him my 4 mains and I told him, if Ocih is on overview he has 50/50 chance. I might blow him up. The other 3 will just help him.

The only advice I can offer to you guys is, keep doing what you are doing with T1. This gives newer people ships they can afford to lose but ships they might actually make a dent with.

- T3 BC: Fittings requirement role bonus. It helps new and old players alike determine the role of that hull when you see obvious requirement boons in the role bonus. 50% reduced PG on a certain gun or armor repair unit is huge incentive to fit a certain way.

- New Logi cruiser. Augoror hull won't replace or kill Guardian as Logi king but the fleet doctrine on both is clear indication of what you should be expecting if you want to be in either. Exeq and Oneiros are morre about autonomous armor logi. They do their job quite well but they both have distinct doctrines.

Those kinds of balances and connections make EVE easier to navigate. It makes it easier for the new player to figure it out on their own.

You know, the one thing that's kept me subscribed this time is the opportunity to pvp.

I've tried to play this game a lot. Before goonswarm existed on several trial accounts, after goonswarm existed but without them, and I got a little further into the game each time, but here's my experience.

Around the time the first trial program came out, I gave the game a shot. I made it about three days. I think I finally figured out how to move my ship and mine a rock once I found someone nice enough to show me how. I don't think I ever figured out how to train that first time.

The second trial was a little better. I was able to run a few missions, but I was alone and every player corp that would even think about taking me had a recruiter who seemed like a moron and I'm no strangers to MMOs and the kinds of guilds/corps that usually take newbies are actually the worst place for newbies to be.

The third time I finally actually bought an account. I joined up with an old friend who had been skilling up industrial skills and wanted to build an industrial-centric corporation. He got me going, showed me how to train and got me into a caracal and effectively killing rats in missions in such a way that I could pay my own bills. The sad fact is though, for all of our dreams of eventually building up something big, two guys trying to build a pve empire was boring as hell for both of us.

After it fell apart I joined a syndicate corp (it was GROON), and I have nothing bad to say about GROON but it's not the place for a newbie who has pve-oriented skills and knowledge.

Then one day I was drunk and had more money than sense, created a new account, and joined goonswarm. Immediately I was shoved into 0.0 and told how to train so I could go on fleet operations within a day. The helpfulness of GSF towards its newbies with ISK, ships, and information was unprecedented in almost any MMO experience I've had.

And that's why this character is still active, and will have more than 10m SP by Jan 2013.

Getting through the months where you can a) fly in a rifter in any fleet or b) fly a noctis someone gave you while they graciously let you hoover up wrecks and sell the salvage was the hard part, and most newbies don't even have that to fall back on. They have to rely on flying missions that don't pay well, in a ship they don't fully understand how to use, using modules they don't understand, and it's a ******* awful experience because I've been there.

I can trash talk a lot of hi-sec corps and ~*Elite PVP*~ nullsec corps, but anyone who helps a newbie, goon or not, is awesome in my book. The more of you guys there are, the better this game can be.

First of all .. the easiest way, as any other game tries to do in its own way, is to create success. If I have success I will stay. If the game just frustrates me (pvp-psychos in starter-area ...) I will quit. I have just simple better ways to spend my hard earnd money.



Though I like the idea I think this won't work on the majority of new players. In order to get better in skill as well as equipment, you have to have the possibility to buy/sell things. Without that the whole concept is null and nothing.
Then ... where to place this part ? In a wormhole? In real 0.0 ? With starter ships you would just die. What if a corp wants to settle there ? What about pvp-psychos killing noobs there ? Actually I don't think that you will exite just one real new player. Perhaps this might be for expierienced players.
Just my 2 cents