EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello CCP and Pilots,

I have just bought my full version of EVE Online *crowd cheers*. As I was buying, I didn't even know about the starter pack boost, I thought it was just a Steam gimmick, but it's not, and there is a starter pack for more than just the Amarr, because I only see the Amarr as the one on Steam.

Anyways you can skip this to the next two paragraph for the questions or enjoy a rookie's tale...

My friend got me into the game, helped me through the "Trial by Fire," aka tutorial missions, there is a lot to take in no doubt about it, doing them a second time through really helps let them sink in, and being a trial I can just start a new character or account if you run out of time or start training silly skills or no skills at all... I am a couple of weeks into the game finally a lost a ship. I was trying to do my own thing in low sec early and learned from it, no need to go it alone. So, why not do Faction Warfare? Being a trial the GM that talked to me in my first week said I had to join a corporation to try it out. Seems there is no trial friendly corporations out there but, easy fix just buy the Corporation Management skill book (no restriction on that for a trial, very odd to me but guess it doesn't affect the game from the big picture view of CCP). So I made my corporation and enlisted.

Doing PvE missions makes some easy cash for frigates and my friend told me to focus on tackling as a rookie and there is so much to learn just about tackling and speed tanking. After a few days I got back into low sec as an Amarr Militia, went out finally joined up in a fleet learning a couple of little things about how FW and fleets work then finally, after warping around for what seemed like forever, got to kill two pilots in a complex, it was pretty exhilarating. I decided to buy the full version.

I logged into account management a filled it out, then I had my options 3/6/12 months PLUS one of four starter packs!!! Sweet!!!

Since I like the Amarr look and chose an Amarrian character it was a no-brainer, Amarr Starter Pack!!!

I logged in today and redeemed my items, with the cost of implants, thank you for the Standard Cerebral Accelerator, this will make the next twenty days so much nicer. The rest of the starter pack... did not seem as logical. Here is the list from my email receipt minus my subscription, start-up and registration and all the "@ 0.00 USD = 0.00 USD" which followed them:

1 x Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
1 x Damage Control I - VERY GOOD this saves me so much
1 x Radio S
1 x Multifrequency S
1 x Standard Cerebral Accelerator - CCP's gift from Heaven
1 x Warp Disruptor I
1 x Gunnery
1 x Small Energy Turret
1 x Spaceship Command
1 x Amarr Frigate
1 x Mechanics
1 x Repair Systems
1 x Hull Upgrades
1 x Engineering
1 x Energy Management
1 x Electronics
1 x Propulsion Jamming
1 x Navigation
1 x Afterburner
1 x High Speed Maneuvering
1 x 1MN Microwarpdrive I
1 x Gatling Pulse Laser I
1 x Small Armor Repairer I
1 x Stasis Webifier I
1 x Executioner - Yay another free frigate!

Question: Why this is a "good" Starter Pack?

To me the ship and fittings are nice, but what is the point of only one of each crystal and one laser?

And the real question is; Why all the pointless skill books?

• Gunnery, Spaceship Command, Mechanics, Engineering, Electronics, Navigation are all skills everyone starts off with.
• Small Energy Turret, Amarr Frigate I get as an Amarrian, so am I suppose to buy another pack? But shouldn't I want to buy a starter pack for my Race/Faction?
• Repair Systems I got in my first mission, why do I need a second?
• Propulsion Jamming... You guys gave this to me in BOTH military missions, why do I need a third?
• Afterburner, thanks but I already bought one for the mission to use my afterburner.
• Hull Upgrades, Energy Management, High Speed Maneuvering - these are a toss up, if anyone got the advice I was getting, these again would be too late, since I already bought them to use some basic modules, otherwise they my save someone the ISK

Other than the last three, I cannot USE let alone, SELL these skill books back to the market for a reasonable price compared to the NPC ones since everyone already has them.

My recommendation would be to:

1. Not give any skill books given in the tutorials
2. For Racial Starter Packs, give more advanced combat and fitting skill books or if you guys think that's too much ISK just give us enough to fully fit a frigate
3. Make a Trader, Industrialist and Explorer Starter Packs with skill books to get characters started more in that direction or again just give them a racial ship and modules to more appropriately fit for their career.

Thanks for your time,

Leopold

Welcome to Eve Online. Where stuff like this is nor-....

OK, I'll be nice :)

I think some of the redundancy you're experiencing with 'starter' pack skill books relates to a generalized effort to make sure every new-player has at least access to these skillbooks from the very start. Particularly if the new player for whom these might be helpful runs out of isk early on, or is extremely unfamiliar with the market interface or similar kinds of genuine unfamiliarity with Eve.

That's unfortunate if this is "normal" redundancy. Like I said, and tested, in the first bullet point about skill books every new character has them, why do they even need to be on the NPC market? And I am an accountant by education, I think the EVE Market is pretty awesome, sure there are a lot of short sale 0.01 ISK in the starter zone but in the beginning it doesn't matter and no tutorial tells you to hit the "Advanced >>" which is a great loss to the starting pilot and begins the unethical trade robbery of the uneducated. It's too bad there is not more tutorials in general outside of the starting systems.

How do you start the game without doing at least one career mission? You start in your pod with 5,000 ISK. Going out and docking somewhere you get you get the rookie ship with a civilian miner and turret, you can strip it and repackage then assemble to get duplicates which is a nice bug also I found out from Rookie Help. If that is all you need to start a pilot with great but, I can tell you from just doing the tutorials you come away with a lot more in the first few hours and a lot of easy ISK.

Let say I start a new account and character with just those skill books and the ship from the starter pack. Again the redundancy of the pre-trained skills eludes me, every pilot starts off with them, second you are given a tackle frigate with just one laser (I listed everything in my first post) and the two crystals, long and short range. Even if this is enough to go out and start shooting PvE or PvP, you still have no seed money to invest in the ship til you shoot something and for the first hour you are just training skills to use the modules given in the start pack. From a rookie view this is all illogical, if the player knows nothing then they should be doing the tutorials to learn, if the player has help they should still do the tutorials just for the easy ISK, ships and skill books and, If the new player is being given stuff from other players in-game then they don't care about the starter pack at all...