Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well I am obviously not a new player, however, yesterday I created a new character and was going through the new "New Player Experience" to show someone who has never played before. In this new player experience, it centers around "Opportunities" which are basic tasks you complete and then you move on. This is fairly different than before when you started in a station and it guided you through the whole process of using agents and getting your ship, fitting it, and then doing missions. While this new experience is not bad, it leaves a lot of very basic information out for people who have never played before. For example, if you follow exactly what the opportunities tell you to do, then very quickly...within five minutes, a new player will be essentially lost.

I will break it down specifically so everyone understands what I am talking about.

First of, you start in an area of space already in your ship, with a basic load-out of civilian equipment. There are 3 pirate NPC's and some asteroids in the area. The first tasks teach a player how to move around in a pocket of space. Double-Clicking to move, and then approaching an object in your overview. Then you go into your second set of tasks. Orbit a hostile, lock a hostile, activate a weapon and destroy the target, and finally grab the loot. Opportunity 3 is about mining. So you find an asteroid, orbit and lock onto it. Activate your mining laser and mine some ore. While the tutorial no longer gives you exact step by step, "press this button" instructions, a new player will be able to understand and figure out the basis of how to accomplish these tasks with minimal effort on their part. Which I believe is a good way for them to learn how to play EVE. The next opportunity is warping. You find something to warp to and warp to it. Pretty self explanatory. Next is Station Services. You dock, unload the items you picked up from the NPC and mining. Fit a module that you got from the NPC, and then you have to buy an item from the market. Now this is where it starts to show where the tutorial is lacking.

When you begin the game, you are given 5,000 isk to start with. If you followed step by step instructions exactly, you only killed 1 NPC and are therefore given 2,000 isk bounty. With the potential of 6,000 isk total in bounties from all 3 NPC's. Now this is only if you have taken your time, because bounties take several minutes to arrive anyway. But at this point you have potentially 11,000 isk. So right away, what you can buy in the market is extremely limited. Buying a piece of ammo can net you as low as 6 isk or up to all 11,000 isk. But let's assume that a new player buys as cheap as possible. So now they have only spent 6 isk for a single inferno rocket. Leaving them with 10, 994 isk.

The next step is to undock. And then you move on to using a stargate. There is only one choice from this starter system and so it makes that very simple. And finally you move on to the Learning Skills opportunity. This is where the major failure occurs, and where I believe those players who have no experience is EVE are being completely failed.

The first task is to start training a skill, simple enough. However, the next task is to inject a new skill. Well, it tells you to look at ISIS and the market and find skills to train. After going through the entire list of skills, I came across only two that were under the 11,000 isk mark. Spaceship Command, which all character start with already trained, and so that is a useless skillbook. And the Rockets skillbook which is listed at 10,000 isk. Which can't be injected yet, because it requires Missile Launcher Operation, a 20,000 isk skillbook, which you cannot afford yet.

This is an issue, because at this point, a brand new player doesn't know anything about selling items, agent mission running, how to find an asteroid belt, how to find NPC pirates (rats), or how to make money doing any of the countless ways to make money in EVE. They have not yet even been introduced to agents, and so they have no idea to look for one, let alone the career agents. So they are left with begging for help, or flying around aimlessly until they happen to figure it out. Although likely, there is no guarantee that a new player will get sound advice or help from other players. Nor should they have to rely on others to show them how to play at the very basic of levels. Only after they figure out how to make enough to buy a skillbook, are they introduced to the career agents. I believe that this is a serious problem for the new player experience. And will very quickly prove to dissuade New Players from subscribing or continuing to play. Within 5 minutes a brand new player could easily be lost floating in space, with no direction, and no idea how to make the extra isk for so simple a task as buying their first skillbook.

This could easily be fixed. As I am never one to offer complaint without possible solutions, I have several such solutions.

1. It would be easy enough for the starting amount of ISK to be 50,000 isk instead of 5,000 isk. 50,000 isk is still so small as to not allow a player to buy anything truly worthwhile, however still allowing for a small selection of starting skills to be open to them. This would, in my opinion, be the easiest and best fix for the New Player Experience.

2. Lower the cost of key initial skillbooks to under 10,000 isk. I only mean a small selection of the most basic skillbooks. Such as Missile Launcher Operation, Small Energy, Projectile, or Hybrid turrets, Mining, and Shield Operation. These are some of the most basic and starter skills in the game. This would allow a player to potentially have access to a skillbook at a price they can afford in the first moments of the game. This is not truly an effective fix by itself, simply because as I stated before, if a player follows the instructions, exactly, step by step. They will only have killed 1 NPC and therefore only have 7,000 isk.

This is the wrong place for this thread. The official response thread for the new NPE is here.

The only reason I posted here, is because the in game GM's specifically told me to post it here. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

As a new player I dont really understand the "new player experience" discussion at all.

As long as there is the current SP system any discussion on how to make EVE for beginner easier is cynical.

Why would I care about skill book prices?

I dont mind if I pay 10000 or 10 mio or how well the tutorial is explained, however, I do care about low SP, because this reduces my combat strength easily by 50%.
Even if I specialize for the next 6 months(and from a new players perspective, this is a lot!), I will be still be ~20% weaker than somebody who has a 10 year account. (because there are a lot of useful skills and 4->5 makes a big difference.)

So yes: I can confirm the new players experience is broken, but this is because the Skillsystem excludes you from most activities.

Dont be butthurt about "excludes you from activities". Yes ofc you can do everything even with low SP, but efficiency also matters.

If my combat strengh is only 50% instead of 100%, just because My skills are all ~Lv3 and I dont have T2 stuff, I am effectilvy excluded from low and null security.

Yes, I can faction fit my ship to be viable in PvE in null and low sec, but then I have to risk 2-3x as much value as a full T2 pilot. (and Meta 4 + Lv ~3 is not sufficient for meaningful <0,5 PvE)

THIS is is the new players experience -> high sec carebearing and slowboating

I have sympathy for your sentiments, but it's not quite as bleak as you say. In the beginning you have poor skills, not enough cap, armour, power grid or dps and your fitting choices are limited. It does indeed feel unfair.

What you do have is the ability to get together with other people and work out a strategy.

Hint: if you can't out-finesse your opponent, throw 20 cheap frigates at him. This is pretty much how Goonswarm and Brave Newbies started isn't it?

Another proposal - fit a t1 scanning frigate with core probe launcher, relic analyser and prototype cloaking device. Then waltz through low-sec, w-space and 0.0 hacking pirate relic sites (not the sleeper ones!).

Then laugh at your older, more experienced opponents as they wallow in poverty while you are able to plex your account and fly as many blinged-up faction ships as you like.