EVE General Discussion

Ok so lets get something straight from the start .. I'm a 'casual' player who has never read anything on the forum before today and quite frankly I'm shocked at the complete lack of understanding and empathy shown by you guys, the 'real' players of eve. This is probably the 4th time I've returned to eve and about 2 weeks ago I had that 'moment of enlightenment' that completely changed my perceptions of the game. At the minute I'm in the position that I can see the game from the point of view of new and casual players and from that of the 'real' players.
Casual player = someone who literally can't play the game to their own schedule but that dictated by their real life .. in my case I'm lucky if I get to play for a few hours late in the evening when my kids are in bed and my wife is watching some stupid film about mermaids or whatever.
When I came back into the game I used my old main character and whizzed through all the starter/career tutorials twice (in 2 factions) and it all made perfect sense ... because I already understood what the tutorials were talking about.
I found the tutorials section quite entertaining, although needing reorganisation of the order of the missions.
So then I went and started my new main toon and attempted to do the tutorials again (basically for the ships and I'd never done them from the Amarr faction ever before). It was without doubt one of the most infuriating experiences I've ever encountered in playing MMOs over the last 20 years. 5 minutes into it I was expected to wait for 3-4 hours for basic skills to be added to my character ..WTF?
And so the tutorials stutter along for about 2 days... my opinion of the skill system in eve is that it is a thing of beauty, BUT it doesn't work at the beginning of the game.

So I have at least 5 or 6 real life casual-gamer friends who should be lifelong fans of eve and they all refuse to play this game ... so I decided to find out what makes casual gamers avoid committing to this game and how other 'enlightened' players still playing got over the 'hazing' period at the start. I didn't ask very many people ..about 10 in game and a dozen or so outside of the game... after digging and digging and digging to find the real truth ...
Casual players will not play eve because "there's no way I'm paying for a game where I have to wait for 2 years before I can start playing the game properly, that's just ridiculous".
When I first logged in again to my account my eye was immediately drawn to the 'character remap' service .. I actually said out loud 'thank god someone at CCP has finally had the common sense to let us new players sort out our ****'. I may have actually peed a little in excitement. Imagine my disappointment to discover I could change my hairstyle.
Total time I've played the game is around 6months or slightly more (15million skillpoints). So I asked the 'real' players how long was it for them before they had that moment of 'enlightenment' and could see how amazing the game actually is and therefore not give a **** anymore about the constant delays in character development.
Most said "oh a couple of days and then I just got it", but when pushed actually admit
'well maybe around the 3 to 4 month mark, maybe a bit longer before I really understood what I was doing".
And the general attitude to newbies from you guys is
"**** you! I had to go through it why should you be let off, there's nothing wrong with the skill system".
Actually there is a problem if it stops casual players from joining the game or frustrates them enough to overwhelm their initial curiosity.
Casual players are the lifeblood of any MMO game, we're the smallfolk who run around like headless chickens, getting blown up, buying expensive and often useless cosmetic **** and generally being exploited by the 'real' players. For every 1 of you there should be at least 10 of me and in a game of this calibre there should be hundreds of us for each 1 of you. We play a game until it bores or frustrates us... we don't have time or patience for being 'dicked around' by bad game design. I played World of KungFuPandaland for 12 years.
I'm sure there are many possible solutions to the 'skill gap perception problem' of new players, I can think of 3 straight off the top of my head ..
1. rookie-learning implants for 6 months or less (that are replaced when lost like the rookie ships).
2. background skillsets dependant on the character background that enable a 6 month toon to do something reasonably competently (doesn't mean the player will be competent though).
3. character skill remap service (which will bring more real money into the game which is good for any MMO business, more money = better wages=happier staff=better service to you and longevity for the game).
As a casual gamer I would never pay for a second account on any game no matter how much I loved it, however if some kind of 'light at the end of the tunnel' was introduced for new characters, I would definitely consider starting a second and possibly third alt character doing simultaneous learning regimes. Yet again more money into the game etc.
You see its not about what is actually going on but what the rookie perceives to be going on in the beginner game.
The beginner game is always going to be harsh in eve .. I got blown up at a gatecamp in the first hour of playing, its just the nature of the game and its actually exciting. At the minute Eve is the 'Firefly' of MMO games and the end of season 1 is in sight. 45k players at peak time that's scandalous, there should be millions playing this game. It's all very well being the nerdy kid in the corner with all the awards, but MMO games need players or they just wither and die, dwindling in a strange sad way. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who remembers some game fondly that's not around anymore and the game-friends they lost touch with.

Tell your wife I'm sorry. In your case I think you'd be lucky if she didn't run for the hills. Maybe spend less time trying to get away from her to play a video game and more time with this person you've, you know, married, you might even discover you have a few common interests.

This reads like some copypasta straight from the European WoW forums.

"Casual players are the lifeblood of any MMO game"

Yeah... No.

Obviously I didn't explain myself properly or you cant actually read .. generally I agree with most of what DaReaper said. Its an amazing game with boundless possibilities for self-inflicted adventures. Although saying its not skill based is nonsense, can you hack a can without a high enough skill to get though the minigame ..of course not, but I get exactly what you mean. However I'm already past that point and actually the post was not about me ..its about how new players perceive the game and why they don't play.
I personally have no problem with the game system...now.
When I played Wow I had no agenda and I still ended up with the same shiny swords and whatever, it just took me longer to get them, just like all my casual-gamer friends. We don't really care about stuff like that. I prefer gritty over shiny. You would have to be an imbecile not to know the difference between Wow and this game. I play to be entertained. I play as a roleplayer...that's why I don't read the forums ..I prefer to learn in game, or at least as much as possible. You guys have obviously discussed such matters before and assumed I'm a particular kind of person having a moan because I can't play the game or want shiny swords and a pat on the ego. Anyway how you play the game is your business, some of us don't have the time to play it as a sim, me personally I'm a roleplayer so I take much longer farting about than others who powergame, some nights I just fly about and see what's out there.
If you want to be sitting on your billions of isk smiling benevolently on us lesser mortals in 10 years time then you have to change people's perceptions of the game right from the start. You guys who read forums and get involved in how the game is run are basically the core player group. CCP looks to you for guidance, not plebs like me. There appears to be about 25k of you, where is everyone else? Where are all the minions, the smallfolk like me?

- yes indeed very well said, but you have to actually understand that.... you understand it, I understand it but most new players don't. You got the game from the first day..good for you (pat on the head).

All this amazing new content and changes aren't going to be worth **** in the wind if there are no new players coming into the game. Get your finger out and get it sorted.

Eve has changed since it was launched and i can't tell it's a newbie ffiendly much.

I did went through the tutorials and it was useless as fook. I was pwned on undockmy next day i've joined corp/alli. It was a WT hehe, so i have learnt some thing new every day, when i was running my single man mining corp so i was wardec'd and was surprised how the hell the bastard found me that easy (agent locator haha) so it was long and not easy way to learn all those bits and piecies and put them all together into a big picture.

I could tell the op one thing - do your homework before you decided to jump into this game, if you have friends who already play stick to them for a giudance, if not do your homework and search for a newbie friendly corp with mentors ready to give you advise.

This game is well knownw for it's complexity so you can't expect thigs go easy from the day 1. And you are correct , after a few years it is almost turned to easy mode gamestyle and things flown by default.

If you could spend sometime and look through the forums you will find some good stories about skill system you are blaming, and game experience etc etc.

Empathy and EvE don't mix, it's dog eat dog man.

Some skill levels take 50+ days to train, it takes roughly 20 years to train every skill in EvE to Lv5.
Waiting for a skill to train is something you just have to accept.

EvE is all about specialization:
Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Explorer, Ganker, Awoxer/Corp Theif, PvPer, Manufacturer, Miner, Salvager, Courier, Mission Runner, Scammer, Researcher, Pirate, Scout, Trader etc etc.

To learn them all takes a long time, to learn one take no time at all.
To be good? well that's up to you.

It's weird, when I started playing EVE I couldn't be nuked away from my screen. The one hour downtime was infuriating like "come on let me play!!" Within 10 days I had left my trial account behind me and before my 1st month in EVE was over I had purchased a second account with 2-3 month's later my third (which I sold 2-3 years ago).

Today with over 100 mil SP I'm forum-ing EVE while I skill-train-online.

Maybe it's all a matter of perception.

And getting asap into a good corp

I have found this to be true. Similar to wow, check out the killboards (similar to my experience with wow armory when returning after a break, check out gear/talents/classes that top teams have- this translates into checking out the fits/ships people are successfully flying; only difference is you can't see the skills they have trained).

If your alliance is noob friendly and at the same time demands their newbie pilots to fly doctrine fits that are very tight, you're either in the wrong place or you haven't been following your alliance's skill training plan like a good little bee newbro should. The cpu/powergrid related skills have a very small multiplier and generally train fast. They are an integral part of learning how to plan ahead and fitting your ship.

I dunno... I'm pretty 'oldschool' as a gamer, I've been playing MMO for over a decade. Can't exactly be accused of not having 'stickwithitness', not after actually getting max level in some Asian grinders, and playing dying MMO until they where well and truly dead.

But yeah, EVE has issues, even for me. Truth be told, I'm only playing because it's a SF based game, requires more than just pressing '1', and because of a certain amount of horrid fascination.

The much vaunted skill system is, imho, crap. Not because it is skills, and not levels, but because it DOES make a huge difference if you have equally RL skilled players with high SP and low SP, and because it is an actual barrier to playing with your friends, especially early on.

So yeah, pretty unattractive to new players. And the older players aren't exactly helping with their HTFU attitude. Funnily enough, it reminds me a lot of some Fantasy games where older characters in their maxed-out looted gear of uberness complain about there not being any PVP anymore... such a surprise that those newbies that keep getting oneshot if they try aren't sticking around for more...

So what would I consider a better skill system? Well, you'll probably hate me for this, but the old Star Wars Galaxies one.

For starters, skills there were limited. You had a maximum of 250 points you could earn, and that was that. You could do a lot of creative things in combining skill sets, but you had to make choices, and no one could get all skills on one character. This made skilling up a character an achievable target even for newcomers. Those who only wanted combat abilities, could realistically get maxed inside a week.

And of course, skills could ONLY be earned by doing the activity related to the skill. Want to learn spaceship crafting? Go craft spaceships, earn the ability by starting out by making subcomponents and working your way up. Want to learn support skills? Go out there and do combat support, starting at low level and working your way up to the better abilities.

But that ship has sailed a long, long time ago, and I honestly don't see how the current system could be adjusted without a complete player revolt.