Player Features and Ideas Discussion

THE PROBLEM:
Eve needs some way of protecting new players until they can get on their feet. A search of this in the forums yielded this comment:
GM Spiral wrote:
"One of our wartargets include some newer players. Will we get in trouble for shooting them?"
Generally, no. Rookies contacting us with concerns in this regard will in most cases be directed to rejoin NPC corporations so that they may complete their tutorials and career missions in relative peace. Camping a station in a rookie system for rookie war targets may result in accidents involving other rookie pilots so we do not recommend doing so and may cause us to have a word with you.

I'm sorry, but as a new player, I don't feel that this will cut it. This basically says that new players either have to stay in NPC corporations where there is no help, and no comradere, until they are established players; or they have to be cannon fodder feeding the bullies. Neither of those will help you to keep new players interested in the game. What this basically translates to is that the new player has to stop playing the game for a week or two until the bullies grow tired and decide to again let them grow (which is exactly what I am planning to do after writing this). How many new players will stop playing for a week or two, after only a week or two of playing to begin with, and will still come back afterwards? I personally doubt most will. And of course if the bullies don't get tired of guarding the new player hubs, then they will never be able to grow, and will soon get tired of trying.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
Any one of the following would solve this problem. I am not proposing that all of the suggestions below be done. Only that any one of them be done.

- Put 1.0 security systems permanently off limits to combat. This is where the newbie academies are. There are very few of these systems. And this will allow the new players a place to grow both in the game, and in fellowship in the corporations. Other restrictions can even be added to encourage players to leave those areas later on, like no corporation structures there and the like.

- Give new players a period of time so that they can get enough ISK and skill, to both be able to fight, and be able to recover when they are ganked. During that time they are not allowed to attack other players, nor are other players allowed to attack them. The player can opt out of that protection early at any time that they want. But once out, they can never get back into it again. How long that needs to be is up for debate, but certainly long enough for them to be able to get reasonable mining skills and equipment, and then save up enough ISK from their mining efforts to be able to recover from such losses.

- Make it much more costly for corporations to declare war. This will make it less profitable for them to declare war against every newbie corporation that they can find in their area. Currently it is VERY profitable for them to fight newbies, at the expense of the game losing a lot of new players. If they can kill even only a single newbie, then they can make millions. The cost would have to be MUCH higher in order to offset the gains. Like 50 or 100 times higher. Perhaps there can even be 2 costs. A low cost for wars that are only fought in low sec, and a much higher cost if they also wish to fight that corporation in high sec. After all, players that want to fight PvP will go to low sec. That is the purpose of low sec. So by definition the corporation that declares war in high sec are fighting players that don't want to fight PvP, atleast at that time.

- Allow corporations to opt out of war altogether. This would be a two way street, in that nobody else can declare war on them, but neither can they declare war on anybody else.

See you in a week or so.

*sigh*

Welcome to Eve, where non-consensual pvp is the name of the game, and the currency we deal in is the tasty, tasty tears of carebears.

This is what you signed up for. I suggest you drop any premonitions about how video games should go and get ready to have your ass handed to you bloody on a platter.

Try pvp, lose some ships. Don't level your raven. Learn how to survive in a cold, unforgiving world. This is Eve. Not WoW.

Maybe you aren't aware, but it was recently released that new players who got shot and blown up, were more likely to stay than those who didn't.

And a fractionally small amount of players cited any kind "bullying" or harassment as the reason for leaving.

This is what new players need to be made aware of before they really start into the game. This is the kind of information they need to have a more pleasant, more welcoming, more constructive start into the game. No draconian, abusable limitations like the suggestions, but proper teaching and guidance. And more of the more experienced players (read: not older; older != more experienced!) need to take on this educational task. However, more of the older players (read: not more experienced) are just interested in creating more victims. Not opponents, just victims.

To the Ed: Don't use a crappy tablet or other touch device to type long posts. It's atrocious. Use a proper PC or at least keyboard for that.

Starter systems are places where harassing new players is a bannable offense. Just saying...



"Yeay, ungankable industrial ship!!! I can now freely move all my officer modules!!!"



Oh, so you're familiar with how much it costs to declare wars? Then you're not the new player you're trying to pass as. Stop complaining, and man up or switch around corps.



"Yep, you cannot bash my POCOs or POSes. Nu-hu. Now get out of my High-Sec, i'm busy carebearing."




The problem with High-Sec is stupid people proposing stupid ideas to make High-Sec even stupidly safer.

Wardecs help New players discover what eve is really about. The harsh universe and no holds barred sandbox is why many people join the game and some players I know found purpose in eve after they were decced.

I too believe npc corps are pretty detrimental to a new players experience (CAS being the exception). That's why ive supported both ideas of social corps, that allow you to create a Corp that works like an npc Corp but is made by players (that means 11% Corp tax that goes to no one and no structures as well), and the option of switching npc Corp.

The problem is also compounded by the amount of terrible corps out there. They are very cheap to make and quite often an inexperienced player will start a Corp and draw in New players under promises they can't keep or with the intention of skimming Corp tax Off players for nothing. Theres a lot of blind leading the blind.

Before wardecs were nerfed, they acted like a screening process to player corps. Testing whether their leadership were actually capable players. The types of corps mentioned above would crumble and their members would look else where having learned the difference between a Corps that work together and ones that dont. New players would sometimes even be absorbed by the deccing corp and shown the ropes of the game by regular PvP'ers. Other times a war Dec would inspire a Corp to become more organised and work together against their aggressors. Wardecs add much needed content to hi-sec, bring players together, stop hi-sec being so safe its boring and show New players whether their Corp is worth their membership or if they'd be better of under someone elses wing.

My only regret with decs is that there is no incentive nor any concrete way for a Corp, no matter how organised or powerful, to fight back.

TL:DR
Let players choose between a social Corp and the real deal. Then level the playing field when it comes to decs. See my sig.

To the OP: I hear Karmafleet is recruiting. Join a real newbie corp and see how things run.

In all seriousness, what newbies need is not safety. They need information. Give them information and they can start making enough money to replace whatever it is that they are losing in PvP. If they aren't doing PvP, newbies are pretty much safe. Griefing new players is pointless when you could be ganking freighters or hunting incursion runners.

Killing new players in starter systems is already a banworthy offense. No further protections are needed.

Some of you said to not change anything. Some that it helps new players stay. Etc.

Well for kicks and giggles, I followed GM Spiral's advice. I created a new character, left it in the NPC corp that it started in, and tried to do the lessons, starting with the Industry lessons. The Venture that the lesson agent gave me didn't last for 2 mining runs. In less than 4 hours, that character basically became useless unless someone donates ISK to it (which fortunately my other character should be able to do sufficiently for it to be able to buy another Venture). So if something isn't changed, then very soon this game will not have any new players left. So if you don't like my ideas for enabling new players to survive, then maybe you should come up with your own. But the fact that what is there right now isn't working is painfully obvious (atleast to the new players trying to start right now).

People are buying dirt cheap ships, arming them to the hilt, and killing the first ship they find. Concord immediately kills them. And they will beat you back to the asteroid belt with their next ship. I don't know if they are trying to produce a market demand for mining ships and equipment, or trying to prevent new players from starting, or just playing the local bully, but the result is the same in any case.

If you want to see this problem yourself, just create a new Amarr character, and try to have it mine in the academy system Amarr.

The 1.0 school systems are meant to be very mineral poor, just enough to satisfy the missions. this was done so experienced players wanting a perfectly safe environment would not discourage the new players just doing missions.

The venture is actually an awesome ship, but you will need to go outside the safety zone in order to really mine. making that isk will require skills to be raised, but I highly suggest you train up a few drones for defense against rats and rats only. My first lesson in that area( and this was a primarily industrial character for many years) resulted in my mining in a velator for 3 days to afford the dedicated mining frigate, something that the venture replaced and outperforms to a great degree.

I min/maxed the crap out of that ship as fast as possible, going for skill level 4 in all pertinent cases. Ship to 3 as fast as possible, all the core skills to get fitting the tech 2 introductory mining turrets. I said above that you really have to work to get someplace in this game, especially the start.

Heres a few of my real mistakes. For 2 weeks I didn't know about drones and ran from the smallest belt rats. I tried to fit all 3 types of repper, shield armor and hull all at the same time. I didn't pack any resist mods. I tried to stay safe in a 1.0 system that at the time had no real protections other than a fast concord response time, but the belts were mined out in less than an hour by people trying to stay as safe as possible. To this day I have some of the most bizarre and stupid fits people have ever seen.

Eve requires you to play outside your comfort zone. You will not have an easy time, even doing jobs with very little combat. Expect rats. Expect to make almost nothing for the first while if you go with industry. Hell, when i started trit was 3 isk per unit and dropped further.

ed* This is merely a suggestion, but with the miner and minerII and t1 strip miner modules you can mine anything without needing specialized skills. I would look for Omber if you can find it, or pyroxeres if you can't find omber. Likely you won't find basic omber, but the higher yield omber. back in the day, and maybe still basic omber was used for missions and fetched excellent prices at relevant stations.