EVE General Discussion

Hoo boy. I'm glad you got your entry in to the Try Not To Think award for 2016.
(I was getting a bit nervous if you'd be a candidate this year.)

That's my point. Thus my solution of making the player feel enticed because he has become a capsuleer after learning all the basic stuff before first undocking in Tranquility.

I was thinking of the tutorial server as a "lore VR environment" for tutorial purposes. As for why a seperate server, it is a reflection of how scholarship goes in the real world. We teach people in special controlled environments before facing the real deal. Those environemtns are optimized for teaching and learning, and in the case of dangerous acitvities, the teaching grounds are notoriously safer than the real deal and allow to practice before taking real risks.

EVE is a very complex virtual world, so maybe tossing people into it before they know how to do the basics is wrong.

Having been recently 'new' myself (got a few dents and dings now, not so shiny) I'm going to disagree with the idea that gamers don't like Sandboxes, because I think the logic is faulty from the start and other Sandboxes like Minecraft have done remarkably well.

The point of issue to me wasn't really the sandbox, I got that from day 1 and wanted to play in it and make my own world. My issue was the darned learning curve was gawdaful and I had no idea what to expect so I created expectations in my head (like any person does) and when the game was RADICALLY different than those expectations, I had a whole gamut of emotions flowing through me. To some players, yes, that would make them quit, to me, I said "Dammit, I gotta rise to the challenge here, change my mindset and figure out this game top to bottom."

I'm not going to let EVE defeat me.

Where I agree with what Jenn and Pix were getting at is that it's not as simple as just training. I think any hands off training NPE is going to fail. You have to have humans and mentors help shape those expectations of the game. If I had known from day 1 what was actually required of me... well, a little of it, I would have known how to behave and what NOT to assume.

I could see Indahmawar's point about separate servers, but I don't think it needs to be that drastic. I'm still advocating rookie systems that do essentially the same thing and still allow free movement of existing players BACK into the rookie systems (with some restrictions) to help the rookies graduate to real space. Part of the attraction of EVE is that there IS no separation of servers or systems once you are in the game. Knowing that just beyond that first gate is every freaking player in the game has an appeal.

If CCP wants to really solve retention, they will have to simplify the game to the point that anyone can play it. Sadly, if you aren't willing to soak some blood sweat and tears into the game, I don't think this is the game for you. This is probably a minority of players out there. I think a good NPE will help keep SOME people in the game but at the end of the day, they have to be the right kind of player. CCP should focus their efforts on recruiting those 'right' kind of players.

From my own experience about the only change I'd make for the noobs is somehow fix it so you don't create the avatar and name the character before spending a week or so in game and get more of a feel for who and what you want to be. My first character's name would have been a bit different if I'd had more time to think it over.

In a rare fit of generosity about the only advice I could give the noobs is do all the training tutorials, as much for the ISK and ships as for the actual training.

Yeah, and the lore. Something I've never paid any attention to as I'm writing my story, with no time for theirs. Or yours, really.

Bah. Noobs nowadays are wusses.

CCP needs to spawn them into a nullsec system and get rid of all the civilian modules.

Harrumph.

C'mon, we are talking about the generation Internet, facebook, twitter and whatsapp ... how can they be scared of thousands of people and some idiots in chat channels?

Have you ever MET a carebear?

That's an often expressed belief and feeling ... but is this really true? I think this is another misconception and marketing challange, because the game cannot be more centered on the individual char in the sense, that I can shape whatever story I want, I have almost total freedom to do and (role)play what I want. I'm not part of some scripted story in a role I'm forced into.

I've linked this before, but I think it's super relevant here. Yes it's talking about formal "Tutorials" but I think it can be expanded to the entire "get new players to stay" issue.

How Game Tutorials Can Strangle Player Creativity



The most relevant part is :

When EVE threw people into space with a crappy ship and said "F you, now go figure it out on your own and make a friend who can teach you" the game grew year after year and CCP was very open about that growth. Then they started with all the "we want the game to be easy to learn, hard to master" stuff, started streamlining things, started working on the NPE, and very soon after stopped talking about how the game was growing lol. Other factors existed of course, but I don't think it's an accident that when CCP got all well intentioned about helping new players into the game, a the game stalled new player wise.

Likewise, the idea of "1.1 high sec" is well meaning, but it would probably result in even less player retention, because you'd show people how to do basic game things sure, but then they'd leave safety (if they stayed long enough to learn that is, safety is BORING), be dropped into the deep end, and quickly saw screw this as the reality is nothing like the training environment.

The problem is already that people are too comfortable and expect too much when starting a game like this. The fix isn't to take it easier on them, the fix is to roll back some of the comfort and make the experience worthwhile again.

It was like that for me in 2007 when I started playing and i'm still here, but TBH and knowing myself, if I started EVE today instead of them and was met with the coddling state of EVE's new player experience/ I probably would not play past a few days before i went elsewhere looking for an actual challenge.