EVE General Discussion

Why is this thread still going?

Apparently you completely missed the fact that he isn't.

His proposal is all about making the game playable for rookie pilots and/or those who prefer PvE over PvP.

I'm a 3-week rookie. Right now my recommendation to a new player would be to:

1. Do the rookie tutorial missions to learn some of the game mechanics and, more importantly, pick up some free skillbooks and easy ISK.
2. Use EveMon to set up a training plan for the direction you want your career to go by using certificates as a base.
3. When you're done with the tutorials, sell the destroyer, refine all the civilian gear and sell the minerals, take whatever ISK you've got and selectively buy skill books. (Based on EveMon plan.)
4. If you don't already have it, add race-appropriate Soldiering or Special Forces certificates to your plan
5. Fill up your training queue according to the EveMon plan and the skill books you could afford. Monitor it daily.
6. Do this for a month. Don't even bother undocking from the station unless you need to pod-travel somewhere to pick up skill books.
7. At the end of a month, you might have enough skill points in the right places to take one of your tutorial ships and the non-civilian equipment you were gifted and run security missions to pick up some ISK.
8. When you can, upgrade your equipment, rinse and repeat.

Also, you can run level four missions at less than a month into the game if you know what you're doing.

If you have any interest in actually playing this game and not moaning about it I suggest you try to turn around your attitude.

Context: Petrus runs a corp which is all about bringing brand-new players into PVP and he does so with aplomb.

I learned a new word today! Or maybe re-learned. I can't remember. Stealth recruitment plug with shiny vocabulary, go!

Anyway, I do, and my confidence only comes from the fact that I had a great time starting out as a newbie, and am trying to do my part to spread the love.

If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn't be a rookie.

... btw absolutly Off-Topic

Read the forums sometime from the PoV of a rookie instead of a veteran.

Go to the loadouts on BattleClinic and try to find one that's actually attainable by a 2-week rookie (casual, some of us do have jobs). The first time I went out there and looked for "cheap" PvE loadouts, the only one I found with positive ratings cost over 70m ISK to equip.

There's almost no useful information anywhere, beyond the tutorial missions, for an actual rookie.

Hell, I've even found corps using the "New Player Friendly" filter that won't accept anyone under 6m SP. Their definition of "new" differs somewhat from mine.

It seems to me that most of the long-term players in this thread don't remember what it was like to be a real rookie, and have no real interest in PvE. Which means most of what the OP is interested in shouldn't interest you at all, unless you're active griefers.

Between this post and the other two on the same page, Malcanis, I think I love you. Your views are exactly those that keep Eve thriving as the living and breathing monster that it is currently. (Monster being good in this context). Keep spreading the good word.

At any rate, OP, I respect that you're looking for alternatives to this issue of chasing away newer players/being too harsh for carebears, but a lot of the ideas you've centered your solutions around really don't make much sense in the context of the Eve universe. BoE and BoP modules? That has disaster written all over it because of Eve's free market economy. The ramifications of having items that, once equipped, cannot be resold are... numerous to say the least.

Additionally you keep suggesting that there should either be a PVP/Non-PVP flag, or an area that is 100% guaranteed safe from violencing your boat (since there doesn't seem to be a problem with market pvp, I assume you're looking at the shooting aspect). Again, it's not feasable unless it is centered on its own completely disconnected sphere because the market impacts that risk-free activities would have on the game would be terrible.

Another point brought up is that it's the dark and dangerous atmosphere that is prevalent in Eve that has brought a lot of dedicated players to the game, and I would absolutely agree with that point. Most dedicated subscribers that stick around and add content to this game are those who got involved specifically because it was a dark and dangerous world. I know that's why I started, and I've been playing since 2005. Typically when a new player is violenced it's because they wandered into low security space. I don't think I've ever heard of a legitimately new player being randomly killed unless they did something to provoke it (aware of it or not).

However, all these things taken into account, there is no reason we couldn't continue discussing possible solutions to player retention. We would have to steer away from people being 100% safe, unless they're completely disconnected from the rest of the galaxy. We would have to maintain the current free market atmosphere. Some people just simply don't like the risk involved in a game like this. I have a good friend who I think would enjoy the industry/market side of this game very much, but the simple fact that he doesn't feel completely safe anywhere means he doesn't play it. This is simply not the game for him.

Perhaps the problem arises from not properly informing new players as to all the different consequences of their actions. It's easy as a veteran of the game to look at what a player did and go "oh yeah you shouldn't have done that." I have, from many many years, developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the do's and dont's of this game. However, when a newbie is in a mission, a frigate warps in and loots a wreck, the newbie shoots the frigate, then dies from the frigate after he reships, yeah I can see how that would be angering and frustrating. How far can we realistically go to inform the players of every single danger in the universe?

What about different industrial ships? Blockade runners already do a terrific job of getting goods past places without being suicide ganked. It seems to me that, basically, all the tools are there, but most people simply do not want to use them and would rather focus on maximizing their isk/hr at the detriment to their survivability.

In essence, carebears used to feel safe because they would be in corporations that worked together to protect themselves, even during war time. Carebears then joined noob corps because they didn't want to deal with the wars any more. Pvpers then started suicide ganking them because, what other option is there?

I honestly believe that fostering a sense of companionship and community within a corporation, and the leadership of that corporation not hiding their heads in the sand hoping blindly to avoid war decs would do a lot to help. The corporation joins an alliance that can help protect them. People are knowledgeable about the risks, and work together to prevent losses. People are less concerned about their own welfare, and more about protecting their friends and assets.

Let's face it, regardless of what is done, pvpers are clever and will discover ways to continue the trend, adapting and changing their tactics. Carebears have the advantage of numbers, but currently don't care, or don't want to work together to protect themselves.

TL;DR: Best thing carebears can do is work together, spread knowledge, and protect their friends over maximizing their profits. Doesn't require breaking anything, and fixes nearly all problems.

When this post has more likes than your OP, you have been invalidated