EVE New Citizens Q&A

Just out of wondering what is wrong within the tutorials specifically? Information is wrong? The way the are setup? The way they are worded? They don't do something that they should?

If a tutorial is bugged (as in you warp to your mission location and nothing is there or the tutorial does't give you your item it says it would) you can file a petition under Game Play > Missions in Progress and let a GM know as a work around for now. I know there is a lot of opinions in this thread but the more people that voice what is wrong or should be fixed can only help the NPE Team.

You are right about the pre-required skills, Forgot that Salvaging and Hacking had pre-reqs.

Then again, 3 to 7 hours might look long for a new player. But I used that time to read on guides, ask for help on stuff. And also later on you will look back at those days where you could train multiple skills a day, instead of having skills that take month to train.

This is a perfect example. I actually did end up playingt he entire way through the tut, because I read somewhere that there were big ISK and stuff rewards (I was actually reading about the SoE arc but couldnt tell lol) but util I was out with a corp I didnt know you could double click.

Why? Wall of text syndrome.




Bold and underlined what I see as the important point. Last time I checked, new players, especially those that hit the trial, didnt want to have to log on pick a char and skills then log on and off repeatedly for the next three days picking skills. I've said this elsewhere but I think it would be pretty cool to actually have a player class Bio mean something by giving that player a small amount of starting skills that lean the player towards his race bloodline's preference. Upon having a research about what to put where, I saw this : http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Starting_skills

While it looks a bit more extreme than I was thinking (starting with lvl5s!?), having a mining/trading/indy/warlike bloodline closer to that retriver/freighter/research/ubertank etc would actually make it easier for a new player to actually do something as soon as he/she started playing.

Lets remember, while you spent your 3 to 7 hours reading guides, most players haven't even decided they like the game enough to even stick at it yet, let alone researched how to get better.

Its kinda getting boring. I mean EVE. Only when your spare time is limitted you see how your possibilities in EVE are limitted...

The only thing atm i can relate too in EVE: my skilltraining.

Bump.

While this thread gives great feedback please make sure to keep the feedback coming and not to bump the topic just to keep it towards the top.



This thread has been added to EVE New Citizens Q&A Resources

Block of text warning, if you don't like blocks of text move along please there's nothing to see here, move along. In MMOs you only get one first impression and it's often a make or break experience. Below is my review of EVE from day one until traveling to the Sisters of EVE. I'm taking the perspective that the starter experience is designed for retention of the new player, a player that is probably coming from an over hand holding modern MMO. The reactions below aren't exactly how I as a former SWGer reacted, but how I feel the majority of new EVErs (the theme park folk) would experience them.

I also want to say I love EVE. It’s the first MMO since SWG that gave me a certain feeling in terms of accomplishment. The statements below are not me being negative, they are me being critical with the goal of improving the new EVE experience to retain more players, resulting in EVE making more money, resulting in more EVE funding, resulting in a better EVE.

A First Impression Review strictly based on what I have seen and done (the starter stuff), not what I have read and will eventually be capable of doing:

Gameplay: 7/10. It’s very awkward at first. Even after you get more comfortable with it you still feel out of sync because of the UI. Fitting is very interesting and deep but also very overwhelming to the newb.

Graphics: 10/10. Space is simply breathtaking. The ships have great detail and all of them, across all races, look great. The characters look great, but sadly they are (at this point) pointless.

Innovation: 9/10. CCP stands alone for innovation and risks with their product. Fortunately I feel they usually do the right thing, make the right change, and EVE continues to evolve for the better. If they add WIS and the other group exploration/pvp stuff they get a 20 out of 10.

Polish: 6/10 The UI/Gameplay/Audio being out of sync makes it feel very unpolished despite being (overall) pretty polished. I encountered only a few bugs (what MMO doesn’t have some), and none of them were game breaking.

Lasting Appeal: I’m intrigued enough by the amount of stuff I don’t yet understand or even know of, as well as the additions CCP is working on to hang around for a while longer but I doubt many new players that didn’t come from the old school MMOs (UO, EQ, SWG) would do the same.

Social: Chat works fine, lots of help available, lots of Corps to help if you know where to find them. CCP needs to talk to the helper guilds and get some newb programs set up to help direct new players. I think getting a new player into a corporation and getting them up to speed might be the best/easiest/cheapest way to retain them in current EVE.

Overall: It was rough. I got beat up, podded, battered and bruised but I’m still here. I’m still learning. I realize in EVE time I’m probably about to start trying to learn how to crawl. I suspect it will be 3-6 months to walk, and a year to run.

Eve’s Starter Content Conclusion: I like this concept, I like the challenge, and I like learning curve but I doubt most new players would be so welcoming. I play games to expand my brain, to learn, to be challenged and to overcome those challenges despite very limited game time. My biggest worry is that only having 1-2 hours every couple of nights isn’t enough time to get a return from EVE. In terms of the majority of new players, I think they play just to have fun, to enjoy, to be entertained and not to take it too seriously. I have no problem with that style of play but I don’t see current starter EVE being able to retain many of those player types. On one level I’m glad for that, it helps keep the amount of annoying players lower than other games through the evolutionary process. On the wanting EVE to have enough players to run for a longer time with a larger budget level, I hope they find a way to strike a happy medium between scary hard and theme park easy starter stuff.

For you block of type fans I have more in depth breakdowns and suggestions below.

Creating my character:
I was impressed. It is the deepest creator I've seen in a long time. The only problem I had was once I had my character mostly done it began to load extremely slow. My suggestions for this feature is more. More options, tattoos, double earrings, beards, etc. Overall I was feeling impressed.

Caps Quarters:
After loading into my quarters I felt the movement was slow and awkward. Naturally the first thing I did was walk around, look in the mirror (very cool), then try to leave through the door of eternal lockedness. I also tried to interact with the room and environment but wasn't able to. It was puzzling as to why such a nice looking feature seemed to have so little actual content. From my readings I was aware of the issues, but it was still surprisingly odd. It made EVE seem unfinished right off the bat. My suggestion would be to get that door to open even if it's only into a few bar like social areas so the entire things feels like it has a purpose, rather than feeling incomplete. More interaction with objects in the room would also be nice. The TV screen with actual relevant information was extremely cool and made everything in the game seem more real and connected. It's a small feature but one of the most interesting I've seen in an MMO. I also loved that both the quarters and space itself had a distinct feel depending on your starter race although it is obvious to me that Amarr and Minmatar space need much love, Gal and Cal space looks like a rich multi colored painting. Amarr and Min space look like a 1 color painting, obviously not as deep and fleshed out.

Game Suggestions
Travel:
I love the need to travel. Travel in MMOs spawns player content and encounters but 85 jumps is just maddening. People don’t play to spend 2 hours traveling. Super gates with negative consequences via ship damage or shut downs are an easy fix. Make them cost a lot and very very risky ex. they are located in very hot pvp areas. I’ll admit this is personal because I have very limited play time so travel that takes me 30 minutes cuts deeply into my 1-2 hour time a little too much to enjoy.

Audio:
More AI audio, more gameplay audio. By audio I mean the works, music, explosion, effects, guns, you name it. Audio gives a movie scene it's feel, the same can be said of MMOs. The greatest tragedy in a game as deep as EVE is that the audio/ui/gameplay sync is so off which makes the game look unpolished and shallow. At the moment I have a soundtrack that I like, but that doesn't que into what is happening onscreen, and I have a bunch of very anticlimactic combat noises and I have a dead UI. Getting all of the audio on the same page will give EVE a cohesive, rich, polished feel. Right now I get a major disconnect between what I'm doing with the UI, what is happening on my screen, and what I'm hearing.

UI:
The UI itself needs major overhauling. I find myself feeling stuck with the layout, and worse than that I'm repeating odd paths to accomplish simple tasks. It also feels overly crowded, over complicated without justification, and it takes away from what happens on screen. As mentioned above it needs more audio as well. SWG had a nice audio to gameplay to music sync going, maybe that would be a good place to reference.

Other:
Along that SWG path, the player content creation tools were not the best, but they were the best ideas. If they were done right they could be genre changing. Players making content for the game is the greatest trick a dev team could pull. I really believe the next big MMO will be based around this concept. Look what having a taste of it has done for Minecraft, and more properly for TES.

Getting players emotionally invested in a character is HUGE for retention. Currently the real time skill system accomplishes this. The deep char creator helps. Most of the people I show it to say the same thing, “I can’t get over just being a ship”. The lack of avatar is a big deal to a lot of players. If we had something like WIS people would connect on an even deeper level. Cantinas kept SWG alive for years and that sort of environment adds a lot to the overall feel of a game. This combined with the other exploration stuff the dev team recently spoke about will easily take EVE to another level and attract a whole new player base. Without adjusting the things I’ve mentioned above I don’t see many of them sticking around. Because of where I come from and the fact that I have done a lot of researching I know the more you put into EVE the better it gets. I also know that the newb missions stuff is just a scratch on the surface of what EVE is. Unfortunately I doubt most new players will do the research or tolerate getting through the beginning stuff. Considering how amazing EVE is, I can’t imagine many players would leave once they get hooked, I just don’t think the starter stuff has the right bait to hook them at the moment.

I have plenty of more in depth suggestions pertaining to fleshing out a better starter foundation, but I think I’ll save it for a slow rainy day when those people that love blocks of type need something to do.

I was running the tutorials with a new toon. Overall better, but why is there so much repetitive ones? I shouldn't get the same book over and over again. They are also rather all over the place. Mining in security. Buiding in trade. Maybe actually make the industrial one, actually industrial.

You may think that such things like a "super gate" would be awesome, but those kinds of gates bring alot of implications with them.

1) The force projection is getting way easier, that may not be a concern for you, but if you can bring a full fleet of people within 2 minutes from one end of the galaxy to the other, your actual territory you can defend gets too big.

2) The consequences you're suggestions aren't critical enough. For e.g. if a Goonswarm Federation Fleet want to use this kind of gate and have to pay 50m per ship to use the gate, they wouldn't care, because they've so much money. And damaging ships wouldn't be that bad, because you've logistics to rep you and nanite repair paste to repair your overheated modules.

3) The very hot pvp areas you think of doesn't exist. There are definitely spots in the universe, in which people heavily pvp, but those are player created and move as soon as the fleet moves on. So you can't make a "npc structure" like your stargate inaccessible through player actions.

4) With such stargates the universe becomes smaller and doesn't feel big anymore. That's the case with e.g. TES 4: Oblivion...the world was in theory really big but with the waypoint system it became small and unemergent.