EVE New Citizens Q&A

One way I go about explaining to someone what Eve Online is about is this:

"Permanent Choices and Meaningful Consequences"

Eve Online is like a sandbox. Actually, no. IT IS A SANDBOX! It's a place where you can come in and make a sand castle as beautiful or as crappy as you like. But while you are making that sandbox, you will have to fight for the tools to make that castle. You also have to be weary of people who would come out and kick your castle into a pile of sand. You also have to try to gather enough sand if you want to make a more complex work of art and therefore you must either steal some sand, buy some sand, or negotiate for some sand. But if you are savvy enough and if you are shrewd enough and if you are patient enough, you can monopolize on that sand or on the tools needed for that sand. You can also team up with others (be it hired mercs or corp mates) to help build your project faster or to ensure its safety.

And there is only one rule to follow: Adapt or Die.

There is no hand holding beyond the tutorials because the tutorials are just there to show you how some things work. They are not intended to tell you what career you really want. That is up to you. But you have to be persistent and determined to achieve your goal.

^^This is how I would say it to a newbie.

You're correct. I'm such a naturally born sandboxer that I basically didn't do any of the tutorials six years ago, except for a very few of them (and probably only some of the way). I had gotten EVE's sandbox, even before I started playing.

But it would be a mistake to rely only on those very, very few who are naturally born sandboxers, such as me. For every me, there's at least a dozen who can learn the sandbox and if shown it, if introduced to it properly, will grow to love it.

Mind you, for every one of me, there's many dozens of people who can't ever get it. We mustn't delude ourselves into assuming that the target audience for EVE consists of 7 billion people. It's much smaller than that. But there is a subset of noob players who unsubscrube, but who shouldn't have. A subset who become lost to EVE.

I think perhaps the solution is to gradually teach the noobs to think for themselves.

Start with some highly scripted and guided tutorial missions. Tutorial tier 1. These offer missions that each have one way to solve, and the noob is told explicitly how to solve them.

Next comes some tutorial mission chains that are tier 2. These are slightly open-ended, most but not all having several methods for completing then.

Then tier 3, more open-ended again.

Then tier 4, almost abstract goals.

Then maybe tier 5, stuff like gain standing 8.50 with Caldari Navy or 4.50 with Caldari State. Or mine one million veldspar. Obviously, these should have very long expiration times, and no penalty upon expiration.

No, the tier 5 thing is only half serious. But I do think the gradual thing might work.

The EVE Tutorials should link to nothing outside of EVE. That's the lazy way out and it is an additional step that new players have to take which breaks their interest in the game since it pulls them away from the game.

If CCP wants to create tutorials or hire / pay / ask players who have done great ones to do them that's fine but they shouldn't be linking outside of the game for things that they should be providing.

If videos would be useful then they need to be internal to EVE's client.

But, that's really just a crutch to get around something that wasn't properly or adequately explained and doesn't fix the underlying issue.

EVE's tutorials are good (for the most part) but they fall short in explaining a lot of core concepts. That's a failure that needs to be addressed by CCP. CCP needs to continue to focus on the New User Experience and continue to improve it.

A new user to EVE needs to be encouraged to think for themselves and act for themselves. There needs to be a series of mission objectives that can be accomplished multiple ways with the mission listing off the possibilities and ending with something like, "And if you can think of another way to get it done then do it that way instead."

The structure of these transitional missions should be fundamentally different than directed gameplay. Transitional missions need to be guided gameplay - in that EVE provides guidance on how to complete the mission but doesn't direct the player step by step to do accomplish the mission objective instead the mission would provide guidance as to possibilities on how to get it done and leave it up to the player to figure out.

So for mining add in a mining mission that instead of directing a user to a deadspace location with an asteroid and telling the player what to do the guided mission would be, "bring X mineral to me." In the mission description a list of ways to find the mineral would be listed like: Mine it, buy it, steal it, or reprocess it.

The same can be done with each of the 'career paths' so that new players could get their feet wet and open their eyes a little to the possibilities of self-directed gameplay. Emergent gameplay is something that many players would love in theory but, in reality, they aren't given the confidence or tools to pursue after completing the current EVE tutorials. A seed of confidence in trying things out and experimenting should be provided to new players.

The reason why there are soooo many miners and mission runners in EVE is simple - that's how the tutorials guide new players. And since that is what they were shown that is what they will do.

A lot of new players say they want to do things like pvp and then follow up that saying with a, "but I don't know how." Which is, really, just a way of saying they aren't confident with the mechanics to be able to test it out themselves.

And if new players finish up the tutorials lacking confidence in core aspects of the game then there is room for improvement in the New User Experience.

Maybe its not EvE, maybe its people that are so used to being told what to do that they get confused when they are offered freedom of choise.

Maybe we should create default answer to these confused people: join a corp..or something...

But then again for me biggest hook on this game was its open world where i can choose myself what to do next...