EVE New Citizens Q&A

Theres a player called Ali Aras, who is probably getting elected to the Council of Stellar Management. She's a relatively new player, and part of an alliance that does more than most encourages new players (*).

She's someone you should liaise with on this, as she's going to be the point person for the player base on New Player Issues.



(*) Personal note. Im personally Kill On Sight in Provi, but encourage peaceful and less peaceful people to go visit there.

thanks both of you for the suggestions. highly appreciated.

true for non commercial or open source projects. Does it apply here ? Because i am surely missing something in that case.



It could be definitely better, but i wont go further for a product i buy beside a customer feedback (which i did).
Neither will I overwork Microsoft Office Manuals nor would I do so if they would use a wiki for it. If i understood it correctly this wiki is the CCP wiki, the company wiki, ie attached to a product you pay for.



one of the most important things when creating manuals for someone new to the software is to not reference or cross reference through different sources. while you are right that the tutorial itself brings some of these items to clarity the wiki itself should be self explaining (if thats the manual), or a manual of some form.



for sure, but thats not the point of a manual for a commercial product. it seems i have here different expectations as to what part of the active user base is led to believe is right or what may have been settled as common sense for the eve community.
trust me on that: outside eve it is not. i am aware and thankful that the forums the chat can answer all these questions in detail.
but especially when we talk about some fundamental game mechanics such as a fitting strategy i am looking to the company which created this software to explain me in a professional manner the main core features of their software mechanic.

the contstant imrpovement on these fields (ie tutorial, wiki etc) does show though that CCP is aware of these issues indeed. A lot was added and improved over the years but its far from being finished.
if CCP gets their documentation and introductions right this software could address a much broader audience. its very "sporty" to let a coder or nerd write the documentation for an end user, unless he is one gifted genius which is rarely the case.
The outcome can be seen in some interface choices (as this also applies for UI-decisions) and more important manuals.

this game is complex yes, but the cross referencing manuals make it over complicated and time intensive while the latter points are not based on the complexity of the game but on the inability to explain. I would understand it from the perspective of a specific part of a user base which actually implies an "elevation" through the mere understanding and mastering of the "eve", a status which can be protected using ingame terms and abbreviations when explaining (happens all the time, go visit Star Trek Conventions, or talk to some federal Authorities regarding their job. Both live in "their world" , have only little interest to share and will make every explanation of their doings sound like the rediscovery of sliced bread and rocket science combined.
For a commercial company like CCP this is surprising to see, unless there is indeed no interest to extend the nieche market you got hold of and get a new player base. A commercial company most vital interest is to explain the software they spent so much time, effort, love but most important $ developing as good as possible to new potential customers. This is a mandatory point to get recurring revenue from them, to ensure financial growth and thus the realization of future (great, loved, etc) projects.
If you strip it down from all "but this is EVE", than yes, It is actually as simple as that in the software world.

cheers,
kriegskind

If CCP wanted to be the sole contributors, then they would have made it a locked website. It's a WIKI, they want us to contribute, and in fact the contributors are listed at the bottom of the pages and you can see they are players in quite a lot of the pages.

You are asking the other players to put in unpaid time to make the wiki better for you as a newbie. Unfortunately, we won't go further for a product we pay for either, so, sucks to be you, I guess nobody wants to update the thing for newbies.

Poor poor newbies.

Someone toss some bounties their way.

A. The wiki is NOT a manual.

B. If you look who made the posts, you will see that a lot of non CCP people made most of the stuff.

@J´Poll ok, if thats not the manual replacement where is a manual than ? (not meant as a polemic question, maybe i just missed it)
google search "eve online manual"
is the ISK guide the manual ?

We still arguing whose responsibility it is to keep the manual up to date?

It's obvious that CCP should put more effort into the wiki, or should entice players to contribute. But, they're busy with releasing DUST and Odyssey, and there is no rewards program, and ultimately we play for our own fun, rather than for the newbies.

I get a small amount of satisfaction from answering a few posts in the newbie forums, and I may update the odd wiki article if, say, I'm doing an exploration site and the corresponding article has no info in it, but otherwise there's nothing in it for me except wasted time.

You can see this sentiment in the quality of player corporations that you can find in-game. There are a few gems, but most of them suck or are NOT recruiting any more. Because the CEO and directors have to put in all their time to create fun and cater to all the newbies they recruit, who will then just leave, or worse (steal stuff and leave), so what's the point?

I apologize for the tone of my previous post, but you were calling on US to put in time and fix the evelopedia, and a couple posts later you expressed disinterest in putting in some of that time yourself. This attitude will be prevalent in this game, and I'm coming on strong now so that you're not shocked at just how much the playerbase will treat you as just another target to kill and loot in PVP, market competition, scam contracts, or other parts of the game.

np, no hard feelings. sorry if i raised the impression complaining to/about the community regarding the quality of the manual/wiki or such.
thats something i´d come to expect from the company itself. theres ton of info to get if one is dedicated.

However from a mere professional pov (im in DTV/Automotive software biz EMEIA sales side) i just felt puzzled seeing new customers (ie market share) left aside because of the shortcomings in the current new player introductions.

//crossing fingers for DUST.

cheers,all the best&see you in space,
kriegskind

EVE doesnt have a manual

I agree with Merouk.

CCP is and should be busy with the game and its expansions. And the wiki is mainly build by players. And players pay for tye game to have fun so dont blame them if keeping the wiki noob friendly isnt their way to have fun. Plenty of people who still get into EVE. I willrepeat it again.......communicate with others, if you have a couple of players in game that dont mind helping you with quedtions will be much better then some wiki.

Edit...Eve doesnt have a manual because a lot of the stuff in EVE is player made content so you cant write a manual on what players might do or dont do. And even if you would make a manual on the CCP created content it would be bigger then the bible because of all the different content and the exceptions.

ISK the guide, the WTD chart among others are the closest things that come to a manual.

Old "manual" (tutorial) was great.

"Target that asteroid with [ctrl]+LMB"
"Good, now press F2 to activate your miner (stuff about obtaining mins and whatnot)"
"Eve's not that safe - see, there's a pirate that's coming to shoot you, target it like you targeted the asteroid"
"Good, now switch active targets to the pirate"
"Good, now press F1 to shoot it"
(upon rat destruction) "Great! you know how to kill stuff!"

"Welcome to EVE, enjoy your stay".