EVE New Citizens Q&A

There are even veteran players who don't realise how powerful the Assets search box is. It seems to be one of the only UI elements that depends on autocomplete tooltips (ala google), rather than search filters as the People & Places UI does. The tooltips also do a poor job of telling you how to construct the search, and that there are hidden columns. For whatever reason, "charges region: everyshore" and "region: everyshore charges" give inconsistent results, but the tooltips build from the beginning of the line.
The point that this becomes useful is in the "new player" timeframe, namely the Sisters of Eve epic arc, where stuff becomes strewn across the galaxy and containers are not heavily used.

The business career agent should show how an exchange or auction contract works.
The other day I showed a character who was a few months old how the contracts system works. Had never used it!
Instance a fake NPC corp to raise the contract to (maybe pre-populate a click-box so people don't have to type it. If they have to type it there will immediately be copycats. )

The distribution career agent should show how courier contracts work. This is also the correct place to teach about ganking.
One of the most common things I see in the newbie chats is people who have no concept of hauler collateral and rewards. They are assuming everything is a scam (which is a fair worry) based solely on the collateral value (which is not accurate). Red Frog encounters a lot of players who don't understand courier contract mechanics either. But the courier system is clearly robust enough to keep the gears of New Eden turning.
Understanding the contract system means understanding 1) how plastic wrap works, 2) how being cargo scanned works, 3) how collateral escrow favours the contractor if done properly, 4) how a fair the reward favours the hauler, and 5) how failing a contract can be by mutual agreement.
BTW if I got any of those 5 points wrong, clearly I'm missing something too!


You're probably making a joke, but I think it's pretty clear they can't make PR materials that say "the fun starts after six months".
That is a game design issue that the first 30-60-90 days have to be fun enough for the player to stay around long enough to realise "oh, it's a whole 'nother game once I can really do things". Maybe there should be a special character badges related to Core Competancy certificates. Something to tell players they have a new level of opportunities at 5M and 10M SP. There's no hiding that it takes time, but if the incoming mindset is "get to level 60", they need a carrot on a stick.

Even if someone had told me at the start, I wouldn't have listened to the two most valuable pieces of advice I now try to give to every new player:

You cannot be a Jack-of-all-trades in EVE ... As tempting as each new discovery is and as useful as every new skill seems, it's best to find something that you enjoy doing and specialize your training for it. The Certificate system is an amazing tool for this!

You won't enjoy the game for long without a goal of some kind ... As much as I love EVE, if I wasn't always looking over the horizon or trying new things, the game would get tedious and my chosen "profession" would become a chore. Try something completely different at least once per year; if your corp doesn't allow it, you're in the wrong corp.

Missions/standings grinds:
-That mission agents are embarrassingly generous isk faucets.
-That I was shooting myself in the foot by doing those very attention-grabbing storyline missions, or any mission with one of the four empire faction symbols, or that of one of their friends (Mordu's Legion, etc.).
-That I could repeat an epic arc every three months.
-That epic arcs (or COSMOS missions) do not suffer from derived standings changes.
-That R&D, Level V, Tracking, and Epic arc agent availability were important factors in selecting which corporations to start grinding for.

Training planning:
-That learning skills would be removed, robbing me of the money invested in skillbooks and months of time I could have spent taking advantage of having put that SP elsewhere earlier.
-That an AI change would make drones an extremely frustrating weapon system to use.
-That passive shield tanking would get clobbered with the nerf bat.
-That the Iteron V would be rendered sub-par.
-That mining is one of the LEAST profitable ways to spend your time (this in particular would have blown my mind)
-That Minmatar subcap ships/weapons generally seem to be a developer favorite, maintaining superiority without nerfing far longer than other ships.
-That carriers/super-carriers would be raep'd with the nerfbat.
-That vanguard sites would basically let me print money for a short time, so train into them NOW, not 3 weeks before their nerf is announced.

Character Creation:
-That, even though the Caldari are clearly the hottest now (in 2009), eventually the Minmatar will lay claim to the most attractive bloodlines, as far as female avatars are concerned, and you will NOT be able to change.

Gameplay:
-That the session-change timer will **** you in the ***, so be sure to ALWAYS try and warp your pod out, not jump through the gate or dock up. :D


This is an intriguing question. I will think on it more and perhaps amend my post later.

This is by far the best answer in this thread, IMHO. The game does not clearly let you know that digging your way to a battleship in three days is a very, very bad idea. I hate to sound all WoW-y, but putting experience gates on skills would probably help people choose skills better.

I wish I had known how important the name you chose was, by the time you know its too late to start again. And ccp won't let you change it (I asked a few years ago and was told no), I only wanted to change from "Anth9rax" to "Mr Anth9rax", after 7 years you think they would let you, even if people could see previous names. If you can change your name in real life why not in a game.

They should really explain when you pick your name how important it is. If you aren't told you cant make an informed decision.

It took me quite a while to work out why some wrecks and cargo containers were white, some were yellow, and some were blue.

In fact, I had to ask in NCQA.

It would be handy if this was explained in the tutorial/career agents system.

Another one i just thought about.

Include something that explains the bounty system. As in..Just because someone sets a bounty on you it does not mean that everyone can hunt you down and kill you without consequences.
Many new players misunderstand this one and thus are concerned about undocking or similar until its explained to them.

White = Belongs to you/your corp/fleet members
Yellow = Belongs to another player (if you loot from this you will get flagged)
Blue = Abandoned by the owner (you can loot this without getting flagged, but you cant fire at the can without Concord agressing)

However you can always salvage the wrecks no matter what color they are and not get flagged.

And yes, i know its off topic but he asked so i figured it was ok

Yeah all the Adolf Hitlers flying around.......

That quitting a mission will permanantly make the mission unavailable again.

This really heart during the basics tutorial.

I was given a mission as a courier toward the end of the basic tutorial. Somthing had come up and I quit the mission and thought I would continue it later. I now have the item in my cargo bay but when I tried to deliver to the agent at another station the mission window does not appear for me to select complete mission. The tutorial and missions that are now available do not follow together.

Ironically however three steps forward of where I should be, Aura in the tutorial warns me of quitting missions.

I read that I should contact a GM to be kind enough to reset the mission for me so I may continue.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to do that.