Assembly Hall

Introduction

Any veteran pilot will tell you that the merciless and cruel universe of EVE is the only true sandbox out there, a place where you can set out to be whatever you wish, as long as you have the patience and the skill to do so. They will go on saying that it’s way more than just a game, tell you about their latest adventure or link the EVE is Real trailer, and shed a tear. This is however not how a new player will see the game. To the newcomer, EVE looks over-complicated, boring, and populated by jerks and scammers.

The current new player experience (i.e a 15-days trial spent running tutorials) does a good job at showing what EVE looks like on the surface : a huge universe, a ton of ships, decades worth of skills, many different professions, etc. But it doesn’t give any long term realistic vision of what EVE is really about. The new player hasn’t been encouraged to team up with other players sharing the same interests, knows nothing about the dangers awaiting him right next door, or what it means to be a full-time industrialist, a w-space dweller or a lowsec pirate.

I believe many new players stop playing after their 15-days trial simply because they didn’t feel welcome in the game and didn’t get to see its true potential. Of course, EVE is a very open sandbox game, and it’s normal to leave a lot of its content hidden for the player to discover by himself, but right now the new player experience hides way too much. The game must remain the unforgiving place where stupidity is severely punished, but I think it wouldn’t hurt to be a tiny bit more helpful towards the new players.

I would like to propose a set of ideas that might help in getting new players more interested in the game and give them a better chance at surviving, thus making them want to play long enough to actually discover what makes EVE so enjoyable and unique.

1. Extend Trial Period

First of all, extend the trial period to 21 days (28 with buddy invite). EVE is a game that requires patience and time, and this should be reflected by the trial. However, the first 15 days (or less, if the new player wishes so) of this extended period should be dedicated to learning the game, as I will explain next.

2. Training Constellations & Reworked Tutorial System

In each of the 4 Empires highsec territories there would be a constellation (or more if required) which would be accessible only to pilots / accounts that are less than 15 days old. These constellations would be connected to the rest of New Eden via the chat system or the mailing system, but would otherwise be entirely closed pockets following special rules designed to provide a safe environment for new players to learn the game, where it would be very hard for a player to abuse another. Each Training Constellation would have its own separate market run by NPC only, separate agents and standings, no player-run corporations, mission sites that can’t be probed, no pvp mechanic of any kind, etc. No assets or ISK could be transferred between these Training Constellations and the rest of New Eden. That’s not exactly compliant with the great open sandbox that EVE is. However, a new player could, in such an environment in which he would only be for a maximum of 15 days, learn properly the basics of the game, be encouraged to try out things and cooperate safely with other players, and be prevented from being abused by older players - he’ll have plenty of time to experience that later.

The tutorials and lessons available to the new players inside the safe zone would teach them the basics, show them what they can do and how to get started, and most importantly, cooperation would be strongly encouraged. A “party-finding” system could be imagined where players can find other people to run the tutorials with. I won’t go into detail about what the tutorials should be about exactly, that’s not the point of my concept here.

As an incentive to stay in the Training Constellations and learn things, each tutorial completed would reward the new player with a certain amount of points (with extra reward if completed in cooperation with other players in order to encourage teamplay and social connections). All the points collected during their stay would be spent upon exiting the constellation, to receive ships, modules and ISK on the outside. It has the benefit of making new players want to run a lot of tutorials, try everything out with no long term consequence. And when they finally get out into the “real space”, they can pick assets from a list of available stuff that will be useful for what they actually liked doing during the tutorials.

In addition, this system will give new players motivation and time to make new friends sharing the same interest. When they leave the Training Constellation, they can do so with their newly met friends, and team up from the beginning to survive in the harsh reality of New Eden.

[Continued in a 2nd post, it’s a bit lengthy :)]

Overall a good idea except that tutorial agents are used for additional faction standings.
How ever I believe the starter area can be 1 overall area.
The 14 day account age could help from old people from making a new character on their account but not it the make a new account to get into easy groups to start awox and ransoms.

A good idea overall and this should maybe help out newly started players to get a possible view of things to come for them in eve when joining up with a real corp. One thing i dont like is the Sponsoring, i believe a bit of self exploring and earning by themself is not bad.

Good point, an ISK reward coupled with a good introduction to market dynamics would serve this purpose just as well. I simply didn't think of it this way, but I guess it's a better solution yes.



This is really the point I wanted to get feedback on from the community. I spent a lot of time considering this, wondering if it is worth doing something like that to improve the new player experience, or if other solutions can be found that don't require to create a sort of separate area for new players ? I'd be happy to get more feedback about it.



Well that's really what this proposal is trying to achieve at its core, because this is what, in my opinion, will make players want to stay and want to discover more.

Thanks for reading me :) I'll try to think of alternative or more moderate ways to do this while gathering feedback about this whole idea.