Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's not about the 'griefing' - god knows I've been in eve a long time and whilst I know it's there it's actually pretty rare on the statistical scale. It's about locking the buggers up and giving them a controlled environment to learn in.

Yes, we all managed - but that doesn't mean it should stay that way moving forward. The game is simply daunting at the get go. Something to help ISD etc corral the newbies to assist them is a good thing.

Again it is about keeping them in, not us out - there's a minor benefit in stopping people hassling them but I'd argue it is insignificant and they should in fact have a wee area to pewpew each other. I can see it being handy just to stop disruption when people learn. A certain standard of behaviour should be expected in a classroom, if you like.

You know, they could just call it a simulator and have done with it - money solved, asset transfer solved - there are neither. Skills can grow as normal, naturally.

Makes it fairly obvious that it's not the real deal.

The NPE in EvE is admittedly somewhat difficult to get through, it just seems so big at the outset, only the thought of trying ot learn Kanji gives me the same pause. It took me two tries before I really got into the game. While clustering all the new players into a gated area may help ISDs to help new players by being available in local channels or whatever, none of this will do much to help with the single most important test every player in this game must pass.

How will you respond to your first ship loss? And the bigger the loss the more pressing the question.

Ultimately if you are the type who will get back up, dust off and get back to it or the kind of person who will punch their monitor though the wall will have a massive part to play in the length of your EvE career. No amount of wording in a tutorial will truly prepare you for jumping into your first bubble camp all by your lonesome even if the tutorial was able to teach you how not to be completely failfit.

I read the Mitani article linked in the OP and while I don't see a whole lot of issues that would really arise from what he suggests other than to say that it would be difficult to convey how vicious this game can be when you get out into the larger world in a way that would have real meaning to a player not familiar with it.

Include a low sec system in the new player zone?

Probably not advisable. Veterans will find a way to deal with gate guns using suitable aged characters anyhow so I'm confident they'd find a way to ruin the intent of including it.

The other major obstacle I see is the market. These characters will not have BPOs nor the assets to buy them let alone start working towards invention and it is unlikely they will train marketing as their first order of business and so the market in this noob region will be quite barren I feel unless you are going to seed it and I feel there may be potential to abuse that if it is not done correctly.

Could the Mitani's suggestions help with the NPE, quite possibly but I still feel that the most important part of the NPE is the psychological aspect of dealing with loss and no tutorial can cover that for you.

I would argue that they don't effectively communicate those points. Mainly because the game does not compel you to read the information rather than click through it all and check the objective foot note. That isn't to say that you should force them to read it all, but there certainly is more incentive for finishing quickly and reading thoroughly when the average player brings their average MMO assumptions to the game.

The tutorials need to break those assumptions and show the player that they need to learn adapt new strategies to this game. Mostly because of how abstractly removed EVE is when compared to the average MMO experience.

Having not read the entire thread, I'll pipe in here with an opinion that has likely been stated already.

I see two issues here. 1) A protected area for newbies and 2) Skill boost as a kick-starter.

As to the first one, I'm not against it. Let's face it, EVE has a hell of a learning curve and there's no need to be preyed upon while trying to figure out how to get into warp. This would need a major revamp of the tutorials. Granted, they've gotten a thousand times better than when I first started, but they still barely tap into the mechanics and options for game play.

As well they must be mandatory. If you don't want to do them you are booted out into Empire. Even with that you get the boot once the tutorial is finished. This will serve to help ensure that only actual new players will stay in the safe zone. Even the most ass hat moron of a griefer is not going to keep starting new characters when he has to run long and relatively reward poor tutorials for a chance to gank someone.

It has to be a safe area to get a handle on the basics. No more. No less.

As to the second one. I'm against any form of skill training boost.

As a new player you have no idea of what the game is like. If CCP gives you a false impression, then it's unfair to the new player and a waste of time for CCP since that same new player will quickly become disillusioned when his skills suddenly take twice as long to train. CCP will lose a lot of new players because of that.

The starter area needs to be as close to the actual game as can be so the transition into empire is not a surprising disappointment. The only reason for it should be to have a safe place to learn the mechanics without being taken advantage of by griefers.

Mr Epeen

Exactly lets get rid of ganking all together it really has no place in eve and only serves to lessen the experience that is provided by eve.




this is exactly the kind of thinking that will become more popular if the first experience new players have in eve is in a safe zone

iirc the exploration tutorial also puts some of its info in the local chat box just to confuse the ones that are even reading the popups

Exactly how not to do it

2-4 months is much to long and will cause them to become used to that sort of safety
allowing them to take items out of that area would affect the market in the rest of the game and could be exploited
allowing them to go out into the rest of eve but then go back will make them feel as though eve has safe places
all the usual rules applying makes the area pointless as i could just make a new alt and go gank the hell out of them
Contains unique items this is possible the worst part of your idea as it not only affects the market but now forces me to make an alt every 2-4 months to take advantage of it
having anything in it that makes newbies leave the area defeats the the point of keeping them in one place where they can have a controlled NPE.

to add more another fundamental problem with the idea of a newbie safe zone where ISD and GMs can control the NPE goes against the core of eve a game that is a sandbox and has the players do as they wish. most players drawn to eve are the ones looking for an experience not spoon fed by the game this idea of a newbie zone would make those types feel the stories they have heard about eves sand box are exaggerated and not true pushing the kind of ppl away that would like eve and causing ppl who want that controlled experience to stay on only to find out once they leave that eve is not like that then leave as well

Ganking does not need to be taken away but I do agree with the Mitani that we ought to make CONCORD attack anyone who attacks a corp mate without him being a legal target, which will get rid of high sec awoxing. If corp mates want to duel or test a fit then the duel option is there to make the targets legal so only awoxing is affected...unless you can get the corp mate to accept a duel from you first in their shiny ship you would be looking to awox.

At the same time enabling your safety will allow you to do whatever you like with a corp member and if you would accidentally aggress them instead of assisting them the safety will stop you there too. So any complaints about accidental CONCORD deaths would be on the player who:

A) Made the mistake.
AND
B) Didn't bother to use the safeguard (You could even get away with setting it to partial).

So why is getting rid of awoxing a good thing?

People are often paranoid of high sec awoxing/hangar thieves particularly when the player is new as it can sometimes be very hard to tell a legitimate new player from an alt account of someone who is here to awox your shiny mission ship. This makes it much more secure for high sec corps to accept new players without worrying about being awoxed. As many people including myself have pointed out the best way to get up the steep learning curve in this game is with help from older players. Removing the threat of high sec awoxing allows more people to take a chance on newer players and thereby giving them that experienced voice to give them the boost they need to get rolling.

So why is getting rid of suicide ganking a bad thing?

Simple the market in this game is player driven, if one part of it falls the rest suffer indirectly as well. If suicide ganking were removed barges and freighters would almost never be lost again causing the price and particularly the value of the BPs for barges and freighters to drop very sharply in price. Whenever a section of a market crashes it has effects that reach much farther than a single commodity and while it is not possible to predict the full effect that crash would have on the market (generally a lot of stuff is lost when a freighter is ganked) the impact would be felt for certain.

Comparing the number of barges typically found in high sec space to the number that are actually ganked on any given day the chances of you being suicided are fairly low. If you move a little ways out of the heavily populated systems and away from hubs the chance drops even further. You don't even have to jetcan mine anymore so it's been ages since I heard complaints about can flippers. (If you don't know what I'm talking about here, then realize this is how much has been done to help you already). The entire idea in EvE is that no space is supposed to be completely safe unless you can make it happen, so no there should not be an area, particularly not one the size of highsec in which you could not be ganked.

First paragraph I agree completely.

The idea wouldn't be to have ISDs or GMs directing the players about what to do in the noob zone it would simply be that since the new players would all be in one area it makes it easy to drop ISDs or GMs into local making it as easy as possible for new players to ask questions to someone who's likely to have a good answer. Things like mining, missions, exploration, stations with industry etc. would all be included and new players would simply know that someone who knows what to do will be around so they can feel free to ask how to make use of these things. I do think, unfortunately, the market would have to be seeded because we take market alts for granted these days and with new players not equipped to run the market and old players not allowed to import one, I simply see no alternative. In which case I think they should base the prices off of an average price for the same items across all high sec regions.

As for maximum length of stay in this area, my suggestion would be to allow people to stay in this area as long as they are currently kept in rookie help, 30 days IIRC.

Basically you want the NPE to end with a player knowing what eve is and all the tools at their disposal and a good grasp on mechanics. You want them to see the wider game options and not just missions - you want the trailers to be their experience. Once they leave 'school' it is up to them to seek their path as we have done all we can.

You can't give them an delusion of safety as that is unfair - but like I say, keeping a certain level of behaviour expected in this period would be useful, I think. Equally keeping them in one controlled place will make teaching easier, especially if events are staged.