EVE New Citizens Q&A

Pretty much your feedback mirrors all the New Player Experience Feedback I've read about. In the chat channel people were telling the new players to just skip it. I'm relatively new myself and was fortunate to start right before they rolled out A/B testing.

One thing they did get right was expanding the trial to 30. Mine was 21, so I did multiple trials before I felt ready to invest real currency.

I'm still learning new things every week. My master plan has been heavily modified to the point that I'll need to rework everything. The people and structure are so different from any other MMO I've ever played.

My interpretation is that they observed that people speed read click through the tutorial text windows, instead of taking notes and memorizing things (because who's going to do that in a game?), so they decided to let everyone "learn at their own pace" by "opportunities" (as far as the obscurity of the word, remember that English is spoken but not a primary language in Iceland).

The game has complex gameplay mechanics, lots of ship stats that must be understood, AND, unlike other MMO's, does not have a clear level progression or zone separation between newbies and veterans. You can go into the next zone and possibly find yourself in the middle of a war, people using advanced ships and complex combat tactics.

So, don't try to keep your character pristine, just explore the game and try different things, and if you have questions feel free to ask them here in this forum. This is a very nice forum where we love to answer newbie questions, really.

Good posts.

I agree strongly that a less-linear approach is the way to go... But the current state is still some serious culture shock.

A poster in a different thread said: "Eve isn't a game, it's a hobby." While the two aren't mutually exclusive, I understand and agree with the point he was making.

Since in this forum we're more supposed to offer advice than critique your feedback, particularly:

The fact that you basically have to have Google open in another window (or the in-game browser) constantly in order to even start contemplating getting through every version of tutorials CCP has ever made is, in all fairness, kind of appropriate training for it, because realistically I've been playing on and off for more than a half-decade and that's STILL how I work out how to do most things, all experience has done is made the google searches faster.

The fact that one of the fastest ways to make sure your results are Eve-specific is to leave in all the random strings of profanity in your question kind of sums up not just the new user experience, but the experience of doing anything you're less than 100% familiar in this game in general.

Thanks everyone for your insights. It is, of course, true that every developer and every piece of software has it's own style. This surely isn't how I'd want to introduce people to software I was responsible for (yeah, been there). But it isn't my call. It's sort of a "throw you to the wolves" approach and in this case the wolves are fairly toothy.

In the end, as I said, I'll keep with it because I happen to have a tutor. I can only imagine that many others would not. Those are decisions that EVE needs to make and I'm certain they are not idiots. I'd like to thank you all for your responses which were, if not helpful, at least enlightening and certainly a ton more friendly than the UI :)

When I first started hearing about PC games there were a lot of exploration type games where you had to figure out the game as you went along and once you figured it out then the game was over. I'm thinking of games like Myst. I guess even the original Oregon Trail had some of that but probably more because the tutorial hadn't even been thought of yet. However to be honest it's been so long since I've played the original Oregon Trail that I can't remember much about it. By "so long" I mean like 30+ years.

Anyway my point is that I think that there is something inherent in human nature like some built in curiosity that we seek out knowledge and love to play around with stuff and figure it out. That is what puzzles are and I believe why the allure of puzzles is so timeless. I think deep down we seek out stuff that we don't understand and want to figure it out.

No-a-days we seem to worship quick and easy information. I kind of blame our school system on this but TV, movies and pop culture has not helped with this. However informing yourself on a thing and knowing a thing are not one in the same. You can only know a thing through experience. So we teach kids to seek out understanding from outside themselves and so we seek out more and more information but since none of it was discovered and all of it was spoon fed to us there is no satisfaction so we keep chasing after more and more thinking the information will fill the void instead of realizing that the process of discovery is where the satisfaction comes from.

A lot of other games hold out a "carrot on a stick". You keep chasing the carrot thinking you'll be happy once you get it. Eve however is a game where you have to enjoy trotting. It's play for the sake of play.

As far as the way that you develop software versus CCP I'm thinking that your software is likely more business focused where time is money and you are looking to get a task done as quickly and efficiently as possible. A game is trying to burn up your free time in the most enjoyable way possible. Two opposing concepts that I would hope would not be developed in a similar manner.

I had a tutor as well. I'm sure many current vets did. This is not a solo game and I tell new players all the time that they need to make friends in this game. It is after all an MMO. I don't think that an MMO that almost forces you to make friends is a bad design. I more question the more and more solo nature of other so called MMOs.

This might conjure up some memories:

10 Reasons We HATE Oregon Trail with Evil Craig!

There are people that have gotten into this game by themselves. It is a sandbox after all and you are not forced to do anything. It is just a lot easier and a lot more fun with friends.