EVE General Discussion

When someone says "It's too hard," what they usually mean is "I can't be arsed with this."

Worst thing about the tutorials is that it makes you plug in skills that later on you might not be at all interested in and there is no way of removing them from your skill list.

Down with this sort of thing!

I made a new alt recently to try out this new "opportunities" tutorial, and my God, it is the worst tutorial I've ever seen in going on 15 years of playing MMOs. Who the Hell came up with this? How can a game that's been around over a decade have such a horrid tutorial? There are probably F2P phone app games with better ones.

My favorite part was completing the tutorials/starter agents, and then getting that pass or certificate to go straight into FW.

Is that still a thing? Because that made for some pretty hilarious moments..

It's kind of sad that people nowadays lack the ability to simply explore the unknown without fear of ... whatever there might be.

In a game, especially.

'A mate told me the new NPE is crap' isn't particularly constructive or really all that different to comments about the old system, although obviously brand new players have nothing to compare it to. There's been plenty of time whilst the revamped NPE was on Sisi for vets to test/review it before it was released. The latest dev blog asked existing players to give feedback now it's live, of which there's a grand total of four pages. This might be another topic worth stickying in F&I for visibility to get a central discussion going from players about what they think would be useful to add, change, improve etc. The AFK Cloaky and the SP threads are pretty big.

This is just the first step in the Opportunities system - it's already had significant additions since February - so there's no reason to think it won't be expanded and improved. I do agree with Omar and Avaelica about more advanced steps being essential long term. I rolled some new alts a few days ago and did some of the basics and it looks way easier than the old system to me. It might look daft to include warping/orbiting/jumping gates but these are the common questions in rookie chat you see people getting really frustrated over.

It doesn't seem like a dumbing down to me, or an attempt to pacify people with a short attention span. The game isn't being changed, just the way people are introduced to learning about it. Breaking that into manageable chunks that you can try in no particular order is a vast improvement over funnelling people through a scripted system. If anything, those of us who started with that type of NPE had our hands held more than the players starting now, because you had to finish the stages sequentially to complete the tutorials. I'm a bit biased here, I despised the old system so much I deleted my first alt then re-rolled a miner so I could sit reading guides for a month. Luckily someone blew me up before I slipped into a coma.


^ That's from Rise in the April blog linked earlier. 10% improvement in new player retention is a significant increase at such an early phase. Maybe they could add longer newbie arcs at a later stage like the old career tutorials which go into a bit more depth for those who prefer a bit of structure. I'd love to see a true PVP tutorial personally (need to learn what transversal is myself at some point). There needs to be a conscious effort to balance letting people decide what they want to do and showing them what is available, as opposed to an industrialised rookie assembly line that churns out a new generation of timid, quivering, screechy farmers who 'just want to be left alone'.

The vets commenting really need to try the Opportunities system for themselves (don't pretend you haven't supressed it, the notifications are annoying as ****, lol) and give proper feedback in the right place rather than relying too much on what their new player friends are saying. Don't forget it's still crap being a noob, no matter how the NPE is changed, so some of that grumbling needs to be filtered out.

oh i know i'm part of the problem, i alreayd know how to play so figured screw the npe.. but.. i think i might want to run it again, just to get a feel and start helping noobs. i want eve to succeed. sadly it was one of the things that helped me cope with issues over the years, i'd be sad if it died. so might as well help give good feedback though a bit late, but still. and if i recruit noobs it would be nice to know what stuff they have to do.

I didn't mean you, I know you'll probably try it at some point

Only tried it myself this week, but judging from the blogs it looked fine.

There's a few too many 'my friend says it's terrible...' in earlier comments for my taste. Every friend I've ever introduced to EvE has said the same thing, some of them before they even started the tutorial. Just because they're your mates doesn't mean they can't be whiny scrubs.

But on topic, I don't think the new Opportunity system is worse than the old Tutorial system and if anyone is going to claim that they better be ready to back it up with some detail. It'd also be interesting to see more considered feedback from people who remember different NPE iterations - it's changed a few times since I started. It's not really too late to review it at the moment, looks like an ongoing development with scope to take on board player suggestions.

While difficult, it's far from impossible. The problem isn't so much with Eves unwillingness to welcome new players with open arms, as it is with how easy the competition is. Take a look at Blizzard. Any game they have out walks you, hand in hand, to complete achievement euphoria. Sure, you have to work at it, but only in the sense that everything's laid out before you, quite clearly.

Honestly, that level of handholding would flat out ruin eve, or worse. Worse being Eve Socialist creating more posts and replies :-/

If anything, I'd adjust the tutorial to be more direct. Hammer it in early to a new player that they are alone in space. They need to understand that it's up to them to get started. I didn't jump in and miraculously start in my blockade runner. I thought "crap, I'm broke, in hostile territory, with no allies or anything" remembered I could belt mine asteroid fields, loaded up my venture and set out.

Made my first mil off concentrated veldspar. Never felt more accomplished in a vidya game. Had been attacked by rats, suicide bombed by bored betas, and only podded once. After the first mil came my second, then my tenth, then my hundredth. Each trip, deeper and deeper into space. The knowhow increased with each day, each trip, with still a crapton more to pick up.

People just need to bite down, and get in there.