Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I recently had a real life friend try Eve. I helped them along and gave them a little isk to get started. I told them to do the new opportunities and follow the tutorial/ sister's of eve arc. So, the question was frequently asked "when will we do something fun?", I was not really able to answer that for them. There was very little a new player could do. Perhaps, my perception of 'what to do' isn't very applicable to a new play because being a t h e r a b o i requires a bit of SP.

I took my friend ganking since a catalyst is fairly easy for a new play to get into. His response was 'meh' at best. Other than that doing missions were exceptionally dull, and anoms were the worst. Although I did see him improve quite a bit by running anoms, as far as not continually running his repper/keeping at range at his optimal instead of trying to light blasters from 15km.

My friend was very interested in PvP in general, but did not want to go out and die over and over. I tried to explain that this is how you learn and its an inevitability. I explained that a new player can be just as competent in a specific frigate within a month or two as I am or others with high SP.

Another aspect besides finding something fun to do in his first week that I saw trouble the newbro mind was the skill queue. The 24 hour limitation to the skill queue seemed to be the most confusing for him. Although, I think that is fair for trials. He also had a hard time figuring out what skills to train on his own, and even keeping his skill queue going seemed difficult. Also, the daunting question of "oh wow half a year to do x y z thats too long" kept coming up. Eve is not for the impatient.

Too put this wall of text into bullet form:
Pros for newbro:
-Fitting window helped him figure out what skills to learn to use certain items with fits I made.
-Plenty of guides on what to train
-The ISIS menu was used quite a bit to figure out what direction to go.
-Implants
-Ganks are easy n+1 activity a newbro can contribute to

Cons:
-Navigating the game
-Purchasing things off the market was difficult
-Managing the skill queue was difficult
-missions are mind numbing
-opportunity system was hard to follow
-the risk aversion was real
-theres no fun hook to keep newbros on the line.
-attribute system was "stupid"

As far as an idea to improve newbro ideas would be to implement a mentor system. I played Darkfall online for quite some time, and there was a mentor program that paired players of a higher sp equivalent to a lower sp character. The mentor answered the questions of the newbro and giving them starting gear/money. If Darkfall can keep its newbros longer than eve with an even worse UI/help/examples/guides then Eve surely can. Darkfall seriously has the worst UI of any program I have ever experienced in the history of computing.

I think pairing a newbro with a mentor right off the bat would help to insure that the newbro continues to advance in the game, and at an accelerated rate in comparison to 'opportunities'. You don't even need to play with the newbro to help them just direct them where they need to go or give recommendations like joining brave or what have you.

^this over and over and over. The new bro experience needs ridiculous levels of help, for the overall health of the game. I don't advocate the theme park or babying, but eve is and always has been brutal to learn.

I don't think so, but he started off fairly enthralled by what Eve had to offer, but that died out pretty quick with the first few steps. We did ganking because he wanted to get kill, but I can really take him on my roams that I do. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-5e3pY94U this is what I typically do, and I can't bring a newbro into this and hold his hand/make sure he as fun.

It should be volunteer based, and I'm sure people are more than willing to answer new bro's questions. Perhaps, CCP could offer some sort of reward for vets who participate to increase the number of people offering help. I don't think they should be rewarded very well though. Darkfall did it like you got 10% of the experience the newbro earned up to an amount, but that wouldn't work for Eve. If I had to throw something out there I'd say if you got a newbro to stay for a period of 3 months or so, then you get free month of game time or something of the sort.

So, how do you make it so I do not simply "mentor" my alt?

To say it short, you lied like a dog.
On topic: stuff your newbro into one of those npsi fleets, maybe that would be fun.

I put my newbros on full refund in whatever they fit (yes, "newbros" lose battleships too, no, it's not gonna make me broke anytime soon), but still, losing a ship is a great shock and I'm not a bit surprised that it hurts people even on full SRP enough to quit eve. I had that experience and I quit for 2 years after it. I am still hurt after losing every T1 frigate despite being solidly in top 5% of richest carebears in eve. Why? No idea. I just know it's a very bad experience I will only repeat when I can take it, otherwise I'd rather stay docked.

Some mates also came to see a space fantasy sim, and quit because there's virtually no solo content which isn't mind numbing. They didn't want to take part in group PvE (it's a bother), they had near-zero interest in PvP for obvious reasons (takes more than a few years to grow a PvP character who's anywhere near proficiency), loved the arcs, and were surprised there's so few of them.

One guy wanted to "**** some farmers", got discouraged by CONCORD first, haven't found any "farmers" in lowsec either, and the first attempt to visit null ended up in a predictable gatecamp disaster. After that he quit and never returned.

A joecuster post that isn't completely terrible. I must be in some kind of weird lucid dream. What else should I expect here? Goons admitting defeat to Gevlon? CODE seceding it's claim over highsec to a coalition of miners? CCP Fozzie rebalancing a ship properly - okay, let's not get carried away.