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NPE feedback Q and A

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Awkward Pi Duolus
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#121 - 2015-07-02 19:18:33 UTC
CCP Rise, I see that Reddit's whining, self-entitled, instant gratification crowd is getting to you.

Don't forget what makes Eve, Eve. You can only dumb it down so much before it's not Eve anymore.

Call up Greyscale sometime if it helps.
joecuster
Anime Masters
#122 - 2015-07-02 19:50:18 UTC
Will there be SRP for the people who already trained all the nooby skills in the form of unallocated sp?
Aerasia
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#123 - 2015-07-02 19:53:41 UTC
Awkward Pi Duolus wrote:
Call up Greyscale sometime if it helps.
Call the person who killed Learning skills and ask what should be done with the rest of them?

I'm on board with this idea. Big smile
Darkblad
Doomheim
#124 - 2015-07-02 19:58:55 UTC
CCP Rise wrote:
Q: 'Opportunities are bad, they've made the NPE much worse'
A: As you know, we did a lot of testing on this system and would not have pushed it out to 100% of new players if it was doing damage. That said, it isn't doing enormously better than the old tutorial and we think there is still lots of room for improvement. We have an iteration plan already in place which we will begin testing within the next couple weeks.

Is'nt doing enormously better? Well, so what.

I'm no rookie without knowledge of EVE and therefore can't comment on this from a rookie's point of view, but anyway:

In my opinion, Opportunities are way better than the pilot certification course (the first Aura Missions). I can't tell how often rookies could'nt find the [Faction] Cargo Rig and choosing an Academy office as the container to get a misson item from repeatedly made new players confuse them with (Imperial Academy) station. Often enough, however to create a short "guide" to have the images that could work as answer for the most common questions. For a basic tutorial. Draw your own conclusions (well, you did and chose Opportunities). These flaws together with a total lack of fool proof mechanics - what happens when the player decides to travel to a different location than the one for the mission.
This is something where Opportunities really did improve, given their non linearity.

But repeatedly observing the same questions about Opportunities, for example, how to fit a low slot module, where to get one, and what a low slot module is in the first place, shows that there really is a lot to improve.

The complete removal of all tutorials, including the ones for the career agents also causes additional issues should a rookie find those by himself - or get them reccomended from residents of the various help chats (good that you at least consider to reintroduce a recommendation to them during the opportunities, like there was for the first iteration).

I'm really curious about what your improvements for Opportunities and the general overhaul of the NPE will reveal next.

NPE – ISD – RIP
Mane Frehm
Immortalis Inc.
Shadow Cartel
#125 - 2015-07-02 20:14:59 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Mane Frehm wrote:

Option 1 - give new players additional SPs to allocate themselves, either immediately or when they complete opportunities. Concern - new players don't know where to put those SPs to get a decent benefit out of them.

Unallocated skill points are useless without proper counsellings on how to apply them properly. There is literally no difference between the current system of attributes and remaps and freely allocatable skill points if there is no advice and counseling available to the newbies. And that is the part where large parts of the community and CCP fail big time.




I agree - and that's why I don't think this is a useful option. Also leads into the discussion about the many other factors influencing new player retention.
Starcruiser Stasarik
Doomheim
#126 - 2015-07-02 20:23:08 UTC
The difference of going from the old char creation (with some 800-900k SP) to the new char creation (with 50k) was terrible. For all the faults the old char creation had, its SP limits (and the respective ability to go out and actually do things) were not one of them.

I am all for giving new chars a big boost to which skills they start with.

Things are only marginally better with a 30-day trial, since you have a lot longer to train before the trial ends and you have to make your decision. Back when there was only a 14-day trial (or 21-day with an invite), having to losing "only" a day and a half to do this, and a day to do that, and another day for something else, was a lot worse.

Even so, making new players sit and wait is bad. The Opportunity tutorial to get them to talk in Local and start a conversation are a bit of a start, but considering how anti-social a lot of starting areas are, it isn't as good a fix as it could be.

In addition to giving new players a boost to what skills they start with, consider a few more chat channels based on what their starting race, bloodline, and school are. Minmatar go to the Minmatar channel, Amarr to the Amarr, etc. Add channels for bloodlines, as well. Finally, add some PvP-related channels to a new Combat grouping and include various channels from Content, Science and Industry, Trade, and the new Combat grouping to the default channels, all based on what the person chose for their starting school. Hell, don't even base it on the school and just put everyone into a few of the existing channels regardless.

I seem to recall that CCP have stated in the past that interaction is the single biggest influence on new-player retention, so it seems very odd to me that the only starting channels a person is dumped into are Corp, Local (often fairly quiet), and Rookie Chat (pure and utter chaos).

Adding a few default channels that anyone can join (Corp, Local, and Rookie Chat are all restricted to specific condition) would be a huge help, I would think, in furthering new-player interaction.
Aryth
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#127 - 2015-07-02 20:59:20 UTC
Phoenix Jones wrote:
Aryth wrote:


Or just give us all reallocation tokens for some hilarious ISK value for 100m SP worth.





You would wind up destroying the game by doing that. Character builds wouldn't matter. Character history wouldn't matter, character trade wouldn't matter. The reputation of a character wouldn't matter.

You'd see Industry alts turn instantly into titan pilots, you'd see miners turn into pew machines. You'd have people complaining how they screwed up their skill remap and beg for another.

That would be the biggest can of worms CCP could ever do. They'd wreck every doctrine, every character and player would be crying how they screwed up their skills, how their training and time investment is now worthless, how their characters definition and life meant nothing.

Swarms of people would max train into the current flavor of the month, and when it gets changed, huge outcry's from people about how CCP nerfed their skill retrain, how CCP trolled them, and that they deserve another or they'll quit.

It basically turns eve into what EQ2 and WOW did. Buy a instant level 90. The entry into eve for all newbies will be "Buy a character off bazaar if you want to play". New Players will feel even more disenfranchised that in order for them to compete on any level, they have to buy a character with a remap.

You want to see Eve die in a ball of fire. Do that.


Because cycling Char/ISK through the Bazaar is some awful high bar to accomplish this right now right?

Leader of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal.

Creator of Burn Jita

Vile Rat: You're the greatest sociopath that has ever played eve.
Soldarius
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#128 - 2015-07-02 21:01:28 UTC
About 2 years ago I tried to get my gf into Eve. As soon as I told her she had to wait to use stuff because she needed to train the skills to even fit the modules, she noped right out.

That being said, she is of the instant gratification type. If there were a set of civilian mods available in tutorial missions that require no or very low skills so as to get new players familiar with things...

A couple mods that would benefit for larger granularity in their stats are MWDs and webs. Equip module, get full benefits instantly is not good progression.

http://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY
Commodore Bubbles
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#129 - 2015-07-02 21:21:14 UTC
I believe that teaching newbies why these beginner skills are important is just as important as getting them into the roles they would like to play.

This problem could be solved by filling those 30 minutes that the newbies wait for skills to train with what i'm going to refer to as "Research Missions". The idea behind this is that a new player participates in a mission(s) that teaches them about a certain mechanic. Because they're actively "researching" how the mechanic works, they get a boost in SP into that skill.

This way, new players learn what falloff, explosion velocity, and tracking are, and get the necessary SP to pilot these ships well. This would also motivate new players to train core skills instead of ship skills. It will allow new players to fill out core and weapon skills while they're still actively training into that big awesome ship they saw on the Amarr undock.

I understand that this is an insane amount of development work, much more than increasing the base SP a new player gets, but CCP has historically put the effort into doing things the right way most of the time even if it's much more work.
Zappity
New Eden Tank Testing Services
#130 - 2015-07-02 21:23:47 UTC
Amber Harrington wrote:
Implants are the bonus to the game. Not everyone uses them, those who do should have an advantage for being , well, brave. By removing the implants you're going to touch one of the core principles of EVE: risk means isk.

(that is, theoretical core principles. Incursions and lvl 4 missions being better than nullsec ratting are a cancer)

It is nothing to do with risk. People routinely use much more expensive pirate sets for PvP. The problem with learning implants is that the optimal choice is to sit in station while using them. They are not 'out in space doing stuff' implants.

Zappity's Adventures for a taste of lowsec and nullsec.
Mike Azariah
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#131 - 2015-07-02 21:24:08 UTC
I started when choosing race and skill meant something about the skills you started with. I actually miss that.

But I have a question for you

Ganker
Miner
PvP tackle
Solo Roamer (low)
Missioneer
Industrialist
Trader
add any other startable professions here

for any and all of these what would be the base skills you would expect to start with to be able to act on day 1? In Rookie chat we get vasriations of this question all the time so what would you tell them, as things currently stand. 21 days, what should they train to be specificly able to follow a chosen career?

btw I love the idea of skill points or a jump in that skill as an award for completing missions for the tutorial/career agents. This makes sense, leads to knowledge of what they are being given and how it will be used. Far far better than here is 1 mill skill points newb, knock yourself out. (Because they will, literally)

m

Mike Azariah  ┬──┬ ¯|(ツ)/¯
Zappity
New Eden Tank Testing Services
#132 - 2015-07-02 21:27:06 UTC
Phoenix Jones wrote:
What do do with the +1 through +6 implants (I'm sure someone still has a +6 somewhere).

You have three options.

1) NPC turn in for isk (I'd run it about 5% UNDER the typical market order.
2) LP hand in
3) Reverse Engineer them to create pirate implants or other implants (bpc's for halo, slave, crystal, etc).
4) contest (similar to what you did with the Sleeper Blue loot).
5) Refund (they have a static cost, refund it).

There are options to this.

I liked this post - quite thought-provoking. If the implant market is a problem you could turn the current learning implants into materials and use them for the production of learning bonused pirate sets.

Also, please remove the stupid standings requirement for jump clone installation. Having to drop corp to join EACS just to install jump clones is totally stupid. And the alternative, to grind to +8, is just so bad from a player retention perspective.

Zappity's Adventures for a taste of lowsec and nullsec.
Tyrendian Biohazard
The Bastards
Sedition.
#133 - 2015-07-02 21:42:06 UTC
Mike Azariah wrote:


btw I love the idea of skill points or a jump in that skill as an award for completing missions for the tutorial/career agents. This makes sense, leads to knowledge of what they are being given and how it will be used. Far far better than here is 1 mill skill points newb, knock yourself out. (Because they will, literally)

m


It doesn't sound bad, but for new players that are coming in with zero knowledge of the game, it may be a bit of miscommunication. "Do missions to get skills, BUT WAIT, that isn't how you really increase skills in this game". Not to mention, should we really be rewarding new players for just completing missions? Might that lead to them just running missions for a month thinking its the 'thing to do' only to quit shortly after? Or push veteran players do the missions for alts they are creating for a bit quicker SP start?

Twitch streamer and EVE NT tournament broadcaster.
Zappity
New Eden Tank Testing Services
#134 - 2015-07-02 21:45:45 UTC
Give SP for opportunities, not missions.

Zappity's Adventures for a taste of lowsec and nullsec.
Bozar Malukker
Mackies Raiders
Wild Geese.
#135 - 2015-07-02 21:51:50 UTC
"We need to figure out a good way to handle all the learning implants in the game though, which is actually a difficult problem. If any of you have awesome ideas for how to handle it don’t hesitate to make suggestions"


Could always leave them. Remove remaps, adjust attributes to whatever it is decided that they will be, and add learning implants to the top of that.
Tyrendian Biohazard
The Bastards
Sedition.
#136 - 2015-07-02 21:53:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyrendian Biohazard
Zappity wrote:
Give SP for opportunities, not missions.



I still think it sends a mixed message

Go do this, go do this, go do this, get extra SP for the first few days. Then suddenly when you run out of opportunities to do, you're left with time based training. It might be greatly confusing for a new player, who is already dealing with MMO mechanics like anything out there, to think they are grasping one system, only to find out that is not how it works.

The same could be said if you were to give skills (like injecting) based on completing missions or opportunities.

I think there is enough mechanic differences for a new player coming into EVE that we shouldn't throw one at them, only to have it removed shortly after they start and potentially never see it again.

Twitch streamer and EVE NT tournament broadcaster.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#137 - 2015-07-02 21:57:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Nevyn Auscent
CCP Rise wrote:

Q: 'Attributes aren't very interesting, you should remove them'
A: Again, we agree. Team Size Matters discussed removing them on the o7 show (or some other public venue) awhile back and it's still something we are very interested in. We need to figure out a good way to handle all the learning implants in the game though, which is actually a difficult problem. If any of you have awesome ideas for how to handle it don't hesitate to make suggestions.
o/

I'm assuming you aren't wanting to simply refund isk & LP. As this would be a simple method but would cause a massive isk & lp burst. Lp could be concord LP in order to avoid faction LP tanking as a lot of FW LP does get created anyway. 'Refund' being at whatever percentage of LP stores you wanted to do. And you could always only refund ones not implanted already as any implanted people have benefited from for at least the time from announcement to removal, or implanted them knowing they would be removed. And not refunded implanted learning implants would significantly reduce the amount out there I'm guessing.

Another possible would be to convert them to a faction sensor strength set. Almost no-one currently uses these sets as they are cringeworthy to some degrees but it would retain some value on them. Alternatively fix it to general sensor strength for all 4 races, as that would actually be worth using.
Or some other implant set that provides some small bonus without being 'pirate set' levels.
Factions could use some more implant sets if you did remove learning implants as well, that provide very low levels of bonuses. i.e. Low Grade only.


On the topic of skills needed.
Afterburner.
Micro warp Drive.
Tackle.
Appropriate repair skill for race.
Light Drones

These skills should be only to 1 obviously. But if during the tutorial or opportunities it asks you to do a task, you should have started with the skill required to do that task.
Tiddle Jr
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#138 - 2015-07-02 21:58:37 UTC
They should remove these stupid Rookie ships, and associated civilian mods. Those are real obsolete stuff.

The current skills layout given to the new born character should be reworked.

0.5m skill points is a must for all newbies.

Implants related to atribues as well as Cerebral accelerators should gone.

Not sure about SP/hour standard ratio for everyone.

"The message is that there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know" - CCP
Ishukone Billboard
State War Academy
Caldari State
#139 - 2015-07-02 22:05:49 UTC
Aryth wrote:
2M starting SP is great. However, it should also come with redemptions. The worst thing is for a newbie to spend his fresh SP and then realize he made a mistake. Maybe allow reallocations for up to 30 days.




^^ this...
in respect of the "learning curve": timeline for reallocate the base of 2M maybe 6 months up to 1 year


"Attributes aren't very interesting, you should remove them"....
There "may" be players stating this for mining, pve, etc either. Doesn't strengthen the argument.
And yes, I don't like the idea to simplify EVE in general.
EVE not being simple as (insert name of bullshit you don't care anymore) is the reason im still playing it.
Mike Azariah
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#140 - 2015-07-02 22:09:42 UTC
Tyrendian Biohazard wrote:
Zappity wrote:
Give SP for opportunities, not missions.



I still think it sends a mixed message

Go do this, go do this, go do this, get extra SP for the first few days. Then suddenly when you run out of opportunities to do, you're left with time based training. It might be greatly confusing for a new player, who is already dealing with MMO mechanics like anything out there, to think they are grasping one system, only to find out that is not how it works.

The same could be said if you were to give skills (like injecting) based on completing missions or opportunities.

I think there is enough mechanic differences for a new player coming into EVE that we shouldn't throw one at them, only to have it removed shortly after they start and potentially never see it again.


I understand what you are asking and I will modify the support to

Complete career mission or Opportunity
(That was great, you know it would have been a whole lot easier if you had trained high speed maneuvering. I have one a one shot cerebral uploader of that skill if you want to get a jump start on it. After that you will have to modify it via your skill queue. Most skills do not come with the jump starts and you can buy them in the local market)

So the lesson of skills is reinforced along whith a jump start to specific ones they need at the beginning in exchange for doing the mission or opportunity. Would that cover it?

m

Mike Azariah  ┬──┬ ¯|(ツ)/¯