Player Features and Ideas Discussion

An idea for CCP Ghost

I was listening recently to the most excellent Tinfoil Factory podcase where they were discussing the new player experience and ways to engage new players more fully in the complex and exciting universe of EVE.

They were talking about the fact that new players start off, as part of their backstory, as being from one university or another and it got me thinking of all the films I've seen where there is a military academy of some description and on completion of the training the graduate students get their postings.

This made me ask the question "Why do characters become capsuleers?" - Part of the canon of EVE is that they do so because of the untold opportunities that New Eden affords the enterprising capsuleer and one of the best ways of taking advantage of those opportunities is joining a corporation that can spring board you into your new life as one of the new "gods" of EVE.

We've previously been looking at the new player experience from the point of view of teaching the new player about EVE with a set of in built game structures but maybe this is the wrong way to look at it...or at least not a complete way of looking at it.

I guess the crux of my suggestion is "why not trust the sandbox?"

So what do I mean? We have a great community in EVE, helpful, knowledgable, fun, exciting and very experienced. Let's use them as the new player experience...or as part of the new player experience.

So how would it work? There would need to be checks and balances right?

So what I would envisage is that there would be a new player experience that would test a pilot's abilities and give them a score for completing missions and various tasks.

On completion of the tasks they would graduate and be able to either go it alone (we shouldn't force people to join a corp) or they could apply for their first "posting" to a corp. Any corp can become involved in the university initiative and have a "Rookie program" but they have to accept that they get very new players that they're going to have to hand hold. The corps will be able to state their main activities to give the students a better idea of what they'd be getting themselves into. The top students would be very sought after by the well know corps whilst students who didn't perform as well would be snapped up by the less well know corps (very EVE).

Students could rate corps on their first month experience so corps would slowly gain ratings so that students know how good they are at providing for new EVE rookies.

A toolset would need to be built around this to enable the new functionality and the corps might be given a new pilot incentive bonus of some description for taking part in the program, although getting good new pilots is an incentive in itself.

Advantages -
- It's a real world model that everyone already understands
- It means that right from day 1 new players get real people interaction and we all know that provides a lot of stickiness for a game
- It will provide a level of hand holding you simply can't get through an automated system
- It will get rookies into what EVE really is much faster
- It will support multiple play styles
- It means corps get great new pilots
- It establishes early on that EVE is a meritocracy where you are what you make yourself
- It's easily measurable in terms of success and customer experience

Disadvantages -
- New tool sets would need to be built to support the experience
- It will tend to drive people towards a corporation system
- the experience that rookies get will be heterogeneous based on how good the corps are at dealing with newbeans

Interested to see what people think.

Darius Falc

Not quite. Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of EVE Uni and what they do but this would give every corporation an equal potential share and interest in the EVE new player experience. The new player experience provides an initial rating of a player and then any corp can take them on and train them. Some may go to EVE universtiy but this way you build a good experience into the new player experience without taking the risk that they'll happen to find EVE University.

Also by building the tools around this, a graduation system, a job placement system, a corp newbean rating system, you provide a seamless journey for newbeans into the life and heart of EVE which are the corporations.

Darius Falc