Assembly Hall

New Player Experience Roundtable

Hello Capsuleers!

As you are probably aware, the past few weeks have seen the deployment and development of the Inception NPE. As such, I’m looking to acquire some more structured feedback from the communities who have the most interaction with people fresh out of the tutorial; to bring points to CCP at the Winter Summit that I hope will help to further guide and shape the NPE in the right direction. As such, if you run an organisation that accepts newer players fresh out of the NPE, regardless of the space you operate in, the activities you deal with, or the size of your group, or even if you don't primarily focus on newer players, we really want to hear from you.

The primary thrust of this will be a voice session on Discord on January the 7th in 2017 (Time to be decided, but likely 20:00/21:00 start), where we will be able to discuss and dig into aspects of the NPE that you feel are lacking, could be changed, or added to (as well as what you feel it did well) in more detail, with the aims of identifying what changes would affect the most players positively and providing constructive feedback to Team Genesis.

However, as I recognise that not all organisations will be able attend this, and I don’t want the scale of this feedback to be limited by such constraints, I’d like to ask people to fill out a quick questionnaire that I hope will help to highlight the key areas that affect your group, and post them in this thread. To help make it easier, I’ve thrown example answers into it, but feel free to go into as much detail as you want.

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Organisation Name: [John Smith’s Newbro Emporium]
Organisation Size: [Roughly 30~]
Organisation Goal: [Mining/Industry]
Area of Operation: [Lowsec]

What is the most common question new players ask?
[How do I find better ores?]

What mechanical misunderstandings (if any) do you see new players make?
[They do not understand that Ventures mine more than Thrashers]

What Topics aren’t covered in the current NPE that you think could be?
[BPO research/copying]

What areas of the NPE do you feel don’t adequately cover the topic (if any)?
[None that I can think of]

What are main problem areas for new players in the new NPE?
[They can’t find their way to the rally point]

What are 3 main „careers“ new players undertake in EVE? (i.e. what gameplay feature do they use the most)
[I see most players gravitating towards FW, Hisec Missioning & Nullsec PvP. I try and provide a different experience though!]

Any other thoughts?
[I wish new players would have 2-3 different overviews to introduce them to overview settings, as they currently don’t utilise them well. Say, 1 general, 1 for mining, 1 for travel to get them started.]

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Thank you for your time, and I look forwards to hearing from you guys :)

Area of Operation: Rookie Help Chat

What are main problem areas for new players in the new NPE?
Too structured, less exploratory. The NPE encourages players to follow an exact script rather than discover on their own. They end up having to reset to checkpoints because they did something "wrong." Part of this is the deficiencies in EVE's UI on a broader scale, but a lot of this is the structure of the NPE.

What are 3 main „careers“ new players undertake in EVE? (i.e. what gameplay feature do they use the most)
Mining, obviously. Exploration. Missions. In that order, it seems. Maybe it's just a matter of who makes the most noise in Rookie Help, but it surprises me a bit how many rookies, especially alpha rookies, are all about doing exploration.

Any other thoughts?
My belief is that EVE's terminal weakness is its UI. Most of the default UI settings are bad. Default window positions/layouts are bad. Every vet knows that it takes at least an hour to set up the UI to be able to get the most basic situational awareness. And all those situational awareness tools are spread out across so many different UI systems, rookies especially would not even know they are important. I feel like if the UI was more integrated and natural, the strength of the NPE would be far less critical, retention would be higher as players would be able to find their place in the universe both literally and metaphorically, and the game would simply be more fun. After being away from the game for a while, the UI almost kept me from bothering to come back, because doing literally anything with the UI is an unpleasant chore rather than being a fun part of the experience.

Edit if i'm not too late:

Area of operation:

Sheroo, helping with the end of the epic arc fighting dagan

Problem:

Simple but fundamental misunderstandings about loadout. In this case, the lesson most seem to fail to learn is that you can dock up and switch from rails to blasters to deal with tough targets. Most get that they can switch ammo, but they often end up with the worst guns possible for the fight that requires them to max out their DPS. Many seem to mix tanks (usually both buffer and active but occasionally also both shield and armor.) Some seem to end up with civ gear still fit even that far down the line. It would also be nice if they knew how to do a fleet warp by that point as well, especially since EVE is supposed to be a social game (which doesn't teach players how to use the occasionally lackluster social tools.)

Organisation Name: [Brave Newbies]
Organisation Size: [Big]
Organisation Goal: [Large Alliance]
Area of Operation: [nullsec]

What is the most common question new players ask?
[How do I make isk with alpha ships]

What mechanical misunderstandings (if any) do you see new players make?
[Mixed Buffer/Active tanks. Wrong Ammo types, automatically assuming bigger ship = better) not knowing how to use the titan/blops jump bridge]

What Topics aren’t covered in the current NPE that you think could be?
[How to customise your overview/how to get a overview that is at lesat 50% useful unlike default The difference between Ships and their Navy/Fleet/Tech 2 Variants.]

What areas of the NPE do you feel don’t adequately cover the topic (if any)?
[N/A]

What are main problem areas for new players in the new NPE?
[They can’t find their way to the rally point or Aura doesn't register them looting items for the task.]

What are 3 main „careers“ new players undertake in EVE? (i.e. what gameplay feature do they use the most)
[Ratting in a Vexor, Being Tackle/ECM in fleet, or exploration here and there]

Any other thoughts?
[Overview settings need to be adjusted, nobody at a decent skill level uses the default and the UI overall is a hassle, Minerals are dropping in price so mining is less profitable for newbies while more profitable in the end game with orcas rorqs and porps, simultaniously without standings or closeness to agents, missions just arn't happening in nullsec so players need something other than "Speed tank a site in a vexor" to do for isk, personally I reccomend more events like the cold iron and purity of the throne events. Able to be done by a lot of ships, give good rewards with chance for escalation and fun rewards like skins.]

Whoever does this, dunk wardecs please.

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Organisation Name:Operation Magic School Bus (not a corp but an initiative)
Organisation Size: 1 or many depending on how you count
Organisation Goal: Help newbros get a decent start in the game
Area of Operation: Career systems

What is the most common question new players ask?
What is the Best 'x' with x being ship/ammo/playstyle/race/module . . .whatever

What mechanical misunderstandings (if any) do you see new players make?
The have difficulty with ammo and drones

What Topics aren’t covered in the current NPE that you think could be?
Non Autopilot travel through systems

What areas of the NPE do you feel don’t adequately cover the topic (if any)?
Exploration 3/5 is a very rude awakening for a lot of players

What are main problem areas for new players in the new NPE?
The unwillingness to actually read and process the information presented. They have been in too may games where you can hispeed through to get to the good part.

What are 3 main „careers“ new players undertake in EVE? (i.e. what gameplay feature do they use the most)
Mining, missions, Exploration

Any other thoughts?
Lots and I hope I can make it to the round table (if invited)

m

Organisation Name: Mercenary Academy
Organisation Size: 300+
Organisation Goal: Training w/potential graduation into Mercenary Coalition
Area of Operation: Lowsec Based, semi-nomadic

What is the most common question new players ask?
The majority of questions I get are about fitting and skill plans.

What mechanical misunderstandings (if any) do you see new players make?
Isk spent does not equal better in all circumstances. Yes those purple mods are awesome, but it's about cost benefit ratios. I've found that the loss of such ships quickly fixes that behavior though

What Topics aren’t covered in the current NPE that you think could be?
As a PVP focused organization, the ships we use are varied and will change how we engage in combat. Since Alphas are racial locked, a description of what each races ship bonuses are (similar to the small section near race selection on the ship tree) would be extremely useful, telling the player, before they're locked in, how their chosen race fights.

There's a portion of the NPE where you're flying with the assembled fleet and your guide tells you how to look at ships. If it taught you how to show info, new players would now have a skill that would let them educate themselves about new ships, and subsequently everything else in the game.

What areas of the NPE do you feel don’t adequately cover the topic (if any)?
The biggest flaw in the NPE is that while it teaches you how to do things, it doesn't explain why. You know that you should orbit, but why is it a good idea? Don't need a breakdown of what transversal is, just tell them it's hard to be hit when you fly in circles.

What are main problem areas for new players in the new NPE?
Mostly getting ahead of themselves and have to restart because they did something faster than the NPE told them to.

What are 3 main „careers“ new players undertake in EVE? (i.e. what gameplay feature do they use the most)
Exploration, Ratting, Faction Warfare

Any other thoughts?
I think the framework of the NPE is in a good place. I don't see it as a method for fully teaching the game, that's my job, but as a set of rails to get them pointed in the right direction I find it immensely helpful. Minor improvements would help for sure, but I think it's beneficial to the community to have players teaching players. It helps us grow, encourages involvement, and fosters comradery

Bumping this due to the proximity to the event. Please get on the discord and your points together, as I look forwards to discussing with y'all.

Final reminder that the Roundtable will be live in around 1 and a half hours. Install Discord and hit this link - https://discord.gg/5gtYdAM - to participate.