EVE New Citizens Q&A

Now that I'm in the game for 1 month (and have played a bit ages ago, plus read quite a lot about the game) I'd like to give some feedback on my first pieces of experience, especially how I see my first days and the tutorial looking back at it now.

- Char creation and moving into the "room" view for the first time is impressive, though later I was using the ship spinning mode and entered my pilot room less and less often, and then usually as a visual relaxation or to create a feeling of immersion.

- Tutorials nicely explain the ideas of career paths. It's nice that military tutorials hint on the pvp aspects of the game (webbing, etc.)

- Missing a tutorial on Science and Planetary Interaction. Maybe there are some words about Science, but PI is basically a nonexistent concept for a starting player. Also the concept of Militia is a bit vague (see later).

- In the Exploration tutorial, some visual aid on the placement of the probes would be valuable, also to indicate to the player that all probes can be moved w shift-click and all can be moved out-in w alt-click.

- I have done all tutorials, but I have learned only from the Rookie Help channel that there is a "SOE Epic Arc" starting on Arnon. This is very un-immersive, I think if this is a lore-rich introductory mission line, this should be evident from the game, like popping up an 'agent of interest' notice or some other notification. I'm kinda reluctant to do these missions now because I have the silly feeling that I shold not 'know' about this...

- Some more hints on the following issues in the tutorials would be useful: corporations, wormholes, trading, POS, refining/reprocessing, tracking speed, optimal range and falloff (guns), missile flight distance, meaning of orbit/keep distance, how to change/save overview settings

- Generally the clarification of item names is a very good idea. How I bought some weeks later Medium Beam Lasers thinking that they are (maybe) Medium weapons, while they are actually Small...

- Petitions: it would be nice to have some stronger notice on the fact that your petition status has changed, also to tell ppl that there is some communication going on there under petition/messages.

- Neural Remaps: it'd be nice to have some more explanation on what this is and how it works.

- Security: there was some discussion on this at the forums, it would be super nice to know which players can I shoot (red? yellow? skull?), what can I loot, etc.

- Militia: what is this, what happens exactly when I join, advantages, disadvantages; I know there are like 3 sentences on this in the Militia window, but that text is somewhat vague and frightening. Maybe a tutorial on this would help too. (Also, it's not evident if this replaces my corp or it is something completely different.)

- Cloning is pretty nicely explained.

- Journal / Epic journal. This looks a bit sloppy. In the center there are only notifications with "Mission 1 complete." "Mission 2 complete" "Mission 3 complete" "Mission 4 completed" (note the inconsistency in grammar and punctuation), while the missions themselves are on the right side in a list. This is pretty un-epic, it'd be nicer I think if the mission names would be in the center, and maybe simply put "(complete)" after the mission names once they are complete. This is mostly cosmetics though.

In general, I'm pretty happy with the new player experience, and the general feedback I'd like to give about this is all efforts / energy put into developing this is well worth the time in my view. I think it's important that the player feels that proper care was put into this and he's not just 'thrown there' in the game. This experience could be prolonged by giving, with some time, advanced tutorials, or some more conceptual suggestions on which directions to go after the tutorials. Thank you for all your thoughtful work put into this, helping Eve to become a lasting experience.

I haven't done the tutorials for some time but from what I've heard from some new players in our corp these seem like sound points.

Did the career agents with a trial account lately, they still do.

Since I'm a newb and did the tutorials with each race, completed only 3 though - not Minmatar, I can say that at least three don't refer you to that Sister Alitura...

Cheers,
Tak

It's not the tutorials that refer you to her, it's the career agent, specially the advanced militairy IIRC

Clear and to the point input is always good, especially from a newbie and if done right (us older players can't really see the game with newbie eyes). CCP should read your post and take notes.

Welcome to EVE btw.

Thank you very much for this fantastic feedback!

Our developers are looking for exactly this sort of feedback and you can expect a devblog about this topic in the near future. Until then, please keep the good replies/ideas/suggestions coming!

Oh yes, one more thing: more posts on devblog please, so we have something to read while waiting for entire fleet to gather :D
I like devblogs, especially from EVE Devs, which are very detailed and interesting. Maybe some interviews with core Devs? Or posts like "Hi, I'm Jón Þórsson and I work at CCP cafeteria. In my opinion Myrmidon is a very bad vessel because..."

There is one thing I'm curious about to know what new players think and that's the default window layout ie chat window size and channels, the overview size and settings etc.

Personally as a player with a few years behind me I can barely travel in high-sec with the default overview since it's so small (and narrow especially) and I'm just wondering what new players think of it? I'd hate to see new players having to rearrange the UI the first thing they do just to be able to do anyting. And why is the constellation channel still a default channel? Does anyone ever use it?

Just something I've thought of.

3. OK, then another solution: Orca-like ship, without mining stuff and bonuses, but with a hangar. How's that?

5. No, no. The alert can be triggered only if there are no agressors in an overview. If there is at least one or you have someone locked, the alert won't fire.

6. Yes, but you are checking not only your modules. Let's see... Locked objects, overview, drones, modules, shield/armor/structure/cap gauges, watchlist, fleet chat, local, broadcasts and 3D environment. That's 10 things to check. Let's say you need 200ms to look at one thing and analyze it. That's 2s for all things (2 server ticks). If you can't propertly identify actual state whitin 200ms, then UI is flawed. So, if it takes more than 200ms for animation to go from full dim to a point when you can clearly see the state and analyze it, you don't know in what state it really is. You need to spend more time looking at the button. That's why in (real life) fighter jets all control lights are turned on constantly when activated or they blink very fast.
How does it look like in EVE client. During fast fights with many weak enemies I'm double-tapping F1 (grouped weapons). Double-tap do not always deactivate module to the point where it is ready to be activated again. I need to look at it to see if it's dimmed (module deactivated and ready), red (module is still active) or green (double-tap not registered). When I try to activate the module when state is still red, my command will be ignored and module will stay inactive when broken cycle fully ends. When I check the module state when it's in a dimmed state (but still active - green) and I assume it's deactivated, but in fact double-tap wasn't registered I will deactivate it. During fast fights you really don't have much time to analyze module state. It should always be clear whenever you look at it. If you can't be sure because of this animated state (which looks nice), then sound effect will solve this problem.
I don't know, maybe it's only me. In that case, patching a client makes no sense.

9. What's the difference? You can refit ship first making it active (as it is now) or by choosing "Fitting" option from drop down menu (for example), without making ship active. There's no abuse here. Besides, you can open ship cargohold without making it active. It's the same thing.