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If CCP isn't planning to eliminate the vast difference in gameplay styles between PvE and PvP, then part of the tutorial needs to explain the difference in tactics and ship setups. Someone who has played missions and plexes for weeks or months might think they're getting good at the game, but not have a clue how pvp works until they blunder into lowsec and find that it's a whole new kettle of fish (and then explode). My first month was like that, and after getting killed a dozen times I gave up on lowsec for about a year because I didn't understand how different it was.

remove stargates

I don't know if this has been suggested, but I believe that because there is in fact so many profession options, it's hard for a new player to fathom what any given one of them really means, much less understand the investment it takes to be good at it. Also, I remember I started with close to 1m SP, and nowadays new toons get way less than that... seems an unfair advantage.

I'd propose that new toons, ONLY while doing tutorials, be allotted some sort of "Temporary SP" that they can allocate based on the tutorial. For example, when doing combat tutorials, give enough temporary SP that the person can fly a cruiser, and give suggestions as to what skills they'll need to decently fit it for various purposes (this leads nicely into "how to fit your ship" tutorials). Then when the person does another tutorial, say industry, the combat tutorial temp SP goes away, and they reallocate SP to fly a basic mining barge with strip miners.... while doing the tutorial they can change those SP all they want to try different things.

It seems like new players are forced to "learn Eve" in a frigate when they will likely rarely fly one once they have picked a path... The basic idea is let them fly the middle of the road ships/fits between frigates and "professional [fill in the blank]" so they can get a good taste of what they have to look forward to. And finally, as a "graduation gift" for completing every single tutorial, they get to do one final allocation of SP and KEEP THEM as a head start towards their chosen profession.

I also tend to agree towards protecting trial accounts from hisec ganks in all their forms... I've had three friends try Eve, get ganked while still on trials (two with no fault of their own, ie not canflipped, straight up suicide gank, the third was victim of "feel free to loot my wreck bro"), and all three say %^*$ THIS $#@$!!! Perhaps tutorial missions could take place on a closed course as it were... noobs sharing the safe space temporarily until they're ready for the real world... I remember a newbie chat channel that you could only get into on a new account, and only for a month before being banished forever... it'd something like that.

EDIT: I recall reading that CEO Hilmar "hasn't ruled out" free to play option... this "safe space" would be ideal for a Free to Play option... let people play for free in these truly safe spaces all they want, and all of those "cannot be trained on trial accounts" skills apply to F2P in this space. Then if they really want to play, they have to pay, but hopefully by then they'll really be ready.

well there can be a better explained PvP tutorial. and along with that a 3 stage fitting tutorial beginning intermediate and advanced. Have new players understand the importance of a corp, tell them they are going to have to try many corps to find the right one for them (as in RL).

don't be a puss ass loner.

Make the actual tutorials longer and epic arkish and add variety to each path. (to show the connection of each general path, i.e one your doing business and your going through low sec have them kill a couple rats alone the way, or vice versa if they are killing rats in low sec and see a wreck then there is money everywhere.)

Add more player generated videos to the tutorials to have a real connection with game and players.

Strength in socializing! when not looking for a corp look for opportunity. network with players and meet new assets.

More in depth skill tutorial. How some skills effect over all skill time. teach new players the importance of taking it slow at first building they're core skills then its a matter of training for the ships and gunz.

And for heavens sake don't be a 3 week noob in a battleship for who can barely fly it!

it's interesting how many comments in this thread ask for things that are already there.

show them that losing ships is no big deal - you already lose a combat ship during the tutorial

don't know what to do - the epic arc is shoved right into your face and the new agent finder is very obvious (unless you have disabled WiS - which a new player wouldn't do).

needs moar isk - tutorials & epic arc give you more than enough money to buy the advanced learning skillbooks which have been removed since. By the time you start running regular missions you are more than half-way to your first bc isk-wise.

also new accounts get a (RL) email promoting PLEX for acquisition of ISK after a few days - not sure if that's good or bad for their enjoyment of the game but the idea was to combat RMT.

needs moar SP - been there, done that. I started the game with ~800k SP which were allocated based on bloodline/profession. This was removed in favor of a 2x training speed bonus which was later scrapped along with the removal of learning skills.
CCP argued that players don't know which skills they want to have at the point of character creation, that one size doesn't fit all and that it's best to let players decide what to train for as they go and learn.
They were given the double learning speed bonus for the first 1.6m SP so that after a month they would have the same SP total as in the old system.
Many players fully agreed with that line of reasoning (and some were sad about having to devote actual training time to low-SP alts).

recruitment channel already has a "no scamming allowed" rule
can flipping and similar malicious activity has been prohibited in rookie systems for a very long time.

(imo the buddy program is a problem because it incentives people to push new players into creating a new account rather than upgrading their existing trial account - there's a lot of money to be made from newbies and often they don't get accurately informed that they have to give up their character or pay for 2 accounts to get the "free isk").

more incentives for cooperation - the SoE epic arc already features one mission that a newbie (with poor game/fittings knowledge) usually won't be able to solo at the time he gets to it. People do ask for help in local and team up for this mission.

(this used to be one of the main recruitment avenues for a corp I've been in - help newbies on the mission, give them basic fittings advice and recruit them if they have a decent attitude towards the game).

point them towards player corps - the in-game recruitment interface is pretty cool nowadays (and my main's corp actually gets quite a few applications from new players through it).

So, right off the bat there are a couple of things I can think of to help out new players, being that I've recently gone through the turtorials a couple of times and recruited a couple of friends that rely on my knowledge of the game to play at all. (note: this is an alt account but I just logged on to one to post not caring which...)

First and foremost, tutorial missions shouldn't expire, if they must, then they shouldn't hurt your rep and you should be able to get them back. More so, they should be inifintely repeatable. It's likely I might start this game wanting to shoot stuff, go into low sec get blown up and decide that's not a good way to play, but I've forgotten or skipped all the tutorials that might have taught me how to play otherwise. In order to keep them from being abusive for rep-grinding make them only give rep once.

Teach players about rep and why it's important. I very nearly screwed my first account and I'm still remarkably close to pissing off the Amarr Empire because I didn't know how rep worked and took alot of kill Amarr/caldari missions on my main.

On that line, make normal rep grind contacts give out non-pirate missions very rarely. Keep empire faction on empire faction missions for the military contacts and make it clear that a contact will have a higher rate of providing non-pirate missions. It sucks when an entire night of exploding ships is ruined because you don't want to jump 20+ systems for the next contact and your current contact just gave you two kill Empire faction missions in a row.

Drones need a bounty. There is really no reason they shouldn't have one as they constantly cause problems. Reduce their drops a bit, and give them a bounty to make them more desireable targets. The bounties do not have to be as high as normal pirates but it would be nice if I could pay for my ammo without having to loot them.

Make more information more easily accessible. This game is by far the most most frustrating when it comes to finding necessary information on what I want to accomplish. Missions are not fun when they fail to tell you about necessary skills or equipment. If you NEED level 3 hacking to complete the objective, as unrealistic as it is to say it upfront, do it anyway. I about quit the game on my first epic arc when I found I would have to train for several days just to complete a mission I picked up that only said I needed hacking and a hacking device (both of which I had).

On that note, make failure messages more explicit. If (for example) I'm not capable of hacking a box, tell me that my skill and/or gear are insufficent to access that container.

Additional tutorials: market tutorials that specifically go through the NUMEROUS methods of buying and selling items including a full tutorial on contracts. I've been playing almost a year and I still don't like dealing with them. in fact make a tutorial market that new players can practice on that doesn't impact their actual isk. A research tutorial would also be nice as well as planetary management. Essentially, if it can make or save you money, you should have a tutorial regarding how.

More normal items should show up in the market. I can buy faction frigates and faction missiles without using contracts so why can't I buy faction missile launchers?

Rework the social skills. It's not obvious how important they are to earn rep. While you won't get into a situation where it's actually better to restart your character if you fail to take them like the old training skills; failing to train them at least some can significantly impact the amount of time you spend doing boring low level missions. Also, it's possible to lose effective standing with a corporation going from level X in diplomacy when that corp is -.01 if you don't also have level X of connections when you finish a mission for them...

Make missioning easier. I currently use eve-survival to look up almost every mission I do for only a couple pieces of information. Are there scams and/or webs in the mission? What is the best ammo to use? What defenses should I maximize. This information can either be provided by the contact, or in the faction details by checking their info. It doesn't have to be perfect but as long as it isn't misleading it would greatly reduce my alt-tabbing time.

Layer information. Sometimes you actually give good information but there should be some mechanism for obfuscating more significant less necessary data until the user is ready to know about it.

This one actually requires dumbing down the game, but seriously, make guns less complicated to use. Of four players I have brought to Eve, two quit almost immediately because they didn't listen to my advice and went some kind of pew-pew instead of missiles, got frustrated when they couldn't figure out why they weren't dealing damage and decided the game wasn't worth it. It's important to note the other two players use missiles and quite frankly I envy them as they are just stupid easy to use and give far too consistent high damage. (that's why my alt is Caldari, while my main is MInmatar and 4/5 or 5/5 on all projectile gunnery skills). While not as strong in PvP, they still make ships go pop there quite nicely.


Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head that either I've experienced first hand as a new player that was incredibly frustrating, or heard from people I (tried to) recruit into the game. Hopefully it gives you more to consider on how to improve the tutorials, or the game as a whole for the new player experience.

_WAter_

I'm no new player having played 7 years now, but I can definitely say that for the number of times you have changed/updated the "new player experience" over the years you're still completely failing at one critical aspect of the game.

That aspect is a clear and concise list of all the game mechanics. The current Eve wiki or whatever is awful when it comes to specifics of mechanics.

I know there are a lot of mechanics and they are often subject to regular change, but whenever I in the past had to say find out if remote repair drones repairing someone neutral would give them aggression rights on me, inevitably I'd have to test it myself to find out.

This is true in SO SO SO many situations, and becomes very tiresome especially for a new player.

Fix mining and mission running, a lot of people get scared off because the game seems boring.

I think buffing tech 1 cruisers would be a help to newbies (and fun for the rest of us) as they are considerably cheaper to fly than BC's. When I started out it took me what felt like ages to buy my first cruiser, and these days they are next to obsolete compared to BC's. Every new player wants to get into something bigger and meaner, but atm making the ISK leap to get a BC must be pretty daunting.

I know that the crime watch system is being worked on, but thought should go into how it is presented and explained to newbies. After I did finally save up for that first cruiser I blindly wandered into low sec and lost it within 2 hours!

The CIDA Files Pilot Orientation video makes an excellent point which should be hammered home to newbies; specialisation makes you a more effective player much more quickly. Pick a goal and pursue it!

Put more effort into the training certificates system and use it much more as a means of guiding early training. Its easy to forget about this and its a bit clunky in the current form.