EVE New Citizens Q&A

Would it be an idea to allow the exporting of damage logs? For some of the theory-crafting i do from time to time it would be nice to have more then 1000 entries availeble at the same time.

Missunderstood this one too and had to undock a second time.

I'm a returning player on a new account, who previously quit after running out of free time to play the game. After spending two hours obsessively creating the perfect character, I was excited to go get my first ship!... only to find out that I already had the ship, and was apparently in the middle of fighting some drug runners or something. Apparently while I was contemplating whether to go with the red mohawk or the blue one, this **** was off fighting pirates without me. Okay cool, it makes no sense that I'm out here, but Aura is telling me to fly around, mine, and shoot people, so I guess it's not too confusing. Everything is going fine until I get back to station.

Aura is now telling me to sell something, and then immediately buy something else. Seeing as I have a cargo bay willed with veldspar I sell that off. The devs knew I'd have some ore lying around! Great game design! I bet this station is seeded with a bunch of 100 ISK trinkets for new players to buy! Oh wait, it's not. The asking price of every item seems to be 5-10 times my total net worth, so I guess I'm just supposed to sell my body to bittervets to get the funds I need to continue the 5th tutorial mission... Luckily I remembered that there was probably ammo on the market, so I bought 100 rounds at a huge markup because I figured the reward for the tutorial mission would offset my losses, except there are no rewards for the tutorial missions so I just spent 1/10th of my money on ammo for a gun I don't have yet. I don't even know if a brand new player would know to look for ammo, the civilian gun doesn't take any and I don't think I saw anything explaining that most guns don't work that way.

At this point I start to contemplate why the Minmatar gave me 5 grand in the first place. Wasn't I supposed to get some sort of Tribal Sponsorship that explained that I was the greatest of my people and subtly hinted that the Republic really didn't have any hold over me but was desperately trying to invoke a sense of national pride so that I'd stay loyal? 5 grand does not invoke any sense of loyalty in me. Thanks for the nickle grandma, if I find four more and fuse them into a higher denomination coin I can buy a gumball! Now I'm going to go play xbox and leave you alone to think about how you've been forgotten by the family.

Now Aura is telling me to fit my ship out, except I'm in the awkward position of not having anything to stick in the low slot, so I'm just standing there listening to Aura's encouraging words while I wait for her to realize that she hasn't provided me with the tools to complete my task, and she forgot to tell me that I'd need some modules before I started buying **** so now there's no money left for what I actually need. I know she's a robot, but if you could program her to feel shame at that moment I'd really appreciate it.

So I stumble around the menu for a bit, confused as to how I'm supposed to get the money to finish the tutorial, when I find the rest of the "opportunities", and realize that I'm not actually doing a tutorial, I'm just completing achievements. So I click the help menu to try to find the real tutorial which I am convinced that I missed somehow, and see that career agents are still a thing. I figure I might as well head over there and do that since Aura has apparently become ******** since I last played this game. On my way to the career agents Aura keeps popping up to congratulate me for trivial **** like turning on auto pilot or jumping through gates. She doesn't tell me why I'd want to do any of these things, she just tells me I did a good job hitting buttons.

I get to the career agents and decide to start some missions to finally re-learn how to play this game. I'm handed a skillbook that I am not told how to use, and upon trying to inject it I learn that I already have that skill anyway. I complete the delivery mission, then turn off the game to go do something more productive with my time. I'll probably be back tomorrow, but not before I leave passive-aggressive rants on message boards across the internet.

Seriously, I don't even get why the achievements are called "opportunities". I know this is EVE, but getting podded, selling crap at a loss, and doing pointless tasks for no reward do not seem like opportunities to me.

"Why don't you take the opportunity to go die in a fire. Welcome to New Eden, *****" -Aura

Hi my name is Dorven Ravick. Completely unrelated to the old Dorven Ravick, who is dead now. I went through the entire tutorial again, and wanted to revise my thoughts. The starting system is actually really fun to play around in, and helps you learn a lot, but I only discovered that by immediately closing the opportunities and just flying around. I think I see what you were going for with opportunities, but I still think there are a few issues.

1. The opportunities go too fast.

If you attempt to follow the opportunities like a regular tutorial, you'll fly your ship around a bit, shoot a guy, shoot a rock, then dock up and try to figure out how the market works. Then you're told to leave the starting system. The player has now been directed out of the starting system and hasn't even gotten to play with any of the cool civilian items/blueprints the rats drop in the starting system (and they've likely sold the one they took off the first guy they shot). This is not ideal. I think the solution is to have opportunities be triggered by a player action before they show up on your screen. Of course, the player should still be able to manually select an opportunity they would like to attempt, but I think it would be better if say, the market tutorial popped up when you open the market. There could even be multiple triggers. Perhaps the market opportunity pops up when you hit a certain isk threshold, or when you pick up an item (maybe a special tag?) that has value to an NPC buyer in the system. Some things could even be on a simple timer. Let the player explore the starting system for 30 minutes before suggesting they jump out. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, and I think the onslaught of tutorial popups is going to direct newbies away from it too quickly.

2. It breaks suspension of disbelief.

I explored the spawn point a little more this time around, and as far as I can tell the story now is this: I'm a rogue clone who, after illegally becoming a capsuleer and being given a ship by my underworld buddies, shoots all my former friends before docking up at a Republic station with no problems from the law. I dislike the rogue clone thing for personal reasons, but I couldn't say it was a bad decision if there was some explanation as to why my empire is suddenly my best friend after I commit what I imagine must be several felonies. And why is it that I attended the Republic Military School if I'm part of the criminal underworld? And if we're not supposed to be rogue clones now, why do we spawn outside a rogue cloning facility? I think the pilot should start in a station. Let them get their bearings, then direct them to fly to the rogue cloning facility to fight bad guys. That would help keep immersion, and would explain to the player who they are, and where they fit in the EVE universe. I think it might be a good idea to break the navigation tutorial into a more standard mission. The other opportunities feel like things you're meant to stumble upon, but basic navigation is a necessity to interact with the game. Doing so would also allow you to easily add a little more context to the first minutes of playing EVE.

3. Opportunities can't decide if they're tutorials or achievements.

Some opportunities tell you how to fly around and shoot people, others tell you to join a player corporation and die in a fire. The first two instruct the player on how to better interact with the game, they are tutorials. The second celebrate some milestone in a player's career, they are achievements. We should not be instructing players to get podded, and celebrating mining a rock is a little underwhelming. I think the "achievement" opportunities should either be broken off into a different system, or removed entirely.

4. Career agents suck.

I originally though the career agents were a better introduction for new players, but after playing them again, I can say with certainty that they suck. I think opportunities need to be iterated on before I would stop directing players to career agents, but they really make the beginning portions of the game a drag. I hope opportunities are refined to the point where career agents can be removed from the game completely, and on that day I will celebrate!

5. MORE TOOLTIPS

They don't have to be tooltips, but give me a way to learn what optimum range means on a salvager. Does it work best at that range, or is that the max range? I thought there were some the last time I played (if I turned them off disregard this section), but I think they would be a big help in filling in the gaps new players have, without forcing them to leave the game to look something up.

That's all I got. Trust in rust, and may your duct tape never run out.

Since CCP gave new players a bunch of skills already trained up to 400k SP, It seems pointless that the career agents give us skill books that are already trained up, like for example I got the Motion Prediction skillbook but It's already trained up to lvl 2. What kind of rewards should we get instead?

Is there any plan to restore the tutorial? Even the ISDs in the Rookies channel make no pretence that the Opportunities have any use, and accept that they have to explain ad nauseum what to do in the career missions, as Aura no longer pops up to help with the mechanics of what they're supposed to do. Even that doesn't happen until someone has told the newcomers to press F12 and find the Career Agents, because there's absolutely nothing to tell the player that they exist.

When I started, I must say I wasn't actually that keen on playing Eve, and only came to try it because friends of mine insisted that it wasn't just another PK game and that there was plenty to enjoy. I didn't tell them I'd got a trial account, so I came in with no help at all. Aura greeted me and guided me through all the strange things (I've never played another space or shooting type game), explaining everything I needed to do, so I felt I'd be able to cope in this universe. She appeared between career missions to give explanations on things like scanning, explained some of the jargon (I wish I had a million isk for every time I've had to tell a rookie what the "third room" is since Aura isn't there) and gave out numerous modules, as well as hints for "mini-careers". After completing the whole tutorial I promptly subscribed and made another account, trying a different race. My experience was even better because I knew which parts I could glide through and where my knowledge was sketchy and I needed to pay more attention. When I finished that I contacted my friends, joined the corporation and am still here after three years, with several more accounts.

If my initial experience with the game had not been that positive, if I'd been left as the bittervets seem to think I should, with "Here's a ship, go kill yourself", I don't think I'd have lasted two days in the game. Whilst I realise that many have the attitude that that is the how it should be, that the lack of help in the beginning weeds out those who don't belong in the game, I don't accept that this is CCP's intention.

It is thanks only to the sterling work by the ISDs and some dedicated vets in the Rookies channel that most newcomers make any sense of the Opportunities or ever find the Career Missions. It makes absolutely no sense that Aura was removed from her rôle of guiding the newcomers through the first 50 missions and explaining game mechanics to them, like how to mine, how to move to another system, how to sell, etc. On that note, CCP also had a brilliant video on scanning but that now appears as "private" to most people. Even if the interface has been changed, it's still a lot better than just being told to go scan, which is what the opportunity "To Boldly Go" and the exploration career missions do. It would also be preferable to the assorted veterans trying to explain in a couple of lines of text how to accomplish a 3D operation.

It's understood that CCP wants to make a new tutorial, hopefully including a new video (please use either Aura or another nice clear voice like hers) but until that happens, would it be too much to ask to have the original explanations and video available?

Personally I found more help by looking at the older tutorial on Youtube videos. The tutorial I'm speaking of is where you start in a station and have Aura as your guide through the basics with some free skill books/modules given + some easy missions to complete.

I do think it would be possible to keep the current Career Agent + Opportunities system IF you start out in the station your school's career agents are located instead of starting in the middle of nowhere with no idea of where to go as is currently the case.

I also agree on that the rewards for Career Missions have to be updated. One idea could be to remove the skill books for skills you already have and instead add free basic modules or some extra ISK.

So, the game does still have a "tutorial" of sorts in the form of Career Agents. Given the open nature of the game and what CCP is seeing about new player retention, it doesn't need a massive tutorial. What I think the NPE (New Player Experience) *does* need is an Opportunity or blatant message directing players to hit F12 and/or Career Agents much earlier on.

The first few Opportunities teach you just enough to figure out how to reach the Career Agents and then they do a good job breaking the game into smaller, educational chunks. The Career Agent mission rewards are also so good for new players I'd consider them essential.

If new players learn to hit F12 within the first hour or two and figure out how to start doing Career Agent missions, they'll probably be okay. Less fortunate players may rage quit before they receive that game-saving advice though.

Also, to those who think the "Rookie Help" channel is the answer, it's way overwhelmed most of the time. I haven't been able to get a single question answered there because for every 1 answer, there are 5+ questions flooding the channel and I don't think anyone even sees my question.

I don't want to make it worse and just keep asking it though so I gave up. I still lurk there just to see what other new players are asking and to gather what tips I can. I feel bad for the helpful folks in that channel trying to keep up with the tide of confusion though.

TL, DR: No tutorial works, but please seriously consider guiding new players to Career Agents ASAP!

I have had a few hours time to get adjusted with the game over 3 days and a good chance to gain new skills and level them up, acquire some credits and mess around the starting system. Have experience with multiple space sims, out of which X3 is the one I spent most time in, sandbox/open-world games of any genres, mostly Paradox games (so I actually have a great deal of experience with clunky interfaces and games that need tutorials/guides in order to be played). EVE is much better put together than most of the existing space games and most of its features don't seem that complex individually, but in it it's harder for me to put the information together in order to understand what I might need to do for each new action I'm interested in. And while I mostly like the UI, some times is not that well thought through and I think those annoying issues about it is why EVE attracts so many misanthropes, as it reputation suggests.

Wanted to get started asap, so what to do? Do the tutorials some people said and there are even guides of how to start in a minimal time to be proficient at a certain profession. Can't disagree more, it's the best way to lose new players.

The tutorial itself is not necessarily bad. Why handhold players if the rest of the game will not be like that? However, when it pits the players against those limitations of the UI, it's a recepy for creating internet trolls. It's that annoying or worse. The individual issues aren't that bad, but there are a lot of weird situations that a new player might find themselves in.

Got a large list of issues that I've ran into which I gathered in notes in the game and kept a journal too, just in case I might need to do a guide for newbs and for individual activities, as the existing ones seem better suited for returning players that start over then for new comers.



Have 2 examples from the business tutorials missions 2 and 3:
Fitting the ship was a bit weird. When I opened the screen after stipping the existing components, I expected to be able to "fit" the ship. Nope. You have to actually open a secondary window, as much as I understand. At least the inventory. Why?? It's just a ship overview window, it's misleading. However that wouldn't be that big of a problem if the mission would explain enough in order to do that with only information you have in game - but then again, if you have to explain it....
Also, in mission 3, I have bought the required resources and mined and processed the remaining when I couldn't complete the missions with that workaround. Still doesn't work:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/321251624522760182/0ACD26226435EF71AD395E39367F50A000990C56/

The reason why I think this should be improved is because it has no learning value to the player. There are games that add apparently "unnecessary" complexity that allows the player to understand game mechanics that they would otherwise skip or won't remember unless they would fail in those early attempts.

Another improvement that can make the entire gaming experience better and would make most basic tutorial useless would be to add better tooltips that list all of the items that infuence a contextual action. Learn from Paradox games, instead of disabling contextual options, grey them out and allow the player to understand in a tooltip the reason why they can't use that option. A good example in EVE is the requirements tab when it comes to skills. With the fitting window example I gave above, there are 2 ways that might have been better: 1) the window contained all the needed items (or not have a misleading name that create incorrect expectations), 2) was pressing the "hardpoints" from where teh weapons disappeared, those should either have functionality or give a reason why they have any functionality even though teh mouse overlay changes over them.

The reason why I insist on how basic functionalities work is because I think the format of the tutorial missions might be better, considering the game won't handhold you and I would instead want more dynamic information available in game to improve the learning experience (which let's be honest, it's one of the best things EVE has to offer a new player).

The fact that the game is a MMO and other can chime in is not really a good solution to the limitations of the tutorials and what keeps a player in or not.

Also, I did got useful suggestions on steam forums and help to the whatever wasn't clear to me for various reasons in the Rookie chat window, despite their limitations.