Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I remember as a new player, getting into a thrasher and covering with civilian autocannons, shield boosters, armor reppers, and hull reppers because they didn't use ammo, wanted to save money, and needed all my systems repaired. It doesn't matter how much SP you give me as a new character, it would have been invested poorly and really hurt the understanding of the skill system.

By starting at 0 and gaining about 2/3 sp/s it forces you to plan and look at skills because you need to think ahead.

OK in an attempt to offer a balanced view...

1. It wasn't Many years ago we all started with 850k characters with a pre determined set of skills.

2. CCP has since changed this to having an accelerated training queue for a month with a lower starting SP

Now the current system allows much more freedom in assigning the skillpoints so that after 1 month you could potentially have a much more useable character than if you had been under the old system (learning skills aside).

I feel a but coming on.

BUT does a truly new player actually have the understanding of how to create this superior character?

Probably not so we rely on the community and their finding a corp to advise them on how to take advantage of this first 30 days

Now accepting this last statement as true then would a new player benefit from having, say, 1 million freely assignable SP on day one?

NO, the people who would benefit are those making alt characters who already possess some knowledge of the important skills. In fact it is likely that a new player will rapidly assign this SP with no knowledge of what to do with it.

The additional question comes in where do they get the skillbooks they need?

Do they have to wait till they have isk? Are a pre-determined set of skills automatically available till that SP is assigned? Can they assign it randomly to any skill in game?


So realistically I would propose the better question for CCP to ask itself is... should the system revert to the 850k pre-builds or remain as is.

I remember when I started my first character, a mining character. Back before I understood anything, back before I knew what different markets were, or jita was.

I sold my ore outright for a pittance, even though back then mineral prices were far lower than they are now. I mined in a Bantam (iirc, since the changes I've forgetten all the mining frigs outside of the navitas. ) . My isk hauls were measured not in hundreds of thousands, or millions, but tens of thousands.

It took me an entire day of playing, easily 8 hours, to grind my isk for a catalyst, because cruisers were multimillion hulls I couldn't fathom affording. The catalyst was a bad investment to boot, when I realized between my skills and fitting restrictions on the ship that there was no way I could possibly fit as many lasers as I thought I could to it.

It was still an upgrade though at the time. It then took me a similar grind to get my first hauler.

Eventually I got taken in by a corp of mostly noobs or casuals. By time I stopped subbing that character, I flew a hulk, spent a lot of my time in lowsec, manufactured, had perfect refines, and a PI empire that brought me billions.

Now I live alone, soloing life in a 1 man corp, running missions, with only public chat channels to keep me company. I grind a plex per month, and train skills, with the hopes of doing things that I will probably never be enthusiastic enough to actually do. In a sense the game is better and easier for me than it ever was. Living that existance, mining in a bantam or cata, making maybe 1.2 million isk per day if I were to grind all day, would be eternal living hell for me now.

At the same time, I have never had more wonder or awe at the game than at that time. It was never more mysterious or interesting. I have never once in my time playing since leaving that corp, had as much fun. Literally no game I ever played kept me as interested, immersed, or captivated as eve has with a Bantam. Nothing ever gave me the thrill of my first scam like eve. Nothing ever gave me the satisfaction of min/maxxing my PI empire, running gatecamps with 300m worth of PI in a nanoed mammoth, or getting popped in my prowler at a bubble camp out in syndicate. No other game gave me the sense of community and fun I had while in that corp, actively looking forward to logging in to see how everyone is doing.

The pure nostalgia, fun, wonder at seeing a battleship up close for the first time, the tension of getting jumped at a gate for the first time, the absolute amazement of jumping into my first wormhole, to spend hours probing down all the sites, with my terrible skills, only to not run any of them, or to grab a single cycle of high end ore just to come back and show my corp I did it, this is all lost now. I don't think I can ever get it back.

And yet Eve is still an amazing game. It is still fun. I still accomplish new things. I still make plans to do things I've never done before. I'm still here.

SP is irrelevant to player retention. It is irrelevant to the fun of the game, and so is isk, ships, skills, and content. I've probably never had more fun in any ship than I had in my Bantam when I first joined. And it is still there, in the hanger of the station I originally started in. I could never bring myself to get rid of it. If I ever resub that account, the first thing I will probably do is go spin it in station, and go mine some scordite, for old times.

I would rather make the first... 90.000 (dunno how much it actual is?) SP free to apply.

I think new players need extra remaps instead of SP. It takes awhile before you figure out what you really need to train and by that time, you would have already burned through your remaps just experimenting. A year wait is a long time for a remap.

They quit because they don't know how to fly a frigate and don't realize they should be flying frigates. They put all their time and effort into skilling up for big, expensive ships and they lose tons of money when those big, expensive ships die actually faster.

What new people need is more realization that frigates are good. Your suggestion pushes them to learn even less about frigates, and waste even more resources on failing with cruisers or batleships when they have no experience.

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And a good portion of those corps that have a SP requirement are doing it to keep from hiring people that they have to spend extra time pilocing, and they are mistaken about something: the best pilots are the ones who learn PVP as early as possible, and when left without an experienced PVP corp to lean on, they learn things they shouldn't learn which makes it more difficult to train them later.


Now this is entirely true and probably very important. New players should be given several remaps that expire after a time, so they are driven to make use of them. Perhaps 4 free remaps which expire after 3 months, and 1 free remap (as they get currently) which does not expire.

My experience of this:

A starting character right now gets the +3 across the board booster for 35 days and 2 free remaps

I focused on mining to generate isk for future improvement to my char, within the 6 weeks (2 weeks free trial + 4 weeks signup). Within that time I had a retriever. Had I focused on frigates I would probably have been flying assault frigates or interdictors.

The best advice I can give a new player is to make the most of the booster and focus on a key area you are interested in. Train into that by setting your attributes for the majority of skills you will learn for the initial profession and then remap back to a more balanced spread with one of the free remaps.

I am more than happy with the current situation regarding SP start point and rate of acquisition.

rabble rabble....my usual.....time spent in lower end cheap ships enforces skills and tactics that will help higher end more expsensive ships from blowing up as often, at at least as often to noob tard mistakes anyway.


My usual as well....had a friend who had a rl money setup good enough to etc to plex to sale buy an alt (this in the good ole days of 300 or less plex sales mind you, not todays 600+ mil sales) who got himself a very nice char to speed things up. And he still quit eve. As unlike the rest of us cutting teeth in t1 trash frigs and cruisers he was popping t2 and stuff like BS's early and often. Moral of the story....sp does not make a good player. Nothing magical happen in a hac if you can't fly a frigate or t1 cruisers worth a damn.

Embrace the cheap deaths my advice to now players...day will come when damn near everything they die in costs lots of isk.

There exists many crews very noob friendly to learn pvp if that is desired. Eve U comes to mind right away. Want more freestyle, R v B. A good frigate or cruiser will find a home there and by mnay accounts will teach you alot of things. The "greatness" of the blob it may not be. But as a jaded 0.0 vet...sometimes 0.0 is not the "greatness" some people make it out to be.


Well that and courtesy of several rebalances t1 frigs and cruisers are pretty damn good these days. Its not the crap I had starting out in apocrypha for sure at any rate. Run and fit well many t1's can hold their own even against t2. CCP gave noobs their hookups here. Back in apocrypha to speed up the hac use I ran navy cruisers till I had them. talking 80-100 blow ups. Didn't have a choice really...the (edit) non-navy/faction t1 was jsut not that good at the time.

Actually a level I PvP Epic Arc along the lines of the SoE lvl I would be really good for new players and old players new to PvP alike. Have the NPC's behave as the incursion NPC's do, could make for a much more interesting Epic Arc series.