Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Really? People keep saying that flying T1 with only 50k SP is perfectly fine/it's why EVE is great/HTFU. You're right in that a player with only three days experience under their belt probably shouldn't be flying a Vengeance. On the other hand, I'm hard pressed to give a reason why they shouldn't be allowed to.

For myself, I worry about the breadth of choice offered by the ability to move into different ship types greater than that offered by crossing factions. Most roles in the game are represented in the Frigate size, so starting a character off with a solid competency in a single race's ships is trading the "Pulse Laser vs. Autocannon" option for being able to quickly branch out into AF/CovOps/Ewar/Inty. Other than the AF, I think most of those only require a single V (beyond Frigate) to be trained to sit in the hull.

And really, if I had my way new players would start with a lot more SP than that.

If I understand correctly; CCP will remove the learning implants if something of the same value on the market can replace it?

Idea on this...

I'm assuming you're talking about the very basic of skills, when you refer to this.
Targeting, warp drive operation, base capacitor, cpu, and pg skill (drawing a blank atm on names, lol), and many other base skills.

Instead of removing them, incorporate them into a training program; HOWEVER, they're instant skills.
Meaning, when you train them, it only takes 1-5 seconds per level.

They can be used to train newbros on skills and skill training and how they apply to stats, while also giving them a sense of gratification. These skills have the added bonus of players experiencing the benefits of skill training and how it effects them, much sooner.

On Starting Skills...

I personally think the starting skills are just fine where they are. I have yet to see a situation where a new player was unable to participate in any portion of the game. The one exception I can think of is WH exploration because getting scanning skills up far enough to probe yourself takes a little bit (like a week...oh noz).

Keep in mind that the more SP you grant, the quicker the skill queue becomes boring. Veterans aren't affected by this but new players are. If the first skills they train take a day or longer, they'll quickly become bored from the lack of perceived progress.

THIS KILLS PLAYER RETENTION.

Everybody can agree that one of the key 'progress' feedback in EvE is the "Skill Training Completed". New players get a sense for their first month or so that, every day, they are becoming more powerful. Eventually they appreciate the skills that take 10, 20, and 30 days to complete for just one level...but to gain that appreciation, they must first appreciate the baby steps.

With this in mind I think that ACTUAL problem is that the Career Agents offer duplicate skillbooks, and non-essential skillbooks many other posters to this thread have referenced (Such as Hull Upgrades or Trade skills). A new player - even one specializing in a specific game style, regardless of type, should be learning at least two skill levels every day for the first two weeks. That keeps the aforementioned 'progress feedback' intact and meaningful.

The skill system exists not to create barriers to entry, but to create appreciation for what can be accessed with committed training. Let's be honest here, every single tech 1 ship of a given faction can be used with basic effectiveness in a matter of two months. That isn't a barrier to play in any way. All tech 1 frigates can be used with basic effectiveness in one week or less. Will a one week old character in an alliance blob likely not last long or get blapped frequently in pirate gangs? Yeah, what do you expect?

Will they appreciate those first kills and aspire to training towards a role that best serves their newfound home corporation? Yes, they will. These are all good things and proof that the current starter pool of sp is not the problem. How the new skillbooks at the beginning are seeded to a new player could be improved.

The ISK/hr concerns weren't for me, if new players want to grind isk to play for free, they'll do so from day one, and it's possible.

I'm a returning player that rolled a new account. Whilst it trains to what I need it for it's essentially dead, as I don't want to commit it to a corporation / alliance that is hostile to the corporation / alliance I eventually put both in after fozziesov.

With that said, I understand your points.


I'm fully behind a new player mission agent that adds loyalty points that can be converted to skill points in select skills like tanking as long as it had a limit to the number of converted SP and a limit to the skills it can be applied to.

My .02


I think new players get too limited career options. We consider "mining and missioning" a career, or hauling and industry, and this is too boring and anti-interactive.

Missions are anti-interactive: one man one mission. OK they might bring friends and that's nice.

But the mission itself is too much like the mission or quest from other games that are not PVP centric and they come from WoW and go right into mission grind, seemingly just trading a sword for lasers and playing the same game.

New missions that cause competition between players that's intended could be a huge help. Getting your damsel stolen looks like greifing and in spite of how many will say it's not, it still looks like it and that's all that matters.

I would recommend then missions that actually cause players to fight each other. This could be along faction lines even, similar to FW. Still a PVP - PVe hybrid could be hard on noobs. I would do it like this:


Level 1 hybrid missions: More than one player getting the same mission that has only one mission item. He who can fight his way to it gets it first. No other engagement allowed.

Level 2 hybrid missions: In this kind of hybrid mission, Concord won't respond to players shooting each other. Gate filters would (and should) limit ship types and player SP if at all possible. You see if you can get them shooting each other, that good, but if you create an opportunity to bittervets to harvest easy kills, then you will (almost appearing out of thin air) get people who will have nothing to do all day except take L2 hybrids with their 100 million SP and claim they are not greifing.

Level 3 hybrid missions: These could be object or kill target missions whereby there is no Concord protection in the deadspace pockets, but each "room" is warp interdicted so that the only way to get from one to the other is to use the gates. This takes the engagement up a notch. First player to take out the boss wins. If it's an object retrieval, first to manage to escape with it wins. Imagine the lolage!

Level 4 hybrid missions: Elements of level 3 but I would include an opportunity for players adhering to pirate factions to get in on this fun. Imagine that you get a hybrid mission that is all about killing Serpentis for example. All well and good. Now imagine that someone wanting faction and LP from Serpentis is getting a mission to stop you from a Serpentis agent. A huge opportunity for Sansha sympathizers was missed with incursions. Imagine special incursion missions where the pro Sansha players (which were numerous back during live events) could help their Sansha bros along?

The idea behind all this is simple: get the players shooting each other. I know some would say that the players already do this "without any help from CCP" but they would also say that's not happening enough. On that line of thought, CCP should be removing all SOV mechanics and letting the players handle that too. But they do not. Therefore it's not a violation of some "rule" if CCP were to create PVP/PVe hybrid missions to goad the ants in the ant farm into a little conflict.

Once players reach that mission grinding and ship cherishing point, where their only success is ISK and shiney bling boats, they are lost to the core aspect of the game. Get new players who are going to run missions shooting each other and getting blapped early and they will have a seamless transition into pure player content. It's not helping the game that it can be treated like a single player video game.

Seems to me a whole lot of time was spent on the entire skill mastery system. If you do believe those skills are actually reflective of a 'mastery level' and you want to get people reasonably competent fast enough that the game is interesting through the first few months, why not base the give away SP on masteries?

I.E. I am a new minmatar player. After doing the tutorials, or opportunities, or preferably both, Aura asks me to tab to Interbus Ship Identification Tool, and pick two frigates. I select the probe and the rifter; all of the skills required to achieve mastery level 1 on both frigates are granted or levelled appropriately.

Now obviously there is a ton of room for min-maxing and aiming for masteries which gain more SP overall , or always taking frigates with different weapon systems, or always taking the exploration frigate. I would assume Gallente would always be the way to go due to the Tristan. Truth be told I wouldn't be opposed to just having mastery I in all T1 frigates of one race the first day - just figure out how much SP this is more or less, and give all existing players that much freely distributable SP.

After 12 years, the base skill point gain could use some looking at. Basically get rid of attributes, make the base rate of SP gain equal to having 30 in each attribute. Take each learning implant and make them a flat +% SP gain/hour; this would encourage people to have lots of cheaper implants. A full set of +3's would be +15%, a full set of +5s would be +25%, to an already accelerated rate. I completely realize that SP is a sensitive subject, especially for veterans are proud to have been with the game for a long time.

In running AT practices, it's something that routinely comes up - SP, SP, SP. We have people who have been playing for 2 or more years that still can't fly half the ships out there. I fully realize that the AT is a microcosm, but think of how new players must feel; it will be two YEARS before I could reasonably fly maybe half of that. That is a long commitment. In truth EvE is something that takes a long time to develop a finer palate to appreciate, but you do need to survive that initial period. SP should of course not be trivialized, its one of the things that makes EvE, EvE, but it is currently, and has been, a huge hurdle to getting people into the game.

Of course you can! The Slave set is still worth the price even without the bonus to training speed. My characters with Slave sets in don't even need to train skills anymore.

Rookie chat rules ban recruitment in that channel. This is why there were little or no answers. We sometimes bend the rules by listing a few new player friendly organizations but basically that was not the place to ask.

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I know this is going to be questionably received, but I stand by it.

NPC null needs love for new players to have a PVP sanctuary.

If I was a new player now, where would I look to? I'd look to either Karmafleet or Pandemic Horde, or some other null entity that is looking for pilots en-masse. They have extremely available and accessible content and income. You don't have the SP to do WHs properly, FW is better played by alts than mains due to permanently ruining a faction standing, and most people get bored of hi-sec activities quite shortly, not to mention learning how to properly exploit incursions and level 4s takes a good deal of time and SP. In a nutshell, and probably quite an intended one, Sov null is a fairly attractive place to go as a newer player provided there are competent organizational structures in place. I personally have seen lots of players in my NPC null alliance leave for one of the 'newbie reddit sov' corps, almost exclusively for income purposes; there's no way to make money for the average new player in some NPC null locations.

Not everyone wants to be part of that though, nor do they have the time commitment to sign up for that. While they want the thrill of small gang pvp, its not practical to live in NPC null; there's no bread and butter income. If they were in Hi Sec, missions/incursions would keep them far wealthier than they could reasonably spend, if they were in low/FW, again, they would have a huge gimmick to keep them flying. If they were in sov space, get your anom running ship! Where does that leave NPC null? Some of it has good LP stores, but not all. Take Syndicate, which still has an LP store worse than the HS SoE one. Not only does that not make intuitive sense (why would pirate LP earned in dangerous NPC null be worth less per LP than the same in HI?), it makes the region unable to support new players, when it is exactly the sort of region that new players that do not want a large social or time commitment could thrive in. Putting accessible, available income in places creates content, which creates trade hubs, which create content, which create bigger player organizations, which create content. Belt ratting in lowsec literally earns more than belt ratting in null due to security tags.

There's a lot to be said about SP, ship balancing, UI, etc. Little is being said about making places to live as newbies actually viable and conducive to fun. People want a place where they and a few friends they may be trying the game out with can have an NPC station to live out of, have good income opportunities, and have lots of opportunity for small gang fights. There is too much emphasis on Sov null; its not for everyone.