Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yes, a newbro can start with station trading and even scouting, but he will eventually HAVE to train the engineering skills.
There's no way around them. I would also argue that engineering skills are very important for mining as well.
They're quite often the difference between tank and no tank.

Also, they won't have perfect fitting skills to start off with, if they didn't have to worry about engineering skills. They'd be fully t1 fitted until they trained all the required skills, there's skills that reduce cap, cpu, and pg usage of certain modules that are very important to a lot of fits.

As far as these skills go, there's no point in having the skills if you're already going to start them off at lvl 3.
How about starting them off with lvl 3 frig and lvl 3 guns or missiles?
You much also remember what separates rookie from vet is piloting.

My point behind removing these skills is because they are mandatory skills for all pilots, and I don't feel any skill should be mandatory. Sure, you have to train caldari frigs to get into Caldari cruisers, but that's an optional path.

With all these baseline skills such as engineering skills, gunnery, missile launcher operation, navigation, warp drive operation, etc. etc. etc...
These skills only force more confusion and also reduce playability.

There are many more skills as well as piloting skill that separate new from old. We don't need mandatory skills blocking the way as well.

While sitting in rookie hubs, you have like often explained that these core skills need to be trained ASAP.

Attributes having a number can remain useful for the purpose of calculating training times in an obvious way. I think they should be kept, but locked into equal values. It is arguably a departure from consequences, but it can also be an acknowledgement of things that are boring without good gameplay reasons, or benefit. I can support that.

Implants can also be handled elegantly by allowing clone swapping in-station without a cooldown. I would also like to see a higher limit of jump clones within the same station than just one, but the importance of that is a 90/10 split: I think the biggest improvement is in allowing more in-station clone selection granularity.

Like attribute remap timers, jump clone cooldowns for in-station clone swaps are just awkward.

Both of these changes would allow attributes and implants to stay, along with the economies and third-party programs that incorporate them, while removing the negative impacts on gameplay.

That absolutely will not solve anything, though. Almost ANY new player - and most certainly the ones that are discovering the game on their own through whatever external sources, aka the ones with the lowest retention rate; not the ones that are brought in by friends in big alliance - is just going to take those extra skillpoints and rush into a Battleship hull, or something similar along those lines. And then they'll die, and then they'll quit after they lose all their money to that one loss.

If you want to fix the new player skill wall, you need to DRASTICALLY ALTER THE SYSTEM. IMHO, you should do what you did with the "training" skills - kill it all. Either take every single skill on this list and incorporate them with some other skill (because own their own with no guidance, they serve absolutely no purpose other than to frustrate new players), or give specific ship hulls stricter requirements (aka you need these skills to IV before you can set foot in a battleship hull). STRICTER HULL REQUIREMENTS IS A GOOD THING. It lets new players know what skills they should have before flying. EVE does not have "leveling up" in the traditional MMO sense, but hull skill requirements are the closest thing to it. UTILIZE IT.

If you want to benefit the truly new players, you have to take a step waaaay outside your box and actually THINK like them.

Calling that list "core skills" is very weird. Since when are things like Salvaging, Energy Pulse Weapons, Cloaking, Energy Emission Systems or higher hierarchy skill such as Rapid Launch, Controlled Bursts, Surgical Strike and so on essential or necessary for anything newbies can do? These skills, and a couple more on that list, are skills that you train necessarily in the longer run, but have absolutely no importance to any newbie activity. All listed skills in the Core Combat section are important skills to improve the performance of your weapons systems over time. If this is frustrating to people, EVE is not the right game for them.

Furthermore, I trust I do not need to remind you that CCP will very unlikely remove skills without any compensation. And this compensation will be longer skill training times for other skills, for instance, in the spaceship command section or weapon performance improvement skills.

Your "waaaay out of the box" thinking is not really out of the box at all, it's basically what has been suggested multiple times before. Does it help newbies? I highly doubt it. They can fly things faster they do not understand or can afford. You, as well as anyone else suggesting nothing but more SP right from the start, ignores the real problem for newbies: missing guidance, help and explanations and support from more experienced players. More SP cannot solve that.

that list is a bit too much. Many of them are what I would consider advanced skills.
Skills such as rapid firing, and others that focus on expertise with guns shouldn't be removed.

Here are the skills I have come up with that need to be removed, in order to reduce confusion, increase newbro piloting capability, and possibly reducing the amount of time vets have to spend explaining skills to a rookie.


Mechanics - 1x
Drones - 1x (there's more than enough drone skills to limit newbros without this)
Capacitor Management - 3x
Capacitor Systems Operation - 1x (Related modules will instead require Electroncs upgrades)
CPU Management - 1x
Power Grid Management - 1x
Gunnery - 1x
Missile Launcher Operation - 1x
Navigation - 1x
Warp Drive Operation - 1x
Jury Rigging - 2x
Science - 1x (all remaining science and engineering skills should be rolled into one catagory)
Shield Operation - 1x
Spaceship Command - 1x
Target Management - 1x

In the case of all these skills, if there is a module, service, or ability that requires them, they will be attached to a different skill or that module, service, or ability is functional at start (drones and targeting are examples of given abilities)

It may also be noted that while these skills do not take long to train, the majority of them, we can all agree, should be trained within the 1st month to a minimum of lvl 4, if not 5 in some cases. This sets newbros behind by half a month minimum.
If you're a vet, starting an alt account, this consumes the entire trial period, and if you're planning to use this character for combat, getting these skills to 5 will take the rest of the month.

Sure, you can build fits without these skills, or you can build fits with these skills at 3-4. However, if you're looking to optimize that character, which you should, then this is time spent ship spinning as opposed to piloting.

Regarding opportunities and the new player experience. Found this post on reddit by a 20 minute account holder

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3c6y1q/just_started_what_is_a_medium_slot/

You have issues explaining what a slot is.

You have issues with rookie chat scrolling way too fast to be useful.

You have issues if the person had to go to reddit to get a question answered.

I found it interesting because I had that same exact question when I started years ago.

CCP stupid like always.

They never try to keep OLD players in this game, they always think about how more easy need to be everything for new players. new noobships with DPS like destroyers, new over DPS crusers. new ability for small ships and removing every possible bonus and DPS and drones from OLD players ships...
And this idiots in CCP cannot understand one simple thing - new players stay in game ONLY if they join to old players, because old players like tree - they create events, they create strong base and they show who can be new players if they stay in this game.

But, like always, CCP just run to get new players and kill the game for old players with stupid nerfes, where old players need to refit own 100-200 fitted ships to new fit every 2-3 weeks because CCP or remove slots or PG or CPU, and noone like to do this stupid things, and this ships became useless and noone refit them.

And because noone want or like to fight against blob of frigs and cheap crusers - old players leave this game, and if few key players leave - other have no reason to play, because noone else can do events or keep alive alliance and defend area, and for this many alliances simply gone, and gone with them hundrends and thousands of players. And if they gone - no place where new players can join and play against other alliances.

I remember the time when we had many different middle size alliance and they always had roamings and fights between small alliances, and there was always what to shoot every day...now you can jump 20-30 jumps and see noone in systems and none of any small alliance with which you can have small fight...and for this people leave again, and leave again old players, and if they leave - leave hundreds with them, because only because of them many people play in eve.

But stupid CCP always just think new players will join game and stay because CCP create game more easy and because they create more damage on noobships and destroyers...New people stay in game only if they will find new intresting group of people and people who can create some events for them.

Eve is dead game now because of idiotic CCP way of thinking and because they never think how to improve game for old players and by this steps they destroy ability to grow up for new players.

The fitting window is ingame. Info windows for modules are ingame. EVE still has an ingame browser, where's the problem with consulting the internet? I do not get the problem, but then again, I still have a bit of curiosity and exploratory drive left in me. The new gamers of the last decade don't seem to have this anymore. As said: handholding.

That remains to be seen. The current situation in Cloud Ring, for instance, is a prime example of what is likely going to happen to small entities. The big players will keep the good space (JALP, ie. CFC has the only good ratting systems in the region. SMA holds the gas constellation.), the worthless junk (the rest of the region, safe for a strategic system) is "left for the daring". Iron.Guard and the other small Syndi players there are, as I know, rather well organized and can at least put up some defense against CFC, but even with the help of PL (in the last battle for the strategic system) had lots of problems. Similar situations will emerge everywhere in Null sec border regions and less organized corps and alliances will see themselves in a similar situation (already happening in Wicked Creek), where they are used by the bigger locals as stomping grounds and meat for easy kills. Smaller, non aligned alliances are "allowed" to exist and have space, they are at the mercy of the bigger players, even alliances of my own's size. Entities like PL and CFC can easily roflstomp entire regions without any issues. Living at their mercy, however, is something that I personally do not like in particular.

Your "chance to actually exist" is a more than terrible Pyhrric victory that's going to cost them time, money, members and nerves and will make them even less likely to accept new players into their ranks.

That's ludicrous. If you are curious, you figure that out on your own or try at least a bit and then ask people for help.
Prove me wrong, but I am sure this player did it the other way around. After 20 minutes, you have barely finished setting up your character, looked around the station and tried some buttons and icons and maybe undocked. He has never ever tried stuff out to gather information. Prove me wrong again, but I'd say this player's also a tad bit overwhelmed by the sudden flood of information and request and tasks thrown at him by the Opportunities, and wants to do that stuff right away instead of settling into the game first. This is also something players need to learn when they start EVE.