Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Subs were not a problem when SP were even worse, so no to you logic.

What? Coherent much? Didn't think so. Here you are banging on about how "logically" subs are a an SP issue even when there were plenty of subs back when training the learning skills was a long and horrible grind (and not fun at all because they lead to no new ships, modules, etc. just faster training times). The problem with declining players logged in is unlikely related to SP.

And granting new born players 36 million SP is not a good idea, period. It is way too much. Increasing starting SP to put more options in front of players and shorten the time to certain ships like interceptors and interdictors and so forth is not unreasonable, but 36 million SP is the equivalent of about 2 years and 4 months of training right out of the box! Potentially way to unbalancing. Removing SP all together, no. Just no.

Marketing on occasion gets a good concept and idea and brings massive people into the game, see this is Eve video.

The hurdle after that it keeping the person in for more than 1 second. This can almost solely be dealt with by addressing the basic quality of life issues people run into day 1.

1) the overview is confusing and the default sucks.
2) missions should be audio fed. Meaning the mission briefing should talk you through the entire mission read vs just reading it.
3) the newbie ship is woefully undergunned
4) the market layout is confusing.
5) there are no default ship layouts.
6) damage notifications and numbers need to be more pronounced and less spammy.
7) missions should give you ISk and some loot (so a new player can understand what goes where.

I'd fix the into a hurtle by doing this

1) create a viable 5 tab overview that works, so that the first thing people don't have to do is go looking for overviews. They can if they want, but update the default one
2) have people (the devs), all spend some time doing audio voice overs for missions. No need to do everything but the newbie missions should provide the newbies the voice of the game designers talking them through the game
3) remove the mining lazer off the newbie ship. Add a second gun and make the first mission give you an afterburner. After mission 1, all noob ships should come default out of insurance, with 2 guns, an afterburner, and a damage control.
4) the market should provide in their quick tab, fits for 2 of each races t1 frigates. So that the player can highlight and buy the equipment easy vs trying to find fits online. They will ultimately but at the beginning bypass that whale of an issue and give them recommended fits
5) akin to 4, provide them a basic pve ship layout, and pvp ship layout for 2 t1 frigates so they can have fast fun.
6 glancing blows should be small texts, and crushing hits big bold text. Similar to how most games denote damage. This provides feed back that they are in their optimal range to be doing lots of damage. Every massively huge hit, give them a visual notification
7) missions in total should start providing more loot. Faction mods, storyline stuff, every so often a mission reward should be a module vs just pure ISk. In the beginning the reward for newbie missions tends to be ships, but that stops. Return to that.

Gating is no inherent game balance. What, is dosh the issue? Every ISK faucet is under a button.

Yet, upshipping requires more funds.

I agree with your description of the problems facing a new player. I recall when I was new and mining, because I didn't know what else to do, that I could change the overview and I was missing out on more valuable ore for quite awhile. Yes, having some decent overviews would likely help.

The audio voice over is a nice touch too. And yeah the noob ship sucks. Giving a new player some more SP would also help this. As for the mining laser, pop it in the cargo hold, or an extra gun. And, IIRC drones for those races where the noob ship has a drone bay.

As for fits, I'd say put those in the fitting window and have it made known to the players. How to fit a ship is very important and something not made very clear early on. I think back on some of my old fits...definitely good examples of glue fits. And loot drops for missions early on, good loot drops, is not a bad idea either so long as it the drops aren't too frequent otherwise you'll kill the market.

SP reduces gameplay -- the amount of content -- which is the main criticism with the game.

The 'content' most people are complaining about has nothing to do with sp and is mostly complained about by vets. The content noobs are complaining about that they cant get into because they dont have the sp is not actually out of their reach.

There are bigger criticisms to the game than sp. If you truly think that the degree of a 'problem' is defined by the amount of people whining about it then get in line after; ganking, wardecs, afk cloaking, jump drive nerfs, fozzie sov, the toxic playerbase, the detached dev team, jita scams, plex prices etc etc

Whining =/= problem

That is content you aspire to participate in at some point. There is other content available for you earlier on that is suitable for you (or not). Suitonia has made several videos on that matter. If people aspire to participate or do 1v10s as early as a week into the game, their expectations and reason are not in line how this hobby works, and losing their subs (should they turn out to be inconvincible) is no loss to the overall population. In EVE, you progress from easy/low level content up to much more complicated/challenging content over time. If people want to take a short-cut, there is the Character Bazaar that opens up doors to more tools quicker. How this usually ends, is very well documented in a wide variety of ALODs.

Again: SP are not the problem; outright wrong and detrimental expectations and demands nurtured in other games, lack of knowledge, experience and potentially access to that knowledge are the problems.

Not content you are capable of handling with your limited (to put it politely) scope of knowledge aside from SP. There's tons of other things you can do. If a new players is fanatically fixated on doing 1v10, they should buy a character and see how far it gets them. If they then, however, complain about losing ships and not being able to handle fights, it clearly shows that SP are not the problem.

I am not going to repeat myself what and who the real problem is.

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Ships, modules, and playstyles defined by fittings aren't content? If not flying ships nor playing the market nor industry.. then there's plenty of space here to define "content", but the point stands. SP limits gameplay. That's its whole.