EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi:
I have been playing eve for almost a month now and I want to give some feed back on a wide range of activities in the game. This is going to be a fairly long rant, I will try to keep it in bullet point form and in sections. Also since I trained and fly combat type ships, there will be nothing in regardes to industry, science and trading part of the game.

I will start by remembering my first 24 hours in the game.


Tutorial

I understand that opportunities and career agents are the two side to tutorial, but I feel like they are missing some very important points that should be covered.

* There really need to be a sort of UI explaination page for anything beyond the simple shields, armor and hull. Each UI that covers your screen, ie, prob scan page, industry blue print page etc, need to have a screen shot/ingame label that explains what each number mean, and how the pages operate. By now, I still don't quiet understand reprocessing and industry UI with the yellow ! on various items and efficiency factors. It would be even better if opportunities cover this, and in addition explain some of the relevant skills that helps a particular task. ie Industry skill when you are taught the industry page.

* Industry career missions has way too many courier missions that essentially teaches nothing to new players and needs to be shortened or changed.

* exploration tutorials needs to explain the difference between a regular data site and a ghost site. It is very easy for new players to focus on hacking mini game and not realise they are being locked on and killed. Also the cans exploding after two failed attempts should be explained as well. I understand there is a message before warping into a ghost site that is slightly different than normal sites but newer player wouldn't know what it meant.

*Weapon tutorial/introduction missions need to also introduce relevant modules/rigs. Right now the career missions are "fit this weapon, go shoot these guys" and thats it. A good introduction on damage enhancers like Drone damage Amp, Heat Sinks, Tracking Enhancer/Tracking computers, etc modules will be immensely helpful for players to understand fitting. A difference explaination between small, medium and large variation of the same class of guns could also be helpful, ie 75mm, 125mm and 150mm railguns. A good overview of the ammunition is also needed, especially for projectile's varied damage and range compositions. Or the Auto Target/Normal/Assault/defender/percision missiles.

*There needs to be a tutorial on tanking. Perhaps not bog down new players and immediately force them into the armor or shield tanking meta, but atleast introduce some modules that can make your ship tougher, general background info on how shields are weak against EM and armor weak against Explosive, how resistance stacking is actually calculated, why does my adaptive inv field doesn't shift resistance like a reactive armor hardener, what are armor plates and shield extenders etc etc.

* A more comprehensive guide on fitting would also be good. I have an idea of giving a player with a race specific ship, and one of every module relevant to the ship (civilian version would be enough) and let the player mess around with fittings. Also explain calibration, CPU and powergrid, (and maybe later sub systems).

* It would also be great if eve indicated to players that ship progression is not linear. IE firing big missiles at frigates doesn't kill them faster proportional to the size of the missile. EVE university have a few very detailed guides on signature resolution, explosion radius and tracking. Perhaps a simplified version to give a new player general rules of thumb, like if the target is not moving you can hit it easier or if you use weapons equal or smaller to the target class you'd rarely miss.

* A good tutorial on scrambling and webbing is also needed. It is not enough to have a mission that require you to scramble a NPC ship. It needs to explain warp core stablisers, heavy webs on battleships, the fact you can stack webs and how it helps your gun to track enemies. Maybe a mission that give the player a small window to tackle an NPC ship before it warps (may require a bit of scripting) and what warp bubbles look like and why they are dangerous.

* Logi/ECM needs a good tutorial too. Especially the four major ones used by NPC during missions, Target Jamming, Sensor Dampener, Tracking disruptor and target painter and how to combat against them. There should be a mission, perhaps one of the last missions for the advanced military career agent, that lets players fly a logi ship and repair NPCs as they fight each other (lot of scripting needed here).

* Lastly but the biggest issue is skill tutorial. It is a huge beast that needs more handling rather than just "queue up skill now". or require players to read every skill they have, then look at "required for" then look at module's "requirements". For a starters, skill books and where to buy them need to be introduced. Then, a short list of good skills that is useful regardless of which path the player wants to fly, like fitting skills and navigation skills. Then it would be good to teach a player how to set his/her own goals, to ships, to weapon modules, to mining barges etc etc and how to plan out training towards that goal. Lastly, explain attributes and SP per hour.


Combat

I want to preface this section by saying I am not prepared to low/null combat, my damage is roughly half of what a fully trained pilot can do. Most of the combat I do is within missions and anomalies with some DED signatures.

Continued:

* Level 1 and level 2 missions are too similar, in difficulty and rewards. I completed both type of missions with practically no tank on a destroyer. The most efficient missions are the ones thats in your system and does not requrie you to jump gates. Salvaging is not worth it and the only reason why I stuck to them is the standing boost that I need to reach level 3/4. With a few exceptions like the Blockade level 2.

* DED signature site's ship restriction needs to be removed/tweaked. I understand this is to prevent large ships taking on smaller sites with no risk and essentially farming for escalation. But it is absurded to limited some of them to frigates and destroyers. Cruisers especially tech 1 cruiser should be able to access all of the sites, there is little point requring players to consistant swapping ships between cruiser and destroyer when your exploration ship literally cant explore and get locked out.

* Standing issues: I am at very high standing with the caldari Navy, I think almost 7.0. I didn't realise that sometimes the caldari navy missions require you to kill ships from other empires. At the start of the game I figured the tag "Gallente" was no different from Guristas/Blood Raiders and are just rats you can kill for money. Now I am literally one or two missions away from being killed on sight by the Gallente federation. It would be great to explain standing to a new player when they first take a mission from a non-career agent, ALSO, remove the standing penalty if a player decline a mission that requires you to kill other empire ships. Now I am stuck between missions, if its a gallente related mission, I'd have to wait 4 hours to decline it. Or fly to Gallente space and do level 1s for AGES. Even though being KOS by an empire is not a huge issue for an experienced pilot and I almost never venture into Gallente space, I DO NOT want to be locked out of a huge section in the universe just like that.

* Story missions are BORING. It is almost always bring item, get implants. It also makes no sense for me to do a bunch of Caldari Navy missions and suddenly a story agent two systems over that works in distribution asks me for a lot of Omber. This feature breaks up the monotune of non-stop missioning, but are often just a few jumps on a tech 1 industrial. Perhaps make story missions extremely difficult missions, or tweak the reward so you dont ALWAYS get implants, maybe large sum of loyalty points or cheap faction loot., maybe allow you to repair standing. Anything rather than "bring item to X, get implant Y" would be great.

* I personally think doing missions for a particular faction should have more consequence than standing increase. When I started missioning for the caldari navy, i expected to be rewarded with navy ships and more huge conflict type encounters. But it turns out it was just another corporation.

* Somehow shift a player from level 4 missioning solo, to group level 5s or incursions. Like an introduction/incentive to change would be great.


Race/Background

I am a tube child, caldari pilot from the military school. Aside from the school, I feel there is very little difference between me and any other pilot.

* I feel like factions need to be more specific. Aside from the obvious ones like Amarr pilots start with small energy turrets and caldari starts with hybrid turrets, there should be more consistent differences and themes. For example:
Caldari Pilots should start with some extra skills in missiles and shield tanking.
Amarr pilots should start with some extra skills in capacitor efficiency and armor tanking
Gallente Pilots should start with some extra skills in Drones and Blasters
Minmatar Pilots should start with some extra training in navigation, speed boosting and rockets.

* A good intro-movie for your specific race would be GREAT. If not, then a general back ground story. I picked caldari at random, but now I know some of the story, I would love to start Amarr, without losing my SP. Each empire's capital worlds and various story important locations should be explained

Continued

I dont want the tutorial to be just a fitting list and go "train these, buy these, fly this, and dont ask why".

I want a tutorial that gives the player some modules and a ship with a fair number of slots and go "mess with this until you think it may work, go try it out, then mess with it some more to improve it".

The thing i'm trying to say is that, new players will have fail fits that have modules that conflict with each other and is inefficient. But I feel like new player should atleast be aware of what type of modules on what slot can do what. A tutorial that says: On low slot you can fit these, and this is it's draw backs.

Example: Cap recharger, Cap battery, Power relays, cap booster all helps a ship's cap. I don't want the tutorial to say: use cap rechargers because its optimal, but say "if you have cap problems, these could help".

This is actually something im in agreeance with.



They did. Its called Burner missions. And there are also missions where you just fly to the gate and try to survive a barrage of damage. There are missions where you run to the warp gate and have tons of enemies spawn above you. These missions already exist.




New expansion every 6 weeks isnt what id call a slow burn style. But okay.

Thank for your reply:

I understand it does warn you. What I meant is that the game need to say "hang on, these guys are not just bandits, they control a huge region of empire space, if you **** them off, you won't be able to go there unless you can dodge them". It makes perfect sense lore wise for the caldari to want to screw up gallente operations, but for a new player like me, the game didn't really tell me that these guys have much worse consequences for bad standing.

What you said about story missions make perfect sense and thats why I say they are boring. You are getting the same story missions regardless of what type of missions you play. Why? Why does a mining ship get the same "story mission" as a pirate fighting pilot? Why does a industrial haulter get a story mission exactly the same as a miner? Story missions are boring because they are the same for everyone, and rewards are generic as a result, imagine if they are tuned for miners and haulers and reward them with a cheap faction mining module, or a cargon expander. Rather than, everyone gets implants, everyone buys omber.

I understand the LP store. But realistically the most LP are earned through concord and incursions. Getting good with a faction should be something special, even if its a cosmetic reward. Example, maybe they reward you with a navy skin for your ship, or give you a rank in the caldari military that you get recognised by. These are simple, but more meaningful than simple numbers.

As incursions and lvl 5s, the difficulty jump is pretty drastic, and they are meant as group content, I meant a introduction like "here are some pointers on how to find people that play like this" or some incentive to take the risk and start flying lvl5s in low sec, once the player found a group, they settle down and incentive isn't needed anymore. Honestly I dont see a lot of lvl 5 runners compare to level 4 runners.

Burner/scount missions are hardly risk/reward. I can finish level 4 ones on a t1 frigate fitted with no guns. Risk means there is potential to lose something, if I can fly at 4-5kmps, and warp out before the battleship can even lock on to me, there is no risk, its just a chore to run through to get to the next mission. The missions I want involve some skill, and punishment if you fail.

Thats an interesting view, thats saying learning as you go, but the issue is, currently in EVE, there is no method of learning aside from learning tons and tons of tool tips. The comparison with WOW is somewhat flawed, because you don't have access to level 30-40 spells when you start, and these spells are drip fed to you when you level. In EVE, all of those things you can use almost immediately when you access a good trading hub, and most of the time new players don't even know they exist. There in lies the issue. When you drip feed the player one spell at a time, its fine to learn as he go, because he never have to learn more than 1 spell + 1 talent in wow. In EvE its not fine when you have access to huge amount of modules that are never introduced to you but are hiding in the market somewhere.

I found the key point to good "variety" of fits is to introduce all sort of useful modules to the player and let them tinker. It is always a small picture to say "when you run into a problem, then you can fix it by looking up the solution to a specific problem".

For example, if I want to jump up a size on my shield extender fit, I could fit a reactor control system, and vastly increase my tank, yet if a player sticks with medium cruiser ship with medium modules, he never run into the power grid problem and thus never realise he could jump up a class. If we let him know it is possible, he have more options to tinker. I know a lot of new players dont have problem with Cap, its just an example.

Personally, I learned this the hardway, when i realised you could fit up class modules, when you could work around armor tanked ships by giving it more cap and shield tank it. At the start of the game I always thought modules are like rigs, medium size goes on medium sized ships.

Online wiki informed me that -4.0 is KOS. I am currentl -3.97. But game mechanics aside. Isn't it the issue if I had to look online for the threshold for KOS? I only really noticed the problem when I flew across gallente space and realised they had the same name as the faction I was killing. And they weren't pirates.

I know security story missions do exist. How is that any better? Why does the story agent closest to you determine what type of missions you get? Doesn't your action speaks more volumnes than location? Why can't your current agent just say: " I have something special for you" and give you a one-off special mission?

Mechanically, the game rewards you for earning LP with a corp, what I am saying is there should be more... meaningful. I can buy a navy mega with the money I earned, I can buy them blue prints etc etc. The key here, is that in the context of the story, I am basically joining the caldari navy to the extent where I should be recognised as one. I gave up a lot of standing with the rest of the factions and I am loyal to this one corp.

Regarding level 5s. thats exactly it. Everyone knows level 5 exist, and yet not many people run them, are they risk averse? is it not worth it? Isn't that the issue to be tuned. Level 5s need to be worth it and more incentive for people to move over to them.

Firstly, http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Faction_Standings

Says -5.0.

So youre saying you didn know there existed a faction called Gallente when you first started the game? Even though its listed as one of the four factions you can start out in? And didnt it pique you as odd that the security mission specifically went out of its way to inform you that this will harm your standings with Gallente, even though it had never done it for any other faction?

Secondly, different agents provide different types of missions. But lets say that it did work like you mentioned, and someone who is doing a security mission suddenly gets a security storyline agent that is 20 jumps away in a battleship because thats the closest security mission agent. What would you tell a new player who said "well this is stupid, i have to fly 20 jumps in a slow-as-f*ck battleship even though im simply trying to grind my standings, when theres a distribution storyline agent 4 jumps away"?

Thirdly, you said, and I quote, "When I started missioning for the caldari navy, i expected to be rewarded with navy ships". Well, you do get rewarded with navy ships.

Your gripe with this, seems to be with the fact that you dont get something that only you, as someone who has gained sufficient standing with the corp, can use. Something that no other person who hasnt completed the missions and gained sufficient standings, can use. But whatever module, ship, or skin you receive is necessarily going to be tradable and therefore anyone can sell and/or buy it.

On the flip-side, games like World of Warcraft or Star Trek Online, bind the item to you and therefore prevent anyone else from using it.

Quite frankly, I prefer Eve onlines item methods, far far better than that of permanently binding ships and modules to you forever. I suppose you dont?

Fourthly, With level 5 missions, yes. People are very risk averse, mission runners, miners and hisec industrials in particular. And yet at the same time, there are many people who run level 5 missions and even corps created around running them too. If the reward isnt at all worth it and the reward with regards to risk, far better in hisec, no one would be running level 5 missions, because it wouldnt be worth the risk.

And thats kinda the point. What percent of hisec miners would risk going into lowsec to mine? Id say its just as bad as people who run level 5 missions versus the rest of the hisec mission-running community. But people have done the risk-reward calculation in their head, and deemed it worth doing.

On the flip side, it would be stupidly imbalanced to make the level 5 missions so worth doing that almost anyone who finishes with level 4 missions would want to dabble in it.

And yes, we already consider Incursions as being very imbalanced, risk/reward wise.

Op, my honest impression is about something more general of this game.

I played WoW for many years and I like it very much, while I am playing Eve now and it's an amazing game in my opinion.

BUT

I have the impression this game has low resources because even if a average Eve player spends much more than an average player of other mmos ( almost everyone has one or more alts, many buy plexes and now many spend for injectors for sure ), population is really low and the result is that developers need to focus on basically 3 kind of players:

- Newbies, they spend at the beginning but easily abandon the game.

- Normal PvP and Pve players, that are about half of the population and not very demanding persons, but can come and go from the game for boredom/real life.

- Assholes, cheaters, gankers, persons that like to harass others. Don't underestimate the number of this ones, they are many because this is basically the only game left giving them satisfaction when they play and they have no other place to go, they defend every mechanic that favours them stubbornly and surely are a steady money base for CCP, maybe the most solid one.

My opinion is that developers are focused on the last 2 of the groups, giving some content to the second one and leaving some nasty mechanics untouched for the gankers group so they will be happy and never rioting.

Newbies are done with inectors, they warn them it's expensive but they introduced them and advertised them quite enough, attention was focus on this aspect, poorly done tutorials are of no interest for developer

I think that you need a different perspective. It sounds to me like you are coming from the perspective that is programmed into you from other MMOs. I am familiar with that perspective since I had it at one point, having come to this game from WoW.

Eve is not a linear / scripted MMO like other games with a very specific start, progression and end point or end game. Eve is a sandbox and an exploration game. You are not in a hurry to get to level cap so that you can panic to get "geared up" and then show up to your job at scheduled raid times to keep chasing after a best in slot gear set that is constantly being pushed further away.

Eve is a game that focuses on play in a more accurate sense of the word. Meaning that you are just playing around with the game to have fun. You are not "working hard" to get to level cap as quickly as possible or "working" at getting geared up so that you don't get left behind.

Further Eve is a much deeper MMO than most others and since there is not one path through the game if they wanted to do in depth tutorials for everything you'd be spending the first month + doing nothing but tutorials and you'd never get anyone to last past the trial period.

In my opinion a much better way to approach this game is to just dabble in things to get a feel for them and do more of what you like. You can do most things in this game with very low skill investment and by very low I am talking minutes in many cases. There is absolutely no need for you to become fully educated and fully skilled on something before you even try it. This is not rocket surgery here where you need to go to school for a decade to get a PHD in something before you are even allowed to try it out.

Play around with the game and have fun. Do a little reading on something then give it a try. Ask friends questions when things did not go as expected and if you enjoy it, then read a little more and try a bit more etc..... To play this game you need to be a bit more self-motivated than most other games and have a bit of explorer in you.

TL;dr
If you are looking for a game that will hold your hand and walk you through the entire game from beginning to end game content then go play pretty much any other MMO out there. Eve has no end game, there's not a path through the game and there isn't even a point to it other than having fun.