EVE General Discussion

\o/ Mission accomplished!

Hi all,

Just wanted to give my perspective of being new, noob, confused, poor, alfa and in all senses underdog in this game.

I am a newcomer to this game, trying to get by as I can, mostly by running level 1 missions to get enough IKS to fill my railguns

I don't go to null-sec, low-sec, whatever-sec solely because of the belief that NPC's (almost anything drifting around, actually) will insta-kill me; So what's the point.

As I understand it, I need to train skills I don't understand, for several months, before I can actually do something in "less-than-high-sec" (well, besides getting killed, that is )
My hope is, I don't get bored with this high-sec-grinding, before that.

I don't mind the PVP - Got killed once, and the attacker ("Shadow Healer" or something) took the time to explain to me what I had done wrong and what I could do to prevent being such an easy target; Learned more in these 10 minutes than a whole week of mission running .
It's just that I can't really afford this "loose ship, buy new ship, buy fitting, rinse and repeat", if it happens too often.
I'm a casual player (Big house, Demanding job, Big and Demanding wife) so cannot invest endless hours mining to get the ISK

Really appreciate what was mentioned earlier, that goonswarm (is that a coorporation?) hands you ships for free, but I feel I should somehow be able to fund my own ships and pay for my own mistakes.

Kind Regards

Of course it lacks tiers/levels it is an open classless system. The tutorial is there to teach you at least some basic elements of the game and now it gives a boost in terms of starting assets.

And no it isn't "level 1" then "level 1,000" it is just a big...."stew". Some players have lots of SP, some have lots of ISK, some both. And the longer you play the more "human capital" about the game. So yes, the guy playing 7 years is going to have a large stock of human capital whereas the new player won't. And there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. Even if you were to somehow force new players to sit and watch hours of instructional videos there are still going to be some elements of the game that are best learned by doing them.

But there is also a misconception in your posts Trasch. It is not simply new player vs. old player. That is not at all the reality of the game, at least not entirely and when and where it does happen is pretty small. For example, GSF is a combination of new and old players, and yes there will be competition inside GSF there will also be cooperation. And GSF will compete with other entities in game as well.

I would be interested in seeing what retention is like for new players who come into the game and go straight into GoonWaffe on day one. I bet it is quite good compared to the player who comes into the game and tries to "lone wolf it" or just simply ignores 99.99% of the other players. Why is there this difference? The GoonWaffe guy is coming in with a significant support network. Hell, there is a damn good chance that after his first fleet he could have a billion ISK...especially if he says something on comms that is hilarious and also wrong. Everyone laughs and the FC says, "Everyone give the new guy some ISK." No **** that happens.

The guy who tries to play the game by himself....he is setting himself up for near constant frustration. Can't fly this, can't fly that. Have to wait to do this or that. Struggling to get ISK. His Goon counterpart has an organization that is going to give him lots of advice on what to train first, how to use a given ship better, how he can start making ISK right away (yeah not alot, but they are laying the foundation for better things to come). Goons are great at seeding their NS market. And whatever our new Goon can't find something on the local market there are ways to essentially order it not unlike Amazon. And all of this was set up by older more experienced players.

ehi... i thought that goons usually stay docked up and spin their ships...
has something changed recently?

lovely
lovely meta indeed

that's why we push them in NOT NPC CORPS
then they must be lucky enough to join a good one


EDIT: for reference
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6877848#post6877848

I disagree with you completely. I have both Omega and Alpha accounts here and I play multiple MMORPGs, this is not the only one.

I also have 2 alts that play quite a lot with the actual, new, alpha players. The main problem with the alpha state here is that overall game mechanics wise it is comparable to that of World of Warcraft. Yup, you heard it right and correct. Whereas it needs to be comparable to that of GW2.

That overall difference in functionality is gigantic. The alpha state here is more like a "free demo" not an actual playable way to maintain a main character, that's the problem. And a lot of alphas, a fairly large percentage, are simply alts.

The skill injectors are great, as they are a tool for new players to catch up a bit and I would take them a bit further, the 2 things in particular that come to my mind:

1. Make more skill injectors with the upcoming changes to PLEX, for example have skill injectors for 100k skill points, 200k, 300k, 400k, 500k, not just the current ones.

2. Give a new player a free NOT TRANSFARRABLE 500k skill injector when upgrading from alpha to omega and using actual CC or other payment method via their account website. This would not be applicable if player is using just plex, but only to those that make an actual monetary payment to CCP.


Those kinda changes would make players stick around more. The biggest turn off to new players, is the same exact one that was there before the alphas, that is how long the skills take to train up and when they realize just how much disparity there is between them and vets and that there is no chance whatsoever for them to even remotely be anything other then cannon fodder in PVP because of the types of ships they can fly. THAT is when they give up and quit and what they need help with.

Instead of posting here like this you should go make an alt and talk to them. I happen to do so because I'm a returning player and there have been so many changes to the game since last I played, I am still kinda new in many aspects now.

O, and the ones that do venture to low / null, are either alts or just unaware yet of what it is they're doing. Some of them join a corp just to see what its like and the corps drags them out there while they have really no clue what it really is, and then again, they quit rather then going Omega.

But putting further limitations on it is the exact opposite of what needs to be done, alphas need more incentives to go Omega and a lot more functionality.

But there is one problem with this narrative: that when the game said, "Here is your velator, now **** off," the game grew. When things were being tweaked more in a direction you are advocating that growth stagnated and then turned into a decline. Is there a proof of causality here? No, causality is hard to prove. But it is suggestive that changes that reduce HS content has probably not been good for the game and player retention.

Targeted war decs? Gone.
Can flipping? Gone.
Hulkaggedon? Gone.

What do people want to see removed? Freighter ganking, suicide ganking in general, prohibit low sec status people from HS...

Just some of the things that have been lost/removed and things people often complain about. And just off the top of my head. I'm sure there is more.

And yes, there has always been trade hub camping. Going to trade hubs to look for targets if you don't have the standings to use locator agents is a good alternative strategy. It is not a 0, 1 thing here. But we have certainly moved more towards 1 (trade hub camping). How many 2, 3, 4,...small number war dec corps are there now? IDK, but it doesn't seem like many.

And look, the stagnation/decline could be both removal of HS content and the overall direction of MMOs. They are not mutually exclusive hypotheses.

Hulkaggedon is gone because it was no longer as profitable for goons to manipulate the market to leverage their T2 BPO's after the changes to invention no longer being negative ME. And Hulks were no longer the only ship worth mining in. The fact Hulkaggedon is gone is a good thing because it was a situation where you simply couldn't compete with people who had special items that were never going to be obtainable for anyone else, and where 5 / 6 of the barges/exhumers were useless. And we now have burn Jita/Amarr instead.

Can flipping isn't gone, it's less common because the other barges are actually competent now, but people who hulk mined didn't need to jet can that much anyway, but I've can flipped other miners happily in belts since all the changes. And the crime watch changes instead introduced suspect baiting, which catches as many people as can flipping used to catch.

Targeted war decs also aren't gone. You just have to actually hunt corps that have assets in space, which with the new structures are becoming more & more common. Though I agree that there is a need to tell if a particular pilot is on or offline, and would like to see locator agents give that information, and also some kind of general 'locate the members of this corp' system (with number limits, so it only locates the 10 most recent logins from the corp or something, thereby also giving you the probable online members of any decent size corp).

So yeah, a lot of the stuff people love to cry about being 'gone' isn't gone, it's simply changed shape.
As for people who want HS ganking removed..... Well, you've read my basic idea about what I'd like to see, which probably increases the visibility of ganking. Those people that want ganking banned and low sec status people banned from HS, well, I'm with you on them needing to smarten up.

As for the decline reasons, it 'could' be. But it would take a very in depth study to reveal which factors are actually contributing, and which are actually helping keep numbers up despite the other factors causing a decline. Which means we can't point at declining numbers and go 'see the recent changes are bad', because it's far more complex than that. (Obviously if they release a patch and 2 days later logins are halved we can, but only if it's dramatic enough).

However I'm wanting the direction of increased natural interactions, rather than either forced interaction or artificial protection. To give an example, take asteroid belts. You can have 30 belts in a system currently if you find a high belt system. What if instead of asteroid belts we got random 'gravitational clusters' a bit like the Null sec anoms, but far more random as to their ore distribution (to reduce the bottleneck issue that anoms have). But a system might only have 2-4 of these, and they would have a respawn timer like ice belts do (4 hours or so should be enough if they have ore similar to a highsec belt). Now all the miners are going to be more concentrated so interact with each other. Now they naturally will either co-operate or compete depending on their temperaments because the resources are more limited (in terms of 'available right now' resources, overall similar output is the goal).
There are reasons to declare a war to chase people away from a constellation now. And the hunters/gankers also have fewer places to check for targets meaning more encounters and less random warping around. And it has the side benefit of getting rid of the just after downtime cherry picking advantage certain timezones get.