EVE Information Portal

New Tutorial Minigame for new players.

Starship Engineer! Fit ships to customers orders.

All ships are and modules are 'fake' and cannot be undocked but requires no skill to fit or sit in.
Ship provided will contain various modules in its cargo bay and is asked how to fit the ship for customer needs.
Player earns score based on correct module for the job specified, Optional correct modules that makes the job easier there will be multiple correct answers. then absolutely WRONG modules.

For example player is requested to fit a sturdy shield frigate. They will be given a ship with various armor and shield modules and are tasked with fitting the ship. once they are done they hit the submit button and the report is generated.

The report basically decalres in right or wrong why they are good choices for the job reasons why and how module synergy with player skill, ship install and each other is important and how details DO matter.

The tutorial should also explain there are more than one way to skin a cat and encourages all sorts of builds.

Various types of fits in the minigame that should be explored should be
Attack (pure dps ship)
Assault (DPS ship with Tank)
Fighter (High speed DPS)
Escort (Fast Lock, Fast Track DPS)
Sniper(Long Range Gun Attack)
Artillery (Long Range split weapons)
Drone Boat (Drone in the drone bay and DCUs)
Scout (Survey, Cloak, and agility)
Intercept (Highspeed Tackler)
Industrial (Mining fit)
Harzard Industrial (Tanked mining fit)
Decoy (Tank only)
Salvager and Combat Salvager

ect ect list goes on.

Examples of WRONG modules

Wrong weapon Upgrade
Wrong TanK setup
Wrong Electronic Warfare modules or thier counter measure warfare.

Good scoring players on this 'npc mission' may get a free one time ship if they succesfully score high enough with one suggested 'fit.'

This will also be a great oppertunity to explain overheating and rigs and the effect on the ship.

As someone that has been involved in running a corp for ages but does not have the time to ever do a proper recruitment drive with all the vetting and such that takes place but would still like to teach newbies i would like to see a bit of a random corp option. Think of it as a blind date for corps. I also have an alt that i want to keep out of my main corp but again find it difficult to find the time to find a suitable corp so i can see things from another side too.

The way i see this is corps should be able to opt in to receive random members perhaps with some data requiring to be in putted so that potential members and corps can match up better like base region and operational regions, active times/days, possibly a minimum SP requirement or even primary language. Potential recruits would then be able to select a join random corp option somewhere and again would get so options which they can choose to limit the potential corps they may join by.

It may be worth while to have some limits like joining a random corp no more than 3 times in a week and some sort of rating system so that corps that are particularly bad for looking after new members could be marked down and at the same time members that were particularly bad possibly trolls or corp thieves could also be marked down.

The system should be open to everyone but aimed at newbies and it would be best if newbies could be put back in the starter corps if they quit/get kicked within 2 weeks or something so that they do not lose the safety net too easily.

I might come back and expand my ideas a bit i had got more detail but cant think straight right now.

You should do more to leverage player-created resources to help newbies find their way around an incredibly complex game. While this content may be found with the application of Google-Fu, sorting out the good from the crap is a daunting task.

CCP should proactively identify, curate and promote the best player generated content and present it to new players as part of their welcome to Eve. Yes, this will require judgement calls as to what is good and will give recognition to some corporations/players that others may resent but that's ok.

Promoting content needs to involve more than mentioning it in a stickied forum post (buried alongside much crap) or shoved into an Evelopedia entry (which few read).

At the very least, newbies should be directed to:

Halada's mining guide
EveSurvival.org mission index
Hardin Salvor's Incursion guides (as well as Jester's articles on the subject)
Ombey's 2D Eve Maps
Eve Uni's guide to Planetary Interaction
Wensley's Rifter Guide to Solo PVP
The Altruist's Know Your Enemy articles

New players should also be directed to investigate
Agony Unleashed PVP University
Eve University

These should be added as a bookshelf you can interact with in WIS.

Edit: Am I the only one a bit annoyed that they both edited XKCD's strip, and failed to credit him?

Am going to respond to this thread but first a hint to posters...write your post in a word document or whatever offline and then cut and paste to the forum...works for me and no lost in cyberspace posts :)

Hey,

So apologies if this has been mentioned, but one of the real big problems with EVE beginners is they don't know all the things they don't know. Meaning, they have to decide based off some really short descriptions where they should start investing their time. It is very rare that you find a beginner who doesn't have some points they wished they hadn't spent. This may never go away for good, but it can be really depressing when you achieve a particularly long game plan, only to realize the features or game play that opens up wasn't really what you wanted. It would be nice if there were a way to expose players to a taste of what things will be like a year into a skill route. Tutorials, with 'loner skill plans' would go a long way to give beginners a taste of more exotic things to come. Think of learning to pilot with an experienced NPC pilot's skills on 'lone.' Have a mission where you scan down anoms in a covops with perfect skills (temporarily of course!). Have a mission where you can mine some ice (or whatevs) with a loned hulk. Have a mission where you hop into a fully fitted t2 BS and destroy some stuff with a ludicrous tank. Have a mission where you have to drop into a maxed logi and keep an NPC alive while it plows through some enemies. Have a mission where you have to tackle a target while an NPC gang blows it up, if you don't tackle it, it won't go POP. Pick some important roles that players say they particularly enjoy and create tutorials where a beginner gets to play with max skills in those activities in great ships for a single mission.

Now, obviously this is potentially a huge way to abuse things, so it would have to be implemented delicately. Obviously don't actually give a player a marauder. Give them a 'tutorial' marauder for a mission. These things can't be refined/sold/traded or aggress other players, maybe even not be able to use warp gates. Whatever, restrict as needed. But give the player a sense of what it would be like if they actually dumped a year into these skill plans.

This would go a long way to upping the wonder of a beginning player and helping them understand why training BS 5 might actually be a good idea at some point.

BONUS:

If this system were implemented it would ALSO provide needed levers to make missioning more interesting. Imagine being occasionally able to fly a highly specialized mission ship to accomplish a task you otherwise would not be able to do. Imagine a "our scientists have created this experimental ship we'd like you to go test pilot" or "we recovered this enemy faction cruiser and we'd like you to use it to frame that faction by attacking a mutual friend", etc.

TL;DR occasionally temporarily allow players the advantage of a year's worth of points in limited PVE scenarios.

The key to the NPE and customer retention is SETTING EXPECTATIONS. Educate the players: tell them to expect to get killed in high sec space. Tell them that the focus of the game is PVP and blowing stuff up. Tell them that they won't be getting their hand held.

This will significantly reduce the whining and complaining when someone gets shot in the face and loses their first few dozen ships.

The current crop of whining carebears is a direct result of the expectation that there are areas in Eve where they are completely safe, which of course is entirely incorrect, compounded by the misunderstanding that Eve's main focus isn't PVP (again, wrong).

New players need to be indoctrinated from the very beginning that Eve players experience PVP in all things, on all levels: market, industry (mining) and of course, ship to ship combat.

If you can achieve even a small portion of the above, we would see massive improvements in player attitude, culture and customer retention.

Not everyone agrees, but I think one of the best parts about EVE is the consequential PVP.

Anything you can do to direct players towards PVP as early as possible is good idea in my opinion. Also, making sure to manage their expectations that they will lose ships, etc.

Changes that make the easier ways to make ISK more profitable would be good - for example, changes to the drone regions to make overall highsec mining more profitable.

Honestly, a lot of this comes down to refining systems that are already in game, like low sec and faction warfare as an easy entry into PVP for newer players.


I have got my brother, sister, and a couple friends to try EVE out, and with the exception of one friend they all played through the tutorial and then basically stopped playing when they stopped having a goal. EVE is a sandbox and that makes it unique and awesome, and I love that it's open ended. However, it might be good to try and encourage new players to develop long term goals earlier so that they don't finish the tutorial, have nothing obvious to do next, and never log in again.

Thanks for your hard work on this!

So much emphasis is placed on the NPE, but imo there are so many activities in EVE to master that many of us stay new players longer because of it.

I think what would make a very dramatic change would be to really overhaul the info that is currently present in-game, and to add and take away as necessary. Much of the info present is inconsistent, and some that should be there is missing entirely, or is present when it's not needed in the least. Even obtaining said info is such a clumsy task that I can see how it would encourage a person to quit. Every system in EVE that I've been exposed to suffers from this handicap.

I don't have the time or interest to nitpick any more than I already have, posting on other characters in the last 5 years, but I will cite two examples of what I feel would benefit from a bit of developer attention - my two most HATED features in-game - and they are:

the “show info > attributes” tab
and the star map in it's entirety

...are both such abysmal failures that some even in the community have created their own versions to avoid having to use these features in-game.

Quote from devblog: “We want to give the new players a smooth and consistent online gaming experience...” This is not limited solely to new players. As polished as the NPE may become, this choppy, clumsy experience becomes more apparent as we all settle into the game world. Carry the quality on through to the rest of EVE; don't stop at the beginning.

(Going to raise a petition about how after writing a long forum post pressing the "post" button it erases your text and gets you to start over. Just lost a long one again! - just saying)

OK here is a cut down version. - When I introduced a friend to the game here is what I thought made the difference.

(1) Get them a buddy - (Me in this case)
(2) Get them to do the tutorials
(3) Tag along on a couple of missions and advise on how to go about it
(4) get them to tag along on one of yours (let them loot) keep them safe but let them contribute.
(5) Drop about 5 Mil on them - (Unexpectedly he paid me back in about 4 weeks)
(6) show them evemon.

My buddy no longer bothers with missions but it did give him a place to start and explore and an income stream.

In fact I think I'd be willing to do this for strangers from time to time. Perhaps a small reward might help encourage older ones to pause their game to help out a noob. - Isn't this already in place ? - I'll go and check.