A ( long ) bit about the Tutorial and EVE in general

Communications Center General Discussion
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I think this thread isn’t in the right place but what do I know? At this point, I feel more stupid than the village idiot… and I don’t even why this text is in bold.

Hi everyone. I hope your day going good because mine, not so much at all.
This is my first thread and probably my last thread as I don’t want to piss anyone off on this forum and have to worry if they’re going to come after me in the game. I like playing EVE and it’s no fun when I have to worry about a player looking to gank me because I wrote something they didn’t like.

I just want to write a few words about the tutorial and EVE in general. Forgive my writing if it’s all over the place but I’m not feeling good right now, not good at all, but that’s beside the point.

So I was reading a bunch of stuff overnight about EVE Online. I stayed up all night because I can’t sleep because I’m sick as usual. And so I found out a whole lot of things that leave me perplexed. Yes, this post is about the tutorial but it’s about much more.
I’m new and everything but I speed read. I can finish a 300page book in an hour. So about the Tutorial.

It’s woefully inadequate. And when I say inadequate it’s putting it mildly. It’s not a tutorial, it’s not a guide, it’s not even a show-and-tell. It’s… just… how can I describe… It just puts you in the seat and shows you the stirring wheel, the pedals, and the gear stick and then tells you “go on the freeway and follow the cops without them noticing you”. it sends you to agents who tell you that you need to do stuff but doesn’t explain how to do them. The blue pointers get in the way of things and Aura gets in the way of things too. It’s just skin-deep, it tells you NOTHING about the game or how it’s played.

Because the game is mostly played offline. I found that out last night’s reading.

Take, for example, the Locator Agents.
I had no idea, not even a clue, that players can find you wherever you are in New Eden for ( if you’re online) 5mil and up depending on the level of the agent and your standing with her/him. Nowhere does it say about locator agents in the game. You have to find out online. That’s one. I think it’s a pretty BIG piece of information that new players need to know, like, right off the bat.
It means that, wherever you are in the galaxy, if someone wants to find you, they will, unless you don’t play at all and what’s the point of that?

Another thing about the tutorial. It doesn’t teach you anything about flying your ship. It just tells you to click “here” and “there” and that’s it. It doesn’t tell you about to align before Jump to 75% of it’s speed if your ship has a long alignment time, it doesn’t tell you about inertia, how that affects your rate speed of turn, it doesn’t tell you to turn off afterburners if you want to align faster, it doesn’t tell you how/when to turn on MWD or off ( I forget, sorry ) if you want to jump right on top of your target, it doesn’t tell you anything about Bookmarks or how to set them. It doesn’t tell you that you may want to jump 50 -100km of a jump gate to have time to see if there’s an enemy and have time to warp off… I think those are pretty important for new player to know. All those tricks will determine how successful a new player is right off the bat.
That’s about navigation only and mostly.

Now, on to weapons. The tutorial tells you that there’s a correct range at which weapons have the most power but it doesn’t tell you that as you orbit your target, your rate of speed will increase the range at which you’re orbiting depending if you have afterburners on/off. It doesn’t tell you that even out of range, your weapons may be even more powerful depending on the ammo you’re using or weapons tracking.
I tried Amarr two days ago. Tutorial for Amarr doesn’t tell you that the laser crystals will get damaged. I found that by buying some in a contract and the crystals were 40% damaged. It’s okay, I’m not bitter because they were damaged but it would’ve been nice to know that they can be damaged and the tutorial could have mentioned something about that. I mean, Aura speaks and all ( it’s the ONLY character NPC that speaks in the game ) but such crucial details are omitted in favor of a talking NPC.

On to the modules. Tutorial doesn’t mention anything about modules at all. Some modules are Active Modules, some are Passive, some can be loaded with scripts, some can be loaded with charges, some with power charges… There are modules that fit better on one kind of ship and others that can be fitted on all ships. There are tech1 modules, tech2, tech3… I don’t even know if tech4 even exists, the game sure doesn’t tell me.

Then there’s the capacitor and CPU. Most tech1 ships have weak capacitors and cpu while there are more hardpoints than it can handle energy-wise. As soon as you put a stasis webber or a multyspectrum shield the capacitor goes crazy and you have to put batteries and rigs to bring it to a Stable level. I know I’m noob and maybe I’m not fitting properly so I have to go on a website and spend a whole day trying to understand how to fit my ship because the good people in Help Chat don’t have time or the inclination to hold someone’s hand and the chat scrolls so fast that you have to write your question twice or three times.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make this post longer than it needs to be but I’m trying to make a point.
Maybe a lot of you will say " The tutorial won’t / can’t tell you everything " and I think that’s the point I’m trying to make: I think EVE could never have a good tutorial because EVE isn’t like other games.
As I mentioned, a lot of what makes playing EVE correctly is only found on websites and third-party software.
Evewho, Evedata.org, Pyfa, EveGateCheck, Locator Agents ( I only found out about it reading EVEUniWiki ) and I’m sure there are other tools that neither the tutorial nor Help Chat will tell you.
I went to the rookie chat asking about Locator Agents and where to find it in the UI and I almost got lynched.

Look at all that with the eyes of a new player - if you veterans even remember what it was like to be a noob in EVE - and tell me how I’m supposed to feel. Here I am, in the game, flying a ship I’m not even familiar with even though my Mastery is at II . I don’t know what it’s capable of doing, how to do certain things with it, if it’s a PvE or PvP ship, what could I use it for and against who… And now tell me, after finding all of that through quick reading all night, how would you feel?
Would you feel woefully inadequate? I do.
Would you feel that this game is really not what the tutorial suggests it is? Or what the advertisements suggest it is? I do.

Then I look at the ships I want to fly ( because, you know, I’m paying monthly subscription to fly ships and have fun and fleet with people and have a good time ) : Battlecruisers, Destroyers, Special ships for cloaking, Support ships, battleships, logi-ships… and I tell myself ( now that I know ALL of what I have just written) I’m going to lose at least 5 or 10 of each of these ships before I can even hope to PvP properly.
What’s a new player supposed to think at this point? Because I really don’t know exactly what to make of all of that.
Did CCP make that game so complicated to where all the crucial info isn’t IN the game expressly for people to spend 10 years day-in and day-out to even start to be useful in a fleet and have fun?
Do veterans use the fact that knowing how to play this game takes so long that any player under a number of years doesn’t even know that even though a system is empty there can be someone in-system that can’t be found / known about ?
I’ve checked and rechecked the info the overview shows against Local and I saw ships with yellow warning icons but when I check Local no one is shown to be a suspect. Why is that ? Is there a special skill for that or am I too stupid to figure it out? ( don’t answer that, lol )

I need to finish this post now or no one will read it. I know it’s long and tedious but those questions are important to me and, I think, other new players as well.
I’ve read about Player Retention in a few threads and I can tell you now: The ONLY reason I’m not letting myself be discouraged by those facts is that I think I’m playing a game that’s unique in the history of MMO’s, that I love space games and I like reading all the info about everything in the info panel, but even the info panel isn’t complete. Info leaves out crucial information only found on webpages, that very few games interest me as much as EVE interests me and that since my body forces me to stay at home until I get better - if ever - I might as well have a little fun between the nurse daily visits and my sister bringing me food.

That’s all I wanted to point out. Very sorry for the wall of text.
I hope you all are taking care of yourselves. Be well.

'ot.

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The point is that encounters between capsuleers are enabled so that they can fight over whatever thing. That aside, why should the tutorial tell you every single little detail about the game? That would take away from exploration and discovery aspects of the game, which are very important aspects to keep the sense of wonder and unknown alive for a while.

Clicking “here” and “there” is how you fly your ship in EVE. You literally direct your ship to fly in a particular direction by double clicking or by clicking on an object and use the Approach or Warp to commands. First person direct movement is possible but completely pointless to do anything in EVE. If the tutorial tells you to click somewhere to move somewhere, it tells you exactly how you move your ship.

You usually do not align faster if you turn on your propulsion module because the cycle time of the propulsion module usually takes longer than the aligntime of your ship.

Why should it tell you that? You should see this option when the tutorial tells you to right click somewhere to warp to. If you right click, you see the option “Warp to within”. That should trigger you to use it and see what happens.

That is not how this works. You cannot be out of range if you use different ammo. If you change your ammo to a longer range ammo, you are still using the same correct range info from the first sentence.

And where is the problem with that? Everyone learned EVE and PVP this way. This is the best way to learn EVE because you make mistakes, you analyze your mistakes and you try again with a (hopefully) better approach. That is also why you start out with cheap frigates to learn all the aspects of how to fly a ship, how to use them properly and how different kinds of ships and weapons behave. Losing ships is exactly how you learn to become better.

If you don’t want that and try ships out in a more educative environment, you ought to join one of the many education corps in EVE, like EVE Uni or a garbage null sec newbie group. There you can learn the ropes, have even more people to ask questions and receive guidance and maybe even get some ships from the corps to try things out or participate in roams, fleets, fights.

You are supposed to feel encouraged to learn. You are not supposed to expect to get everything, every little detail handed to you on a silver platter. If that is your expectation, you are trying to play the wrong game.

When I started to play EVE, I did not even have this kind of expansive tutorial that you can enjoy today. We were encouraged to look things up on the internet, ask in the starter corp’s corp chat if we had questions and discover things on our own. Since then, the tutorial has changed a lot and become much more comprehensive.

Everyone does at first. If you cannot overcome this feeling by powering through the learning curve, maybe EVE is not the right type of game. If you feel inadequate for not knowing everything and not getting handed every little bit of information about the game on a silver platter, you will be very disappointed when you realize that all the things you mentioned as “lacking in the tutorial” are still only very basic aspects of EVE. If you do not want to discover these basic aspects, how badly will you feel about much more complex aspects like industry chains, larger ships, fleets, group dynamics, navigating hostile space, surviving in null sec or W-space, high-tier PVE content, and so on?

This text is bold because you click on the B in the formatting bar above the text input field or added 2 ** ahead and behind the text. This is just a very basic feature of a text editor. :confounded:

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Okay then. According to you this thread is useless and shouldn’t even exist. What can I say, sorry for being stupid. Next time I’ll think twice before trying to point somethings out that are important to me and thought were also important to other new players.
Please, really, don’t come and find me and gank me because you don’t like me or this thread. I’m really sorry for asking stupid questions and wasting your time answering them.
Take care and don’t be mad at me. As I said, that was my first and last thread.

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“there are no stupid questions, just stupid people”

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I’m sure I read that somewhere. Thanks for reminding me and making me feel a bit better. I’m thankful for the people who still remember that we are all human after all o7

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We all been there. When I started tutorial looked like this: “Here is your ship, now f** off. Oh, btw. you are under attack”.

If you don’t know something or something looks wrong or frustrating. Even simplest stuff. Just ask and someone will try to help you.

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I like to read and find things out for myself. I don’t want to bother people who may also struggle with something they’re trying to understand and we all have a life besides EVE, it’s not always so simple with posts on a forum or chats in-game.
My whole O.P is about finding out things that I feel I should already have known but I was so geared toward the game that I neglected to take time to research online as well. and I think that a new player reading OP may be lead to also go and find for himself once he understands that the answers to his questions lie in a website somewhere and not in a chatroom or a forum. I hope I didn’t repeat myself too much there, lol.

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It’s not so much about stupid but wrong expectations. If the tutorial covered everything you asked for, you’d have to spend a whole day in the tutorial alone. And you’d still lose 5-10 ships before you can say you are somewhat competent with them. There used to be explanatory videos from CCP that delved deeper into some aspects of the game, but CCP removed them … and/or wants to make new videos if I remember correctly.

Why would I gank you? Technically, it would teach you some interesting lessons. For instance, if you see a few Catalysts land next to you in your mission, you should get out. If you see a few Thrashers or Tornados on the station you just undocked, you should not move, wait your session change timer and dock again while you are still undock-invulnerable (did you know about that?) if you fly a shiny ship. While I do not see ganking as beneficial activity for the game as a whole, the sudden and unexpected attacks can be very educative. :slight_smile:

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What would really help the npe is a list of vetted corps that are willing to help train new players after the tutorials but I don’t think its practical from what’s been said before. Trying to start solo is difficult to say the least. The best suggestion I can give try to find a good starter corp.

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I didn’t read the post, but at least he used paragraphs.

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You raise some very good points.

You already mentioned the best resource for info:
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Main_Page

I suggest searching the forums and google as well. Yes I know that takes time away from actually playing the game but once you’ve found the info, you’ll be good to go. And if you don’t find the info, then you can post a thread in the correct sub-forum and hopefully get an answer in a short amount of time.

Hope you have a long career here in Eve with much success.

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" Cause you ASCII stupid question and you’ll get a stupid ANSI" :nerd_face:

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Agree, the NPE is total garbo

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Eve is vast. It simply cannot be covered in a tutorial. If it was, no one would finish it before they got bored.

I think CCP had the right idea when they made short tutorial vids on topics. EVE is easier to understand when it’s broken down into smaller chunks.

The OP is a good argument for restricting what new players can do, and then progressively unlocking features. For us vets, it took longer to progress and there was less information available online. We just had to figure it out. In the immortal worlds of ex-ccp soundwave: Here’s a rubix cube. Go ■■■■ yourself.

But by far the easiest way to learn is with other players to guide you and answer any questions you may have.

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When I started there was not a tutorial like there is now. Just some agents with different lines of noob missions. We learned not by being told everything about the game because that is not needed at first. Instead we learned by trial and error along with help from a good corp.

You die, you analyse how you died, and move on knowing that was the price of that knowledge. When i was a noob I warped to the gate and exploded ending back in station. I didn’t complain that the game sucked or the tutorial failed. I wanted to learn how can I do that to other people. Eventually I found out it was a smartbomb and I trained them. Over the course of my EVE career I’ve sent many hundreds of capsuleers back to their home station via smartbomb thanks to that guy that killed me as a noob.

You try things out because they are interesting. You don’t need to know everything an expert does right at the beginning and overload yourself with information. You gain that knowledge as you go and learn to be more efficient.

Even though Eve may be more complex than some other MMOs I can’t think of a single one I’ve ever played where the tutorial teaches you everything about the game. In every case the tutorial is TO GET YOU STARTED. As you play then the more advanced mechanics, nuances, skills, etc are revealed.

Case in point locator agents you mention. Really a noob has no need for locator agents. In fact even after over a decade of playing I can say I’ve only used them less than the fingers on one hand. Other people I know use them a lot. A noob just learning to pilot their ship for combat or mining doesn’t need a locator agent. That is information overload for a noob tutorial. It is a more advanced topic for the player to learn another day. The noob has not arrived to the point where a locator agent will make a difference in their gameplay. Depending on what they do in Eve they may never need one ever in their Eve career. (Like I said I don’t need or use them after over a decade in the game although I know what they are and have access to them). So could I say I wasted time acquiring that knowledge? Who knows?

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wen i started i mined in a hauler with ONE small laser
them i trained for a gigantic amount of time to have a covetor that was the shiwitz at the time (at least i thought that)
but it was expensive AF making jack ■■■■ money , so i got enslaved by a corporation …
one day i was thinking , oh F DAT , why i mine and they don’t give me money?
so i left the corp with the covetor they gave me
i felt like the king of the world

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I really miss Soundwave and co. For me those were the Golden years of EVE.

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Instead of being frustrated enjoy and embrace the unknown and learning opportunity. It will probably last for longer than in other games, but there will come the time when you have lifted most of the curtains, and too often just take the seat next to Waldorf and Statler.

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You’re right. EVE could never have a complete tutorial and I like that. After the initial “here’s the guns and here’s the engine” we’re left with total freedom to explore the game and uncover all those details you mentioned. With trial and error we get to learn a little each day and with patience and perseverance everything connects then we get to be kings of NullSec -umm, no, not really but at least we can navigate in the more dangerous parts of New Eden like 0.8 and 0.7 - LOL, joking.

That’s important to know. Thanks for mentioning it.
And locator agents are like spies, how cool is that?

Don’t you just hate it when capacitor is in the red? But I found the way not to spend an hour on solutions. I feel like champion now :smiley:

If that’s the case, I say BRAVO CCP!

You bet ya.
We need to walk before we can run. Take your time, there’s no hurry. EVE will be around still for longer than the naysayers say it will be.

:+1:

It’s cool, wasn’t long at all.

Do take care. :heart:

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