AIR NPE - Improved New Player Experience

EVE Technology and Research Center Test Server Feedback
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I ran and streamed the NPE last night. I, personally, liked the humour Aura has but that sort of thing is always a matter of taste. I agree with some of the comments, above. Astero was the wrong ship to use, a Sunesis would have been better.

The hand off to the career agents could be modified slightly to emphasize that you can run all of them. The contextual clues make it sound like you are making a choice on a path.

To the people complaining about time? You are a vet of the game. I think the actual newbro will be panning for all they are worth and going ‘wow’ a lot more than we do.

A good start, now do the career agents.

m

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The new Skills window

If you haven’t done the tutorial (old character for example), when you open the Skills window, you are default on Skill Plans → Certified Plans window, and a big focus on AIR.
It says that your AIR program is completed… when it might be not completed → My alpha Caldari characters don’t waste their precious limited amount of Skill points into Armor Repairer. So I don’t train “Repair Systems I and II”. So I didn’t train that skill, so it should not be marked as completed. I assume this is related to the tutorial, as this is when you are introduced to AIR, but then please remove the AIR Skill Plan if the tutorial is required, for characters that can’t do the tutorial.

If a player decide to create a new character, and to skip the tutorial (“Takes too long!” or “0 ISK = Waste of my time” or “I know the game and I’m a freaking trillionaire, I can feed my new character!”), then they are presented that AIR Skill Plan screen by default too.

A big NO for me, is that training System Repair I and II is mandatory to “unlock” any other career path skill plans.

If you absolutely feel the need to make the AIR skill plan mandatory, can you please think of (a) skill(s) that is relevant to all empires (for a new character, that is, considering this is your focus) ?

Again, that Armor Repairer (and skill book) as a reward for completing the tutorial will not serve the narrative that some empires are proficient in shields. Can you think of a reward at the end of the tutorial that serves all empire characters ? (or make it empire specific, like some Career Agents do)

Back to the Skill window.
At least, if I go into another section (Skill Catalog for example), if I close and reopen the Skill window, I’ll be shown the last window I had open. Good for that.

I’m kinda fine with the Skill Catalog view. Though it took me a little while to figure out where Space Command (and the others) was, as you changed in which order each subject are. Was it necessary to re-order them ? New players won’t be bugged by that since they will not be accustomed to the actual Skill window, but it feels unnecessary to change the order for your existing players.

On that one new character I’ve created to try the tutorial, I have the Certified Plans unlocked. The presentation/UI interaction seems good to me.

I’m lacking time now and have to go, but is it possible to “import/export to clipboard” a personal skill plan ? Like we do for fittings.

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The time to complete the tutorial is also slowed by the video loading time for Aura and Balin, and the cinematic that appear to stutter (sorry, not sure if this is the appropriate word for that. Loss of frame rate) and is getting slower and slower the more I advance in the tutorial. So my experience is that the video/cinematic needs a lot of optimisation.

I have a decent computer, and have no problem running new games in high quality.

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Fair enough. I also had some lagging issues in the stream but I figured that it was on my end.

m

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For the Aura video to load, it does that since they made her in 3D a few weeks ago. So as they didn’t optimized it since, I’m not surprised the lagginess is sticking. It just takes bigger proportion now with the addition of Balin (and maybe the rest of the cinematic).

(I’ll check your stream :slight_smile: )

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Oh I see. I’m about 20minutes in, and I see your stream is lagging, not necessarily your game, as I can hear the sound and your voice while you shoot at stuff, but the video stream remain still. It’s like 1 frame per minute :stuck_out_tongue:

Was it lagging/stuttering (to some extent) in your game too?

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No, It flowed fairly well for me.

m

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Every time I see a new blog entry about keeping new players invested in Eve Online, I hold my breath in anticipation that this is going to be the one that announces a complete revamp of the NPC mission givers. Honestly, CCP, if you really want to keep new players invested in the game, that is the single most important thing you could do. Nothing kills my enthusiasm for the game as much as the dull, repetitive NPC mission givers that fail to hook me into the gameplay in the slightest. Yes, I know, Eve is all about the sandbox etc. etc. But most new players who are just beginning their Eve careers are going to do what they do in every MMO - get their feet wet by doing quests for NPCs. It is here that Eve fails spectacularly. In short order, new players are going to be bored silly by agents that have an extremely limited number of missions, and fail to provide any hook other than some isk/loot and grinding for rep. There needs to be much more content than that!

Long short: I am glad CCP is try to do as much as it can to retain new players, but you guys seem to be nibbling at the edges of the problem rather than addressing it head on. Just overhaul the NPC mission giver system already. Do that and Eve will retain a lot more new players than any of this sideshow stuff you’ve been working on.

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All the new PVE content that CCP released in the last years is much more repetitive and unrewarding than missions ever were. They are not even trying to provide lots of different environments and just reuse the same environment settings for all things. Worst example of that was the Invasion but also Abyssal space is just 6 different settings that you repeat ad nauseam.

All they need to do is create more missions. In particular special missions that show up around MV systems, FOB (in NPC null sec even around attacked Sotiyos). incursions and other events or temporary points of interest.

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Opportunities

I can understand the goal of this is to provide ideas to new players for activities to complete… or even to force them to interact with rookie chat if the objective is unclear to them.

However, as there is no reward attached to this, and as a non new player I’d rather have this out of my UI completely. Not just minimized.

Example: Reprocessing opportunities : A new player would learn reprocessing with the career agent (mining tritanium…) However, to a non new player, we usually figure out (or are told that) it is much more profitable to sell the ore and buy the mineral… or the final product. (until the skills are up to speed and have access to proper reprocessing facility, at least). So with no rewards attached to the “Opportunities”, suggesting the newbros to mindlessly reprocess 10000m3 of Pyroxeres, or 15000m3 of Plagioclase, it is not going to help them. They’ll end up with mineral with lower values than the ore they reprocessed and they might not need the minerals to start with if there is no other context to use them.

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Glad you are focusing on this and revamping the career agents. Good start, just a few comments:

  • The introduction video is low quality and the AI voice seems…not in line with Aura or other voices in game. Recommend a voice over for this since it’s so short.
  • On the first ship combat, Why does the Astero use energy beams for a Gallente pilot? Why not use the weapons of the race you chose since you will be working with ships of that race for career agents? This is a quick opportunity to teach someone what guns to get when they get their first good combat ship.
  • Why is the game overview using old-school icons? This is another time to show frigate/cruiser/battleship icons to teach people something about the overview.
  • I like the use of the modules - suggesting turning them on at each encounter so it’s not confusing what they should be doing - also, said ‘highlighted’ but the modules were never highlighted.
  • Recommend adding more info about what the modules do before you use them.
  • The new skill window introduction needs more. What do I do with it? Where do I get skill books? Sure I can buy them from the screen but why not use the items in game? How do I do that? Market? What’s that?
  • Furthermore, the pre-set skill plans are pretty advanced for a brand new player. Sure they are great. but if you don’t have all the books - you can’t add the plan. So if I open it up and can’t add it, I’ll just close it again. Suggest adding a starter skill plan - have aura explain some of the skills (CPU Management) and why they are needed, then set up a plan for say level 3 of skills you already have. Start with the Magic 14. Also, this gives players something to train if they are lost on what to use points they get and time (Aura should mention that these would be a good idea to train to level 5 at some point in your career as they affect all ships).
  • Need to add a lot more basic information - how to use an overview for seeing different things (e.g., asteroids for mining missions), how to dock, and what the market is and how to use it.
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Skills → Skill Catalog

On Tranquility : Skill groups are ordered as a mess, but Skills are ordered alphabeticaly, by lines.

On Singularity: Skill groups are ordered alphabeticaly by columns, but Skills are listed as a mess.

For no, or unknown or in the best case for weak reason, you have changed the order in which the Skill Groups are listed and have completely messed up the order of the skills.

On Tranquility, the vet players are accustom to look for Spaceship Command as the first skill group on top left. There is not so many skill groups, so the brain should be able to remember their position quite easily, even for new players (I don’t think their brain function much differently).

But then, if you decide to screw up your vet players by ordering the skill groups, why did you not order them by lines (like Skills are on Tranquility) and why are skills a mess now ?

Whatever by line or column, if you think it should be ordered alphabeticaly, do so with all lists on all screens.

Consistency please.

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On TQ skill categories are sorted in sort of logical groups (ships, modules, misc, industry), which makes somewhat sense. It is completely bonkers to sort categories alphabetically now but skills themselves not. :joy: I would really love to learn the reason why this was done.

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Working through the NPE now but seem to have an hour spare trying to kill Hostile Battleships in the Astero. The frigates and cruiser were easy enough but these two BS are taking an eternity.

First observation, at the early stage where all the ships need to align to warp off together, I would suggest making Balin’s call for people to ‘align’ instead of ‘enter warp formation’. This might save Eve Uni and other noob training centres hours in getting noobs to learn align/warp/jump commands.

Next, remove the requirement to kill the BSes (the Aura tip says fire on the remaining hostiles / fire on the remaining frigates (which seems incorrect at this point) because I am chipping away at hostile BSes. Took about 3 minutes to go from 61% shield to 60% on the first BS due to regen. Gave up after another 5 minutes when it went back to 60% from 59%. The BSes weren’t shooting at me. Logged out and logging back in to see what happens.

Logged back in to a full working screen side icons, chat, etc. The BSes were still there and aggressed me this time with scram/web. Still couldn’t kill or be killed for 15 minutes. Initiated self destruct to see what might happen… woke up in a station with nowhere to go. Char deleted to see what happens as not Caldari.

Trying Amarr this time… this one hung on loading the tutorial. Logging back in again. In space, in capsule but no Aura guidance. Slowboating to the Astero to see if boarding it triggers the tutorial. Boarding it on this toon showed the modules and the chat channels and side buttons (it didn’t for the first toon) but the tutorial won’t trigger, so biomassing this one and might try Gallente next…

Trying Gallente, back to minimal/no modules upon boarding the Astero (though I can Alt-F1 the AB on). Ok, killed the three frigates which triggered Aura to move onto the cruiser. Moving onto the BSes and then getting killed was good/necessary. Skills interface would be rather confusing for new players and has no intuitive info/words/etc to explain what it is.

Hmm, looks interesting, very brief and very buggy. Makes me think that EVE needs such a big overhaul around PVE and missions to make the game far more interactive and interesting from the single-player perspective.

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Hey.

I’ve been back in twice more to try to work out that new skills training interface, and it really is not intuitive. In fact, it’s terrible.

Every skill I aimed for seemed to push Infomorph Psychology of all things. There are lots of skills to learn to improve game-play, and IS is very much an “I’ve been playing the game 4 months, and need something to help with my implants”, not an “I’ve been in the game a day, and this skill is appearing in several plans, it must be worth the million isk”.

Understanding individual skills was not made easier.

And what of the Attributes for skills, what has happened to things like Charisma, Wisdom, Perception ? Or have these concepts been binned ? What will happen to my implants, and how will I now work out their worth ?

Sorry, bin it. It’s very polished, but it’s still a t**d.

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I absolutely love that you were lipreading Aura. That is truly fantastic and your assessment is hilarious. Thank you for that.
Seriously, it’s one of the best things I’ve read on this forum and there’s some really funny people here.

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And that although Aura is supposedly somewhat capable of matching speech patterns with her facial expressions.

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Normally I would have just thought that the animation and lip syncing software had gotten out of sync but since he’s actually not able to hear the sound and is lipreading her instead that sort of kills that idea.
A lot of lip syncing software is simply based on vowels and if they aren’t placed exactly right things get weird looking.
What makes me wonder though (and great article by the way, thank you) is how, since lip syncing software has been around for way more than two decades for 3D animators why they have such a complex system for this, the facial stuff, specifically the speech and expression stuff shouldn’t have any problem with this as far as I can see. Maybe it’s something to do with the models themselves but even that shouldn’t be too hard to fix, I believe (I’m not positive) that this has been built into things like Blender for ages now.
I know someone who made a cube with a round hole in one side and had it talking in minutes and it did so with what felt like natural inflection, this was maybe fifteen years ago or more. It’s sort of odd watching a cube talk and have it be believable.
Still, I love the idea that they have the potential to maybe have our characters do more than pose for portraits even if the people lip reading them see gobbledygook, to me it means there might be a future in which we can run around and do stuff. And yes, I know they tried that with captains quarters and then gave up, I think that it’s really sad they not only didn’t stick with it, but just let it die.
Imagine the new player experience if you had, as your character, to go through the whole process of actually becoming a Capsuleer, that could be amazing. They could introduce a hell of a lot of the background mechanics that way using the actual interface, and from there begin training you to fly.
As it is now (and I haven’t had time to look at the stuff on the test server yet) they do this training backwards. They should teach flying first, killing, defending and running away second, then drop you right into PvP. PvP is where everything in Eve starts and ends, if you know how to survive and that being killed is part of life you are far more ready for the rest of Eve. Learning to mine before learning to defend your mining ship makes very little sense to me and only leads to boredom punctuated by distress when you blowup and don’t understand why or what you can do about it.

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I had completed the tutorial with the one new character I created to test the NPE. This morning (EDT), and now again, both time I logged in, I was at the beginning of the Tutorial. The game does not save the progression, nor the completion, of the tutorial.

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Forced to redo the tutorial…
Alright.

What are “Abnormalities” ?

After Balin repair the ship, I can’t move the camera around, and can’t zoom in or out. Left and right click don’t do anything anywhere on screen, except if I specificaly click buttons highlighted in the Overview (Approach, Orbit, Target). Anything else is locked. Even the Track and Look At button aren’t responding to clicks, and I also tried Alt and C shortcut with no result.

Really not a great experience if I’m forced into a camera angle and can’t interact with the UI.

I see you made the destruction of the Astero much faster. You broke everything, except this that you fixed.

Killing the pod : there was an opportunity to AT LEAST TRY to escape. A missed opportunity to tell the newbros that once their ship is destroyed, they still have their pod and should try to warp out. But the story clearly want us dead, so Aura, even before the ship is destroyed, doesn’t even suggest warping out in the capsule, she just assume we die and that it is a learning experience. Learned what exactly ?

Waking up in a station. I can finally move the camera around. Clearly the tutorial locked me up. Did you locked the camera movement to help with the lagging issue many (including me) were facing last week ? If so, wrong approach : fix the performance of your video engine. It makes the tutorial useless as it does not represent the game properly.

Again… received that useless armor repairer from Calytrix for my Caldari character…

Overall, even though the tutorial was completed much faster (did you cut any part of it, or is it only that I had no lagging this time?), I strongly prefer the existing tutorial on Tranquility… Sadly, considering you might have invest quite a bit for the new one. Piloting that “civilian” Astero (with guns) didn’t help put joy this time (probably because I knew it would blow up and I would end up in a corvette (I love the look of the Ibis, but it is not the Astero))