An Open Letter to CCP from Current and Former CSM Members on the "Prospector Pack"

But, as I have found myself, a new alt will find the whole experience much easier. Even the alt I started 2 months after Cilla is doing way better in the game and making less stupid mistakes.

I was just lucky someone gave me 20m ISK on my first day. Had the Autothysian Lancer that I decided to attack ( yes…I now know that was stupid ) wiped out my puny Venture rather than me barely escaping…and given that I had no idea about free corvettes…I’d be just another statistic in the 'stuff this game, it sucks ’ category. A lot of oldbies have zero idea just what a knife edge it all is between staying or leaving…people forget the part that sheer luck can play. And then they look back years later and assess everything with 20/20 hindsight.

Some people do, yes, I agree. But not all of us. Sometimes people misunderstand and set safety yellow and get their nereus obliterated because they had a player venture and a serpentis rat locked and they accidentally engaged the wrong one, or they bump off a bit of debris in a newbie site and then get killed while trying to warp out, or they just get bad drops and can’t make as much money. Yes.

But for some people who ‘that’s it, they’re done, screw this game’, other players, them actually losing something and that consequence actually mattering draws them in more.

For both groups, the point is not for you to go spend 3 days mining with a single Meta 0 mining laser on your velator so you can buy a new whatever and try again, but - and this is one of the places CCP has legitimately made an error in both how they market and in driving away the older player base that’s supposed to fill this role - the point is for you as the newbie to find someone, or be found by someone who’s got a porpoise and an old venture and they’re willing to help you out and teach you.

This is not a single player game.

This is actually one of the things that CASTabouts does pretty well and one of the reasons I’ve had a lot of respect for them for years, engaging with the CAS school newbros.

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This.

The player-led cooperative aspect of the game is no longer a marketable feature for CCP.

Butterfly Effect anyone ?

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EVE 2022

THE SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE

@Mike_Azariah

They are talking about the NPE!

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I can’t be certain that they do. But the essence of the video, the aspect I agree with, is that its an issue CCP are at least trying to tackle, and one which the longer term player base doesn’t grasp.

There’s a knife edge between Eve being too easy and Eve being too hard for newbies. Again and again on these forums one reads a sort of mantra that Eve needs to be tough for noobs so they grasp its a cruel universe out there. That is true, but the reality for most noobs is that sheer luck plays a huge part in which way things fall. My own opening experience of Eve wouldn’t have had to go much different for me to join the ‘stuff this, I’m outa here’ crowd.

A lot of the argument here has been of the ‘slippery slope’ sort…and I even initially agreed that that was an issue. But it is an insignificant issue compared to how the video I posted exactly describes the new player experience, and why so many leave the game. And I agree with the video that the player base is doing nothing to resolves that particular issue…except moan when CCP tries to take the lead.

I think my opinion on this issue is that new players should be able to reasonably manufacture ships new players should have so that there is some kind of market that new players can partake in. If new players can’t fundamentally support themselves by themselves, I think that’s a problem with the fundamentals of the game. I don’t think it’ll be an easy fix, either. I just don’t see this as helping anyone, unless it’s helping CCP capitalize on a game deficiency they should address in some other way.

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I would actually support this, with some provision for exactly how it’s implemented because there is NO such thing as a new player only ship.

I’d be fully in favor of something like frigate and destroyer bpos not requiring research or being available to new players, or hell, even an expansion of the corvette class to actually be… IDK, an actual class of ships and not a name slapped on noobships.

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The noob ends up in Rookie Help asking for 50K ISK and gets told not to beg.

That’s the reality. Actually, it took me well over a month to even realise one could get a free Velator at stations. Nothing is obvious when one is a noob, not even the ‘board my free corvette’ button. And the ‘patience with this game’ timer is ticking down…as one gets spammed with ’ join this corp and make mega ISK ', when one has no idea what a corp even is.

I think most noobs are too much in the ‘what does this button do ?’ phase and help isn’t immediately at hand most of the time. Then they get blown up, and the ‘patience with this game’ timer runs out.

Thank you for your anecdote. Please see previous post where CCP has pushed a lot of the players who would/used to otherwise hang our around new player systems and do exactly this kind of stuff away from the game.

But I will give you one point in that hiding the corvette behind a board your corvette button and not just having it be there is a design mistake, yes.

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Quitters chose to compete and fail rather than share in the legacy of our antecedents. CCPs response is to cheapen those achievements for no gain that I can comprehend.

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There is, as far as I know, positively no way to know how those are related. CCP does not publicly post statistics on how many players leave, or stay, based purely on tenure in the game. Players leave for all kinds of reasons, not just the NPE, while simultaneously players stick around in spite of it.

Anything attributing anything to correlation or causation without any presentable facts is just an opinion. The video is a subjective reality.

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I don’t regard sheer luck as an ‘achievement’. The first days in Eve are down to pure luck. I was lucky that it was 6 weeks before I lost a ship. I was lucky that some random stranger gave me 20m ISK on my first day. I scraped through. Sure, with hindsight I can call it ‘perseverance’…but I can fully see how someone less lucky who loses a ship twice on the first day can end up with a ‘stuff this game, it sucks’ attitude. It has nothing whatever to do with being a ‘quitter’…in fact if anything its the game that quit the player.

This is false. Luck is a factor, but your first days are not just some uncontrollable force that either blesses you or curses you and you are absolved of all responsibility.

Your experience with someone giving you 20m?

Here’s the truth. More Eve players are inclined to give isk to newbros than not, and more Eve players are inclined to give isk to newbros who go out and try to do things. Even if they die horribly. If you’re that guy who sits mining in a nereus for 3 days and chooses not to interact with anyone, no, nobody is going to interact with you in return.

Matter of fact, some newerbro just tried to give me a hundred K just for answering a couple questions. I sent him back 2 mil and told him thank you, but I’m too old to take money and good luck. 2 mil isn’t much*, but your notion that by some alignment of the nine realms somebody chose to give you 20 mil so therefore it’s all because the divines smiled upon you is false.

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Hmmm. It’s interesting to me that the ‘game quit the player’ isn’t ok as long as we’re trying to let newbros down gently, but when the vets come knocking to tell CCP the game is failing them they’re all entitled, ruining the experience and over privileged.

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This guy is so full of crap…
1st) CCP has made things more expensive by the changes done to industry.
2nd) Prices are not going to fall cause of this pack.
3rd) I wish he had the balls to post here, im not part of some brigade… I am part of the playerbase and this CCP interference in the PLAYER economy with packs like this is bullsh!t
4th) He needs to grow up get or buy a brain, or just plain STFU cause he has no clue what he is talking about.

Me personally, i have no reason to play this game except for the those playing alongside with me. I can take a brand new player Day 1, teach him/her how to play, flying alongside that player, whom never heard of EvE before starting up, get them Omega’d in 33 days and making their 1st billion per week half way thru the next month… Ive done it already, so i know how to train a newbie. Not my fault some of them finally got into hardcore PvP, went to losec, got tons of kills and eventually got bored.

something something Carnage…that his character name? I hope you see my post, you Sir are stupid with no clue what so ever how the player economy works or what affects it!

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thx for spam it to jita, i didn’t even know about that BS they are doing. If they consist with that “pay to win” or “pay to broke economy” things i definetly will quit the game for good. Such a shame

‘Responsibility’ is meaningless if a person doesn’t know what they are actually doing. For example, I attacked an Autothysian Lancer with my Venture on day 2 of being in Eve. All the other ( Serpentis ) npcs had been a piece of cake to ward off…so I saw no reason why this new npc wouldn’t be too. Well…within a second my shields were down to 25%, and I only just got away.

Likewise, my choice of mining in Ethernity was luck. I had no idea what the 0.9 at the top left of the screen was all about. Two systems in the other direction and I’d have been in 0.5 Aurcel. Sure, I grasped that it was ‘security’ status…but had no idea about Concord response times etc. I’d never even heard the term ‘ganker’ at that stage.

The point is, responsibility is only meaningful if you actually know what you are doing. It’s a meaningless concept if you are stumbling in the dark, still wondering ‘what does this button do ?’ and you have zero idea about Local or d-scan or are blissfully unaware that you even can get a ‘free corvette’ at any station.

Ignorance is not luck. You’re describing ignorance.

And as a new player to a game, just because you don’t know very much, that doesn’t mean you’re still not in control of your ship and choices. Even if your operating from a place of ignorance because you’re a new player.

Luck is warping to a belt and a shadow serpentis initiate warping in, not warping out when you get it to low health, and then dropping a hundred mil energized plate. Ignorance is not knowing that blinky red catalyst isn’t there to rub exhaust ports with your poorly fit retriever and then warp away with rainbows and butterflies. As far as addressing ignorance, see the part about finding people to interact with.

Look, here’s the deal. You’re set on attributing everything that’s ever happened to you to some force beyond your control and everything you didn’t know as someone else’s fault for not holding your hand. You can choose to play Eve like that if you want. But if you do, you are actually playing Eve wrong. I know the meme, ‘it’s a sand box there’s no wrong way to play it’ but yeah, that’s the wrong way to play it. And since that’s the way you’ve chosen to play, good luck, I’ll agree to disagree and go on with my life.

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Do you honour the achievements of others? That is a choice we each make individually.

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