The problem with the current state of the career agent missions, is that whilst they introduce concepts quite well (mining, ratting, exploration, etc) they don’t introduce the wider game. They should be guiding people towards things like Faction Warfare and Incursions whilst linking into the groups that support new players in those environments.
In my mind an ideal pathway for any newplayer would be AIR Tutorial → An Epic Arc or Two → Faction Warfare → Wider Low-Sec Content → Seek the stories that made you join.
How would you get new players to join FW/Incursion corps/groups though? If you just give them a popup with “Hey, look for corps that do xyz” they will either be overwhelmed by choice, or end up with a corp they don’t like and quit the game, or they might even find that too big of a hurdle and stop completely.
Not really sure if the things you want to do are obtainable by either CCP, or making players do those things by themselves.
FW isn’t per se, but Incursions are a group effort from the get-go and new players might not find themselves completely at ease by just joining a player corp and going off with it, and I’m not sure if the players that will stop playing anyway will follow these steps before coming to the same conclusion. And there’s no real incursion content for a 1 week old player iirc, since most of them require at least some form of battleship or faction cruiser to run those things with, most 1-2 week old players (or newbies for that matter) don’t have those ships just lying around.
FW is a very easy thing to guide new players towards, and could even be part of some NPE loop or hell, even an epic arc where they “capture” an outpost owned by a hostile faction to get a feel for that specific gameplay loop. After which they can be prompted with the FW selection screen to go “Hey, liked the content right? Go here and do stuff!”.
Guiding players towards established player corps like EVE-UNI, or hell even Horde/Goons will put one of those groups at a big advantage over the other, so new players would have to be introduced to similar groups in a way that doesn’t give any player group some advantage over the other when CCP pushes dudes their way.
FW is definitely the easier one to tackle here, since one can start that independently, but even then the experience is made more fun with a group.
Incursions are definitely a group play, but there are groups that welcome lower SP players to join in T1 ships - especially on the smaller sites.
Prompts are part of the process I’d like to see, but the biggest thing is an overhaul of the corp recruitment UI - at the moment the filters are very basic and don’t give any way to filter down what corps do what to a small enough degree and even when you do filter them down there is no way to tell who are the shitty tax farming corps and who are actually there to help new players. Groups like EVE Uni and EVE Rookies should 100% be endorsed as neutral new player avenues, but I’d also like to see some kind of rating system in place so people can get a flavour for a corp before joining.
@Ankh_Lai Do you support hiring (EVE Vanguard) Warclone Mercenaries as an attack/defense vector in Capsuleer conflicts? Like attacking/defending Planetary Infrastructure, Skyhooks/POCOs and Upwell Structures?
As a CSM would you try and pitch for CCP to make stack multi-split (splitting a stack of items into multiple stacks of same size in one go instead of just on split at a time) happen?
Last year I asked eight questions and then compiled the answers into a huge mega-thread. It was massive. With the exception of MILINT_ARC_Trooper, no one had a thread bigger than mine, to be fair MILINT_ARC_Troopers’ thread was so weighty and knowledgable it teetered on the edge of collapsing into its’ own core.
That catalogue of replies is now a time-capsule and encapsulated within are the hopes and disappointments that CSM 18 candidates considered worth speaking about during the year of EVE’s 20th anniversary.
The responses gave voters en masse an opportunity to test and compare each hopeful CSM 18 candidates commitment to their claims of being community oriented, knowledgable, responsive and representative of player values. Given that the CSM does not directly control any aspect of EVE’s development and that the successful candidates are those that can identify existing and future consequences, co-operate with other CSM members, and communicate issues -from a player perspective- to CCP staff one-to-one, I’ve formulated a set of questions designed to seperate the compressed ORE from the Long-Limb Roes in this years election race.
Year-on-year the Independent Representatives, Solo players with single accounts, Worm Holers, Triangle People, Semi-nomadic Role-Playing Sandbox Explorers, and Salvagers, have been organising and gaining traction against the self-secure Null-Bloc Empire Candidates and their vast hordes of leather-skinned, evil, flying-monkeys. More-and-more players are choosing to vote in members they believe can positively impact CCP’s approach to the game regardless of their in-game affiliations.
Exposure matters, who are you, what is your clue?
As was the process last year I will post each candidates reply in a super thread, first-in first-served.
This years questions:
What ONE identifiable consequence requires CCP’s attention?
What PROVABLE evidence can you supply to support your belief in this situation?
What practical, and balanced change can be made to support a solution if any?
What support do your observations have from other CSM candidates?
How will you present your findings to CCP?
If you have already identified and spoken about a problem in your CSM candidacy bio at the top of this thread feel free to copy pasta that response where applicable. I’ll copy paste directly from your response to this post. Choose your goblet…. wisely.
Let the games begin, and may the odds ever be in your favour.
Hey Rhett, awesome questions and I’m glad to answer.
What ONE identifiable consequence requires CCP’s attention?
Homefronts are a fantastic opportunity for newer players to start making meaningful levels of isk, the problem is, they were placed in High Sec. This means that multiboxers can dominant the sights and control the sites, effectively starving newer players on mass.
I would propose either moving them/adding them to low-sec, or making them a limited PVP area, so that fleets of newer players (such as EVE Rookies and EVE University, can effectively contest the sites).
What PROVABLE evidence can you supply to support your belief in this situation?
I make my money in Pochven - the joys of it is, that whilst the isk faucet is incredible (and probably overpowered), the sites are contested. This means that you’re both having to create fleets that can take a fight, but also discourages multiboxers (who frequently will get pushed out of sites by fleets of multiple players). This creates competition in the market.
What practical, and balanced change can be made to support a solution if any?
As I said before. Move/add the sites to low-sec or make them a limited PVP area so that the sites can be contested.
What support do your observations have from other CSM candidates?
I’m yet to talk about this specific issue with any candidate, but I do hope to talk about such things with Kshal when I am interviewed on their stream this week.
How will you present your findings to CCP?
The same way I approach things in my day job. Data never lies. If you can present X number of sites are completed by multiboxers vs Y number of sites are completed by “normal” fleets, then that tells the story. CCP need stories from us as much as our opinions.
I’d like to see EVE Vanguard interacting with the core game in some way, but I think it’s better placed in conjunction with Faction Warfare mechanics than across the wider game.
As for stack splitting, yes. I find this one incredibly frustrating myself.
What if you were able to hire a Vanguard merc outfit to do something like assault an Ansiblex gate?
Or even a Skyhook?
Or maybe even a Sotiyo? Like, a Vanguard op could have a primary mission of sabotaging the manufacturing module of an industrial citadel, or maybe even hacking into a citadel’s mainframe to offline defensive modules. Requiring an alliance to either have their own counter-assault to repel the saboteurs, or have to take manual control of the citadel to re-online modules knocked out by the Vanguard team?
Limiting something to faction warfare mechanics seems like it would narrow the scope of application of such a specialized outfit.
EVE is all about emergent gameplay. The possibilities are potentially limitless.
The problem with integrating the mechanics too closely is that it stops being an adjacent game and becomes a part of the core meta. If for example you could disable an ansiblex through Vanguard, then that would absolutely become THE way to disable ansiblexes.
Making EVE’s meta dependent on Vanguard is a dangerous path as it will remove things from the core game and shift them into Vanguard.
I want EVE Online to be EVE Online and EVE Vanguard to be EVE Vanguard.
This dude has very good ideas about how to bring fresh blood into the game and make them stay with this wonderful community. I voted for him and if you care about new players, you should too!
Well said! What’s your point of view on aggressive high-sec behaviours like ganking? Would you support CCP to implement more protection on high-sec, for example faster response time from CONCORD, and more restrictions on pirates travelling through high-sec?
Also, for new players without knowing too much about EVE politics, how can you advocate to provide equal opportunities for smaller alliances/groups to compete with large alliances, when it comes to recruiting new players? How can you be sure directing new players into those newbie companies, with the rating system you mentioned wouldn’t end up being manipulated only by large alliances?
As a game developer myself, creating an Epic Arc means a lot of work and involves different teams. How can you justify and persuade CCP that the existing SoE Arc isn’t good enough, and an Epic Arc for new players should take priority over other content? And what’s your backup plan if it’s too much to do?
Sorry for a lot of (maybe too tough)questions, but I’m eager to know what you think!
Hope your son sticks around and finds something he enjoys!