I’ll take some of what you said as a compliment, but essentially you are missing the point. My comment was replying to the statement I quoted:
165m ISK is simply not achievable for a 2-3month old player let alone 1 month
So focusing on my billion is evading the real issue of how easy it is to earn 165m.
From experience of Combat Sites, Mining and Project Discovery (and this is where one of the biggest issues lies in my opinion, PD is a license to print ISK and you don’t even need to be correct) it is laughably easy to get 165m ISK in a week, yet alone 1 month or more.
From life in Rookie Help, I can tell you almost every new Alpha player immediately wants to know how they can earn enough to pay for Omega with ISK. Maybe the Alpha system is to blame. They join free and they expect to have everything for free, and are determined to do so. People who on day 1 have a goal of earning 1.5 billion as fast as possible are not going to struggle when it comes to earning 165m in a month.
I think your experience is probably outdated. In modern day EVE, 165m is peanuts.
Small skill injectors are 165 Million which is not out of the reach of people new to EvE.
Anyone can grind SP in eve by grinding for ISK to buy these skill injectors.
There is 0 point to this entire thread apart from, i want all the skills now and shouldn’t have to wait for them.
Then you’ll be pleased to know it’s still available.
A new player has absolutely no way of knowing what an older vet knows. It’s strange how you carry on that older players have forgotten what it’s like to be new. At least they have SOMETHING to base their opinions on. A vet was new once and has learned over time what that means and how it is different to being a new player in the past. We understand the benefit of taking time over things, while someone at the start of their career can understandably only see the climb ahead of them.
It’s easy to see why a toddler thinks he should have chocolate all the time, because he has no experience of tooth-ache, bad breath or morbid obesity. Imagine the toddler walking up to the sugar ruined overweight diabetic and suggest she’s just being mean and jealous by telling them chocolate isn’t as great as they think it is.
Instant gratification addicted new players want to ruin the game. It’s our job to protect them from themselves.
You know…bad ideas never die. They just keep being resurrected and then shamble around like zombies. Case in point this thread.
With skill injectors a player can cross many of these gates very quickly. Yes it costs money, but then again training the “old fashion” way costs money too. For me to get into a shiny new ship I had to spend money via a sub.
This is basically another: “I want something without having to pay the costs…either the opportunity costs or the cash costs and I want somebody else to bear those costs.”
Okay, part of the problem here is that this issue cannot be addressed via SP/gating or whatever.
Learning to make ISK in the game is something that each player has to learn himself. This doesn’t mean he cannot get help here…but that help can and should come from other players. People tend to stay longer, IMO, the more they interact with others in the game.
Second, if you change things to benefit new players it very well may have an effect contrary to what you intend. If we make it easier for “New Players” by letting them have more SP or shortened SP training times you make it easier for veterans to train alts and thus not have to interact with the new players and continue to interact with other veterans.
It isn’t “I went through it so you should too,” it is wanting something that the rest of literally paid for. I paid a sub so I could train to get where I am now. Now you come along and say, “I want what Teckos has, but at a fraction of the cost, or even better, make Teckos Pay for it!” Sorry, but to the latter, “FOADIAF,” and to the former “Why should you get a discount and I shouldn’t?” I have been with the game a long time. I have shown my loyalty and chances are I’ll probably still be here when you’ve quit…even with that discount. Why are you getting special treatment again?
Really, this is like complaining that the guy in your office who went to school 40 years before you, got a PhD and worked for 30 years is now retiring and you are sitting there bitching saying, “Why can’t I retire too with all the same benefits?” Because you haven’t earned it. Now get to work like the rest of us.
Are you sure you are in the right thread? OP provided nothing but a stringently logical argumentation, he didn’t even fall into salty talk like most would have done. I’d link you his text, but you could just scroll up and read for yourself.
165 Million is a lot for a new player, even if he immediately starts grinding. Also 165 Million only covers for 0.1M SP and only while you are below 5M SP. You need 13 of these to get the required 1.28M SP for one Cruiser Level 5, making it more than 2 Billion Isk for that, more if the player is already past 5M SP.
Only that newer players have to put much more time into grinding to get the same ISK as “anyone”. On top of that grinding is boring for many people, as it doesn’t fulfill at all expectations of a challenging game.
Again, if you had read his post, you would know that this thread is about Skill progression not being fast enough. He never said anywhere that he or anyone should have all the skills instantaneously. But between now and 5 years is a lot of space and the question is: shouldn’t it be much faster. I think it should, OP thinks it should, many people I know think it should. Your false accusations do nothing but make me question your intentions in even answering to this post. Read again and give a more reasonable reply or shut up.
Not sure if you are a vet, but you say you are, so well. The climb ahead is real, it is a climb for SP mostly and it is absolutetly real. Some older players remember how it was to be new, some don’t, what does it matter? Why do you try to put different meaning in what I say? My statement was specifically against you and people like you who claim that there doesn’t need to be a change, because they care more about preserving their own bitterness than supporting the smart thing for keeping EVE lively and interesting.
First of all new players in EVE are not toddlers (usually). To learn about mechanics in EVE is in no way compareble to the massive amount of learning small children do. It’s also funny that you compare older players to someone who got sick from taking in too much of it. Kind of shooting in your own foot here, aren’t you? A new player will meet a lot of older players who are semi-smart but feel like they really would like to play the teacher for a newer player. Maybe you are such a person. Someone who tries to polish his own ego by thinking what you’ve learned in EVE is so precious and so difficult to understand, that others should bow in respect. Let me tell you that you are wrong. Many aspects of EVE, both the theory and the practise are much less hard to learn than players like to tell themselves. What you think is super spare knowlegde, is something many new players will grab within their first few months. After that it’s waiting for the SP to catch up with the options they know about. And that’s the problem. Progression in knowledge is much faster than progression in gameplay options. That’s what I understood this thread being about and I fully agree that it drives new players off.
P.S. Also, toddlers should not eat chocolate. If they are chocolate addicted, it is because their parents prematurely introduced them to sweets.
Aha, now we are getting somewhere. Thanks for giving me a hint where all these counter arguments are coming from. Just to be clear, are you against it because you and me and others (including OP btw) had to endure the waiting and pay years of subscriptions to reach our resp. current SP levels, while with the proposed changes people, esp. new players in the future wouldn’t have to do as much of the same?
If so, and your comment strongly suggests that is what you don’t like about the proposal, I think we would have to call it envy (even though you would potentially profit from as well with new alts etc).
Envy is understandable, but it doesn’t do any good. So while “I hear ya”, I don’t agree that just because something has been shitty in the past, doesn’t mean it should continue forever to reach some weird distortion of justice, in which everyone has to suffer the same.
The idea is that CCP is selling a product and some are arguing we’ll get more players if we give away for free what CCP previously charged for. Sit for a bit and think about why that probably won’t work…ahh never mind I’ll just be pedantic.
Consider that for years people had to pay and/or wait for all these things that you say are turning people off from the game. So question: why didn’t it turn people off back then. Or, to put it differently, how come the game grew then if this is the true source of declining player numbers? The story sucks donkey ■■■■ because it can’t explain that growth phase.
But it hasn’t been “shitty in the past”. Back during those “shitty days” the number of people playing was increasing. In fact, in many ways it was even “shittier” in that we had things like learning skills and higher requirements, IIRC racial BS 5 was required for your racial carrier skill, now it is 4.
I think this narrative is a complete load of Bravo Sierra. It hinges on a couple of unstated assumptions and one of them is that new players will stay longer if we give them more toys. But they have been getting more toys. Now new players doing the NPE get alot more than in the past. And yet we see PCU declining and the unstated assumption is it is new players not hanging around. But PCU declines do not tell you that. Further, we have evidence…actually fecking evidence that people stay with the game longer when they interact and in particular when characters less than 15 days are killed illegally–i.e. ganked.
So sorry, I’m not buying the Bravo Sierra because you got Jack and ■■■■ for evidence and Jack just left town.
So save the pseudo-psychological analysis and tell me what evidence you have to support you claims besides your “Well it stands to reason…” Lots of ideas rely on that and to be quite honest most of them are garbage.
CCP is selling Omega Clone state access to the game last time I checked. No one is paying for specific functions aka mechanics of this game, as each of them can change at any time. OP argued that this should be done for Skill progression, as with the current system CCP excludes players from loads of their neatly created content for months to years, which is a waste of Dev ressources among other things. I added my personal view that the learning curve for new and newer players is both steeper and faster than the Skill progression curve, which means people already have ideas about how they want to try things, but for each of them they have to wait a few weeks to a few month, again and again. It unnessecarily limits options for far too long pieces of time.
No one said it is the only reason for anything, of course not. But it doesn’t need to be the sole reason in order to be taken on. On the other hand I would like you to think outside of your EVE experience when talking about growth. The growth EVE has seen in the past had different reasons, but the numbers look in no way impressive - neither for the decline nor the growth. Alas, that’s not the topic, but I’m curious if a swifter, deeper dive into the many options of EVE would have led to any serious growth at any point. Also, I strongly wonder if the temporary rise in PCU isn’t much more connected to more people having more alts, especially back in the day when using certain Multiboxing Software wasn’t yet declared an exploit. Ya?
So first off, I heard it was pretty shitty. People suffered heavily from putting alarm clocks in order to be competetive in Skill training. There is no sense to such mechanics, because they only support self-destructive gaming behaviour and they don’t encourage smart game play, but grinding and sitting it out.
Second, you forget to mention that back in the day people only had to train one Battlecruiser to 5, not all of them. And when CCP changed that everyone who had trained it before got LVL 5 on all BC, so upcoming generations of players have to train roughly 75 days longer to get all BC to 5. But yeah, selective memory seems to be a valid choice when trying to be right.
The NPE is a joke. Do you honestly think new players care about some roleplaying BS that has nothing to do with the rest of the game? I mean, maybe in the moment of doing it, they care. I’m also not against it, but it seems CCP is content to be able to make a hook behind “New Players” with delivering this so called NPE and not having to think about them anymore. The real New Player Experience is what happens outside of this simulation inside the game. That’s what counts and Skill Progression is a huge part of it.
And what you are saying is either completely untrue or a misinterpretation on purpose. New player Skill Progression hasn’t seen any significant speed up and the “new toys” you seem to be so proud of cannot change the fact that being excluded from specific content for many years for no good reason (if you have one, please finally name it).
I didn’t find anyone anywhere in this thread speaking against ganking. This is a not a “poor newbros, we have to provide them safety”-thread. This thread is about giving everyone, new and old the option to faster dive into new forms of content without waiting ages for Skill training to finish. Ganking, of course, good thing and all.
Not sure why you won’t write out Joan’s name, but yeah Jack left town and now I’m alone with her.
I had no intention of replying before seeing your post, as I knew i’ll only be talking to bitter vets terrified that new players might have a better experience.
It’s refreshing to see a newer player voice their opinion on the forums. The vast majority of those who come to the forums at all are older players who invested a lot of time in a platform that gives them advantage through that time investment.
Naturally, when someone suggests making the game more accessible they feel that their hard earned advantage is in grave danger, so they respond with all kinds of personal attacks and repeating outdated weak arguments, as if repeating the ‘skill injectors’ argument 50 times will make it believable.
My post is about the NEW player experience. From all those who commented, you are the only actual NEW player. It is your opinion that weighs even more than mine.
Sadly, most new players quit before ever going on the forums. If one of them dares to criticise anything they are swiftly met with a storm of htfu, you don’t have what it takes, you’re a sissy and so on.
Even good players don’s because they know the forums are infested with trolls and toxic players with so much time and no life purpose.
I doubt the post will make a difference. From what I saw, CCP has a very “focused” tunnel vision, and a excessive overconfidence that they have the right vision and method.
CCP remind me of Sparta mentality, which is glorified and romanticised in western culture based on one moment of bravery.
History forgets that Sparta’s golden age was short lived, a mere 67 years. Because Spartans were so confident and proud of their elitism, they refused to evolve and change as the world changed around them, and so they steadily declined and were eventually eclipsed by others.
The story of EVE online is eerily similar to that of Sparta, it had a short golden age and a lot of PR because of it’s unique elements, but it hasn’t truly evolved since then, and has been in decline.
If you did that you were bad. Simple swap in a longer skill you also want to train so you can sleep all night, then change it back later on.
Yes, things have gotten easier. Unlimited skill queues, lower requirements, more SP in “core skills”, new NPE. But things are still declining.
Maybe it isn’t new players, maybe it is the older more established players leaving. See, you have no data. You got zero evidence here, zip, nada, zilch, the empty set, goose egg, nothing.
And the same for destroyers (BTW, nice job being a ■■■■ stain). Still, the learning skill removal and the reduction in requirements to get into a carrier are pretty big given that is often what people point too as one of the “big things”.
For me the NPE was not much more than, here is your velator, now ■■■■ off. Ironically during that time the game was growing.
Also, the point is not that we need a new NPE that hands out more goodies, but maybe one that leads players to interacting with other players.
Again, that seems to be the key. Players who are not ganked in their first 15 days leave the game the earliest, those who are ganked stay the longest. Ganked in the first 15 days. So tell me about how skill progression affects this.
Many years? WTFAYTA? You can do just about everything in game pretty damn early. Want to camp gates with people…find the right group. Want to go on roams? Find the right group. If there is an activity look around. Heck there are groups that are even dedicated at helping new players. But oh boo-hoo I can’t fly a dread 2 weeks on or even a BS. Hell, once I was in a BS with t2 guns back in the day I missed being in the support fleet. They often seemed to be having fun while we were bashing a structure or waiting for stuff to happen. Oh, and despite having close to 160 million SP and being able to fly both the moros and the nagalfar I have yet to fly one as they are usually flown by capital alts. I have flown a carrier a few times on ops, but again usually a sub-cap pilot. Point being that nearly 10 years on I am still waiting for some of that “content”. So having the SP does not mean you’ll actually get to enjoy that content.
My God…
The point is that the argument for what will keep people in the game longer is not more starting SP, quicker access to new/different ships. It is player interaction.
Whiff…right over your head. I was talking about interaction with other players. That will keep players in game longer than giving them a butt load of SP.
EVE has been around for 14 years. PCU grew for 8 of those years. Was flat for 2 more and then went into decline. That is some “short” golden age.
Nicely written, pity its totally shallow and has no stand in reality.
“Once new players understand the importance of SP and how massively disadvantaged they are, they’re more likely to avoid PVP or at least avoid risky PVP. Would you go in the ring with a boxer 20 pound heavier, a head higher, generally better condition and 10 years of experience, while you just learned how to bind your bandages? I didn’t think so.”
Ask BOB how it worked for them vs newbie goons?
SP are tool which opens you some possibilities. Your skills at using ships has nothing to do with that. There are players with 5 mil sp in ships fitted with t1 mods who can kill players with 50mil sp in same ships with t2 mods. There are new players who can kill way older and better equipped players in better ships. Simple as that, believe it or not.
Again, if people wanted EVE:GO they would all play on SISI.
CCP does not have to react at all, you just need to realize it is not game for you and leave or MTFU and play ^^
Yeah I heard it was good times when Goons came to EVE. So your suggestion is exactly what? New Players should join in chunks from already existing communities so we don’t have to talk about stuff?
The first fights I had were all in T1 ship with meta T1 modules and there were some kills. It doesn’t prove the SP Progression issue wrong though, on the contrary. New and newer players who chose to get out there and fight will very quickly get an understanding for PVP mechanics and if they are even a little good, their SP will greatly lag behind their skill at using ships.
It’s funny to write that from a char who didn’t play since 2012. Furthermore I resent your notion that “man-up” would mean to be stupidly accepting being limited by arbitrary waiting time, instead of opening ones mouth and speak the mind. Your idea what a man is sounds to me like a little worm, with no backbone.
Okay, as I said I only heard that people felt it was a bad mechanic, unnessecarily drawing from real life time of players. If there was a hacky solution, sure, whatever works. On the other hand these solutions usually still mean extra time investment on a regular basis.
Sure. Even if we had such data we would need more data. Are these old player accounts still old players or accounts bought by new players? Are these new players really new players or alts of old players which they use once for bait and doomheim them after? Everybody knows that no one (despite maybe CCP) has any reliable data, but one thing is for sure: OP told his story of being active for 7 years before taking a break and recently decided to start from zero. He told us his experience and reasons to not do it again. In my opinion his description of the SP wall is absolutetely correct and it is an issue CCP should be looking at. If you see any negative consequences of faster SP progression, let me know.
And sure, old players are leaving EVE too, as I’ve said and as you surely know. As different as the individual reasons may be, there seems to be a clear tendency in regard of the game feeling stale, lack of content and so on. Now imagine we wouldn’t scare off newer players with arbitrary year long waiting time. Maybe and I cannot prove it, but maybe then less older players would be leaving the game, because there would be new “older” players coming in reasonable amount of time.
Thanks and yeah, I guess that evens things out. I guess the crowd who wants BC 5 (like me, I admit) is a bit different from those who want to sit in a Carrier asap. The latter seem to be people who want to rat with higher ticks while the BC-crowd probably wants it for PVP.
From a storyline perspective, I think that’s enough. NPE stands for new player experience and there seems to be a mix up of meanings when CCP uses the term. Experience is not something someone else gives you, but something you make yourself. So a set of colorful, comic-like tasks will be one setting - which in my opinion draws a pretty wrong picture of EVE. A year long arbitrary waiting time for SP progression is another setting - which unironically draws are more realistic picture of how EVE is now. That is what OP was talking about and I personally think that there is no need for this anymore.
I absolutetly agree, we would need that and we have it in form of older players who seek for new PVP buddies. SP progression is only one factor. Being “ganked” in the first 15 days might say a lot about the player though, as these could be types of persons who get out there and play the game immediately instead of staying near the newbro systems for long. Of course these types of players will have a higher retention rate. This entire post is not about making EVE easier. It is about supporting these types of daring new players to be able to have quicker SP progression and to be able to chose between all the great variety of ships and gameplay mechanics EVE offers earlier than 5 years from start, so they can contribute to content and they don’t lose interest.
Surely true, but it misses the point a bit. Just because you have the SP, doesn’t mean you will use them or will be good at it - yes. But reversely, just because there is a chance you won’t be, doesn’t mean you should be excluded from it for years.
Also, as you probably know for yourself, support skills are pretty damn important and the same goes for all Skills that affect your ships. The first fights I had in Thrashers, Ruptures and Stabbers - with their T1 meta fits. The real SP wall is when you want to have reasonably good skills for your ships, not when you merely want to be able to board them.
The data CCP provided there was pretty unspecific, but in general it makes sense that player interaction is an important part for deciding to play EVE. As is the realization that by fate aka mechanics aka year long Skill progression time you are bound to be a victim for all these times or find people who are weaker than you. That’s what I don’t like about it. It spoils the game for many people, old players and new ones alike. It drives the entire game towards risk-adversity.
