Extended New Player Experience

Communications Center General Discussion
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41

Matchmaking and arena pvp will teach them pvp that is fundamentally different to the sandbox.

What happens when they leave the arenas and their opponents aren’t matched to meet their power level? What happens when they get ambushed because they weren’t taught how to d-scan?

Basic pvp skills will be absent from arenas. And they could be even more frustrated that their pvp tutorial showed them nothing of basic survival skills.

Heart is definitely in the right place. But nothing can teach a new player how to pvp as well an experienced player.

3 Likes
42

I think you misunderstood the purpose of this. It is not meant to be a long term activity but a tutorial only.

1 Like
43

Now it is often, next it will be a practice area and soon plain old Instanced Arena PvP, scope creep already and still just a thread.

Just rename the thread Arena PvP and be done with it.

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44

The main issue i want to approach is that new players quit the game before they even realise that its fundamentally pvp based.

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45

Player interaction is what drives this game. All the main hub locals are quiet now. (cept Jita, sigh) There’s no reason for a noob to say anything if no one else is talking.

2 Likes
46

Thats why i believe a 2v2 matchup scenario would be great. A reason to talk to someone and work together just to get the ball going.

47

That’ll be perfect, nothing makes a new player feel better than have their “teammate” call them a FING NUUB in chat :rofl:

1 Like
48

this is totally the way to go, someone told me this and I learned tons. I finally decided to roll a different race so I don’t really play this guy after that.

I even made some kills!

3 Likes
49

Hate to tell noobs their noobs, but they are. If they ask questions in local, they wont be noobs for long…

I know, don’t feed the trolls…

1 Like
50

It’s not hard at all if they are willing to cooperate with other players, even other noobs. Just ask around, probably in the starter corp, help channels, or anywhere there are a lot of people. I’ll ask once in a while if anyone wants to run some missions. Guess how often anyone takes me up on the offer. I haven’t fully figured out why, but it seems easier to get people to join a corporation than to join a fleet.

Well, guess what. If they won’t join a fleet to mine or run missions or explore, they sure aren’t joining to PVP, and if they aren’t PVPing in a fleet, then they are probably just losing ships.

The players I have gotten to fleet me and do something with are usually gone after that. I don’t know what happens to most of them. Many join corps but I don’t know what happened s after that. And, even those players are few and far between. But while they are cooperating, I can assure you, they are making good ISK and can afford losses. Even a few days out of the gate.

51

I can say ■■■■ the casuals and good riddance

2 Likes
52

I think it’s a bad idea.

The (extended) New Player Experience should prepare new players to what EVE is. This has two goals:

    • Teaching new players the basics, so that they can explore the rest of the game on their own.
    • Showing new players the core concepts of the game, so that they can see if they like it.

Even though I really like the idea of putting newbie players into PvP as part of the new player experience, your proposed idea of staged 1v1 PvP matches as ‘extended NPE’ has multiple flaws and does not fulfill either of the two goals above.

As a start, most of the PvP in EVE isn’t actually fighting other players, it’s finding favourable fight you know you want to take and running from unfavourable fights. Newbies won’t be tought the first basic rule of PvP in EVE if they’re pitted in a 1v1 they can only win by killing the other player: flying out alive in an unfavourable fight is as much winning as actually killing the other player if the fight is favourable to you. A forced 1v1 teaches newbies the wrong basics of EVE combat. They should try to fly away if things go sour, and they should keep their opponent tackled if they want to kill them.

Second, your extended new player experience will be a horrible experience for new players. In your arena the newbies will most likely not face another newbie, but they will face people who made their Nth alt and know exactly what they’re doing.
Have you thought about what happens when newbies who barely know their keybinds or other basics of the game, are pitted against people who have made yet another alt to compete in the only EVE 1v1 queued arena? This arena style fighting will draw the attention of a few veterans that have always wanted the simplicity of queued 1v1 fights, which means this first PvP experience is not going to be any kind of fun for actual newbies.

Lastly, this arena doesn’t show new players the core concepts of the game, as none of the PvP in the rest of the game is a queued 1v1 at the press of a button, giving newbies a completely wrong idea of the PvP in EVE from the start.

To come back to the goals of an ENPE, your idea fails both to teach new players the right basics and it shows them a completely different core concept of the game that they won’t find anywhere else in the game. This could scare away people from the game that are uninterested in forced 1v1 battles, and it will disappoint people who stay because they actually liked your arenas.

My feedback
I really like the idea of putting newbie players in real EVE PvP scenarios as part of the new player experience. But doing it in queued 1v1 battles against mostly veterans gives the newbies a completely wrong idea of what the game has to offer, a bad impression and a terrible introduction.

Instead, I would suggest something more simple, such as for example sending interested new players to faction warfare at the end of the NPE, give them a mission and a few ships and teach them how small scale EVE PvP really works.

1 Like
53

I think it’s interesting that someone so anti-social as Elena, who claims that one can not trust anybody in EVE ONLINE, continuously talks about “victim blaming”.

And since when does a noob need to fit frigates worth three million ISK a piece??

6 Likes
54

Additionally, while I am currently doing this myself, I suggest people look through the forum accounts of this unusual high amount of likes given to the initial post.

4 Likes
55

Good observation Solecist! I didn’t even notice the unusually high amount of likes given to the initial post at first, but it seems Kalzi, Tronster Imba, Salmandi Deritro, Normann Tivianne, Amilia Lina, Diego Renalard, Dr bl4ckbird, Soaren Aideron, Almos Pau and probably many others as well logged in for the first time to like this very post. Didn’t view any other posts or anything, they just created an account, logged in on the forum and liked this post.

That’s suspicious to say the least.

2 Likes
56

Likes given == Likes they gave, not “Likes given to them”.
I’ve left out people who are definitely legit, like Herzog Wolfhammer.

Notice that almost half of the, currently, 32 Likes are made by people who only ever gave a single Like. Notice the weird amount of people who have given a Like, yet not ever wrote a single post.

Also notice that there are three who have LESS than one minute read time, which means they could not even have properly read through the initial post of this thread. There are also others who seemed to have specifically only showed up to exclusively read the posts in this one thread.

I’ll leave the rest up to you guys.

Neofly Thiesant - LESS than 1 minute read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
JOBY IRIS - LESS than 1 minute read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Dr bl4ckbird - LESS than 1 minute read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.

Normann Tivianne - 1 minute read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Diego Renalard - 1 minute read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.

Tronster Imba - 2 minutes read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Almos Pau - 3 minutes read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Soaren Aideron - 4 minutes read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Kalzi - 5 minutes read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
FroZT Blaker - 9 minutes read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
Amilia Lina - 23min read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.

Sipers Makanen - 1h read time, 1 Like given, 1 post created.
Dead Cal - 1h read time, 2 Likes given, 1 post created.
Chysgoda - 1h read time, 1 Like given, 0 posts created.
H0pe Shaishi - 1h read time, 5 Likes given, 2 posts created.

DisbandTheCSM ForCSM14 - 2h read time, 9 Likes given, 2 posts created.
Jordan Cesaill - 2h read time, 2 Likes given, 5 posts created.
Taric Laresh - 2h read time, 2 Likes given, 3 posts created.
Raborne Leonadus - 2h read time, 4 Likes given, 13 posts created.
Ark Zxr - 5h read time, 1 Like given, 2 posts created.

Antiker Hyperion - 13h read time, 1 Like given, 10 posts created.
MasterEYE - 1 day read time, 1 Like given, 2 posts created.
Phat Phreddy - 1 day read time, 41 Likes given, 0 posts created.

This thread smells.

7 Likes
57

Thank you. :slight_smile:

58

Gerard
Your first paragraph contradicts some posts that claim 1v1 or 2v2 aren’t realistic enough: that balanced PvP against reasonable people is rare in EVE. Probably both are right. But “imperfect” is far better than the real problem, which is people who have good reason to avoid combat completely. And they do have good reasons.

I think this is a good suggestion by OP, but one that obviously can never be perfect. Griefers in alts will try to ruin it for people playing for the first time. Vets will blow away new players and not stop to help afterwards etc. Two groups of new players will fight a few times but have nobody around to offer advice and guidance. etc etc. ALl of these, BTW, refute the many claims in this thread that it’s easy to get help with combat in niormal EVE. If everyone was so nice, they would behave that way in the NPE too :slight_smile:

But it addresses a much worse problem: new players who avoid combat due to much worse first experiences than this would offer. EVE players are in denial about what EVE feels like to the majority new players. it’s self-selecting: naturally you only hear success stories. Of course the successes didn’t need anything other than existing game features.

This suggestion is for people ones that would otherwise have a negative first combat experience (which are much more frequent than the bittervet narrative suggests), or find the startup threshold for combat too high and defer it indefinitely, or can’t figure out how to make enough ISK to cover both their PvE risks and combat PvP as well , or don’t want to join EVE Uni or RvsB because they want to be in a PvE Corp with friends (the group that CCP believes often left EVE after a “harassment Wardec”), etc etc etc …

The vast majority of new players leave without saying why (for obvious reasons).

This suggestion would help with anyone who might enjoy EVE more if they got a soft introduction to combat. It doesn’t have to be particularly good to be a huge improvement on what actually happens in the current environment.
:
:
Faction Warfare might be more like “real EVE”, but there’s a problem with its track record: it’s been a failure at attracting new players. Why should that change?

1 Like
59

Dear OP,

I am not trying to put you and your idea into a bad light. The idea is not bad per se, but it is not social. Matchmaking never is social. Two players are being thrown at each other, then seperated again. That is not social at all.

What you’re missing is that what CCP talks about are “real life events” in the video game causing feelings, which is what actually connects people with the game. The reason why “recruiting by shooting” works is because it creates feelings, caused by another player, in a semi-random event during regular gameplay. Anger and Adrenaline have proven to be fantastic in regards to getting people to stick to the game.

Your idea does not, in any way or form, provide such a scenario. It is artificial match making with no actual potential connection forming between the players.

Furthermore does your idea ignore that there will be masses of old players creating new characters to join in on these fights, who are going to win by default simply because of their experience. While there is room to argue that this can be a good thing, because it will help new players to learn faster … there is also room to argue that it will discourage people due to certain individuals being called out for winning a lot more than others. Potentially.

What is definitely not going to work out as you envision it, is the part I’ve addressed first. Your idea is not social at all and does not create the same feelings as those that actually bind players.

You’re welcome,
Sol.

2 Likes
60

32 likes, 10 suspect (very short read time).

What’s the problem?. 22 is still way more than normal.

Also - why is it even relevant? Posts should be considered on their content.