What this tells me is that your risk aversion is malfunctioning. It is all well and good to want to avoid taking losses and even avoid being made a fool of, but at some point that you and many EVE players seem to have gone beyond, you are paralyzed.
There is a vascillation that man players seem stuck in, between “EVE is real.” when they win and “It’s just space pixels.” when they lose or are acting to avoid loss.
I am reminded of the quote, “To avoid criticism, do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing.”
When you realise that you can’t kill Dagan solo, and call for help in local. Generally the next thing that happens is a random stranger rolls up in something way overpowered for the job and blats him for you.
The SoE arc isn’t part of the NPE per se, but you are pointed towards it when you finish the tutorials IIRC.
right in the feels…
whenever you want to give your argument some extra power you start with an insult?
It is just one of many possible approaches really. My focus was on the goal of giving newbies an idea how pvp works EARLY on and then trying to hook them up with other players to make use of the skills they gained. Let us know if you got a better idea.
also why does it seem like the bitter toxic people all post under alts? thats way more suspicious than the like ratio on this post tbh
That post doesn’t tell you anything at all about me.
In the beginning, before a player is properly set up (with income social contacts, some experience), EVE consumes a lot of time and it doesn’t give much back. Nor do you get useful honest advice. Or rather, you can’t distinguish the useful input from the wildly optimistic advice, malicious lies, or scams.
Mistakes are inevitable. Risk management is essential - but new players lack the knowledge to make good risk assessments, so they naturally lean towards paths that look reasonable.
This is why people being boosted, or who play with more experienced friends, are much more likely to stay. Honest advice, much less time wasted generating an income, help with activities that are near-impossible to research as a beginner (notably PvP combat, but there are plenty of others), etc.
BTW you’re blaming the person that CCP have foolishly put in this situation, rather than EVE’s ridiculously high startup threshold.
It’s not the fault of every player who tries EVE and leaves for ever. Unless, as I sometimes suspect, CCP believes it’s a good idea to select people with a high threshold for boredom and wasting time. Nor is it because EVE is a bad game once someone gets set up.
The startup period is for too long, too much of it is boring, and the advice and guidance leaves out far too much vital information.
Some of that could be fixed very cheaply. But it won’t even be considered be as long as the majority keeps telling itself it’s the newbies’ fault.
I’ve done the SOE Epic Arc at least five times as a beginner. After the first one (which was a mess of course) I started explaining to people who commented in local how to take out the Drone Queen, Dagan, and the guy before Dagan (forgot his name) with the appropriate beginner ships (T1/T1 destroyers? It’s been a while
All three must have been designed (long ago) by someone smart, who wanted to teach tactics and ship fitting.
Some people want to be boosted rather than listen. But surprisingly many (at least 50%) are very happy when they find that a DPS-tuned ship and the right kind of tank or avoidance technique let them solo him. Nobody is unhappy to learn stuff like that, and then find it actually works.
This is a (rare) example of a context where there can be a natural, safe (because it’s only information) social interaction with a good chance of continued contact.
EVE could have a lot of opportunities for simple safe interactions between beginners, and between beginners and experienced players. Or more interestingly difficult scenarios could be created and documented properly so they provided useful instruction.
Not quite as easy to do it with PvP combat, but the OPs suggestion (plus the tuning along the way) would provide an excellent framework. It must be possible to construct useful PvP combat scenarios.
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PS: Boosting any of the harder SOE scenarios isn’t going to motivate a player to stay with EVE, nor teach them anything. All it does is make the booster imagine they’ve done something useful.
They probably linked it in alliance chat or something and have all of their init buddies upvoting it to make it look popular. OP is one of the two that got banned with brisc.
I have seen that you make good, well reasoned posts. But here, I think you have experienced some errant emotional reflex.
OF COURSE your post tells me something about you. That’s what you are doing when you post, telling us about you.
Here is one point I might contend. I think whether they stay has more to do with the psychology of the person. I have not seen that people being boosted or who have close friends or associates already established in game will tend to stay longer. I just don’t have data and I don’t think you do, either.
Let’s be real for a second: some people are weak. Some players are Gary Kasparov. Some players should stick to checkers.
YES! I so agree! That’s why I would urge - nay beg - Elena to run for CSM! Her peerless thoughts deserve a wider audience! Please, Elena, EvE needs you!
Or people can just play chess for fun! Not everyone who plays chess wants to be a grandmaster. My ELO is below average but I like to play a match when I’m bored.
Thing is I usually have the option of playing against similarly rated players. In EVE that’s not really an option, not that it is a bad thing. Playing against higher rated players with more knowledge is how someone learns. Actually learning chess is similar to EVE in that new players are told to play many matches (and lose) and then analyse those matches to find their mistakes.
The difference between chess and EVE is that one is a board game with simple rules and a single goal and the other is an open-world sandbox MMORPG with many complex rules and no goals. If someone wants to get better at EVE you really need to ask “better at what?” to which most newbies would probably respond “I don’t know”.
Maybe the goal of the NPE should be to help newbies find out what it is they want to get better at?
In a place like this, in writing, you’re not going to read anything about my emotional state or personality. Hopefully it’s clear I’m mostly interested in the playing environment for new players, and I’ve stated the reason for that elsewhere. BTW I’d share more, but the EVE forums are full of wannabe “snipers”.
CCP has data that shows a solid correlation between Corp membership and staying, and have shared some of it. I CBA finding/analyzing myself because they are still so new at collecting/interpreting that kind of data I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. Also because of what they just did about Wardecs, which IMO showed they’re still trying to find and address symptoms, not causes.
There’s no point get into a discussion about whether “the tough survive” or “even a wimp being boosted can get along in EVE”. AFAIK It’s not currently measurable.
But it can be considered from another angle:
Nothing in EVE suggests that the tough survive: startup is slow and a lot of it is boring, but it’s certainly not difficult. Apart from people who get into a good, rich Corp early (and any others who don’t get caught up in “startup grinding”), EVE statup seems to select only for patience, persistence, and the availability of a lot of free time.
I also have serious doubts about the high-end game being exceptionally difficult compared to other PVP-combat intensive games. The forums are currently full of complaints that suggest the opposite.
I think EVE players started believing their own stories a long time ago (the message hasn’t changed at all in ten years). And part of that has become a legend that, deep down, most believe in: that you have to be “hard” (compared to other games) to make it in EVE. I’ve never seen the slightest evidence for this.
I do see a lot of “risk management” though, and minimal evidence of risk-taking (in terms of risking damage/destruction that will cost a significant amount of playing time to recover from). When a new player goes up against The Drone Queen or Dagan they are probably risking more of their wealth, and more time to recover, than the average “super-cap” owner does when they actually risk their ship in combat.
Think about suicide ganking: the attackers have the choice to initiate the attack or not, and complete control over the engagement they will lose. It’s certainly PvP combat of a sort, and costs will be incurred, but how much time (the only real cost in gaming) is put at risk? What they do makes sense, but it doesn’t demonstrate anything out of the ordinary for MMO gamers.
It’s natural for players to evolve towards similar manageable risks, where over time and multiple engagements the loss of equipment doesn’t cost too much playing time. And of course it’s can’t be criticized: any other bahavior would be strange.
So compare with the “hamster wheel” of a pure fantasy-style MMORPG: does it really take more time for EVE players to cover their equipment costs than a pure PvE player in “that other game”? Does a loss in an EVE battle really take more time than a fantasy PvE player invests in the serious of failures it takes to get to the end of the latest focus scenario in the endless progression?
If you drop the ego boosting and think about total time played doing interesting things, you’d expect the “hard-core” players of every game to put approximately the same amount of energy and time into their preferred game.
This is part of why I can’t take all the EVE posturing seriously: I’ve never seen any evidence that EVE is “tougher” or “harder” than other games. It’s at least as good as a game of course - but the arguments for “player exceptionalism” sound like a cult.
BTW they also sound exactly like the content the WoW PvP-server players’ forums used to before their supplier ruined those servers.
Well of course I am! Everyone in EvE should follow you!
Just because I get a quick alert telling me who posted and in what thread that I’m watching and the EvE forums aren’t nearly as populated with new topics and posts as they once were isn’t important - what is important is that I get to read your awesome posts!
You are generous indeed, but I implore you not to explain just to me, but rather many EvE players at the same time when you take your rightful place in the CSM.
I’ve been reading the CSM candidates’ running announcement platforms and I’ve thought; “Elena could do so much better than these!” Please make your voice heard! Stand for CSM! New Eden needs to hear you!
If you think one person can have their finger on the pulses of and represent the desires of hundreds of thousands of others your ability to vote at all should be removed.
