I hear you on that one. And this forum in particular is full of people who haven’t been a noob in a decade yet somehow are greater experts on noob experience than the noobs themselves.
Undoubtedly the decade old people have greater Eve knowledge and experience. But that very experience ends up erasing and re-writing the noob perspective to the point where it becomes a false memory. It then easily gets shoved into whatever current agenda oldbies want, along with a ‘this is what noobs want’ claim.
Thus the primary voice for noobs ends up becoming not the noobs themselves, but lots of older players who try to lay claim to speaking on their behalf.
Yah when I recruit generally newer people into my corp I am pretty lassie faire with teaching them things. Ill give tips on fitting a ship if they ask and so on. Other than that I let them enjoy the benefits of the corp/alliance. It’s what you put in to EVE is what you get out. I am not going to hold the person’s hand all through EVE. 95% of stuff is on Google/YouTube that can’t be best explained through chat box/voice. I don’t want to impose what I like on to new guys and so far it really works out.
If you are a new person in EVE I currently believe no amount of me talking, holding your hand, answering your every question is not going to change how you feel personally towards the game. That is a question up to the new person.
I’ve been playing EVE almost daily for 16 years and it’s extremely hard to summarize the game in short words. The basic toxic attitude lies in the nature of the concept of a closed industrial, trade, and the war system. All three areas are interdependent and PvP is the toxic part at the core, but PvP is extremely important to making industry and trade work. However, once you have had a chance to look behind the scenes of various groups, you find that most players are relaxed, friendly, and cool people with or without families. Everyone wants to have fun in the game, but it’s just not easy. EVE is a fleet-based game. In a group, you get ahead quickly. Solo, you need a lot of patience, a lot of experience through trial and error, until you get to a point where the game expands the possibilities that you can use effectively. You can compare the game with cave diving. I start confidently and have to fight my way through endless narrow passages. There are dangerous spots where I can get stuck, starve, die of thirst or drown. But at some point deep under the mountain, a huge grotto full of wondrous things opens up. And each passage leads into unknown territory with equal dangers. I’ve been playing with three accounts since 2008 because I mostly had to and wanted to play solo. Despite the long experience and many strategic routines, the game remains a formidable challenge. It is a pity to see that the veterans are slowly leaving EVE and there is no fresh blood left that had to fight their way through a tough skill system as we did, thus the game gained a certain idealistic value and also a professional seriousness that is needed for larger corporations or alliances. CCP took a big risk here because it is precisely because the game is close to the reality of work that it is very special. But the current development is understandable but also deadly for the soul of the game. The monetization of EVE and the quick access to skill points seem like a last desperate act to squeeze something out of the lemon. It simply lacks a concept to make the game attractive to a new generation and to keep the games in the game despite the hard hurdles.
You have to make 73 million a day roughly to plex your account in 30 days…Yeah an Alpha is not going make that consistently. Could a Veteran Eve player with extensive knowledge of the game using Alpha clone ? Sure he could, but a true newbro would struggle to reach that income.
Also you have to make that income consistently. I have a real job I get paid a salary for, I don’t need one in a video game.
Well, if they can’t manage that, they will have to settle for making enough to go Omega once every 2 or 3 months then. Or, you know, get a job and work a whole hour a month…
I think the Skill system is the biggest detriment to the game growing. My friends all quit eve once they figured out “Wait…I have to skill for 90+ days to fly this ship” ?
I’ve told players this many times before, but it bears repeating. If you can’t afford $20 USD for a subscription, then there are probably better things you need to be doing with your life than playing online video games…
As far as the skill system goes, it’s been that way for 20 years with no problems. The only reason new players have a problem with it is because they are part of the “gotta have everything now and for zero effort” generation…
There is also awesome games on steam for less than 20 dollars. Stardew Valley comes to mind. Talk about a bargain for you money, I sunk probably 500+ hours into that game.
There are issues with the skill queue, yes. On the other hand, no MMO I know of has ever let you start the game and jump right into mid-game, endgame, or raid content. You always have to grind X amount of time to get to the higher stuff.
One difference is that with the ‘levelling’ and quest style systems of most games, a new player can’t even see all the things they can’t have. So they don’t really care they can’t get +12 Plate Armor of Adamantine Grooviness or ShockPulse Ultracannons of Starslaying.
In EVE though, everything they can’t have is right there in the skill and market windows, and they even come with ‘helpful’ little info checks that tell you exactly how long you’ll have to train to get them. So that’s possibly a case where EVE’s “broad sandbox” design doesn’t do it any favors.
Maybe, but this attitude of players “I have to play 3 months to do whatever? screw that!” is just stupid. If they want to get to the end game and win the game in less than month, then they are playing the wrong game. I see it all the time on my fan made NWN1 server where the new players are crying how slow levelling is and it takes week to get maximum level (when in reality it can be done in 15 hours clean if one knows where to go and what to do there). Well these players should be playing singleplayer games and not MMOs which are from the beginning designed to keep players interested for pretty much unlimited amount of time. If one doesn’t want to play it for unlimited amount of time, he shouldn’t start any MMO.
It comes back to people starting the wrong game for them, to then demand it gets changed to suit them. Part of that is a lack of effort on the player to figure out what he’s getting in to, part of that is a lack of clear messaging and advertising by the developers.
