New Player Experience Phase 1 Playtest

[CCP_Sledgehammer]

Greetings Space Friends!

We are planning a play test for the upcoming changes to the New Player Experience (tutorial) on Singularity today, Wednesday 8th August, at 16:00 UTC (= EVE time)!

We have made some changes to the NPE, including integrating the majority of the NPE within The Agency and creating a basic combat and industry path for The Agency tasks. These changes are the beginnings of allowing new players to experience choice early on and also introducing them to content discovery via The Agency from day 1.

What exactly is being tested?
• The NPE integration into The Agency
• The new combat and industry tasks for the NPE

What feedback are we looking for?
• Bug Reports for any defects within the NPE tasks and Agency integration
• Forum posts on any other issues experienced during NPE task completion

How to connect to Singularity for this test:
Change the server from Tranquility to Singularity in the upper left corner of the launcher and log in as normal. More detailed instructions are available here.
Join the channels “singularity” and “masstesting” to have questions answered.
Test steps:
Note: You are free to run these at your own pace

1. Dock at one of the stations in FD-MLJ in your pod to get a Rookie Corvette.
2. Open the Agency window.
3. Select the Combat or Industry tutorial paths.
4. Progress through the different tutorial tasks
5. Report bugs if you see them via the in-game tool, bottom of the F12 (Help) menu.
6. Leave feedback, if you have any, on this forum post!

What else should I know?
• Use the command /moveme to be moved to the start system [/moveme FD-MLJ]
• 2M Skill points will be awarded on Singularity for this playtest

[Dyver_Phycad]

Shouldn’t you fix the Agency first before you introduce and force more players to use this trainwreck?

[Chocolaty_Sprogmaster]

and yet AGAIN changing the NPE without even touching on all of the broken crap that hurts player retention after it abruptly ends.

Also, funneling more people into that abortion known as The Agency is just going to hurt retention, if anything.

[Uriel_the_Flame]

[PIXARZ]

I sense a little bit of emotions bubbling out in the form of frustration. Keep calm. Fly unsafe. L2p and so on.

[Farr_Arrow]

I am apologizing to other pilots who may strongly disagree with me in advance because I do not want to confuse the issue with my opinion if almost everyone else without exception does not like The Agency or thinks that it is broken in various places and barely usable. But I myself use The Agency from time to time and I like it. It seemed a bit confusing to me when it first came out, but now I mostly like it and I enjoy how everything is in one place. I must admit that I am not really a new player and so I cannot really comment on what an actual new player might think of The Agency. However, in my opinion only, I am going to give the hard working employees of CCP a chance to make whatever changes to The Agency that they want to make before I decide whether I like the new changes or do not like the new changes. Thanks.

[Nigel_Kouvol]

the guiden for how to use skill book is very clear and easy to understand

[Aspecter_en_Welle]

Combat career path. Task 1.b.

Can’t be completed at all. Trying several times on English, Russian and German localisation, leaving and returning to the core system, docking-undocking and kill all enemies multiple times, trying to shoot structures (0 damage), loot all wreck. Nothing.

Then. About translation. I don’t know who translate this.
English

Russian

"Seek & Destroy" translation is a “Найти и уничтожить”, not “Всем спать.” (Everyone to sleep.)

[Aspecter_en_Welle]

Combat career path. Task 6.b.
After clicking “activate button”

[Seamus_Donohue]

My feedback thus far:

Combat 1A and Combat 1B are too difficult for new players. I was able to do them in the default Velator only because of my skillpoints and knowledge of the game. I recommend either reducing the number of enemies, or supply a repair module; preferably both.

I previously reported to CCP Sledgehammer in the “masstesting” channel that I was able to complete Combat 1B normally. It turns out that this is not correct: now that I’m looking at The Agency window, I see that Combat 1B is NOT lit up as yellow to mark completed.

Someone in the “masstesting” channel (I forget who) had the good point that this version of the NPE is setting unrealistically low expectations of cruiser hitpoints. In my opinion, there shouldn’t be any cruisers in the NPE except when it comes to demonstrating tracking speeds. (For this purpose, switch the NPCs to using turrets.)

Combat 3. The tutorial talks about “Observe how your guns miss more against a smaller target”, but both targets are cruiser-sized. THIS is probably the step where I’d introduce cruiser NPCs, and say “notice how the cruiser misses you more often than the frigate misses you.”

User “Tink Pickles” said in “masstesting”: “the frigates have good application against corvettes, and they try to fight from over 10km out, which is beyond our guns range with maxed skills” I tihnk this was in the context of talking about Combat 1B.

As part of the first step in Combat 1A or Industry 1, it might be worth giving new players an extra civilian weapon and civilian miner with the corvette, and then telling the new player to remove a miner from the high slot and replace it with a weapon. It’d be good to get them started early on the idea of properly fitting a ship for the actual task-at-hand.

[Aspecter_en_Welle]

@Seamus_Donohue

Combat 1A and Combat 1B are too difficult for new players. I was able to do them in the default Velator only because of my skillpoints and knowledge of the game. I recommend either reducing the number of enemies, or supply a repair module; preferably both

I did combat 1b in very slow mode (5 minutes) on ibis with no skills.

You can be killed in the 2nd wave, but battleship can’t kill you at all. I don’t think it’s will be too difficult for new players, but after fight needs an advice about repairing your vessel.

[Ozera_Saberef]

thoughts so far
-agency window still cluttered and confusing
-NPE missions not really visually identifiable as tutorials(the orange-ish colour may actually confuse new players into thinking they’re harder events)
-NPE industry mission 2 oddly specific about veldspar only and no other variants

-NPE combat mission 1a does not require killing of all enemies (also may be too difficult for new players)i have great small hybrid skills and good tank skills finished with less than 10% armour using only optimal range orbit speed tanking which most new players wouldn’t understand(using default corvette)
-NPE combat mission 1b same as 1a only finished with 98% structure (mission did not complete after last enemy destroyed confirmed 4 times)
-NPE combat mission 2 did not complete(possibly because i had frig 5 and turret 5 already)::edit:: (eventually completed after switching agency from suggested to all)
::update::
-NPE combat mission 2a failed to complete
-NPE combat mission 2b failed to complete
-NPE combat mission 3b failed to complete
-NPE combat mission 4b failed to complete
-NPE combat mission 6a failed to complete
-NPE combat mission 6b failed to activate and broke the agency window (NPE combat line gone completely)
::update2::
NPE combat mission 6b completed after several minutes without player interaction (no clue what objective was the briefing never displayed in the window)
NPE combat mission line reappeared… however agency window was slow and unresponsive while on the suggested tab window returned to it’s normal molasses feel in the other tabs without suggested events displaying.

[Circumstantial_Evidence]

Some players may be irritated at The Agency not because it is “bad” overall but because some features in it could use a little more polish. Which is outside the scope of this thread. Most players who remember the excellent old Agent Finder (not a new player) don’t like the Reduced Features version moved into the Agency. And the new visual style of using The Agency to set destination for Escalations is more cumbersome to use than the old, fast method of clicking on map-free, no-graphics journal entries. (You have to go into The Agency for Escalations TWICE, once to set a destination, and open it up again (if you closed it during the trip) to click the “Warp” button to the site. No simple right-clicks to bypass this, afaik.

[fdal]

Hi, I chose the combat path. i think you presume players will close and open the agency window or dock after each mission. so the transition for completion one mission and moving on to the next is very bugged. Try running it with t the agency window open and you will see what i mean right away.

I fitted civilian stuff web, repair dc etc. the web once activated never deactivated. in fact i docked, and it was still active when i undocked. I fitted t1 small to the corvette with some faction ammo and tore through these npc really quickly. was not challenging at all.

if i could transition between one mission to the next easily without bugs or having to dock or close reopen the agency window I would complete the whole thing in like 15 minutes.

The agency window is ok i guess but its too big and doesn’t get smaller when i want it too.

You need to redesign the agency window so its more streamlined with the interface. I don’t like the big window and it needs help. Maybe it shouldn’t be a window but more like take over the interface main like the ship tree,

Anyway. Hope the rest of your testing goes well.

[Raven_Luna]

First of all, thanks for the invitation to this test. Having invited and sat with new players, it was fun putting myself back into the new player role. Now I’m a technical writer and write technical and instructional manuals as part of my RL job - so apologies for me being super picky about Aura’s instructions.

I took the Industry route and focused on UI and Aura’s verbiage to see if a brand new player could figure out the steps and terminology. So here we go:

Industry 1. Aura asks you to warp to an asteroid. You warp to asteroid belt. Yay! Now what? Aura doesn’t come back with any further instructions. I’d recommend doing what you’ve done with Industry 2., 3., and have Aura come back (after the warp is complete) and tell the user to open the Agency to select the next task.

Industry 2. Aura almost perfection. Stays with you while mining, notification you’ve got enough veldspar, tells you (initially) to open Agency to select next task. This pattern repeats through other Industry steps, which is great.

Industry 3. This task is entitled “hauling ore”. I’ve just completed task 2 and am sitting out in space with my lovely veldspar. I click on this task and it informs me that I have to be docked in a station to continue. Okay - find a station - now I’m docked. Aura comes back and tells me to “find a station on my overview, right-click select dock.” Hmmmmm. (Note - sometimes this task gets hung up and doesn’t complete. Only seems to happen if I’m repeating the task. First time works (tried this with alts.)

Industry 4. Aura asks you to open the reprocessing plant to reprocess veldspar. This might be clearer if you included something like, “Open the “reprocessing plant” station service, move the veldspar from your item hanger to the reprocessing plant window, and reprocess your veldspar.” For new players, lots of steps we complete almost instinctively won’t be immediately clear to them.

This is what I have so far - off to RL job (booo). I’ll be back at the next testing session though. This was fun. . Thanks for the opportunity!

[Nicole_Morningside]

Industry part 7 - manufacture a module.

13 minutes construction time on the miner I, with nothing else happening is not a good way to retain newbies. put in something about the market whilst construction takes place, get them looking at the different types of things there are in eve, something to keep them occupied whilst construction takes place.

[Nicole_Morningside]

Ok, Industry Part 8 - More manufacturing

“using the lessons you’ve learned acquire 2 more miner I modules and place them in your item hanger.”

So more mining and another 26 mins waiting on construction??? Newbies will need a bit more activity than that to keep interest.

Why have them waiting on manufacture of the first Miner I, THEN let them know they need to mine again? Why not have them mining while waiting?

This needs looked at.

[Leslie_Torres]

I think given that it’s about 3-4 minutes between full holds of corvette mining, I think that’s the intention. It sets a demand, has you meet it, then makes the same demand, but now that you know what it takes, you can set one run to craft while you mine the materials for the second one, to try and get you to optimize your time usage. I admit they could use some additional wording after the “It takes a few minutes” akin to “feel free to mine some more in the meantime”.

[Circumstantial_Evidence]

The word “Acquire” could be explained in greater detail: players can build more of the item, or go somewhere to buy it. But “using the lessons you’ve learned” strongly suggests the tutorial is requesting the player to spend more time building more items.

To show players how to build something, any test object could be used: for example a civilian item that only takes one minute.

[Ryan_B_Thiesant]

Overall.
I am slightly disappointed, I thought there was supposed to be an activity tracker coming that road mapped all you can do in EVE.

I think you should concentrate on that.

The only thing wrong with the NPE currently is attacking seekers. Yes things like tracking, fall off are useful additions. But there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know like stopping a forum thread to stop arguments.

Here is the beautiful amazing sexy activity tracker at 30:03 of 2018 keynote.

Some constructive feedback as a tester

1. seek and destroy
   Good
   There is an undock button, and gets players straight into the action

Bad
How do I orbit, at what distance?
How do I shoot, what button?
How do I lock a target

Ugly
(if i shoot circadian in real life in a rookie ship i will die horribly)
There was nothing wrong with the old NPE, it should have just been more realistic. Like fighting the local pirates instead of the nerfed aliens.

Bug
Killed the seekers in seek and destroy 1. Then I selected 1.a seek and destroy in the agency as a mission.
But an alert says “all progress in this operation will be lost…blah blah!” This is a very off putting dialog. I’m said yes anyway, and no progress was lost.

1a
good
I like the waves of invaders, good scenery from the array.

bad
As a noob I have not been told how to navigate or how to shoot. If this is a training operation where is the training?
Why did i just get money?
What are those gifts?

ugly
The circadians should have kicked my butt. This is not preparing a noob for the game. This is like telling kids there is a father xmas.
Why aren’t I podded and wake up in station.

bug
2 enemies left and aura says “well done no enemies left”

2. falloff…
   good
   overlay of what to shoot
   Fall off needs to be explained.

bad
Please show people how to right click and orbit at optimal gun range.
How do I move my ship or orbit?
How do I lock a ship?
Where are the overlays to show where to redeem, inventory etc are?

ugly

bug
the overlay on the weapon is off the screen, for those who have the weapons at the top.

3. tracking targets

good
Tracking is important to be explained. I hope that all weapon types are explained too.

bad

ugly
How do I warp to the target?

bug no real distinction between mission 3 and 4

4. after burner
   good
   yes an afterburner reduce

bad
the afterburner training should have included moving - for example in a straight line or round a target.
How do I warp/jump through the stargate?

ugly
i warped to another system - i can’t right click to see my home station! (perhaps an opportunity to introduce what every noob asks for in NPC corp chat - “where is my stuff” hit alt-t open personal assets )

---

I’m too tired to continue. not a reflection on the new NPE, had a long day.