Hey there, friends. I’m a returning player and I’ve been watching Rookie Chat both to learn and to help, and one thing I’ve seen from new players repeatedly ask how to fit their Ventures for combat when beginning the Enforcer and Soldier of Fortune career agents, or how to fit it for combat while mining. At that point, other players explain that the Venture is not intended for combat, and that the universal consensus is that the Venture will want to rely on drones for self defense.
Following that, I repeatedly see that new players get confused why they can’t put drones in their Ventures.
I understand EVE wants to give players a lot of freedom, but during a tutorial, I feel like there needs to be slightly more restriction.
I propose two suggestions:
Firstly, the Venture specifically be restricted from Enforcer and Soldier of Fortune career agent missions.
Secondly, the Light Drone Operations skill book should be worked into the rewards for the Industrialist career path somewhat early.
You don’t need the game to restrict you from taking mining ships into combat, you just need basic logic. Battle Ventures are a meme fleet Vets fly for a laugh, not to accomplish goals.
Granted, it’s been about a year since I ran an alt through the NPE, but I don’t recall you needing drones at all in any of the missions. The players confused why they couldn’t use drones didn’t need the skill book, they needed the skill system explained to them. The error message in the fitting window tells you why you can’t use them, you just have to know to look.
My way-out there opinion on the NPE/Career agent system is that it shouldn’t even cover mining or industry as a topic or, at most, place it dead last and with a focus on huffing.
Entry-level mining is a trap for new players that combines tedium with atrocious income while also failing to teach the player anything even vaguely useful.
The tutorial genuinely is very bad when it comes to the venture. The missions tell you to fit turrets to it to defend yourself from rats, and the popups insist you fit a turret before you undock (you can ignore it, but newbs are unlikely to). This is simply teaching players wrong.
Make them do the enforcer track first so they understand weapons. Then let them do the industrialist track, hand out the venture on the first mission, and the drones on the second, with notifications that some ships, including all mining ships, are best of using drones rather than turrets.
The tutorial advises new players to “hide in the asteroid belt” because “pirates can’t find us here.” I think CCP needs to create an Interstellar Council (ISC) which would act as a focus group, allowing them to speak to players and get meaningful feedback which will improve the New Player Experience.
You can take only 2 drones in a venture into the Enforcer and Soldier of Fortune career agents. The tutorial will tell you to “return to dock and equip a weapon”. However you can optionally ignore this message and still warp to site. Use the (L) locations to look up the deadspace for the agent mission and warp there.
I don’t think this game needs more restrictions. It won’t be sandbox, if you are restricted from using the ships you want to use. How about we restrict gate camping to only frigates or less? How about making it more of a challenge by restricting Battle Cruisers out of being used under a set of circumstances? Eve is suppose to be messy and people are allowed to make their own choices. For example, in real life, I wear a helmet when on a motorcycle, it is not a law in my area. I don’t run around telling people we should enforce a law to make idiots wear a brain bucket. It is their choice.
Of course they shouldn’t stop people from putting guns on a venture. But the tutorial shouldn’t be giving such wrong advice as “fit a gun on your mining frigate in case a rat spawns”, it should take the opportunity to tell them about drones instead.
Of course, this suggestion is only for the tutorial. There are other similar restrictions already in the career agent mission chains, this would just be an additional one to address a specific issue.
Holy slippery slope fallacy batman, the OP is just suggesting that brand-spanking-new players should get a little extra instruction on what the Venture is good for, and what it’s not.
That question gets asked exactly never, I can’t even recall someone asking this. Actual newbies don’t even understand or know about the concept of drones, the only ones who would be asking this are alts pretending to be new and trying to ask questions that would make them look like a newbie.
Nope. The only question that sometimes happens is “where do you I put the drones”, but even that happens less than once a week.
Silly restriction with no need.
Disagree, actual new players already struggle with the basic UI and ship handling/control. They’re not helped with another layer of UI and control, let them get used to basic ships first and once they got some experience with that, then they can add drones.
I have seen at least three variations of this question in the form of new players asking basic fitting questions that ultimately circle back to the fact that they were trying to use the Venture for combat in Rookie Chat in the last week. I don’t know why. I’m honestly only making a forum post because an ISD suggested I should instead of talking about it in Rookie Chat.
And they don’t ask about drones until the players helping them tell them they should be using drones, and then begins the process of explaining how to train for, equip, and use the drones.
You can even find forum posts about it. Agent missions , for example.
It could honestly just be during the first mission of either path, and there should be a tutorial box explaining why you don’t use the Venture for combat. It doesn’t harm any existing player to institute this and only serves to help new players understand that ships have roles.