I want to add some feedback regarding the initial “new player” experience as I am quite disappointed in Eve.
First of all, to add context, I decided to return to the game after many, many years but as it was all new to me again, I set up this account to start fresh, go through the tutorial and start to get a handle on the game.
The tutorial was straightforward enough and it quickly became familiar once more on how to play the game - but I quickly realised that this game is not suitable for new players which is essential for any online game in my opinion. If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking.
The first thing that hit me was the black screen at login. I checked several threads to find the cause, tried numerous things until at one point it magically started to download more content. This was a good 20 minutes after settings were changed and literally just started - no prompting or pressing of buttons to initialise. The forum posts go back almost a decade with this problem and each one show little or no support from CCP. I can imagine you lost a lot of potential new customers this way, but I stuck to it as I remember 10 years ago I had the same issue.
The next thing was that the tutorial highlighted a major issue for new players - how can you do mining or industrial missions when the asteroid belts in the newbie starting areas are all mined clear. There was a bot problem last time I played but on each Race I tried, all the asteroid fields in high sec were cleared completely. For a new player, learning the game - this effectively cuts that entire part of the game out for them initially as they are not skilled up with enough resource or ability to handle low-sec.
Following this, a major annoyance was Corporation Tax. This is set at a ridiculous level and effectively hamstrings the new player for one of the major resources they need to get up and running. I had forgot about this from my last experience and was annoyed when I checked my balance in game to see how much I lost on something that the tutorial never covered. Sure I can join another corp with lower tax - but that’s not something brand new players would learn and the biggest issue for me was the actual annoyance of being taxed such a ridiculous rate just because I was new to the game!
All this for me made me rethink rejoining the game that I used to spend a lot of time on a long time ago. I’m sure I am no great loss, the world will not end etc etc - but you need to do more for your new players by patching up these issues. Finally fix that black screen issue (10 years is disgusting), do something about asteroid fields for newbies and lower the taxes on the NPC corp you start on - or at least tell them before they find out that almost a third of all their work has been wasted.
I have to disagree. Rustiness and/or prior inexperience + how EVE changes so radically over a relatively short period of time = comparably “new” experience. It suffices to say that if you are so damn rusty or previously inexperienced to the point that you need/would benefit from the tutorials, this qualifies as “new” to the same extent that you could play the game for 3 years and still be a newbie if you haven’t learned and mastered it well.
Overall you’ve raised some good points. The new player systems (and maybe a 1 jump radius) really should be immune to the AI mining fleets that clear out highsec on occasion. The rookie systems do have anomalies that spawn constant veldspar but those don’t seem to be very well highlighted.
Newbro corp tax definitely needs to be looked at, I’ve seen multiple newbros get sucked in to “0% tax havens” where they get shat on or shat at until they quite as they’re not impressed with these “corps.”
This is a technical problem. There will always be a percentage of players who experience game crashes or glitches, but this has nothing to do with whether you are new, nor is it a problem that CCP is at fault for. If you google “world of warcraft crashes” or “call of duty modern warfare black screen” you will get many people complaining, and yet this is nothing to do with the new player experience.
I for one have never encountered a black screen or sudden crash of Eve online. Not in the 7 years I’ve played.
You can say “world of warcraft hasnt fixed the same crash error 10 years ago”, but it’s most likely a problem with your setup or connection than the game itself. Blaming or bringing this up as a detriment to the new player experience is disingenuous.
Many missions sent you to a pocket dimension where you can mine. No need to go to belts. If you still want to go to belts and mine, though, you would surely be able to go to other systems by then, because you’ve passed the initial missions and tutorial.
Same thing with industrial missions, most of them send you to pick up x or y from another system. No mining needed.
I thought that was one of the things the tutorial taught.
I remember NPC tax being at, what, 10%? That isnt a lot. And new players will not realize this nor care when they get bigger and start bringing in tens of millions per tick, and they realized that 4 months ago they lost 200k to taxes.
C’mon. Dont be stupid.
World of warcraft still crashes for some people. This isnt an issue that Blizzard has simply ignored for the 10+ years WoW has been out for. Every game has a small percentage of people who experience gameplay problems. Are you saying that star wars the old republic, WoW, elder scrolls online, not a single person experiences crashes/black screens today?
Ignoring my earlier derp, we have the opposite problem if NPC taxes are lowered: players don’t leave when we want to encourage migration to player corps. (I should also note that the start NPC corp and default NPC corp taxes should be the same - numerous justifications for this.) BUUUUUUT we also want to temper migrations so that players don’t leave prematurely, which is technically an unrelated issue but something that must still be addressed since it would come up if taxes are too high vs being too low.
Taxes too low = they don’t migrate to player corps as quickly as they should
Taxes too high = they might migrate “too soon” while they’re still (too) naive and (grossly) incapable of fending for themselves.
To some, 11% tax may feel like it’s too high, but I’m inclined to disagree. Right now, it’s low enough to be tolerable if you stick around, but high enough to encourage migration to player corps after some time. It’s the latter point is that is a point of concern, however. Unprepared newbies are liable to join player corps where they can be easily screwed over by various corp politics, particularly by wardecs. This was discussed in detail by an earlier thread that discussed many of these concerns. Here is one of the points I raised from that thread:
I should have said this in the original quoted text, but a similar warning should be issued for joining corps not at war: just because the corp isn’t at war now doesn’t mean it cannot be at war in the future. Basically, notices need to be posted to indicate that there is a liability involved in joining a player corp (though perhaps these same notices could outline the benefits so as to not be overly negative).
Let’s be honest: 11% tax doesn’t really hurt much. Even back when I was a newbie I thought to myself it wasn’t a big deal, and the majority of the newbies I work with (quite a few) also think it’s not a big deal either, so it’s not just bitter-vet talk. I honestly think lowering taxes is going to cause more harm in terms of slowing migration to player corps than it would benefit newbies.
Yes it is AI fleets clearing it out. I do primarily highsec mining and talk to people that do as well. It’s been the case that these fleets empty systems quickly most of the time. If you see one in system you leave because you cannot compete
The NPC corp tax is a slightly less common complaint, but it is one that is common enough that I’ve heard it spoken about 6 times over the past 5 months.
Okay. My experience has always been that I see Hulks and Mackinaws AFK mining in starter systems. Id need actual evidence to acknowledge this as a problem, but Im fine with removing AI fleets emtpying out 1.0 starter systems.
Yes and no, lets face it this game has changed a lot in 10 years.
As he mentions NPC corp. tax that was changed a long time ago. Not sure if CCP intended for the change to give an incentive for players to join player corp. but as usual it failed as it just made people make single player corps.
He is also right that new players must see that they can make isk in-game in order to progress, if they find it a struggle they most likely won’t see the point of continuing. Buying PLEX isn’t really the answer.
I’m not new but haven’t played for a long time, my understanding and expectancy of isk is VERY different than an actual newbie’s perspective. A newbie isn’t going to think about how long it’s going to take and how much isk he needs to get into a HAC as he doesn’t KNOW what a HAC is nor what it does.
A real newbie is mostly going to be busy with getting to understand the UI, the basics of the game and how to get from A to B. A fake newbie (whether just a restart or alt, or an alt pretending to be new) is going talk/whine about how long it takes to get into a Hulk (or insert any other long term ship).
Mining being limited in the starter systems is a GOOD thing, it’s a nice “well, go try something else then” kick in the behind from CCP.
yesterday and today i killed some ventures on low sec
felt bad , its fun ,but poor noobs , i sent 10 millions with “for your lost o7”
i mean ill not pass a free kill and they are brave for being in low so early
that said if they looked in some sites or videos they would realize that with a 4 mil frigate and few skills they can get 1 million a minute in the same systems they are busting their ars#s to make 7 mil /hour , if that
but the player needs to want it , okayyy i don’t care its not good enough here
You are given your own little place to mine during career agents. Or you can buy ore of the market (you get plenty of isk to do this). Or travel a little further out to mine what you need.
You definitely don’t need to go to lowsec.
Which doesn’t tax you until you start earning over a certain amount.
It’s also no where near 30%. So what does this mean:
