So… I’ll keep this brief…ish, I’m a returning player from 2007 and I’ve played this game on and off like the weather, mainly due to work commitments. I like to troll a lot and moan, I moan because I care for this game.
Fast forward to today, as a returning player (clinging on to hope), I fired the game up, refreshed myself with all my assets, and then… I was lost; not knowing what to do mainly due to co-players having since gone on the long AFK probably for the sames reasons… Anydwho, someone suggested creating a new account and start a fresh so that’s exactly what I’ve done.
So, I started to create a new account. There was some difficulties with the client launcher where I had to solve around 10 re-captchas to signup, I’m not on a VPN. So the first hurdle was a BORING struggle.
Finally, I’m in the game, chosen a women character as standard and chosen the career as an industrialist and hit “CREATE!”.
AURA finally greets me, with a changed voice but all is good she still sounds great, I start of in some PVP encounter in deadspace as part of a tutorial, I’m being explained through the overview UI. Ships are exploding and I’m being hand help through a storyline and told to approach some ships, we then warp all is good. I’m curious, what all this is about…
We come out of warp and the camera moves around in a cinematic way trying to show off ships and textures (skins), this is where it goes down hill. Let me say, EVE is NOT a cinematic game, it’s a tactical strategic game. The game looks absolutely awful with these close ups in the tutorials, I’m running an Intel i9 with a 3080 TI and the graphics and game performance is awful, especially when coming out of warp. I feel a lot of new players would instantly be turned off by this, CCP you’re better off just showing the tactical view instead.
This is the view you get without moving the mouse…
I’m told to target these red dots in the space while I’m in some kind of cinematic view, the game play feels awkward, a clash of game view perspectives, I’m confused, why am i being told to shoot these multiple pirates (a process that has taken 5 minutes up in the tutorial that could be used instead to show off what important things like players, markets, industrialism etc). I want to mine, trade, the game intro feels like one of those in-browser Facebook games that you try out then quit a few minutes later.
All the above images are AUTO cinematic views, no mouse movements. It’s beggars belief how CCP thinks this is OK for a game of this calibre, do they really think these tutorials show off what eve is?? and any new person will pay £15 for this a month??
Anyway, back to tutorial I am now blown up, and re-appear in a station (as part of the tutorial), no explanation about clones or any of that, I’m then instructed to board a ship and pick a weapon out of my item hanger… no explanation of the markets or where to buy ships and item or how any of that works.
At this point as a new player, I’m totally confused about what this game is, are we on a multiplayer game here? Where has this ship come from? where do i buy stuff? where are the players? where is the interaction? To make it worse, the immersion is totally thrown off when the american accents come in, the tutorial has so many accents making the game feel even more cheap along with the poor graphics, poor explanations and no real example about what eve is. Not even been told about mining, industry markets or anything at this point and already want to turn it off.
What a poor introduction to such a great game, I’ll say it again… no markets, no mining, no human interaction, game feels like a cheap 90s single player game nothing MMO about it, what a state.
Would love to see the new player retention rate, I bet it’s poor, to make it worse, CCP try and bribe you with isk when you leave the game. Such a cheap feel. Bribing me with isk before I even know what it is, not even seen the market at this point or told what isk is for. CCP, tutorials are more than showing people how to blow things up or trying to show of cinematic views in hope that the user might buy a skin … it’s your opportunity to make a sale and sell the GAME… What makes EVE even EVE?? You’re doing quite the opposite IMO.
TLDR; The game throws you through some boring, unexciting, visually awkward, confusing tutorial, enough to give a false representation of what eve is for a signup to quit before they even know. CCP, product owners sort out your QA, CEO, sort out your product owners, jesus.
You should be banned for that.