Warning ! Walls of text incoming ! Not for the faint of eyes !
I observed a few newbros start the game, so I have a few observations.
This post is about career agents.
I think newbros doing the careers agent is great. However I have a few points that could be adressed
Exploration
People just won’t read a wall of text that may or may not be useful later.
The missions text should focus only on what the player will experience and the mechanisms required to achieve that goal.
What’s more, missions should be longer, typically by requiring to do the same thing twice. Those mechanisms need to be understood well, not “barely touched”. So warp to anomaly should require TWO proof of discovery ; hack a relic site should require TWO items.
The data and gas missions are useless. Group the gas mission with the anomaly one (which incidentally would not require to be done twice), and spawn no-damage enemy in the gas, so players know that gas can have rats. Make more rats spawn with a 1 min delay, in the distance, with little damage, so players know that gas site can kill them if they are not aware. This mission (part2) should be done in a 5mn corvette, so give a civilian one and tell the player they can die in that tutorial mission, and therefore should use the free corvette.
Basically that mission (part 2) would become :
This mission teaches you how to use your probe scanner to warp to anomalies.
Anomalies are activity sites which you can warp to.
Since this mission involves travel, you are granted a free microwarpdrive.
<style=“warning”>In the second part, you can be killed by pirats. You are advised to use the free corvette, which you can request for free in any station</style=warning>
- Open your probe scanner (alt p), find a basic tutorial anomaly to warp to it, navigate the gates to loot the item in the last pocket.
- Then in your probe scanner, warp to a “gas tutorial anomaly”, avoid the pirats, loot the item, and warp off to avoid the new rats.
- Give me the two items as a proof of your success.
granted : civilian 5mn
request : proof of discovery basic site ; proof of discovery gas site
No more text in the middle.
Last mission (part 5, ATM gas) would become a mission to change your overview. Speaking of which,
Overview
Default overview should be a specific “tutorial overview”, with visibility for ONLY the items used in the mission and those important :
- all rats and ships, to have danger awareness
- stations, since you need to warp to them
- no stargate since you can use your route / next item to jump
- basic ore required for the missions only. Not asteroid belt, not the other ores
- acceleration gates of course
- no need for planets, pos, structures
The last mission of the exploration career should require the player to warp to a specific site, which contains several elements (with worthless value of course, like a corvette, a 0 isk no damage idle rat, facpo ships, concord ship, an empty can, one containing a carbon, decoration minerals, a diamond rat, a fob, …), and then change its “tutorial overview” to another overview (general ?) and then approach each item with a small description of what they are/do that appear once “approach” order is performed.
All the items here should have the prefix “FAKE” in their name(actually this should be the case for all entities in the tutorials), not be killable, etc.
Filaments
They should have their own exploration mission. The player is given a noise or signal needlejack, told to warp to a safe, set safety to yellow, fleet himself, get yeeted, then exit ship and self pod to get back to station.
- check that player is in station (dock in it otherwise) and make him change home station to there (will fail most of the case : tell him to do that nevertheless)
- check that player is in corvette and no implants, only filament in cargo
- check that safety is yellow (not red)
- check that player is at target beacon
- check that player is in fleet and everybody close. Tell him to create new fleet otherwise.
- consume filament
- exit ship
- self destruct pod.
text :
A SoE team brought us a piece of dangerous items. We tried them on our ships but they all disappeared.
Since you are a capsuleer, I think this could be tested on you. Wherever you are going, I want you to suicide to get the freshest data.
<style=“warning”>You will die. The mission requires you to be in an empty pod, have your home station here, and use a free corvette</style=“warning”>Take the provided filament, warp to beacon, and yeet yourself. Then come back as fast as possible (self destruct is mandatory).
Maybe do the same for abyssal filament ?
SoF
IMO the combat parts should be split in 2 : combat mechanism and team mechanism. The SoF should focus on fleet/corporation concepts. This last part includes:
- creating and leaving a fleet, fleet warp.
- fleet roles : logis, tackle, boost, all in the same mission (several rooms)
- looking at corporations (including tax rate) , explanation that most activities can be done without being in same corporation
- creating and leaving your own corporation (for free… is an issue)
- joining and leaving FW (including losing your own ship to player in LS or HS)
- the importance of alts
Industry
Only give building missions, no extraction mission. Don’t send people to mine for the sad “industry” excuse.
There is enough to understand between acquiring BPO, creating copies, invention, BP chains…
Make seeded BPO sold in the starter stations (fake part BP, fake item BP). Add faction and T2 BP and item
Fake part BP needs 1 trit to manufacture, fake item BP needs 1 fake part to build, and fake item II BP needs 1 fake item and 1 fake part to build. (“tutorial” instead of “fake” ?)
no datacore to invent fake item II BP (or a decoration datacore if already exists, provided by the agent. I prefer none)
Only the faction BPC is granted by agent. The two BPO needs to be purchased, the BPC needs to be copied, the T2 BPC needs to be invented.
Maybe make the faction BPC acquired from local LP store ? For an item solely provided by the agent.
All the activity times are set to 10s.
Small text every time about the specific activity you are doing. When manufacturing, for T1 an explanation that meta 0 is the base line, for T2 an explanation that they usually have better stats but also are harder to fit, and for faction an explanation that they are usually as good as T2 but with easy fit.
No point talking about storyline, deadspace, officer modules. However mutations could be interesting, with fake mutator.
, failing a covert research site 
, warping straight to gate in ahbazon 
(I still think that AP is a bad design and that docking radius being lower than warp exit radius is another one)