Eve online has incredible potential. its only scratching the surface when it comes to cutting edge games. it might not be too late to save it. but the red carpet must be rolled out asap. This means streamlining the UI, improving the new player experience and adding new common sense content (i hate that term as much as anyone but that is what is required for lasting success imo.)
Lets talk about the new player experience. What is it? Is it just a tutorial that tells a new player do this, do that, badda bing badda bom, and thats a new player experience. Yea, but its a bad one.
But lets skip forward a bit. In my opinion the character customization shouldn’t happen until the player is ready for it. When he is creating his first character you could just ask the player to put in a name for the character, or maybe not even. And just put him in his pod and his corvette, and thats it. Hes right there in the station, didnt even chose a name, faction or anything. But he can play within 5 seconds of launching the game for the first time, within 5 seconds hes in the world and hes exploring. His name might be Pod Pilot #XXXXXX and so what. When he is ready to choose a name he can. When hes ready to choose a faction/backstory he can. When hes ready to choose what clothes his character should wear as well as the gender, body type and so on he can. That is a new player experience. No bs, new characters are put into the world like a lightning strike. And then all the common sense things like choosing your name, backstory, appearance and so on comes only when the player wants to do it. This is the kind of red carpet mentality im vying for and wish to see applied to the game.
Let CSM/CCP work on it. I said this in the last NPE discussion thread.
None of us average joe players have any data related to NPE. Because of this ALL COMMENTS here that are not CSM/CCP are going to be based on experience/conjecture.
The NPE is directly tied to marketing for this game. In marketing we need accurate data and reporting that is why I say it is not really productive to say we need to do X to help the newbros w/o data to back it up.
Proceeds to walk down red carpet with his henchmen.
Data can be misleading and misinterpreted, and attempts to influence the data can have unintended consequences. Its better to design the game using your own experience and gut feeling as a starting point. But also you can read these forums and tap into EVE online on social media to find out what players think and to find out how you are doing and what can be better. And if you are not playing the game yourself that you are working on, what are you even doing then? Anyway i dont think anyone at this point enjoys the cookie cutter character customization step that all games have you go through before you can explore them. It would be a breath of fresh air if a game would just put you directly in the world within seconds of launching it for the first time. And then have technicalities like choosing name, backstory, appearance come only when the player is ready and chooses to do it.
But how can you play an MMO without first choosing a name and appearance and backstory? Wrong question. How can players conceivably pick their name, their backstory and appearance when they dont know anything about the game? They need to play it a bit first
Is creating and naming a character really a prohibitively difficult challenge for anybody? Raise your hands. Its not like you have to pick a class or anything that will dramatically effect gameplay in a way that specifically locks you out of any content.
