So how do we persuade new players that losing ships is ok?

Communications Center General Discussion
105

Been playing this toon since July 18, 2008.

I’ve had 14 losses:

Atron
Dominix (2)
Retriever
Gallente Shuttle
Noctis
Capsule
Helios
Ishtar
Mobile Tractor Unit
Venture
Algos
Maulus
Incursus

The only ones that were acceptable losses are the ones where I tried new PvE content without knowing what I was doing and got blown up. The ones lost to other players will always be unacceptable.

NPCs have no moral agency. They are programmed to shoot at you and nothing more. You generally only encounter them in predictable ways, for which you can prepare in advance. The only time there is a competitive mismatch is when you simply choose not to do your homework prior to engaging in a particular type of PvE interaction.

Players do have moral agency, and most of them seek out competitive imbalances because they are at best sadists and at worst sociopaths. They are looking to ruin the game for another player, and little else. CCP’s advertising and marketing directly appeals to this aspect of human nature, so it’s no surprise that EVE players are a collection of bullies looking to pick on folks engaged in constructive rather than destructive pursuits, as evidenced by referring to them as “food.”

My losses have been minimal. I have more than enough cash on hand to replace any of the things I’ve lost hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times over. That, however, is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the PvP community is comprised almost entirely of genuine lunatics, and because a lot of PvE players have found ways over the years to minimize their losses, CCP has decided to crap on us and make it an even bigger hassle to do so.

The problem I see here is a system designed around cultivating the absolute worst natures of the players and penalizing those who refuse to become the most vile versions of themselves.

How are you going to persuade me that’s okay? I don’t see a way.

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106

You’re right! CCP and the sociopaths are working together to make your life miserable. They’re all monsters, probably eating children and definitely shooting new players every single day. Hundreds of them!

It definitely has nothing to do with you or with your perspective on the matter! No! You’ve figured them out! All of them! It’s all the others, not you! Why doesn’t anyone listen? Sadists and sociopaths everywhere and CCP is working with them! It’s a conspiracy!

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107

Ha, more unjustified flagging. Is it not enough that the ISD are unhiding them? Do you just keep doing this, despite them unhiding my posts?

Oh! I know! ISDs are in on the conspiracy as well! Damn.

108

Knock it off with the flagging and have a polite, on topic conversation please.

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109

We don’t have to.

Because it is, and your opinion on what is okay for us or not is irrelevant.

This IS what the game is.

You absolutely have every right to not like it. Hell, you can even completely HATE it. That’s fine. You are entitled to your opinions and your tastes.

However, as I see it, we have here a conflit between:

-“Sociopaths” like us, who play this game as it is intended to be.

-“Great Philosopher” like you, who apparently have completelly figured out that this game appeals to us, not to you, but for some reason, refuse to just choose to play a game that has been designed around his own philosophy.

The fact that you consider this to be a “sociopath” philosophy is irrelevant.

What actually matter is that I am playing a game designed for people like me, and you are not.

Between you and me, you are the one who owes me an explanation.

I don’t care what an unqualified random dude on the internet think about my behaviours. But I do care about why this same random dude would choose to be in a place that is apparently made for me and not for him.

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110

I’ve suggested similar in the past, my variation on it being that 2 players are given the same objective but only one can return it to their agent; how the players figure it out via diplomacy or violence is up to them.

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111

Thats really true. The CCP says it is a simulation of a real world market but still they dont make insurance like the real world.They see the insurance as an Isk Sink.

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112

In my opinion it’s all very simple. Give them a ship.

Don’t just say “it’s okay to lose ships”: PROVE IT by giving one of YOURS away. To a new player, that 2m frigate (or whatever they cost these days) is nothing, but to the new player it still represents hours of boring level 1 mission grind or whatever they do these days to get a mil or two in their pocket.

“It’s perfectly fine to throw your 6 hours of work away in a fight you’re destined to lose” is a vapid, frankly quite disingeneous way to entice people to waste their ships in fights they don’t even have stake in.

“Hey just use one of mine, once you played as long as I do you’ll think nothing of losing a frigate. It would be my pleasure for you to lose mine. Don’t come back untill you made a kill or you exploded.”

When newbies start out like that they can get some practice in, perhaps even experience a little kill-rush without it damaging their wallet. To my wallet or the corps it’s peanuts to pay for a few explody frigs.

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113

There are a bunch of newb friendly corps/alliances that do exactly that. I have given new players ships (although usually after theirs blew up).

I think in the end some of it is just the person. My son started playing EVE at 13. He is a total badass. He doesn’t care at all about losing ships in PVP. He’s better at that than I am. It may be all the PVP minecraft he played.

It used to be, pre-WoW days, that many if not most of the MMO’s were more hardcore on the PVP front. We were more used to it. These days with most MMO’s being your more “themepark” style MMO’s the full PVP style is more fringe now. Unfortunately those who want a themepark game would rather try and turn EVE into a park than play it for what it is.

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114

When I started playing there were some key individuals who helped me along my way, more so in explaining things but some also gave me a head start (which I didn’t ask for but wasn’t going to turn down). I ask a lot of questions and am more interested in knowledge than being helped outright with ships or cash but for others that might be different.

Now that I’m more settled I’m beginning to return that favour, so far it’s just been once in a blue moon but I’m training up a character who (amongst other things) is going to do some light Bus runs, as Mike does them.

If you really feel that all it takes to prove something is giving away a few mil costing ship then you have really low standards.

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115

You don’t. ESPECIALLY when new players have even less ISK, and resources have been kicked in the balls and everything is going to be 3-4 times what it used to be…

Now that literally everything is MORE valuable even LESS risk will be taken.

LOGIC. :+1:t3:

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116

I think a lot of ‘new player’ threads have completely forgotten what it’s like to be an actual new player. Way too many threads boil down to “if new players had the resources, skill and experience of older players then all these startup complaints wouldn’t be a thing”.

Let’s be clear: to an actual new player, it is an ISK thing. You aren’t born with 10 million ISK in EVE. You don’t start the game with knowledge of where and how to buy things cheap, or which ships and builds are cost effective.

You don’t start the game with 10 throwaway ships you can learn with. Every ship you have is a limited resource, and it takes time, ISK and effort to get modules to put on that ship. Yes, I know experienced players can throw a T1 ship together in 5 minutes with stuff from their inventory and not even notice. But the thread is about actual new players, and that’s not what they do.

Another issue is, despite the ‘character creation’ process in EVE, for most new players, their ship is ‘them’. It’s the thing they see, it’s the vehicle they’re active in, it’s what they shop for and figure out and put their gear on. They have no personal connection with their ‘pod clone’. They have more connection with their ship, and losing it feels like failure.

While mentoring gets mentioned as a ‘good thing’ in a lot of games, keep in mind that actual new players are unlikely to get mentored. They’re new, they don’t know where to talk or ask about it, they’ve got lots of time-wasting questions that are important to them but boring to the vet who’s answered them 50 times. There’s no payoff for mentoring them either, in general.

I’ve said it a hundred times before and I’ll say it a hundred times more… if you want something to occur in the game you have to design the game to support and encourage it.

You give a better tutorial experience that emphasizes that ‘you’ are your clone and your skills. You’re immortal, you laugh at death, meat is nothing, and your ships are disposable tools. You practice death and replacement in a ‘ship combat’ tutorial that’s separate from the first ‘how to play’ tutorial but rewarding and interesting in its own right.

You let the new player know that ISK is a renewable resource and give them some decent sources of it so that “It’s not an ISK thing” becomes true and not just a vet being blind to the actual new player experience.

You specifically reward mentoring and recruiting in ways that make it worthwhile for vets to take new players under their wing or into their corps and make actual improvements in their total resources rather than milk them for taxes and materials.

These things have been obvious for over a decade now. The fact that CCP and most vets are blind to what will actually mature new players into vets is why player population has gotten down to crisis levels.

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117

My gila is similar…level 4s are fine. You have to pay a bit more attention to triggers between waves than you used to but other than that, no worries.

118

losing ships in pvp /fw is ok.
Losing ships on gank, DC, crazy npc spawns is not ok :slight_smile:

i dont like losing ships. yes im very special…

119

As a true newbie you don’t NEED 10 million, when I started if I would have 10 mil I’d not even know what to spend it on so it would serve no purpose to have it. The career tutorials provide you with all the ships you’ll need and enough cash to buy the modules required for it.

If you ask around in the help channel many people will tell you you can do them several times in different locations and then point you to those locations so if you really want to you can easily start off with 50 mil. And that is if you would actually have a use for it, which again you don’t (at least I didn’t)

If as a new player you ask around in Rookie and read answers to other’s questions you will learn SO much you’ll do just fine. Isk really was the least of my concerns.

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120

The topic is ‘losing ships is OK’. I didn’t need more ISK either as a new player. But then, I have the patience to do career agents (not everyone does) and I wasn’t losing ships.

The point isn’t that new players should be given 10 million ISK. The point is that ISK amounts that are inconsequential to a vet or even a well-read newbie aren’t so inconsequential to most new players.

If you’re going to convince new players that losing ships is okay and they can engage in risky behaviours, then yes, they do need ISK to replace them. As well as the other factors mentioned in my post.

As an aside: It’s weird, but people often take a full post and respond to the least meaningful point in it, out of context. Apparently just so they can have something to disagree with. I mean sure, that’s okay, and your point is valid (it’s at least not a troll)… but honestly you couldn’t find something to say about better tutorials or meaningful training or mentoring/recruiting support?

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121

That’s called cherry picking. example :

{citation needed}

122

CCP don’t WANT new players,they only care about the CSM,which is dominated and overrun by the goons (with the to expect result even for high).

Hell they even call the high sec arm of the goons(aka CODE) doing ‘roleplay’ and not just what they are…ganking creeps…this alone shows what CCP is and whose song they sing…

123

If someone is risk averse, cannot cope with the adrenaline rush or doesn’t like this kind of emotional stress there’s little else you can do than make people understand, what their issue with the game really is and that they’d be better off looking somewhere else.

124

Given my limited experience and knowledge I’d say I’d be out of my depth talking about those, so I don’t. I only reacted to what applies to my personal situation.

1 Like