So I made a new character. It was eye opening

Communications Center General Discussion
21

1 million SP for referral is nice but single char only.

I’d prefer CCP to get new players in the habit of working/earning their rewards early. Beefing up the AIR and Career Agent programs to reward more SP to get players rolling a bit faster would encourage them both to complete the tutorials and tackle new things. It could also be used to provide them with some guidance as to what they should be doing with those SP and how to put their new skills to use.

In fact I’d recommend that about 10-20 million SP be up for grabs by completing a series of different initiatives that takes players down a dozen or more career paths in EVE with progressive difficulty. Some of them requiring fleeting and teamwork and accomplishing corporate goals.

The whole point of carrots is to guide players into the behaviors you want them to engage in, but at the players own choice. All CCP seems to know about is sticks, and rewards for playing in the few ways CCP wants you to.

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22

At the same time people cry and whine about “pay2win” being able to buy skill injectors and how that’s bad, terrible and newbies shouldn’t advance that fast.

The only ones who benefit from this are Null overlords as it makes it even easier to have readymade clone soldiers. And ratting alts/bots, obviously.

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23

pay2win. cheat to compete. Thx ccp

24

What people whine and cry about is essentially irrelevant, since the average gamer knows next to nothing about game design.

You also rather cheaply pulled half a sentence out, completely context-free. There’s a world of difference between a 20 million SP giveaway, and a series of career path/achievement goals that require players to complete a large variety of different in-game tasks in different careers.

Ideally that process would take about 4-6 months of significant play, or longer for a casual player. That’s to keep them in-game, busy, and learning new things for a long time. Ain’t no bots and nullbabies gonna do that repetitively.

“Play2Win” beats “Pay2Win” any day of the week, when you need to keep new players engaged long enough to commit to the game.

25

My point is the 10-20 mil which is out of whack regardless of what hoops said newbie would have to jump through. It’s such an insane number that it’s either just completely random based on zero understanding of the game or there’s a hidden agenda going on.

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26

The thing that keeps new bros from succeeding in EvE from day one is not skill points, but the knowledge of how to do things. Until they learn how to fit ships, d-scan, use the market, make safes, learn the difference between fighting a ship with turrets vs fighting a ship with missiles, etc, a new bro is going to be at a disadvantage to a vet, regardless of how many skill points they have, or how many free navy thrashers they are given.

EvE is no different than any other MMO in this regard. When I started playing EQ way back in the day I had to learn how to kite, root/rot, wall walk, ping-pong tank, etc. If one short-cuts the learning process for new bros by giving them more easy stuff, without the knowledge to use it, the end result will be a new bro with a confused story about how his golem was somehow ganked by a destroyer, and all destroyers must be nerfed because it is not fair that they could blow up the golem.

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27

CCP should make it easier to gank miners, not harder. All they are doing is setting up new players for long-term failure.

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28

Bingo, what they need is knowledge and guidance. That’s not given to them by (most) null blocks and it’s also not handed to them by Mining corps.

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29

Well, any significant change recommended to the game tends to get “that’s so totally impossibly insane!” responses from reactionary vets who frankly, typically can’t envision any significant change as being acceptable.

20 million was chosen because it’s the Alpha limit. It would also break down into about a dozen different sets of, call them “AIR Career Arcs” that a player could follow to learn a playstyle fairly comprehensively. So arcs for Exploring, Pirating, Mining, Manufacturing, Research, PI, Missioning, WH diving, Anomalies, Abyssals, FW, Incursions, Fleet Combat etc.

Each arc could net about 1.5 million SP, in progressive stages, for say about 40 hours gaming time. That basically means every arc keeps a player actively playing the game for about 3 weeks. It would be best to make the early stages easier to complete and smaller SP rewards, and have the larger rewards for harder content late in the arc.

This would accomplish a number of goals:

  • It would get new players and veterans alike trying out career options they’d ignored.
  • It would give new players some ‘catch-up’ options while older players would be less likely to jump through those hoops. And if they do, who cares? It’s Alpha-level SP.
  • It would encourage players to attempt more corporate and fleet play, which is the sort of content that makes people stick with the game.
  • It’s a big enough chunk that it would bring back a lot of players who’ve given up on EVE, at least to check it out.

In practicality, many players would just min-max the arcs to get the most SP they could with the minimum effort (eg. only the early parts of the arcs) and that should total maybe 4-5 million SP. Large rewards would require more effort. Virtually no players at all would end up doing all arcs to the end to get the full 20 million.

I certainly understand that to players whose attitudes towards SP or other rewards kind of fossilized around “the old way” of doing things, this would appear excessive. However rewards need to be significant if you want players to engage in the game for significant time, and it’s pretty clear that “2,500 SP a day rewards, free!” isn’t accomplishing that.

Besides, the current trash system of rewards (logins and NPC kills) already amounts to something like 3-4 million SP per year for doing little more than logging in, undocking, shoot an NPC or three, and dock back up again.

Players and CCP should stop mentally limiting themselves to the notion of restrict, restrain, and limit players and rewards. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being generous with rewards and resources so long as it involves players actually playing, learning, and interacting with other players in the game.

30

Just saying it now you’ve been able to Buy toons for a very long time.

31

But that would turn it into “grind for XP” effectively and while that’s going to gel well with many (new) players it also forces them to do things instead of just “doing things because they are fun”.

I would much rather give new players a booster that adds like 15 extra attributes for like 3 months. That would add a total of Some 4 mil SP for omega and half that for alpha (pretty much maxing them out on the soft cap). That way players can do what they want, be as (in)active as they want as that is the EVE way. “must grind for progress” is very much NOT the EVE way.

It would also still give them time to apply skills where they want to instead of instantly “having to deal with” a character that has capabilities they don’t understand yet.

32

Eh, that would be okay, and certainly better than nothing. And I appreciate that for some players, the EVE system of “set up your training queue and come back 3 months later” is considered to be a fine example of what’s good about EVE.

Although TBH since your earlier gripe was about something abusable by bots and nullfarmers, I’d consider “Create a new account, get 1 million SP up front, then pop your accelerator and copy-paste your training queue and come back in 3 months for another free, zero-effort 4 million SP” to be far, far more abusable.

I also don’t get how you think an accelerator is going to teach players what to do with their skills, but sending them down several weeks worth of specific activities with dialog along to the way to educate them is “instant progress” that they “won’t understand yet”. It sounds more like you’ve decided to reject the concept out-of-hand, and are twisting the clear facts into something you can disagree with.

As for “must-do” grinds, the whole point about multiple career arcs is so players can choose what they do, when they want to. They can go as far or shallow in each arc as they want. That’s sandbox design, not “must-do grinds”.

If you’re going to define playing on your own schedule by choice for a reward as “a grind”, then everything in EVE is a grind. Myself, I consider encouraging players to take a deeper look at various aspects of EVE as a growth opportunity, not a grind.

33

No it’s more a “this is a sandbox and today I want to try [insert play style] to see if I’d like it”. Instead of “Just keep doing what the wheel of pain tells me to do, because that’s how I advance in this game”.

34

So basically, the exact same system we’ve had for 2 decades now, that’s been failing badly lately. But with an extra 4 million zero-effort SP thrown in for free for alt accounts, bots and farmers.

Well, me and my hidden agendas just don’t get how that would be a change for the better (since it’s really no change at all, just an SP giveaway). But I’ll have to agree to disagree on this one I guess.

35

EVE is a sandbox, if you want (or advocate for) a rollercoaster type of carrot on a stick game design then you are playing the wrong game. You can change that but then a few things can happen:

  • people who have been playing EVE for what it is, BECAUSE it’s different from any other MMO, will find it’s even less than they bargained for (most of those players are pvp/competitive focussed). If you lose that you just end up with a “grind for things” sort of game with a lowered demand for goods. That’s a death spiral

  • suddenly EVE has to compete with other “grind for xp” kind of MMO’s, and not only would EVE not be able to transform into that properly, it would be one of many with lots of new competitors coming out on the regular. Another death spiral

  • hoping that people who enjoy “grind for XP” stick around and then, somehow, transform into “actual sandbox EVE players”. It could happen but trying to attract grindy players and making them stick around has a very low chance of working out.

You don’t solve this issue with instant gratification or carrot on a stick game design, that’s not what EVE is (or could be formed into without pretty much ditching the game itself). You solve it by adding ONTO the things that make EVE stand out from all the others thus trying to attract “the right type of player” (whatever that may be) because lets be honest: EVE only still exists BECAUSE it has no real competition. Somehow changing the game to be more mainstream, giving it more competition, is the wrong approach.

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36

Eh, whatever. I suggest something, you say it’s a hidden agenda to benefit bots and alt-farmers. Then you suggest something even more abusable to bots and alt-farmers.

I suggest actually adding on to current system, you talk like somehow being able to earn SP through literally months of gameplay is “instant gratification” and will also somehow entirely change the way EVE works. Even though we already have this in the game, but in a way that adds nothing to gameplay at all.

EVE already has the “grind for ISK” built in since day 1. You’re trying to paint “play constructively for a reward that doesn’t currently exist” as some kind of fundamental game-changer, even though EVE has been adding such things in for years (Incursions, Abyss, Pochven etc)… and all those systems have contributed to increased gameplay.

Whatever, you’ve clearly decided any change not put forth by you is a bad change that will destroy the game. And your own contribution is “Change nothing, but give free SP to bots and alt-farmers”.

I know you’re capable of better than that, so I’ll just drop this and move on.

37

“Give XP for activities”, however well meant or however “mild”, isn’t going to help people in a game that doesn’t revolve around that past that newbie experience. You attract people who enjoy “xp for grinding” who will then get a reality check later, at the same time you might turn away people who are NOT looking for this in the first place who WOULD fit better in the EVE universe later on.

To do well, especially as a niche product, focus on and augment what’s special about your product and what makes it stand out. Trying to become more “like everyone else” just never works.

38

Not exactly. The point isn’t “free SP” as a goal in itself, but to more quickly or even instantly get new players into the action. The ultimate goal being that the moment that they are ready to advance into something new and more interesting as players, they can do so without some silly SP barrier preventing them from participating.

It’s a PvP Game. We need to remove the outdated barriers to this and allow new players to actually play.

39

The problem with this is that as a giveaway, it becomes the “new normal”. So a number of Aisha’s valid critiques do hold - most new players won’t have any idea what to do with those skills, especially not a 20 million SP sheer giveaway.

Most new players will enter the game with the standard MMO approach that “bigger is better”, and they’ll use excess SP to jump into BCs and battleships as fast as they can gather the ISK - and then lose them.

Giveaway SP just sets the entry bar at a new level, and after that people will come along and say “Nope the magic 14, all base skills at level 4, and an extra 10 million SP to allocate just isn’t enough. To really compete players will need X Y Z more”.

In my opinion giveaways and ‘passive’ SP are just bot and alt fodder. Any player that gets SP that way has learned nothing about the game, hasn’t put in any time experiencing different aspects of it, and doesn’t expect to put in any effort to get what they need to move forward.

If they aren’t engaging in a variety of gameplay to both learn and gain new skills, especially team/corp/fleet oriented gameplay, then it’s pretty much a waste of effort.

I also don’t get how more SP will get players “Into the action instantly”. There is no instant action in EVE. Unless you’re also dropping 50 million ISK on them, they can’t even afford “instant action”. And they wouldn’t know how to do it if they did. The only people who need to start a char and instantly leap into something more advanced is bots, alts and veteran farmers.

8 Likes
40

Very good subject as a lot of work would had gone into the New Player start up and yet so many press escape to be instantly ported to the rookie starter station.

There should not be an option to skip You should not be allowed to leave until you had completed the mission.

2 Likes