None of these things are an issue. A T1 tackle frigate takes hours to train into. During your time in the tutorial, the career agents and the SOE Epic Arc, you have more than enough to do to get a feel for the game, train lots of skills, even get tons of SP to speed up training (beyond the 1M referral) and learn to fly your ships.
Nothing you point out is any issue for people who actually want to play and not just have everything handed to them like you demand it to be the case.
2 Likes
And I just asked you where the line for complaint will be in a few months. What will be the new reason for new players leaving the game then? They canât compete because they have less ISK? They canât compete because they canât fly all the T2/T3 ships? They canât compete because they canât fund as many accounts? And all that must be equalized from the start!
Come on man, be real.
Let me tell you a story from some years agâŚehhh no, from YESTERDAY EVENING:
Newbro in our corp asked around for help regarding abyssals. That guy can barely fly Cruisers and he loves the Maller. He did run some T0 (Tranquil) filaments in a Slicer before but wanted advice to make a little more cash by himself to stand on his own feet, be able to buy his own fittings etc⌠So we crunched numbers and via Teamspeak and Pyfa we did a Fit for him. All named, barely 3 Items were T2. The rest was all compact, enduring crapmods for 25k ISK per piece. And he wanted to test T1 (calm) with it. So I said to him, âno man, Calms in a cruiser will earn you barely the same ISK than Tranquils in a Frig. You can do T2 in it, trust me.â. So we made a Videostream, he fitted a nicely looking Imperial Navy Skin that we looted earlier in an Eventsite to the Maller and jumped the brandnew ship into the Abyss. It was an insanely hard run for him, he had huge tracking issues on the smaller frigates and issues overcoming the repair of some cruisers with his little newbie ship, most skills not even being on Level IV. But I guided him the whole time, gave him advice how to position himself, explained what the different effects do and how to counter that and guess what: He made it out of the Agitated Abyss with shaking hands and 20 seconds (!) on the timer. He even needed to leave the loot of the last room else he would have died. He was so excited that he needed a break and afterwards we chatted like 3 hours about what to learn and what is all possible in the game.
That dude will TODAY tell this story to the other 2 newbros we have and he will be online every damn day for the next week to get more of this adrenaline and he will suck in input and advice like a sponge.
Newbros leaving EVE has nothing to do with Skillpoints, but all with how they are teached, welcomed and supported by other players. All this shiny graphics, UI, skills, ships, explosions are just a surface, a shell that needs to be filled with entertainment and meaning. He has seen what I as a Vet can do with a Zealot or Sacrilege and hell he wants that too. We made a skillplan that pushes him that way and he will be on his toes for weeks to get closer and closer, fit his maller with more and more T2, do better and harder content and at some point replace the Maller with a Zealot and Sacrilege. You donât keep new players interested by giving them all stuff for free, but by showing them what is possible, letting them taste the feeling of hard earned victory and then show them a way to earn that victory by themselves.
12 Likes
+1 to OP.
Barriers to fun (like training fitting skills) should be removed.
1 Like
Yes, but the Magic 14 skills do not take long to train. Look at the link youâve provided. The majority of them are 1x, which takes 4 days to maximize it (speaking for Omega). The skill training time through 0-5 grows exponentially, sort of. It is much faster to train almost any skill from 0-4 than it is from 4 to 5. People with even only level 4 skills of the Magic 14 can still fit their ships well enough and have fun.
2 Likes
I donât really think the fitting skills or âmagic 14â need to be improved any further for new characters. Most of them are already 1 or 2 levels from the Alpha clone maximum and it doesnât take long to improve them.
One of the cool thing about new chars is they have a lot of short skills to train in the beginning and can see notable improvements to fitting and performance very quickly which in turn can give them more incentive to log in everyday.
Veterans are generally training much longer skills and go weeks or even months before seeing even a small improvement to performance or a new ship to fly.
The new char starting skills seems to be just perfect, especially with the buddy codes being so accessible now.
2 Likes
New characters are created with both the major fitting skills at level 4 already.
That seems more than enough to me.
Itâs not like they need level 5 right from the start, they donât even have the skills or the ISK for T2 modules yet which need the extra fitting space of level 5.
I think itâs good that new players have a bunch of âquick winsâ at the start, short 1x skills that improve their gameplay in one way or another, so they get used to the skill training system.
5 Likes
Personally I donât care either way if Magic 14 skills come trained or not. Although I donât see how it would improve things much for actual newbros either. In literally thousands of hours of sitting in help channels, I canât recall ever seeing an actual new player saying âHey Iâm new and I started yesterday but my skills are too low to fit these weapons I need to complete my career agents.â
Why donât you elucidate on the âeye-openingâ things you tried to do, but couldnât, on your new account? Letâs discuss actual âinstant actionâ that an hours-old new player would need to leap into to enhance his new player experience.
I definitely know that when I myself first start, Iâd like to be able to launch 5 drones for instance, and I see that I have a fair bit of training time to go before I can. But then I notice that on a new char, I donât actually need 5 drones and in fact, donât even have a ship that could launch them. So I start things training, and I go do a set of career agents. You know, exactly what everyone tells a newbro to do.
Once Iâm done my career agents, I go run a few L1 security missions to get my standings up. Again, as everyone tells a newbro to do. Or maybe the newbro goes to mine in a Venture, or explore in a Heron. Or run some distributions in his free hauler. All things possible with starter skills and a few hours of training.
Lo and behold, by the time Iâm done my orientation of running the tutorial, careers, and a few missions, the skills I âneedâ are there. I havenât started a new char to test it with since last fall, but I understand that new pilots now have some AIR Career missions to run that grants SP, as well as the login rewards and daily Skilling Sprees. So it would currently be faster for a real newbro than any character Iâve ever started.
To be clear: I have no problem with players starting with Magic 14 or some other set of improvements. But I have never seen a need for them to start with these either. Why would those skills be any different than all the other skills? Wouldnât âinstant actionâ also require max weapon, defense, cargo and piloting skills? Wonât they need Spaceship Command and Agility maxed? Shouldnât Cruiser V be part of instant action?
This merely kicks the can farther down the road to the next set of âmust-haveâ skills that new players âneedâ to have fun.
Basically all your doing is supposing a hypothetical âbut it would be so great for newbros!â when itâs clear that what it would mostly benefit, is bots, alts and farmers quickly getting their newest multibox character up to speed.
When youâve got some evidence of actual situations that new players are prevented from engaging in because they canât train the skills in a timely fashion (eg. during the period where theyâre learning how to even play the game), Iâll pay a bit more attention.
Until then your just begging for your alt farms.
5 Likes
I canât recall ever seeing an actual new player saying âHey Iâm new and I started yesterday but my skills are too low to fit these weapons I need to complete my career agents.â
Out of curiosity: How often have you heard players stating something along the lines of âOh man canât wait to try the [Ship] with [Module], just [Amount] more Weeks!â ?
Iâve seen that pretty often, although the âwaitâ time ranges from days to months.
However those have pretty much all been veteran players waiting for things like Marauders, T2 ships, T3 destroyers, freighters, cloaks, interceptors etc.
As for âOh man, just started playing and itâs gonna take me so long to train into my Punisher with Focused Anode lasersâ though, canât say I recall seeing any like that.
Canât say I remember any âWow this Venture is gonna take so long to start miningâ. Fresh out of âHey how long does it take me to start scanning in this Heron?â too.
Can you relate players wanting to get into specific ships with specific fits to the topic at hand a bit more clearly?
1 Like
They do target past 20km. Again, show us a fit that would be aimed at a newbie that you think wouldnât work.
edit for some content
I have made fresh restarts many times (probably more than is healthy), Iâve done âchallengesâ of making it seeing how fast you can get up and running on starter and alpha characters. Also to see how other players, and corporations, react to a newbie.
Yes I run into limitations fairly quickly (not money issues though, thatâs for sure) but that is because Iâm not new: I KNOW what options lay ahead and what capabilities Iâm missing, I donât NEED the extra time to learn the game. Using my own perspective it feels cramped but itâs not about my perspective, itâs about a newbieâs perspective and they donât know whatâs around the corner so it doesnât matter.
The worst thing you can do it go âlol you canât compete man, itâs just not happeningâ and then give them a bunch of isk and some ships to make up for it. Newbies can do just fine in EVE as long as they have a âcan doâ mind set (or at least itâs explained and nurtured that way). Do I need to remind people of Suitoniaâs old â14 day trialâ pvp challenges (pre-f2p and when we didnât start with 450k SP), or how about Goonâs poster going with that whole cascade thing ending with âbecause you tackled him in your rifterâ, not that Iâm a fan of goons but that thing was awesome.
Itâs not an SP issue, itâs a mindset and effort issue. Some of that just takes time, and SP taking time along that is completely fine.
2 Likes
A little bit of background: Iâm coming back from a years long hiatus, and have been â â â â â â â around a bit with the stuff that has been implemented since then.
Including the NPE, as a new character without any help. If youâre completely new to the game, itâs obviously a lot better than it has been back in my days, but also highly confusing. EVE being 20 years old and filled with multiple iterations of content doesnât really help much, even with The Agency giving some pointers. You will have the rough skillpoints needed, because you are provided with skillbooks and a little bit of SP to inject, but after you have done the initial 2 hours of gameplay with guidance by light clicking, youâre sitting dead in the water. You have been promised everything is doable, and are now to figure out everything on your own. The Help channel will do just that for you, if you can communicate. However, if youâre not fluent in any of the 5 or 6 big languages, youâre again â â â â â â .
You will also be told to get the free 1m SP once youâve asked the question what youâre gonna do now that you have to wait for skills to finish, but that creates a new problem: Do you click a random link someone sent you, not knowing youâll forfeit quite the ISK for a fresh character the moment you buy Gametime for the first time, or will you follow the guidance of other players, showing you how to create your own referral link, which you can then use to ⌠create a second account, so you can reap those benefits on your first acountâŚ?
For someone new to EVE, both sucks. One sucks because you miss out on ISK, the other sucks because now you suddenly need to create a new character, despite having spent an hour or more in character creation, your name is gone, too, and youâll have to do the NPE again.
Why not immediately give everyone starting 1m SP of unallocated skillpoints, make them aware about how precious they are, and giving them some more baseline skills to try different stuff? When you make your account, you donât know whatâs good yet. Maybe someone told you in help that the Tristan is cool, but youâve started Caldari, and now you need to get the skillbook somewhere and spend a few ten thousand of your precious SP on that just to be able to try it out, ⌠and so on, âŚ
and so on, âŚ
and so on.
Real, daring question:
If, through sheer mindboggling autism, CCP decided to â â â â over Skillpoints as a whole, and remove SP from the game, and roll every skillbonus possible into the base item itself, while reimbursing players for their SP with, say, Concord LP (that can be transferred to any other Corp iirc) at 1 LP per SP, while simultaneously keeping Omega stuff still gated behind Omega clone status.
What would break?
Would the game be worse off, or better?
Would even anything happen at all?
Would everyone throw a tantrum and quit the game because all of a sudden they can use any ship in the game to the same extension as every other player?
CCP would probably lose money somehow, because why the â â â â would you need so many alts now, but thatâs a different story.
It would break the game.
If SP did not exist and any character could fly any ship, there would be no consequences for actions.
Negative security status? Get a new alt to instantly fly any ship.
You burned your cloaky camper by killing someone? Next day you can camp the same system with a new name in a new character flying the same Arazu.
If any character can fly any ship, character names, negative security status, negative standings, it all becomes meaningless.
âSet ganking corps to redâ is advice you often hear, but what if gankers could have a new corp with new characters every day without costs?
Jump clone cooldown? Who cares, I have a dozen more characters who can now do exactly the same thing.
Specialization gone, consequences for actions, gone.
Your character can only do 3 C.R.A.B. beacons a day? Lol, swap to any of your other characters and continue flying the same dread.
âRemove SPâ will break the EVE online we know.
6 Likes
Easy fix:
Since the powerful stuff is behind Omega, restrictions could be implemented on Biomassing. 3 Slots per account, Biomass takes 30 days of locking that character away before you can remove it.
And despite this rather simple solution, every problem you listed can be fixed by ISK as of now.
Bad sec status? Lol, get tags.
JC cooldown? Who cares, i have a dozen more characters that I bought SP for so they can do it.
CRAB is locked? Lol, swap to any of your other characters that you injected with ISK and continue flying the same dread.
Cloaky camper burned? Who cares, I have 30 accounts set up in alpha state with chars that are injected to run a cov-ops (thatâs really cheap compared to Dread chars)
Since we have Injectors, the guys with loads of ISK can do whatever they want anyways.
Oh, and on the new ganking chars every day at no cost:
New account, 1m free SP, Gnosis requires no SP to fly.
I have a skillplan for a day-0 belt-ratting praxis that lobs cruises at 200km with 500 dps, so you can farm Officer spawns. Costs the hull + another 10m in fitting.
To give the abolishment of SP another perspective:
Imagine, you have a friend who is interested in EVE.
And you know for a fact that, since itâs war, on friday evening/night a big fight is about to go down. The ones that make the news.
And you tell your friend about it:
âMate, friday evening, EVE Online, maaaaasssiiiiiive fight going on! Going to be so awesome!*â
âOh nice! If I make an account now, could you get me in there?!?!?â
âHahahaha, no. Weâre bringing the big toys, we will keep newbros out because they canât contribute and will just â â â â up the server even more, but I can stream it for you!â
OOOOOR
âHELL YEAH Iâll send you a link and give you one of our doctrine Nightmares, Iâll teach you a little bit and you can help!â
Just imagine.
*Itâs not going to be awesome because of TiDi and you know it, but whatever. Titans will die.
Thatâs hardly a restriction.
We can have an endless amount of free accounts.
Turning an account into an omega account is really cheap nowadays: just get a 3 day âweekend warriorâ omega subscription and you get three more potential âthrowaway titan pilotsâ.
Removal of SP will break the game.
Point still stands, everything you pointed out is buyable with ISK right now anyways
While buyable, this price is high enough that actions have consequences and that specialisation matters.
Without SP, thatâs all gone.
1 Like
The three throwaway Titan Pilots are still going to die like any other non-throwaway Titan Pilot.
Interesting to bring up Titan Pilots btw, as they are probably the most skewed in this whole SP thing.
The Ship they fly is more expensive than the SP required to fly it. If you have the ISK to buy a Titan, you most likely could also relatively easily have the ISK to buy a whole new character for it.
With everything else that is currently gated behind omega skill time subscription, like a straight Marauder pilot with no wasted SP, youâre looking at 2 years of subscription skill training. Thatâs 400 bucks (or 200ish when you buy the offers) for the ship you might want to have because it looks cool and performs strong.
Alas, weâre drifting a bit away from the topic with my little mind game.
I, too, believe the NPE is disheartening. Itâs way better than it used to be, but the game is so old and hyperdeveloped, catching up to play with the big boys is a feat of years. And once they realize it, I guess many new players (as in: never played EVE before) will say farewell.
So a lot of vets think about the new player experience from a âmin-maxed vetâ viewpoint.
âOMG, Iâve got a new character and he canât even use T2 weapons! How useless! OMG Iâve got a new pilot and he canât even cloak! OMG Iâve got a new pilot and it takes him so long to kill things in L3 missions!â
Your issues here are mostly about min-maxing the value a vet could/would obtain from doing everything in the best fashion. This really isnât something a new player is going to be worrying about.
An actual new player is focused on learning a somewhat clumsy, awkward, non-intuitive interface with a complex and poorly documented game. Heâs focused on doing new player things - completing his career agents, running L1 missions, learning what to fit on a frigate.
Theyâre not so concerned about milking every last drop of ISK out of their player referral link. And if they end up, down the line, deciding they want that⌠guess what? New accounts are free, and thereâs plenty of reasons to have alts in EVE! They can set up all the referrals they want.
I see vets âimaginingâ situations in which a new player is somehow disadvantaged and the âfixâ would just be âgive them more stuffâ. More skills, more SP, more ISK, more ships. But I donât see those issues arising in Rookie Help where the actual newbies are.
You then mention a number of other issues which are unrelated to ânew players need more free skillsâ. Such as players being left hanging at the end of career agents. Thatâs a completely different issue with various sorts of poor game design on CCPâs part.
Yes, those issues should be handled, and the forums are filled with critiques and suggestions on how and why other issues could/should be fixed.
You can indeed immediately give all players 1M free SP, for instance, but then youâre missing out on that tiny bit of social interaction that occurs between two players, one accepting the link and the other both offering and incentivized (in some fashion) to encourage that new player to sub up.
Could it be done better and more socially? Sure. Myself Iâd grant the 1M SP for the link and then have a system of achievements in the game where the new player earned more SP by engaging further with the game.
We need more reasons for players to play, learn and interact with other players. Not more free giveaways, which will always be more exploited by vets and alts than by new players anyway.
As for your âwhy not give every skill to all players?â question, it reflects a complete lack of understanding of player motivation. If you think thatâs a great idea, ask yourself this question:
Why do you think there isnât a single serious MMO out there that gives new players full access to every skill, gear, talent and ability in the game as soon as they log in?
6 Likes