Good thing there are lots of players who do help new players so no, indeed, you are not needed.
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Long term planning would require some form of mining or grinding and then that offered the mini game seen as instant action I thought.
No it just requires that player to play in whatever way he likes, whether thatās trying new stuff or focussing on something specific.
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I created this character barely 10 days ago, and Iāve been doing exploration event sites in highsec while I train skills. After 10 days of playing 2-3 hours a day on average, Iām currently on track to make 500m isk before I finish training my first million skill points. And thatās just in highsec too - I havenāt even touched lowsec event loot or regular nullsec relic loot yet. Thatās not exactly ābeing able to do nothingā.
Since the thread is moving much faster than I anticipated and I didnāt reply to my own post, I also added some additional thoughts in this post: So I made a new character. It was eye opening - #166 by Jasmin_Acami
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I think the problem here is we know how to make a new character , would a real new player be as successful as you or me with a new character.
But i think it shows the tools are there to do it right , maybe its a form of natural selection at work and to be a good eve player they needs to fight their way though , many will fall by the way side to monsters like Aiko and her likes, we just need to get more to pass the test some how.
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One thing I would like to add about my new character experience - I did not give her isk from another character to start up like I typically would do. It has been a very, very long time since I have been hard pressed for small amounts of isk and I wanted to see how difficult that would make it nowadays. And, I was actually impressed with what I saw. The career agents, despite all their shortcomings and being extremely outdated, give access to some basic ships that are more specialized to do their respective tasks. And I was also very surprised at how much of a difference the isk rewards from the AIR Career Program made. 50k isk may not seem like much when youāre sitting on a few bill in the wallet. But to a newbro, that can pay for a couple t1 modules and a HSBB contract. (And you get a lot of these isk rewards.) So while, yes, I already know how to play and therefore can make more isk faster than a real newbro could, the NPE gives enough resources to stay afloat while a new player figures everything out.
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Guys, that supposed to be a princess? 
She sounds like a MAGA Alt-Right nut. 
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Nope. The Grinches of this game have decided that giving was a sin
and that new players were some kind of homeless people: donāt help them or theyāll buy alcohol.
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The thread delivers. Now we have references to MAGA and to homeless people, with a few rounds of personal attacks. Not exactly similar to following the forum rules, is it.
From eye opening to jaw dropping in a matter of a few posts. Local just moved to the forums, eh.
Better close this before it turns into a dumpster fire.
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You must have very high standards for what constitutes a dumpster fire.
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Talk to Aiko about that, sheās the one who acts all MAGA-Right-Wing-Nut on these forum.
Nothing wrong with mentioning the homeless. We should remember them once in a while.
All the threads devolve into dumpster fires so thatās not saying much.
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69 posts to read since last time,
nice.
Somewhere, someone stated that 99% of the players here had to went through it and made it, and suggested by this that the current system and the new, better NPE than almost we all had to go through, is actually a good enough system as is.
Thatās a prime example of survivorship bias.
The goal I, and the OP, and some others, are trying to achieve is this:
Make the start more easy, and make catching up more easy.
Many of the people defending the status quo seem to bring up the argument, that this would somehow be either unfair or unbalances, because vets would somehow abuse it.
Everytime an ease on the skilling part is highlighted as a possible way to get new players more engaged, eigher by giving them more stuff to do on day 1, or this, or that, is apparently met with resistance on the likes of
-Oh they can do so many things anyways!
or
-Back in my day, I had to invest months and months of skilltime, and that was good, because I had to learn the game!
However, developing the player skill to find your place and niche in EVE has never been up for discussion, and even with a removing of SP alltogether or giving people more SP on the start will never, never, never take that part away.
You have to start distiguishing between the PLAYER Skill, of the flesh-and-bones, wetware sitting in front of itās computer at home navigating through EVE; and the Character Skill, which develops very slowly, adds a lot of complexity to the game and thus to the required Player Skill.
Just because we all had to go through this and made it doesnāt mean everyone does. We will never see the numbers, we only see maybe the tip of the iceberg, for example, when you read on reddit about some guy thinking of picking up EVE, who has already played it a few years ago, but didnāt make it for more than 3 or 4 months. I havenāt asked these guys, to be fair and provide you now with the means to attack my argument, what the reason was they quit. Could have been RL stuff, could have been not finding their niche, lacking the social aspect because they werenāt picked up by a corp, and many many many more. But in the many many many more area there will always remain the possibility that they simply realized how much time they would have to sink into this game while paying a subscription (which is good, it gives CCP money, which they can then use on EVE (or which is bad, because they will use it on random eve-universe project #17 that wonāt make it)) to fly ships they are interested in.
We seriously canāt tell.
I think, what we can maybe see somewhere in data, devblogs, blogs or whatever was the impact the new NPE had compared to the old one.
But what changed compared to the old one?
Well, for one, new players get a little bit more guidance.
For second, they have more SP.
What is it?
The SP, or the 2 hours of guided warping/jumping/shooting?
I say: Letās try more SP.
A lot of the opposing viewpoints on this is however that this will lead to more tools for veteran players to ruin other players game by getting quicker acces to:
Ganking ships
Cloaky ships
Cyno Cloaky Ships
or by stating that it would be unfair towards everyone else.
Which is one evolution of the trolley meme, were you could stop the trolley and noone gets hurt, but it would be unfair for everyone who already got killed by it, just with an EVE flavour to it.
The acces to means to ruin everyone elseās game, however, is purely on the decision of the receiving end to let them ruin it for you.
As of now, veteran players that want to ruin your game by cloaky camping, arazu cynos and ganking taloses can already do so.
You even showed your own variant of cheap, no skill 850 dps Gnosis. The tools are already there, the players doing it are already there, and they are there for such a long time they have had all the time they needed to train up their alt-army to it even better/worse.
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Another example:
I created this character barely 10 days ago, and Iāve been doing exploration event sites in highsec while I train skills. After 10 days of playing 2-3 hours a day on average, Iām currently on track to make 500m isk before I finish training my first million skill points. And thatās just in highsec too - I havenāt even touched lowsec event loot or regular nullsec relic loot yet. Thatās not exactly ābeing able to do nothingā.
You already have player skill, you know what and how to do it.
A genuine new player does not. Within his 10 days, he might be sitting in a venture somewhere around Rens and mine Scordite. Because he decided to skill more into mining, because he wants to become a producer, because he heard everything in EVE is built by players, and those that do it right get filthy rich.
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One would think, by now, that the retention rate would show some difference since the introduction of the NPE - if indeed the NPE made any difference. That is a question to put to CCP, and perhaps they will mention it during Fanfest. I, for one, donāt think that the NPE had more than a passing effect, if any.
If the OP argues that all the magic 14 plus 20M SP is not even enough to make a difference, then there really is nothing to be changed to the game, or said to the author. It had become a matter of āam I equipped to play this gameā. Nothing that is handed freely will make that basis more solid - it will make it worse, as I said extremely briefly in my first post.
If an alpha player can kill triglavians using alpha ships and skills to a total of 5M sp, I seriously have to ask the OP why he thinks more is needed or faster. I cannot but suspect a wrong approach on his part.
And that is the not-so-obvious gem in this game: you get better faster, and you get more satisfaction from the game by playing with others, learning from them, achieving competence at increased pace, discovering stuff via them that you would not have thought of. This has always been the case for EvE.
Iāll repeat my earlier comment: getting dropped onto the middle of the learning curve only makes the frustration more intense and, if anything, will hasten departure from the game. And most of us would be against breaking the game to prove that we are right.
Itās not so much about skill levels and equipment, but all about knowing and understanding the lines of force at play in EvE. And that cannot be handed to a rookie without him/her going through the paces.
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If an alpha player can kill triglavians using alpha ships and skills to a total of 5M sp, I seriously have to ask the OP why he thinks more is needed or faster. I cannot but suspect a wrong approach on his part.
Op is not alone with thought like these, and we can derive from that, that new players will to a certain amount also have this mindset you claim to be a wrong approach.
Pick them up (somehow): yes/no?
Doesnāt have to be through granting the magic 14, or abolishing SP alltogether, or or or
Iāll repeat my earlier comment: getting dropped onto the middle of the learning curve only makes the frustration more intense and, if anything, will hasten departure from the game. And most of us would be against breaking the game to prove that we are right.
Giving SP does in no way affect the learning curve. Take the Magic 14: They do only enhance the characterās capabilities in the core ship ressources there are. Heāll still have to learn, as a player, how capacitor works, what fitting is, and that he will probably have to use a fitting tool to simulate his fits (or use ingame one, idc). He will still have to learn about managing his capacitor, about align time, about everything else these skills affect.
But the skills, if granted from beginning or removed in total, will not alter his experience of flying around in a ship learning the game.
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Give everyone free titans, thatāll surely help. Or how about omega for free, that will really help as well. I mean, if the requirement is āitāll attract some more peopleā then anything goes right?
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Giving the skills to fly a titan does not equal to give a titan.
Free Omega, not a fan anymore, someone convinced me. You can find a thread that i started in Player Features and Ideas, to try out the effects of āgrantingā SP to players.
As of now, with skill injectors, the moment someone wants a Titan and has the ISK for it, he even has the opportunity to forego every skillpoint based time restriction and just inject into it. And since most coalitions require your titan pilot to sit in it or have access to it in a minute after logging in for emergency capital operation reasons, they could probably rip out many a unneeded skill for titans if they donāt have the ISK to buy all the SP.
Sure, OP is not alone in these claims. Thereās plenty of threads on the topic of āmore freeā or āeasier startā. That doesnāt make the claims right.
Btw, āthe wrong approachā I mentioned has nothing to do with free stuff or easier starts, but everything to do with āwhat can you do with what you already haveā.
Of course. But itās very difficult to achieve, because it requires the new players to become part of groups of players - some are very reluctant to join, others have great difficulty in finding the correct group. I think that makes all the difference in experiencing EvE online, even when one is smart enough to figure out all the necessary things to survive and thrive as a solo player (most of those even enjoy it more when they become part of a larger group). The key, in my opinion, is the social aspect of belonging to a group with which the new player feels comfortable, or perhaps even identify.
Well, no. Giving a mass of SP inevitably leads to a player aiming for ābetter shipsā. In EvE that equates to hulls one is not ready to fly at all. With bigger risk comes bigger loss and bigger frustration. One does get dropped onto a higher part of the learning curve by skipping the previous parts.
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I do agree that with the current 500k starting SP and the free 1M SP you can do a lot of things. I think I have mentioned that somewhere earlier. But still, new players will eventually want to optimize their ships, and that will require to train these skills. Which will eat a lot of SP, not only for an alpha, even for someone paying omega.
Is this really necessary? I think not, you think yes, the reasons are varying immensely.
One could argue that āweā are okay with the way the game is because we know it no different, or only slightly different. But āweā know that the new NPE is waaaaay better than what most of us had to go through. For example, my second account. Purely anecdotic evidence, so not reflective for everyone.
I wanted to streamline my second account back then, and train only useful skills for what I wanted to do with that character. It required me to max out the learning skills first, as these would greatly (like, GREATLY) influence the future performance of that account. I was okay with it, it meant my 2nd char would develop better. I didnāt know it no other way. Then, CCP removed learning skills and rolled all the attributes into the base attributes. How delightful! Pretty much everyone rejoiced, as they got their SP refunded and could spend them on something else now!
Back then, Battlecruisers and Destroyers were non-racial. Everyone with BC V and Dessies V rejoiced when that was changed, cause they got all the free SP! Everyone with BC IV or Dessie IV was shafted and fell under the bus, not so cool. They now had to spend 3 times the SP to eventually be able what they would have been able to do if they skilled BC V before that change. The others however, if for example only interested in flying SLeipnirs, could rip out that SP and were even more happy!
Point is: We know the game we know it. Ultimately, CCP is in full control of everything. They could change the way the Magic 14 work, no matter what we all had as an opinion for that, and when they decide it was bad, they could revert it.
Iām fully for trying out things in a 20 year old game that has a problem with player numbers compared to 5 or 10 years ago.
And who knows, maybe once we all have the Magic 14 rolled into the base stats of ships and characters or granted for free, we will all like it, and in a year or two, canāt imagine why it hasnāt been that way all along.
Well, no. Giving a mass of SP inevitably leads to a player aiming for ābetter shipsā. In EvE that equates to hulls one is not ready to fly at all . With bigger risk comes bigger loss and bigger frustration. One does get dropped onto a higher part of the learning curve by skipping the previous parts.
Not giving SP does the same, everyone is looking for better ships to do the things they like doing.
The limiting factor has primarily been ISK, with SP adding a time component to it, that would in no way guarantee a player to be āmatureā enough to fly a ship unlocked by the SP.
Nobody likes a challenge.
New players ONLY want easy games.
If you donāt agree, you are the other political party!
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